Supprise

Well, DH was beyond belief when I pulled out the HPT. He thought I pulled a fast one on him, with an old stick....

He just shook his head in disbelief, a massive S.E.G. on his face... Which was followed up with "well if I knew we were going to try this cycle, I would have had more SEX!!!!"

His next statement was "But we only BD once!!!!" Followed up with "This sort of thing happens to other people not US!"

Yeah, not us... It has been months of charting, temping, RE appointments, and massive amounts of timed BD in order to get a BFP. We were told we were SUB-Fertile!

But here we are, second cycle after my loss, and not even trying!

The Unexpected....

Ok, I know people tell you this all the time... {when you stop caring too much, that is when it happens}.

Well, I just don't know. I know I have sort of given up TTC, I know I really felt resigned that Maddie will be an only. I even started looking at other things to keep me busy since building my family was a loosing battle. So I went through the process to get my NH EMT license (used to have a NJ license) and joined the local Fire/EMS/Rescue department. I have PLANS! I am going to ride the ambulance, I am possibly going to get certified for fire! I have started planning on all the gardens we will work on, Maddie's play set, a vacation with inlaws in June...

And that nagging feeling "POAS, POAS, POAS," kept creaping in.... AF is not late, heck it is not due for another day or two... But...

I POAS'ed.......

And, my morning foggy eyes, looked down, and stated {hell, must be an old strip, that looks like an evap line!}. But after two minutes, the line was not a faint yellow streak, it was a bright flaming pink line! I did the pink line laugh "ha ha haaa haaaaaa haaahaahaaa". And DH had already left for class....

So here I am living with the knowledge that that "feeling" I had was a "feeling" afterall.

I am happy, scared, and well, just don't know what to think!

This is just the begining again, and the road is long, but I grasp the moment of "HOLY COW!!!!!" for now! I love the supprise! I love the "we were not even trying!" Those are like statements that 'other' women use... Not me! But now it is me! We had an 'accident' and I am PG!!!!!!! OMG!!!!!

From what I can tell, I think I O'ed around Easter. So that makes an Easter baby who has a rough arrival date of late december, early January... A christmas baby... Is there any irony in this?!? I gave up, I quit, I threw my hands up and accepted my lot in life, just to have another chance...

Pray for me, pray for us, that this time, somehow nothing goes so tragically wrong! I need to stay positive...

What is it about Syracuse?

Well, went back to my "roots" for my nephews first birthday from April 22 to the 26th. It was nice to see family, and to hold the "chunk". He is 1 and weighs 25 lbs!!!! My DD will be four in July and only weights 34lbs!

But what was odd, is I kept getting this feeling to POAS? This feeling like, well, a feeling.. I have not remembered having a feeling like this.. Sort of like this knowing... This gut feeling... Odd. I am not due for AF for about a week...

It is funny because last pregnancy I POAS in syracuse, and got a BFP...

Sex but no Sex...

Well, DH and I have had an interesting relationship this month. Feel like we are back in college, and he is scared to well, you know....

Did not stop us from having some fun though..

I know he was keeping a mental tally of what cycle day it was each time and making a risk calculation on the fly...

But I think I O'ed early.... That might just throw everything off...

The discussion...

Well, had the "talk" with DH about TTC this cycle. He was hesitant, well, more like "No thank you"... And he confessed that he was scared. That he does not want to go through more losses. I agreed, I do not want to go through more losses either! Yet, I am not ready to give up.

So, no BBT temping this month, no "trying".

Time....

Well here I am, just about at the end of the first "official" cycle post surgery/miscarriage. And the thoughts have already started creeping in....

My DD, my only is going to be 4 in July, and well, she is a strong willed, lovely little girl, but not my baby anymore... Rarely do I get the moments where I can snuggle her and run my finger down her soft cheek and watch her sleep.. More and more it is replaced with independance that flares up wanting to rule the world.....

I keep having dreams of babies, big cheeked, cherub like babies, with puffy little pink lips... WTF?!?!?!? I deam of pg bellies, of wanting to have one... wanting to feel something alive inside me again....

And then I have nightmares, or reality mares, however you want to look at them, where I never have another child... I go on having painful loss after loss, surgery after surgery.... And finally exhausted, I give up... I quit....

I just don't know....

Our economic situation has not changed, DH is still unemployed, with no "leads" to speak of, yet I think of children? I know the reality that I am getting older, and well, there will be a point where my desire to have another child will just be a pipe dream... But how can I pull myself together to risk adding more financial strain to our world? How can I risk more pain, more dissapointment? I just don't know....

But I do know.... I've got those baby wanting blues......

And Aunt Flo is in the house!

Wow, it is so strange, my feelings about AF this time.. Not the first time i felt this way either...

It seems when I am TTC, each time AF makes her visit, I get dissapointed, depressed, and feel like a failure. That another month of my ticking clock has gone by, with yet more dissapointment and no hope of a baby.

Yet I find myself relieved and somehow uplifted when AF arrives after a loss. Yes, some days the bleeding is a reminder of the loss I had, a painful reminder that I am bleeding instead of growing bigger and waiting to feel my bean wiggle...

But the other emotions that come into play are there as well!

The feeling like the waiting for things to become a new "normal" has come to fruition. That my body has healed itself and continued the cycle of life. That I am not broken, that the miscarriage with or without surgery did not damage me beyond repair. That somehow I bleed again.. My body starting fresh all over, a new womb environment.

It also carries with it an optomisim that yes, these past months sucked, but does not mean the next will repeat that theme. Sort of a spring cleaning of body and mind.

I have also updated my ticker, because it is true, I feel like I am moving on, a new cycle, the completion of my miscarriage. My body has moved on, now I just have to make sure my mind moves with it!

So, now if I could just tell AF to lay off the cramps, I would enjoy this moment a bit more!

Thinking again...

Ok, So I was thinking again, something that I do often.. :)

So if this loss was a chromosomal disorder, and quite probably an isolated "bad egg" then what? Where my other losses the same cause? I call into question my wanting to have natural mc's and not find out.. Yes, monday morning quarterbacking, etc.. But now I wonder? But would it have made a difference? I do not know. Both DH and I were Karyotyped, which should have ruled out any chromosome disorder in either of us.. So.. Have I had multiple MC's for various reasons? All unrelated? All just bad luck (ok, if you believe in luck) ? I just don't know... I do not know what to say.. I do not know what to think..

It does bring into question my feelings of "broken". I have been carrying around the stigma from my first MW who told me quite frankly "you just have a bad womb environment" (which pissed the shventa out of me for reasons I won't digress here). I held onto that and let it feed my self loathing. My frustration with my "dysfunctional" body..

But know I wonder? Especially since my last OB told me that even though previous med pros called my first losses due to "low progesterone" she highly doubts that due to the presentation. None of my three losses that lasted the longest had any spotting before realizing that the baby was not viable. She seems to think it was more that the progesterone was low because the baby was not healthy. (First loss never saw HB at 7 or 9 weeks, but had fetal pole, yolk sack of a 6wk pg. Second loss, no HB at 7 weeks, HB seen at 8.5 weeks, fetal pole measured small, yolk sack measured unusually large, spotted at 10 weeks w/ confirmed fetal loss). I had no chromosome testing done on those pregnancies..

And then there is this pregnancy, an early loss, so early that not even a fetal pole or yolk sack developed, but my "bad womb" held onto it! My body nurtured this failed life without sign of deficiency! Take that! Maybe I am not as broken as I made myself out to be!

Now it is not a great victory, but a step a step on the path of coming to terms with the lot I have been handed.. And I still do not know why these babies were not quite right. So I question my eggs. I have gone from bad "womb" to bad egg... LOL...

Lies, damn lies..

So, here I am trying to move forward, and things keep coming up that just knock me down. So the latest was the itemized hospital bill. And that was an eye opener. There were things on there that just did not make sense. Sutures, Tissue Culture, Skin Biopsy, and some other little ones...

So WTF?!? Sutures would be used if there was a laceration to the cervix from their damned toothed tanaculum, or from instruments cutting it. But the OB's surgical reports state nothing on the subject.?!?

Skin Biopsy? What? That was listed as $861 some odd dollars, and completely does not lign up with having a D&E! There was a seprate charge for the "level 4 microscapy examination" worth $210. And then the genetic analysis was there for $1221.00 So what Biopsy?!?! Skin? Where? What the F?!??!

Of course I can't call the OB's office, since OB is no longer there. So what then? I called the Hospital and the billing woman had no clue, but told me she would look into it.

So yet again, here I am left with the feeling of WHAT THE F HAPPENED TO ME!!!! DH feels that they are "just padding the bill" but I am left with the WTF moment! He was not the unconsious one, with someone sticking metal bits up inside! He is not the one that cannot easily check to see if everything is fine! It is my body, my frustration!

So we had "words" and a cold shoulder night. I truly feel that most people have no way of understanding what it is like, to have moments of your life just missing, to have to trust people you have not a single reason to trust!

My face in that of others...

I am reading a book where the main character has isues with hospitals. She sees herself in the faces of the people there. I can relate. Never put it to words, yet I feel that dread, that feeling as if I will be in that position. And already in my life I have played the role of helpless patient. It is a feeling that haunts you. To have your life completely out of your control. To face ones own mortality. That tody may be the last, or even worse, that this may be the last day of your life as you know it. To leave damaged. Each surgery leaves it's mark on ones phisical and psychological self. Scars may be little, or not even visible on the outside, but they are there, forever a change, forever altering. Phisiologically, it leaves holes in your life. Moments of time that you will never remember. Taken from you as the anesthesia consumes you. Time when you are unable to control the most primitive functions of being human. Time when you are laid bare, no way to protect yourself. No doubt the trauma to the psychological self can easilty outweigh the body damage. Yet has this been addressed? Does anyone care?

Results

Well, the results are in.

First off, the results were XX. So my August 09 baby would have been a little girl.

And the results. Again, just like the rest of my life... ambiguous.

They found a structure abnormality with chromosome #5. I was told that "they have never seen this before, and don't know what to say. That it was not a trisomy, but abnormal structure. That they "think" it was an isolated problem but asked if we have been karyotyped."

Yes we were Karyotyped without any "abnormalities" in 2004.

So OB's office does not know what to say. They feel that no genetic counseling is requried, since they do not know what to make of the results. That it is not an obvious seen before problem.

So how does that make me feel? I do not know.. I feel like I am left with partial information. What the hell is a structural abnormality? The Nurse could not answer those questions.

I looked up chromosome 5 abnormalities, and not a whole hell of a lot out there. But I did see that there are cases where chromasome 5 sometimes breaks and then re-forms into a circular structure, which is a fatal error.

I also did read about a disorder called le Crie-du-Chat syndrome, where children born with abnormal chromasome 5 have all these physical and mental problems, the name is french for the characteristic newborn cry that sounds like a cat screaming... Wonderful image...

So I do not know what to think. I am still glad that this was the last picture of the puzzle for this whole event, and now moving forward is a bit easier without anything looming over my head. But as for the meaning, or if I can make meaning out of it... Well, I can't. I don't know what to think. I will be getting my medical records, so hopefully I will be able to dig a bit more out of the actual report, but I bet not..

In the end, what does this mean? I have no genetic results for the previous five, so I have no way of knowing if this is a recurring error or what. It must not happen all the time, since I DO have ONE child without any obvious chromosomal issues...

So again, left with the "just keep on trying" and the "if we try enough times, statistically one will work" But how many more losses, more surgery, more bleeding, more mental misery must I endure to get that one more? I do not know.. Might be none, might be five... I just do not know...

Service? Anyone?

My OB's office service sucks!!!

I had a voice mail on my cell phone this am from a nurse at my OB's office. To call her back. First, I do not get service on my cell phone at work. So I call them back.

I get the triage nurse voice mailbox. I press 0 to get the receptionist. I get the receptionist voice mailbox. That was at 11:30am. I call again ten minutes later, receptionist finally answers, tells me she just sent the message down to the nurse, and she will call me back.

Ok, back from lunch, it is now 1:05pm. I call the OB's office, go straight to receptionist. Tell receptionist I have to change the phone number where nurse calls me since I will be at work, and cell phone does not work. She gives me nurse's voice mailbox. I leave message.. Please call work number before 2:30 since I will be away after that time at a meeting..

Now 1:35, and NOTHING.

This is how they handle life altering news!! WTF!!!! I will never deal with this office again. Ever.

So still waiting.... Anxious as all hell. I had a lunch date with DH. It was stresed filled at first. I had some crappy meetings all morning long, and then with the phone call stuff... It sucked... But as lunch went on, we laughed, joked, and reaffirmed that we are moving, moving forward.. Thank god for DH.

A day without spot!

Wow. Lets celebrate! I am actually back to wearing just a pantyliner! WOO HOO!!! And not a single spot on it! Just about 14 days post surgery. Always feels like you will be bleeding forever when you are in the midst of things.. But somehow you come out the other side, and wow, I don't have a phone book between my legs anymore!!

I honestly feel the D&C ended up being the right decision, the OB was great (wow, I know one that actually was great?!?!?, oh and did I fail to mention she left the practice for the boonies Maine last week?) and seems to have been the fastest way to recovery. She really did honor my wishes it seems and did not scrape the crap out of me, which is nice.

So where am I now? Trying to build up my strength, (thanks Floridax!) and keep going. The next few weeks will be tough with tons of EMS stuff, and travel for work, so that will keep me going..

I guess I will be posting less here, as my life starts to move to a new normal, but it has been nice to get this shventa out. I will be residing at my original blog www.octarinelife.blogspot.com but will probably continue to post any TTC journeys here. Hopefully this rollercoaster will someday bring me to the next hill, one where I can welcome the arrival of a new family member. But even if this rollercoaster has more valleys and dark tunnels (ya know the ones where you are upside down) I vow to keep riding this, eyes wide open!

Still have the results of the genetic testing to deal with, and I have requested my medical records from the surgery and my OB's office, so I am sure there will be stuff that needs to be processed there.. But...

HERE I COME LIFE, Ya have not kicked me down more than I can kick back!

New Normal.. here I come!

I am finally starting to feel a little bit more like myself. I have been able to get out of bed earlier without too much complaint (hey, I never was a morning person). And find that my energy level is getting better. Still have an odd cramp here or there, but even the bleeding is more like a yellow/brown spotting.. Just have these odd left side pains, if I was not post pregnancy, post surgery, I would write them up as O pains.. Ya know, that sort of irritated insides sort of feeling.

I think the hormones are finally starting to stabilize as well, so that is nice. I still have some dark moments, but overall, I would say that for the last two days, there have been more upbeat moments.

It has been cold still, 20-30's but the sun has been out, and I have had the curtains thrown open so the light streams in, and with the daylight slowly getting longer, that seems to help as well.

Been doing some house cleaning, and that makes me feel better, nothing more brain numbing than vacuuming, and washing windows. Plus DH and I had some mommy daddy time last night after DD went to bed, the first time in a LONG LONG TIME. It was nice.. It was nice to have that part of our marriage back again. And it was just that much sweeter since it was valentines day. :) Sigh...

So I keep wrassling with the thoughts of trying again, and the self preservation of never wanting to go there again... But yet... I know sometime we will. Just trying to balance the sanity, with the fact that I am just getting older, and every month that goes by, I just get older, with all those statistics of "older moms" having more problems.. etc.. But then, common, I have already had "more" problems... WTF..

Oh well, off to find "a bag of food" for my "hungry girl" who is asking to eat a "bag of food"???