House, Health, and Happiness

Where to start? It's kind of amazing to look back at my last post. Since then, we have bought our first house, and I am currently waiting to hear from the woman I mentioned below, to see if she's pregnant (she would have just found out this past week). I'm freaking out.

Three of my friends/colleagues have had babies this past month - over a 3-week period, in fact. I haven't met any of them yet, but it's gotten me thinking hard about what we're doing here. We want another child, and could simply pick another donor. I went to the website today and saw several options. But when I even considered going back there, using new sperm, I practically had a panic attack. There's no way I could do it before becoming completely confident in our decision. I'm not sure I could get there, so where does that leave us now?

I turned 40 in July. I don't have much more time. It's agonizing, trying to figure out what to do.

That said. I have had some health stuff come up, especially in the last 6 months, and it would be a bad time to become pregnant right now. I know I need to work on becoming healthy again before working on carrying a child. But I need it to move quickly, which is typically not how it works.

On the upside, as mentioned, we bought a house! In another suburb not far at all from our last rental. It's a super cute ranch-style cottage, kind of small (whoa have we downsized our stuff, and still have a ways to go), with amazing yard space that I can't wait to landscape. It. Feels. Good. Although stressful because of the lack of storage (although we're remedying that this week by converting our carport into a storage/work space), I'm ultimately so happy it's ours. Even if we move in 5-10 years, this house fits us and I'm thrilled. It's also in a cute, seaside town, and only a quick train ride to the city.

Well I just got a text inviting us to visit one of the new babies, so off I go! This one is part of our chosen family - I can't wait to meet him.

our ectopic, the monks & major life decisions

Two and a half months later, and what a couple of months it has been. My miscarriage was actually an ectopic pregnancy, which put me in the emergency room for 9 hours before we had it figured out. It didn't burst and I didn't need surgery - that was the bright side. "It could have been worse" has been a motto of sorts since January.

The day after my ER visit, my brother arrived from Chicago. He came out, dropping his wife and kids in Kentucky on the way, to start a new life here. We offered our place as a transition-point while he found a job and a place to live. He did both, and is moving out in 3 days. His family will meet him here in a week. I've never spent a ton of time with him as adults, and this time has been trying and a test of patience to say the least. But it could have been worse.

Last week I took a staycation, and scheduled myself with appointments & yoga so I wouldn't be too tempted to stick around the house (and get sucked in to all the distractions). I wanted to take care of myself and try to heal both physically and mentally. One of my appointments was with an acutonics practitioner. After the treatment she told me that she had been wanting to see me since she heard about my ectopic. She had had a dream and wanted to tell me that although the ectopic was awful for us, we actually were quite lucky that we did not have that child. That the sperm is bad, and we shouldn't use it anymore. I was so fascinated and truly respect this doctor, and even if I didn't buy into it all, how can I ignore someone telling me that the sperm we have chosen essentially has a curse on it? (OK that was my interpretation - we actually have no idea what she meant when she told us it was "bad sperm" and that we shouldn't use it, and we discussed tonight how we're probably better not knowing).

I've been working on a lot of my past shit, trying to "go deep" so I stop repeating unhealthy patterns in my life. One of the things I signed up for was a bi-weekly women's group. We meet and meditate, draw, have "sound baths" with gongs, etc. With all of this personal work, I've started to have some clarity on some things. Namely, what to do about the sperm. I realized that I don't want to switch donors, and I don't want to use the one we have. When it comes down to it, I want a kid that's 100% biologically linked with our toddler. And if that doesn't happen, we will adopt.

A quick backstory: When we got pregnant with our now toddler, we called the bank and all of the vials of our donor had been bought up. We were devastated. I tried twice to find people who had vials stored from this donor, but none were willing to give it up. I'm 39, we felt we needed to let it go, so we chose this other donor. That brings us to today.

I decided to reach out on a forum today to find out if anyone had reconsidered. Within a couple of hours I got an email from a woman who is willing to give up some vials "once we have a healthy baby." They'll be trying this summer, and if all goes well they'll have their kid next Spring. Which means at that time we could get some vials. I can hardly believe it!

I'm nervous. It's not guaranteed that we'll get any, or that I'll have any eggs left by then. But it's some hope.

So back to my acutonics practioner. She's a Korean Buddhist Naturopath, and her parents in Korea go to the monks once a month to ask for guidance. Recently her mom went and asked about me and my husband (who's a colleague of hers).

They told her that this year is not a good year for a baby, and neither is next year.
This year's a good year to move.
It's a good year to buy a house.
I'm having family issues and will for the next 5 years.
That there will be a baby girl in our future.

I kind of love it (all but the family issues). I won't hold my breath but I will certainly hold onto some hope!

miscarriage confirmed

Well, it's (mostly) official. I'm having a miscarriage. The last two weeks have been brutal. Not even because I was miscarrying, but because we didn't know for sure that's what was going on. My hcg numbers 480, 440, then 660, then 650, then 900, then today, 461. So finally it's going down, but the whole time the numbers were staying stable or going up, we had no clue as to what was happening. Blighted ovum? Miscarriage? Ectopic? Or a pregnancy that was located somewhere else? (really, that was a thought by one of the doctors)

When the numbers hit 900 two days ago, we let ourselves get hopeful. Then that night, I cramped badly and started bleeding again, and it hasn't stopped. So I wasn't surprised by the numbers today, but I was still very sad to have it confirmed.

The good news is that we now have some answers, and hopefully will be able to try again in March. In the meantime I'll be working on some self-care, starting with this weekend, when we'll be heading to a nearby island for some R&R. Can't wait.

hcg & progesterone

After my post yesterday I continued to cramp pretty badly, and it continued all day. I bled throughout the day as well - mostly dark, none was bright red, but it was still very scary. I finally called my midwife at 9pm and she said while it could be an "ominous" sign, it wasn't definitive. So today I went and got my beta - my hcg is 447 (not bad) but progesterone is only 4.26 (horrible!). So today I start on progesterone supplements.

I'm just so mad because when I did my CD3 blood work my progesterone "looked good." I told my midwife at the time that I had to supplement last time and wondered if I should do it again, and she sort of waved it off and said something like, "do it if you want."

Now here we are and my levels are dangerously low. This particular midwife is revered in this community as THE BEST, so how could she have missed this?

At any rate, I'm feeling better today. I bit of spotting when I wipe but no real cramping, and I'm still queasy and bone-tired. I just want to run home and take my first progesterone supplement. It's so hard just to sit here while I know my levels are so low.

What a ride.

5 weeks, 3 days

I'm a wreck today. Around 11am I had some pretty horrible cramps, then about an hour ago I had some spotting. I'm exhausted, but didn't have coffee for the first time so who knows the real reason for the fatigue.

I also talked to my dad. My mom told him yesterday, and instead of saying congrats or anything positive, he reminded me how much could still go wrong. Oh right - this is why I didn't tell anyone the first go around.

I'll try to go take a nap, or at least read a bit. Trying to stay positive...

It's a BFP!

I can't even believe it. I bled what I thought was a light period this week (spotting at first but then bright red for 2-3 days before it was gone), but I kept feeling symptoms. I was so mad about feeling queasy and pinchy - I figured the queasiness was from being sick but I was starting to get worried about all of the pinchy feelings I was having in my ovaries and uterus. Then yesterday, at work, I was having breast soreness, a weird taste in my mouth, and was incredibly dizzy. I did some research and found out that bleeding is sometimes normal, so when I got home I decided to take one last pregnancy test. I couldn't believe my eyes, but there was no doubt a positive!!

My bbt was down yesterday, so between that and the bleeding, I'm trying not to get too excited. But man, that's hard. I want to scream it out loud to everyone! I'm pregnant!

It's Saturday and I'm at work all day, so I have to wait until Monday to take a blood pregnancy test. It can not come soon enough.

We joked that with our first child I got a tlp (tiny little positive), but I can honestly say this is a true BFP. I'm so grateful and happy, but cautious.

danger zones

I'm 8DPO today, or 7, depending on what chart you're reading. I'm trying not to be overly obsessed but of course that's all I can do. The last couple of days, all I've wanted to do is clean, purge, and organize. So today, I tackled the office. I moved a large desk, recycled a bunch, and tried to organize in a way that makes more sense (and that will encourage us to use the space more effectively). I supposed it's my way of getting control of something - anything, really, because I have no control over whether I'm pregnant or not.

The thing is, I shouldn't be moving heavy furniture, right? In fact when I did it, I got this horrible pinching down low, and it scared me to death. So now I'm convinced that I just jostled the implanted egg (that I don't actually know is implanted or not) and ruined the whole thing. Now it's something new to obsess about, and I've been looking up dangers of heavy lifting while ttc all night.

Day 8. I can't really test until day 12, and even that might be too early. Why can't I just sleep for the next few days and wake up when I can test?

Man oh man - this is ridiculous stuff.