Answers to some questions

Thanks so much to all of you for responding to my last post. I loved all the WTF responses! Sometimes that's all one needs to put a smile on ones face. That and maybe a few shots of tequila would put a nice big smile on ones face. But oh, no alcohol, sorry. :-)

Today is a new day, and I've been doing a lot of thinking. With the amount of estrogen being pumped into my body right now, it's a little hard to even think straight actually. But I'm trying.

First and foremost - a lining problem is a trivial problem in the large scheme of things. I understand that. The bigger battle has been fought and won. We have 4 normal blasts on ice waiting for us. They aren't going anywhere. Therefore we do have the luxury of time.

Having said that, it brings me back to the fact that I now have a lining problem. That bothers me because I never had a problem making a lining before. While it's a small thing, it's just one more problem to tackle. Every time we find a problem and fix it, and we think that we've identified the issue, and NOW things will get better, a new problem pops up. Every single time. And like some of you said - it takes a lot of stamina to get up and face a new issue with everything else that's going on!

Some of you asked me if it could be because of the fact that my surgery was so recent. Answer: I don't know. My surgery was 4 months ago, at the end of October. If I get cancelled next week, and we have to start all over again, will I make a better lining? I don't know.

My gut feel? I feel that the surgery could be causing my uterus to scar. My body creates scar tissue. I know that from my knee injury / surgeries. I had one knee surgery, and it ended up becoming 4 knee surgeries because of the scarring that kept happening. I knew that, and I had told Dr. Sch that I was worried about doing the surgery because my uterus may develop scar tissue. (He had said if there is scarring, it happens immediately after the surgery, and to prevent that, he was using that balloon {remember my fan pull tail?}) And it's not just the one surgery. I've had a couple of D&Cs as well. Now I don't know if my uterus is developing scar tissue or not. But I feel like this may be the reason. And if this is the reason, then I probably won't make a thicker lining next month either.

Tori - you asked about Viagra. I asked the nurse last week when I was being postponed the first time. She said being on Viagra for one week may not make a difference. At that time she was pretty sure the estrace suppositories was all my body needed.

I have always talked about how my body responds well to medication, haven't I? Well, apparently it doesn't. I mean, to not grow even 1mm after being a week on estrace is weird. Strongblonde, you asked if they measured multiple times. Yes, the RE measured again and again. My uterus is retroverted and sometimes it's hard to get a lining measurement, so he takes several readings each time any way.

How am I doing? I know some of you have said time and again that I need to think positively. You know, I can't make myself do that. I'm a rational person, and I like to keep my hopes up, but I like to be realistic. If I feel positive, great, and if I don't, I can't make myself do it. And my gut is not jumping up and down with positivity right now. We'll see how it does over the course of the week. In the meantime, I'm doing all the medication etc that is required. And I'm doing it all diligently.

So I'm doing ok. I'm willing to give it one more week. But I'm being realistic about it. If I grow a beautiful lining next week, HURRAH!! If I don't, I'm taking a break. The entire past year has been devoted to IVFs and in the process, I have reduced myself to nothing but my IF. I have let it shake my self esteem, my confidence in my body, in my abilities. If next week brings bad news, then I'm going to side-step a little. I need to take a breather, regain some of my life back.

Still a no-go

I'm trying to process my failure right now, and I don't know what to say.

My lining today was still at 4.9 mm. EXACTLY the same as last week. My local RE (he's been helping with all my monitoring here) said he's sorry. He thinks it could be because of the surgery, because he knows how my lining has grown for 3 IVF cycles with him.

We walked out of the clinic assuming we were being cancelled. I didn't even do my morning dose of estrace today.

And the nurse called - pretty late by their usual routine. It was after 5 PM in CO when she called. And she said they want to try me for one more week. I was expecting to be cancelled, but she said lets try it one more time.

So now I have to continue my 4 patches every other day, increase the estrace suppository to three times a day, and add an intramuscular estrogen injection twice a week to the mix. If the lining still hasn't responded by next week, I'm getting cancelled. I also decided to do acupuncture, even if it is absolutely last minute. But I need any help that it can give me at this stage. I've scheduled an appointment for Saturday.

I'm tired of the games IF is playing with me. EVERY fucking thing that can go wrong, HAS gone wrong at some point or the other. EVERY damn thing! This morning DH and I actually had a very serious conversation about possibly proceeding further with a GC. Someone with a proven womb. Not me. My womb can't be trusted.

I'm giving it this last one week for things to improve. If not, I give up. I don't have the stamina to fight any more. I'm tired and I need a break.

I have a lot of things on my mind, and will write a more detailed and coherent post later. Right now my thoughts are rushing out over each other, and I'm feeling very jumbled, defeated and confused.

My uterus can't grow a lining - how on earth will it grow a whole baby???

2/24/2009

I shouldn’t be here right now writing this. Today shouldn’t have been the way it is. I should have been 40 weeks pregnant, in active labor, or waiting to be in labor, or with a brand new infant. Nothing about this should have turned out the way it did.

I still have a copy of the “Save the date” email I sent to my brother, sister and their spouses: “The bun is in the oven. It is expected to be ready on 2/24/09”.

The oven turned out to be faulty, and the poor bun has long since gone, and is nowhere close to being ready.

Prima facie, life has moved on. But when you look, only time has moved on. I’m still where I was when all of this started. We wanted a baby then. We still want a baby now. We are still here, wanting, and waiting.

And sadly, my third loss didn’t even get a fitting tribute from me. All I felt was stunned anger. With my first loss I was a heartbroken mess. With my second, deep deep sadness (albeit with the “solace” that it was a chemical pregnancy, and under normal circumstances we may not have known that it had even happened). The third loss – nothing. Just plain anger and frustration.

I reasoned with myself that I didn’t react the same way with my third loss as with my first because we had not got to see a heartbeat ever. Whatever be the reason, my baby did not get the love and honor it deserved – not even from me, and I feel bad about that today.

I write poems when I’m emotional – and I wrote and dedicated one each to my first and second losses (they are here and on my side bar). But I have not written poetry since then. I have no words to describe the numbness in my heart.

And yet, I’ve stayed addicted to hope, trying to plod on and come out victorious over IF. That’s what took us to CCRM and through this excruciatingly long last IVF cycle. That was June/July 2008, and this is the end of Feb 2009. Long IVF cycle, yes?

I had been making myself feel totally positive for the FET. Then my cousin’s news came and threw me into a funk mentally. And then my lining check last week was the frosting on the nasty cake. Try as I might, I’ve not been able to get back into feeling positive about my FET.

I’m tired. I know that if my FET doesn’t work, I won’t have the strength to try again (can’t even think of another FET at this point). And I know that if the FET works and something goes wrong with the pregnancy again, I won’t know how to find the strength to carry on with life.

I guess I’m just feeling low today, and I wish today had turned out differently for DH and me.

Simba

We have friends that love Simba, and very willingly baby sit him when we travel out of town. Since we were supposed to be going to Denver on Tuesday, we had spoken with them about Simba staying with them while we were out. They agreed of course, but on the condition that they get to spend at least one weekend with Simba. So we had all agreed that Simba would go to their house this weekend, and come back home after we return from Denver. Our plans got changed, but our friends had already made plans around Simba this weekend, so we agreed to have him go spend the weekend with them.

They picked him up last night, and right now, I’m missing him terribly! I woke up this morning and went downstairs and it struck me that Simba is such a huge part of this house and our family that it is impossible to imagine life without him! The house is so silent. Not that Simba is a magic dog that talks, but he communicates. He makes us talk to him. He makes us have the semblance of a normal life, the feeling that we are in fact parents. He makes me refer to DH as Dadda when I talk to him, and makes DH refer to me as Mama. “Where’s Dadda, Simba?” makes him run and look for DH.

I’ve written about Simba before, and I mention him often here on my blog. Simba came into our lives when our first IVF failed. We had a huge need to parent, and take care of a little life dependent on us, and DH thought bringing a puppy home would be just the thing for us. It was. The little ball of fur, all of 6 weeks when he came home, was a wonderful outlet to our parenting instinct and our need to nurture something.

If the last 3.5 years of parenting Simba is any projection of how we’d be as parents, then I can’t wait for us to be parents to a real human baby! DH surprises me by being so gentle and calm with Simba, and I surprise myself with being so very patient with him. He knows Dadda is the one who takes him out and makes him play fetch, but he knows that if he’s in trouble, and Dadda is angry, then Mama will take care of him. He knows that if he comes and looks at me in a certain way, I’ll know he is hungry or is thirsty.

It was a scary realization today that if we didn’t have Simba in the house, and if our lives had proceeded the same way in other aspects, ie, if we were infertile and had had those losses, and were where we are emotionally, mentally, physically, it would be a very very depressing and lonely existence. Just the 2 of us in the house to deal with all of these raw emotions would be too hard to bear. Not that Simba offers any emotional advice, but he just takes away so much pain by wagging his tail or licking the tears away!

After my ectopic pregnancy, we talked about getting another puppy – and we still might. It’s just that from then on we’ve been traveling to Denver practically every month, and we didn’t think it would be fair to bring home a new puppy and have to leave him/her in boarding or with friends so often.

All said and done, I miss the little guy! OK – he’s not little, he weighs over 90 lbs! Is it Sunday night yet? 

Postponed

I had my lining check ultrasound and E2 blood work today. 

My lining check didn't go well at all. My poor pathetic lining, after 2 weeks of Estrogen stickers was only at a measly 4.9 mm. No triple line pattern or anything - nowhere even close to it. Just a sad blurb, 4.9mm thick.

I spent the morning in panic mode. DH has been trying to calm me down, telling me that we have good blastocysts to transfer, so there is nothing to worry about. At the very worst, we'll get postponed. 

And postponed we got. The nurse just called - I'm being pushed out by a week. Instead of flying out on 2/24, we now fly out on 3/3, transfer on 3/4. My E2 level today was 382, and they wanted me to be over 300, so that was good. I thought there would be a correlation between the E2 level and the lining thickness. So if my E2 level is right where it should be, shouldn't my lining also have been right where it should be? 

They want the lining to be a minimum of 8mm, so I get to add estrace to my drug cocktail, only I get to have the pleasure of using the lovely blue pills as a suppository instead of a regular oral pill!! Yeah, been there, done that also before. I hate the blue discharge! 

I can't help but wonder if the surgery I had in October to fix the shape of my uterus could have anything to do with my lining being so thin this time? 

I need some thickening vibes please.... 

Weighty issues - updated

Anyone dealing with or having dealt with infertility will agree. Apart from the very obvious – the inability to have a baby – infertility also brings with it these 2:

WEIGHT and WAIT.

We all know how we’re incessantly waiting – waiting for results, waiting for doctor’s appointments, waiting for schedule, waiting to start cycling, waiting for results – and the cycle continues. While we wait, normal life occurs (ok, not NORMAL as it used to be – but the new normal that we’ve settled into)

And that’s where my struggle with weight comes in.

I’m going to bare my soul here and talk actual numbers and sizes. I know there will be people who will say: “Eeks, she’s FAT”, and there will be people who will say: “Please – you have no reason to complain, do you know what half the world weighs?” I understand. I don’t want to offend anyone or tick anyone off. I am not comparing myself with anyone else at all. I am comparing myself with me. Or who I used to be.

Before IVF#1 – I weighed 124 lbs. Size 4. I could happily wear short T-shirts that even showed a little tummy. And remember, I'm petite - I'm only about 5 ft 3 or 4 inches. 

After IVF#1, I sort of settled at 130 lbs – sometimes swinging to 132. Still ok. Size 4 pants still fit me ok, but I had bought a couple of size 6 pants for my “blah” days.

After IVF#2 – I was pregnant for a few weeks and my bloating from the injections and swollen ovaries continued right on. I could not button up any of my pants, and since I did not know better, I didn’t expect things to go wrong, and I ended up buying a couple of maternity pants / jeans. Three days after that trip to the mall, we found out the baby’s heart had stopped beating. My depression after the miscarriage made me go back pretty quickly to 130 lbs and to my size 4 pants.

IVF#3 and IVF#4 happened back to back – with IVF#3 I had a chemical pg, and with IVF# 4 I had an ectopic pregnancy, which was treated with methotrexate injections. My weight sort of plateaued at 134-136 lbs. My size 4s felt tight. My size 6s felt snug.

After IVF#4, I had surgery to fix my uterus, and then moved on to IVF#5. 

Now - in between ER and FET of IVF#5 – 138-140 lbs. Some of my size 4s won’t go over my knees. Some that do go up, look obscene. And my tummy mushrooms over them in a very very pathetic manner. My 6s feel tight. There is one pair of jeans that is close to comfortable and I’m tired of wearing them all the time. Other than that pair, I’m wearing drawstring or elastic waisted pants.

You can’t really go out in those pants. So like I said, while I am waiting for my cycle to continue, my weight dilemma weighs in on me.

Should I buy bigger clothes? No. I don’t want to, I hope to be pregnant, and I will wear my maternity pants then.
Should I wear maternity pants now? No, because I feel superstitious about jinxing my chances (don’t ask me to explain why).
Should I complain about my weight? No, the intention is to get pregnant and put on 25-30 lbs more.
So am I happy about my weight – the fact that I am 16lbs heavier than I was before IVF#1? No – I’m close to being depressed about it!

I know this is not the time to be worrying about my weight – and on most days, I don’t worry. I worry when I have to go out, and when I stand in my closet for ages KNOWING there’s nothing there that fits ok.

I’m the kind of person who gets motivation to lose weight when I’ve lost some already. That’s when I’m happy to shed more, and maintain it. When I put on weight, I lose all the motivation to move my blubbery self and do anything about it.

Once again, please, I don’t mean to offend anyone by talking actual numbers here. I am merely talking about ME, and how much I weigh. This is my opinion on myself, and about nobody else.

Weight - the unfortunate by-product of IF. And it's bothering me because I'm in waiting mode right now! Oh well.....

Update: I just realized I didn't mention this. Don't worry - I'm not on a diet or doing anything drastic. In fact, on the contrary, DH has decided that I need to drink "fattier" milk, so he's not letting me get my usual fat free dairy! I'm eating well, and eating healthy for the most part. I would not compromise anything for the chances of this FET to work!! :-)

Rainbows and the like....

Through the rain, this is what we saw today. It has to mean something, doesn't it? Hope. Light at the end of the tunnel. Something to look forward to. 

I'm doing much better today. Thank you all once again for reaching out and helping me when I felt low. I don't know how I would get through days like yesterday or feelings like the ones I had yesterday without you guys! 

IF takes away so much from us, but in the process it gives us a lot too. My IF has given me a wonderful support group of people that get it. Had I not been infertile, I wouldn't be here, writing this right now, and I would have not had the opportunity to meet so many wonderful people!

IF took away the innocence of an "oops" conception, and the joys of a pregnancy which proceeds without incident. In its wake, it left behind a paranoia which causes one to obsess over EVERY twinge, every symptom, or the lack thereof, a paranoia which will not subside no matter how much one tries to "stay calm".  

IF took away the carefree loud laugh and wicked sense of wit and humor I once possessed. In its wake, it left behind a large amount of bitterness. 

IF took away many treasured relationships, for one reason or another - both friends and family. In its wake, it left behind a lonely isolation. 

IF took away (from me) a career which could have, and was progressing extremely well. In its wake, it left behind a woman willing to give up EVERYTHING, for just one chance to have a baby. 

However, IF did give me a lot of compassion and a lot of insight. Like April said in her comment to my last post, IF makes our lows lower and our highs higher. It makes us much more tuned in and perceptive to others. I'm learning to harness that perception and reaching out to people who are suffering like me. I'm learning that by reaching out and supporting people, I'm not only helping them in their struggles, I am actually helping build a support system for myself too. 

More than anything, IF has shown me how strong I am, and how far and beyond far I'm willing to go to make my dreams come true. It has helped me prioritize my life, and has given me absolute lucidity on what's important to me. 

It has taught me to focus on hope, because sometimes, it's all you've got! It has taught me to look through the rain and find the rainbows......