Para 6, Gravida 1.

I was pregnant. Last night, there was a very light pink line on a FRER. This morning, it was a stark white negative, and I got my period. If I believed in the term "chemical pregnancy", which I don't- you're either pregnant or you're not, and you miscarry or you don't- that's what it would have been.

I don't feel one way or the other about it. I understand early miscarriages for what they are. I'm glad to know I wasn't just crazy and didn't have anything else wrong with me.

DH has super sperm and my fucked up eggs just love to fertilize. Good reminder to be much more careful. Will blame best friend for coming over and encouraging the consumption of beverages and the watching of Goodfellas to contribute to the contraceptively challenged evening.

You win one, you lose six.

Apparently:

You can accidentally have unprotected sex on the day of ovulation, wake up dizzy several days later, be so exhausted you can barely keep your eyes open, feel like it's 100 degrees when everyone else is cold, have heartburn, gas, constipation, bizarre shooting pains in your breasts and uterus...

And still get a - hpt 11 dpo.

My period is due either today or tomorrow. I tested last night, stark white negative. I only have one test left and I'm not using it until tomorrow. I've been pregnant five times, and I've never felt so pregnant and had a - test. If I'm not pregnant, there's something very wrong with me. I usually go to bed at 1 or 2 am, now by 7:00 I'm pinning my eyes open with toothpicks.

They really, really need to come out with at-home beta blood tests.

I'm so screwed up at this point, I don't even know whether I'll laugh or cry if it does turn out to be positive.

Not in that 3%!

I totally forgot about this post. I did end up getting my period on April 7th, despite weird hormonal symptoms and a super faint line which I guess was an evap line (I hate blue dye HPTs). I think something is going on, though. I'm sure it's related to miscarrying at 13 weeks and losing a ton of blood and being under enormous stress mentally & emotionally because of that and many other reasons. I am very relieved to not have to deal with another natural pregnancy. Thank God.

We should find out tomorrow whether DH got a job he interviewed for last week. He had a really great feeling after the interview, but, you just never know.

I'm coming down with a cold, and in bad shape. Right now I think I'm experiencing migraine aura, which has never happened to me before (the auras, not the migraines). I saw a flashing white light in my upper field of vision, just like if someone had turned a mini strobe light on for a couple of seconds, and then I saw a blue dot on the computer screen. So, I'm going to sign off and try to fall asleep before I'm in extreme pain.

is 97% effectiveness not enough?

So...I think my period was due two days ago... but I'm not sure. I wasn't really paying much attention to the one I had in March. But I have heartburn and burpiness, two things I really only get when pregnant.

I had to take a break to give Bonito a breakfast treat- two gluten free blueberry waffles with whipped cream in between them like a sandwich. Admittedly, not a very responsible breakfast (well, there was a banana, too). She's on gluten free experimentally again, this time for chronic diarrhea and eczema. But anyways.

We do use condoms. Very faithfully. No breaks. Doesn't make me feel better.

http://www.mothering.com/discussions/showthread.php?t=877437&highlight=condom

I saved my morning pee, & I'm going to buy a test today while I'm out getting eggs to dye.

I don't want to be pregnant. I vowed to NEVER be pregnant from my own eggs again. I know the possibility is slim, but the whole no period and heartburn thing is really throwing me off.

Letting go

The last couple of weeks have been hard. I've had a lot of feelings surface about completely letting go of the dream of Bonito having a sibling to grow up with. She'll have a sibling, or hopefully two, eventually- no matter what, I will have more children somehow. But at this point it's obvious it won't be until she is significantly older, and it won't be the same type of experience. I had hopes of two kids in the tub after a long day, two kids at swimming lessons, playing with the same toys on the living room floor. That's gone now. It may happen with two different children, but it will not happen for the daughter I have now, and I'm sad for her about that.

However, I also appreciate that being an only child is not always lonely. My husband was an only child until he was 19, and never had a deep desire for a sibling. He was always very close with his parents. I also recognize that we have to make a concerted effort to have her around other kids as much as possible. On the good side, we will have more time and money to devote especially to her, and any type of activity, vacation, therapy, or class she wants. We'll also have more time to ourselves for a while, because she's getting older and able to do more things by herself. There are pros and cons to everything. I don't feel like the pros of having an only child weigh out the cons for our family, but the choice has essentially been made for us, and acceptance for now is the only way to survive.

In the meantime, I'm going to work towards our goals: moving, buying a house, DH getting his degree, and myself going back to work. I'm going to keep educating myself about becoming the recipient of an egg donation but not obsessively. It's the route we've decided to go with when we can afford it, which will not be for quite some time- at least three years, if I had to guess.

I hate that money plays such a huge part in infertility treatment. I do live in a state that requires insurance coverage, but the red tape and specific details you have to match up with make it almost impossible for me to qualify based on my diagnosis. I haven't been TRYING for a year, and no thanks, the last miscarriage did me in for trying naturally. I'm going to have another conversation with my OB about it, and possibly look for an RE up here- but I have a feeling I might go back to Arizona for any procedures. I liked it there, I didn't like the supposed best clinic we have up here.

I found this online and thought it was hilarious, because I'm a cynical ass (and I guess I'm in Group 3, but having a special needs child changes some of the details);

http://www.surrogacy.com/psychres/article/eggdon.html

Frantic. That's exactly what I'm trying not to be!

the end of the end.

I tried to miscarry naturally at home, and it got really ugly. On Monday around 5:30 the spotting and cramping turned into bleeding, and the bleeding was like a faucet turned on. Blood poured into the toilet- it sounded like I was peeing but I wasn't. I didn't feel it was normal but never miscarried naturally this late; my other 9.5 wk m/c was a planned d&c, my other 2 m/c were very early. My OB wanted me to come to the ER but I was home alone with Bonito and felt I was overreacting at the time, so he prescribed methergine to help my uterus contract and stop the bleeding.

The blood poured and clotted and poured again, and I felt panicky and said I would come to the ER. I called DH to come home from school so that we could leave Bonito with my mother instead of dragging her with us. I had to cancel plans for one of my best friend's birthday and felt terrible, and again convinced myself I was overreacting and called back and said no, the bleeding is stopping, I'm not coming to the ER. I sent DH to pick up the methergine and ate supper and had a heating pack for the cramps, and when I picked up the heating pad off my stomach it was covered in blood, as were my legs...I stood up to go to the bathroom and got a head rush, but it didn't go away. I could barely get upstairs to get to the bathroom. When I did I saw that I had soaked all three pads I put on (hello denial, realizing you need 3 pads at once but not thinking you need to go to the hospital?). I felt like I was going to pass out and called for my mother, and told her I now needed to go to the ER. Blood was everywhere. She forced me to drink tonic water- I actually don't mind plain tonic water- and I laid on the bathroom floor and cleaned myself up and got ready to go while DH put Bonito to bed. I wanted her asleep before I left.

We got to the ER around 10:30. I could barely walk in there by myself. They took one look at me and asked what was happening and I felt more gushes of blood. They got the wheelchair and put me in a room but not soon enough to stop the blood from going through the pad, through my jeans, onto the white blood-pad on the bed. Eventually the bleeding would soak through pads and the hospital pads and sheets repeatedly, flowing up my back and down my legs and everywhere. I had an ultrasounds which my OB had said wasn't really necessary because he felt the d&c was going to happen no matter what. But my stupid denial self still wanted to avoid surgery at that point. The VAGINAL u/s was so painful, caused so much more bleeding and didn't matter anyway, just prolonged the inevitable and made my recovery worse in the long run.

When I got back from the u/s I had to pee, and they wouldn't let me go to the bathroom so they got me a bedpan and I squatted over it and pee came out, and then blood clots the size of a man's hand. I paged the nurse and said I feel like I"m going to pass out. Somehow, I didn't. They put my bed upside down and my blood pressure was 79/44, then there were lots of people and an IV jammed so violently into my arm- but I knew she had to do it that way because that vein had already been busted from an earliet attempt and being bloodless, was difficult to get to. I started going into shock, shaking from the cold, but the nurse forgot my blankets and DH had to chase them down for one. The anesthesiologist had to come get me because that same nurse never got the message 20 minutes earlier that they were ready for me in the OR. Many of the doctors knew one or both of my parents because my father is a surgeon at that hospital. They were nice. The IV and mask delivered the anesthesia and the next thing I remember, I was blabbering embarrassingly as I came to.

They mercifully gave me a couple doses of fentanyl, even though I felt no pain. DH picked up my scripts for abx and vicodin while I was in recovery, and they let me go when he came back. We got home around 5 am.

Recovery has been very difficult. I lost a lot of blood. I am pale and drawn and exhausted and traumatized (I left out the part when I saw the fetus- it was awful- I will never understand people who want to see that). I had a two day migraine. Food doesn't taste good. I'm too weak to play with my child but I miss her and snuggle with her a while every day. DH is taking good care of me, but it's difficult with a toddler in tow. I'm not sad about losing the baby- the baby needed to go if it was unhealthy. I am sad about feeling like I've been punished for even trying. That feeling is just a grief feeling, it's not in line with my values or spiritual beliefs, but nevertheless it's how I feel and I've learned not to fight feelings like that, let them wash over you and then you can heal.

I never thought I'd lose so much blood. I was scared and confused made some poor choices, like waiting to go to the ER, and I take responsibility for that, but this type of severe blood loss isn't common in a 9.5 week miscarriage. I just didn't know, and I don't think the doctor really "got it" when I got to the hospital, how much and how quickly I was losing blood. I thank God I went when I did. If I'd gone to sleep that night I don't want to think about what might have happened.

I'm going to go choke down some chicken liver and rest and try to enjoy convalescing as much as possible; Netflix, and working for ChaCha, and having three cats who love the couch being folded out is helping the days go by.

12w2d....but still 9w3d

I canceled the D&C when I started spotting a week ago, but the spotting has stopped and the pregnancy symptoms have stayed the same. I still want to give my body a chance to do this on its own, but my patience for heartburn and bloating is waning.

But I also like the absolute infertility of the state I am in. I don't know that I'm ready to see a period, to feel ovulation pain, to be reminded that I could get pregnant, again, if I wanted to. I don't want to. Deep down I am very sure about that, but I'm not going to pretend to be so immune to superficial, spontaneous desires that I would say I know I won't feel a little twinge halfway through a cycle for a while yet.

Despite being pregnant two separate times in the past four months, I have never felt so infertile in my life. The idea that my body will ever create a healthy embryo is completely foreign to me now. The way I feel, physically and emotionally right now, is that I should never try naturally again. Three months of debilitating nausea and acid reflux and exhaustion and a possible abortion looming over my consciousness 24/7, all for absolutely nothing, is just not something I can see lining myself up for again. Quick, fast miscarriages like the one in November, and the one in 2004, I can deal with, and if that's all I ever had, would be willing to endure repeatedly in hopes of eventually hitting the jackpot. But 9 week long "missed" miscarriages, like this one, and the one in 2002....they're just wrong.

I see two paths in front of me, and the choice seems clear. Keep using time, energy, money that I barely have to pursue a healthy pregnancy, but with no guarantee; or stop, move on, change our lifestyle, get a job, focus on making and saving money and enjoying what we have, with the understanding that someday, we will again attempt some type of fertility treatments, whether that be donor eggs, PGD, etc.

I wrote to our embryo donor and explained everything to her. I told her I could never just hand the three remaining embryos back to her, because I feel responsible for them, but that I had no idea when we will be ready, and I am worried about keeping them frozen indefinitely. Hopefully, she can find another recipient.

The thing I mostly struggle with is what led us to invest money we really couldn't afford to lose: a sibling for Bonito. That's the major loss from all of this. She will be four in July. By the time we get around to trying again, it's likely the age difference between her and a sibling would be so long that the childhood sibling relationship would not be a real benefit. She will be an only child for some time to come; which has it's own set of pros and cons.


This post sounds sad, and I don't mean it to be. I'm not sad about taking a long break from "TTC". I'm disappointed, I'm frustrated, but I refuse to let this take over my life. I do have a child. If I didn't, I would continue to pour everything into this endeavor- but because I do, everything I pour into this, I take away from her. Our resources are limited. We are young enough that we can take a break, save up, move ahead in life, and then try again. Hopefully we'll be refreshed and newly optimistic. Right now we're both too pessimistic, too irritated by trying and failing repeatedly. I think that alone is a good enough reason to refocus our lives on positive goals we CAN accomplish. Infertility is very different than many other aspects of life because you can give it everything you have, do everything right, follow the protocol, and have absolutely nothing to show for it; in fact, be even worse off than you were before. You can't say the same about education, about career, about finances- all things we also need to address- and will definitely have some real, tangible success if we put our energy into those parts of our lives.