Ho hum

I'm doing ok. Sad, but not flattened. I suspect I haven't fully processed things, but at the moment, that's fine with me. Night time, right as I'm trying to go to sleep, is hardest.

Physically, the D&C recovery has been easy. Minor bleeding, no cramping. Anesthesia is the way to go. Very thankful my doctor was able to squeeze us into his evening before he left for vacation the next day -- much easier to be on this side of everything.

I took 3 days of methergine, which was the least pleasant part of recovery -- each dose (3x daily) made me feel yucky. Queasy, rumbly tummy, etc. Last dose was this morning, though, so it's behind us. And yay for no shots.

I got a nice email from the nurses at our IVF clinic checking in on us (my ob emailed with my RE pre and post-loss), and scheduling our followup phone appointment for January 12. We'll have the genetic testing results at that point.

I figure until the end of February, nothing invasive is going to be going on. So we'll spend some quality time together, and rebuild a sex life (have to wait two weeks post D&C, though). We have vacation scheduled for mid-February, and we have two full weeks together right now over the holidays.

Thanks for the wonderful messages of support over the past few days. I hope everyone finds some joy in the holidays, be it from the change of season, food, family, or a break from work.

Not this time, either

As we suspected would be the case, there was no heartbeat at our ultrasound today.

My ob (who was my preIVF fertility doc) is leaving on vacation tomorrow, but managed to get us in for a 7pm D&E tonight. I'm going with anesthesia for this one since the one in the spring was so traumatic.

I think having the bad news spread over two days made it a little easier to handle. It's all relative, of course.

We'll do the genetic testing again. I'm not sure if there's a way to check my immune system levels, since the Intralipid on Tuesday would have calmed down anything active. But I'd hate to rely on it being all chromosomal issues if we also have some immune stuff happening.

Not the way we wanted to go into our holidays, that's for sure.

Your comments on my last post were wonderful and helped us get through the past two days. Thank you.

Can't we ever get a break?

We had our second ultrasound yesterday at 7w5d. It didn't go well.

There's a heartbeat, but it's slow (around 50 bpm). And it's grown, but only a little (measuring 6w3d +/- 4 days.

My ob thinks that my immune system is killing it and/or it's another chromosonally abnormal embryo. So we did an emergency Intralipid infusion (conveniently, his office started doing them about 6 months ago), and we'll go back for another ultrasound on Thursday to see if the heart rate has picked up. If it has, we're not out of the woods, but it would be a sign that the immune suppression worked and is helping. But the embryo could still be abnormal.

Our doctor gave a 50% likelihood that the Intralipid will help. Honestly, I suspect that's optimistic.

It would sure be nice to catch a break one of these days. I almost hope that it's another abnormal embryo so that we don't have to add concerns about my body killing off embryos to the list of problems we have to confront. Isn't that awful?

I'm on bed rest, and double doses of dexamethasone and Lovenox until the ultrasound tomorrow. Trying to just be, and not sink into this too much. There's a chance things will look better tomorrow.

We were worried about the timing of this pregnancy, since we knew we'd be finding out about any issues right before Christmas. I wish we weren't right about that.

Alternate reality

In an alternate reality somewhere, I'm full term today. If we hadn't lost our first pregnancy, today would have been our due date from IVF #1.

It's surreal. It feels so far away, even though it absolutely affects every day I'm living now, taking each day one at a time, hoping this pregnancy turns out differently.

It was a loss of innocence. Another one, after realizing that getting pregnant wasn't going to be the no-brainer we always assumed it would be.

It's whatever the opposite of a silver lining it -- the unfortunate side effect of our wonderful TTC community. We all know far more about potential loss than we'd like, and far too many of us live through it. Of the 7 out of 8 couples that aren't infertile, I dare say most of them go through their TTC and pregnancies blissfully unaware of all the milestones they're passing.

In the spring, I thought getting pregnant was the goal. Then I learned it's just the next milestone on the path to a baby. It's an important one, but it's only necessary, not sufficient.

--

But thankfully, I'm pregnant from IVF #3. I think today would have been a lot harder if I weren't.

I'm doing ok with my anxiety levels, taking one day at a time with this pregnancy. We're not reading any of the pregnancy books, or googling to see what's developing this week. In fact, the only reason I'm counting weeks is to figure out my ultrasound dates. Thankfully my RE recommended ultrasound #2 be only 7-10 days after ultrasound #1. So that's next Tuesday. And I'm going to try to have another one a week later, which would be 8w5d. With pregnancy #1, we found out at the 9 week ultrasound that the embryo had stopped growing sometime around week 7, although they had no way to know for sure when it actually happened. So having a positive ultrasound right before Christmas would help us breathe easier while we're away for the holidays.

I'm not excited, really, about being pregnant. It feels so tenuous, so fleeting. I think that getting to Christmas will be a big enough milestone that maybe I'll be able to get more into it. Right now, it's definitely 'so far so good'.

Thank you for the lovely notes on my last post. It feels great to get those nice comments in my inbox.

Another milestone crossed

Our ultrasound this morning showed one embryo, well placed, with a heartbeat!

He was very quickly able to find the gestational sac and see a heartbeat when he put the ultrasound wand in, which was good, because after looking at my ovaries, everything had shifted a bit and he had a heck of a time getting a good view again. It probably took 10 minutes for him to get the scan right so he could see and measure the heartbeat. Was stressful even though we'd see it earlier, and it would have been agonizing if that's how things started.

The heartbeat on first measurement was 108 bpm, and on the second measurement was 110bpm. He likes to see 110-112bpm (although looking online, 108-110 seems just fine).

Measuring 6w1d +/- 2 days, and today is 6w3d. So in the range (although it always entertains me that they can consider something this tiny an accurate measurement -- honestly a pixel or two one way or the other really matters).

Our RE was more cautious sounding than he was in the spring when we had our first BFP. It was hard to read. I think it's because we lost our first pregnancy, so he'd rather be cautious but optimistic and have everything work out, than glowingly optimistic and have us face another loss.

He wants us to have another ultrasound in 7-10 days. I'll be calling my ob (my ob/gyn was my pre-IVF RE) to see if he can get us in early next week (Dec 13-15) -- if not we'll go back to my IVF doc for this next scan. (In the spring, he recommended the next ultrasound be 2-3 weeks after the 6w3d one, with my ob. So I'm sure he's recommending an earlier one to help us get through the anxious next few weeks.)

I'm stressed about doing the next ultrasound with my ob, because that's where we had the 9week ultrasound in May where we found out the embryo had stopped growing. But I'm glad we'll only be waiting a week or so to get some confirmation of what's going on in there.

So far so good...

Ultrasound tomorrow

Successfully drove cross country in 3.5 days this week. :) Stopped for a blooddraw after getting my car back (we were driving my dad's car for the trip).

Yesterday's beta was 6,824 and progesterone was 32. So far so good -- next milestone is the 6w3d ultrasound tomorrow...

Definitely getting more symptoms -- bigger, tender breasts. Continuing to have vivid dreams every night.

A little anxious for tomorrow, but not overly so.