Tuesday May 28, 2013
Hello Shelby and Dalton,
Today seems terribly long, for tomorrow is the day we find out if our latest attempts at IVF were successful, resulting in me being pregnant again. I am trying to practice patience, something at which I'm horrible, and something I feel you understand, as you were so very impatient with your Week 24 arrival.... Of course, as Daddy is fond of saying, we have forever lost our blissful ignorance, so even if we get a positive report, we are far removed from any giant celebrations, as there will be such a long road ahead. We know so many things could go wrong, obviously. I will try not to dwell on those things right now, because I am trying to do like your Daddy says and be positive. Unfortunately, I am a natural pessimist and my mind always wanders to the worst scenarios. This trait was made even more prominent because during your far too short lives with us, each time we heard something positive, within 24 hours, our worlds ended.
Terrified is again the theme of the day. I'm terrified that I will start bleeding, I'm terrified that the headache and the cramps I've been feeling today are indicative of the start of my period. I'm terrified with each cough that I am tearing something asunder within my uterus. I'm terrified that we are not pregnant. I'm terrified that we are pregnant, again with multiples, which increases our risks of pre-term labor even further.
It's so different from when we first underwent IVF. Back then, we fell in to the blissfully ignorant category. I vowed that I would never be one of those women who obsessed over getting pregnant, who charted body temperatures, overanalyzed every minute measurement and freaked out if not pregnant. Oh, no, I was above all of that nonsense. To paraphrase one of my childhood idols, Suzanne Sugarbaker "If I ever did decide to have children, I would do it with a minimum of fuss and muss." - yes indeed, that was MY attitude. Well, the general concept of IVF ensures that conception will not be achieved with a minimum of fuss and muss. But, even in the waiting period prior to finding out we were pregnant with you, I was rather cavalier, thinking "Well, either this works or it doesn't." I had it in my head that we would give it one shot, and que sera sera..... Then, IT WORKED! I was shocked, as I'd heard many horror stories of women or couples having to try IVF 5, 6, 7 times or more to achieve a successful pregnancy. With us, one attempt and bam, we were pregnant. Then, we found out we were pregnant with twins, even better! I would break the long line of only children, but only have 1 pregnancy. I figured I wouldn't be one of those cute pregnant women who looks adorable in maternity clothes and grows the cutest little basketball bump. But, I feel like I kind of carried on the que sera sera attitude, like "OK, I'm pregnant, I'm going to be a mother, OK then, let's embrace this." And, for 22 weeks and 4 days, I think I did. I didn't complain when I experienced almost daily bouts of nausea well into the 15 week territory. I didn't suffer blood pressure issues, my ankles remained relatively unswollen.
But, now we are part of the terrible club that is all too familiar with pre-term labor, children dying in cord accidents, children dying of SIDS, children dying, dying, dying. And, we also know IVF can fail, as we experienced at the end of January, when we tried IVF the 2nd time. So, I sit here on the eve of the blood test that will reveal if our 3rd attempt was successful, and I am terrified.
I am also very very angry. The anger comes from watching women who get to be mothers to living children and don't appreciate what a precious gift they have. We went to the baseball game yesterday. While walking to our seats, I observed this overweight blond in a black knit dress, allowing her toddler (probably about your age) wander about the concourse. It has always been a pet peeve to observe parents allowing toddlers to run loose in crowded public spaces, sporting events, malls, airports. Not only is there the risk of kidnapping, but there is the more likely risk that a large man will not see the toddler and trip over the toddler, causing both to fall. Guess what you DA mother, if a 200 lb man falls on your 20 lb toddler, there is going to be serious collateral damage to said child. It's like a motorcycle colliding with an F-350.... the guy on the motorcycle is not walking away uninjured. So, finally, Tubbo Blondie, hikes the little girl (who sadly also was already obese) up under her arm like a football, and the child was just dangling there, getting bounced and jostled. I carry groceries more carefully. When we were seated, this couple came in and sat in front of us with a blond boy toddler, (again, probably about your age0. The mom was pregnant again, probably about 7 or 8 months along (far larger than I ever got with you). We proceeded to watch her ingest a corn dog (on the value menu, guaranteed to be all "lips and assholes" as your Daddy says), several pieces of taffy, a large soda and popcorn. Yet, here I am, not even sure if I'm pregnant, but avoiding even an all beef hot-dog and eschewing soda for water, and trying to be dedicated to eating healthful, organic, non-GMO foods (even my prenatal vitamins are organic and non-GMO for God's sake!!). But, my body could not sustain a healthy pregnancy. A perfect example of life's cruel irony.
My darlings, thank you for listening to your momma's rants, nervous ramblings, fears and idiosyncrasies. Please ask God for good news for us tomorrow. We are missing you today and always.
All my love,
Momma
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Terrified
Wednesday May 22, 2013
Hello darlings,
It's been a while since I've written. There's not a day goes by that you're not on my minds, but I've just been in an extra big funk lately. Fitting that I would write to you again on a Wednesday, the day you were born. You would be almost 17 months old today. Every picture I see of other toddlers around that age makes me die a little bit inside. I get so sad thinking about what you would have looked like, and which one of you would have been the first to take those first steps. How much you would have been babbling by now. Working on your swimming skills.
Yesterday marked the 6th anniversary of your great-great Aunt Jayne's death. I know she's got you and is taking good care of you. I hope you were extra sweet to her yesterday and didn't act too fussy.
As you probably know, we are trying to bring forth a sibling. We started a fresh IVF cycle, with the egg retrieval on Tuesday, May 14. They retrieved 18 eggs, which was a remarkable number, 2 more than the cycle which gave us you two. We were blessed with fortunate news that of those 18, 16 were mature and ready for the ICSI process, and of those 16, 14 normally fertilized and embryos were developing. There was much debate whether the implantation would be on cycle day 3, Friday May 17 (your Uncle Pete's birthday) or cycle day 5, Sunday May 19 (the MISS walk and Phoenix Bereaved Parents' Day). The coordinator called me Thursday afternoon with this glowing report that our embryos were developing beautifully, that I was her star pupil of the week, and that there was excellent cell division, which was remarkable for a woman of my age. She said she would call the next day to let me know if the transfer would take place that morning or Sunday. So, she calls Friday morning and tells me to come in at 10:30 with a full bladder. We arrive. Daddy notices the car in parked in front of us has a Sewell sticker on it (a car dealership in Dallas), then, we get out of the Tahoe and Daddy notices the manhole cover says Waco Drilling. We go inside, Daddy selects the latest issue of Phoenix magazine. He flips it open and there is a picture of Waylon in an article on musicians with Phoenix ties. We're excited to see all these things from Texas, we take 3 things as a good sign. We go in to talk with the doctor. He now thinks it would be best to wait until Sunday, ok fine, you're the expert, we'll wait until Sunday. He said he debated it, because we got pregnant the first time with a fresh cycle and 3 day embryos, but by waiting until day 5, we should be giving them a better chance to further develop. We leave feeling a bit dejected, but hopeful, because he too commented on how wonderful my eggs looked, especially for a woman of my age. We had 8 8-cell grade A embryo's, with the remaining 6 embryos graded nothing lower than a B. I was ecstatic, but scared to feel too cocky, as sometimes I worry my cockiness is punished (the whole pride goeth before the fall and all). So, we planned to go back Sunday. We decided on a sushi lunch, as once they did the implantation, I hopefully will not eat sushi for several months. On a side note, I am totally torn on all the things they tell pregnant women to avoid, how they freak out over things such as sushi (when millions of pregnant Japanese women probably eat sushi daily) and limited amounts of wine (thousands of Mediterranean women probably drink a daily glass of wine with dinner). But, we are no longer innocent, and if able to become pregnant, will be over-the-top paranoid.
So, we are told to come back Sunday morning. No one sets an appointment time, so I ask. The receptionist says "The coordinator will call you later today with a time.". Ok, so after sushi, I go off to MISS to help finalize things for the walk. At about 3:45, I realize no one called with an appointment time for Sunday. I text Daddy and ask him to call. By the time he got my text, it was 4:30 and the office was closed for the day. NOOOOOOOOOO! So, we had to call their emergency service on Saturday and then wait for a call back. Finally, we had our appointment time, 7:45 arrival, 8AM procedure. We show up on time (very important to your type A momma). The doctor is LATE! Like 45 minutes LATE. Intolerable! And then, to top it off, another couple comes in for some procedure. I was feeling so upset by this point, and my bladder was overly full. Finally, she arrives, and we go in her office for the mini-consult, where they review the embryo quality and discuss how many embryos will be implanted and give us little pictures. This doctor again congratulates me on the quality of embryos, she says it is almost unheard of for a woman of my age. All 14 look fantastic, and they chose the best 3 blastocysts. She highlights one in particular and tells me that that blastocyst is picture perfect and even compares ours to the one on her little chart. I am feeling extremely hopeful, but at the same time, completely terrified because if they all look so good, what if we have 3 babies? I'm terrified because I know how having just the two of you went so horribly wrong with my body failing you at 24 weeks. I try to remain calm, but of course, being all jacked up on these various hormones, I start crying as she's showing me on the ultrasound monitor the details of the procedure and showing us the surge from when the embryos are pushed through the catheter and deposited in my uterus. She comments on how my uterine lining looks nice and thick too. The process is done in a few minutes and they leave Daddy and me alone in the room for about 45 minutes, me with a full bladder and Daddy reading aloud from Travel & Leisure, trying to keep me calm and keep my mind off my full bladder. We decide that the nurse on duty that day doesn't want to empty the bedpan, as it is never offered to me (whereas both in your cycle and the failed frozen transfer, I was provided a bedpan).
So, we leave there and are driving home. Daddy is complaining about a terrible smell, and we both mistakenly think it is some residue leftover from the recent detail. Wrong...... It turns out to be the new box of muriatic acid I purchased on Thursday, but couldn't remove from the car due to the lifting restriction I had. Your Daddy forgot to take the chemicals out of the car, so the box tipped over and was leaking on the carpet. It leaked through the peach blanket that I keep in the back of the car for the dogs, and ate right through the carpet, even though probably only about 1 cup of acid actually leaked out of the containers (both still seem quite full). Unfortunately, Daddy leaves the pool chemicals in there until today. There is a film on the windshield. I feel almost asphyxiated from the fumes. I start having a full on panic attack, freaking out that the fumes will harm the embryos we've had implanted. Daddy and Grandpa Joe take the chemicals out for me, but I am terrified that I have somehow once again failed any unborn children that might be trying to develop in my uterus right now. So, after speaking with a dealership service department, we may have a complete and total fouled up mess, in the words of momma's Boston friend, "It's a CLUSTAH....", or in military terms, it's FUBAR. The acid may have corroded the metal and corroded wires in the floorboards of my truck. The fumes need to be fully aired out. I can't do anything for 2 reasons - I am terrified to go near the car right now in its present condition and also, your Grandpa took the car so he could go to his job at the stadium. When Daddy comes home, he is going to try flushing out the area really well, as the dealership parts guy advised. We may have to file an insurance claim. I was just beside myself. I made Daddy call the doctor, they said it should all be OK, the danger would be from ingesting the acid, which I obviously did not do, just breathed in the chemical smells. Either way, again, in continuing the theme of this post, I AM TERRIFIED. And, while Daddy had the coordinator on the phone, he asked how many blastocysts they were able to freeze. Apparently, my super high quality eggs that produced wonderful and perfect embryos failed somewhere along the way, as she reported they were only able to freeze 4 blastocysts..... So, 7 of them failed, 7!!! My heart broke a little more at that news. I can't help but think, we got pregnant when we did a fresh cycle with day 3 embryos and we didn't get pregnant in a frozen cycle when we used 5 day old blastocysts, so what if we don't get pregnant now using fresh 5 day blastocysts, as they should have been returned to their natural environment, my uterus, earlier rather than later?!?!??!!
Oh my babies, it's been a rough rough morning for your momma. As Daddy said, why can't anything go right for this family? Please please please help us and ask God to bless us with a healthy living child or children. I can't even have a drink to take the edge off (not that I'm advocating that or endorsing raging alcoholism, it's just sometimes a small amount of spirits can be medicinal). Somewhere up there, go see your great grandpa Stan and have him mix y'all a highball and put it in to those Steuben crystal coupes emblazoned with "Baby's First Cocktail" that I first saw in a magazine when we were getting pregnant with you.
Momma loves you my darlings.
Hello darlings,
It's been a while since I've written. There's not a day goes by that you're not on my minds, but I've just been in an extra big funk lately. Fitting that I would write to you again on a Wednesday, the day you were born. You would be almost 17 months old today. Every picture I see of other toddlers around that age makes me die a little bit inside. I get so sad thinking about what you would have looked like, and which one of you would have been the first to take those first steps. How much you would have been babbling by now. Working on your swimming skills.
Yesterday marked the 6th anniversary of your great-great Aunt Jayne's death. I know she's got you and is taking good care of you. I hope you were extra sweet to her yesterday and didn't act too fussy.
As you probably know, we are trying to bring forth a sibling. We started a fresh IVF cycle, with the egg retrieval on Tuesday, May 14. They retrieved 18 eggs, which was a remarkable number, 2 more than the cycle which gave us you two. We were blessed with fortunate news that of those 18, 16 were mature and ready for the ICSI process, and of those 16, 14 normally fertilized and embryos were developing. There was much debate whether the implantation would be on cycle day 3, Friday May 17 (your Uncle Pete's birthday) or cycle day 5, Sunday May 19 (the MISS walk and Phoenix Bereaved Parents' Day). The coordinator called me Thursday afternoon with this glowing report that our embryos were developing beautifully, that I was her star pupil of the week, and that there was excellent cell division, which was remarkable for a woman of my age. She said she would call the next day to let me know if the transfer would take place that morning or Sunday. So, she calls Friday morning and tells me to come in at 10:30 with a full bladder. We arrive. Daddy notices the car in parked in front of us has a Sewell sticker on it (a car dealership in Dallas), then, we get out of the Tahoe and Daddy notices the manhole cover says Waco Drilling. We go inside, Daddy selects the latest issue of Phoenix magazine. He flips it open and there is a picture of Waylon in an article on musicians with Phoenix ties. We're excited to see all these things from Texas, we take 3 things as a good sign. We go in to talk with the doctor. He now thinks it would be best to wait until Sunday, ok fine, you're the expert, we'll wait until Sunday. He said he debated it, because we got pregnant the first time with a fresh cycle and 3 day embryos, but by waiting until day 5, we should be giving them a better chance to further develop. We leave feeling a bit dejected, but hopeful, because he too commented on how wonderful my eggs looked, especially for a woman of my age. We had 8 8-cell grade A embryo's, with the remaining 6 embryos graded nothing lower than a B. I was ecstatic, but scared to feel too cocky, as sometimes I worry my cockiness is punished (the whole pride goeth before the fall and all). So, we planned to go back Sunday. We decided on a sushi lunch, as once they did the implantation, I hopefully will not eat sushi for several months. On a side note, I am totally torn on all the things they tell pregnant women to avoid, how they freak out over things such as sushi (when millions of pregnant Japanese women probably eat sushi daily) and limited amounts of wine (thousands of Mediterranean women probably drink a daily glass of wine with dinner). But, we are no longer innocent, and if able to become pregnant, will be over-the-top paranoid.
So, we are told to come back Sunday morning. No one sets an appointment time, so I ask. The receptionist says "The coordinator will call you later today with a time.". Ok, so after sushi, I go off to MISS to help finalize things for the walk. At about 3:45, I realize no one called with an appointment time for Sunday. I text Daddy and ask him to call. By the time he got my text, it was 4:30 and the office was closed for the day. NOOOOOOOOOO! So, we had to call their emergency service on Saturday and then wait for a call back. Finally, we had our appointment time, 7:45 arrival, 8AM procedure. We show up on time (very important to your type A momma). The doctor is LATE! Like 45 minutes LATE. Intolerable! And then, to top it off, another couple comes in for some procedure. I was feeling so upset by this point, and my bladder was overly full. Finally, she arrives, and we go in her office for the mini-consult, where they review the embryo quality and discuss how many embryos will be implanted and give us little pictures. This doctor again congratulates me on the quality of embryos, she says it is almost unheard of for a woman of my age. All 14 look fantastic, and they chose the best 3 blastocysts. She highlights one in particular and tells me that that blastocyst is picture perfect and even compares ours to the one on her little chart. I am feeling extremely hopeful, but at the same time, completely terrified because if they all look so good, what if we have 3 babies? I'm terrified because I know how having just the two of you went so horribly wrong with my body failing you at 24 weeks. I try to remain calm, but of course, being all jacked up on these various hormones, I start crying as she's showing me on the ultrasound monitor the details of the procedure and showing us the surge from when the embryos are pushed through the catheter and deposited in my uterus. She comments on how my uterine lining looks nice and thick too. The process is done in a few minutes and they leave Daddy and me alone in the room for about 45 minutes, me with a full bladder and Daddy reading aloud from Travel & Leisure, trying to keep me calm and keep my mind off my full bladder. We decide that the nurse on duty that day doesn't want to empty the bedpan, as it is never offered to me (whereas both in your cycle and the failed frozen transfer, I was provided a bedpan).
So, we leave there and are driving home. Daddy is complaining about a terrible smell, and we both mistakenly think it is some residue leftover from the recent detail. Wrong...... It turns out to be the new box of muriatic acid I purchased on Thursday, but couldn't remove from the car due to the lifting restriction I had. Your Daddy forgot to take the chemicals out of the car, so the box tipped over and was leaking on the carpet. It leaked through the peach blanket that I keep in the back of the car for the dogs, and ate right through the carpet, even though probably only about 1 cup of acid actually leaked out of the containers (both still seem quite full). Unfortunately, Daddy leaves the pool chemicals in there until today. There is a film on the windshield. I feel almost asphyxiated from the fumes. I start having a full on panic attack, freaking out that the fumes will harm the embryos we've had implanted. Daddy and Grandpa Joe take the chemicals out for me, but I am terrified that I have somehow once again failed any unborn children that might be trying to develop in my uterus right now. So, after speaking with a dealership service department, we may have a complete and total fouled up mess, in the words of momma's Boston friend, "It's a CLUSTAH....", or in military terms, it's FUBAR. The acid may have corroded the metal and corroded wires in the floorboards of my truck. The fumes need to be fully aired out. I can't do anything for 2 reasons - I am terrified to go near the car right now in its present condition and also, your Grandpa took the car so he could go to his job at the stadium. When Daddy comes home, he is going to try flushing out the area really well, as the dealership parts guy advised. We may have to file an insurance claim. I was just beside myself. I made Daddy call the doctor, they said it should all be OK, the danger would be from ingesting the acid, which I obviously did not do, just breathed in the chemical smells. Either way, again, in continuing the theme of this post, I AM TERRIFIED. And, while Daddy had the coordinator on the phone, he asked how many blastocysts they were able to freeze. Apparently, my super high quality eggs that produced wonderful and perfect embryos failed somewhere along the way, as she reported they were only able to freeze 4 blastocysts..... So, 7 of them failed, 7!!! My heart broke a little more at that news. I can't help but think, we got pregnant when we did a fresh cycle with day 3 embryos and we didn't get pregnant in a frozen cycle when we used 5 day old blastocysts, so what if we don't get pregnant now using fresh 5 day blastocysts, as they should have been returned to their natural environment, my uterus, earlier rather than later?!?!??!!
Oh my babies, it's been a rough rough morning for your momma. As Daddy said, why can't anything go right for this family? Please please please help us and ask God to bless us with a healthy living child or children. I can't even have a drink to take the edge off (not that I'm advocating that or endorsing raging alcoholism, it's just sometimes a small amount of spirits can be medicinal). Somewhere up there, go see your great grandpa Stan and have him mix y'all a highball and put it in to those Steuben crystal coupes emblazoned with "Baby's First Cocktail" that I first saw in a magazine when we were getting pregnant with you.
Momma loves you my darlings.
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