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.

Dr's visit after Dr's visit

So it's taken me a while to get up enough courage to post a follow up to the prior post, but I'm going to be straight forward with it and just come out and say it.  We lost baby M.  No heartbeat. No growth.  Nothing.

I went through an appointment per week for 4 weeks straight to see if the fetus had passed on its own.    At week 3, it had not.  So the midwife I was meeting with recommended taking a suppository to make me go into labor and pass it without surgery.  It consisted of taking a day off work and going into full blow labor, contractions, and dilation.  This was definitely quite the experience, and has made me officially consider a natural birth.  Well, maybe someday, a natural birth. If I ever get to that point.  Thankfully the suppository worked, and I was able to avoid surgery.  But there's still so many unanswered questions.  Why did this happen?  Will it happen again?  Did I do something wrong?

Motherly Instincts

So I'm writing a separate post about this, because I never understood the whole "motherly instincts" until now.  Many people would say that when you get pregnant, you just have those instincts. The instincts that baby is moving, growing, etc. Then these instincts grow even more after the baby is born.

Well I completely understand that it does happen after conception.  There were a few times where I told S that I think something was wrong. I had spotted a lot, and that spotting turned to clots at a couple of points. I knew that wasn't normal and wasn't okay.  I had instincts that something wasn't right, but whenever I called the Dr's office they told me that what I was describing to them was normal.  Guess not.  Now I just regret not pushing it further. I should've requested that I come in and be checked anyway. That something wasn't right and didn't feel right.

I even prepped S the night before our ultrasound that it will go 1 of 2 ways. We'll either see our 9 week baby forming and hear the heartbeat, or the tech will let us know that she doesn't see anything or that it is smaller than it should be.  Maybe those instincts did kick in from the start, and I knew it was happening. 

First Appointment and Ultrasound

So yesterday we had our first appointment. As first time parents, we were so excited to be able to see baby and hear the heartbeat.  The spotting was still around, but I had called the Dr's office another time to just make sure it wasn't anything to be concerned about and they told me it was fine and normal for some women.

Awesome! We get to see baby!  Of course we had an afternoon appointment and had to work all day beforehand with the anxiety of what was to come that afternoon.  Is everything fine? Will baby cooperate and we'll get a good picture of him or her?  Will we start crying when we hear the heartbeat?

We got to the Dr's office 15 minutes early to fill out paperwork. The ultrasound tech was all ready and set up for us, and said she would squeeze us in a few minutes early. Yay! We get to see baby.  We get in there, and she lets me know that she's going to try an abdominal ultrasound first.  She started going on my stomach and let me know that my uterus tips to the back, which is normal, but makes it difficult to get an ultrasound of when the baby is still this small.  So she switched to the transvaginal one.  For any of you who have never seen one. It looks like a sex toy. We'll just leave it at that.

She comes back in and lets us know that she's going to take some general shots of my organs. Very similar to when I had the ultrasound done a couple of months ago when I was on Clomid. She took some shots of those then said, "now we'll get to the good stuff.  The reason you're hear and what you've been waiting for."  She gets to the uterus and points out that the black blob in the middle is the gestational sac that holds baby. YAY! She then lets us know that she's going to zoom in on it so she can get us a closer look of baby, and get us a good profile picture.  She zooms in, and nothing is too clear. It looks like a sac of mush.  She asks me if I was 100% sure on the date of my last period.  Um, yup. Did a round of Clomid, ovulated on day 16, and took a pregnancy test accordingly. Also had Beta's drawn at exactly 4 weeks. So it was pretty spot on as to when this child was conceived.  

She then let us know that baby is measuring small for being a 9 week pregnancy.  She measures the gestational sac and lets us know that it is measuring at 5weeks and 6 days. She next said that she will give us a couple of minutes, and then we will be meeting with the midwife after she looks over the pictures.

I looked at S with my eyes full of tears, and the minute that door closed I lost it. Why?  Why us? Why isn't baby growing?  What did I do wrong?  What can I do to change this?  We had a couple of minutes of just the 2 of us, then I knew I needed to suck it up.  The tech was going to walk back in and lead us back out to the waiting area until the Dr could see us.  And I remembered there being another couple sitting across from us that you could tell were here for their first ultrasound too. So I didn't want to be a blubbery mess when we went back out there.

We went back out to the waiting room, and sat down across from that other couple.  Holding each others' hands, trying to choke back tears, staring off into space.  It kept running through my head that the other couple is probably going to go in there and have a wonderful ultrasound. Get to see their healthy baby at the week it's supposed to be at, shed tears of joy, get a printed black and white picture of their baby, then meet with the Dr and discuss the do's and dont's of pregnancy, those list of questions I had in my purse that I knew were no longer needed. That I wasn't going to get an opportunity to ask, that weren't needed today.  Instead I was thinking of the questions I should ask about miscarriage, the odds of baby just being a slow grower, what happens if I don't miscarry naturally.  All of the questions I didn't bring with me, because we were hopeful that we were seeing our healthy 9 week baby.

The nurse came out and got us. She had us go into the room, took some vitals, asked us different health questions, then asked me a question that completely stumped me.  How long is a normal cycle for you?  I know what this question was for.  They wanted to try and figure out if this baby was just conceived during a long cycle, and that's why my dates were off.  S and I both started laughing. I've never had an actual normal cycle since getting off birth control.  So how was I supposed to answer that question?  I gave her an answer of, "anywhere from 50-90 days. Longer ones were usually ended with Provera to make my period come."  So she put 50. HAH! 50 day cycle. I wish.

Then the midwife came in.  She just confirmed what we already knew.  That baby wasn't measuring right. The dates didn't match up with my past appointments, beta numbers, etc.  Which meant baby was likely not growing.   So our next steps are to come in 1 week later and see if there's any growth between now and then. 1 week of not knowing whether your child is growing or not. 1 week of not doing things a non-pregnant woman would do, because your baby might still be growing, but you have a feeling it is not.

Fear, Worry, and Anxiety

Since we had to do fertility drugs, my Dr requires we do what they call BETA draws immediately after finding out you're pregnant.  So I called the Dr on Monday morning to let him know about the positive test, and he got me set up for blood draws at the local hospital. The first one came back at 82.  Then I had another draw exactly 48 hours from the first one, and it was 156.  These are both good numbers. They want the numbers to double or at least increase by 60% in a 48 hour time period.
Then the next step was scheduling our first appointment and what they call a dating ultrasound to figure out how far along I am.

The appointment was set at exactly 9 weeks. Which meant waiting 5 weeks for our first appointment, and the ultrasound.  That's a long time for a newly pregnant woman to wait, but we had already had the blood draw done to confirm the pregnancy and they wanted to wait until they could give us a good profile picture of baby and so we could hear the heartbeat.

A couple of weeks went by, and everything was just fine. No issues, nothing to worry about.  We had fun telling our parents and a few of our friends. But of course, there's always the fear in the back of every couples' mind.  What about miscarriage?

Around 6 weeks I began having some spotting. I called the Dr's office, and they said what I was describing wasn't anything to be concerned about.  If it got worse or heavier, to let them know.  Whew, good. There's nothing to worry about.

Saturday....Wedding Day

I had mentioned in a previous post that we decided I would take a pregnancy test on the Saturday of my friends' wedding.  Because we wanted to know whether I should drink or not.

So that Friday night I reminded S that I would be testing in the morning.  According to what I've read, it's best to test right away in the morning. So I planned to do so accordingly.

We both got up that morning, I took the test, and we waited so we could walk in to look at the results together.  We both stepped into the bathroom to look at the results, with a lot of emotion running through us, and the test was a dud. No lines on it. Nothing.

Great. That was a waste of money.  On to take another one when I need to pee again.

So I tested again.  This time we didn't both walk in at the same time. I looked first, and showed him the results.  One bright pink line (the control line), and one very faint line you had to squint to see.  What does this mean?  Off to the instructions I go.  It said that any 2nd line is a positive.

Positive? No way!  I brought the stick to S and let him look at it. With telling him he needed to squint to see it, but there's a 2nd line. He asked what that meant, and I told him it meant no more fertility treatments and no more meds. No freaking way! Only 1 round of meds? That's all it took?  We seriously expected this to be worse. To be a long journey. To be a lot more discussions and disagreements about how far into IF treatments we were willing to go.  Could this really be? We're going to be parents?

Like any other insane woman out there.  Since the line was faint, I just HAD to do another test (a non-cheap one) to see if it gave the 2nd line.  Sure enough.  2 bright pink lines!

There were many tears of joy, elation, and worry that day.  Which we knew would happen for us.  We wanted children. We had no idea when we wanted them, but we knew we couldn't just "try" and have it happen.  So we gave it 1 shot.  1 shot of medication. 1 shot of trying. 1 shot of my body responding and cooperating.  And it's there. We're pregnant!!!!!!!!

Well damn, now I can't drink at Cassie's wedding.

Follow up appointment

I know I'm late to giving a result to this, and I apologize.  But I wasn't sure how I wanted to write these next posts.

I went to the Dr's office to get the Progesterone levels drawn.  He confirmed that I ovulated on day 16 of my cycle, and that our timing was perfect. This was on a Wednesday, and he told me to go ahead and take a pregnancy test on the following Tuesday if AF hadn't come yet.
Then he prescribed me Provera to help induce my period (if it didn't come on its own), and Clomid for the 2nd round.  I expressed to him that S and I were not ready to do a 2nd round.  He pushed that he would prefer we begin immediately with another round, but understood if we weren't quite ready.  So he told me to take it again in 3 months, because he doesn't want me going longer than 3 months without a period.

On the drive home I called S and explained to him what the Dr said.  He said he wasn't comfortable doing another round on the medication, but understood my Dr's reasoning for not wanting me to go that long without a period. So we would re-visit it in 3 months.....if we even needed to revisit it.