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.