Six months later...

Today would have been Peanut's due date. Yesterday was my 6-month followup to the boobie business of last fall. I'm not an overly emotional person, and in the face of Bug looking great, I can't find in it my heart to dwell on the negatives too much but I did want to remember today.

As a reminder and for those who didn't read "The Noodle" six months ago, here's a (very long) recap: in June of 2009, I did my first IVF cycle. I had an atrocious response and went into ER with a single follie. My crazy RE did not cancel me, as every other RE would have, but left it up to me to decide whether to do IVF or IUI. Because my insurance was already counting it as one of my covered cycles, I went ahead. They would up getting 3 eggs at retrieval, though the other 2 were surely immature and I got to a 3-day transfer with a single, spunky high-grade embie, 8-cell HIP. In retrospect, looking at that photo, it looks little too fragmented to me to be graded as HIP, but what do I know? Anyway, we transferred, I had some hope but not a ton and AF showed up 12 days post-transfer, despite progesterone.

NoodleGuy and I had decided to take the summer off regardless of the June IVF outcome, so when it was a BFN, we told the RE that we'd wait until September to attempt IVF#2. The summers are short and fleeting in New England and we wanted to be able to enjoy the nice weather without scheduling or syringes. We had a long weekend to the beach at Cape Cod booked for late July and a Caribbean cruise in August and were looking forward to a summer of fun. I also took the opportunity to get a mammogram immediately after the BFN, as I was overdue -- even though I'm under 40, I've had issues with lots of cysts in the past (all benign) and got one annually. I always had a hard time scheduling mammos because I was always in a "not sure if I'm pregnant" mode, so now was the time.

At the mammogram, I mentioned to the technician that I felt something in my right boob and she really tried to image it, but thanks to my extremely dense breast tissue (great for perky boobs, horrible for any sort of breast imaging), she couldn't find anything. It was policy at the hospital that if a patient felt something palpable, an ultrasound was ordered along with the mammogram, so in I went. On the u/s they saw nothing at the site I was feeling (turned out to be "hard tissue"), but happened to notice a small mass nearby. They thought it was probably benign, but gave me the option between a biopsy or watching it for 6 months. I probably would have opted to watch it for 6 months if I hadn't known that I'd be fully immersed in ART again at that point and just felt it was better to get this issue over and done with asap.

So, 10 days later I have a biopsy. For those who never had one before (I'm hoping that's most of you), it wasn't that bad. They numb the ara with lidocaine first, so you don't really feel anything, just pressure. And with these dense breasts, it was ALOT of pressure. The radiologist had to climb up on the table with me and use both arms to get the needle to the area, believe it or not. Anyway, when she reached it, it deflated somewhat, which is a good sign for a fluid-filled cyst. But she took a sample and sent it off for analysis and I was to hear from my PCP with the results in 2 weeks.

I go about my way, DH and I have some fun-time sexytime mid-month, not temping. Trying but not obsessing. In essence the rare, spontaneous fun for long-timer IFers. In late July, we head off to Cape Cod. In the back of my mind, I'm aware that AF is late (a rarity for me) but don't disrupt the vacation with running to a drugstore for an HPT, we just chill out, I drink lots of beer and pina coladas and go for mountain bike rides. And don't mention a peep to NoodleGuy. On the day we got back home, AF was 3 days late, and as soon as NG left for work, I took an HPT. And holy shit, it was positive!! A natural pregnancy! Me, who was given a 2% chance of that ever happening! It was 2 hours before my clinic opened, so I just decided to drive the 45 minutes and camp out there until they agreed to give me a beta. After some arm-wrestling with the receptionist, I got her to agree to speak to someone actually informed enough to make a decision and the on-call nurse gave me the green-light for a beta.

Later that morning, I was thinking that it had been over 2 weeks since my biopsy, so I decided to call my PCP. After several rounds of back and forth between the PCP and radiology department, who each kept claiming that the other was responsible for passing on the results, it was finally determined that my PCP would tell me. And she told me that abnormal cells had been found on the biopsy - atypical hyperplasia. She happens to be foreign-born, with a heavy accent, and explained it all very poorly and to top it off I found out that these results had been in for a week and no one called me, so you can imagine how quickly I later skedaddled to a new PCP. Anyway, within an hour of getting this call, I get the call that my beta is a spectacular 299 (at 15dpo). So feast and famine within an hour. Imagine the happiest news ever, tempered with the scariest. NoodleGirl's brain shuts down.

I waited until NoodleGuy got home to tell him both bits of news - it was really surreal. We were both thrilled about "Peanut" but very scared over the atypical cells. I made an appointment the next day with an excellent breast health center in Boston, for a week later. The doctor I met with there was incredible, explained everything really well. She said the condition I had was sometimes called "precancerous" but she liked to explain it more as "juvenile delinquents". She said it was unfair to portray to patients that this would later become more serious, when in reality, yes, those cells could grow up to be criminals, but they also could get decide to straighten up and go to college, law school and become tax attorneys. She said that her recommendation would be a surgical biopsy to remove the entire area, and some surrounding, but being pregnant, it was up to me, I could also wait. After consulting with my RE, we decided to proceed with the surgery in early October, when I would be in the 2nd trimester. I decided to relax, hope for the best and just enjoy the rest of the summer and Peanut. We went on our cruise, and then to a good friend's wedding over Labor Day weekend.

At my almost-10 weeks ultrasound (having been released from the RE after a fantastic 8-week ultrasound) on September 8th, I found out that Peanut had no heartbeat. The next day I called my breast surgeon and moved up the surgery. So, I had a D&E on 9/11 and then the breast surgery on 9/24. I figured that I was already devastated, why not get these cells out of my boob sooner rather than later, because at least I could be doing be something proactive while grieving. The one happy thing in this whole ordeal is that a week after the surgery, my breast surgeon called with the good news that they saw absolutely no abnormal cells in any of the tissue they removed. I think that call was actually the one I cried over the most out of sheer relief, even after losing Peanut, I still had this thing hanging over my head, so I was finally able to move on, for good and bad.

So, fast forward to now. Peanut's EDD was today, should he have survived (it was a boy, with undetermined chromosomal issues). I still have some tickers out there with his due date, so I've morbidly been reading the 40-week updates this week. It's sad but not nearly as much as it would have been without Bug.

Not so coincidentally, I had a follow-up breast ultrasound and appointment yesterday to check on the surgical site. After 45 minutes in ultrasound -- during which I actually fell asleep on the table when left alone for 25 minutes! -- where I was mauled by two radiologists and an u/s techs (dense boobs strike again!) -- they saw nothing of concern, just a couple of small cysts and the scar tissue from surgery. Then I headed up to the doctor's office where I met with the nurse practitioner, as my doctor is on maternity leave (of course!), who was great. She discussed that the results looked very good and my long-term care plan. My risk of developing breast cancer one day is twice the average woman, a simple formula just based on the finding of the atypical cells. Average women have a 12% chance, mine is now 24%. Thanks to that, I will continue to have yearly mammograms and yearly MRIs, spaced at six months intervals. I'm actually someone who prefers more aggressive diagnostic treatment, so this sounded like a great plan to me. I'd rather do the occasional unnecessary procedure and feel safe than not do things and possibly miss something. MRIs and mammograms both find different things, so I am very happy with the idea of getting each every year. The NP mentioned that we could do the mammogram in July (the one year mark for last one) and said you can get it done while pregnant (surprise to me) but I decided to wait until after Bug's due date and am scheduled for October. I liked that plan because it'll give me 6 months to breast feed Bug (Sept-March) and then 6 months of trying for baby #2, which is the window NG and I have discussed before closing the door on ART for good, before the next mammo. Additionally, if I were not pregnant/planning on breast-feeding/planning on TTCing another, they would put me on Tamoxifen as a preventative measure - it's an estrogen binder than has shown very good results in reducing breast cancer rates. But clearly playing with estrogen is something I would want to wait on until after any thoughts of babies are out of my head.

Anyway, phew - I did not mean for this post to be so long. I mostly wanted to acknowledge Peanut and how surreal it seems to me that, in a different world, I would have a different baby in my arms right now.

Just when you think you're OK...

I was on a work conference call earlier today and we were talking about a big release we have coming in April. A few folks piped in about how that'll be here before you know it -- the holidays always zoom by and then it's January and we'll need to ramp up for the release for a few months. It made me really sad to think that it's true - April will be here before you know it, and so will Peanut's due date of 4/8/2010. It's hard to think that he'd be born by the time this silly release, where everyone will get their panties in a bunch for stupid reasons, is completed.

Please, Lordy, let me be pregnant by April. I don't have a ton of hope because I don't think my-own-egg IVFs are going to work for me and we won't start donor egg until about April or May. But it would be really, really nice to be pregnant by Peanut's birthday anniversary.

I've been having a hard time letting go of the fact that this is a totally missed cycle with my stupid HCG. As I said yesterday, it screws up all my planning. I even forgot that my younger sister wants to visit in early December to see Boston in all its pretty, Christmas-y glory. We both love Christmas, plus now she lives in the South where you miss the snowy nostalgia, and we were really looking forward to it.

She doesn't have much flexibility in weeks to visit because she's in college and is taking a winter semester class. It had been a great plan before, but now it puts her smack dab in the week that would likely be ER and ET. Besides the fact that I wouldn't want her visit bogged down with my doctor's visits, I haven't even told anyone in my family about all of this. UGH. I'm going to need to put her off for a while - she has a credit on South.west that she needs to use by 12/31 - until I have more of an idea of good/bad weeks, I'll try to buy some time. I know whatever I do, the timing will backfire, but I'm gonna try to map it out.

I'm trying to force myself not to get too depressed down in the delay. The only two times I've been pregnant have been unmedicated*, so I figure I have as good a shot this month as any, though my hormones are probably still too out of whack to accomplish much. But you never know, I'll be obsessively analyzing my BBT charts next week as I should enter the O-zone.

In happier news, my big goal for the weekend is to go out for Indian food. I love, love, love Indian food - my best friend in college was Indian and her mom was an awesome cook and got me totally hooked. To this day I still salivate at the idea of these pickled mangoes she use to send up to us and we'd eat on toasted english muffins with cream cheese. There aren't any Indian restaurants in my boring corner of suburban Boston, so we go down to Providence for any ethnic cravings outside of Chinese and Italian. We found a place that we love near Brown University and we're going tomorrow night. It's going to be a rainy weekend, so lots of nesting and cooking. If I come across any interesting recipes, I'll be sure to share them.

A little aside here, if anyone likes Palak Paneer (also called Shag Paneer), Tra.der Joe's has an awesome version of it. Palak Paneer is a spinach curry dish with cottage cheese cubes, it might sounds a little gross, but it's delicious. If you have it with warm naan, it's awesome. We tried the TJ's version (have had middling success with TJ's pre-made ethnic dishes) and it's one of our favorites. It comes in a pouch that you just microwave and boom! In 5 minutes you have a great side-dish or even dinner. We also get the frozen naan at TJ's - very good also.

Also, NoodleGuy and I have been bumming lately because we LOVE to travel and never do so due to TTC timing (can I get an "Amen?"). We decided we're sick of our sad-sack selves and this weekend we are going to map out potential long-weekend, spontaneous trips. So we can still work around TTC, but will hop in the car or on a plane of those 1-2 weekends that pop up as free. It's a good plan, let's see if we can stick to it!

* Note that the first pregnancy I did take Clomid but my RE insists it had no effect on me. Since it works by naturally raising your FSH and my FSH is already high, he says I definitely would have gotten pregnant that cycle without it also. So, I like to consider it a "natural" pregnancy. Humor me!

Update: chromosomal karyotype

Dr. Beloved (OBGYN) just called me again out of the blue. The lab that had done Peanut's karyotype called her today with a little more info on the FISH report. She said it's still listed as "inconclusive" but she's almost positive now that Peanut's loss was due to chromosomal issue. The issue was on Chromosome 21 which is the one that is the marker for Down's Syndrome. While Down's itself would not be incompatible with life, there was something called "mosaicism" -- where some cells had Trisomy 21 (Down's) and some did not. While a baby can be born with mosaicism, it can also lead to pregnancy loss. Dr. Beloved feels confident that this was the cause of my loss.

While there is some comfort in knowing that it's probably nothing I did to cause this loss, there is NO comfort is knowing that my eggs are such crap. I know this issue could come from the male, but believe me, I know it's me. And the depressing thing here is that I can't even do a chromosomal abnormality properly -- I screw that up too to be even more fubar than a simple trisomy.

I do not know what NoodleGuy and I would have done if we had found out from the CVS test (which was supposed to be a week after I found out there was no heartbeat) that the baby had Down's. We had briefly discussed options and it was too painful to discuss, so we shelved it until if and when we'd need to deal with it.

Now I'm 10000% sure that I will not do IVF again unless my insurance will approve PGD. I'm not going through another pregnancy only to find out that my eggs caused another baby with no chance.

Also, when I asked, she told me that Peanut's gender was male. We were so sure it was a girl all along. So much for our psychic abilities. Hearing this detail made me so sad all over again -- Dr. Beloved asked me if I was sure I wanted to know and I said yes. And I'm glad I know, I never knew with loss #1, but it makes it much more real.

Combine this with talking to my RE's nurse this morning and getting a whole new round of sympathy and cue me up for some waterworks tomorrow. I thought I had compartmentalized the weeping, but apparently not.

Karyotype, names and rainbows

As mentioned yesterday, I got the results of the chromosomal karyotype of Peanut yesterday. This one is frustrating. I'm going to try to explain this as I understand it: in order to perform a karyotype of D&E tissue, which is dead tissue by the time it arrives at the lab, they need to be able to regrow the cells so they can read their DNA. Or some such hoo-ha like that. My lovely OBGYN, Dr. Beloved, actually chit-chatted with me for 5 minutes before giving me the results asking me how I was doing emotionally and how my boob surgery went. She sounded genuinely thrilled for me that the biopsy came back negative. So unlike every other doctor who tries to get off the phone asap. Anyway, she tried to explain the tissue analysis to me, but I was crouched in a windowsill of PF Chang's trying to hear her over the god awful jazz music that had blaring from the ceiling. Anyway, the weren't able to regrow these cells for whatever reason. Ugh. When they can't do that, they'll test for specific high-probability issues like X/Y, chromosomes 13, 18 ,21 and all of these came back as normal for Peanut. So basically no answers whatsoever. Dr. Beloved said that she still thinks it was likely chromosomal issues as that's the reason behind 75-90% of 1T miscarriages. But she's not sure. So I'm left in limbo between wondering whether my eggs are total crap or if I have yet another potential problem -- if Peanut was healthy, why did I miscarry then? I had that bad spotting from weeks 4 to 8, including passing that dime-sized clot, but no one seemed to take me seriously because up through that point, Peanut was looking like a superstar.

I have an appointment with Dr. B (RE) on Friday. I plan to grill him more about this -- if I can do any other testing, clotting or whatever, I will. I'm also pondering if I need to call his nurse today and warn them why I'm coming in. Last time they saw me, they were all smiles, patting me on the back and wishing me well after a great 8-week ultrasound. Now, all of a sudden, I'll show up again. I did tell the scheduler that I was coming in again because I had miscarried, but I don't know if that intel was transferred. I guess I'll call to be sure -- I don't want to deal with weird surprises on a day where I want solutions.

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Also, in response to Circus Princess and Sarah (callmemama), I'm at higher risk for breast cancer simply because they found atypical cells in the first place. Breast doctors use a very simple "Breast Cancer Risk Assessment" formula where they plugs in data about the patient, such as race, age, whether atypical cells were ever found, breast cancer in the family. Based on the answers to those questions, the formula spits out a percentage. It's very low-tech and Dr. Boob pointed out obvious flaws, like whether your job or lifestyle might increase/descrease your chances and it had nothing to mitigate my odds after the second biopsy was clear. But it's a guideline, and I know we're all familiar with those IF percentages, to help them determine how aggressive to be in monitoring/treatment. I'm 100% on board with aggressive monitoring, so if they're overestimating my chances I'd rather have that than them underestimating them!

This is actually the tool if anyone is interested:
http://www.cancer.gov/bcrisktool/

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Finally, I remember others wrestling with this in the past (Sarah, I'm talking to you ;) ), about whether to reveal personal info about yourself on your blog. I still think I'm not ready to share photos -- I'd love to show you guys, but I don't want someone, a work colleague for example, to be googling me and know for sure that they've found the right person. However, I don't see any risk in sharing my first name -- there's enough of any of us out there that it wouldn't really help to track anyone down. As much as I like the word "Noodle", it'd be nice if I could actually comment back and forth with people under a real name. Any of my message board friends already know this, so it's anticlimactic, but dun dun dun...

My name is Lara and I'm an infertile. (Edited to add: it'd be nicer to refer to ourselves as "subfertile", though, huh? "Infertile sounds so defeatist and we're still fighting!)

Big Day #1

So, this morning at 11am I have my follow-up appt with my OBGYN. It's exactly two weeks since I found out that Peanut had no heartbeat at 10 weeks (or stopped at 9w5d to be exact). It was so awful mostly because of the shock. After fabulous betas and two great ultrasounds at 6 and 8 weeks, I actually let myself feel good. I had been spotting pretty badly from weeks 4-7.5 and was nervous for the 8-week ultrasound, but after Peanut measured right on target, had a heartrate of 159bpm and the NP gave me an A+, I actually really started to believe that the pregnancy was real. And then, boom. No heartbeat at 10 weeks. Seemingly out of nowhere.

Today I find out the results of the tissue analysis after the D&E. I suppose they'll also do a quick gyn exam to make sure everything's healing as it should but I don't really care about that. I seem to be frustratingly healthy as far as healing, ovulating and all that. I just can't conceive a chromosomally normal baby. I'm 99.9% sure the results here will be chromosomal abnormality again, so the question will be where we go from here. It'll be 3 strikes against us chromosomally, if it is. The first miscarriage (balanced translocation at chromosome 18), a failed IVF in June (which was after a perfect 8-cell, grade 1 embryo was transferred and my RE says that 90% of the time when perfect embryos don't implant, it's due to chromosomal issues) and then this one.

So, I'll gather my info today, try not to cry in the waiting room with the insanely huge pregnant women. I need to try to turn my brain off from too much analyzing or negative thought today if the results are what I think they'll be because I need to try to go into surgery tomorrow (Big Day #2) with some sort of positive energy.

I'm trying, at least.

NoodleGirl's Choice

We had a nice weekend, beautiful weather up here in New England. I love these warm, waning-summer September days. On Saturday we went to a neighborhood block party and then to a benefit for a friend who got into a motorcyle accident without medical insurance.

The block party was predictably torturous for me, little tykes running around having fun, NoodleGuy and I trying to make conversation with perfectly nice people who talk about their kids 80% of the time. Luckily no one point blank asked me when we'd be having kids, but since they've been asking us that for the two years since we moved here, I think we may have officially entered the pity don't-ask-them-anymore phase, which is a relief. The benefit was fun, hopefully they earned a good chunk of change for our friend -- he needed to be Medi.vac'ed to the hospital and that alone cost $25k. Ouch. He's doing extremely well considering -- he had a broken pelvis, but was up and around at the party, quite remarkable as the accident was only 6 weeks ago.

Then on Sunday we went out for dim sum, which we love love love. There's a great spot about half an hour away from us, which we try to get to at least once a month. Plus, the closest Tra.der J.oe's is right near the restaurant, so we get to kill two birds with one stone. Then the rest of the day yesterday we just chilled out, watched the movie "The B.ank J.ob" (we're both big Ja.son Sta.tham fans) and went for a bike ride. A nice, normal weekend before the chillier weather sets in.

This morning, I spoke with a nurse at the surgery center handling my excisional breast biopsy on Thursday. We did the pre-interview, designed to speed through check in. Though Lord knows why we're trying to speed through since I have a 5 hour wait between the prep-procedure and the surgery itself, but whatevs. When we got to the question about "Any previous surgeries?", I had to say "OK, this is quite a list, are a ready?". Since they consider any procedure using anesthesia as a "surgery", here's my list:

1. January 2008 - Voluntary foot surgery
2. February 2008 - Laprascopy (found Stage IV endo, a 5cm cyst on each ovary, lesions "all over the place")
3. December 2008 - D&E (m/c #1)
4. February 2009 - Hysteroscopy (10 polyps and an adhesion, caused by the D&E? Who knows?)
5. June 2009 - egg retrieval (one freaking egg, but she was a good one! Became a HIP 8-cell, grade 1 embie, but no dice)
6. September 2009 - D&E (m/c #2)
7. September 2009 - Excisional breast biopsy to remove atypical cells. Which I'm convinced were caused by 5 straight months of fertility meds.

Seven surgeries?? This has NOT been a great year and a half. Bah. And to think that I used to be terrified of surgery, thinking I was one of those people who would look asleep and sedated but actually be awake behind my closed eyelids and feeling every slice. Now surgery is a walk in the park, sadly. I'm like a little kid who will do anything for a treat because NoodleGuy always takes me out for some horrible-for-me, guilty pleasure food after a surgery. Taco Bell, here I come!

I cannot wait for Thursday's surgery to be over. Besides the fact that checking in and spending all day in a hospital only a week and a half after this latest D&E is kind of brutal, the surgery isn't until 3:45. And I can't eat past midnight the night before. Doesn't it seem like they shouldn't schedule surgeries so late in the day? It's mean. But obviously the hunger part is minimal. What I'm really nervous about what these cells are and how it'll impact my life and my continued fertility treatment. I'll find out in about a week after the surgery what the results are -- even if they're confident they removed all the cells and that it's just something to be watched but not a major concern, I'm still very nervous about continuing to pump hormones into my body. It's yet another pro in favor of donor eggs (see previous post for more pros). But I'm trying to take this one step at a time. Surgery first, then I'll obsess about the results phone call. After that I'll start obsessing about the STBY appts with both the breast surgeon and RE to grill them for their opinion on whether fertility meds will continue to be a safe option for me.

There were so many reasons we were grateful for the natural miracle of Peanut, not the least of which was that I'd be able to leave ART behind. I know every IF lady yearns for the day to never have to jump up on that u/s table again, or try to track down their nurses for results or have to schedule a vacation around TTC. But for me, it also would have meant I could have stopped taking these stims that may or may not be causing health problems for me. Now I'm back with my own version of Sophie's Choice -- do I stop trying to conceive a biological child or do I take a chance on my own health? Both choices kind of suck.

A bad night

Look at me, getting into the swing of posting every day ;).

I, sort of unexpectedly, had a really bad night last night. Obviously not totally unexpected, today will mark only a week that I got punched in the gut and found out that Peanut had no h/b. I feel kind of foolish in retrospect, like I should have known that OF COURSE any egg of mine is a ticking time bomb. I even posted to that effect when I announced my pregnancy on a message board that I frequent. But after going through some crazy stuff before week 8 (bad spotting weeks 4-8, a flight, a Caribbean cruise), the fantastic week 8 ultrasound finally made me feel secure in the pregnancy. Foolish, foolish girl. If I ever do get pregnant again with my own eggs, NoodleGuy is going to have his hands full keeping me calm.

Anyway, yesterday was a beautiful day up here, sunny and 75, without a cloud in the sky. Work was not too busy -- as I've mentioned before, I work from home. I'm a web developer, my company kind of jumped around and changed hands a few years ago, just as NGuy and I were doing our long-distance dating from New York to Boston. A year before we got married, they moved the headquarters from NY down South and allowed those of us that they were keeping on to work full-time remotely. It was so lucky for us -- now neither of us needed to quit and find a new job. It made the choice to move to NGuy's neck of woods very easy.

However, the negative side is that I left all of my friends, my neighborhood, my apartment. And since I work from home, it has not been easy to meet new people. I always thought that once we had kids, I'd meet people through them. We all know how that's gone. Perhaps if we actually lived in the city of Boston, I'd be OK. There would be more to do, more distractions, more things to stimulate my brain. But instead we chose a perfectly nice suburb, thinking it would be a nice place to raise children, and my soul is dying. There is nothing to do here. Yes, there are malls and TGIFriday's and all of that. But nothing for a somewhat young, single lady to do during the day. Usually I'll go for a walk or a bike ride, but sometimes I want something else to do, involving real, live people. A yoga class, a knitting class, just strolling through an interesting neighborhood. Nothing. Now, I grew up right in the heart of New York City so maybe I'm just not coded to live in the suburbs. I think I could be happy in the country, but not in this depressing in-between world that is all about convenience and nothing about helping a person's brain percolate.

Yesterday I was searching my brain for something to do on my lunch break, since it was such a lovely day. And came up with nothing. I wound up sitting on the porch and reading for an hour, which I know sounds awesome. And sometimes it is, just not for the 45th day in a row because you couldn't think of anything else to do on your lunch break in your boring hometown. So, I was a little bummed by that but it's not as if NGuy and I haven't hashed this out many times. I'm not happy here and he is completely aware and our plan is to move as soon as the economy gets better and our house builds back up to the value at which we purchased it two years ago. Poor timing recession! Please try to be more courteous around my schedule in the future.

Our house value dropped about $50k since we bought it. It has since creeped back up maybe $10k, but still has a way to go to get to our buying price. We didn't overpay or overbuy, it's a perfectly nice house and neighborhood, worth our purchase price. It's just that there's not much of a market right now, as we all know. Once people start buying again, we're confident we won't have a problem selling. We're guessing it'll be about two years.

So, that's the background on the suburbs crushing my spirit. One of the many great things about Peanut was that he totally distracted me from how lonely and bored I am here. I certainly could endure two more years of suburban life with the excitement of a pregnancy and Peanut's first year here. Yay, nursery decorating and maternity leave next summer! Watching Peanut learn to crawl and walk on our frustrating-to-keep-up-with-the-Jones yard! Yea, that didn't work out so well.

Last night as I was telling NGuy about how I was bored and couldn't think of anything to do during the day, everything just kind of came crashing down. Our frustration over how we feel financially trapped (house, unable to change jobs, etc) despite the fact that we both have good jobs and supposedly have done everything the financial experts always told us to do. How it seems like any idea for having children going forward has so many negatives for us, there doesn't seem to be a right answer. How I'm scared of this breast surgery coming up and what the results will be. And on and on...

Then we started moving on, talking about a block party our neighborhood is having this weekend. I said I wanted to make an appearance but I didn't think I could stay very long. NGuy nodded but then said "Are you sure you don't want to meet the new neighbors?" And I said "Yeah, that's why I want to go, to meet the new folks. But I don't think I can be around children for very long right now..." and then I started sobbing. Kind of unexpectedly, I just couldn't get sentence out without breaking down. NGuy was great as usual, saying "Come here" and hugging and cuddling me.

I'm not used to being such a powder keg of emotions. Obviously I'm sad. But I also think I'm having a serious hormone crash. My boobs have suddenly stopped hurting in the past two days and I started taking my BBT again this morning (a practice I had been more than happy to leave behind) and my temp was only 97.5 which is way below my usual coverline. In addition, I can actively feel my uterus contracting back to it's non-pregnant size with spasms throughout the day. Because I like to torture myself, I still get my daily pregnancy tickers emailed to me each day, and on the day I found out that Peanut had died it said that my uterus "was now the size of a small grapefruit". So, it had grown quite a bit and now I'm waiting for it to go back to normal.

I know it's understandable to have breakdowns, but depressing nonetheless. Life is short and I don't love wasting days on moping around. I'm going to try to take the bull by the horns and force some out-of-the-house activities that my limited suburban town offers. After my boob surgery, I will join the local YMCA. They built a new one in the neighboring town and it's beautiful. I had let my gym membership lapse because the old gym we went to was a little creepy and this mentally unstable guy used to chat me up while I did the elliptical each morning. When it came time to renew, I bid him sayonara and haven't joined up anywhere else yet. I miss having calves of steel and feeling healthy. Also, I've been wanting to take a watercolor painting class for years and I found a nice little studio nearby and I'm going to sign up for classes. So, there you go, I'm going through the motions of being a normal person.

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In other news, I have moved up the date of my breast surgery (an excisional biopsy) to next Thursday, 9/24. It had been originally scheduled for 10/5 because it was when Peanut would have just made it into the 2nd trimester. My surgeon and RE had pow-wowed and decided that was the best time to do it. Now, obviously that's not a consideration and I want to get it over with. Both for peace of mind but also so I can move on with whatever TTC plan we come up with sooner rather than later.

Because they fit me in late, the two parts of the surgery will have to be separated. The first part is threading a wire into my breast to the area of concern, as a guide for the surgeon. Then, the actual surgery. When I had planned early enough, they had the first part lead right into the second. Now, because of the radiologist and surgeon's divergent schedules, I have the wire part done at 11am and the surgery not until 3:45. So I have to spend almost 5 hours sitting around with a wire sticking out of my boob. Lovely. It's worth it because it's short term pain (literal and figurative) for longer-term gain. I need to bring a seriously good book and maybe my laptop, though I don't know if they'll let me use it.

Since I was able to move up the surgery, I was also able to schedule my STBY appt with my RE. So: surgery on 9/24, follow-up with the surgeon on 10/7 (where I'll grill her for her opinion on whether fertility meds caused this issue) and then the appt with my RE on 10/9. Hopefully I'll have more of an idea of where to go TTC-wise after that week.

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Finally, on a happier note, I have not completely lost my sense of humor. For you bloggers out there, if you don't already have one yourself, you may have noticed the Feed.jit traffic feed that some of us have on our pages. It's fun to look from where your traffic comes and how often, etc. But the best part is that you can tell when someone has just stumbled on your site from Go.ogle and what their search terms were to get there. Usually people find themselves here when searching on "TTC", "EPP IVF" or "Peanut" (when searching on 'peanut', I'm sure this is not what they bargained for).

I had to chuckle the other day when I noticed that someone found my blog by searching on the term "remove panties". It was because of a post from a couple of weeks ago about a routine dermatologist skin check I had, and my quandry about whether or not I needed to remove my undies. It amuses me that some perv was looking for risque photos or erotica and instead found a decidedly not-sexy infertility blog.

If you need a chuckle yourself, nothing makes me laugh out loud on the interwebs more than when Alexa at Flotsam combs through her random search terms and comments on them. Here is her latest batch, the terms in bold are the search terms that led to her site, and her witty responses are below them: http://flotsamblog.com/2009/08/31/reader-request/. Enjoy!

Guilty

I don't know why I'm doing this to myself, but let me tell you that it's pretty much par for the course. I've been feeling a little bit better, a little bit less sad about Peanut in the last day or so and now I'm feeling guilty about it. It doesn't seem fair to Peanut for me to be planning the next steps so soon.

This is the only thing about me that really makes NoodleGuy frustrated; one of the things he loves best about me is that things will rarely get me down and if I've momentarily stumbled, I'll figure out a way to move forward. But it doesn't seem right to be planning so soon after finding out Peanut was gone. I spent a good portion of the day yesterday making doctor's appointments, to find out what happened this time and to discuss next steps; this makes me feel more in control. But then last night I told NGuy that I felt bad about doing so, that maybe I should still be lying in bed weeping. He wanted to tear out his hair when I said that, it's such a guy vs girl reaction. Why would I question how I feel? I feel how I feel. Why am I making it into a negative thing that I'm feeling a little bit better, that I have a little more hope? So, I'm trying not to question how I feel and just go with it.

But, Peanut, let me tell you: I'm not moving on from you. This is how I deal with problems. Your mom is a planner and an info gatherer, I would have been a kick-ass birthday party hostess. This is just how I heal. It's not about not thinking about you constantly, picturing you next April, being born just as New England started showing the first shades of spring. Daddy and I were sure you were a little girl and I had you pictured in adorable yellow sundresses with those fluffy matching bloomers, though, in reality, it would have been too cold in Boston for you to wear something like that until June or so.

Strangely, now that you're gone, I feel like you were a little boy. We were going to find out at the CVS, which had been scheduled for tomorrow. We would have known by next week if our first or last instinct about your gender was correct. Sadly, we would have also found out that you more than likely had chromosomal issues that were incompatible with life. I am able to be thankful for small things at this point, and I am happy that, if you had to leave us, that you were able just go to sleep quietly inside of me instead of your Daddy and I having to say goodbye before your body was ready.

Even if I'm standing up today, I'm thinking of you all the time. We love you, Peanut. Always.

Me today

I've erased the previous post as it wasn't sitting well with me. I had wanted to give a clinical rundown of the procedure on Friday, for those that might stumble on that post through Go.ogle and are going through their first (and hopefully only) D&E. However, it came out way too cavalier and flippant and did not convey AT ALL how I feel right now. It was like someone else wrote it and not a good way to honor Peanut. So, it's gone.

I'm swinging between total, abject grief and distracting myself for short periods of time. Yesterday I could not get out of bed until 11:30, crying and obsessing way too much. Then I discovered that reading and watching movies distracts me pretty well, so I spent the afternoon finishing a book and catching up the DVR. In the evening, I did a bang-up job of depressing not only myself but NoodleGuy too, so it's been lovely. Today has been pretty much the same, though I am going to try not to send us off to the the work week with a bad night tonight.

While I am somewhat in control, the grief over losing Peanut is almost too much to take, I truly, really feel like this might have been my last chance. My new OBGYN seemed surprised to hear me say that, but I have to face facts. I have no response to stims and they very possibly are the reason behind a precancerous condition in my breast. I feel like I would be insane to start taking them again. When I'm crying, it's over a combination of things. Obviously grief, but also fear over what are these cells in my breast and how I can possibly go on with fertility meds if they are potentially causing abnormal cell development in my body. The miscarriage is unfair enough, but I am so angry that I am forced to deal with this additional, and scary, complication.

I would be lying if I said I hadn't obsessed over what my options are going forward. I thought I'd be too grief-stricken to even think about it for weeks, but I am way too much of a planner by nature and have had alot of time on my hands this weekend to obsess. After the breast surgery in October, I feel like I have only 3 choices: 1) IVF with PGD, 2) trying naturally, 3) donor egg. The problem with IVF with PGD is that I would need to stim again, which I am terrified of now. Plus, I got one measly follie from 15 days of stimming last IVF, so the chances that any egg(s) would survive PGD are slim, but I don't know if I'm willing to take another chance on another chromosomally abnormal embryo. Trying naturally is a HUGE gamble and again, my eggs are clearly crap so chances are, it would have issues again. Donor egg is probably my best bet, but financially and emotionally draining. I had made peace with the idea of DE after my IVF BFN in June, then this surprise natural pregnancy has to set me back. I would need to come to terms all over again with the idea of never having a biological child and my brain can't accept a new task right now.

Of course, I cannot pursue any of this until after the surgery. A week after that I am supposed to hear from the doctor with report of the tissue they have removed and analyzed. That alone will determine much of the course of action regarding TTC. If it's bad news, I'll need to pursue treatment on that end, and TTC is seriously in the back seat. If it's good enough news, I can continue TTC but need to make decisions about what artificial products I'm willing to put into my body.

I wonder if I'll be able to handle work tomorrow. Luckily I work from home, so I can be as much of a basketcase as I want without people knowing. I could call in sick again, but since I'll be home alone, I actually prefer the distraction of work, it makes the day go by fast until NGuy is home. Little things to get through the days for now, I guess.

It's over

I'll write more over the weekend but just wanted to update that the D&E is done and was uneventful. We requested another u/s before the procedure right beforehand for peace of mind and it confirmed "fetal demise". I'm glad we asked for the 2nd look though, I feel like we'd always wonder about a possible mistake otherwise. It'll be 2 weeks until we hear the chromosomal results. The saddest part of the day is when NoodleGuy got choked up when I told him that we were allowed to park with "Angel Valet" which, I suppose, is a special-service valet for people dealing with a death in the family.

Destroyed

I thought maybe I'd be lucky enough to wake up this morning and have a few seconds of blissful non-remembering that Peanut has died. No such luck. I woke up an hour before the alarm in full awareness and just laid there quietly staring at the ceiling so that poor NoodleGuy would be able to sleep a little more. He has it bad because he not only is dealing himself with losing this baby, very possibly our last chance at a baby, but also consoling his basketcase of a wife. This is something he's quite good at, I have to say, and has gotten more experience than is fair over the past 3 years. Even if everything else in my life is turning to shit: dead baby, hating my job, living in a family-friendly suburb that makes me want to blow my brains out, living 5 hours away from any family or friends, there's always good ol' NoodleGuy. He's a peach, thank God.

I guess "why" is always the operative question here. Why me? Why can't I have one single baby when everyone in my family has never had a problem? Why me, the responsible daughter out of three of us, the one that has always followed the rules, the one that gets along with everyone, the peacemaker who always tries to smooth everything over? Is that a good thing, shouldn't the fates be happy with me? What have I done to make the universe so upset with me? When I add to the fact that I have this breast cancer scare going on and am going for yet another surgery on 10/5, my head short circuits. WTF have I done to deserve all this? I understand empirically that there are sadder things in life than infertility and recurrent losses and cancer scares: there are babies starving all over the world and people killing each other over money and on and on. But as far as personal crappiness goes, this takes the cake for me.

I told NoodleGuy last night that this is the saddest I've ever been in my life. Which I thought was a given, a no-brainer. I mean, when could I have possibly been sadder than when being told that my miracle, last-chance baby who looked perfect in all previous blood tests and ultrasounds was inexplicably dead? But he just looked devastated when I said that, it was so sad. It's like he finally got how bad this is, and I hated to do that to him. I'm just lovely to be around right now.

To rub salt in the wound, I have to go in for the D&E surgery tomorrow. When something this cruel happens, it seems like somehow the universe should be kind enough to just let the baby fade away. But unfortunately, a horrible, clinical ordeal has to be tackled also. I've had D&Es before, so it's not like I don't know the drill and physically I know it's not a bad surgery. But I don't feel like seeing or talking to anyone but NoodleGuy for the next 100 years, so I certainly don't feel like pretending I'm anything but destroyed to a bunch of hospital workers I'll never see again. I know no one expects me to be friendly and perky, but all I feel like doing is crawling under the covers and, at most, grunting responses. Maybe I can actually get away with that tomorrow.

R.I.P. Peanut

Peanut died on Labor Day. At my first OBGYN appt, first one ever in my life as an OB visit, the OB couldn't hear the h/b but we were giggling over the fact that I had chili for dinner last night and the noises in my bowel were making it impossible to hear over. So she sent me for an u/s, which is in a different building, across a busy road. A brusk male doctor did the u/s and told me very matter of fact that there was no h/b. He sent me back across the street to the OB, so I got to cry my way across Route 9 and walk into a room of giant fat pregnant ladies wondering why I was blubbering. The OB took me in right away and was very kind and told me that the growth showed 9w4d, so it looks like Peanut died on Labor Day, how's that for painful irony? And I got my IVF BFN on Mother's Day. I swear someone "up there" hates me. D&E scheduled for Friday.

I'll talk more in coming days about how I think I might be done with TTC. If a miracle happens naturally - which is what we thought this one was (suckers) - then yippee, but I don't think I can do stims anymore and my body responds badly to them anyway. For now I just want to crawl under a rock for a few days. I guess at least until NoodleGuy has to drag me to the D&E.