May 21st, 2012
So It Has Been a Week…
I guess I have a lot to write. My beta last Monday was only at 3800, which was just 800 up from the previous Monday–making me annoyed that they didn’t give me another beta in between, just so I could know if that was already heading down, or if that was as high as it got. All was moot however when I started bleeding on Thursday. And man. It got heavy. Like, overpower-a-tampon-in-twenty-minutes heavy. I also saw the sac pass, as well as a lot of other, er, stuff. I will say that for as emotional as I can get about this whole process, I am pretty proud of how well I handled it all once the bleeding began. On Friday of last week my beta was drawn and was 1600, and I will go tomorrow again to see how much it fell since then. I really don’t know how long it will take to get back to zero–I know with my d&c a few years ago, I got a period a month after it happened, and I also think I started an FET soon after that…I know it was done by the end of June of that year, and the miscarriage happened March 20, d&c was March 25, first period was April 26 (crazy how these dates stick in one’s head), and I was on estrace in early June. I also remember that they effed up my first try at an FET by dosing my lupron wrong, so it could have actually started before that. Who knows.
I am floating somewhere between trying to think about our family being “complete” already, trying to think that maybe an FET with less than stellar embryos could work, the potential for adopting embryos down the line in a year or so…and it’s a strange place to find myself. Emotionally, I have not been a wreck (Alleluia, alleluia). I have not spent minutes/hours/days in tears–but I still have it all weighing on my heart and my head. I am a little tired of “qualifying” things–by saying how blessed I am to have the boys I have, how lucky, how fortunate, how grateful…because OF COURSE I am all of these things. And I guess I keep saying to convince myself, as well as to let the world know that I KNOW I could be in a much more devastating place right now, if we didn’t have the two boys. But I cannot yet bring myself to think of getting rid of tiny baby boy clothes, baby toys, and the idea of another one of us in this world. The regular folks of the reproducing world get decide when they feel their family is complete, and I am still jealous of that. It amazed me–last night I spoke to my grandmother on her 93rd birthday, and while I don’t really tell her about all we have gone through, she knows some of it. And who would have thought Nana would get it right–she said to me, “I can say you are so lucky and blessed to have the boys but when your heart wants more that is just how you feel.” Thumbs up, Nana. You nailed it–who would have thought?
The emotional aspect of potentially being done hasn’t completely hit me yet, but every time I see a pregnant person with two children, I do still feel that stirring inside, that sting. It is nothing like it was when I was trying for P, and then the even harder journey of trying for A—but it’s still there. When I told P that it seemed the doctors hadn’t been able to fix “Mommy’s broken belly” he told me, “Oh Mom, that’s alright. There are like ninety years to life, you still have plenty of time to get someone to fix it.” I loved his simple view–being four and a half makes him almost as wise as Nana at 93–but sadly, I don’t have plenty of time. I have one more shot–one more partial-shot. And that fresh cycle didn’t give me a baby–so why will the frozen one? (I am going to try to ask my Dr if I can cycle using Ganirelix instead of Lupron through–it will decrease the whole cycle time by at least two or three weeks, and I am a DISASTER on Lupron. Dis.As.Ter.) Of course, I can’t help but HOPEHOPEHOPE that maybe God is guiding us to this last option, to show us that the reason all the recent cycles have failed (so, two FETs and one fresh in attempt for #3) is because our little one is waiting for us already somewhere in a freezer in Greenwich, and that HE is the baby that we are waiting for. But I know that isn’t how God works–mainly from experience. I love being a mom more than anything I have ever done, and likely anything I ever will do. It fills my heart so completely, and I will surely struggle as I come to grips with knowing I won’t be journeying through new motherhood ever again…