1 Down, 9 More to Go

Centimeters, that is! Whatever happened on Sunday night, it resulted in my cervix being 1 cm dilated and 50% effaced. You know what that means? It means that things are really happening! My body is getting ready to give birth to a baby. Insane.

Now, my doctor was quick to mention that it doesn't mean I'm about to go into labor. There are women who walk around at 3-4 cm dilated for weeks without making any other progress. However - remember back in February when the Maternal-Fetal Medicine doctor first mentioned induction to me? And then in July, when they changed the plan a bit and said that I could probably go to 40 full weeks and then be induced, as opposed to doing it early? Well, my feelings about inducing labor have been mixed from the very beginning. Inductions apparently work best when your body is beginning to go into labor a little bit already (when your cervix is, ew, "ripe"), and have the highest rate of complications when your cervix is still long and closed and the induction process has to start from scratch. My OB had warned me that if we got to 40 weeks and the baby was still just hanging out in my belly with no indication of busting out anytime soon, he might not want to start an induction because the last thing we want is (and this is a direct quote) "a long, hard labor followed by a c-section." Um, yeah, let's not plan for that.

But! As of yesterday, we know that my cervix is already beginning to change and my body is tentatively getting ready to give birth. I wouldn't necessarily want to induce today, but I'm already in a better position for an induction than I could have been at this stage. And I might go into labor on my own anyway, who knows...

24 Weeks

Well, unborn child, we made it. Today you are - probably, maybe, depending on a lot of things - considered viable to live outside of my body. At least, viable enough that we would all fight for you if you decided to emerge today. But I want to make this point crystal clear:

DO NOT COME OUT NOW. DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT COMING OUT NOW. I DO NOT WANT TO MEET YOU FOR AT LEAST 12-14 WEEKS. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?

You've been holding Tae-Bo and Jazzercise classes in my belly for the past few weeks, and I think they should continue. Isn't it cozy in there? Don't you enjoy waking up every morning with a flurry of kicks when I drink a glass of orange juice? Hasn't it been fun to listen to the muffled sound of my voice as I complain about my back pain to your dad? Rumor has it you have a couple of thumbs in there with you - want to practice sucking them in peace for a few more weeks so you're totally prepped to start drinking milk from my magical boobs in the fall? You can practice your yoga moves and get a nice uninterrupted snooze whenever you like. I can be working at my desk on spreadsheets and you can just nod right off, which is awesome when you think about it, because that behavior will be frowned upon when you get older. I can even work on not sneezing so loudly that it wakes you up (sorry about that!)

Besides, if you came out right now, we would have nothing for you to wear besides this single novelty onesie that's sitting in the top drawer of what will eventually become your dresser. Your room consists of a single rolled-up carpet, a bookcase in pieces, the aforementioned dresser with the onesie in it, and a free bottle I got from the maternity store - it's not nearly as nice as the inside of my uterus, even if there tends to be less placenta on the walls. Now that we have a bit more confidence in your impending arrival, I promise we're going to start getting you stuff like a bed and a carseat. And I will read one of those parenting books I bought. So many projects! We're very excited to meet you.

JUST NOT RIGHT NOW.

Make It Pink! Make It Blue!

My favorite movie growing up was Sleeping Beauty. Okay, fine - one of my favorite films even as an adult is Sleeping Beauty. It's so fifties-tastic in style and has a happy ending and I really identified with Merriweather, one of the three good fairies. In fact, I identified with her so much that I always rooted for Princess Aurora's dress to be blue rather than pink. Remember that? Merriweather keeps magically changing the gown to blue, then Flora zaps it with her wand and it goes back to pink, and so on and so forth, until this is the result?

(Full disclosure: as a child of the '80s, I actually thought 

this splattered look was the best one of all.)

This is not to say that I dislike pink. I am always faintly embarrassed to look at my closet and realize how many of my clothes are varying shades of pink. But blue is the color of the sky and the sea and it's always been my favorite. And now, it is the color that will inevitably be most associated with... our son. Yes, you read that right:

We're having a boy!

A boy who has ten fingers, ten toes, a normally shaped palate and feet, and who was so active during the ultrasound that we had no problem taking a peek between his tiny legs. I was actually the one to identify his, um, personal region - the ultrasound tech and I both started laughing since it was so obvious. So there you have it. The tiny creature who keeps kicking me (he was especially active during this week's Game of Thrones episode and appears to support Stannis more than the Lannisters, whatever that might indicate) will someday, we hope and pray, be a man. How weird, and how wonderful.

The Quickening (Not a Horror Movie, I Swear)

A few weeks ago, lying in bed drifting off to sleep with my hand on my belly hoping against hope for some sign that the baby was still alive in there, the thought occurred to me that once the kid starts kicking, he or she (hopefully) won't stop. Drowsily, I wondered if that would be annoying. But it'll probably be balanced out by how cute it is, right?

Well, I am here to tell you that our baby has started kicking me. It is indeed highly reassuring and adorable. It is also at times distracting and, yes, just a wee bit annoying. (Sorry, unborn child! I really do love you a whole lot, I promise. It would just be easier to concentrate on work if we could coordinate a bit when you decide to dance a jig. For instance, while I'm sitting at my desk responding to emails - fine. In the middle of giving a PowerPoint presentation - less helpful.) Yes, I know that it's way more distracting to have a screaming baby on my hip than feel a few wriggles in my belly, but I don't intend to give many work presentations while holding our child once he/she emerges into the world... at least, that's the plan! I'm getting visions of Diane Keaton at the beginning of Baby Boom when she brings her daughter to the office and hilarity ensues.

What does it feel like? Good question. I would say it's one of those things that you'll just know when it happens to you, but that's totally a lie. The first time I felt something weird in my belly that was remotely distinguishable from gas bubbles or other general digestive activity was early in the morning at 18w3d. It was before I had eaten anything and there was nothing else going on besides - tap. Tap tap. Hmm, I thought. Nothing happened at 18w4d, but at 18w5d in the middle of the afternoon I felt the same sort of tapping. It happened briefly and then disappeared. 18w6d I made a strategic mistake and ate a buffalo chicken sandwich for lunch; any tapping the rest of the day was rather obscured by the heartburn and general gastrointestinal protest that followed. But 19w0d was full of activity. Tap tap tap. Pause. Tap tap. Pause. Wriggle. Pause. Tap wriggle tap tap.

The other thing that made me think it was the baby moving was the location. At this point, my uterus is a pretty darn obvious structure within my belly, especially when I lie down. And this is the only part of my story that does come close to suggesting a horror movie (since I think we can all agree that "The Quickening" would make a great title) - the taps and wriggles were coming from inside the uterus! And then they turned on the radio and heard about an escaped serial killer and they found a hook on the door handle! But no, seriously, it's hard to ignore this giant thing in my body that's making me resign myself to wearing only maternity clothes from here on out. And when that thing starts moving a bit, it's hard to miss.

So there you have it! Now, instead of wondering appointment to appointment if the baby has died, I get to wonder every few hours "Hmm, is it still alive in there? When was the last time I felt anything?" But I'm still really glad that we've passed this milestone, right around the time I would have expected it. Strong work, baby! Keep it up!

Madame la Propriétaire

A quick update because I'm at work - I've had no Internet the past few days. Why? Because we bought a house! It's lovely and a little intimidating and now I have an answer to people who ask if we've gotten anything for the baby yet: why yes! We got the baby an entire house! Honestly, I think the members of the family who will benefit the most from this new development are the cat and dog, but Harry and I are pretty happy too. Or we will be once we get some curtains up in our bedroom. I never would have made it as a pioneer, waking up with the sun, argh. If I could just remember where I packed that sleep mask...

Chillin' with Pregnant Women... When You Are a Pregnant Woman

I spent the early part of this week at a work conference, and of the 150+ people there, at least three others were ladies sporting the same "spring casual/swallowed a basketball" look that I have also lately adopted. Their bumps were varying sizes and hard to mistake for anything else, but I'm totally paranoid about asking a woman if she's pregnant unless I see an actual baby emerging from her, so I managed to say... nothing. I talked with them all at various times, I was polite and friendly, we discussed business, and not once did I ever mention that we might both have a fetus or two growing in our respective bellies. But, then, neither did they. Which leads me to a few observations:

- I'm still kind of shy about all this pregnancy stuff.
- I think it's not related to the infertility/IVF, actually. I mean, best case scenario, I would have been approaching them to join as members of the "we recently had unprotected sex!" club. Ummm....
- I feel like my belly is huge, but it's clearly not so big that I appear unequivocally pregnant (yet).
- Other pregnant women are also reluctant to ask someone else if she's expecting, perhaps because they're equally sensitive to the issue.
- What are we really going to say to each other? "Hey, you look like you're knocked up. Are your boobs covered in grotesque blue veins?" "Yes! How did you know? I'm also constipated, let's talk about that!" I ended up talking about the pregnancy most with women who had young children, who were offering advice on daycare and breastfeeding and very well-intentioned childcare stuff that I was able to nod and smile and take with several grains of salt. It seemed easier that way.
- Or, maybe I'm just a wimp and should have said something.

In other milestones, I had a very distant acquaintance actually break into a conversation I was having with a friend and say "Congratulations! Was it planned?" I was too shocked to do anything other than answer her with a firm "Yes." And then, classically, I came up with about 50 assertive-verging-on-nasty responses to her question right as she was walking away. Oh well. Other opportunities will come up in the future, I have no doubt.

Our NIAW Pregnancy Announcement

So, at 15 weeks (with a belly measuring over a week ahead of that), it's getting ridiculous to expect that we'll be able to continue hiding the pregnancy for much longer. Therefore, despite learning about our most recent terrifying complication, we've gone forward with announcing our big news. We're kind of rolling it out in phases, especially since we're not terribly frequent users of Facebook, so we've been telling some of our nearest and dearest by email. It's better than carrier pigeon, I guess, plus it allows me to be as overly-detailed and wordy as I want! I kind of feel like a belly picture or ultrasound printout actually wouldn't be worth a thousand words in this case, know what I mean?

A few paragraphs from our email that touch on infertility awareness appear below. I started with a Very Short description of the events that led us here, and ended with what I hope didn't read as a heavy-handed public service announcement. Anyway, here is how we combined telling people about our bun in the oven with National Infertility Awareness Week:

...

...I wanted to tell you this story rather than just shouting from the rooftops "We're having a baby!" for a few reasons. First of all, infertility is pretty common. I hope that we have already soaked up all the bad mojo on your behalf, but in case we didn't, please know that you are not alone. Not every couple is made up of a man and a woman to begin with, and even that is no guarantee of success. Assisted Reproductive Technology (which is a huge, varied, and growing field) is becoming more and more accessible, particularly in states where it must be covered by insurance.

Also, I expect that many of us will become parents someday, and of course I hope that you find it an enjoyable process from start to finish! If this is the case, please, please, please do not forget that not everyone is so fortunate. Harry and I are so grateful that the technology for IVF exists, and that it worked for us on the very first try - in one sense, this makes us very lucky indeed. But there's nothing lucky about infertility overall, and the stigma attached to it is really unacceptable. We want you to know that we experienced this problem and this process, that we survived it together, and we want to thank you for the support you offered simply by being our friends during this time.

...

That last sentence goes double for you, fellow bloggers.

Copy That, We Have Visual Confirmation

So although I was genuinely shocked yesterday when I got my lab results, I will confess to you now that it wasn't the first inkling I'd had that something weird might be happening down in ol' Uterustown. The sequence of events was as follows:

Monday - Embryo transfer in the morning, lay like a slug on the couch the rest of the day staring at the picture of my blastocyst. Cramps start around 3 PM.

Tuesday - Cramps continue and intensify.

Wednesday - Cramps continue and start to taper off in the afternoon/evening.

Thursday - Cramps are gone. Totally convinced that nothing was happening, besides the increasingly worrisome pain in my right leg.

Friday - Told I had a DVT in my calf and all hell breaks loose. Upon arriving home at 7 PM, decide to take a HPT even though it's only 4dp5dt since the result might have a huge effect on my treatment for the clot. It's negative, as expected. I sigh and toss it in the trash.

Saturday - Come down with a raging cold. Now I'm sneezing and coughing and my leg hurts and I'm lying around watching reality TV generally feeling sorry for myself. Near the end of the day I'm fooling around on my iPad and decide to Google side effects of Crinone, the progesterone gel I'm using instead of progesterone in oil. Sure enough, breast tenderness and enlargement are listed, which explains why the girls are starting to ache a bit. But then I look at a few message boards where women have discussed their experience with Crinone and most of them mentioned that their breasts started to hurt within a day or so of beginning Crinone, whereas mine only began aching a week and a half later. Huh. Before I go to bed, I take another HPT. It's also negative. This time I leave it on the edge of the sink and go to sleep.

Sunday - Harry was gone overnight, which was a good thing because I woke up early due to all the sneezing. This time I have some pretty concentrated urine to use for a test, so I take another one. It's negative again, so I flop back onto the bed and start Googling "6dp5dt BFN" to see whether it's possible that I might still be pregnant despite the negative result. But the cat is crying for his breakfast and the dog needs to go out for her walk so I drag my congested self out of bed to put in my contacts and start the day. I look back at the test and I see - no. No, wait, it's impossible. There's something there. It's a line. It's a faint line, but it's there. Wait, really? I have other tests under the sink. My hands are shaking so badly I can hardly get the box open. I take out a First Response Early Result, which is apparently the gold standard of early home pregnancy tests. While I'm waiting for the results, I compare the 6dp test to the 5dp test and the 4dp test. When you line them all up next to each other, you can see that there were very very faint lines after all. If I had seen them earlier, I would have chalked it up to wishful thinking or an evaporation error. I look back at the FRER. There are two lines on it. It's real. This is happening. I walk back into the bedroom and stare at my surroundings for a moment, bewildered, and then burst into tears. I think of Emma Thompson at the end of Sense and Sensibility when Hugh Grant tells her that he's not married and finally professes his love. I am not the only one crying. The cat is now standing on the bed meowing at me at the top of his little lungs that I am late in serving him breakfast. I can hear the dog down in the kitchen starting to whine that she needs to be let out. There is no choice but to start the day - pregnant. I am doing all of these things while I am pregnant.

When Harry comes home, I am incredibly impressed with my acting abilities. I'm in the kitchen doing food prep for the Superbowl later that night and I make some remarkably normal small talk. I say that I need his help changing the sheets on the bed and he follows me upstairs. We're standing next to the bathroom when my act starts to falter. I say weirdly "Oh, and there's something else I wanted to tell you" and I push the door open. I've lined all the tests up on the edge of the sink, including a digital with an unmistakable "Pregnant" result. He walks in, takes one look at them, and throws his arms around me. We're happy. We're freaked out. We're cautious because the lines are so faint. We're debating when to have a baby shower. We're wondering whether we should buy a house. We're speculating about whether it's a boy or a girl.

For your viewing pleasure, here's the picture of the FRER at 6dp5dt:

And here is the progression of Wondfo tests from 4dp5dt to this morning:

And while everything looks promising so far, I want to say that I have been convincing myself about once every hour since Sunday morning that this is a chemical pregnancy. Or that I am destined for an early miscarriage. Or a stillbirth. I'm so freaked out about all the things that can go wrong. I feel like I have never read a blog written by a woman who went through one IVF cycle and actually had a healthy pregnancy at the end of it. And those Wondfo tests are particularly worrisome: um, they are nowhere near as dark as I would like. If the amount of HCG in my body is doubling every day, then why aren't the lines twice as dark? I'm out of FRERs and I've debated buying more just to put my mind at ease, but that seems silly since my clinic is going to give me a much more accurate result after my second blood test tomorrow morning. And they're going to keep testing me to make sure my HCG keeps increasing, and then do ultrasounds to make sure that the pregnancy is progressing normally, and the reality is that this is a level of uncertainty I am just going to have to live with until the day I hold my baby in my arms. Then a whole new level of worrying will begin!

The only thing that helps is repeating a mantra that I've seen recommended for women who are pregnant again after a loss: "Today, I am pregnant." And it helps - today, I am pregnant. Today, I am grateful. There is nothing I can do except cultivate patience and calm for the tiny person growing in my belly. In a way, I think that everyone who gets pregnant after struggling with infertility has already struggled with a loss - the loss of our innocence. I feel joy about this pregnancy, but I know it can be taken away in an instant, so my joy is nearly equal to my terror. I also feel honored to have received so many positive comments on yesterday's post - thank you, thank you, thank you all. I hope to have more good news to report soon.

Beta Results: I'm Pregnant

So. Um. I'm pregnant. My beta HCG at 7dp5dt, or 12dpo, was 54. That's two days earlier than they normally would have tested, and even at 14dpo they consider anything above 25 to be positive. So that's happening.

In other astounding medical news, the ultrasound yesterday afternoon could not find the clot in my leg. They were quick to caution me that this result doesn't mean there's no clot, so I need to have additional ultrasounds to make sure it wasn't a false negative. They saved the images from the original scan and everybody agrees there was a clot there as of Friday, and clots take several months to go away, so it may have moved (to where?!?) or it may be a problem with instrumentation. I'll probably have my next leg ultrasound on Monday 2/13 but for now they are not starting me on Lovenox or anything else.

Anyway, I may or may not be growing a clot, but I am definitely growing a baby. Holy... [fill in expletive of choice here].

Welcome, 2012!

May you be:
joyful
peaceful
eventful...

Happy Hanukkah!

This is my favorite Hanukkah song:

I will admit, I always envisioned playing this in the car while I was driving around with my children - it's such a catchy tune and a great way to memorize the blessing for Hanukkah candles. I also like the part about how "with the jingle bells and the toys, and the TV shows and the noise, it's easy to forget - at the end of the day, our whole family will say these words for Hanukkah." I really want to participate in my children's Jewish childhoods and build a Jewish household for them, so this year's celebration will be a little bittersweet. And yes, it has me thinking more about actually having a baby as, you know, a positive development. Really, a baby? A baby. Whoa.