Oh Hey By the Way . . .

I had a baby! Over three months ago! Her name is Luna. She is amazing. Being her mom is amazing. Most of the time, anyway. She is finally napping in a location that is not on my body! What a good little baby. First month was hard with me recovering from a rather traumatic 32 hour natural-until-after-5-hours-of-pushing labor and birth. I could hardly walk for two weeks. Then sweet babe was not gaining weight so the next month or so involved lots of lactation consulting, obsessing over my milk supply, nursing and pumping and bottle feeding 24/7, etc. But we got through it and now things are getting easier day by day, and I am just loving life with her so much. I get to be home with her and see each adorable smile and hear each clever coo and gaze into her gorgeous eyes and kiss her precious cheeks. Cannot. Get. Enough. I wish I could slow down time a little.

Mmmkay, now I should probably wake her up so she can eat the boobies. Love and luck to all!

39 Weeks!

I am 39 weeks pregnant and full-term by any definition. This time last year I never imagined this was even possible for me! I can’t believe my sweet girl could come at any time now. We are planning to give birth at a birth center with our midwives; I am really hoping everything goes smoothly so we don’t have to transfer to the hospital, but no matter what, I know I will soon by holding my newborn daughter in my arms! Love her already!

Anatomy Scan: Check

Today was the dreaded anatomy scan. I managed to put it off until 22.5 weeks, partially because of scheduling difficulties and partially because I just didn’t really want to know whether something could be wrong with my baby girl. BUT it had to be done or else I wouldn’t be able to deliver at the birth center.

I wore my lucky elephant necklace my sister gave me and my harmony ball/Mexican bola so baby girl could listen to soothing happy jingles. And I guess I needn’t have worried, because everything was perfect. All her little limbs and organs are there and developing how they should be. We saw her sweet little face and her cute little hands and feet. She even signed “I love you,” I swear! She was moving like crazy and the ultrasound techs were laughing trying to chase her down to get the images they needed. They also assured us that she is a “cutie” and that yes, they can tell an ugly baby when they see one. Ha!

And baby girl was still a baby girl. 🙂

Both my husband and my mom came along to the appointment for moral support, and we all were just giddy afterward. They gave us a huge reel of pictures to take home with us. I was hoping we’d be able to get some video–my mom did get a little clip before they told us we weren’t allowed to record. But that’s okay–it was so much fun just watching her flip around on the screen.

She was measuring about a day ahead–I think they estimated she weighs 1lb 3oz. Big girl! She’s doing such a good job growing in there. Keep it up, little one!

Team Pink!

Hubby orchestrated a highly entertaining gender reveal party for our family yesterday. He had called the lab a few days ago to find out what we were having and had managed to keep it supersecret–I had no idea!! He banished me from the kitchen while he baked a cake from scratch with either raspberries (girl) or blueberries (boy) as the filling.

I was crying way before I cut into the cake because I just couldn’t believe we’d made it to that point. Right before the big reveal, everyone was like, “Are you excited??” “You look so serious!” I AM TRYING TO KEEP MY SHIT TOGETHER, PEOPLE! PLEASE GET YOUR CAMERAS OUT OF MY RED, TEAR-STREAKED FACE!

I cut open that cake to find four layers of…….raspberries 🙂

I was pretty surprised–I didn’t realize how much I’d been thinking it was a boy until I found out it was a girl! My sister and I had both had visions of boys. Just goes to show: we clearly are not psychic. But we couldn’t be more thrilled. I still can’t believe we’ll be meeting our DAUGHTER in January!! Sweet baby girl 🙂

Sixteen Weeks

And four days, because you know I’m counting.

My baby’s heart is still beating! Thank you gods, thank you universe! I had seen it on the ultrasound, but I hadn’t heard it until today. A healthy 140 beats per minute. And I’ve started to feel the baby move . . . just little ticklish prods every so often. I’m so happy I could cry! In fact, I do. Often.

I haven’t announced my pregnancy to the world yet. I’ve been feeling a bit superstitious about it. But maybe I will now. I’ve got a cute little bump that people are probably starting to wonder about anyway. It’s kind of dwarfed right now by my massive boobs, but oh well.

We’re going to find out the sex of our baby soon too . . . I can hardly believe it. Is this happening? Are we really going to have a baby this time? My own little son or daughter? Seriously, whoa.

I’m Alive, and I Have News!

It’s been quite a while. After miscarriage number two, I basically went into hiding. I thought something was wrong with me, that I would never be able to sustain a pregnancy—my doctor was talking about problems with my lining and that there wasn’t much they could do to treat that. I spent Christmas apart from my husband because I couldn’t bring myself to be part of my sister-in-laws’ twins’ first Christmas as I was literally miscarrying. And I took a LOOOOOOOOONG break from the Internet.

But….we did another FET cycle in April, with the endometrial scratch procedure and extra hormone supplements. I got pregnant. FINALLY my HCG levels were rising on schedule. We saw baby’s heartbeat at 7.5 weeks. And today, at our first midwife appointment at 12.5 weeks, we saw baby movin’ and wigglin’ all over town! I know we’re not out of the woods yet. But we’re past that 12-week milestone, and I have a lot of hope that this baby will hang in there until January 2015.

Normally the midwife would just use the Doppler to listen to the heartbeat, but she couldn’t find it, so she switched on the ultrasound and also seemed to be having difficulty finding baby. CUE MOMENT OF ABJECT TERROR. Eventually we realized that my uterus is not down low in my pelvis, it’s all the way up by my belly button! It just wasn’t where anyone expected it to be, but once we found my uterus, we saw baby inside it and everything was fine. WHEW!

Congratulations to all of you who have had or are expecting your little ones, and luck and strength to those still waiting. Endometrial scratches/injuries are not pleasant but highly recommended if it’s something you haven’t tried! 

Yes, It’s Happening Again.

Beta #3: 204, down from 213. I didn’t have much hope going in, but the worst part about this is that this makes two chemical pregnancy losses/early miscarriages in a row, with chromosomally normal embryos.There’s a very good chance this is not just bad luck and that something is wrong with my uterus, specifically my “endometrial receptivity.” We have three embryos left, but I’m afraid to risk losing more of them if something’s wrong, and the doctor said there was no good way to test for problems other than what we’ve already done. I just feel devastated. Defeated. A failure. What else is new?

Could This Be Happening Again?

Well, the good news is I’m pregnant. The bad news is that my beta did not double within 48 hours… or even within 72 hours. Beta on Friday was 116. Beta today (Monday) was 213. Almost, but not quite, and not enough to make me feel good about this pregnancy especially considering what happened last FET (beta levels dropped, resulting in m/c). I really wanted the results today to bring me peace, and instead I’m in limbo for another 48 hours. I want to cry; I want to throw up; I just want this baby to be okay. I don’t know if I can go through another loss, especially so close to Christmas. I just don’t know what to do. Oh and by the way, we only transferred one embryo, so there’s no “oh maybe two implanted and then one didn’t make it.” Nope. If anyone has a hopeful story to share, I sure would appreciate it.

To Pee or Not to Pee?!

So, ladies. Help me out here. My FET is coming up in just over a week, and I’m trying to figure out what I want to do about testing this time around. 

Last time around, I had bought pregnancy tests but ended up not POAS at all. I just wanted to be able to keep hoping, so I waited until the blood test. It was positive, which was an ECSTATIC HIGH. Then at my next beta test, I found out my levels had dropped and that I was basically miscarrying. DEVASTATING LOW. I had also POAS between my BFP and that next beta, and I remember being concerned that the line hadn’t gotten darker at all.

So what I’m wondering is, do you think I can mitigate some of that roller coaster effect by POAS starting a couple of days after transfer? I know my clinic frowns on this because they say “Don’t test at home! Even a positive pregnancy test doesn’t tell you anything.” And to that I say, well…it tells you if you’re pregnant, right? And maybe if that line is there and I see it getting darker I won’t feel so worried. Or maybe the line won’t be there and I at least won’t have spent an extra few days getting my hopes up. Or maybe the line will stay the same or get lighter and I’ll know to prepare myself for the same news as last time. Or maybe no matter what you do, you just can’t be prepared for what the outcome is going to be. So, I bought a bunch of pregnancy tests. But I haven’t decided whether I’m going to start POAS before beta day.

What do you ladies think? What is your strategy? I am starting to get so nervous about this wait, especially since it will end right before Christmas… I just don’t know how I’m going to handle it knowing what happened last time.

Family Woes

This is non-TTC-related, but it’s really upsetting me today. I feel like with the holidays coming up, family issues have been magnified, and being the peacekeeper that I am, I just don’t know what to do. My mom and her only sister have been estranged for over a year now; they wouldn’t even tolerate each other’s presence during the holidays last year. It’s shaping up to be the same situation again. My husband and I had thought it might be fun to host Thanksgiving this year at our house, but as we are still in contact with my aunt, that would have meant we would’ve had to take sides. Obviously my loyalties ultimately lie with my mom, but when I mentioned the thought of inviting her sister and letting it be her choice whether to come knowing my mom would be there, my mom wasn’t having any of it. She said she wouldn’t be forced to deal with the stress of trying to get along with her sister during the holidays. I wasn’t about to host Thanksgiving but exclude certain family members, so my mom said she would host Thanksgiving. Okay then.

The other family issue is that my mom’s partner and my husband don’t always get along. They are both men with strong personalities and strong wills, and they just clash a lot. My mom’s partner is basically my stepdad. I consider him part of the family. But a lot of times we don’t end up doing family things together because of this weird male rivalry that goes on. Both my husband and my mom’s partner are at fault, and it turns into a sort of vicious cycle where something Hubby did upset mom’s partner, and then Hubby thinks it’s ridiculous that he got upset about such and so, which makes Hubby upset, which makes him more likely to upset mom’s partner, and vice versa. Mom and I are continually trying to smooth things over so we can be a normal family and do things together without it being a testosterone-fueled standoff situation. My mom and I have similar easygoing, peacekeeping, keep-everyone-happy type personalities. And Hubby and mom’s partner have similar opinionated, extroverted, can-dish-it-but-can’t-take-it personalities. Get two of the latter types of people in a room and you can guarantee they’re going to be like oil and water. So this is what we’re dealing with, and it’s affecting my relationship with my mom because I feel like my husband isn’t welcome in their household, and she feels like her partner isn’t welcome in ours. So, great.

I didn’t really realize the extent to which this was a problem until my mom told me her partner was still holding a grudge about something that happened a couple of weeks ago, which didn’t seem like a big deal to anyone else. And now I’m realizing I’ve probably compounded the problem by agreeing to go to Hubby’s folks’ for Thanksgiving this year instead of having Thanksgiving with my mom. She probably thinks it’s because we don’t like her partner. It’s not. It’s because Hubby didn’t want to do what we normally do, which is have early Thanksgiving dinner with his parents and late Thanksgiving dinner with my mom. (And let’s be honest, I don’t want to rush around trying to do two Thanksgivings in one day either. I just want to make everyone happy.) And since Hubby’s brother got a divorce from his controlling ex, his family will finally be all together for Thanksgiving and it was really important to Hubby that we go. Plus, he promised me Christmas Eve with my family.

I’m the type of person who feels like she should be able to fix everything and find a way to make everyone get along and be happy. But I’m failing at fixing this. And I feel guilty about the fact that I can’t make everyone happy even for just these couple of holidays. Which is completely illogical, I know! But there it is. And of course with my hormones being all messed up, I’m super emotional about it.

So this week, my mom and sister invited me to hang out at my mom’s place, and my sister invited my husband, and then my mom uninvited him because her partner had some beef with him and didn’t think it would be a good idea for them to be in close contact. I can’t even hang out with my family without it being a huge deal where we have to like, keep these two men in separate stalls! So whatever.

Are y’all’s families as crazy as mine? Please tell me I’m not alone.