New Midlife Mommy

Trick or Treat?

Trick.  Confirmed negative on Halloween morning.  Pfft.  Two more left in the freezer.

Thank you for all the kind words.

I Don't Know Why I Ever Get My Hopes Up

Ten days post transfer -- negative. 

Yeah, yeah.  There's still a chance. 

Riiiiiight.  Though I'll still be testing, I won't be holding my breath.

I really thought it would work this time.

Mind f*ck

I sometimes rub my hands gently on my abdomen.  Wondering.  Am I caressing a spark of life, too small to see?  Or is it just emptiness?

Sometimes, I feel a twinge, and I think - implantation?  Or just a twinge.  Of nothing, really.  All in my head.

My uterus feels achy sometimes.  Echos of my pregnancy with DD.  A spark of hope flashes into my thoughts.  But, it could just as easily be the progesterone and estrogen that I faithfully take.

I look at the picture of those beautiful embryos and wonder how they're doing.  Are they living?  Or have they disappeared into nothingness?

I hope, thinking that if I don't, then I'm somehow affecting the outcome.  Absurd.

And then, my mood swings the other way.  Expecting another bad result.  Why not?  They're all bad results lately.  And then I worry that somehow that will affect the outcome.  And so I force my thoughts elsewhere.

Sometimes, I wonder why we have the audacity to tread in God's territory.  How dare we?  How dare I?  Creating life is a mystery still.  Even to the doctors, who can do everything except promise implantation.

And then, I think that I'm thinking too much.  And so I stop thinking for a little while.  But just for a little while.

F*ck you, two week wait.

Welcome Aboard

And here they are:

Kind of tired still, probably from the Valium and the avoidance of caffeine today.

We started out with five embryos:  one straw of one, and two straws of two.  I don't know if I mentioned how angry I was that the embryologist chose to freeze that one embryo alone, particularly since my doctor said that it is harder for a single embryo to survive.  When I asked about it, she said that "it just felt right to her to do it."  Surprise -- it didn't survive.  But the next straw of two did, leaving one more straw of two.

We had a special treat today.  They had the monitor on in the transfer room, so we got to see the embryos being drawn up into the syringe, and then again when the syringe was examined to see if they were still inside.

Official pregnancy test on Halloween of all days -- Trick or Treat.  Of course, I will be testing on my own well before that.  It has always made me feel more in control of my destiny that way for some odd reason.

Eh (Can't Think Of A Title)

Two burning questions:

Why do I always feel like I have to go to the bathroom the instant I step into the shower, even if I've just gone minutes before?

Why can I part my hair and think that it's just fine, look away for a moment, and OMG, see a totally f'd up part?

Two recent DDisms:

"Mommy, you just don't understand how my brain works. I know, just by looking at something, that I'm not going to like it. So you can stop asking me to try new foods, OK?"

DD recently advised us that when she's a teenager, she will be queen of the house and will be telling us what to do (apparently, she's dissatisfied with the current arrangement). Dream on, sister.

And an update:

Evil, evil Estrace.  Need I say more?  Feel like I'm too fat to breathe.  Taking six tablets a day.  Ugh.

Transfer on Monday, 10/19.  At least I hope and pray there is a transfer on Monday.  Can't help but think what happened the last time I had five frozen embryos.  If you are the praying type, please say one for us. 

It's Always Something

I had so much fun on Tuesday night!  Ahem.  I was at the urgent care for TWO AND A HALF HOURS. One chest x-ray, an EKG, threatened hospital admit, and breathing treatment later, they reached the same conclusion I did: asthma + URI = lots of breathing problems. Um, and I guess it's a bad thing to use your rescue inhaler 15 times during the day, because your heart rate and blood pressure will go through the roof, making the doctors think you might be having a heart attack.  I honestly didn't know, and I am such an idiot.  Just consider me a future recipient of the Darwin award and learn from my mistake.  And the fact that your inhaler might have expired in 2007?  Doesn't make much difference.  It still works.  I have had a mild case of asthma for many years now, which started with allergies and is controlled by minimal medication, and this was an unexpected twist.

Moving on.  I think that we are going to do another cycle right away.  In fact, I'm supposed to go for blood work and an ultrasound this morning.  But it's always something, you know?  The latest thing that I'm noodling around is whether or not to wait to get pregnant.  Why?  H1N1.  There are some pretty scary statistics out there that I'm trying to put into context.  And, I'm trying to get this right, so I looked up the news story again. Six percent of the people who have died, about whom they have statistics, were pregnant.  At any given time, 1% of the population is pregnant.  So, pregnant women are dying at a higher rate from this flu (and in previous pandemics), apparently because the body's immune system becomes more focused on bacteria as opposed to viruses during pregnancy, and because the lung capacity becomes compressed to make room for the baby, making respiratory infections more likely and harder to recover from.  High fevers in the first trimester aren't good for babies, and medication is usually avoided during pregnancy, but they are suggesting that any fevers be controlled with acetaminophen and to immediately start taking the antiviral drugs at the first sign of flu.  Pregnant women are reportedly four times more likely to die or suffer complications than non-pregnant people.

I called my old OB's office.  He's retired from OB since DD was born, but I like his opinion on things.  I just wanted to know if I should wait to try again (hope springs eternal, as though trying again might mean success).  His nurse called me back and said that he wouldn't advise waiting, since pregnant women will be on the vaccine priority list, which includes health care workers first, then pregnant women, parents and caregivers of infants, young people ages 6 through 24, and non-elderly adults who have high-risk medical conditions, e.g., people with asthma, diabetes and heart disease.  That's a total of 41 million people, and they expect to have 160 million vaccine doses available.  In our house, that means everyone except my husband, whom I would prefer to have included, just because I love him and think that it's better to be vaccinated than not.  But, he may have even higher immunity than I do, since I guess the older you are, the more likely you are to have gotten some resistance just from getting an annual flu vaccine.  And my dad, who is 79, probably has even more, though he has a heart condition and diabetes and would be on the list.  But, it just occurred to me that if we do have 80 million vaccinated people in the country, that would be amazingly helpful to people who aren't vaccinated, because it's less people spreading the flu around.  We need 600 million doses to vaccinate everyone, because I guess you need two shots.

I realize that life is just a balance of the risks.  And I don't want to get caught up in the hysteria.  But I do, to a certain extent.  The thought of leaving your child without a parent is scary, and the stories about children dying from this stupid virus is heartbreaking, as it always is whenever a child dies.  And wouldn't it be so fitting, were I to die from this thing, to have a notation on my tombstone, "why couldn't she just have been happy with the one she had?"

Wouldn't it be nice to have a crystal ball sometimes, to know whether or not these are things to really worry about?

Still Negative

But despite that, I still have to get up before sunrise to get to the clinic so that they can draw blood, just to call me to confirm that yes, we have no baby in there.  I had some wine tonight.  F*ck it.  It's only adding insult to injury that I have to have the blood draw on the one day that I can actually sleep in a little.

We are really bipolar in this household.  A BFN makes me cry, and it makes DH feel like he dodged a bullet.  Sigh.  I do want to do another cycle right away, and I want to transfer more than one.  DH is not happy about that, but it's not like we've had any roaring success here (no luck even transferring two frozen).

Moving on.

DD and I were dressing in the bathroom after spending a little time in the pool today.  (And may I say what an effed up summer this has been?  Not very hot during the day and freezing at night.  Hate it.)  As always, DD usually just says what's on her mind.  I like that about her, though sometimes, it's embarrassing.  Today's uncensored question was - "mommy, why do you have fur there?"  Oy.

We talked for a bit about how our bodies change as we start to grow up, and that she would grow "fur" someday too.  That was incomprehensible to her.  As was the notion that she would grow breasts.  "Really, mommy?  Me?"  So cute.  She already knows, and reminded me today, that her body has everything inside that it needs to grow up as an adult. 

Then she specifically wanted to know what is underneath a n*pple, and I told her that it was breast tissue.  "What is in breast tissue, mommy?"  I explained that milk is made and stored in breast tissue and there a many tubes that lead back to the n*pple, called "ducts."

You know, every time I think I'm being so clever, so much better at this than my mother, explaining things in a straightforward way without embarrassment, DD just knocks me right off my pedestal.

DUCKS???  DUCKS????

THERE ARE DUCKS IN YOUR BREASTS MOMMY???

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

DO MEN HAVE DUCKS IN THEIR BODIES TOO??

(More hilarity ensues, and no, I was not given an opportunity to redeem myself.)

Fortunately, daddy walked in at that moment, and I could slink away and try to figure out how to do it better next time.

Sigh.

10 days, post transfer

And a BFN (big fat negative).

Not good.  There's always hope, I suppose.  But as they say, if it weren't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all.  At least not with ART (assisted reproductive technology).  Though there was that one time, and she is sleeping peacefully in another room . . .

No symptoms either, not even the fake ones that I usually get from all the elevated hormones.

I don't think my beautiful little embryo decided to "stick" around.  Too bad though.  She doesn't know what she's missing.

I'll test again tomorrow, but you know how I feel about 11's.  The official bad results will come on Sunday.

Welcoming The New Addition

to my uterus:

Isn't she pretty?  (tee hee)

One embryo arrested, and five continued to divide.  We have three frozen straws of 2-2-1.  Worth at least - maybe - one more try.  Of course the embryologist said that we should have good thoughts and believe that no additional transfers will be necessary.  (Though I did ask her if she'd seen my 4" thick file documenting all of the failures, and she admitted she had.  But, then she did what they all do - she pointed out that there are other people with even bigger files!  So, I shouldn't feel bad!  Riiiiight.)  And then she suggested to DH that the embryo looked so good, it might even divide and give us twins!  (That was a joke, since she was aware that is DH's worst nightmare, and probably mine too.)

Seriously, this is probably the best-looking embryo that I've ever had, though that doesn't mean anything.  No one really knows why one embryo implants and another doesn't.  I've read plenty of blog posts about top quality embryos going nowhere, while the "hail Mary" transfers of two don't-get-your-hopes-up embryos result in twins.  All of my previously transfers used high quality embryos.  And with one exception, we know how those turned out.  You just never know.

But here we are.

The "Fert"* Report

Eight were mature enough to ICSI**; six*** are embryos.  Go six!

* - Fertilization

** - Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (forced fertilization - good sperm selected, tails cut off, hole poked in egg, sperm inserted - very romantic, eh?)

*** On track to be consistent for 60%, as it has always been.  Now I'm just hoping that they keep on growing.