What Dreams May Come

I don't really know what to say about this year. For the most part, I'm pretty sure it was disappointing. One year ago I was so excited and hopeful thinking, "By this time next year, I'll be pregnant for sure!" We all know how that turned out. But in these dark times, there were also rays of sunshine. I never thought I would get that amazing moment where you think to yourself, "Hmm, my period is kind of late. What's up with that?" I thought for sure I was sending Brian on a fool's errand when he bought that pee stick that shocked the hell out of us. We never knew anything about that baby, but s/he gave us a moment we always longed for and will forever cherish. And with our second pregnancy, well, I got a daughter. I may never hold her in my arms, but she will be forever held in my heart and memory.

Twenty-twelve also was a very rewarding year as Noah's mommy. He has developed such a silly and feisty personality that makes my heart grow every day. Who knows what 2013 will bring. Maybe I'll get and stay pregnant. Maybe I won't. No matter what, I hope that in the end I can see the rays of sunshine.




So, Happy New Year friends. I hope we get everything we dream for.

It's So Hard To Say Goodbye

Five and a half years ago, my friend Maggie's sister Rachel moved to Denver. She found a roommate, Noelle, through a website. Noelle moved from St. Louis. The first time I met her we all went out on the town. She was dressed all chic and looked like someone straight off of the first season or two of America's Next Top Model. She was tall, stylish, and had a cute cropped haircut that only a select few can pull off. I never really expected to become close friends with her. She was more of an acquaintance for the first couple of years that I knew her. But then she got pregnant just before me. We had our boys 3 months and 11 days apart. On my due date, her adorable little Wilson sat on my lap and knocked on my belly, as if he was inviting his soon-to-be best friend to come out and play.

Silly Wilson

Noelle is the amazing friend who quit her job days before I had to go back to work and agreed to drive to our house every morning to watch Noah. I think she saved my life by doing that because I was terrified about leaving Noah at a stranger's house when he was so little. We didn't pay her nearly what she was worth, something I still feel guilty about. She has been one of my biggest supporters throughout our infertility struggles. Despite having no fertility issues of her own, she just seems to get it better than the rest of my fertile friends. We have bonded through countless play dates, birthday parties, and get-togethers with our boys. Noelle was the first to pout and complain when Brian and I talked about moving to Minnesota. "But what will Wilson do without his best friend?" she would lament.


One of many play dates at Monkey Bizness

On Thursday, Noelle turned the tables. She moved back to St. Louis to start a new job. We were supposed to get together last Saturday one last time, but poor Noah was still getting over his fever. On Wednesday the boys FaceTimed their goodbyes, and by goodbyes I mean Wilson ate crackers and laughed at Noah while he ran around pretending to drill things. Oh, it has been so much fun to watch these two baby boys grow up into silly toddlers with messy faces, who bang on xylophones and watch movies without any pants on.

To Noelle, Earl, Wilson, and baby Ethan, you will all be incredibly missed! Your friendship has meant so much to me. Thank you for everything!

Christmas in Pictures



Sampling some cookies on Christmas Eve



He loved the toffee!

Opening his first gifts

Noah got a toy car you can build. He fell in love with the screw driver. Watch for it in other pictures!

Reading "The Night Before Christmas"

Fixin' stuff with Uncle Brady

We tried to take a family photo. Apparently Noah thought my face needed fixing...

Sweet screw driver dreams. (Noah woke us up in the middle of the night claiming there was a lady bug in his bed. After I shook out all the blankets he told me he wanted to go "screw things." Hmm...)

"Santa" putting the train set together

Coming down the stairs Christmas morning

Checking for more loot in his stocking

Eating a candy cane, watching his train, and holding his claw grabber. This is little boy heaven.

We really did get a white Christmas! Sledding with Grandpa!

And with Grandma!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Love,
Lisa, Brian, Noah, and our angels.



Merry Christmas!

I knew I wouldn't be able to actually follow through on my idea of jotting down something I am grateful for every day. Here is my attempt at catching up.
I am grateful that Noah recovered from his terrible illness just in time to be spoiled by his grandparents. We are kicking off a full week of Christmas since all grandparents reserved their own time slot this holiday. We are lucky to be in education so we can enjoy two weeks off each year to accomodate them all!
I am grateful for the white Christmas they are predicting for Denver. I can't remember the last time we had a snowfall on the actual holiday, and I am so excited! Call me sappy, but I like to think it's my Christmas gift from our two angels up above.
I am also grateful that we were able to get Noah's picture with Santa done in the "Nick" of time. (Sorry for the bad pun.) Turns out waiting til the last minute was a good idea because there was hardly any line.

Merry Christmas!!

Rolling With the Punches

Lately I feel like a big Debbie Downer. Complain, complain, complain. I don't particularly like feeling this way, but oh my goodness it feels like the universe is just raining shit on us. Here's the latest, in bullets, because I'm lazy and exhausted.

• On Tuesday I used the bathroom at work and discovered that I was bleeding again. This time it actually resembles a period with cramps and consistent flow. It's much heavier than normal, but at this point I've given up on anything "normal" happening down there for a while. I had to reschedule my sonohysterogram to January 2nd as a result, so I'll be kicking off the new year with my feet in stirrups. Seems appropriate.
• Also on Tuesday, Brian brought Gilbert (our shih-tzu/yorkie mix) to the vet for x-rays. He went out to pee on Sunday and came back in the house limping. Well, guess who tore his right knee and needs surgery? Combined with all of my medical bills as of late, our savings account should be empty in no time.
• Over the weekend Noah came down with a cough and fever. It has stuck around all week, peaking in awfulness yesterday it seems. Sleep around here has been scant. It's like having a newborn again. He wakes himself up coughing every 10-15 minutes (on a good night), then wakes up crying out for me 2-3 times per night. He looks like a comatose zombie most of the time, and refuses to eat or drink. Brian took him to the doctor Monday and everything pointed to a virus. Last night we brought him back to urgent care due to his deteriorating appetite and concerns over dehydration. They concluded he has the flu. I feel like a shit parent for forgetting to get his flu shot earlier this fall. Today I am spending my 11th full day off of work since the school year started so I can try to nurse this poor kid back to health. So far he's eaten a small bowl of dry fruit loops and drank some juice. Progress? God I hope so. I can't handle another night like last.
• On our way home from urgent care last night, Brian asked me if I had remembered to wish one of our friends a happy birthday. I said no. He then asked me if I had seen his FaceBook status yet. I asked if I wanted to. It was a pregnancy announcement for baby number two, three weeks before our should be due date.

Brian aptly pointed out that many of the crummy things that have happened in the last couple of months are things you sign up for when you have a kid and a pet. And he's right. Kids get sick. Spastic little dogs can get injured. Periods are normal. Friends get pregnant and have kids. The only exceptionally shitty parts of this year were our two lost chances at having a baby. However, it just feels like a lot to deal with when all of these hard things have happened in the last two months.

Since I am now on Winter Break thanks to Noah's flu, I am going to try to document one thing I am grateful for over every day til the end of the year. I have no idea if I can actually follow through, but it's worth a shot. To kick it off, obviously the number one thing I am grateful for is my son. Noah is the brightest spot in our lives, without a doubt. We are so lucky to have him! I know this now more than ever.

Negative

As of Friday, my HCG level was finally below 5 (but still not 0) which is considered negative. No more blood draws for now. Yay!

In other news, Noah came down with a bad cough Friday night and developed a fever last night. He topped out at 101.8 today but ibuprofen seems to be helping. My poor little guy. At least he got sick the week before our Christmas break, and not during. Although there's still a chance that I will get sick over the break. Considering my luck, it's probably a guarantee. I am so over 2012.

And a quick funny story to end with. Last night Noah woke up around 4:15am coughing and crying. I went to get him and brought him in bed with us. We tried sleeping for a little bit while sharing my pillow, and at one point he asked for me. "Mommy?" "Yes Noah?" I turned my face toward him. He whacked me with the back of his hand and told me, "Go to sleep!" What a stinker!

Where To Begin?

To put it in a nutshell, this week has sucked. Hard. I really wanted to keep my happy mood, but a girl can only take so much.

After the bleeding incident on Sunday, the rest of the day was fine. I figured it was over. Monday morning I drove to work and as I stepped my first foot out of the car, whoosh!, out came another huge gush of blood. I promptly pulled my leg back in the car and high-tailed it home. I called the after-hours hotline again and they scheduled me an appointment with the OB. While I waited for my appointment I scrubbed out yet another pair of pants and tried my best to get the blood off my car seat. What fun. I got to sit in the waiting room with all the happy pregnant ladies, again, then had a quick ultrasound. The OB said she couldn’t see any evidence of retained material from the pregnancy, and said my uterus looked as it should during a healthy woman’s menstrual period. Her conclusion was that since I never bled much following the miscarriage, I just had one heavy-duty period on my hands. Lucky me!

I went back to work and tried to get through the rest of the day. I had a few other incidents of passing big clots, but luckily no additional episodes of sudden heavy bleeding. By early evening I figured it was finally over. I had no interest in cooking so we went out to dinner. Soon after being seated, my stomach started to hurt. It felt a little like the crampy sensations you get when you have the flu. I was able to eat though, which I found encouraging. I started to feel slightly better, but as I scooted out of the booth to leave I felt a small gush. I looked at Brian with horror in my eyes and told him that things were about to get really bad. I tried a couple times to slowly stand up, but each time I felt more blood leak out. Eventually I came to the conclusion that there was nothing I could do. I was about to bleed all over Old Chicago. I stood up and felt a huge clot pass, along with heavy blood flow. Brian tied my jacket around my waist and walked behind me to minimize anything people might be able to see. When we got home, my jeans were soaked all the way down to my knees. There were three huge clots in my underwear. I was no longer convinced that this could be a period. I called back to the after-hours hotline and the nurse told me to go the ER. They did hardly anything and looked at me like I was wasting their time. In the end, they agreed that I was just experiencing a very heavy period and sent me home. Thanks for nothing. We went to the store on our way home so I could buy the “ultra” tampons and industrial size pads. “Have yourself a merry little Christmas” was playing over the speakers. Something about that song and my situation made me want to break down in tears. A Merry Christmas? I’m walking around a grocery store at 10:00pm buying bad-ass feminine protection because I’m having the period from hell following a miscarriage. Not so much.

Tuesday the bleeding seemed to have ceased. One small break from the universe. I called my clinic to reschedule my weekly HCG check from Wednesday to Friday. When the OB checked my level Monday it was at 10, and I figured pushing things back to Friday would better guarantee that I would finally get below 5 and end this garbage. I also asked the nurse if she could please check on the chromosomal testing that was done so that I could have that information for my consult in the afternoon with our new (old) doctor. She said she would call me back. I had been mentally preparing myself for finding out the sex. What I didn’t really prepare for was all of the other information. The nurse finally called back and said the results were in. She asked if I wanted to know the sex and I said yes. She then asked if she should fax the info to our new clinic, or to me, or if she could just email it. I told her to email. Then she finally told me that the result was normal. No chromosomal problems. I didn’t hear her mention the sex at all, so I decided to wait for the email. I was already too upset, and I was standing in the hallway of my school with a teacher waiting to talk to me. As the day wound down, I downloaded the report off of my email so I could print it. That’s when I finally saw it. “46 XX. Normal female result.” It was like a punch to the gut. A chromosomally normal baby girl. All I could think was, “then why?”

As I drove to our new clinic to see our old doctor, my stomach started to hurt terribly again. I was worried that another bleeding episode was upon me and would prevent me from being able to go to the appointment. Luckily the pain was not accompanied by bleeding so I was able to suck it up and go. Dr. A was his usual amazing self. Even if he didn’t remember us, he pretended that he did. He asked if we had pictures of our son, so we gave him the long-overdue thank you card with pictures of him at 2 months old. Unlike our last doctor, he had obviously reviewed our files and knew all of the background from our previous cycles, and even knew exactly how many embryos we had left. We chatted about logistical details such as med protocols (no PIO with him, woohoo!) and dietary suggestions. Then I finally brought up our chromosomal results and asked him what he thought could have gone wrong. He looked at the report and thanked us for bringing it up. He quickly checked the time, realized we were his last appointment for the day, and then told us we could stay as long as we wanted to discuss his thoughts. This is why I love this man.

Dr. A gave us 7 different areas to consider. The first was genetics. Even though our baby was chromosomally normal, that doesn’t guarantee anything about genetics. Despite having the right chromosomes, the genes could be all messed up and there is no way of knowing that. Dr. A said that for a typical woman of my age, the odds of a genetically abnormal baby are about 15 percent. That’s just life and there is nothing we can do about it. That would mean that approximately 1 in 6 embryos will be abnormal. He actually believes it is even more likely that about 1 in 3 will be abnormal. I don’t exactly know why, but whatever. This discouraged the hell out of me because if it’s 1 out of 6, maybe we have just one funky blast left. But if it’s 1 in 3, there are three potential non-viable blasts left. I shouldn’t complain because we’re so beyond lucky to have 9 remaining. But with the odds of getting pregnant with FET at about 50% (Dr. A suspects my odds are higher) and the odds of having a genetically screwed up blast transferred is 33%, it feels so impossible. How do normal people beat all of these shitty odds so easily? It’s not fucking fair.

The second area he hit on was infection. With our fresh cycle back in 2009, Dr. A had me taking doxycycline, an antibiotic, pre- and post-transfer. We didn’t do this during our FET, and he explained that Dr. B doesn’t believe in it. However, when he was younger he worked on a ranch and helped impregnate cows. Those that were given antibiotics were shown to have better pregnancy rates. Dr. A recommended that I stay on a low dose of antibiotics through early pregnancy next time. Although I am not a cow, I am fully on board with this plan.

He then moved on to the area of prostaglandins. I don’t remember what he had to say about this, but the recommendation to help was to use low-dose aspirin during early pregnancy. We had this on board, so probably not our issue.

The next area was autoimmune issues or thrombophilia. His suggestion was to run some blood tests. If this is an area of concern, I will need to have low dose Heparin throughout my next pregnancy. More shots, but I’ll do whatever it takes.

On to number five. There could be an issue with my uterus. My hysteroscopy was done before my chemical pregnancy, then I had a possible “abnormal” ultrasound in July which canceled our first FET. It’s possible that things are not as they should be. So, next week I will have a sonohysterogram to check out how my lady bits are looking. It’s recommended after a miscarriage anyways.

The last two possible issues were hormonal problems and alloimmunity. We will be checking my thyroid and vitamin D levels, along with progesterone. The alloimmunity had something to do with the body not recognizing fetal tissue which leads to complications. I didn’t totally understand that either. Not sure how they test for that, but if it were an issue I would need high doses of progesterone.

So that’s that. I left feeling discouraged. It seems overwhelming and so impossible. I know it can happen because we have Noah, but it feels like our luck has run out. I’m sure once we get the ball rolling on all of these tests and start to form a plan for the next transfer things will start to feel a little easier. In terms of timing, Dr. A would like me to have one more period before we start a new cycle. He also wants to check the upcoming schedule and make sure that it’s not too busy. He doesn’t want us to rush through the process just to get it done. He would rather take our time and make sure he can give us the attention we deserve.

I also have a consult with Dr. B set up in January. The nurse said he wanted to offer a free appointment to discuss his thoughts on our miscarriage. I have very little interest in sticking with him, but I am curious what his thoughts are. If it’s free, hey why not?

As for the bleeding, it has basically stopped. I still have PTSD every time I stand up after sitting for a while, but so far so good. It’s hard to believe that was my period, but there’s no other good explanation. Hopefully the next one will be normal. Fingers crossed.

Well, that sucked.

Today we had a neighbor over to watch the Vikings vs. Bears game. We are avid Vikings fans, and he is a Bears fan. We were having a nice afternoon and his little boy and Noah were playing happily together. Noah asked me to get out some magic paper for his magic marker. I stood up from the couch and walked over to the shelf. As I reached for the paper, I felt this sensation of wetting my pants. At first it just felt like a trickle, but then it turned to a full on gush. It was such an awkward moment. I could tell it had completely saturated my entire crotch area and was beginning to run down my legs. I backed out of the room (literally) as subtly as possible and then bolted for the upstairs bathroom. 

***TMI ALERT***

It was like a scene out of a slasher film. I can't even begin to explain how much blood was pooled in my jeans. I ripped off my clothes, threw them in the tub, and sat on the toilet while blood continued to drain out of me. I caught a big clot and examined it, then waited as it turned back to a trickle and then mostly stopped. I called for Brian and he brought me my phone. He looked pretty concerned when he saw the scene in front of him, but stayed calm. I called our after hours care and they decided I probably had some retained tissue which worked its way out. I tend to agree since I never really bled heavily after the miscarriage itself, and the last ultrasound I ever had showed a small clot and very thick lining left inside. I'll follow up with the OB tomorrow, unless I start bleeding more and then it's off to the ER. Of course this was a traumatic experience, but I am so glad it happened at home. I can't even begin to imagine what I would have done had I been at work or out at a store or restaurant. 

Ok Universe. I am over this. Please stop now.

But hey, the Vikings won! I guess you can only ask for so much.

Life Is Good

There's something about going through something awful that can restore some of your faith in humanity. Since my miscarriage, I have been amazed at the outpouring of love and kindness people have shown me. Friends and family have reached out in so many ways. Some have just offered shoulders to cry on, others have offered to bring us meals or watch Noah so we can get a break. People have sent me songs and poems, and opened up about their own personal experiences with loss. I have felt very loved and supported, which is exactly what I needed.

I don’t know what exactly did it, but something switched on in me around Friday of last week. I went to work that day in a phenomenal mood. Despite having a rather difficult IEP meeting to attend at the end of the day, I felt really relaxed and happy. I tend to be a high anxiety type of person, but my edginess was absent. And so far, this new state of mind has now lasted an entire week. Part of it could be that the week-long headache I was plagued with finally subsided over the weekend. (I was becoming paranoid that it was literally killing me.) Part of it could be that my hormone levels are dropping off (beta=25 yesterday, yay!). And part of it could be that I really and truly love the Christmas season, especially with Noah around, which makes it nearly impossible to be depressed and mopey. But I think a lot of it has been all of the kindness I’ve been shown recently.

And with my new happier mood, I also have a renewed sense of optimism. I really believe that I will get another shot at carrying a baby to term. I am going to have to wait longer than I wanted to, and might have more unforeseen obstacles in my way, but I trust that it will happen. And when it does, it will only be that much sweeter. I’m also no longer afraid to find out what we lost. Whenever the chromosomal/genetic testing results come back (soon I hope, I’m getting impatient), I am fully ready to find out if we had a baby boy or girl. I think for me this will make the whole thing a little less abstract, and although that might bring up some harder feelings, I want to remember that I really was pregnant and I really was carrying a little life inside of me. It wasn’t just a dream or a little phase that I passed through. With a miscarriage you have nothing to show for what you had, so knowing more about our baby feels important to me. (Sorry if that doesn’t make sense. I can’t quite put it into words.)

Don’t get me wrong though. I am still very sad about what happened. It still stings to see pregnant bellies and hear pregnancy announcements. (Shut up already about Will and Kate! I don’t care!) I still haven’t mustered up the nerve to see any of my pregnant friends. It’s not that I think they won’t be sensitive to me, but I worry about other people’s innocent remarks upsetting me. Those people who don’t know what I’ve just gone through won’t realize that when they ask my friend how the pregnancy is going, it’s going to be like a punch to the gut for me. But, I am definitely doing a great job of keeping that sadness and emptiness in the very back of my mind. I refuse to waste another single moment of Noah’s childhood wallowing in self-pity. He’s going to be grown in the blink of an eye, and I don’t want to miss any of it!

So, I’ve decided that life really is good, if not great, even though shitty things happen sometimes. I really hope this mindset sticks around!