One Year Ago Today...and 11w6d

You've graduated from looking like beans to little people! We saw your noses and the outlines of your bodies today for the first time. We also saw a lot of other body parts, well at least they told us they were. Little arms and legs...your heart beats, and the sound of your heart beats for the first time. You guys! You were so squirmy and bouncing all over the place! Baby B, you would hardly stay still long enough for them to take your picture. Your heart beats are 163 and 158...although I can't remember whose was whose. My guess is that one of you, I think Baby B, is a little girl...and Baby A, a little boy. We won't know for at least another 4-8 weeks. I go back again at 16 weeks, and then not again till about 20 weeks - which will be around the first of the year. I sure hope you cooperate next time and we can get a good picture of you so that we can start picking out names and CLOTHES!

Coincidentally, today is your aunt J's birthday...and one year ago today, I asked your dad to marry me while sitting at our kitchen table and drinking champagne. Who would have thought that a year later we'd be looking at our childrens faces for the first time!!!

October 20, 2011: Eight Weeks!

Here you are at 8 weeks, a couple of kidney beans!

Today was kind of bittersweet. At eight weeks pregnant, we officially graduated from the fertility doctor today. I have to admit that going to that office had become a new normal, and now, the thought of not going on the rest of our journey the next 30-some weeks without my fabulous nurse, without the same doctor, without the same familiar faces makes me a little sad. They did a lot to get you here, and you're doing so well!!!!

Today Baby A is measuring 20.5mm, and your heartbeat is 167 bpm. Baby B, you're really catching up! You're at 10.5mm, and your heartbeat is 174 bpm. The doctor was really impressed with how well you're growing!

I'm feeling really pretty well. I keep waiting for morning sickness to be as bad as everyone says, and so far, I've only felt lousy here and there - usually at night, and it's really just kind of more like, nothing sounds really good to eat. At times I just feel like I'm hungover from too much wine, and want to eat cheeseburgers. But most of the time, you have me craving sweet things, like cake. I can't get enough cake right now.

I've only gained 1.2 pounds, but my belly is definitely getting bigger. I put on flannel pajama pants last night that I'm pretty sure won't fit in another week.

I feel my uterus growing on most days. Sitting in my office chair at my desk is a bit more uncomfortable than usual, especially if I lean forward. And I have been sleeping with a big pillow on my side. I have been pretty tired, but even that has subsided a bit this week. I say that, but it's 10:52 a.m. and I just had a huge yawn.

Monday I go to my OB for my first pre-natal visit. Counting down the weeks (4) until we're officially out of the first trimester, and then I can tell the whole world the good news. Right now, only the people who knew what we were going through (our family and closest friends) know. They are super excited. You've already gotten some baby presents too. A couple little bunny hats and shoes and stuffed bunny rabbits from the neighbors, an Eeyore and a Piglet stuffed animal from your great aunt PZ, lots of toys, bottles, and stuff for mom from aunt R, and some beautiful flowers from your super-excited-to-meet-you great aunt K--they were yellow roses and white hydrangeas.

Keep growing my little wonder twins!!!!

October 7, 2011: The Day We First Saw You

Here you are, your first picture, together.

Wow. That shock, that surprise I so desperately wanted to feel for so long has now hit me twice. This morning we had our six-week ultrasound appointment with Dr. K. The appointment was at 9:15, and it was quite busy in the office this morning. We waited patiently for about 30 minutes until they called us back. Everyone seemed to be excited to see us - so I got up on the table, the old routine. Dr. K came in and the ultrasound began. I think I knew almost right away that there wasn't just one of you, but that there were two. He said "well there is one.........and....there is a second." I said "twins!?" and he measured Baby A - you'd be the big one up there on the left. Your dad was there holding my hand. I laughed and couldn't believe it. It really hit me when we saw the heartbeat of Baby A, and I began to cry. Your dad was SO excited. Next we got to take a closer look at Baby B, and you are measuring just a little smaller than your sister/brother. But you look good, and we saw your heartbeat fluttering away.

I didn't expect this, figured because I had one big follicle on that last pre-IUI ultrasound that I was just blessed to be having one. Now, two! It's a blessing so big as your great-Grandma Flossie said "It's almost to big to comprehend." And it is. I feel like I just won the lottery. Your family and our closest friends now know that you are on your way, and they are so excited. We, are so excited. Time to buy a bigger car(s)!

My two little lines! 

My two little buddies...you are truly blessings from God and you doing so well! I pray for you everyday to be physically, emotionally, and spiritually strong. 34 weeks to go.

Remember This Day - September 19, 2011

This was the day you were convinced wouldn't happen. You were expecting this day to be the day that officially started your "break" from fertility. You had forgotten to take you prenatal vitamins, you barely kept up with your prometrium, and you drank. Like a fish. For the last two weeks. You walked into the doctors office this morning, confident that it was the last time in at least four months that you would be there. You were in and out, in a record ten minutes. You came home, made a 3-egg white omlette with mushrooms, spinach, and onions. Drank a cup of coffee, and started to weed through a flood of emails. At noon you went downstairs and you got on the treadmill, you did the week 2 of the couch to 5k app, plus an extra 25 minutes of walking and running. You burned 376 calories, pounded out 3 miles, and you felt proud of yourself as you pushed through the last five minutes of running straight. You took a shower, you came upstairs, and you heated up lunch. Grilled chicken, 1/2 a cup of black beans, and 1/2 a cup of brown rice. You had just finished that lunch, when at 1:23 the phone rang.

It was a nurse, Shirley, calling from the doctors office (your regular nurse is Italy). She told you you that she had good news, and that test confirmed the one thing you never expected...that you are pregnant.

You are pregnant............

And you broke down and cried, and over and over you said 'oh my God are you serious.' And she said she was. And you exclaimed "but I did everything wrong this time!" And that utter disbelief and flood of emotion washed over you, into the pit of your stomach, and you cried. The news-bearing nurse then told you that you need to come in to have your blood taken again on Wednesday, and then again on Friday, and to continue to take the prometrium for four weeks? Seven weeks? (who knows) how long.  And you hung up. And you cried a few tears, your hands trembled, and you said a silent prayer of thanks to God for hearing all those that came before.

And you called your husband, and told him that he was going to be a father. And you let it wash over you...and you went upstairs to take a pregnancy test just to see for yourself.

For the first time in your life you saw what you always hoped you'd see.

Two lines.

Le quatrième fois

It's funny really, how isolating infertility can be. In all my life, I don't think there were many more occasions to need people, need encouragement, or need to get out of my head than I've needed since January. But for some reason, no one wants to talk about it. Friends. Family. Me. Who would want to talk about it?

I've found mostly, that people don't really know what to say, so they just don't say anything. When questions or the subject is posed in the course of conversation, it's quickly dismissed as "I don't get all that stuff," or "it'll be fine." Jokes are made to the effect of "is your uterus ready?", or even being told that all of precise calculation, the hormone injections, the measurement and counting of your egg follicles that you endure over and over is just "weird." That's usually right before the subject is changed. Or, you're simply wished good luck, as if the mere mention of your reality is so uncomfortable that it's best just to stop talking. Most of the time now, I wish they would stop talking. It makes me uncomfortable, too.

People don't talk to you about how you're feeling or what it was like to lose your normalcy. They don't think to not take "I'm fine" for face value, or ask another question. In fact, it seems the silence just continues to grow evermore. At some point you become the pink elephant--that unrelateable freak in the corner who everyone pretends isn't there. Slowly, you begin to realize that your new reality has forged a wedge between a world that once existed, and a whole new time and place and person  that no one wants to acknowledge. Its just as if you are disappearing. On most days, it feels more like you already have.

So the silence grows, because one can't understand that it's alright to ask and the other no longer cares to tell. It grows and grows to the place where the expectation is inflated, on both parts, and the hurt festers into monumental proportions. At times the grief and the despair, and the sadness, and the isolation are so overwhelming, that you're not sure if you're sad because you're facing your fourth time going through this, or because the people you always needed most in your life are no longer really in your life at all.

And you think, and you think...are you wrong for keeping to yourself, for fostering the silence? For building expectations and for wondering what kind of person you must really be if no one stops to ask, or listens to what you're not saying when they ask how you are? If you broke your own silence, who would want to be the recipient of someone who suddenly stops protecting their own heart? What would it mean if you unleashed the tears that come so easily behind your blue eyes, to let them flow, to cry out in a gutteral voice this pain and disappointment you are harboring down inside. Would they want to hear that?

Would they want to hear how desperately you love your husband, and how the only thing in the world you ever knew you wanted was his child, and how after you were told that his child was not possible, how the only thing you could think about for months was if he dies, not being able to see his eyes, or nose, his gentle hands in the resemblance of another human being? Would they want to know that kind of sadness?

If the silence was broken, could you tell them how painful it is to inject hormones into your skin. What the burning feels like as it melts into your abdomen, or what the bruises look like? Would you tell them how on the days after your Ovidrel shot, you feel like you can't get out of bed and really, don't want to. That it takes at least four days to feel human after you've been laden with FSH. Would they want to listen about that first time you went to inject sperm of some man you've never laid eyes on into your body, what not being able to turn back really felt like, what the parking lot of the medical office looked like as you cried and cried like the scared little girl that you really were. Would they want to know how scared you really are?

Maybe they'd want to know about that first, second, or third negative test result and knowing that you were going to go through it again. You know, the getting up at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday to get your blood drawn and your egg follicles counted, in a town 45-minutes away, only to do it the next day, and the day after that. Would they laugh when you tell them how you now know not to ever do an IUI after emptying your bladder because the pain you felt was excruciating...or how it sounds to have your donor's ID number stated, restated, and restated again just to remind you a final time of why you're here before lying back on a table wondering if this would be the time it worked? Maybe you'd tell them that what you have to look forward to if the fourth time doesn't work, is going to be twice as hard. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't understand when you tell them without the slightest shudder, how normal all this has started to feel.

Perhaps you'd tell them about the email you got, about the donor you first chose, and how an offspring had been born with a cleft pallette, and how you could continue to use that sperm, or you could find a new donor. Not over wine and laughter, but a Friday afternoon at your kitchen table and a Monday at your desk. Could they understand how it feels to pick your future out by nothing more than sifting through height requirements, the color of someones eyes, the sound of a voice, a childhood photo, a silouette, and a great answer to who do you want to be when you grow up?

Would it make sense then, if to that person you also told, that on some days you harbored a glimmer of hope and resilience. That there were a handful of days that you allow yourself to think that perhaps one day you would see two lines on a pregnancy test strip. That the level of disappointment you feel because there will never be the accidental surprise you'd always hoped for, would actually be a surprise of epic proportions. Would they want to know about the way you bury that down inside, so as not to let yourself think about it too long?

So you sit and you sit, and you think and you think, and you wonder and wonder about all the silence that surrounds you. And the result is that you make a choice and your choice is to continue to sit silently...all the while, waiting.

Waiting for the question of how are you to be asked again. Waiting for the arms of someone other than your husband to wrap around you and be willing to stand beside you on this journey. Waiting to not be the pink elephant. Waiting for two lines to appear on the very next test. Waiting for a life to grow inside you.

Waiting...

For normalcy.

It's been three times now, but who's counting...

A long time ago now, I started a journey toward motherhood. Ok, it's really only been since January that we found out that JF had no sperm, but now we're approaching nine months in, and three failed IUI's. Fourth one is just around the corner...

Clomid regime has been increased to 100mg x 5 days, followed by a three shots of Follistim, and then the trigger HCG. Third time around, even though I was heavily hormoned up, my follicles never got above 20mm, which means, we're not sure if I ever had a fully mature egg. My body started to ovulate on it's own, so we had to go with the IUI - and for the third time, it didn't work.

We have decided to do the fourth and final IUI for the donor we originally went with. Tomorrow is the third day of my cycle. It's the first IUI that I'll have had that is a back to back procedure - hard to believe we've been on this road for 9 months, and we're only on the 4th cycle of IUI, thanks to my hellacious travel schedule this year. We will have one vial of donor sperm left from the original donor. It will be time to find another for any further procedures.

We have decided that if the 4th cycle doesn't work that we will stop until January. In January, we will likely begin IVF. Health insurance doesn't cover IVF, so it will be an out of pocket expense, a costly one, so we need to wait until we can max out our FSA's, health spending accounts, and whatever else we can think of to buy us one or two rounds of IVF. We anticipate they are $16-20K a pop.

We will only do 2 rounds of IVF, and then we will pursue adoption.

That's what the plan is right now, anyway.

For now, I continue to delicately balance hope, faith, and a black pit of despair somewhere in a far place deep in my soul. My soul, which has become a very lonely place to be.

IUI 2: Results Are In...

And despite feeling quite different this time around (super tired, boobs hurt)...I am in fact, NOT pregnant.

So, again thanks to my agressive travel schedule and factors I can't wriggle out of, we will wait until August to try the third time. I wish I could have gone another round back to back, but there is a good chance I'll be in Atlanta for the timing of the IUI. So rather than go through the Clomid and poking and prodding for the first 11 days, I'm going to just wait until my next cycle.

This continues to be a struggle, although it's really only 2 tries, and it's just got a 20% chance of working, it's still really hard to reconcile against my feelings.

More to come soon.