I just realized something. All of my pregnancies have been on our own i.e. not while doing fertility treatments and we did a lot of treatments. I find this very interesting..I wish I knew what the stats are on that and if that's what other women like me experienced...I think that's the opposite of what usually happens to infertiles..right. Of course everything I do where pregnancy is concerned is fairly opposite of the norm.
Pregnancy symptom talk - Warning...
I finally understand what "nipples full of glass" means. I've heard others mention it and never quite felt it until now. I don't mind. It at least means the progesterone pills are doing their job.
Tummy is good and bad on and off...I hate to admit I wish it was more bad.
Kitty jumped on my side today in bed and I yelled. It hurt so badly. She does that all the time and she is a petite little thing so it usually doesn't hurt. I feel generally achy.
Tired...oh man am I tired. It was all I could do to get dressed this morning and get to work. Thank you again progesterone pills.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Trying to enjoy Limbo
For about the last week and a half I've had moments of pure gaggy, upset stomach joy. Joy because I feel it at least means we're headed in the right direction. Then last week two days before our ultrasound it went away completely. Other than being incredibly tired I felt great. I thought the pregnancy was over...then it came back so I felt reassured. Yesterday it went away again. My boobs even stopped hurting. I panicked. Tonight it came back. I guess it's too much to expect I won't expect the worst. I also know that being ill doesn't really mean anything in the missed miscarriage realm where I've been twice. It is more reassuring than a loss of symptoms though.
I'm doing acupuncture and my acupuncturist has me cutting down on carbs which can't be a bad thing. I'm still eating plenty and I am eating three whole grain servings a day. Last night I had the worst heartburn. We picked up take out and I got a salad with chicken and sour cream and salsa so it was already hot enough and my husband got a big bowl of rice and beans etc. So I get home grab what I think is my bowl and head to the TV room (we're like bachelors we never eat at the table although this still galls me it's a battle I've given up on) except I didn't have my bowl I had DH's so I head back to the kitchen to find him dumping every kind of hot sauce he can find on my bowl...I was like "Seriously, you didn't notice all the lettuce here vs. your big old bowl of beans and rice?!" So I ate a bowl of hot sauce with a little salad and then suffered for the next two hours...it wasn't pretty at my house. I was so angry and even though I realized it was an honest mistake I couldn't reign it in. I felt just plain mean. Hormonal?
Oh also, acupuncturist asks me this morning "How many" I said "How many what?" he said "Embryos" I was like huh..."Well just the one" and then my mind got to wondering...maybe one was hiding...does he know something I don't know? I wished I'd asked why he asked me that..probably just because they are an acupuncture group specializing in infertility and RPL so they probably deal with a lot of IVFers and I am 43 and not likely to be pregnant naturally. I have this friend who likes to argue with me about a woman's ticking biological clock. She's of the inclination that a woman can get pregnant at any age. What's rich is she's never tried to get pregnant...so there you go. I can't wait for her to say "see I told you so" HAHAH this makes me laugh out loud at the ridiculousness of it.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Average results again and I'm not complaining
Our Ultrasound was today and it went fairly well. It was a little bit early. I had wanted to wait a few more days but my OB works really limited hours and she still delivers babies so she's strapped for apts.
So what we have is a perfect round gestational sac measuring just about exact for dates 5W6D and a perfect fetal pole measuring 5W6D and a yolk sac. She thought she saw the flicker of a heartbeat but couldn't be sure. So our option was to come back next week or wait 2 weeks. We were having a hard time figuring out a visit date and time because of her limited hours and me having vacation next week for a couple of days so we are now scheduled for July 3 for US #2. I actually feel really good about it. I'd rather wait and have a definitive answer on July 3 than go in next week and perhaps still be in limbo.
She checked out my progesterone cream and said I could keep using it and double the amount I am using or she could prescribe prometrium. So at the risk of having to slather my entire body with the natural cream I opted for the cooter pill. She said she doesn't have any reason to assume I need it but "it can't hurt" how many times have I heard that statement? :) The other thing she kept saying was..."well you know, you've been down this road" which was nice.
One thing I didn't know and was surprised by is that she'd prefer I not swim in the lake on my vacation...I did think that maybe I should ask but then I thought maybe I was being a hypochondriac. But she asked us what we were doing on vacation and when we said swimming in the lake she said "Oh, not you. You can dangle your feet in if you don't have any cuts or blisters, but you can't get all the way in." Well I guess now I know.
I feel really good. I think this is the best we could hope for at this stage and I will see what happens next. There are a lot of milestones in pregnancy and I've many more to come. Good news is we have a growing intrauterine pregnancy and that's good enough for today.
So what we have is a perfect round gestational sac measuring just about exact for dates 5W6D and a perfect fetal pole measuring 5W6D and a yolk sac. She thought she saw the flicker of a heartbeat but couldn't be sure. So our option was to come back next week or wait 2 weeks. We were having a hard time figuring out a visit date and time because of her limited hours and me having vacation next week for a couple of days so we are now scheduled for July 3 for US #2. I actually feel really good about it. I'd rather wait and have a definitive answer on July 3 than go in next week and perhaps still be in limbo.
She checked out my progesterone cream and said I could keep using it and double the amount I am using or she could prescribe prometrium. So at the risk of having to slather my entire body with the natural cream I opted for the cooter pill. She said she doesn't have any reason to assume I need it but "it can't hurt" how many times have I heard that statement? :) The other thing she kept saying was..."well you know, you've been down this road" which was nice.
One thing I didn't know and was surprised by is that she'd prefer I not swim in the lake on my vacation...I did think that maybe I should ask but then I thought maybe I was being a hypochondriac. But she asked us what we were doing on vacation and when we said swimming in the lake she said "Oh, not you. You can dangle your feet in if you don't have any cuts or blisters, but you can't get all the way in." Well I guess now I know.
I feel really good. I think this is the best we could hope for at this stage and I will see what happens next. There are a lot of milestones in pregnancy and I've many more to come. Good news is we have a growing intrauterine pregnancy and that's good enough for today.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
I don't follow any rules..no matter how hard I try
When I had my taxes done this year my tax lady said to me.."So looks like you're pretty risk averse" as she was looking over our finances..And she's right I am so risk averse it's a joke among my friends, colleagues, family.
Apparently though that risk aversion doesn't apply to my reproductive health. If it did I never would have tried the second, third, fourth, hundredth time and if it did I wouldn't be pregnant right now...
That's right. You read that correctly.
The day after my last post which was all about how well I am doing and how I've moved on I had some spotting. More pink water than blood..it was odd. It was day 20...So my first thought was oh man I am really starting into perimenopause now. My cycles had been down around 23 - 26 days but never at 20.
But I didn't have anymore spotting or bleeding and my period didn't come. So I tested and I got a faint line of the sort my husband looks at me like I've completely lost my mind but then the next day he saw it too and the next day it was undeniable. I waited until a normal period would have come and called the Dr. I just really felt this was going to go away and the next day or the next I would not be pregnant anymore. It hasn't gone away and my hcg levels and progesterone are good. We did two levels and they are exactly on the average scale, not high and not low and exactly doubling as they should. I'm not doing anymore bloodwork. I know after all of these I've been through that there's nothing I can do to change the levels. We have an US on Thursday the 20th and we'll see what we can see.
I'm taking a baby aspirin a day at the request of my Dr. and I am using a natural progesterone cream bio identical. I started back with acupuncture and am also going to take the herbal formula my acupuncturist gave me. (Of course I Googled every ingredient to make sure it's safe and I feel relatively good about it).
Now here's how I think this happened, other than sheer luck. We were not trying. We never did get on any sort of birth control and DH never made his vasectomy apt. I didn't push. My therapist says it's likely that my emotional mind never caught up to my rational mind in understanding that I wanted to shut down the factory hence my ambivalence. What did happen is I was having horrific pre menopausal symptoms. Hot flashes, moodiness, loss of libido. I was talking to my sister, who is 3 years older, and she suggested I try a natural progesterone cream that she had used. If you want to know the name let me know and I will email you. So I started using it and actually had a 28 day cycle. The second cycle I got a normal period and also got a cold and so I was taking mucinex every day for the days leading up to what must have been "the" ovulation". My libido came back...with a vengeance. I felt 20 even though I was getting over a cold. DH and I had a day of 20 something sex.
So there you have it. A highly unlikely pregnancy at 43. Since I found out I have been reluctant to talk about it. I had to cancel a work trip which would fall during the week of two of my previous miscarriages. That is the last thing I want, to miscarry in another country without friends or loved ones. I hated telling my boss why. He was great about it but I don't want to talk about it. Something about it being real and having to deal with the real possibility of failure. There's a little bit of embarrassment...that I am here again after all that's happened. I'm not sure what that's about but it's there. It's also why I didn't post until now. I wasn't going to post at all...Was just going to go out with my last post but then this is a real story about my real journey so that didn't seem right. So here I am, 43 and pregnant after years of infertility and 4 miscarriages (really five but I have a hard time counting the chemical as I suspect there were more of those that went unnoticed)
Apparently though that risk aversion doesn't apply to my reproductive health. If it did I never would have tried the second, third, fourth, hundredth time and if it did I wouldn't be pregnant right now...
That's right. You read that correctly.
The day after my last post which was all about how well I am doing and how I've moved on I had some spotting. More pink water than blood..it was odd. It was day 20...So my first thought was oh man I am really starting into perimenopause now. My cycles had been down around 23 - 26 days but never at 20.
But I didn't have anymore spotting or bleeding and my period didn't come. So I tested and I got a faint line of the sort my husband looks at me like I've completely lost my mind but then the next day he saw it too and the next day it was undeniable. I waited until a normal period would have come and called the Dr. I just really felt this was going to go away and the next day or the next I would not be pregnant anymore. It hasn't gone away and my hcg levels and progesterone are good. We did two levels and they are exactly on the average scale, not high and not low and exactly doubling as they should. I'm not doing anymore bloodwork. I know after all of these I've been through that there's nothing I can do to change the levels. We have an US on Thursday the 20th and we'll see what we can see.
I'm taking a baby aspirin a day at the request of my Dr. and I am using a natural progesterone cream bio identical. I started back with acupuncture and am also going to take the herbal formula my acupuncturist gave me. (Of course I Googled every ingredient to make sure it's safe and I feel relatively good about it).
Now here's how I think this happened, other than sheer luck. We were not trying. We never did get on any sort of birth control and DH never made his vasectomy apt. I didn't push. My therapist says it's likely that my emotional mind never caught up to my rational mind in understanding that I wanted to shut down the factory hence my ambivalence. What did happen is I was having horrific pre menopausal symptoms. Hot flashes, moodiness, loss of libido. I was talking to my sister, who is 3 years older, and she suggested I try a natural progesterone cream that she had used. If you want to know the name let me know and I will email you. So I started using it and actually had a 28 day cycle. The second cycle I got a normal period and also got a cold and so I was taking mucinex every day for the days leading up to what must have been "the" ovulation". My libido came back...with a vengeance. I felt 20 even though I was getting over a cold. DH and I had a day of 20 something sex.
So there you have it. A highly unlikely pregnancy at 43. Since I found out I have been reluctant to talk about it. I had to cancel a work trip which would fall during the week of two of my previous miscarriages. That is the last thing I want, to miscarry in another country without friends or loved ones. I hated telling my boss why. He was great about it but I don't want to talk about it. Something about it being real and having to deal with the real possibility of failure. There's a little bit of embarrassment...that I am here again after all that's happened. I'm not sure what that's about but it's there. It's also why I didn't post until now. I wasn't going to post at all...Was just going to go out with my last post but then this is a real story about my real journey so that didn't seem right. So here I am, 43 and pregnant after years of infertility and 4 miscarriages (really five but I have a hard time counting the chemical as I suspect there were more of those that went unnoticed)
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