Second Chances

Those of you who have been reading my blog for a long time know that I never got a positive pregnancy test with E.

I did test- twice. Once at 10dp5dt, and the second day at 12dp5dt, the morning of the beta. Both were negative, which made the strongly positive beta a wonderful surprise. I learned from this not to use tests from the dollar store.

At 14dp5dt, exactly where I am now, I posted this:

Is it completely ridiculous to want desperately to waste money on a pregnancy test that is NOT from the stupid dollar store just to see two lines? Q. has no idea why I want to do this so badly since we’re getting accurate counts from the betas every 48 hours. And I studiously avoided tests pretty much all through this entire process- I used one with our first IUI, and used one the day before the beta with the first IVF, and then I had my flirtation with the dollar store tests this time round.

But I think I want to see two lines. Even though I know I’m pregnant, I want a piece of plastic to confirm it.

Is this like food cravings?

And Dandle, and Sarah, and Springroll, and Serenity, and Mel, and babyinterrupted ALL told me to go buy a pregnancy test to see those two lines.

I didn’t.

I never saw two lines.

It became one of my biggest regrets from my pregnancy with E.

And after our two FETs failed this past fall I started to think I had missed my chance.

So this morning, despite the cold, I bundled E. up, and we went to the drugstore. We had absolutely no other reason to be out in the freeze except that I wanted to see this:

I’m not going to lie- it was a little anticlimactic. But it was a relief to see it.

2.0 IVF 13dp5dt- Happy New Year

So here’s the thing.

I have thought, for a week now, that I’m pregnant.

Two things have done this: the fact that my face massively broke out, and the insane bloat/fullness in my abdomen.

I have refused to breathe a word of this to anyone, not even Q., because I knew that it could be from progesterone and holiday eating and I couldn’t bear to get it wrong again.

I didn’t get it wrong.

The clinic called.

Beta was 835.

Repeat beta and an intralipid infusion on Saturday.

I’ve called my midwives already.

You guys. I’M PREGNANT!

2.0 IVF 12dp5dt- One more day

Beta is tomorrow. It would have been today if we’d been home.

I thought about testing but decided against it. I don’t want to spend more money only to get one line. Plus I did a pretty good job of not thinking about it while we were away (except for the early mornings when I woke up before everyone else), and I didn’t want to wreck that. It was clever to put the tww over Christmas- I just wish I hadn’t stimmed so quickly that the tww started on the 20th and not the 23rd. I was pretty stressed over that weekend what with the major weather event and the frozen embryo report, and it was only on the 23rd, which I spent baking cookies with E., that I was able to consciously relax and just focus on Christmas.

Oh well. Maybe that was already too late. There’s nothing I can do about it now.

Nor can I do anything about the chair that I lifted on the second day after the transfer and carried upstairs so that we had a way for E. to climb into his crib by himself without me having to lift him. Q. weighed the chair afterwards, and it was just under my clinic’s magic twenty pound weight restriction, but I had nothing but cramping afterwards.

Nor can I do anything about the fact that on the 23rd, after walking with E. down to the streetcar stop rather than getting the stroller out, because I know it weighs more than twenty pounds, and having E. climb up the steps himself rather than carrying him like I normally do, and having him climb down the steps himself instead of me picking him up like I normally do, we then walked to the dollar store where I promptly picked him up and put him in the cart so he could help me choose wrapping paper. It didn’t even occur to me what I’d done until we were finished shopping and I was trying to lift him OUT of the cart and his boots got stuck in the spaces for his legs, and I suddenly realized that I’d ended up lifting my toddler despite my oh-so-careful plans to make sure I wouldn’t. Cramping again after that. Then nothing.

I tried. I tried so hard to do what my clinic told me to do. And I still ended up, yet again, doing things that now hang over my head, things that I can’t help but wonder whether they might have swayed the balance, even though they are things that most women would do without a moment’s hesitation.

I wanted this to work so badly. I worked so hard to try to get my head around the possibility of twins, to make my peace with it, to accept it, to eventually even welcome it.

I did everything I could, and tried so hard not to do anything I wasn’t supposed to. But in the end I can’t make it happen. It’s not up to me. I can’t wish it so.

I’m preparing for a negative. I’ve got nothing to really sway me either way, but it’s just easier to try to start expecting bad news than to get blindsided.

2.0 IVF- 9dp5dt- Oh, shut up

December 24th
Body: Psst.
Me: What?
Body: *looks furtive* Wanna overanalyze?
Me: No. I’m busy. *goes back to wrapping presents*

December 25th
Body: Psst!
Me: What??
Body: C’mon. Wanna overanalyze?
Me: No. We’re busy. *goes back to opening presents, skyping and eating nice things.*

December 26th
Body: PSST!
Me: WHAT?
Body: Let’s overanalyze! You know you want to!
Me: NO. I’m busy. *goes back to talking non-stop to her toddler for three and a half hours to keep him from melting down in the car during the seven hour journey that should have been four so Q. can concentrate on driving (since he won’t let her drive because “That’s stressful and you’ve got the twins to think of”).*

December 27th, 28th, 29th
Body: PSSST!!!!!
Me: AUGH!! Fine! What do you want??
Body: You cannot tell me you haven’t noticed. All that bloating. All that sensation of fullness.
Me: Yes. I’ve noticed. You’re not fooling me. It’s called progesterone. I’ve been fooled by it before. Not this time.
Body: Yes, yes, ok. But this time is different. You have to admit it’s different.
Me: Yes. It’s called PIO shots meet Christmas holidays. It’s FOOD, body. Overeating for a week doesn’t mix with a digestive system currently functioning at the speed of a snail.
Body: But you’ve had to think about it and tell yourself this, no?
Me: Oh fuck off. I’m going back to reading Longbourn.

2.0 IVF- 1dp5dt- Disappointment

My clinic didn’t call today.

That’s the first time they’ve ever missed a really important call like this. I called around 4 p.m. and left a message, but I find voicemail is a bit of a black hole there. I’ll call again first thing tomorrow- at least the advantage to dealing with a clinic is they’re open seven days a week!

This has, of course, led to some ridiculous anxiety-driven thoughts along the lines of, “THEY DIDN’T CALL BECAUSE THERE WAS NOTHING TO FREEZE AND THEY DIDN’T WANT TO GIVE ME BAD NEWS, SO THESE EMBRYOS CURRENTLY FLOATING AROUND IN MY UTERUS ARE OUR ONLY HOPE AND WHAT IF RATHER THAN BEING JEDI TWINS THEY’RE ALREADY DEAD??”

Even I can see that this is unlikely. The nurses at my clinic spend every single day giving people bad news- that the beta was negative, that the eggs didn’t fertilize, that the f/s didn’t find any sperm, that it will be a day three transfer. They’re hardly going to shy away from a phone call because it might upset the patient.

Much more likely is the fact that we’re currently experiencing a bit of a weather event in my neck of the woods, and a number of the nurses live outside the city. I bet they were busy and short-staffed today, and my doctor probably ran two hours late as per usual, and my chart just slipped through the cracks in the chaos.

Still.

I would like to know where we stand. If for no other reason than to help me get back to sleeping through the night again.

Last night was the third night in a row where I woke up in the wee hours, but well before 3:30 a.m. (which is usually the danger zone for my body deciding that I’ve had enough sleep and should just get up), and then tossed and turned in bed for a couple of hours before finally drifting off again. Last night was particularly disrupted: we had E’s coughing fits (we discovered last night he has croup again), combined with our cats deciding that they both wanted to sleep on the bed, and the resulting territorial standoff which required much meowing and clambering on us, combined with E. wheezing so badly from the croup that we had to check on him (and then I had to check on him again when he stopped wheezing so loudly we couldn’t hear him any longer from our room down the hall).

No one was bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning. Except maybe the blast twins, but it’s hard to tell with them, being but tiny bundles of cells floating in my uterus.

2.0 IVF- Transfer Day- Déjà vu

Yesterday Q. and I worked through our options while he was making dinner. We agreed that if we had four blasts or more we’d transfer two and freeze the rest. If we had three or less we’d transfer one and freeze the others. We wanted to maximize our chances on this cycle, but also hedge our bets against failure, because I wasn’t emotionally ready for our 2.0 quest to be ended without warning in early January.

What we didn’t do and, in retrospect, should have done, was discuss our tactics if we had a repeat of E’s cycle in August 2010 where we had two blasts ready to go and more still developing.

That is exactly what we got.

My f/s appeared in the transfer room, 90 minutes later than scheduled (not bad by his standards- I love listening to the nurses talk about him. One was telling another patient: “I’ve learned that the more you ask him, the longer he makes you wait. So you try not to ask him until you have to say, ‘They’re leaving!’, and then he comes. All the other doctors work on our time. He works on his own time.” He also managed to give everyone the slip for a few minutes- he’s had a doctor shadowing him for months now and this doctor, plus everyone else, had absolutely no idea where he was.)

He looked at the embryologist’s report. “Let’s see what we’ve got. One, two, three, four, five, SIX! How many do you want to transfer?”

“Two!” I said with confidence, pleased to have a clear answer.

Then he started qualifying.

Turns out we had two blasts ready to go (one more advanced than the other) and four more late bloomers that were still developing. Of those four, two were “very very close” and the other two “still had some work to do”.

I vascillated.

I doubted.

And then I screwed my courage to the sticking place and told him to transfer the two blasts.

“Just like E’s cycle,” I told myself.

In August 2010 we had six embryos still thinking about becoming blasts at this stage. Two of them did, and were frozen. I’m hoping that because the technology has improved we might get two again.

Four would be enough. Enough for two more chances. Enough to know that we really did do everything we could to expand our family. Enough for closure when the time came.

So here I sit, pregnant until proven otherwise with twins, yet still in the retrieval waiting game mindset.

At least it will kill one day in the tww waiting for the clinic to call tomorrow to tell me whether my gut instinct gamble paid off.

Beta is January 2nd.

Expected

Beta was negative.

That’s it then.

We do another full round of IVF, or we call it quits.

I really didn’t think we’d end up here.

11dp5dt

After I last tested, my sister decided to go and do some research. After trolling numerous online forums and controlling for five day embryos and successful pregnancies (and I have no idea how you would control for those variables when you’re just dealing with online forums, but that’s why she’s the scientist in the family), she e-mailed me to say that I had tested too early, and that lots of women didn’t see even a faint line until 9, 10 or even 11 days post-transfer.

All right. 8dp5dt is too early.

But a BFN at 11dp5dt, like the one I got this morning?

That, I’m betting, is definitive.

I’ll get the official word from the clinic tomorrow. And then Q. and I can start to think about just how far we want to go along this road.

In the meantime, I shall continue to plant the two hundred or so bulbs that E. and I bought this morning.  If I can’t seem to manage to support life in my uterus, at least I can look forward to something beautiful in the spring.

8dp5dt

So.

I tested this morning.

It was a clear BFN.

I’d been debating testing and refusing to test for a couple of days, mainly because I didn’t really believe deep down that the cycle had worked, but knew that if I kept refusing to test I could at least keep on trying to believe it had worked.

Q. has pointed out that it is still early and that I don’t exactly have the greatest track record with HPTs. To which I have made the reply that at other clinics beta day would be tomorrow, and the HPTs that gave me the negative result with E’s cycle were from the dollar store. This one was a FRER.

I bought a two-pack, so I’ll test again on either Sunday or Monday for confirmation before the actual beta. But at least now I’ve got a couple of days to start to get my head around it all.

I didn’t ever really think, not deep down, not in my heart of hearts, that we would transfer both of our remaining blasts and still end up not pregnant. Deep down I was convinced that one of them would work.

But here we are.

Looks like we’re going to have some tough decisions to make.

2.0 FET #2, Day 16: Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise

Again.

Today was a weird day. I didn’t sleep well- I got hit with some news late last night I wasn’t expecting, which led to a huge emotional meltdown (think me sitting on the couch wailing: “I’m a GOOD mum! I just want to be a mum again! Everyone else is getting pregnant!” while Q. gave me a cuddle and quietly thought about how much he prefers his wife when she’s not on a billion medications), which led to me waking up at 5 a.m. this morning and not being able to go back to sleep.

I decided to not even try to get any serious work done this morning, so after I dropped E. off at nursery school (the drop offs are just getting better and better), I made my way very slowly down to the clinic running a bunch of errands and walking the entire time. It was a crisp, clear fall day, and I was in good spirits, and walking just felt like the right thing to do.

On the way down I chanted, over and over, under my breath: “This embryo is OUR baby.” I repeated it right up until it was transfer time. I decided this morning to go whole hog with believing this transfer will work. It’s going to be a mindfuck of crushing disappointment if it doesn’t, irrespective of whether or not I’ve tried to protect my own feelings. And if my doctor is worried that something in my body is interfering with the embryo’s best chances for implantation, I feel I owe it to this embryo to be as all embracingly positive as I possibly can be. All morning I chanted my mantra and did belly breathing if I started to tense up.

For the first time, when I got to the clinic there wasn’t a free cubicle. They were having a really busy day, so I had to sit out in the little waiting area for about twenty minutes or so before they found me a space. Once I was all set up, I sat in the chair and did some teaching prep. It was weird to be there by myself. My favourite nurse was on duty, as well as the old head nurse (who is supposed to be retired but seems to be in there every time I am), and they both know me well. I signed my instructions, confirmed I had all my medications (“You’re on practically everything!” said the nurse), and then waited.

Surprisingly, despite the really hectic day, they called my name at 1 p.m., only an hour after the scheduled time. I walked into the room, and that’s where all of my composure started to fade and my positive thoughts started to falter. It was harder than I had anticipated to be in there by myself, and I started to get a bit emotional knowing this was our last embryo. So much riding on one little ball of cells.

The head nurse and the u/s tech (both of whom also know me very well) weren’t happy about this at all, and convinced me to take an Ativan. “Honey,” said the u/s tech, “I hate having patients cry when I do the ultrasound, because crying contracts the uterus. It’s not what we want to see.” So I obligingly took the Ativan, and sure enough was a bit spacier (but much more relaxed) shortly thereafter, and then we all sat around for a bit longer to wait for my doctor to turn up.

He was having a chaotic day too. He had a med student shadowing him who didn’t inspire confidence- he kept getting in the way and shining the light in the wrong direction. My doctor had to send a text message before starting the procedure, and then his phone rang partway through and he had to get the ultrasound tech to answer it for him and take a message. Then he forgot to get me to sign the consents until after the transfer was complete.

But the important bit, the bit that mattered, was the blastocyst survived the thaw and it looked ‘good’ according to both him and my u/s tech, and the transfer to my uterus went smoothly.

I headed home soon after that, and told the embryo all about its first subway ride and its first ride on the streetcar, and then we counted the pumpkins we could see on our street. I mean, if I’m going to go crazy about this whole process, it might as well be crazy for a purpose, no?

Beta is November 4th- only 12 days to wait this time. I’ll test the morning of to make sure I don’t get blindsided like last time. And until then I’m going to do nothing but talk to the embryo, because, as I proved much to my chagrin last cycle, how I’m feeling on any given day really has nothing to do with whether or not the cycle has worked.

But still. For today, I am pregnant until proven otherwise. And if I can will that embryo into sticking, I am damn well going to try.