September 28, 2006

Scary stuff . . . and it's not even halloween yet.

I'm almost to my 6th week and I'm irrationally scared. Somehow tonight, I stumbled on an entire page of "reasons for miscarriage" and you'd better believe that I'm now convinced that every one of them will happen to me (even though that's impossible). Chemical pregnancies, blighted ovums, molar pregnancies . . . there really is so much to be scared of. And every description includes a line such as, "Most women have all of the symptoms of pregnancy and have no reason to think they're not pregnant when they have one of these conditions."

My mom tried to convince me last week that I'm under a lot of stress . . . even though I don't feel like it. Tonight, I'm beginning to think she's right. I've been so excited about my October 9 appointment when we'll have our first ultrasound, but now I'm downright dreading it. I feel like I need to be preparing myself for the worst. I had such a positive week last week . . . I don't know where all of this is coming from. I have just as good of a chance at delivering this baby as anyone else does.

I know that most of you who read this will be reading it weeks, maybe even months, after all of this takes place and you'll already know the outcome but pray for me anyway. I believe that God transcends everything . . . including time and that your prayers as you read this can influence me right now.

September 19, 2006

No doubt about it.

It's official. Two years and thousands of dollars(and counting) later, we're pregnant. I had my blood draw yesterday and my beta level was 211 which is right smack in the middle of where it should be for being a little more than four weeks pregnant. It's still irritating for me to know that couples who could afford these treatments way more than we could can get pregnant on their first try with having to spend little more than what it costs to buy lingerie, a nice dinner and a bottle of wine, but that shouldn't matter to me anymore.

It is completely surreal. Joy found out last night because I'm a bad liar. And we told our parents, who all seemed to be as excited as we are. I talked to the Reproductive Endocrinology (RE) office today and I go in for my first unltrasound on October 9. THey want to monitor me for the first couple of months. And I have to find an obstetrician. DeLynn (the LPN from the RE office) told me that my due date is May 27. Only we would get pregnant exactly 40 weeks before staff training at camp . . . but what can we do?

This child is a true miracle. I know that EVERY baby is a miracle . . . but there was so little chance that we could conceive this baby, it just seems like even more of a miracle. I get the sense that this baby has been chosen for something special. I realized that I've always seen expectant moms be more excited for themselves about the thought of being a mom, but I'm just excited about this life and what it will end up becoming. I'm still scared of miscarriage, of birth defect, or disease . . . but I'm trying not to think about those things. I'm just trying to enjoy the moment.

September 17, 2006

Yawn . . .

I've read that you are the most tired in your first trimester of pregnancy, especially in the first few weeks . . . but this is ridiculous! I can barely keep my eyes opened long enough to type this and I've yawned 3 or 4 times already. If I didn't know I was pregnant, I'd think I had mono. I'm super irritable too (well, I guess more than normal). I don't know if that's a result of being pregnant or being tired.

I didn't realize how hard it was going to be not to tell anyone. In church this morning, someone asked us how our treatments were going and we just didn't answer so they assumed things hadn't worked out on this try. It was so hard not to cry "It worked! It worked! It worked!"

I've surfed the web and seen a lot of pages on pregnancy. I've seen every page on infertility, gonal-f, polycycstic ovarian syndrome and more so it was nice to go to more positive sites. I found a due date calculator and found that my due date will be around May 25, and that the first heartbeat would be as early as September 29! That's 12 days away! According to the calculator, I'm 4 weeks, 1 day along . . . and I'm not sure how that works because I know for a fact (thanks to modern science and Dr. Aimee) that I ovulated on the 31st of August and conceived on September 1. I have to go back to my RE's office for a while before I see an OB/GYN. Hopefully they'll explain all of this to me.

It's still so crazy to think that this is actually happening. I'm VERY nervous that I'll miscarry especially today since I've had a lot of cramping. Odds aren't really in my favor, but I know more impossible things have happened.

I'm going to go take a nap.

September 16, 2006

Two years of trying . . .

I've wanted to start this blog for so, so long. I've seen other women do it and have read their blogs with both tears and laughter and wished that I could articulate the feelings and events associated with our struggle over the past two years (almost to the date). So I'll start here.

It seems that along every step of the way, we always found out about the pregnancies of our friends during the most trying times. When we first found out that we were going to have difficulty conceiving we had about three or four friends tell us that they were trying. And we knew they would be pregnant before us. When our doctor told us there was nothing more she could do for us, we found out that there were about 11 couples we know were pregnant. No exaggeration. When we had to clean out our savings to pay our bills to the U of M reproductive endocrinologist, when we had to pay thousands for our first round of injectables, when our first round of injectables FAILED . . . At all of these times, things seemed to happen to discourage us even more.

I knew I'd find out this weekend whether or not my second round of injectables worked our not. At the beginning of last week, there were FOUR babies born to friends. FOUR. As I was choosing gifts and packaging them to send out, I realized that this was probably the "thing" that would happen to make failing this round of injectables even harder. I began to prepare myself emotionally. Kyle and I took a camping trip to get my mind off of things while we waited, but I was convinced because of the babies our friends were having right now that results would not be positive. We had already decided not to try another month (against our doctor's advice) and take a year to try and rebuild a little bit of our savings and recover emotionally and physcially.

When we got back from the camping trip, it was still more than a week before a pregnancy test technically would be accurate, but I took one anyway. And even though I knew there was no possibility that it could be positive, seeing the negative result was devestating. Then, instead of waiting until September 20, like I was supposed to, I decided to take one on Friday, the 15th (why do I do that to myself). I took the test, saw nothing within the first 30 seconds and just left it on the counter. We had company coming and Kyle and I were getting things ready.

That night, Kyle had to take tickets at an Addison football game and JJ came over and we went to eat dinner with Debbie in the office. WHen we got back, Kyle, JJ and I were chatting in the living room. I needed to use the bathroom, and when I walked in, I glanced at the test still sitting on the shelf. And there it was. It was faint, but there was a line in the "pregnant" box. I did one of those double takes that you see people do in the movies where they close their eyes, rub them, shake their head and look again. I called for Kyle in a way that made him think that something was wrong. In retrospect, he told me that he thought I was going to tell him that I started my period. But instead I was saying in a quiet voice so that JJ wouldn't hear, "It worked. It worked. It worked." as if I were the inventor of a time machine and we had been transported to November 15, 1955. Indeed, I was pregnant (at least chemically).

Of course, I took another test this morning and the line was there AGAIN, but darker this time! I'm going to go out today and buy one of those digital tests that says "Pregnant" or "Not Pregnant." I really feel like I need to take as many positive ones as I have negative (which is a lot) in order to balance them out. :) But we can't afford that, so I'll hold off.

We're obviously going to be choosy about who we tell and really careful about when. There's still only a 6% chance that I'll make it through the first trimester (typing that just caused me to gulp and get teary). So, anyone we'd tell we'd want to lie to anyone who asked . . . so we just need to be careful. It's going to be hard not to tell anyone . . . especially the people who knew we were going through this stuff.

So, I guess my next step is to call the RE office to see what I do next . . . I'll be under their care for a little while then go to my OB/GYN . . . who has moved to Chicago since she referred me to U of M so I guess that I'll be looking for a new doctor. I'll kind of miss my trips to the U of M RE clinic. I've been there 3 - 4 times a week since May and the staff never ceases to amaze me. From the receptionists to the nurses, from the LNPs to the doctors . . . everyone has been kind, helpful, encouraging and has made all of my not-so-comfortable appointements enjoyable.

There have been some amusing parts of this whole process. There is the doctor who would do voice-overs for my ovaries and tell me what they were saying back and forth to each other . . . that was entertaining. And U of M is a teaching hospital . . . which means teams of medical students in many of my not-so-modest appointments. One of my favorites was when my pharmacist told me that my set of injectibles was $60 . . . to which my response was "plus $1200?" He informed that that I had reached my insurance deductbile and it was covered now. I told him that he was my new favorite pharmacist and if that counter hadn't been there, he would've gotten a hug.

There are so many stories . . . funny and sad. I wish I had been blogging the whole time because God has revealed himself to me throughout this process in new ways. But I'll start blogging now . . . whether this pregnancy is viable or we have to start over.