grateful & thankful, but not enjoying it

I remember a little while ago Mommy Odyssey posted about how she hates being pregnant. I am joining that club, and I stand tall and proud.

Seeing our son and daughter grow with each ultrasound, watching them move around, beginning to feel movement, watching my body change and grow and my belly swell - I am in total awe of these things. They are beyond my wildest dreams.

However, my pregnancy has actually been overwhelmingly miserable, from hyperemesis during first tri and the beginning of second tri, to my bleeding episodes - the partial abruption last week being downright terrifying and the potential for a larger detachment that could potentially doom my little ones constantly occupying my thoughts.

The hyperemesis sucked (I put it in the past tense but without anti-nausea medication, I am still a mess) but it was manageable in the sense that it seemed like a necessary evil that I needed to endure in order to make it to the prize…'paying my dues' or something like that. There was a strong sense of purpose in my suffering and I never felt that it seriously threatened my pregnancy, at least not in an immediate sense, as long as I could stay adequately hydrated with IV fluids.

But with this partial detachment of my placenta and the fact that it is a chronic issue - I feel like such a time bomb and I am so scared for my little ones. Of course I am beyond grateful that we made it through the last bleed, that was a huge deal, but I just wish I could will time to pass, to at least be at 24 weeks and then after that 26, 28, etc… (maybe the etc. is a little bit much, but a girl can dream).

As an infertile who is now pregnant and worked so hard to get to this point (and let's not forget, was lucky enough to get to this point…many wonderful, strong women have endured more with less to show for it), there is definitely an expectation, both that I place on myself and that the IF community places on one another, that once you are pregnant you better well damn enjoy the pregnancy and also, that you should never complain once pregnant, because so many others would do anything to be in your position.

I want nothing more in the universe than to hold these babes in my arms, to watch them thrive and to grow and to have the honor to be their Eema and the joy of seeing Y have the opportunity to become an Abba. If we can get to that point, I just can't imagine - it will be so, so special and amazing. I am very focused on the end-goal these days.

My particular pregnancy experience (and I am very well aware this may be my only pregnancy) is not the wonderful, magical time in my life that I had hoped it would be. Rather, it is a means to an end. It doesn't mean I am not eternally grateful to be where I am right now, but I would be lying if I said it was fun or easy or that I am enjoying it.

G-d willing the outcome will be good and then it will be the most worthwhile negative experience of my life.

anxiety girl returns

Remember this chick?



I think she's back in rare form! I have this creeping unsettled feeling that is making me so anxious lately. I secretly think everything is a hidden sign of pre-term labor and it is my job to crack the case and figure it out. Every new pain arouses new suspicion and I feel like it is impossible to differentiate between what is just me being me and what is a potential issue.

Most days I am just still so shocked to be pregnant, to be gestating life and sporting this little baby bump and whatnot, it is so hard to imagine all of us coming out of this ordeal alive and healthy because me + reproductive success is such uncharted territory. I do take comfort in knowing that my anxiety is probably very common among People Like Me. It doesn't help that I was unusually anxious and neurotic before infertility and miscarriage entered my life.

I really pray that one day I can look back on this time of my life and think to myself how silly and unwarranted all of this anxiety is because I will have had my happy ending (the alternative is I will look back on this time of my life and reflect on what a sucker and smug self-entitled jerk I was to surreptitiously compare overpriced double stroller models and fawn over cute lamb mobiles like someone who might give birth to two intact children in the near future).

Of course the only thing that separates the wistful, omniscient "See, everything turned out okay" me of the future from the self-loathing "I told you so, sucker!" me of the future is the outcome of this pregnancy.

And now here is a summary of what actually happened this week in list form:

• Horrible food poisoning over the weekend that incapacitated me through Monday. I think it was worse than it would have been otherwise because I am pregnant. Vomiting Olympics 2012 ensued. Things were finally brought more or less under control by IV Zofran. I still don't know what the culprit was, but I hope to G-d it wasn't the lethal baby-killing kind of food poisoning. We've heard the babies' heartbeats on the doppler since, so it appears they're still kickin'.
• Discovered the show Homeland. Actually, that didn't happen this week, but it is an awesome show and I highly recommend it.
• Hematology appointment...pretty uneventful (we like uneventful!). I go back in 2 weeks. The cancer building where the hematology department is housed is a very depressing building. Not only is the clientele largely very ill, but the building is incredibly physically depressing.
• Lightning crotch:) Is this normal during early 2nd tri? I wasn't planning on enjoying this loveliness until later on. Shockingly, I find it contributing to my anxiety.
• Bump shot - for better or worse, the first one I've posted (14w5d):
  

1st ultrasound - 2 heartbeats!

This is a pretty long overdue update. I wish my thoughts on blogging during pregnancy weren't so complicated and conflicted. The last few weeks have certainly been an adventure. For so long I was so hell-bent on just getting pregnant (a big deal), I never really thought very much about our previous loss or how it might feel to actually be pregnant again. When you're entrenched in the IVF circuit, it is just always one foot in front of the other. All you can really afford to worry about and obsess over is the next step. I think that kind of singular focus is a survival mechanism just to get through and it has served me well. It did, however, leave me pretty unprepared to deal with the anxieties of pregnancy.

The past few weeks I have spent pretty much in a panic, re-living the awful ultrasound that showed our baby had stopped developing over and over again in my head, continually trying to "prepare" myself for the other shoe to drop, if you can ever be prepared for that. My lowest point so far was last weekend, in the days leading up to our first ultrasound. My symptoms had noticeably changed late during my 5th week/beginning of the 6th week. They hadn't totally disappeared, they were just different. I had also begun to spot a little, which last time was basically the only indication I had (in retrospect) that I had lost the baby.

I totally convinced myself I was having another missed miscarriage. I even managed to convince Y I was having another missed miscarriage, and we spent a lot of time discussing how we would move forward from that (yes, my super rational, logical husband spent many hours discussing with me how we would move forward from my imaginary miscarriage).

I think the thing that really freaked me out last time was not knowing I had lost the pregnancy until the ultrasound. It made me feel even less in control and so carelessly oblivious - while I was buying my first pair of maternity jeans (will never do that again until I really, really need them), filled with a smug sense of purpose, I was totally unaware that I was walking around carrying a baby that was no longer developing. I know I can't prevent a loss from occurring, but after that I vowed to never be that happy-go-lucky oblivious girl again.

Anyhow, we walked into the fertility clinic totally somber and demoralized last Sunday morning, expecting bad news. How surprised we were to see one healthy-looking string bean with a heartbeat! "Is it just one?" I asked the u/s tech. I didn't mean it as an insult to the one fine-looking string bean, like "Is it just one?", but that seems to be how the ultrasound tech took it. I was just genuinely curious. "Don't say just one, one is great!", exclaimed the u/s tech. We both nodded our heads and agreed, one baby with a heartbeat was awesome! But then she said, "Wait....there's another sac," and then "...and another heartbeat." Wow, wow, wow.

Once I read over the ultrasound report I did find a few areas of concern - one is that both babies were measuring 4 days behind and the second being that the tech didn't observe a yolk sac for baby Bet. From my understanding, it is highly unusual perhaps even impossible to have a heartbeat without a yolk sac, since it is a developmental milestone that precedes the heartbeat. It is possible, however, to have either an enlarged or shrunken yolk sac if miscarriage is imminent. It is also totally possible that the yolk sac was just hiding and not visible from the angle the u/s tech was looking at. My RE seems optimistic, but says obviously there is nothing to do but wait now, anyway. My next scan is on Monday at 7w3d. Y can't come, so my friend B is going to come with me. I really hope both babies are alive and growing! Please G-d, keep them safe.

betas

I have been the lousiest updater since I got a positive pregnancy test last week. The news so far, though, has actually been really good! I went in for my first beta on Sunday (11dp5dt) and it was 308. My second beta on Tuesday (13dp5dt) was 849. So it would seem that I am undoubtedly pregnant and that things are progressing as they should for now. It is weird to be blogging about pregnancy. Honestly, it makes me a little uncomfortable hence the lack of updates. We will have our first ultrasound late next week, but we are done with betas, so until then I am in a no-data zone. Taking a step back, trusting in my body - wow, that part is really hard. For now I am so grateful to be here, in this place, I just hope I never wake up from this dream.

Space Camp

What has shocked me the most about our loss is how unshocking losing this pregnancy was, despite the fact that everything was going so well until it wasn't. I remember when I was little, whenever something I deemed to be very important occurred, I divided my life into the before and after based around that single event. Inevitably, I would find the after incredibly depressing - the let-down after a big trip or significant event and all of the anticipation that led up to it.

When I first became pregnant and then later when we learned that our baby didn't have a heartbeat, I came to believe that these events would be the same - defining points against which everything that followed would be subsequently measured - separations differentiating the old before from the new after. Perhaps if my pregnancy had been healthy and marked the beginning of the life of a child we brought into this world alive and into our arms, this would have been true. Instead, I have found it surprising that the loss hasn't really felt like a defining point at all.

Perhaps it's because I spent so long hoping and praying to be pregnant and comparatively so little time actually pregnant (just shy of 8 weeks when I was admitted to the hospital for Cytotec), but the pregnancy itself feels like a strange but hopeful dream I had for 10 minutes one night. Now that its been a week since the miscarriage, nothing about the pregnancy feels real anymore. More accurately, I've been asking myself, did it ever feel real?

Not really. In fact, the whole time I was pregnant, I felt like an impostor. Part of me could never actually believe it was true or that it finally happened. I kept repeating over and over again to myself, to Y, to anyone who knew and would listen, really, that it was too good to be true.

Sure, I clumsily stumbled through all the motions of being pregnant. I was starving for lunch every day at 10:30am and ready to go to sleep at 7. My breasts increased a full cup size and I finally worked up the courage to buy a copy of The Book - What to Expect When You're Expecting, which lay splayed open proudly on the couch, not tucked away in a drawer like infertility books. I ordered cooked salmon maki and veggie rolls at sushi and sipped Cokes and Shirley Temples at our friends' wedding. I turned down wine, quit coffee cold turkey, and when the bloat made it impossible to comfortably wear jeans, invested in 2 pairs of elasticized maternity pants. I secretly enjoyed it when people would stare down at my protuding little belly (in reality more bloat than bump) and wonder.

On the outside, I acted like someone who believed she would have a take-home baby and yet on the inside, I was just an opportunist - a little kid version of myself who wanted to take full advantage of this longed-for virtual reality experience before school was back in session.

That's because in reality, I felt like a nine-year-old girl who wants to be an astronaut when she grows up more than anything else in the world. Finally, she gets to go to space camp. She is delighted and squealing with excitement- how lucky she is to get such an authentic experience! But even as a young girl, she still knows in the back of her head that this is just make-believe, a token or morsel of her real dream. This is all a high-tech stimulation - she has yet to see the moon.

And so, ultimately, my brush with pregnancy amounted to a few weeks at space camp. In the end, the only moment of my pregnancy that stands out in my mind as being real was lying on the crinkly paper of that ultrasound table with three technicians and one doctor crowded around me, nodding and talking to each other about the body on the table and the image of a womb on a screen, not a single word uttered to me.

That's when I knew that my time at space camp was through. Catapulted back to the reality of Earth, I was no longer an astronaut or mom-to-be, but an infertile finally pregnant, but with a baby without a heartbeat. All of those prayers and wishes and dreams for that miraculous ball of cells, that splendid little life growing inside me, slipping further and further from my reach, like so many dreams of outer space or Orion descending. I am here in Jerusalem, Israel, Planet Earth. I am 238857 miles from the moon.