Flight or fight

I did say I’d come on to post about what our f/s had to say at our WTF appointment yesterday. The weirdest part of the day was realizing the visceral reaction my body now has to the clinic. My heart starts pounding as I walk up to the doors of the building. By the time I’m in the waiting room I can feel it rushing on. I had to seriously force myself to take some deep breaths and try to relax.

So that type of reaction MUST be helpful when trying to conceive. ‘Cause stress is excellent. And overloading on adrenaline must be even better. (See me rolling my eyes.)

Anyway, the appointment was short, as expected. F/s was a bit confused as to why we were waiting until the fall, but I think we explained it in the end. He’s endearing the way it seems to boggle his mind that we can’t just magically pull out thousands of dollars and hand it to him to get started again RIGHT NOW. Dude- I’m a graduate student. If it weren’t for Q. being clever enough to already have a PhD and get a permanent job, we’d be living in a van. And we’re not giving you any more money until we finish paying off the IVF!

The good news: he now wonders if my thyroid antibodies could be a problem, and wants to put me on three new medications next time round in case my body rejected the embryos (hooray for our drug plan). One of them was called Frag.ment. I can’t remember what the other two were- I think they’re all blood thinners. Since I bruise easily anyway, this should be barrels of fun.

The bad news: he still doesn’t think that my TSH has anything to do with the cycle’s failure (his test finally came back at 4.7- if I’d known that, I would have cancelled the cycle immediately. Gah.). He is, at least, quite willing to run a TSH test well before we start to see where I’m at.

So the plan right now is to start BCPs around the end of August (and let me tell you, even thinking about taking bcps is weird after this much time pill-free) to aim for a transfer in mid-October. That’s when Q. and I should be settling into the new school year, so I should be less stressed and able to sit back and coast for a couple of weeks. It turns out I don’t have to stim to get my useless body ready for the FET, just take estrogen. Suits me.

My f/s said yesterday that when they can get the frozen embies to be as good as the fresh he reckons no one will do fresh transfers any longer. He feels your body is just put under too much pressure during the stim cycle. Makes sense to me- I know I certainly didn’t feel normal after my IVF experience.

So that’s where we left it. We have a plan, and I still have my summer to do my own thing. And hopefully next summer we’ll have a baby coming.

—

More news on my friend’s baby. They did an MRI to try to explain the seizures, and it turns out that along with getting the GBS she also had a stroke (!!) at some point during delivery or just afterwards. They hope she’s going to be just fine; she seems just fine now, but they’re going to have to just wait and see and visit a lot of specialists. The whole thing is just awful.

Going quiet

I don’t think I’ll be posting much on here over the summer. I’ll update next week after our WTF appointment with our f/s, but since I’m taking a break from all treatments, I’m trying to make it a good clean break. I’ll return when we gear up again in the fall. I’ll probably get behind reading blogs too, so if I’m not commenting as much, I’m still thinking about you all! Just trying to take a bit of space to figure out what’s what and who I am again.

(And my friend’s baby is doing much better. It turns out that my friend’s type of GBS was resistant to the antibiotic they gave her, and when they induced her and broke her water the GBS spread to baby A. So thankful they caught it when they did- it could have been so much worse.)

For a friend

One of the girls on my forum had her baby, a beautiful little girl, on Saturday. She was discharged Monday, but baby A. was transferred to the NICU Sunday night because she was lethargic, refusing to feed, and turning blue. She’s a bit jaundiced, which could explain the lethargy and the feeding issues, but the turning blue obviously has everyone exceptionally worried. They don’t know yet if it’s seizures, an infection, or what.

If you’ve got time to cast out some good thoughts and support into the universe for my friend, I’d really appreciate it. She has worked so hard to get here, and what should have been a joyous moment has now become full of fear.

—

As for me, I am just full of beans these days, which leads me to believe that I was actually showing signs of hypothyroidism without being aware of it (sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between unnatural fatigue and fatigue caused by a long day/week/month/year). I feel really really good at the moment. Q. and I are enjoying our ttc-free summer. The last week or so has really brought home just how much I love him.

If we never ended up with children, we’d be more than ok.

News, unexpected

It’s been a rough weekend.

It started on Friday with a call from my endocrinologist. My thyroid is out of whack, again. He wants to up my dose from 0.75 daily to 0.1. I know there’s a 0.885 pill out there, so that must mean it’s significantly out of whack, since we’re jumping a pill.

The blood test that turned this up was from the 22nd- the day before my beta, and the day I took the hpt.

This means my thyroid was out during the IVF cycle. And we didn’t catch it.

I am just SO FRUSTRATED by this. I begged my f/s to test my thyroid. He agreed, even though he said repeatedly that it wouldn’t matter (how he can be one of the top f/s in Canada and still not see a link between thyroid and IF is beyond me). I watched him call the blood lab and ask for the test to be run.

But the result never appeared. I asked for it a couple of times, and then we got so caught up in the IVF cycle it slipped my mind.

If my TSH was elevated, that could have been enough to sabotage the cycle. We are still paying for a cycle that quite possibly had no real chance of succeeding.

I just don’t know what to do. Since my hypothyroidism is auto-immune, it stands to reason that my levels are going to keep fluctuating as my thyroid continues to fail. I don’t know when I’m going to be able to trust that my TSH is stable. And is there any point in even trying to get pregnant if it’s still bouncing around?

I know that I will not, under any circumstances, start the process for an FET without getting the results from a TSH test in my hot little hands. Burned once, twice shy. But I’ve got no idea what effect a high TSH would have had on embryo development/egg quality. Maybe those four snowbabies are all doomed too.

I’m so tired of being hit with surprises. I wish my doctors weren’t both so busy and important that they’re incapable of cooperating with another physician. I wish I would actually present with symptoms once my TSH went above 2 so I would be able to suspect that something was wrong. The only thing at the moment I’ve noticed is my skin looks really tired, and I’ve gained a bit of weight. But I’ve had a hard year, and I wouldn’t be surprised if my skin reflected that, and I deserved to gain some weight this winter given I mostly sat around and ate. There was nothing conclusive to make me wonder if something was out of balance. That’s probably why I didn’t push harder to get the TSH result back from my f/s.

The second surprise of the weekend came when Q. bounced back from a sporting event with the news that our friends are pregnant again. I felt awful for not being able to be super happy- she is a fellow IFer who experienced recurring early miscarriages before they figured out she needed progesterone. She has been through the trenches, and the same clinic where I’ve spent so much time.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t happy for her, and her husband, because I am. They’re dear friends, and I know how hard this has been for them. I love their son. It was more the realization that struck me that all of my friends who have one baby are now either pregnant with their second, or have already given birth.

Of those first babies, when Q. and I decided to start ttcing, one was six months old, one was six weeks old, and one was born the exact same weekend we had our conversation about chucking out the bcps. Obviously not one of those families was trying to have a second baby at that point.

I know it’s not a race. But I have this terrible sense of being left behind. I want our kids to be close in age to our friends’ kids. I want them to be able to grow up together, to spend vacations together, to run around in our yards while we barbeque and drink wine in the hot heavy air of summer.

There is a very good chance I will not yet be pregnant by the time the two remaining second babies make their appearance in the world (November).

I’m just so tired of not knowing what direction our life is going to go. And I hate the person that IF is making me. I hate the sorrow and despair that bubbles beneath my surface. I hate how my emotional control is stretched so thin that I snap all too easily. I hate how my first instinct is not to celebrate for my friends, but mourn for myself.

I hate how I’ve forgotten how to be happy.

Case in point

(Continuing on from my earlier post today about my total inability to control my emotions at the moment…)

I went to yoga this afternoon, only to discover that there was a new instructor for that class. This is usually enough to seriously disrupt my routine, as I like the usual instructor a lot, and I also like my routine a lot. Sudden, unexpected changes stress me out (if I were being uncharitable, I would call myself hide-bound).

This would have been fine, except that she started us off in a pose that was “good for your uterus and your ovaries” (the class was full of women). She told us how this pose would “help with any oddities of menstruation”.

(Anyone who guessed that I was in tears by this point (FIRST freakin’ pose!)  in the class, five points.)

Then we moved on, but for most of the hour she kept getting us to “think about our wombs”. To “imagine the fullness in your uterus”. To “really ground yourself in the fullness of your womb”. I think this was supposed to make us more centred, more aware of ourselves as women, or something.

(Anyone who guessed that I then continued to cry for most of the class, five more points.)

I know it’s not really good yoga-speak to say this, but at the moment my womb and I aren’t in the best space. And, frankly, one of the reasons I go to yoga is so that I can get an hour where I DON’T have to think about my womb. Or my ovaries. Or the oddities of my menstrual cycle. Or any or all of the above.

I go to yoga so I can be blissfully unaware of what drags me down so often these days, even if that freedom only lasts from the first sun salutation until the final resting posture.

I go to yoga so I can cut out that part of me that causes me pain.

And yes, I know that one day I’m going to have to work towards acceptance, and unity, and loving all parts of my body.

But right now? Right now I just REALLY need a break.

Trying to get a grip

First up, wanted to say thank you to everyone who’s been stopping by and leaving comments. It’s been a horrible week, but I get cheered up every time I check my email and see that someone’s posted. Some days it’s the only thing that really helps.

I am trying to try to move past the IVF failure. But I won’t lie: it is really hard. So much harder than any of the IUI cycles, even that first one where I was naive enough to assume it had worked. Maybe it’s because we KNEW for a couple of days at least I was pregnant. Maybe it’s because this cycle demanded such a higher toll: physically, emotionally, financially. Whatever it was, it’s been a real struggle to find my way back to balanced. And throwing myself into my doctoral work can only get me so far.

Case in point: last night Q. and I rented The Cur.ious Ca.se of Ben.jamin Butt.on (WARNING: SPOILERS). Admittedly, I have become a touch more sensitive to stories involving love and marriage since Q. and I got married. And yes, I now usually cry at any film where they show wedding vows, so I’m hardly a cool, emotionless viewer. (I’ve always been a big crier at movies, so this wasn’t a huge shift. I cried at three separate points the first time I saw the Lion King. Also, I was bawling my eyes out about five minutes into the first LOTR (but that was more because they’d actually realized on screen what had been in my head for years and I was just overcome by it all).)

But last night, while watching this film? Total meltdown. It started with the death in childbirth, gained strength with the announcement that someone could get pregnant at 43 (!!!!!) without any difficulties, and by the end, well, let’s just say my eyes were so puffy and swollen from my sobbing that I could barely see. Q., bless him, just gave me a cuddle and promised to grow old at the same time as me.

It was awful. I’m tearing up again just thinking about it. The loneliness was just heartbreaking.

(As we were on our way out of the video shop it occurred to me that the second Narnia must be out on DVD. Should have got that instead.)

So not really the relaxing evening we were planning.

A reckoning

Let me start by explaining that I like lists. I really like lists. To the point that when I have trouble coping with stress, the best way for me to calm down is to write down everything I have to do. And if it looks really out of control, I write down EVERYTHING. Including having a shower. Or eating lunch. Because it feels so good to cross something off. Done. Dusted. Complete. (I will even admit that I have been known to write down things on my lists that I have ALREADY done just so I can have the smug sensation of crossing them off.)

I’ve been carrying around two lists in my head since Saturday. The first is the good list, the coping list, the list that is my reminder that I am not going to spiral into a deep, dark abyss of despair and waste my summer wailing and gnashing my teeth. The list that tells me over and over again that I am through with my infertility controlling my life, and I that I can manage the stress it brings. Otherwise it’s not good for my skin, my hair, my weight, my everything (case in point: I started grinding my teeth in my sleep again during this tww. Wonderful.).

So, the good list:

Reasons why it is a good thing I’m not currently pregnant:

1. Who wants to have a baby in late January anyway?

Even in my part of the Great White North, which is admittedly a kinder, warmer, gentler part than much of the country, late January is the ugliest part of winter.  A late January baby means months of being housebound due to snow and cold. A late January baby means I would need to buy a maternity winter jacket. A late January baby means my baby would always have to have indoor birthday parties right when everyone was exhausted from Christmas.

2. I’m supposed to write comprehensive exams next April.

Having a baby would have delayed them significantly, as I would have been on mat leave until late May, and then with the summer the chances of getting everyone I needed in the same place at the same time was highly unlikely. To say nothing of whether I would even have been ready. So not being pregnant right now means I don’t have to worry about setting back my PhD by eight months. Now I know I’ll get the comps done before any baby comes. After that, it’s just the dissertation, so if things slow down while I’m on mat leave, it won’t matter (yes, my union has made sure that TAs get 16 weeks paid mat leave. I don’t like my union, but I like this perk.).

3. I need to take a course in the winter semester of 2010.

Same reason as #2. I would have got round it by taking something in the fall of  ‘09, but it wouldn’t have been in my field. So I’ll be much happier in that course.

4. I can run my half marathon again.

We’re not going to think about an FET until the fall. So that means we can try to beat our time in the half marathon we ran last September. And that leads to…

5. I can lose the 10 pounds (that used to be seven before this IVF, gah) to get back to my wedding weight BEFORE I get pregnant, and thus start being pregnant at my ideal weight.

Yes, this is a silly reason. But it works for me.

6. I can do whatever I want this summer, including lots of exercise, and working like crazy on my doctorate without worrying that I’m going to kill our baby through stress.

There is so much I am excited to do this summer. And now I will have nothing that can prevent me from doing any of it. No clinic. No needles. No mood altering drugs or hormones. Nothing.

7. Q. gets more time in his study.

See, Q.’s study is really the nursery. So when a baby comes along, he’s getting punted to the basement (because he has an office at the uni, and I do not). So he gets a few extra months above ground with natural light.

8. I don’t ever have to deal with a winter due date again.

This literally just hit me in the shower this morning. We’re onto IVF now. Every cycle will be planned out months in advance (since we have to figure out where the money comes from). There won’t be any months where we’ll go in for treatments just for the hell of it, or just to see what happens. If I don’t want a depths of winter baby (which I really really don’t), I don’t have to deal with the clinic during those months that would give me one (which are also usually the busiest months for uni what with the year wrapping up). 

The really good thing about this IVF is it has made me let go of my timelines, and my schedules and my expectations. I recognize that I cannot control when I get pregnant. I cannot make it happen. But I still get to control when we TRY to get pregnant. And that makes me exceedingly happy, since I feel like I’ve relinquished control while still maintaining some (or am I just deluding myself here?). I look back at when we first started with the f/s, when we really wanted a May 2009 baby and we didn’t want to progress to the IUIs too quickly because an earlier baby would have been really inconvenient. And then I sit and laugh until I cry. I was so cute and ridiculous back then. No freakin’ idea at all. So, I’m done with stressing about not having a baby by the time I turn 30, or not even being pregnant by the time I turn 30 (which is my new reality). We will continue down this path until we either have a baby or we have had enough. And then we will stop.

So that’s the good list. The bad list, which I’m happy to say is getting much quieter these days is my “mea culpa” list. It’s the list of the things I didn’t do EXACTLY right this IVF cycle. This is the bad list:

1. I had one day where I felt so awful from the retrieval and all the Gatorade that I hoped I wasn’t pregnant because I didn’t think I could handle it.

2. I used a heating pad when my belly was super bloated after transfer for one night until I realized I wasn’t supposed to.

3. I went to one yoga class (and didn’t over exert myself).

4. I worked in our garden (and didn’t over exert myself, but the cramps got way worse afterwards).

5. I stressed about being pregnant.

6. I stressed about not being pregnant.

7. I stressed about school.

8. I stressed about being stressed.

9. One day I only remembered three of my progesterone and forgot the fourth.

10. Somedays I was so sure it was going to work and that we would end up with twins I thought about what we would do with our embryos and whether we ought to donate them to a friend who has unexplained recurring miscarriages. Umm, hubris anyone?

I’ve put lines through all of them because I don’t want to hear my inner doubts anymore. I did NOT make this IVF cycle fail. There is no point in second guessing. We will never know what went wrong. For every little thing that I may have done wrong, I did so much more right. I was so conscientious. I was so careful. I made Q. do everything for two weeks. And even with all the odds in our favour it was only ever a 50/50 shot.  So I will not carry guilt with me.

—

On Saturday, after we’d heard, I got the sudden urge to deal with our hedge. The people who owned our house before us weren’t really gardeners (ahem, understatement) and the hedge in our front yard was rapidly taking over. It was blocking out the stop sign (I’m not exaggerating). We’d been meaning to chop at it for weeks, but the previous weekend we’d done the veggie patch instead. Once we got the phone call, I just really wanted to chop it down. So out I went, and hacked at it for a couple of hours. And then my energy just vanished, and I couldn’t bear to do anything more. Q., bless him, took over and chopped the rest of the hedge and tied up the bundles of cut branches and got sunburnt while I sat on the front porch with a black cloud over my head. It was my way of mourning, I think.

Q. is still very optimistic, but he went out the next day and hacked at our rosebushes as well (see above comment on previous owner’s gardening interests). I think he too needed to work out some frustrations. On Sunday I vacuumed the house and scrubbed the kitchen. If I wasn’t going to be pregnant, I could at least be not-pregnant in a clean house.

—

Today is Day 1. And it doesn’t in the least bit matter. It doesn’t mean I’m back to the clinic tomorrow.  And that, my friends, feels good.

Ugh

I’ve been thinking about what to say with this post. I knew what was coming because I took a hpt yesterday. Normally I avoid them like the plague, but I had to see my endocrinologist and I figured if I were pregnant, he’d want to know.

It was negative. The beta today only confirmed what I already knew. There’s not much more to say than that. We transferred two perfect embryos…and they didn’t stick.

Pretty gutted right now. I never ever thought it would get this hard.

9dp3dt

I really wish my body would stop coming up with something different to keep me guessing. Every.single.cycle, it seems something has to change. This time? It’s cramping. It started yesterday morning before I got out of bed. It was really noticeable in the afternoon after I’d spent the morning pottering around in the veggie patch with Q. (note: NOT exerting myself- I raked some loose soil and pulled some weeds. Q., on the other hand, climbed our tree to saw off a branch that was blocking the patch from getting good mid-morning sun, and can barely move this morning as a result.) So then I freaked out, and after we’d walked home from the grocery store I put myself on bed rest for the rest of the day. The cramping just continued, unabated, and I had to keep reminding myself that since it had started BEFORE my little excursion to the garden, I had NOT caused it.

This morning? Still crampy. It’s to the point that I keep running off to the loo because I’m convinced that af must be on its way.

But that’s ridiculous, right? If this were an IUI cycle, I wouldn’t even be stopping the progesterone until tomorrow (after the inevitable bfn). And af arrives several days after I stop the progesterone. And I NEVER have cramps until the day it arrives.

And since I’m on double the dose of progesterone, I can’t possibly see how af can be starting.

Ugh. I don’t get it, and it’s driving me crazy. That and the sore bbs (which is not exciting as they are usually still sore at 12dpo).

—

The good news is at least my bloat is under control. I’ve had to admit that G.atorade really does work. On days when I drink loads of it, I feel better and I’m less bloated the next day. On the days when I don’t…the next day I’m back to feeling tight and bloaty. So I keep sucking it back, although I’m diluting it now to cut down on how much sugar I’m getting.

—

I think I may seriously explode from the agony of unknowing before Saturday.

4dp3dt

I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to figure out what’s been going on with me.

The problem is that I’ve been noticeably short of breath. Not all the time- but if I’m walking for more than a few minutes, or climbing even one flight of stairs, I catch myself puffing way more than is usual.

And breathlessness was one of the OHSS symptoms that my nurse was most concerned about.

But, I haven’t been gaining much weight. Certainly not enough to suggest that I’m in the throes of severe OHSS, which is when the whole breathlessness thing starts to come into play. And yes, I’m bloated, and I feel like I’m huge, but I’m not. I still fit into my pants- I’ve just got a bit of a tummy.

So I couldn’t figure out where the breathlessness came from. And then last night, when I was reading a pregnancy book (which I only allow myself to read in twws, in the hope that this will somehow inspire my body to gestate), I came across a discussion of the symptoms that are caused by high levels of progesterone. And wouldn’t you know, smack in between gassiness (check), bloating (check) and digestive woes (check) was breathlessness.

It makes sense- my progesterone dose is twice as high as it has been any other cycle, and my breathlessness gets progressively worse throughout the day. The longest stretch of time between progesterone is overnight. My bloating and other discomforts get progressively worse during the day too.

So while I continue to keep an eye on the situation (and drink Gatorade), I feel like I’ve got a better sense of what’s going on.

The gassiness is really starting to get to me as well (sorry if tmi). While the high fibre foods that Q. is continually placing on the dinner table are keeping the system moving, I’m getting awful gas pains at night. It’s like the gas has nowhere to go, so it just gets progressively more trapped and angry. I think it’s moderately better than it was just after the retrieval, but it’s still not great. I’ve got no idea what’s metformin related, what’s progesterone related, what’s transfer related. All I know is I am one cranky customer.

I just hope it’s not all for naught. And that the three or four extra pounds kicking around every time I get on the scale are bloat related and not my new starting weight for pregnancy.

Embryos, are you listening? I hope you’re having a good time in there!

And THANK YOU for all of your encouraging comments. The excitement you brought to my last post was clearly infectious. When I’m having a cranky moment, I go back and read them all again.