It takes 30 weeks plus 1 day

to stop feeling totally terrified that something might happen to the pregnancy (which i still do please see previous post). At least for me. Not that superstition has abated totally. No baby shower and we still have not bought anything for the future little one…although we have plenty of time and I do have a list.

It is very exciting to feel the future little one kick and move. Which it does a lot and is a sign of good health, I’m told. I’m meeting with our doula again this Friday – that’s actually the one thing I did do very early on – find a doula. Like as soon as we passed the 3mnth mark. We are walking the fine line between natural birth and a hospital that does mostly epidural and c-section births. It helps that our obgyn has worked with doulas in the past and is on board. Of course since we’ve prepared for natural I’m also totally prepared to be told I need a c-section for some sudden reason (or not so sudden as I’ve been told the placenta is lying very low and may obscure the cervix so the baby would not be able to come out). You know it’s like planning for a wedding – it wont ever go perfect – and it’s just one day compared to all the days, weeks, months, years after. So we’re doing what we can to plan for a natural birth knowing full well that anything can occur and we just need to go with the flow when/if anything happens. Bottom line is we trust the care we have. Same for the IVF doctor. We very much trust him too. It’s so important to trust and like the people we allow to handle our bodies so intimately.

Infertility doesn’t stop when you're pregnant

It has often been confusing to me being pregnant. Not the pregnancy, that’s been something where I’ve felt afraid the whole time that something will go wrong…no, I’m talking about the signs of visible fertility. Kami has a post about this that got me thinking about it even more. Sometimes I feel very uncomfortable – like when the lady on the street corner asked me my due date and then told me to be careful because there were women out there who could not get pregnant so they might want to steel my baby, possibly even cut it out of my stomach. I’m not kidding. It was so absurd. And of course I am one of those women who could not get pregnant. Could not until DE and even then, it’s not a given. I got lucky. Finally.

I straddle both worlds. Once my husband and I started having our fertility problems five years ago we slowly withdrew from the people we know who were pregnant, or had children. It was just too painful to be around them or to hear them talk about their babies etc. It was our effort at self-protection. And it sort of worked. When I spoke to friends over the phone and they started in with baby related talk I would not go along for the ride because it left me in tears after hanging up. Rather I started saying things like, oh wow, I didn’t realize the time, I’ve got to go, or some version of that. It was much better than going along.

Now we are pregnant and I found myself reluctant to speak about the pregnancy because I remember and know all too well how painful it is to hear about pregnancy and babies if you want them. I do this, apparently to a fault. One friend actually asked my husband if everything was ok with the baby because I never talk about it. She is single and in her 30’s and I just didn’t talk much about it because I didn’t want her to be upset. Same with the other friends of ours who do not have kids or are not in relationships. The interesting thing is that she, unlike me, wants to hear about it. Which means, as Kami discusses in her post (and others discuss in the comments), that it is better to ask and be honest with people. So in that spirit: I grapple with how much to talk about my pregnancy online because I know when I wasn’t pregnant there were many days when I just couldn’t read about someone who was, and then there were the days when reading about someone who’d been through so many hurdles and was finally pregnant gave me great hope. I try to strike a balance here, if I haven’t please let me know.

Ultimately I don’t think infertility stops when something works be it a pregnancy or an adoption or the decision, as some make, to get off the roller coaster completely. Infertility changes all of us and makes us who we are, or will become. I think I am a better person today for all that I’ve been through (and will continue to experience) hopefully more empathetic and sensitive to those around me. I am continually reminded to take nothing for granted. Especially this online community.

A little more on telling…

So my husband and I have now told just about all the people in our lives that are close to us about DE and the struggles we’ve been through regarding infertility. Mostly in superficial detail with more explanation when it’s asked for. A couple of interesting things

1.one friend revealed that she too had two miscarriages
2.only one friend asked us questions about the donor

Regarding #2: I’m not sure why more of our friends haven’t asked more detailed questions but I can say that I was grateful to go into detail with the friend who did ask. It felt amazingly good to talk frankly about coming to terms with DE, choosing the donor, the first waves of genetic loss followed by the embracing of the idea that a baby is much more than genes. the best things my husband and I can pass on to the future little one is o the knowledge we have learned and continue to learn by living our lives.

I’d be curious, if anyone wants to share, how your friends reacted when you told them about doing DE or DI. Did they ask lots of questions? Tell you that they were happy for you and leave it that? Something else?

Oh – glucose test came back negative. No gestational diabetes!

worry warts

turkey day was fine -- my husband and i decided that we would tell people about the donor if it made sense to do so regardless of my parents. it's been interesting for me to see how much i still want their approval even though i'm an adult. needless to say it didn't actually come up...and most people there were not family. the close friends who came already knew so there you are. once again i was worried about something that didn't happen. i read something somewhere once about how the things you worry about are the things that don't happen which is true until it isn't. so i guess it's good to be prepared. and i appreciate the advice that people left for me. it was helpful.

had a glucose test this AM and everything seems normal. i'll know the results in a day or two. i ate the food the chinese doctor suggested instead of the bagel the doctor suggested and feel fine. no sugar crash. and quinoa congee is fairly yummy. the test really wasn't as bad as i thought it would be. once again something i was worried about that was basically a nothing.

we are now 27 weeks and the baby is 2 pounds. doctor said this is when you feel the kicks the strongest because the baby is big enough and there is still room for it to move around.

Sweet and Low

On Monday I go in for a glucose test – this is a test for gestational diabetes that, at least from my doc.’s point of view, is mandatory even if you have no symptoms because there is a 5% chance I could be one of those who has it but doesn’t show it. Being a veteran infertile I know all about being on the low side of the odds so I’ll have to suck it up, or drink it down a 20 oz. bright orange sugar liquid. You have to fast for about 8 hours beforehand drink the stuff and then take a blood test an hour later. I don’t eat sugar (except in fruit and sometimes honey) so I imagine I’ll get pretty wound up and then totally crash and feel like crap. On the up side I spoke with my Chinese doctor who told me what to eat right after the test and the homeopathic pediatrician we found suggested some drops to take as specific intervals post sugar high.
Will report back and let you know.

One more thing: my husband finally told his brother about DE – no we hadn’t told him, hadn’t even told him details about our infertility, we’re very good at keeping secret, but as I’ve written here before we don’t want this to be a secret. He’s still got a few more to tell, but that will come. Of course tomorrow being thanksgiving there are more people we could tell BUT because my parents, while understanding that we want to share this information, are reticent to tell anyone they know there is a bit of a conflict in my own mind: do we tell people because want to tell them tomorrow OR, to spare my parents their conflicting emotions etc., do we just not say anything save it for times when we see individuals alone? i think im leaning toward waiting for the parents not to be around. Anyone have any advice/thoughts on this?

have a nice thanksgiving!

95% of the time it’s nothing…

Just got a pre-cancerous melanoma removed on Saturday. The dermatologist had said “when you’re pregnant things grow so be sure to check in with me” and voila…she found something. Well, that’s why I go. This is the third one that’s gotten cut out of me. I take cancer or it’s possibility very seriously. Coming up on Thursday is the three year anniversary of the general check up appointment when the doctor, agreeing with my Chinese doc and acupuncturist, felt things weren’t quite right around my neck and that I should get a scan. 95% of the time it’s nothing…and silly me, I believed her. Of course it wasn’t fine. And I had to have a 6 hour surgery to remove two tumors and my entire thyroid which meant that the treatment after surgery was more aggressive. Basically I drank radiation. When you don’t have a thyroid you don’t have a metabolism, and without a metabolism your stops working. There are drugs to take that can give you a metabolism. The trick is knowing how much. Every person is different and it is not dependent on weight or height. Basically you feel like crap until the meds are adjusted which takes a few months.

And what does this have to do with fertility? Well the day I got the go ahead to start my first IVF cycle after all the tests etc. was the day I found out I had cancer. I was on the phone with the IVF doctor when the cancer doctor called. Too much. Really. After my surgery the first thing I asked when I could think was can I still do my IVF cycle. I’m lying in bed barely able to speak unable to really move my head and all I could do was focus on that. When the cancer doctor said no I’d have to wait six months because I’d have to do some aggressive follow up treatment since the tumor had touched muscle I just cried and cried and cried.

In fact it’s safe to say I never really dealt with the cancer because I was much more focused on wanting to have a baby. Now that we are pregnant (25 weeks) I guess I’m finally wondering to myself if I actually dealt with everything I went through. I don’t know that I have.

Maybe some of you know what I mean – I mean about not dealing with other big huge things in life because fertility/infertility completely takes over. Has that happened to anyone else?

what if the other shoe never drops?

Next Monday is the 6 month or 24 week check up. It’s hard for me to believe. Still. All the baggage from the years of trying does not simply get put into storage. It’s more like a suitcase that I still carry around with me. I don’t know that it’s necessarily bad. Or that I want to forget. Actually I know I don’t want to forget. What I struggle with is how to feel at peace with where i am now, with full acceptance, with not worrying that something terrible will happen. But I guess terrible things do always happen and maybe all I can hope for is that I have the strength and wisdom to deal with things as they come up. Sometimes it’s hard to just be happy without the worry. My husband was also saying he’s worried because everything is going so well for us now. We’ve been so used to not having things go the way we’d hoped that now that we are we’re worried because everything is too good. Is this normal? I don’t know.

What I do know is im feeling cautiously optimistic about this pregnancy and about having a healthy birth. The little one kicks a lot now. Or I feel the kicks more often, take your pick. That’s the optimist part. The cautious part is my husband and I have not thought about names, we have not gone shopping for things yet and we wont have a baby shower (we’re way too superstitious). But that’s fine.

What else…oh! People have been asking us if the future little one is a boy or a girl. we opted for not knowing. For us after so much medicalization and knowing almost too much we wanted to have this be a surprise.