Trying to Keep from Cracking

Well, I went in to get wanded this morning and the news is decidely mixed. I am 5 weeks 1 day today. There was a visible amniotic sac measuring 4 weeks 5 days and a yolk sac measuring 5 weeks 2 days. Dr. Cookie Pie said the yolk sac had a "hat" ( a tiny white line on the border that indicated early growth of the fetal pole) and that such a line does not develop before 5 weeks 2 days. She said that the am sac measurement was within the margin of error and that I just should not worry. But I feel like I am going to crack from anxiety. I am sitting here pecking at my mobile device and trying not to cry. I just don't know how to keep enduring these losses. Worst of all, I can't go in again until 3/3 because she is away next Friday and Monday. So next scan will be at 6 weeks 5 days (unless I start to bleed first).

Half-Expecting

Don't you think that would be a great new name for my blog? As in, I'm on my 3rd pregnancy in the span of 9 months and I still half-expect the arrival of a live baby? Of course, I also half-expect to wake up 6 inches taller and ten pounds thinner. Regular pregnant ladies get to say, "I'm expecting." But we recurrent miscarriers daren't do more than half-expect.

Beta was 300-somethingish. Can't even remember, but double what it was with the blighted ovum at the same gestational date. V. sore boobs, crazy fatigue, no sick yet (knock would, cross fingers, toss salt, etc.). So um, 1st ultrasound to look for sac is Friday and I think I'm just too stupified with fatigue to write anything else.

Thank you for the comments, my loyal old friends on the internet. I go back and forth on whether to tell the world at large about each new pregnancy. Last time I told everyone who so much as said hello to me, but this time, it's just you Nets. SO *thanks* for the support and good wishes.

Seven

You guessed it. I'm back on the blog with number seven on board. In an unusual display of self control, I waited until today, the actual day my period is due, to test. Reward: a nice dark pink second line. By yesterday, I was pretty confident of the facts and cocky enough to enter the day of my last LMP into the handy due-date calculator at Bby Ctr. They actually provide the result by saying "your baby will be born on..." WILL BE BORN? Can I sue them for malpractice if/when this one goes south?

Anyway, feeling good, feeling hopeful. Irrationally exuberant one might say. I blame the hormones--for which I also blame the decision to place a partially open bottle of Fizzy Lizzy into a purse full of library books on the way to the doctor's this afternoon.

Mostly feeling pretty proud of myself for having the sheer guts to try this again. Lucky # 7 (yes, I'm hoping to steal a page from Tertia's book) would be due just before my 37th birthday. Sure would be nice...

Will post Beta when I get it. Cheers!

Snowy Day

You can't always get what you want, and if you try sometimes, you just might find, you don't need what you get. In my head, the perfect snowy day involves snowballs, snowmen, sledding, snow angels, snow shoveling, and maybe after all that some hot chocolate for the little ones. In reality, my perfect snowy day involves a brief brisk walk in the sunshine, followed by a nap for Turtle, a "nap" for mommy and daddy, then a nap for daddy, and then blogging,coffee, and a brownie for mommmy.

I thought I wanted a puppy, but what I really want is a baby. And it turns out that a yipping, nipping, pissing, pooping machine that needs clean-up baths three times a day and walks ten times a day does not begin to fill the baby-shaped hole in my heart. So the puppy, through no fault of her own, has been sent off to foster care at my parents' house (bless their hearts). I've been shocked by the level of resentment/indifference I wound up aiming at the dog. I never understood, until now, the expression "harden you heart." Even strangers on the street melted into puddles at the sight of the puppy. But while I could observe her little doggie merits clinically, I could *not* expereience them emotionally. I felt no rush of nurturing feeling whatsoever. Instead, I felt a regular desire to throttle her.

My negative reaction to the OMD shocked me all the more because I experienced every second of Turtle's infancy as sheer magic. I discovered myself to be remarkably maternal, a delightful surprise given that back before I knew how hard it would be to have a baby, I had thought that I didn't really want one all that much. Yes, I was covered at one time or another in every bodily effluvium known to womankind. Yes I nursed for a cumulative eight hours a day around the clock. Yes my nipples cracked and bled and yes I thought my body would shoot clear to the ceiling from the pain. But my God, I was so grateful to feel it all, after the numbing sorrow of infertility. I just walked around all day with Turtle snugged to my chest in a kind of dreamy blissful stupor. In fact, a friend told me the other day that she and all my other friends found me nauseating in all my dewy joy and that they came to a collective agreement to put up with me only because they knew how hard the road to motherhood had been. So when I told her I was sending away the OMD, she laughed and said, Anne, *finally* you're getting your taste of post-partum (post-canum?!) depression!

All of this is to say, that we are still actively trying for a second child the old-fashioned way. (My repeat FSH levels were an age-appropriate 9.9. Not fab, but definitely not catastrophic either.) But instead of feeling crushed by my latest negative pregnancy test this week, I felt strangely peaceful. Turtle is so adorable, such a big boy. I have a great flexible job*, good childcare, and a marriage making a comeback from parent-shock on the strength of a rock-solid foundation. I want a second kid, I think. But I'm prepared to be philosophical if I don't get what I think I want.

*Tomorrow, for example, I won't be working, but rather cheering wildly at the TV round 11:30 a.m...

Everything or Nothing

Sorry for the lack of posts. I have not been able to get a moment to myself. We are currently stalled out waiting for the arrival of our brand new OMD, who missed her flight and is now not arriving until 10:30 PM. Who/ what is OMD, you ask? That would be Soper's coinage from way back: Obligatory Miscarriage Dog. OMD, you know the pet you get in order to have a sentient object on which to dump all your unfulfilled maternal longings. The one you buy toys and cute sweaters for and dare anyone to call a mama's pup. I actually signed up with OMD's breeder last August after my fourth miscarriage. Turns out to have been a prescient move, since she's now arriving just in time to console me on my fifth.

Did I just say fifth? They're mounting up so fast now. I got the dread call from Dr. Cookie Pie today. They weren't able to culture any cells for analysis, so we'll never know whether my latest loss is related to my prior ones or is a random chromosomal one. But all signs point to it having been chromosomal, your garden variety blighted ovum. The million dollar question is: was this a random event, sort of thing that could happen to anybody? Or is this in fact more circumstantial evidence in the mounting case for pre-mature menopause? This latest loss could mean everything or nothing.

New day three testing as soon as practical. I'm now enjoying the exclusive no-hope edition of the fabled two week wait. Glad to have OMD arriving any minute now.

I'm OK

I'm OK. More OK than I would have thought. Much more OK than I was after last summer's loss[es]. Turtle sang "Happy Birthday" to me on my birthday, and it was truly the most wonderful sound on earth.

I am humbled to realize how much of my emotional response is hormonally mediated. I had an easy pregnancy and an easy miscarriage and I simply don't feel tragic. I feel kind of bemused.

I don't know where we go from here. Dr. Cookie Pie prescribes: "soul searching." We are trying to do cytology on the bit of tissue I manged to collect and we are planning to do day 3 blood work next month (which could be difficult over the holidays...).

I am not sure how far I am willing to go in the pursuit of a second child...the ethical questions swirling around all non-standard options are so complex, the risks, financial, emotional, physical are so great. I think I need a break from thinking about all this... Today's NYT's magazine cover story and all the attendant comments were thought provoking to the point of being headache inducing!

Easy Come Easy Go

I am currently miscarrying. My first spontaneous miscarriage, no D & C needed. Unfortunately, this is most likely chromosomal and is entirely consistent with the lousy FSH reading. I feel bleak. And bloody...

No News Is Good News

Hi. Five weeks here and to all appearances still pregnant. I have in the last week weathered a bout of flue AND a UTI. I did not think I needed antibiotics for the flue-ish thing, but had this persistent sore throat that wouldn't quit. Upside # 1 to the UTI is that I scored some antibiotics that seem to be kicking the throat thing as well. Upside # 2 to the UTI is that I've only had one once before during pregnancy--and that was the successful one with Turtle. So I am choosing to see this as my lucky UTI, not so much a bladder infection as a benediction. Also, I an not queasy yet, whereas I was one day pre-vomit at this stage last time. I have a theory on this, but I'm not going to jinx it by telling at this point!

Many thanks for the well wishes. I am not going in to get wanded until next Wednesday, one day before Thanksgiving AND my birthday. Trying not to make anything of the timing...I will update.

The Audacity of Hope

A quick update. First of all, thank you very much for your comments. It means the world to me to have this support. I quite honestly do not think I could face doing this again without knowing than an online community of fabulous women with more than their share of fertility awareness has my back! Also, when I took Blogger up on their seemingly innocent offer to upgrade my templates, I lost my site meter, so I now have NO idea who or how many people are reading, apart from the evidence of the comments. (I did make a teensey ineffectual effort to address the situation by visiting site meter. But they had a long log-in process with lots of questions and passcodes and email address queries. And since I first set up the dang thing years on years ago, my email has changed, I don't remember any of my old passcodes etc., the whole thing seemed like more than I could handle and I gave up.) I'm driving the old blog without headlights.

Not the update you were looking for, eh?

Well, I am really only officially pregnant as of today. Last week on cycle day 25, something like nine days post-ovulation (I *think*) I saw a big red spot on the toilet paper and thought--oh no, foreshortened cycles, classic sign of perimenopause. But, because my hope addict* rules the roost, I also started thinking about how the boobs were sore, I felt a little dizzy, there'd been that nose bleed and, well, you know the drill. So I took a pee-stick test. And because, after years of practice at squinting at these things, I've now developed near x-ray vision, I was able to see the ever so faint second pink line. I went over to Dr. Cookie Pie's stat, where a blood draw revealed that my HCG level was 14. Dr Google quickly confirmed that anything under 5 was not pregnant, anything over 25 was pregnant, and a number like 14 was, well, interesting. But, being the eternal optimist I went with "the opposite of not pregnant is--pregnant!!" And duly reported the news here.

I spent the weekend on progesterone supplements and tried to ignore the very occasional light red spotting.

I then waited until yesterday to do another blood draw, the first official day of my "missed period." And, the office took their sweet time getting back to me, but, I learned this morning that my HCG is now an entirely respectable 123. So. I am now, as of today, 4 weeks pregnant. Which, if you think about it is insane. I've already logged nearly a week of anxiety and yet I am still only ever so barely pregnant. You can see how a girl might turn to the internet for support, a stiff drink being out of the question...

I have to say, I was absurdly pleased to see that faint pink line. I said to my husband, "you know, the silver lining to all these miscarriages, is getting to experience the joy of the positive pee-stick so many extra times." Seriously, I know I really am getting warped. But. I am irrationally hopeful. And I'm carrying around that foul little peestick in my purse like some kind of good luck token. At least it proves I still can get pregnant, lousy FSH to the contrary. I'm still in the game...

*With a tip of the pee-stick to the ever fabulous Tertia...

What a Wonderful World

On the micro level, I am dreamily amazed to report that today, three weeks to the day before my 36th birthday, while waiting to repeat the day-3 bloodwork that caused me so much anguish, I have discovered that I am pregnant once again.

On the macro level, I am thrilled to have just lived through one of the most important events in U.S. history, the election of our first black president, a man who, as a constitutional scholar, fully understands the enormity of that accomplishment as well as his obligation to undo the widespread damage of the Bush-Cheney years.

Very sleepy, very happy, not yet pukey...

Thank you

I am so moved by all your support, practical and otherwise. Thank you. Thank you.

Big Boy/ Little Boy

A couple of months ago, very shortly after he began speaking in sentences, Turtle became interested in the idea of privacy. Where he learned the term I'm not sure, as his Dad and I seldom if ever use the word. It may be that his babysitter is more modest than we are. In any event, his conception of privacy delightfully betrayed the two-year old's basic belief that there is no division between mommy and me. "Go away, daddy," he'd order, "I need privacy with Mommy."

Tonight, for the first time, he asked for privacy for himself. I was giving him a bath and he began to splash. "Stop that," I said, firmly but calmly. "Sorry, Mommy!" he yelped almost before I could get the words out. We had just made it through a block-throwing incident, and he knew, I thought, that he'd better not push things. But we'd hardly resumed our boat race when he began to splash again. "I know it's fun to splash," I said, "but it's only fun for the one in the tub, the one who's already wet. Mommy's wearing clothes and she wants to stay dry." "Sorry, Mommy," he said. Then he thought for a moment.

"Mommy, I want privacy," he said. "Really?" I asked, shocked at this new development. "Mommy go away," he clarified. "OK," I said, looking for a compromise that would not involve leaving him unattended in a good 6 or 8 inches of water, "I'll turn around and I won't look again until you say I can." The boat race resumed along with the splashing.

And in that instant, I saw all the other separations he'll demand over the years, the privacy he'll want for illicit pleasures so much more dangerous than a simple splash in the bath. How will I protect him from himself, and from me, from my demands for perfection? "I can hear you splashing," I told him.

Later, on the way to bed, in his uncanny two-year-old way, he began to take stock of his own maturation. "Mommy, I no have a crib," he announced. "That's right I said. Can you tell me who has it now?" Not to be distracted, he repeated, "Daddy took da crib." We'd given it away as a hand-me-down fully four months ago and I was surprised to have him bring it up. "That's right," I said, "and now a new little baby sleeps in it, right? It was too small for you." I felt good about teaching him empathy, the importance of giving to others. "I climb out and Daddy took it away," he insisted with unflinching accuracy. In fact, Daddy did confiscate the crib for good one day about a month after the big-boy-bed had been introduced, a day when the nap-time stall tactic of requesting transfer from bed to crib devolved into the nap-strike tactic of climbing out of the crib.

"Well," I said, opting for perfect honesty with this small exacting boy, "it is true that Daddy took the crib away when you climbed out of it. That was a dangerous thing to do and you could have gotten hurt. But it was time to give the crib away anyway. We didn't give it away because you climbed out. We gave it away because it was too small for you. You were so big you had to scrunch your legs up inside it. You didn't need it any more and until we gave it to the new little baby, he had no place at all to sleep." I nattered on about all the space for playing we'd opened up in his room. He launched into a scientific catalog of all the changes in his room since his infancy. "No changing table, Mommy. That's a dresser." "Man brought the bed." "Daddy took my shelf." Wow, such loss, such longing, such nostalgia and such clear memories at two.

I wanted to comfort him in the face of all this change. I said, "let's get Freddie." You've had Freddie since you were a tiny little baby," I said as he nuzzled his favorite stuffed dog. "You've always loved Freddie." But he was on to me. "Mommy, Freddie no bark," he said. "Freddie no make a noise," he said pressing futilely at the electronic insert that used to making a barking sound when pressed. "Wow," I said, "Freddie did used to bark, and you have a really good memory. You remember what he sounded like when he barked, right?" "Yes," he said, sounding miserable, already learning the lesson that you can't go home again, not even when you're two and rocking in your mother's arms.

"Well, and you have blankie, right?" I asked, suddenly grateful for the continued presence of the disgraceful unraveling rag I used to swaddle him in. "Do you remember how I used to wrap you up in blankie?" I asked him. By the end I had taken to wrapping him loosely toga-style around his chest, just to give him the suggestion of a swaddle. He tensed and didn't answer me. "Should we wrap you up in blankie, tonight?" I asked him. "No!" he declared. "OK," I said, and we finished our book. Then I lay him down on his big-boy bed and wrapped him toga-style in his blankie. The silly phrases I used to repeat like a mantra and haven't used in a year came back to me: "I'm gonna wrap you up in blankie, in blankie, blankie, blankie. Blankie makes you feel totally safe, totally, secure. I love you son, oh yes I do, I love you to bitsy bitsy bits." He greeted the old game with gales of giggles. And then, with more rocking and singing, he slowly drifted into sleep.

Failure

I am one of the youngest looking 35-year olds you'll ever see, five feet tall with a cute round face and big baby eyes. I see the signs of my own aging clearly in my face, the ever deepening under-eye shadows that are the curse of the sallow-skinned, the frown-lined brow calling out for Botox. But apparently what everyone else sees when they look at me me is a totally exhausted and very grumpy sixteen-year old inexplicably decked out in Eileen Fisher.

I was carded last week. When I laughed and told the waiter I was old enough to be highly flattered, he shrugged only half apologetically and said, "listen we have to card anyone under 30." When I told him I'll be 36 next month, he looked genuinely flabbergasted.

As a working woman, I have mostly found my exaggerated youthfulness to be a serious annoyance. Whatever one may say about the cult of youth in this country, the fact remains that age equates with experience and competence for most people. Look young and they may proposition you at the corner bar, but they won't promote you to the corner office.

With an outer appearance that makes everyone assume I'm much younger than I am, I was totally unprepared to be given news so terrible it has taken my breath away. Flattened me bodily. I appear to have entered perimenopause at the age of 35.

From the beginning of my fertility struggles, back in 2003 at the tender age of 30, I have always had one thing on my side. "Don't worry, you're still so young," everyone told me. And so my secret fear has been losing the one straight arrow in my quiver, the ability to conceive with relative ease and to produce genetically sound embryos. As an archer, I've been working with a broken bow, a body almost unable to shoot straight and send a baby out into the world. Four dead embryos. Four missed miscarriages. One live birth. Hitting the target that one lucky time meant everything, of course. It meant a child. And it meant that if I could only manage the strength of arm, if I could only muster the will to try again, I could seize another arrow from the quiver and I might, just might, score the pot shot that would bring another child. Now I have only broken sticks and shreds of feathers, dreams in dust.

When I didn't conceive last month, I went to Dr. Cookie Pie and said: "Let's do day three blood work." She said, "Are you kidding me? You're absolutely fine." I said, "I'm an information junkie. I'm about to turn 36. Let's just do it and see where we stand." I'd had a couple, that is two, episodes of night sweats over the last 4 months, and it had given me a little nagging worry. I wanted to reassure myself. And I thought that if my FSH had edged over 9, it might be time to think about IVF, to freeze some embryos from 35-year-old eggs, to give myself a fighting chance to carry to term with a viable embryo.

To my utter shock and grief, my FSH cam back at 15.5. Cookie Pie, always the optimist observed that my LH was 4.5 (when it would typically also be elevated with elevated FSH) and insisted that it must be a lab error. They ran it again and the numbers came back 16.5 and 5. They ran them yet again, and they came back 17.8 and 6. Cookie Pie will not believe it and says we'll try again next month with a different lab. Maybe it is a false alarm. But I feel devastated. These are the numbers of premature ovarian failure, numbers so bad no IVF clinic would even touch me.

The first thing I did, after hanging up the phone with Dr. Cookie Pie, was consult Dr. Google about premature menopause, whence I quickly discovered that it's associated with, you guessed it, hypothyroidism. And that information makes me feel enraged. Because no one, no one, not one person ever mentioned this fact to me. No one ever said, you had better try to conceive again the very instant you give birth cause your days are numbered. On the contrary, everyone spouted platitudes about primed pumps. Somehow, in all my googling on Hashimoto's, I never came across that little factoid. Or maybe I believed the hype about how I'm actually 16.

I am soo sad I am moving through my days in an utter fog. Tears come unbidden whenever I let my mind wander, and so I mostly try to pretend this is happening to someone else. I've told no one but my husband and my mother, but I have the oddest sensation walking down the street that everyone can sense I'm barren, that I'm a walking black hole.

Only here, in the safe virtual world of my fellow infertiles on the internet, can I stand to take this news out and run my fingers lightly over it. Thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your comments last week. It means so much to know I am not utterly alone at a time when I feel so forsaken.

FSH.
Further Surprise of Hashimoto's.
Fantastically Shitty Hormones.
Failed Second-child Hopes.
Fucking Sorry History.

Insult to Injury

When I was a primary infertile, a big part of my pain stemmed from a feeling of arrested development, that there was a key life stage that I was ready, willing, but inexplicably unable to enter. Watching all the fertile folk rolling by me as I trudged the path to parenthood was so dispiriting.

I always thought that the pain of secondary infertility could be no where near as severe. And in the beginning, it really wasn't. But, as the months go by and Turtle grows bigger and bigger while the cradle stays empty, the pain begins to deepen. And what I mostly feel is that I am so worn down and weary now.

It's like the first time you go for a run and you really overdo it and come home sore, you think--wow that was tough. But actually, you don't know the half of it. Because the moment you're really going to face a world of pain is on day two, when you hit the trail again with muscles already worn down from the first run. Oh, at first you'll think, this is great. It feels *soo* good to get moving again, to stretch out all the muscles that tightened over night. But a few miles out you'll realize that you've pushed yourself beyond endurance. It's then that you want to curl up on the side of the trail and die a peaceful death under a drift of brown leaves. And if, somehow, you will yourself to live, you then have to face the fact that only putting one foot in front of the other can ever bring you home again.

Right now, a summer chemical pregnancy (Maria and the Girls both scored, as it turned out...) followed by two months of disappointing negatives has me clutching my side and kicking at leaves...

Emotional Immunities

If I confess that I'm achingly homesick for the little boy asleep in the next room, will you tell me to sit up straight and think of the children in Sudan, or Zimbabwe, (or in Newark NJ, for that matter)? That's about the response that Judith Warner got when she devoted an entire NYT column to the theme of missing her girls at camp. And I'm sure that Judith and I deserve the scorn.

The thing is this. My husband and I leave tomorrow morning for a romantic weekend for two. (The hotel describes our room as a "bridal suite." Ahem. Not a lot that's bridal about yours truly, the lady who's been around the block and up the duff 5 times now. But I digress.) We have never left Turtle overnight before and I'm already feeling bereft. Stomach tied in knots, chest-heaving sighs, bereft.

I know that billions have done this before me. I know that strong marriages make strong families. I know that we'll have a a great time lounging by the water. I know that I should have better manners than to complain about such a problem in public in the blogosphere. But there you have it. I miss Turtle terribly and we haven't even left yet.

In fact, I am feeling rather resentful of my parents for tricking me into letting them take away my child. I literally just got into a "discussion" with my mother over how early they'll promise to get him back on Sunday. If you knew how utterly unsentimental about children I am in general, how ambivalent I was about motherhood in the first place, you'd be better able to understand my own bafflement at the emotions my psyche comes up with.

Why do you think it is that things can hurt so acutely, that, by any rational standard, are actually phenomenal privileges (see spending weekend in pampered relaxation in first world country)? My latest theory is that it must be a kind of emotional allergy.

One leading hypothesis on the rise of allergies in the West is that our bored immune systems are going hay wire. Engineered to fight off typhus, plague, and long winters without fruit, our bodies just don't know what to do in the sanitized world of handi-wipes, antibiotics, and 24 hour supermarkets. So our bodies turn inward and come up with lovely counter-campaigns (like my immune system's brilliant idea to attack my thyroid). Maybe emotions work the same way.

Maybe we are all born with the emotional range to make it through wars and floods and famine. Yet, because most of us cosseted Westerners just don't have much immediate experience with woolly mammoths, we operate most of the time in emotional overdrive. Our feelings are left to cycle through the intense highs and lows that would make lots of sense in tougher conditions, but sound ridiculous applied to the problems of the middle-brow American.

Sorry to go all philosophical on you. But when you're on the verge of a mini break-down over a mini-break, it does get you thinking...

Girls: 1, Maria: 0

Probably not the brightest idea to compare pregnancy hopes to a tragic romance in the first place...Off to comment on the blogs of all the fabulous IComLeavWe folks!

My West Side Story

With apologies to Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim...

MARIA

I feel sleepy
Oh so sleepy
I feel sleepy and hungry and gay
And so pregnant
That hope is on the rise today

I have spotting
Light pink spotting
And the cramping, the peeing, oy vey!
I feel pregnant
Yes my boobs are very sore today.

See the pretty girl in that mirror there?
Who can that deluded girl be?
What’s the cycle day?
Number 24!
Could be PMS…
Still she hopes for more!

I feel hopeful
But so frightened
Could be puking, then crying oh boy
Cause I’ve been
Just a little pregnant before!

GIRLS
Have you met my good friend Maria
The craziest girl on the block?
You'll know her the minute you see her
She's the one who is in an advanced state of shock

She thinks she's knocked up
She thinks she's in Spain
She isn't knocked up
She's merely insane

It must be the heat
Or some rare disease
Or too much to eat
I mean come on please

Her doctor said no
Yet she says go!
This is not all
That smart as you know!

Once calm and cool,
Waiting resigned.
Now she wants a peestick
She’s out of her mind!

I Heart IComLeavWe

Wow, comments! From cool interesting women. My second try at blogging, like my second try at baby making, did not exactly get off to an auspicious start. But the IComLeavWe is a fine fine thing. And I hope it bodes well generally.

Now, I sat down here 5 hours ago when Turtle was napping with full intentions of writing a long post, having actually forgotten all about IComLeavWe. But then I saw all the great comments. And I remembered! After browsing many blogs; and leaving my required comments; and getting dinner for Turtle (which we ate picnic style on the floor in the living-room air-conditioning); and doing bath-books-bed with Turtle; and eating myself; and doing some more blog browsing, I am now wiped and brain dead.

But I do have a question. Why do you think the media is playing up motherhood so much right now? I was alive and sentient in the 80's and I feel quite sure that no one knew a damn thing about Goldie Hawn's cute little baby Kate until said Kate was grown and ready to be a movie star herself. Why do we hear so much about celebrity pregnancies now? Why the obsessive focus on motherhood? Even if you try to tune out pop culture, I bet you can name the crazy baby names of at least a dozen celebrity kids.

The reason I ask is this: how am I supposed to discern my own genuine desires for motherhood from the Pavlovian marketing of motherhood that I see around me every day? I mean, I think I do want another child. I think I want a sibling for Turtle. But can I or any other American consumer with a pulse honestly say it's not at least a little bit about the Pottery Barn kids?

Secondary Infertility to the Second Power

Do these entries seem stale to you? Have I lost my edge as a blogger, however dull that edge already was? Is there a recycled, refried, retread quality to my thoughts?

Maybe the worst part of this most recent miscarriage is its awful "back to the future" quality. For many sufferers of secondary infertility, the first child arrives without incident and then the sudden onset of fertility problems comes as a nasty shock. It has happened to several of my friends and I truly understand what a brutal experience it is.

Yet. What I'm going through as a second-time infertility sufferer is different and carries its own particular pain. I am not for a moment going to compare my plight to that of someone in the midst of primary infertility. "One is better than none" cannot begin to sum up the joy that Turtle brings me. Still, I am going to dare to compare myself to regular secondary infertility sufferers and say that I have secondary infertility squared. Secondary Infertility to the Second Power, if you will.

Here's the thing: I emerged from primary infertility sadder but wiser. I had learned patience. I had gained perspective. To get those things, I worked really really hard, in typical type-A fashion.

I started a blog. Joining a community of women on the world wide web made me feel cared for and competent at a time when neither feeling came often. I wrote lots of angry essays and lots of sad ones and more than a few sentimental ones. I also managed a few that were actually funny, if you like gallows humor, and I'm such a compulsive good girl by nature that I'd never spent much time trying to make anyone laugh before (wouldn't be proper). I liked finding that side of myself.

I went into therapy for a little while. I joined a support group. I rebuilt relationships with family members that needed attention. I read countless medical journals, web pages, and women's magazines and I honestly thought that I'd discovered a reason for my miscarriages in the form of inadequate thyroid hormone. I marveled that anything good could come out of the experience, but in the end I felt like a stronger more resilient person, someone who'd learned a little more humanity and humility, someone who knew how to be deeply grateful for motherhood and how to treasure every moment of my son's all too fleeting babyhood.

I coped. I achieved closure.

And god damn it, the closed door has swung back open again. I don't wanna cope. I don't wanna think up clever new ways to say how much infertility sucks. I don't want to teach myself all over again not be jealous and spiteful of pregnant women. Especially not pregnant women I care about. Like my amazing sister in-law. This woman threw me a beautiful shower for Turtle 3 years into her own infertility hell. She even hand-crocheted him a blanket. NO matter. Now, another two years later she has enraged me by making it through her first nausea-free trimester with twins after her first IVF. What kind of person would feel nothing but coiling snakes of jealousy towards someone as deserving as her? I don't want to be that person. I hate myself for being that person. But can I just ask, how DARE she hopscotch right past me to have 2 kids at once, all the while glowing and proclaiming that pregnancy has made her feel the healthiest she has ever felt? How have I slid back to this bad place?

I feel as if I've graduated from from high school only to be ordered to go back to ninth grade detention, with that really nasty math teacher with the saggy two-shades too-dark pantyhose glaring over her glasses at me. How the HELL do I get out of here. Do I really have to take Algebra I again and fight those nasty rumors started by the popular girls? Do I really have to get my heart broken again by one feckless teenage boy after another? Are you gonna make me apply to college again? I been here. I done that. And I am soo, soo, sick of it...I just wanna get on with my life.

I'm a recurrent miscarriage relapser. I'm back on the sauce folks and this time the binge is gonna be ugly.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

After much pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth...after getting through the fourth anniversary of the due date of my first lost child with a new fourth loss to mourn...after much websurfing and downloading of information on hyperemesis for my family...I decided to try again. Now! I just decided I want one more child and I want to get a pregnancy over with as soon as possible, both because I am sick of this life-in-limbo stage and because I am afraid of my rapidly advancing "maternal age." The husband and I had long talks and agreed that I would be entitled to perfect princess treatment for the duration of any pregnancy (the man, though lovely, does not play nurse well naturally). Dr. Cookie Pie said she'd give me an HCG shot right away, just to speed things along. And the final deciding factor was that, by rare chance, I have no work projects scheduled for August, meaning I'd be unusually free to languish in bed vomiting. Sounds like a plan, right?

I went in to Dr. Cookie Pie to get the shot on Monday, but she wasn't totally happy with the look of my uterine lining. She also said I wasn't ready to trigger, that the follicle needed another couple of days. Come back Wednesday, and you'll be good to go she promised. This actually meant postponing my departure for a business trip from Thursday afternoon to Friday morning in order to be present for the neccessary conjugal event. (No joke that declining fertility with age is correlated with decreasing frequency of sex!) But no problem, I have my priorities straight. I rearranged things so I could be here through Friday morning. In the meantime, Dr. Cookie Pie said we should check my estrogen levels, and promised to have the results STAT. I did notice that she added an HCG level on the lab order, and you'd think this would have rung a bell, but it really didn't.

So imagine my surprise when she called me personally at home at 7 AM this morning to tell me that my HCG is still hovering at 8 from the LAST pregnancy and that I shouldn't waste a trip to her office. It was, really, an extraordinary kindness on her part. And how impressive that she essentially called this from her first 3-second glance at my uterine lining on ultrasound. There's a reason why I call her the smart cookie sweetie pie. But all I heard was, sorry, honey, you're still a very little bit pregnant.

Not only did I lose the last baby, I can't have the next baby, cause my body has still not accepted the facts. I believe it was Anne Lamott who said if you want God to laugh, you should tell her your plans...