I'm coming out

Okay, I know it's been over a year since I've posted.  So many things have changed, and I'm going to try and get you up to par with it all.

First off, I'm going to "come out" and say who we are.  My name is Bridget and my husband is Derrick.  This is our absolutely gorgeous daughter named Riley.  Yup, you read that right.  Our daughter!!!!!

After beginning the gluten free diet, I decided to go speak with a counselor about my fear of trying again.  The diet was working.  I was getting cycles, and we were actually having a shot at getting pregnant.  But I was scared.  I was afraid of losing another child.  After 6 weeks of sessions, we decided to give it a go.  We knew the diet was working, and all we had to do was allow it to work.  After 3 cycles, we received a positive pregnancy test. 

Now that part of this was quite the whirlwind.  June 7th, 2014 was the due date of the baby we lost.  We planned to meet up with our parents to set off some sky lanterns to baby.  It was a way to handle it, and was advised by my therapist.  Well the 7th ended up being a rainy day/night so we had to do it the next day.
I also knew that Sunday the 8th I wanted to take a pregnancy test.  Well, I woke Derrick up to the positive test.  Crying and shaking in fear, but also excitement.  

That night we met up with our parents to set off the lanterns.  Happy, sad, and all sorts of confused with feelings.  Happy to be pregnant, scared of what will come, and sad because we should have been bringing our baby home around that time but instead were mourning the loss of what would have been. 

Getting our Money Makeover On

Since we're currently taking a break from fertility treatments and worrying about trying to get pregnant, we have decided to focus on some other things to better our lives.

Not only am I doing the gluten free diet to get my body to work somewhat normal.  Someday has also been watching what he eats and exercising.  So far he is down 42 pounds since December 15th.  Woohoo!!!

Along with all of that we decided after the miscarriage to take charge of our lives.  When we got pregnant in October we were scared.  Not going to flub about that at all.  As are many people when they find out their pregnant.  Whether they went through fertility treatments or not.  We knew we would be just fine, but we also knew once we paid for daycare, diaper costs, the expensive delivery costs since my insurance sucks, and finishing the remodel on our home.  We wouldn't be living as comfortable financially as we had hoped.

In November Someday text me while at work and it said, "I'm Gazelle intense!"  I knew what this comment was from.  It was from Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover, and he says it often on his radio show.  I text him back asking him how he knew that phrase, and he said he downloaded the audiobook and he's ready to go.  Ready to get Gazelle Intense and get our financials in line to better the future for our family.

Oh hell yeah!

Then it began.  Now, we're your average run of the mill, mid 20 year olds.  We have student loan debt of course, car loans, and a mortgage.  We always felt like we were in a good financial state.  I mean come on, we pay our bills on time with ease, have money in savings, and we go on trips and do things we enjoy.  We also didn't have any credit card debt.  When we compared ourselves to our friends we were doing pretty well.
Then throw a family into the mix.  When talking to my boss about maternity leave, he told me that I could take as much time as I wanted.  My job wasn't going anywhere and they would work with me on whatever I wanted to do.  My response, "I can't afford to take more than the minimum 6 weeks."  That hurt.  It hurt both me and Someday.  Wait, we can't afford to go without my income?  Why?  Oh, that's right, because we have payments.
So onto the Total Money Makeover we went.  When you're told that you have to have fertility treatments in order to have a family, and said fertility treatments aren't covered by insurance, you quickly figure out what needs to be done to make that happen.  What are we doing wrong?  What do we need to do differently?  We can't afford to move forward with treatment for another year because we need to save up money to be able to afford the next round.  When we figured up exactly how much that amount was, it was ridiculous.  How is it going to take us a year to save up that little bit of money?  We make good money.  That shouldn't be the case.

Now here we are almost 6 months after making this decision.  Our families probably think we're crazy, we've lost friends because they are making judgments about us selling things (guess they weren't good friends anyways), and we're telling people no constantly about doing things and going out to dinner.  This is our life now.  While all of our friends are having children, we're focusing on getting 100% debt free so we can afford to pay to conceive ours.

Gluten Free Baby!

Okay, don't get all excited.  The word "baby" isn't in the heading because I'm going to have a baby.  But it's in the heading because Gluten Free is working!!!!

Yeah that's right.  It's working!  This girl is having a normal cycle like a normal woman would without any assistance.  That's unheard of for me.

So here's the lowdown on it.  Gluten free is exactly that.  Eating nothing with gluten in it.  My Dr was sort of against this, but I decided that the least I could do was give it a shot.  What do I have to lose?  Another 90 day cycle?
Normally I'm not a "hippie" person, but now I am understanding the concept of not putting things in your body that shouldn't be there.  Those Cheetos?  Yeah, they're still processed.  Even if they say "organic" on the bag.  They're still a processed puff that isn't cheese in its normal state.  So why not avoid things that are processed too?
So that is what I've been doing.  Eating as many fruits, veggies, and meat as I want.  Yet avoiding things that are processed or have gluten in them.  If you think about it, things with hormones in them will probably affect your hormones, right?  Make sense?  I think it does.

Here's the way I view it.
Fertility treatment = $3,000-$12,000.
Gluten Free = $30 on some start up gluten free flour for baking, but just tweaking your regular meals.

Yeah, I'll take that.

PCOS Diet

There is so much conflicting research out there as to how someone should handle PCOS.  Most Dr's put a woman on birth control to give her regular cycles, and it ends at that.  Others go months or even years without a period.  Some get on medication to help their bodies get cycles, but it doesn't always mean ovulation or getting pregnant.

So what am I choosing?  Option D? PCOS Diet.  This was brought up to my Dr not too long after I was diagnosed.  His response?  "You aren't overweight, so it wouldn't help you."  My thoughts? Why not give it a shot?
The PCOS diet isn't easy. It isn't for the faint of heart, but we want children and fertility treatments are not covered by our insurance.  Nor is testing, seeing a Reproductive Endocrinologist (RE), blood draws, ultrasounds, medications, or monitoring.  So we would be 100% out of pocket again, if we choose to do another round of medication.  Something we just aren't up for financially at this time.  So that's when I started looking into other options, and came upon the PCOS diet.

It consists of a mix between Gluten Free and a Diabetics diet.  Low sugar, minimal carbs, nothing with gluten,  no alcohol, and low amounts of dairy.  But I can eat as much veggies, rice, and protein as I want.

Another thing I took into account was my original diet.  At one point in my life I weighed 45 pounds more than I do now.  It's been almost 7 years since losing the weight, but since then I've yo-yo'd my way between 60lbs of weight loss and 20lbs lost.  So I set up with a dietician to take a look at what I'm doing with my PCOS diet and what she recommends.  After her looking at my food diary from the past couple of months, she noticed that I usually do a 1,200 calorie diet.  I'm also an avid runner, and am currently training for a half marathon.  The first thing she asked me was, "how long have you been doing a 1,200 calorie diet?"  Um, off and on for the past 3 years.  Pretty much since we got engaged.
Then the lightbulb went off in her head.  My body is starving.  Which could be causing my reproductive organs to shut down.  My first response to her was that I'm not thin.  Not by any means.  There's still plenty of fat and chub to share.  She explained to me that it didn't matter what my weight was.  I could weigh 200 pounds.  My body isn't getting enough nutrients that it needs to function fully.
So now it's no more 1,200 calorie diet, and is an 1,800 calorie diet (more when I workout, which is 5-6 days/week).  1,800 calories of PCOS friendly foods.

Hello Gluten Free, Good-bye carbs and sugar.

The Fast Poster

Okay, so I'm going to go all "Facebook" on you now.  Obviously this post is regarding a Facebook post.

You know that friend you have on Facebook that you side eye every time they post?  What about the ones that blindside you with their post?  Or the one who is constantly posting about the same thing.

This has to do with the middle one.  The Blindsided post.

Yesterday I logged onto Facebook.  For the average 25 year old, this is a daily task.  To find that my friend commented on something someone had posted on her wall.  The post said "Congratulations, do you know your due date?"  She responded with a Thank You and her due date.  The due date of 9 months from yesterday.  The due date that shows she's exactly 4 weeks along.  And her pregnancy has been posted in public.  4 weeks!

I text this girl today and asked her if what I saw on Facebook was true.  She said yes and she was so sorry I found out that way.  Mind  you, she doesn't know what we've been through.  Honestly, this is the girl whose wedding we went to the day we found out we were pregnant.  Then 2 days after I took the suppository to help pass the miscarriage, I met up with her for lunch.  She's a wonderful friend, and I love seeing her and her husband and I knew that they were likely going to start trying soon after the wedding.  So this didn't come as a surprise.  

But I can't help but be fearful for her.  For what she could possibly go through.  Yes, there are what ifs.  There are what ifs with everything in life.  But it's already been posted to her 500 Facebook friends that she's expecting, and her husbands' 300 friends.  If something happens, that's 800 people to ask if you're okay.  Or the chance of not all of them seeing your post that you lost the baby, and they ask you later how you're feeling or when you're due.  

I've prayed for her multiple times since this afternoon.  Prayed that her appointment on January 30th goes great, and that there's a loud thriving heartbeat.  And that she has a very uneventful 9 months.  That her and her husband don't go into their appointment 3 weeks from now and have to go through anything we did.  That she never has to "untell" people.  That don't have to make a follow up Facebook post that their baby isn't growing.  

It's great to be excited.  Wonderful to be excited.  The creation of another human being is a wonderful thing.  But let the pee dry on the test before you tell 800 people you're 4 weeks along.   For your own mental state, and their mental state too. 

Amazing people

The day that Someday and I had the appointment scheduled to officially find out whether baby M had grown or not, we decided to both take the day off of work.  If the appointment went great, then we would go to Babies R Us (1.5 hours away from our appointment) and test out jogging strollers.  Being an avid runner and half marathoner, I was already researching the best one and didn't want to skimp on quality.  If the appointment went bad, then we would still head that direction but we would go shopping at the mall and just take a day to be together.

As I've already posted, we found out that we lost the baby.  After the appointment we got back into the car and just started sobbing.  There was no stopping it.  We couldn't drive anywhere yet, because we couldn't see to drive.  I didn't want to go shopping over 2 hours from home and it just be the 2 of us...... sad together.

So once we were finally able to see to drive, I told Someday that I wanted to go get my wedding ring cleaned.  For some reason I felt that even though we just found out the thing we had created together was being taken away from us, we still had each other and our marriage to fall back on.  So I wanted to have my ring sparkly and new.  While we were there, Someday called one of our friends to see if they had the day off of work.  It was Columbus day, and she works at a bank.  It was also her birthday.  They both had the day off and were planning to head out of town for a leisure day of lunch and shopping, and they asked if we wanted to join them.

For some people they would think that the last thing they wanted was to go somewhere with people after something like this.  But this couple knew everything we've been through.  They knew about my PCOS, when we started trying, when we found out we were pregnant, and that things weren't going right.  They also knew that we had the appointment that day.

For some reason spending the day with them made everything all better.  They didn't ask about the appointment, but Someday and I brought it up soon after we got in their car to leave.  It helped to have these friends to discuss this with.  I firmly believe that what has made it so much easier is that they have very similar religious views as us.  They got our mind off of things, talked with us about life, and helped us to comprehend what we were going through.  Even though they haven't been through it themselves.

What next?

This is a question we both have been asking ourselves over and over again.  What next?  Do we try again? Do we go through treatment again? Do we see if my body does its thing on its own?

These are all questions we asked at our last appointment.  What next?  What does the Dr recommend?  Through all of this, I had been moved from midwife to midwife, and hadn't seen the same one twice.  So at this appointment we met with Jennifer.  Jennifer had gone through IF treatment herself to have each of her 3 children, and I instantly put all of my trust in her hands.  For some reason I didn't care what was medically correct in what to do next.  She was someone who would know and understand what we had just gone through, and we both felt that she would give us her thoughts on what to do next.  Even if it wasn't what she needed to tell us as a medical perspective.  She told us that medically they say to have at least 1 cycle before trying again.  But with my history, I do not have any sort of cycle.  So this was a mute point for me.  I told her that I was willing to try again.  Wanted to put this loss past us, and move forward.  Turn the page and wake up tomorrow feeling renewed and ready to move on.

Then she asked us the question I never would've thought of myself.  "If you were to get pregnant again right away, could you mentally handle it?"  My response, "yes."  "Now, if you were to get pregnant immediately and then lose the child again, could you mentally handle it?"  Someday and I: "Not a chance."

There it was. Decision made.  No proceeding with treatment. No jumping right back in.  Another loss just wouldn't be good.  We just can't handle it.

Sometimes Dr's can give more than just giving medicinal advice.  They can also meet the mental needs too.