Definitive January 30, 2008

My gawd, that last post was melodramatic. More maudlin than I actually feel, I assure you.

When I showed up for my beta yesterday, the fabulous Dr. Nice (I could really use a better name for him, but he is really nice) was around in between surgeries after all, and brought me in for an ultrasound. My uterus is definitively empty, no hint or whisper of a sac, so he had me stop the Crinone* (which he kept calling crinoline and I wanted to shout, “It’s not a petticoat! Jeez!” Anyway.) and is going to monitor my beta back down to zero to be sure it is not ectopic. He didn’t see any signs of an ectopic on the monitor, but I feel it’s always nice to have something new to worry about.

I am okay. Really, I am. I was 99.9% sure I was having a miscarriage, but that bitch Hope was still whispering things in my ear like disappearing twin or subchorionic hematoma, or your sister bled for four months and still had your nephew and it is nice to shut her the hell up.

This doesn’t feel even remotely like the last miscarriage, and here’s why:

Last time: We’d been trying for six or seven months and had a diagnosis of male factor infertility hanging over our heads. This time: No known infertility, pregnant on the first month, and practically accidentally at that.

Last time: In addition to that miscarriage, had a diagnosis of probable recurrent miscarriage hanging over our heads. This time: My ANA tests actually came back normal recently and I’ve called the single mutated MTHFR gene for the bullshit I believe it is, so it’s just the shortish luteal phase, and that is easily solved with progesterone supplementation.

Last time: I saw a heartbeat at seven weeks, was positively stunned to find it dead at nine weeks, and I had to have a D&C. This time: The blood started at five weeks, and that was staved off for a while by the progesterone, so things never really got going in there, I wasn’t surprised, and I don’t have to have surgery.

Last time: It didn’t feel like just an “ordinary” miscarriage, the kind 25% of women have, but rather the first of many more to come. If I could even get pregnant again. I thought I might never be a parent. This time: I already have Gatito, so I am a parent, and I have no real reason to believe that the next time (or the one after that) won’t work out.

The other thing is that the timing, with my brand new job, was pretty much giving me a heart attack. I was dreading the possibility of telling my boss, who would be under no obligation to hold my job. Plus, this company has awesome maternity benefits, and it would be a shame not to be eligible for them.

I know that feelings after a miscarriage can be a bit of a roller coaster. You can feel fine one day and depressed the next. And I am surrounded by the most fertile office mates in the history of the world (ten births out of ~40 people in the last month), which is irritating. And I’m annoyed that I’m now 1 for 3 on this whole pregnancy thing. But mostly I am totally fine. I know that in all likelihood I will have a successful pregnancy in the future and even if I don’t, life is pretty awesome just as it is, with my one, fabulous kid.

I want to thank you all again for your support over the past week. It means more to me than I can say.

You guys are the best January 28, 2008

I forgot how much you know how to rally around a girl when the going gets tough. I appreciate all of your support. Unfortunately, the news, she is not good. I’m up to a medium-flow period level of blood accompanied by intermittent cramping.

My OB’s office is so nice– my favorite nurse offered to get me in for an ultrasound this afternoon, but my schedule was packed and I knew an ultrasound at five weeks wouldn’t show anything conclusive anyway, so I’m going for a beta in the morning. Now I’m kind of just hoping for a definitively low beta tomorrow so I can leave off the progesterone for good and just get this over with.

If I were at my old job, even if I’d just taken a vacation, I would have felt comfortable taking a day or two off, but with the new job, not so much. I’ve worked with people that have one (often good) excuse after another for not working and I don’t want to be one of them. Sometimes I got distracted by my meetings today, but sometimes I was sitting there screaming on the inside, “I’m miscarrying right now! Right this very second!” It’s so weird to think that the cells that might have been a baby ended up in the office toilet and garbage can.

Occam’s razor January 28, 2008

More than spotting, less than bleeding. Bright red. Looks like the beginning of a period.

I realize that it’s possible that this is meaningless, but it sure seems unlikely. Will wait for blood tests before discontinuing the progesterone, which is probably the only thing holding off the flood, so that means I won’t know for sure till Thursday afternoon or Friday.

I’m okay. I just want to know one way or the other.

Hi there January 26, 2008

Thank you for all of your kind, kind words, and I am sorry for the lack of updates. I was staying with a friend and borrowing her computer and didn’t feel right about clearing the browser history more than once.

So where did we leave off? Oh yes, the faint positive last Sunday. Well, this was followed by some good old-fashioned what have we done panic, knowing the only way out now is miscarriage (let’s not consider the horrors of a late term loss) or an actual baby. Mixed with a solid dose of guilt for daring to have doubts and superstition that the doubts themselves were going to cause a loss.

Meanwhile, the test lines were getting just the teensiest bit darker day by day until Thursday, when it got lighter. That’s it, I assumed, early miscarriage. I swore a little but did not have time to dwell, as it was off to an amazing day of skiing in the Alps. During the day, I convinced myself that I would not let an early miscarriage turn into a Big Thing in my life. It’s totally different from the first time, which came after six months of trying (which I realize is nothing, but felt like a lot to me) and a diagnosis of infertility and probably recurrent miscarriage. This time, I’ve already got the fantabulous Gatito, I got pregnant easily, and I’ll just try again. And possibly not till I’d be eligible for FMLA, dammit.

Then Thursday evening’s stick was darker, as was Friday morning and today. But at 18dpo, I’d like to see a really dark line, you know? This one, while undeniably there, no squinting required, is still lighter than the control, and I don’t know what to make of that.

I really do want to be a normal pregnant person and just show up for what my OB calls a pregnancy confirmation ultrasound at seven weeks, but while I can deal with a miscarriage if I need to, I hate the idea of unknowingly carrying around a dead embryo for three weeks. (I’m unlikely to start bleeding as long as I keep up the progesterone, I think.) So I am thinking that I will call Monday and ask for a beta and progesterone check on Tuesday and Thursday.

If that goes well, I’m totally going to start acting like a normal, unconcerned pregnant person. I swear it.

In case you were wondering… January 20, 2008

… if you open a progesterone suppository while you’re on an airplane, it will explode. Even the day after you land, it will still explode a little and you will be left scraping up the remains and trying to manually insert it and hoping enough of it gets where it needs to go because…

… FRED said (a very, very faint) yes this morning. Yikes! I feel mostly calm and happy and just sort of curious to know whether it will stick.

Two questions (Updated) January 16, 2008

1. For those of you that have used progesterone suppositories: did your doctors give you any directions on what to do if you, um, are intimate while on them? How long does it take to get absorbed and would the act 6 hours later rub it all out? (Am I a prude or what?)

2. What happened to good old FRED? The First Response I just bought says nothing about being able to test 5 days sooner, like the ones I used a few years ago. The box just promotes 1 minute results. The web site only has the “5 days sooner” ones, though, so it doesn’t look like they’re selling two different products. Anyone know?

Updated: It turns out (contrary to the information on the FR web site), that there are actually two products with nearly identical packaging. One offers rapid results, the other early. I’m sure they’ve done tons of market research to segment market needs and I clearly fall in the freaky but high profit category of test early and often. I returned to the store and now have six early tests in my hot little hands.

I am convinced that I am not pregnant because I was reading my archives and my breasts were already huge by this stage with Gatito. A is sure that I  am pregnant, but what does he know?  I feel disappointed by the likelihood that this is not the month, even though I know I don’t have any right to feel disappointed. I wasn’t even actively trying and we didn’t get the timing exactly right and the timing with my new job is ridiculously bad. I know I have lots of infertile readers who would be well within their rights to shake their heads in disgust at me for daring to be disappointed after one measly non-try. But there it is anyway.

Amazed and proud January 14, 2008

Gatito comes from a family of early readers. My sister learned to read at 2.5 and I was a relatively late bloomer at 3.5. My older nephew learned around 2.5 as well.

We haven’t been specifically teaching Gatito to read. We read to him daily. We sing the ABCs all the time. We draw and talk about letters sometimes. He’s learned the sounds all of the letters make mostly because of this thing. But trust me: we haven’t been grilling him or teaching him or asking him to sound out words or anything.

This morning, A was reading Gatito a new book and got to a page with a huge NO. Gatito said, “N-O spells No!” Amazed, A wrote “no” on another piece of paper, and he read it again. When we got home tonight, he read YES, SI, MOM, and DAD.

He is two years, two months, and two weeks old.

He was so pleased with himself. I could see the gleam in his eye. And when I read him his story tonight, I could tell something was different. He realized that all those letters made words that I was reading to him. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Oh go on, de-lurk January 11, 2008

Apparently it’s de-lurking day? week? and since you guys have hardly been commenting at all lately, go on and give me some love!

Nanny 2.0 January 11, 2008

I spent a lot of time writing about our first nanny. Remember her? Remember how she was late all the time until one day she just didn’t show up, but that didn’t stop her from complaining about staying till the agreed-upon end time or for asking for more money? Remember how many times I chickened out of firing her?

Well, it was meant to be, because Tata has officially been with us for one year and she rocks. In fact, she is so awesome that one of the first things I thought when I accepted my new job is that now I could give her a raise. I cannot tell you what a difference it makes in my life to know not only that she is going to show up on time every day, but that Gatito is thriving in her care.

Tata has four or five girlfriends that take care of young children, and they hang out with them almost daily, so Gatito gets lots of social interaction.

Of course, there is the Spanish language thing. My kid is bilingual! With his pale skin and red hair, he is the ultimate gringo, and the Spanish-speaking people they meet absolutely *love* hearing Spanish come out of his mouth. (Side note: A and I noticed that his (English) language skills got a lot better over our two week vacation– his sentences got longer and more complex. We wondered if his Spanish would regress after the hiatus, but Tata reported that the gains he made in English translated right over to Spanish. While obviously he did not acquire more vocabulary, he was able to create longer and more complex sentences in Spanish. I find that fascinating.)

For his birthday, she made him an amazing card, baked a cake and decorated it with cars, bought him a toy car (as did her boyfriend), and requested to attend his birthday party, along with one of her nanny friends who also loves Gatito. For Christmas, it was another incredible handmade card and gift and a scrapbook she put together of pictures of them from throughout the year, along with his artwork and his various certificates (for first hair cut and completing library story times and the like).

She sends me picture messages from her phone periodically throughout the day. (Or she did, till I started my new job and stopped getting service. Grr.)

On her own initiative, she started potty training officially this week (he’s been using the potty about once/day– with her only– for the past few months but there’s been no rigor to it) and he’s already gone poop on the potty once. (The pediatrician at his 2 year appointment said he was surprised Gatito wasn’t trained already, given that apparently Hispanic people tend to train earlier!)

But most important of all, she really loves Gatito, and she misses him when they’re not together. When she came back after two weeks off on Monday, it was all in a flurry, and she leaned over to him in my arms and gave him a big kiss. He turned to me and said, “Tata’s funny!” He was happy to see her, too.

It’s so amazing to be able to focus on my job and not worry about him every day. Not that I don’t think about him and wish I could be there with him, but since I can’t, Tata is without a doubt the very next best thing. She just better not ever leave us!

Strike # 2 from the list January 10, 2008

Pap results came back negative this time. Whew!

That really leaves my main concern being the new job… and my upcoming vacation and my irrational conviction that flying and/or skiing (specifically getting my heartrate up when I have a progesterone issue) will kill a potential embryo. It’s not that I really think it would, but that I don’t want to have anything to look back on and regret should I get pregnant and then miscarry. Ach. I see the crazies are starting already.