Last week I had my last painting class of the year at the museum. Painting is something I do for fun and just for myself -- I am not very good at it. Back in February, right before my first hospitalization, we were working on a self-portrait project. The assignment was to take a xeroxed photograph of our faces and then break it into 25 parts, painting each panel separately and then finally pasting it all together to see the whole face.
The idea is to see each aspect of the face abstractly - in other words not to see an eye as an eye, for example, but just a random collection of darks and lights with a particular contour. It was a 3- or 4-week long project, and half-way through, I had the partial placental abruption of Aminadav's placenta.
When I came back to class after the twins had been born and died, I had a vague recollection that I had left the self-portrait project incomplete but I had no desire to go back to it. It just served as another reminder of where I was, what I was doing, and what my happiness and anticipation was like in the weeks and days preceding the darkness that was to come.
For our last class, we were supposed to discuss 3 or 4 pieces that we felt were most representative of our work and our progress throughout the year. My half-complete tiled self-portrait was long forgotten by me, but my teacher apparently found it at the bottom of a drawer filled with projects from the winter, and when I walked into the classroom, I was met with the half-complete painting tacked on the wall.
I really didn't want to spend any time looking at the self-portrait, which I had not seen nor really thought about since I was pregnant with the twins. I could not, however, ignore the obvious irony of my own missing parts in the painting.
In the other painting, something other than my xeroxed face was suddenly and unexpectedly left wholly incomplete.
It has now been four days since I stopped the progesterone, estrogen, prednisone, folic acid and Omega 3s. Today marks 5 weeks and I am waiting for my body to do something, anything to signal that it is letting go of this doomed pregnancy.
In the mean time, I have:
gone on long runs, ordered in sushi (I lied and told the lady on the phone it was for 2 people when she asked how many it was for -- to be fair, I did eat the 28 pieces in two separate sittings), drank wine, consumed copious amounts of (unpasteurized?) goat cheese, ordered a large latte every morning at work, popped a few aspirin, and lifted many heavy boxes. While long runs historically cause me to spot bright red when I am not pregnant, running under these circumstances does not seem to produce the same effect.
I will get a beta drawn in the morning to see where things stand. In the mean time, this is beginning to feel a little ominous. If this isn't going to work out (it's not) I was really hoping it would at least be chemical and that my body would take care of things itself.
I can't help but think that it would be a signature A. move to be diagnosed with an ectopic the week we are supposed to move abroad.
After a week of +hpts, beta #2 was the same as beta #1. My E2 and progesterone seem to still be going up, so I really hope this doesn't turn into a prolonged ordeal and that it's chemical and not ectopic. Damn, I really would have preferred a plain old BFN to this.
Beta #1 = 138. Going back on Wednesday for beta #2. I think this could possibly work, but such a long way to go! Still in shock to be in this place at all.
Please body, please G-d, please universe, please random chance: let this be good.
This entry is for Angie's annual Right Where I Am project where she asks baby loss bloggers to describe where they are in their grief. Thanks, Angie, for both facilitating this project and the prompt -- I know it certainly helped me and took me to an unexpected place.
Today we are packing up our apartment in Jerusalem into boxes that will be put into storage for a year. In about 2 weeks, we will move to Toronto for Y to complete his fellowship. Y's parents are in town and they are helping us pack. Both of them (and Y) are much better at packing than I am. They are doing us a big favor by spending their vacation time in Israel helping us to pack, especially because I am so spatially challenged, easily distracted, and also inefficient.
Y's mom really wants me to acknowledge what a good job she is doing and how much she has helped us. But my stubborn 5-year-old version of myself is at war -- I will not thank her or acknowledge her help. Instead I will mope aimlessly in the corner. Both of my feet are planted firmly on the ground and I push hard against Y, against his parents who are helping to facilitate this move. Enablers. Co-conspirators.
I offer Y's mom a slice of leftover pizza, ask her if she'd like me to heat it up. She'll have it cold, she says. Like her son, she is ok with eating pizza cold. I marvel over how this is done, I tell her. Personally, I think cold, congealed pizza is disgusting. "I eat pizza cold because I am a mother," she tells me. Is this lady for real? Of course the only appropriate response is "Oh, well, mothers of dead babies like their pizza warm."
But instead I just bite my lip and stutter "I really don't think that has anything at all to do with being a mom." I hate myself for not saying what I want to say, but I'd hate myself for saying it, too. I hate myself for all that is left unsaid between us -- for the dirty feeling I get each time I realize that she doesn't consider my children real babies nor me a mother, not even a sort of in-between half-mother. One day I will tell her everything that she does not want to know.
I will tell her the truth, that these were her grandchildren, too. That Aminadav had Y's big head and that Naava was born alive. That they were not some sort of sad, macerated, bloody miscarriage mess. In fact, there was nothing sad about them except for their death. That these were real babies. Real, beautiful babies. Perfectly formed, just too small.
But for today I will not thank her for packing up my apartment and I do not budge. I do not want to budge. I don't kick or scream or make noise, I just give in to inertia and refuse to move. Actually, it is less of a refusal, more of a giving in. I am paralyzed, my feet planted firmly into the floor, through the floor, into the ground. Doesn't anyone understand? I have roots here.
Roots -- isn't that what I sought in this land, this scorching dry holy land that sucks you in until you belong to it more than it belongs to you? I came here, to Israel, as a new immigrant 6 years ago, seeking out the metaphorical roots. But now I belong to the land -- rooted.
These are the strongest, most real roots; so solid I could not extricate myself from them with any amount of effort or denial. Because here comes the simple truth: my babies are in the ground here. They are part of it and belong to it and I am part of them and so we all belong to this land.
Leaving this place, packing these boxes with our books and pots and pans, is leaving my children behind. So on this day, 2 months and 3 weeks since Aminadav and Naava came and went and returned to the land, my land, I hope you can understand why I can't interrupt my moping to thank anyone for enabling me to leave this place.
When they were gone it was so easy to go back to the life we had before. Except for their absence everything about our lives was identical -- a perfect replica of everything we had left behind. I went back to the lab, to a life of pipetting and aliquoting and enumerating. Y went back to the operating room, to the familiar routines of cutting and splicing and suturing back up. We both found a lot of comfort in the oldness and predictability of our lives from before. I returned to work full-time within a week of their deaths.
But here's the thing: I never imagined the future without the twins. I never imagined Toronto without the twins. While it was easy to slip back into the past without the twins, when it comes to the future I am still stuck on the future of my parallel universe -- our future with arms more than full. In the last few weeks, I have been preoccupied by the thought of how if they were to come now they would most likely be here safe and healthy.
I still wonder what it is like to have arms that are more than full.
Until now, until our living room was filled with bubble wrap and packing tape and IV boxes full of kitchen utensils I conveniently blocked out the part when everything changes and the twins aren't here, the moment when the future arrives and the twins aren't coming with us. This is right where I am: 2 months and 3 weeks later.
Despite my best attempts at apathy, TTC again is really hard. I so desperately want to be pregnant again, but everything I've been doing to try to make it happen feels like a form of punishment. I think constantly about how if the twins were to arrive now they would most likely be alive and well, and that causes me a lot of pain.
Every action we take to make a new baby is a reminder of the babies who were supposed to be here with us right now. Sometimes it is just too cruel. I do still think this was the right choice for us -- to jump back into IVF again so soon after, but it is hard and lonely.
Today we transferred one day 3 8-celled embryo with some fragmentation. I really only want to do SET because I am terrified of conceiving another set of twins, but I still have very complicated feelings about it. In some sense "needing" to do SET and the lowered chance of pregnancy with each transfer that comes with it feels like a punishment, like I am being reprimanded for something really horrible that I did.
And in a sense that's completely accurate -- I am being reprimanded for something really horrible that I did, it is just something that my body did that I had no conscious control over.
Honestly, part of me also would still really like twins. I am okay now with admitting that, but at the same time it is a very theoretical type of want, because another twin pregnancy, at least before proving that I can successfully carry a full-term singleton pregnancy, would just be too terrifying and too unfair to the babies (so despite my complicated feelings, no need to lecture me on what a bad idea it would be to transfer more than one embryo).
Anyhow, all of this talk of singletons vs. multiples is pretty moot at this point. Due to the premature rise in progesterone, Dr. T. thinks my chances of conceiving with this transfer are low. Of course this makes me feel pretty bleak. Actually, this really sucks.
I have been giving this little 8-celled soap bubble a lot of pep-talking, and of course anything at this point is possible -- if I have been on the wrong side of the unlikely statistics more than my fair share, isn't it possible to end up on the right side of the unlikely statistics this time?
I even promised this pretty little 8-celled soap bubble a ridiculously overpriced stroller and a loving home (you will not be surprised to know Y rolled his eyes at the ridiculously overpriced stroller part). Still, I am not very hopeful and it's bringing me to a sadder place than I imagined because I am bringing so much additional grief along with me.
The interesting news is that we still have four remaining embryos. This morning, one was 4 cells and the other three were 6 cells. All of them had some fragmentation. This doesn't sound stellar, but Naava and Aminadav both came from blasts that were fragmented 6-cell embryos on day 3.
Our lab isn't so good at freezing and thawing blasts (though they do use vitrification), so the current plan is to freeze the remaining embryos today on day 3 and then thaw them next month and attempt to see if we can grow one of them to blastocyst. Then we would attempt a day 5 SET, which is what we initially wanted to do with this transfer and we would have, but since my RE thinks our chances of implantation are lower due to the premature progesterone rise, we didn't want to…wait for it…put all of our eggs in one basket.
This plan is ok but puts a serious cramp in my style given that we were supposed to move to Canada on June 15! If this transfer is unsuccessful, the new plan is for me to stay behind in Israel solo to do the transfer after we've packed up all our stuff and moved out of our place. This would pretty much suck (goes right back to the feeling of being punished), but since I am a glutton both for punishment and opportunities to get pregnant, we all know that I will end up doing it. Clearly, what would suck even more is if I hang around for the additional couple of weeks only for none of the embryos to make it to day 5.
Between the move, TTC, and my work situation I feel like everything is in total limbo right now and nothing about this year is unraveling the way I hoped and anticipated (most notably the part where my twins were supposed to live and I was supposed to be totally overwhelmed with two infants this summer). Sorry if I am starting to sound angry, sad, and bitter, but right now, I think that's pretty much where I'm at.
