Not How I Planned It (hope it will be OK)

the one in which i indulge my first world whine...

2010-03-22T14:18:00.003-04:00

so, i don't like my job. i like the work that i do, but not my job. because i'm a government slave i can't just quit like i'd very very much like to. no, i have slightly less than 2.5 years left (but when cl comes back it will only be 2 yrs).

two years! t w o y e a r s. 2 yrs. holy hell.

i know that it's really a short amount of time overall. after all, when that date passes it will also mark two years already gone at this same job. and since i don't like it and don't care about advancement and have no reason to think i'll ever get a raise, it doesn't leave them that much leverage over me except, i guess, vacation time (which, actually, they've been pretty good about so far). i can ask for and may get schedule changes that would help me not hate it so much. i can leave ON my last obligated day and not look back.

and, it's alot better than alot of people's jobs. i do like the work. i'm not in a textile factory in bangladesh sewing soccer balls together 9 hrs a day 6 days a week until my fingers bleed and my lungs explode for $0.35 cents a day. and there's things to be said for the location...i like the house that i'm renting, i like my son's daycare, the lack of traffic is nice, the cost of living is somewhat lower than what i'm used to.

i have to try and keep that stuff in mind or the next t-w-o YEARS will drag by interminably. i have applied to other jobs, but the interest has been somewhat muffled. it's out of my control, so i just have to let it be. i can't force another job and i'm limited in what i can do to make my current situation better so i just have to remember that it isn't that bad, and two years isn't that long.

right?

dubious achievement awards

2010-03-09T23:15:00.002-04:00

filed under parenting advice i don't intend to follow:

my stepmom to me: "you have to bite HIM to show him that biting hurts!" um...i'm not prepared to bite the baby, but thanks just the same.

my pediatrician to me: "don't give him a snack until he asks for it by name" ...considering little e's got a speech delay, i'm not prepared to starve him as well.

random stranger in the supermarket when e is twisting to get out of my arms: "well, on supernanny..." ok, but that is a TELEVISION show. they have editors and $hit. it's not literal truth just because you see it on tv. (and that goes extra-special double for YOU jenny mccarthy fans)

filed under no, seriously, why would you say that?
my mom to my sister regarding her twin boys: "one of them looks like robert d.owney jr., and the other looks like john g.oodman!" someone, get the lady a filter for the love of god!

fridays

2010-02-19T22:26:00.004-04:00

fridays are a tough day. E is frazzled from a long day at daycare, and i'm frazzled from a long day at work. he gets upset and cries in the car on the way to the house, and then is testy and mercurial once we get home. meanwhile, i'm so tired myself that it's hard to parent as my best self or even a reasonable facsimile of my half best self.

i'm reminded of this poem by ph.ilip lar.kin (seriously, how many of you reading are close to your parents now?)

This* Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery* to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as* you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

(and i havent heard re: the interview yet, but my plan is to contact them next week)

10% improvement--at what cost?

2010-02-16T23:21:00.002-04:00

so, the interview at the hometown clinic went ok. you know how sometimes you leave an interview with a warm fuzzy feeling? well, that didn't happen. i think some things would be better than my current clinic: for instance, i didn't get the impression that upper management was beyond-the-pale-insane. i can't even tell you the dread i feel even at opening my work email just to see what new and crazy thing is going down.

on the other hand, the resources to do the job i do are not as available at the new place. the support from other people would be less available. even computer support would be less available. and, just like where i am now, my feet would be to the fire over the great god of productivity. that won't go away.

and, some things would be worse. traffic is much much worse in the hometown. where i live now, i travel 20 min in one direction on the most heavily traveled road in the area to drop E off at daycare, and then turn right around and come back down the same road to go to work, twice a day. i can't even imagine traveling the beltway 4x a day, i would never have any life outside of the car. just going one direction today what should have taken 25 minutes took almost an hour.

so, overall i think the improvement would be about 10%-15%. is that worth moving everything, pulling e out of a good daycare, and doing it all while cl is gone? i don't know...right now it's an academic question since there's no offer on the table. but i guess one thing i know is that all clinics of the same type of one where i work are bad: the salient question is how bad?

good gracious, i know she MEANS well...

2010-02-15T21:40:00.003-04:00

so today was a hectic day to say the least. in town for 24hrs for a job interview (wish me luck, fingers crossed). poor ez has been running a not-insignificant temp for >48hrs. i took him to the dr's before the plane ride (ear infection: his third in 3 mos, plus the reactive airway disease) and made the plane by the very skin on my teeth. yep folks, i was still going through security, watching e's motrin get strip searched and otherwise violated, with 10 MINUTES to go until takeoff. the plane did not take off without me, and i stopped feeling like i was going to vomit from exertion from sprinting through the terminal about 15 minutes into the flight. good times, good times.

anyway, my dear mom (mdm) is supposed to pick me up from the airport at noon. my thought was we'd then go home and put poor sick baby to bed. i get off the plane, walk through security to baggage claim and no mdm. i call and she assures me that she's no more than 5 min to the airport. pause. was she supposed to bring the carseat?

*beat*

um, you are kidding me, right? seeing as how 22lbs doesn't meet the requirement for unrestrained seating in this or any other state (not even kansas, and we know how crazy them folks are), how about YES. YES i WAS hoping you brought the carseat so i wouldn't have to leave the baby in an airport locker. so, we ate lunch in the airport while stepdad drove back home, picked up the carseat and drove back to the airport to get us.

she means well, and she raised two children to competent adulthood, but ai-yai-yai! last time i visited she watched e for me so i could sleep in which is very nice of her...and when i got up to take him he was still in his pajamas (ok) but also still in his night diaper (ewwwww). oh well.

picky eaters?

2010-02-11T21:09:00.002-04:00

thanks for the responses on the previous post. :)

moms who have picky eaters, how do you get your babe to try new foods? e will eat most carbs, but very little else consistently. a glance at his daycare food sheet shows that most of what he ate today was oyster crackers and quartered grapes. there are about 15 foods he will reliably eat--thankfully one is a meat/bean stew--but i'm having trouble branching off from it. because he'll eat baked beans with meat, i tried a pot roast tonight and nada. i remind myself that toddlers need very little by way of nutrition or protein to keep going (which is somewhat helpful because if e is getting a consistent protein intake, i'll be darned if i know what it is) or the lot of them would have died out long ago.

mama's boy syndrome?

2010-02-10T22:52:00.003-04:00

e had his 15mos checkup yesterday, where he was diagnosed as being a little bit behind developmentally and a little bit of a mamas boy. specifically, he isn't walking or standing independently, and he only really has one spoken work that he uses in context: 'hi' (though he uses that word effusively and frequently). he does cruise on furniture and crawl at lightening speed, and he does point, grunt and gesture to communicate. but there is no escaping the fact that at 15mos, most kids are walking and have about 5-10 words.

the doc said it was a combination of e being who he is and him being a mamas boy. he thought that as a mamas boy. he advised me to carry him less, and to force him to ask for what he wants using words rather than rely on gestures and grunts. if he is still not walking at 18 mos or not really using speech we will get pt/speech therapy referrals.

even though it was what i expected to hear, it was still a hard checkup. no one likes to think that THEIR kid is going to be the kid on the other side of the slope--where things come later and with more difficulty vs the kid who picks things up quickly and easily. also, no one wants to think that they are inhibiting their kid and preventing them from reaching their full potential.

on the other hand, i am most likely going to ignore advice regarding not carrying him if he wants to be carried, or pretending i don't understand a gesture/grunt combo if i do. i feel like i know plenty of mamas boys/mamas girls and those kids walked and talked at younger ages than e. the motivation was intrinsic, not because teh parent forced it. i think that by pretending i don't understand him when i do it will just make both of us crazy. i don't really care if he walks at 16mos or 18 mos as long as he gets there. if he wants to be picked up i don't mind doing it; my feeling is that most kids at that age want to walk. i'm not sure that ignoring him when he wants to be carried will encourage walking so much as encourage crying.

but, i don't know. maybe i am preventing e from reaching his full potential. this is the very hard part about parenting: it's hard to know what you should have done until after the fact. maybe in a year i'll know that as i typed this he was 2 wks from walking so no big deal. or maybe i'll have a non walking/talking two year old and realize i should have done things completely different.

and then there's the question: does it matter later on? does the slow walker turn into the clumsy kid? the late talker into the dull child? or can you look at a group of 4yo children and not be able to tell the difference?

tired! (possibly a recurring theme)

2010-02-08T22:32:00.004-04:00

today was our first "real" day back home. i had to work and e went to daycare. it looked like this:
630a: get up
700: leave house, drive to daycare
730: drop e off at daycare, drive to work
8a-5p: work
530: pick e up at daycare, drive home
6p: home, feed e, read books, get ready for bed
7p: put baby to bed, shovel the gazillion inches of snow in driveway
730p: dishes, picking up
8p: "relax"
9p: realize i've fallen asleep in front of the computer.
930p: realize i've fallen asleep again in front of the computer, give up, go to bed fer realz.

home, home again

2010-02-07T20:30:00.003-04:00

well, we survived the trip back home from sarasota. e was a ham on the plane, and thankfully we weren't seated next to anyone who really wanted to be left alone--because that wasn't happening. e targets people in the area and says 'hi' with increasing urgency and frequency until he gets a response. he's not above flinging a hand onto your arm and saying hi really really loudly if more conservative attempts to get a return 'hi' haven't worked out.

the plane ride sucked a little besides the obvious because i'm now home for the duration sans hubby. and traveling alone with the baby inevitably leads to some kind of 'where's the husband type question' usually it came up this way:
well meaning person--where are you flying back from?
me--sarasota. was lovely.
WMP--oh, what were you doing in sarasota?
me--i went to a conference.
WMP--OH, how did the baby do at the conference/who watched the baby during the conference etc.
me--blarg.
don't feel like getting into hubs just left but was around during the conference, but the lie would be so extensive. so i did get into it, and it went fine but was tiring.

tomorrow is back to work and e's first super long day at daycare.
tue he has his 15mos checkup which is good because he's somewhat behind his age peers with both language (one word--'hi' though lots of babbling) and gross motor skills (not standing independently, but will cruise holding onto furniture). it'll be nice to either hear not to worry about it, or get an early intervention referral.

pictures

2010-02-06T20:33:00.002-04:00

today went somewhat better. for dinner he had oyster crackers because he would.not.try. the chowder that he would have greatly enjoyed. seeing has how he had mac and cheese the last 4 non-breakfast meals i thought i'd at least attempt something else. mind you, we had to leave the beach two days ago because he wouldn't stop eating sand. and today i had to fish both mulch and rubber playground chips out of his mouth. so for those of you keeping score at home: sand, he'll eat. sweet potatoes/corn chowder/hamburger he won't. what a weirdo.

they know more than they let on?

2010-02-05T23:34:00.003-04:00

either demons possessed E this afternoon, or he sensed something was up. his daddy left around naptime, and E woke up from his nap like a baby possessed. when he wasn't whining, he was hitting (a troublesome new "skill" he's picked up this week) and when he wasn't doing those he was screaming or wailing. of course, it rained today during our sunny fla vacay no less, so our go-to-the-park plans were scrapped in favor of just crawling around the hotel. of course, i had grand plans for myself tonight after e was asleep (gym, hot tub) and executed a grand 0 of those. all i did was hang out in the darkness of the hotel room plunking away on my computer. computer:1 me:0. maybe i'll do things tomorrow.

resurrected

2010-02-05T14:20:00.002-04:00

well, after a long hiatus i may be recharging up the old blog. my hubs just left for a stay over in the desert, and i thought this blog would be a good way of keeping in touch with our day-to-day life in addition to everything else: email, skype, carrier pigeon, etc.

i guess not much is new and everything is new. baby is napping and i'm blogging to keep my heart from breaking. how do you look into the face of a 6mos separation and keep going? well, right now i'm not. i'm kind of looking at it sideways and an hour at a time.

am contemplating big job change: move to maryland! another fqhc, but hopefully better than the one i'm at currently. second interview is next week, wish me luck!

pictures to follow, i promise!

a question for any random person that might happen to read and have some tech savvy: this blog is associated with my yahoo email, and i want to change it to be linked to my gmail. blogger will not allow. any ideas why?

should i move?

2009-07-13T23:12:00.002-04:00

we currently rent a house in a neighborhood we greatly enjoy. we're about 2 blocks to the library, 4-5 blocks to the local Y, and maybe 4-5 blocks to a big playground. during the summer we walk to the park every day, and take ez to the library play group twice a week. we've lived here almost a year and i'm just starting to make friends with other local parents with baybeez. the problem is the house. for one it's old (built in 1917) and dark--the carpet here is dark green and there's lots of dark wood trim. the house is also in need of repairs which our landlord is too broke to accomplish. some are annoying (i.e. none of the doors to rooms stay shut when you close them, incl the bathroom; our fence is falling down), some are even more annoying (some genius prior tenant nailed shut all of the windows on the first floor and then painted them closed for good meaure. so, we can't open the windows on the first floor). and some are downright blecchy (the sink and shower drains are reaally sluggish; drano has not helped).

there's a house for rent near here that i found out about through work. the house is beautiful. it was built in 2003, has three (THREE!) bathrooms (current place has one), three big bedrooms, all the doors stay where you put them, all the windows open, the drains function like drains ought, etc. it has a two car garage attached to the house which will be a great benefit in winter for lugging in the baby and groceries and it has tons of closet space. it has a second floor laundry room! the problem is the house doesn't have a neighborhood. it's like the developer was drunk when he drew up the plan. there's no sidewalks. the house has barely any yard, and there's no playground anywhere within walking distance. the closest library is only 1.8mi away but you'd have to drive to it because it's off a main highway. the closest park isn't that far away but you'd have to drive to it. the closest Y is five miles away.

i just keep going back and forth. on the one hand, in the winter when it's two degrees, it's better to have a nicer house because you have to drive everywhere anyway. and the house is so loverly. otoh, it has been so nice just to plunk ez in the stroller and go for long walks...there's no where to go in the other neighborhood and we'd have to walk in the road.

rent for both houses is the same.

to contracept or not to contracept? that is the question...

2009-04-22T20:42:00.002-04:00

so, firstly i'd like to point out that ez has recovered from the manhandlings of yesterday. he spent his day today as normal: drooling copiously, jamming his hands and anything else unlucky enough to cross his path as far into his mouth as possible, and practicing his new skill--shrieking. his mama, i fear, has PTSD. oh well.

anyway, as a veteran IVF'er, now post baby, i find myself in the odd position of deciding whether to proactively contracept. on the one hand, i would like another, but i'd like to wait until this one is no longer up 3x/night, every night. if the next one is also up 3x a night...well, that's 6x a night, at which point you might as well just give up entirely and enjoy the sleep-deprived visual hallucinations that creep in around the edges of your non-functioning state. maybe keep a thick pot of coffee on hand at all times. i believe i'd go slightly mad in relatively short order. so: yes to a second and yes to not now please!

but actively trying to prevent pregnancy seems odd to me right now. essentially, using bc means one believes that random, untimed, non-charted, unknown CM, non-ovarian stimulated, no-turkey-baster-in-sight type of s.ex could get them pregnant. and i'm not too sure about that. could random s.ex get me pregnant? it never has before. hell, even lots of timed/turkey baster style s.ex didn't do the job. using bc seems wasteful at best and smack full of hubris at worst. so, i dunno.

and i'm still waiting around to get the first baby AF yet, so who knows?

poor ez

2009-04-21T14:25:00.002-04:00

about an hour ago i was upstairs in the bathroom doing stuff. i had ez seated on the countertop/sink area facing me. he's not an independent sitter yet, so i was holding both of his hands in one of my hands to provide sitting support while i futzed with things with my other hand. of course, ez decided to suddenly arch backwards while aiming the back of his head at the mirror and i put ***SLIGHT PRESSURE*** on his hands to keep him from ramming his noggin into the glass.

i think i felt a little pop, but what isn't in dispute is that ez started screaming. panic crying. tears falling. wailing. i scooped him up and started singing to him and walking him but he just kept crying. i thought somehow i may have broken his wrist. when i was able to get my wits about me somewhat, i realized that i must have given him a nursemaids elbow. and, it did pop back in when i reduced it. and he did stop crying shortly thereafter. but, i feel like a giant shithead.

i guess on the upside, i broke him, but i fixed him, right?

the astounding thing is how little pressure it took both to cause the nursemaids and to fix it. i mean, most ER nursemaids i get are 3yo's who decide right then and there to either take off into traffic or unweight their bodies at target while mom or dad has them by the hand. you know, a significant force. oy. it was so easy to cause it makes me wonder why there aren't more 6mos olds with nursemaids. or maybe their mothers have more common sense than i have.

2009-04-07T22:38:00.002-04:00

mmmm...ducky...

hey! who turned out the lights on the baby??

so we survived The Colic. mamas of colicky infants, don't despair...it ends. we started seeing the light about 3mos and by about 4mos it was mostly dissipated. i'm happy to report at 5mos, ez is a mostly happy, fairly mellow baby. most days. and NO he doesn't sleep through the night. so, there's still improvement to go.

as a total aside rant: i *hate* when cashiers comment on my purchases. nothing makes you feel more like a tool than hearing 'WOW, those are EXPENSIVE batteries!' while sliding your ener.gizer li.thium 4pack across the scanner. so, cashier lady, not that you give a crap but i MEANT to pick these up far cheaper at ta.rget at least 3 different times over the past few weeks, but i keep forgetting, so it's down to get them here, now, or don't get them at all. so i made the painful decision to buy the overpriced batteries at your expensive little tienda here, can we let it go at that? i don't mention that however much you've spent on toothpaste, it wasn't enough.

emerging from the morass

2008-12-22T18:35:00.003-04:00

so, don't let anyone tell you different. the newborn period is very very tough. ez is a beautiful lovely baby, but he is NOT portable. he tends to be a bit screamy, especially in the evenings. so, cl and i don't go out in the evenings unless, maybe, the house is on fire.

we've also recently learned how important his regular daytime naps are...consequently we don't go out during the day much either. compounding this is the fact that ez's favorite nap spot is *on us.* sweet, yes, but incapacitating as well.

it is getting better though. now, at 8w, we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

long lost greeting

2008-11-19T19:28:00.003-04:00

please excuse my absence of the last 4 months. i've been busy! i know, who cares right?

well, please allow me to introduce EZRA, born 10/27 @ 41w, weighing 7lbs even. he is a delightful baby, despite his propensity to sleep all day and cry all night. i feel like a complete zombie. and the short, cold days DO NOT HELP.

anyway...yay! ezra!

yes, she did

2008-08-15T22:13:00.002-04:00

my mother actually said to me today 'you look like the goodyear blimp.' and when i took offense she said: 'fine. you don't. you look svelte.'

*headdesk*

i know she loves me and means well, but damn!

supposedly fun things (i'll never do again)

2008-08-14T15:38:00.004-04:00

APW with LJwas a blast. even the contract-o-rama that occured for about 2 hrs before the onset of the radi.ohead only diminished the pleasure slightly...and in retrospect was to be expected, given the lengthy history i have regarding drama of some sort or another involving radi.ohead shows. so: two thumbs up.

the trip to la.svegas with my long-suffering spouse immediately following apw as sort of a 'pre-babymoon' was a little less enjoyable. the spouse was lovely and the accomodations were nice. but, as no doubt smarter people than me have put together. la.svegas is in a desert. in august, day temps are about 108F on average and at night it 'cools down' to about 85. sometimes there is a breeze, which more or less feels like one is trapped in a convection oven. so, suffice it to say i didn't leave the hotel much. at least the olym.pics were on, and gym.nastics, which is my favoritist :). we also saw a few great shows including la mystere.

i have a dr's appt tomorrow to check on ms. contract-y. OH, and i am now taking the nif.edipine prophylactically just like i should. i'd say it works 85% of the time but when things really get going, it doesn't seem to me like it makes much of a difference at all. but who knows...maybe it would be even worse if i weren't tossing them back 4x/day.

not how i planned it, part dos

2008-08-03T22:00:00.002-04:00

tonight i started regularly contracting again, which led to stomach pain. previously its been the other way around. things did quiet down with as much fluid as i could possibly ingest (ugh, heartburn) and ni.fedipine.

i know ni.fedipine is supposed to be taken prophylactically...that is, you take it 4x/day to prevent contractions. i've been taking it in the evening once i feel contractions. taking it the right way makes me feel like a$$ though...headache-y and nauseous. it sort of seems to work if i take it the wrong way, just sometimes like tonight i've gotta get through rhythmic ctx first.

oy.

it would be *really* nice if i could just get to 36 wks. i'm only 5 wks away.

late and hoping to stay that way

2008-08-01T00:10:00.005-04:00

so, i know i'm about 4 yrs behind trends but right now 'new sl.ang' by the sh.ins is rocking my face off. (it is also in a sorta delicious scene from sc.rubs, which only adds to the allure).

so, i'm late and my poor, long-suffering spouse is early. last monday the bean tried to take after it's father when the omnipotent and ever-irritable ute started contracting, appropos of nothing. well, not exactly nothing. i had spent the day shuttling around airports and squashed in the middle seats of airplanes. and when i say 'squashed' i mean my seat mate to the immediate left needed to raise their armrest to fully accomodate their expansive girth. somehow during this debacle, i failed to intake a sufficient amount of fluid. le sigh.

so, fast forward 6 hrs and 600 miles, i got off the airplane and had a stomach cramp that nearly brought me to my knees. following quickly on it's heels, another. what commenced was a trip to the army hospital, an 8 hr stay in L&D triage, me contracting while slowly and not so slowly losing my mind, an IV, 3 bags lactated ringers, one shot of terbut.aline, a cervical check and gbs swab that felt something akin to a cross between getting friendly with the business end of a spade and and being manhandled by a three fingered sesame street puppet. while the endless search for the posterior cervix was commenced, my mom, there at the hospital with me, passed the time by offering helpful suggestions to the medical staff. some of the highlights: suggestion to place a "stitch" to bring my posterior cervix to a more anterior position in order to facilitate finding it with greater ease; endless incredulous queries as to whether i go through this every single time i have a gyn exam, and what the function of the several swabs were and when results from said swabs would be available. this, while i laid on my back, fists under my heinie, and tried to breathe normally and, you know,RELAX as the attending dug around my insides with excavating tools and the resident looked over his shoulder at the girl with the crazy anatomy. i kept saying: mom, shhh...mom, shhhh...mom....SHHHHHH!

anyway, the bean looked fine, hr reactive, cervix long and closed, fet.al fib.ronectin negative and somewhere between the second cervix check two hours after the first, the bags of fluid and the terbu.taline shot i stopped contracting. that night. only for the old ute to start up the next night with no loss of enthusiasm. i went back to the clinic yesterday to impress upon them that my fragile mental state would simply not tolerate contracting for the next 12 wks. i must have impressed them with a particularly wild-eyed gaze because i left with not only ni.fedipine, but also some macro.bid and a few ambien. :). hell, why not, eh?

for the record: duly noted

2008-07-06T21:45:00.003-04:00

dear brand-spanking-new-resident who has been an MD all of 5 days:

it is not my fault that you do not know how things work in an ER. your failure to put in cosigned orders before 5 minutes to shiftchange does NOT, i emphasize: **NOT** equal my emergency 5 minutes before i am supposed to leave work for the day. don't even THINK about asking me when x-and-so is going to get done if you didn't even bother to put the order in before 7pm. and no, we don't have a 'float nurse.' surely you are familiar with the complexities of health care in the modern era. nurses with no assigned patients who merely flit around ER's waiting for some a$$hole to put in last minute orders simply do not exist anywhere outside of your internal fantasy-land. i suggest the next time you feel you need something done absolutely immediately without fail you ALSO take the time to get your orders cosigned and posted in a timely fashion. d&ck.

it has come to my attention that i might be somewhat moody. this is true. i can admit to some moodiness on my part. however, i would like to note that i would be less moody if less provoked.

nur.sing wars--how tedious (rant)

2008-06-22T11:30:00.008-04:00

can i just say...UGH. or maybe UUUUUUGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

one of the message boards i regularly post to had an all out war for the last week on bf vs ff. i agree, and will not argue, that bm is the optimum nutrition for infants. there isn't really a debate, the science is more or less unanimous. what i will argue to the end of the earth though, is that ff is 'dangerous.' i think to say or allude that is at best misinformed and at worst treacherous. example: infants *can* and *do* grow and develop normally on a diet that consists of ff in whole or in part. this is not so where the main nutritive input is, say, diet soda. or even regular soda. formula DOES supply the caloric and nutritive support needed for infant growth and development, soda does not. whatever. either way, maybe ff is perhaps dangerous if you mix it incorrectly or use tainted water in the preparation, but to call it dangerous under normal circumstances in this country is absurd.

taking it a step further, in my experience, the infants that i've seen on a partial or full ff diet do not, as a whole, differ in any substantive way from their entirely bf peers. i also think that if you took a randomized sample of high achieving amer.ican adults, you could make no estimation of their infant feeding patterns with any reliability. you would be far more successful if you tried to guess the SES, race, gender or educational achievement of such individuals. i would argue that a distressed mother and an underfed bf baby is at far greater risk of poor outcome than a relaxed mother and a well-fed ff baby. after all, the underlying point is FEED THE BABY. babies need adequate food, end of story.

one could read the above and maybe think that i am pro-ff or anti-bf. i am neither. i am just not prepared to denigrate mothers who feed their babies in a way that works for them and the baby, however they accomplish it. some are aghast that mothers could elect to ff knowing that bf is better and label these mothers as misinformed or lazy. i whole heartedly disagree. people are NOT scientific models who are always able to perfectly enact ideal situations. in the real world, people are complex and their lives are complex. their choices are complex and exist in a realm of competing motivations that don't exist in scientific models. people make all kinds of suboptimal health choices for various reasons. they don't get 8 hrs sleep/night, they smoke, they overindulge in alcohol, they get sun exposure between 10a-3p, they eat fatty foods and not enough veg, they don't exercise at moderate intensity for 30min/day 5 days/wk, they watch more than 5hrs TV/wk etc. should we stigmatize all individuals not living at goal? should we assume that their failure is due to lack of adequate information or inherent slothiness? are *we* stone throwers living lives beyond scientific reproach? i believe that mothers who have found a way to rear their infants in a way that works for their family deserve our praise and support, not our scorn.

in a larger question, why can't women and mothers support each other? as long as the baby is being fed in a way that supports growth, why must mothers judge other mothers? what difference does it make to anyone outside of the mother/child dyad how that baby is fed? motherhood is so hard and such a long haul. surely we can support each other along this path, whether their babies are bf or ff.

update

2008-06-17T18:12:00.004-04:00

sorry for the long absence! every now and again (actually, just recently for the first time) i have a crisis of conciousness regarding my blog. it started out as a loss/IF blog, and then after the sucessful IVF cycle it sort of morphed into one of the few places i could unload my utterly all-consuming 'when-will-i-miscarry' dread.

i'm right now between 22 and 23wks, and it has started to occur to me that this could possibly happen. i'm jubilant about making it this far, but don't really want to post much in that vein because a) i'm concerned that the fertility god is so ornerny that giving voice to my internal celebration might be met with 'HOW DARE YOU' type old-testament retribution for my haughtiness. also b) what about our sisters still fighting the IF fight? i don't want to be disrespectful. finally c) there are things here and there i'd like to complain about (frikking WICKED A$$ heartburn, for one, and sciatica as a legacy of continued PIO shots for another) but does that take away from my greatfulness? i get caught up in loops and find it hard to post.

regarding my earlier post, i had not thought of the "birth" until recently. and then when i did think about it, my head was populated with images of poorly-trained, sleep-deprived, hero-complexed residents at the military hospital slicing open my perineum with rusty scissor blades and yanking on poor Bean's little head with whatever instrumentation happened to be handy: forceps, vacuum, shoe horn, etc. i eventually found a midwife practice in the area that took my insurance and who i believed would not unnecessarily instrumentate (a word?) my poor hoo-ha or Bean's skull. and now i think i may be moving in about a month to six weeks to accomodate a job. so, brand-new city, and starting all over again with trying to locate providers. le sigh. i wish i could magic the baby out when that time comes.

birth providers: wwyd?

2008-05-26T20:49:00.002-04:00

i could use your opinion or advice or reality check or something. i've thought around this situation so much i'm thinking in circles. this post is prob going to be too long too, as i sort things out.

so, i am on my husbands tricare insurance. it is military insurance, as he is currently on active duty. there is a huge military medical hospital near me (i'll call it army clinic--original huh ) where active duty and dependents give birth. the funny thing is, i have a history with this place even before my current involvement in it; i happened to spend 2 mos rotating there in L&D full time as an elective in nursing school. there are pros and cons to this place.

pros: it is completely, 100% covered. every lab, every test, every IV, every everything. all of the births i witnessed there were professional, and even the ones with unexpected turns of events were handled well. they also have a level III nicu, where i also spent time, and which i was impressed with.

cons: if i deliver at army clinic, there is no opportunity to meet the staff who would be present at my delivery ahead of time. none. there's no way even to narrow the universe of people it might possibly be. whoever will be with me that day or night is whoever is on duty that shift at army clinic. if my delivery crosses shifts, then the personnel that i've gotten to know the previous 12 hrs shifts as well. i have always known this about the army clinic, both because it was that way when i rotated there, and because they told us about it in 'orientation' . but, to be honest, it didn't bother me as much before, because i think part of me never thought i'd make it this far. now that i'm about halfway there, i'm starting to think i might make it the whole way. thus, the newfound concern.

another con about army clinic is they do things their own way: for ex, i could not get an NT scan through them at all, so i had to pay out of pocket for one through another provider.

what i'm worried about: what worries me is the instrumented vaginal delivery. as odd as it sounds, i'm really not worried about a planned c-sect. i have confidence that whoever is my provider is proficient at c-sections. further, i have a bicornuate uterus so my risk for c-sect is higher in the first place. i've made peace with that along time ago. frankly, i'm just going to be happy to have a real live baby, the planned c-sect doesn't bother me. in fact, if i could just plan a c-sect right now i wouldn't even have an issue. the vag delivery where nothing goes wrong doesn't bother me either. what worries me is the worst case scenario: the stuck baby, the crash c-sect, the bottoming out heart rate, the dystocia, the forceps, the vacuum, the episiotomy, the 4th degree tear, the retained placenta etc. etc. etc. THOSE are the situations where i want to be able to be able to concentrate on nothing but myself and SB, where i want to take for granted that my provider is skilled and qualified, and has done thousands of these before and i'm in good hands. in short, i want to be able to trust my provider so that in a worst case scenario, i don't also have to worry that they might not know what they're doing. its sorta like what nicole said in her thread, she trusts her doc to make the right call re: her induction. i want to do that too...but i have no opportunity to do that because i can't meet anyone ahead of time. instead i have to trust the institution that whoever is there when i'm there knows what they're doing. i feel like it's alot different to trust a whole clinic than to trust one person or even a group of people.

so, i wrote an email to my old ob-gyn whom i've known for-EVER and who has known me for-EVER and who did my laparoscopy. i have utmost trust in her. the problem is, her practice doesn't take tricare. i called the hospital where she delivers and they do take tricare, i just have to switch the version of tricare that i have. if the hospital didn't take tricare, i couldn't even contemplate this switch because it would just be too expensive. but they do. her flat fee is $3200 which includes prenatal appts, vag or c-sect delivery, and postpartum care. it's a significant discount from what she generally charges. labs/sonos are NOT included.

pros: trust is not an issue. i know her. she is very good, very skilled, very experienced. if she busted out the forceps, i would not worry that my babe would end up with a mashed skull. i know she would never cut a senseless episiotomy. she would always treat me with dignity and respect.

cons: $3200 is a LOT of money for us right now. especially when that seems to be a floor, not a ceiling, as what if i need extra labs/a sono at the end for some reason? money would suddenly become a huge factor in the delivery, where it isn't now. plus, i'm spending on what is essentially a luxury item. it's not like i don't have care and would have to pay for the delivery no matter what. i have full coverage, and would be not using my coverage (wasting it) and then paying out of pocket for sort of the same service. it's not money i have to spend.

there is one more option. i could ask her to recommend to me someone within the tricare network that delivers at this other hospital (not army clinic) that takes tricare. then i could try to meet everyone in this other practice in the next 20 wks to try and get comfortable with them. it would cost alot less, but i don't know if i can meet and get comfortable with someone or someones that fast. i'm sorta under the gun as i only have 20 wks left. i would have thought of all this before hand, but i really just wasn't sure i'd make it this far.

thanks for making it this far through this rambly post. now, wwyd?

bad reasons to have children

2008-05-19T22:15:00.004-04:00

i guess there are alot of really good reasons to have children--and probably twice as many really bad ones--but having comfort in your old age is probably NOT a good reason to have children.

my grandpa has two children (my mother and uncle), two grandchildren (me and my sister) and two great grandchildren (my sister's twins), but since the death of his second wife he just feels lonely. he definitely feels like his children and grandchildren don't visit often enough, and don't do enough for him when they visit. i know i'm guilty on this score...but since the first half of any encounter with him is chock full of guilt "who did you say you were again? my granddaughter? oooooohhhh, i thought my granddaughter FORGOT about me. it's been SO. MANY. WEEKS. since i've heard from you, i thought you didn't REMEMBER that you had a grandfather." cue repeat x10 minutes, or until my end of the conversation falls completely silent long enough for him to take note. (maybe he would use a different guilt tack if he were aware of how rampant alzheimers is among his peers where 'WHO did you say you were?' actually inidicates genuine confusion on the part of the inquisitor...but somehow i doubt it.)

anyway, one gets the feeling that the feckless children and grandchildren are something of a dissapointment to the grandfather. and, honestly, he has a point. i live close enough to him that i could and probably should visit alot more often than i do.

i guess it just makes me think that being a parent will probably bring you nothing like what you thought it would...or at least you can't count on it bringing you what you hoped for. you can hope to get something back from it at the end, but there are no guarantees. just ask grandpa nathan.

my a$$ really hurts

2008-05-08T22:33:00.003-04:00

so, the irony is thick being a health professional and all, but i'm pretty sure i gave myself sciatica with all of the self PIO injections into my buttocks. today i had excruciating pain with **walking**. that's right, walking. and since people tend to need to walk, i spent alot of today gimping around hurting quite a bit.

so, my sisters in the IF wars, watch where you shoot yourself because the sciatic nerve is unforgiving if tampered with.

in other PIO news i am just NOW--mind you, 6 or 7 wks since my last shot--gaining feeling back in the old top half of the tusheroo in general. for a while it was just straight numb, and then i'd have deep tingly itchy feelings, and when i went to scratch i couldn't actually feel my own fingers on my skin. now i get zings as the traumatized nerves and tissue slowly regain feeling, combined with feelings of warmth and itching. the rebirth of my a$$.

science babe seems to be doing ok, as far as one knows from the doppler, which is the good news at least.

jiving and surviving

2008-04-29T22:11:00.002-04:00

hello blogger my old friend
i've come to talk with you again.
because the blog as yet unwritten,
attached to the LOL kitten,
and the post, that was planted in my brain
had this refrain--
you must get your a$$ up from where it is sittin!!!

my only big news is that the NT screen that i got thanks to leah is neg. downs risk is 1 in 7901 and trisomy 13/18 is 1 in >10,000.

i also must say that the purchase of a doppler has done more for my fragile mental state than the SSRI's, relaxation tapes, and tepid baths combined. i realize i'm setting myself up for disaster by saying it (saying what? did somebody say something? ptu! ptu! ptu!).

this semester is KILLING me. praise jeebus that it's almost over. today my preceptor scolded me for not completing a history and physical on a brittle diabetic patient in under half an hour. well, my dear, you frequently fail on that score as well. so bite me.

but i digress. this weekend i will be at jazzfest. ste.vie won.der baybeeee!!!! heeyaw!

ultimate

2008-04-12T11:41:00.003-04:00

so i play a sport called ultimate frisbee. technically, it's a no-contact sport, but there is alot of incidental contact with other players and the ground. i've played for about 10 years, but haven't played at all this spring.

last night i stopped by a teammates for dinner after work and he asked me if i was going to play tomorrow. i said no and reminded him i was pg (he knew, but i don't look it so i figured maybe he forgot). neither he nor his wife (also on my team) gave me any grief about it, but the wife casually mentioned that she knows other women who played up to 5mos pregnant and even beyond.

the more i sat with that, the worse i felt. i love ultimate, and i hate letting my team down, but there's no way i could take the risk of even incidental contact. and to avoid all contact basicaly means taking no risks while playing. i've spent years trying to teach myself to play more aggressively, i don't want to start trying to play more passively. and it isn't worth the worry. if i did fall or get run into (which doesn't always happen, but always could) it would take days of reassuring sono's for me to even feel remotely ok. so i know i can't play. i can't even put myself in the mindset of the 5mos pg woman who does play...does she figure she won't have contact? does she just assume that everything will be ok if there is? otoh, i feel bad that maybe other pregnant women in my position are doing more, and maybe my paranoia is restricting me even beyond what i thought it was. it didn't occur to me that pg women played much past getting a hb (the limit i set for myself) and now that i know they do, it makes me feel a little bit bad about myself. :( oh well.

on unrelated good news, my doppler came last night and after i got a 9v battery for it this morning i heard the HB. strong, regular, 160's. i think if i can get the hb every morning maybe...maybe...maybe...i can let myself think beyond just a few days from now into the months ahead. maybe. i've passed other milestones where i thought that would happen and it didn't, but hopefully this will help.

stupidest...logic...ever (or, trying to get my NT scan)

2008-04-09T20:56:00.002-04:00

so, bad news first: i talked to the attending dr of maternal fetal medicine at BethNav on monday, voicing my concerns with being offered a distinctly substandard aneuploidy screen, particulary when such a policy is distinctly at odds with acog guidelines. she informed me that acog states merely that all pregnant women should be offered _A_ screen, not the _BEST_ screen...and they just simply have too many patients to do an NT on all. i told her that given the 80% detection rate for serum alone and 95% for both combined, they'd surely miss quite a few downs cases that they could have otherwise detected. she said they are aware of that, it's just how it is. she offered me a cvs though, which is essentially a core biopsy of the placenta carrying with it the attendant risk of damage to the fetus or m/c. so, i can't get a 5 minute, non invasive screen, but i can get an expensive, risky, labor intensive procedure i don't really need? interesting. maybe she offered it because she assumed i'd say no, which is of course what i'm saying.

the good news: i am getting an NT scan, paying for it out of pocket, and with the help of the lovely and talented Leah it should only be $300-$400. praise be for fellow stirrup queens with connections! the scan is next tues at 830a, wish me luck!

inspired or truly stupid...time will tell

2008-04-06T10:39:00.007-04:00

so, i think i'm going to order this doppler. it's a good one, and i lie and tell myself that it has another use besides my paranoia...i can use it on my patients on the rare occasions when that is necessary. surely a use that justifies the $550 price tag, nu?

not much up here. i'm still getting by sono to sono, hb to hb. 12wks tomorrow. tomorrow i'm also going to try and get the hb by doppler (similar model) after clinical. hopefully it won't be as agonizing trying to find it as last time, but will instead pop right up :).

i also don't look pregnant at all to anyone but myself. but last week my loving and adoring spouse did comment that i'm getting a bit fuzzy in the under-chin area. and yet, we're still married as of this week! i'm such a softie.

also: thanks to everyone for their suggestions regarding the NT screen madness. it is truly an astoundingly wretched policy to withhold the screen from those that want it. i looked into getting it elsewhere (i.e. on the civilian side) and it is prohibitively expensive. i would have to be seen by my old ob-gyn, pay out of pocket, be referred for a sono and pay for the sono, radiography tech and radiographer all out of pocket. in the state where i live, it would actually be cheaper to wait until the 18wk scan, and then get a late 2nd trimester abortion if i had to. it's definitely not good policy, but it seems to be the best of my limited options. :(

acog who?

2008-03-31T21:18:00.008-04:00

my ob care is through the military, allegedly at one of their flagship institutions. i'm being seen at be.thesdanaval.medicalcenter. interesting then that at such a premier institution i'm unable to get a NT screen, my requests for same and ACOG guidelines nonwithstanding. apparently, they do sequential testing and only offer NT scans to those women whose 1st trimester analytes are abnormal. while this seems like a good idea, serum anaysis alone only detects 80% of possible aneuploidy, whereas serum analysis + NT scan has a detection rate of 95%. if i were working with a tiny clinic in a remote area that didn't have appropriate equipment or trained sonographers i would understand. but that is not the case, at "the president's hospital." if acog guidelines suggested that only women of a certain age or risk factor should be offered the combined NT and serum screen i would understand. but acog guidelines are clear: "Women need to be aware of all the different screening options that are available, including their detection rates and limitations, so that they can choose the test that's best for them." if i didn't want the NT scan it wouldn't matter. but i do. it is very odd to me that i'm being denied such a simple screen at, allegedly, one of the nation's top medical institutions. what could possibly be the reason for BN to be so far outside the normal standard of care? cost cutting? abortion politics?

i heard the hb today by doppler; i'm 11w. i have a retroverted uterus so it didn't come up right away and i scared myself half to death. i'm going to wait a week before trying again. part of me thought, that as i'd made my 1st maternity clothes purchases this weekend, that it wouldn't be there as payback for such a wanton display of hubris. like DD said in her post, i guess things will be ok but it's hard to mentally work myself around that. if someone asks if i'm pregnant, the answer that feels most right to me is "technically". i feel bad because i feel like it's keeping me from bonding with the lil bean, but i keep waiting for the second shoe to drop. maybe it'll get better in the 2nd tri?

i honestly couldn't say it better myself

2008-03-24T17:23:00.003-04:00

so this post might be cheating, but every now and that i come upon a sublime post that says just exactly what i wish i could say, if i didn't sputter out into an incoherent rage each time i tried. i'd like to refer you now to julie's 3/24 entry at a little pregnant for a spot on discussion about what's so insidious and nasty about this whole j.lo twins THANG.

it's not that fraternal twins at age 38 after years of wanting and trying to become pregnant doesn't scream IVF (umm...but it most surely does)...it's the denigrating way she denies it. no one is asking j.lo to be a mascot for IF (for that i'd like to nominate z.braff if only because he's so damn cute!), but if she could just refrain from being insulting in her she-doth-protest-too-much denials that would be much appreciated? k? kthxbai.

how to quickly lose your mind in one easy step

2008-03-23T12:49:00.003-04:00

so early this week i reluctantly stopped lov.enox...no longer being hemoconcentrated following my bout with OHSS/paracentesis/abdominal bloating from hell. even though the shot stings like crazy i quite was sad to give it up, because i got pg and stayed pg (so far) while taking it. so rather like a basketball player and his lucky underwear, i wanted to make it to 12 wks before deviating from my medication regimen in any way. alas, not to be. plus, i figured if i was homozygous for MTHFR (and being ashkenazi, it's a reasonable possibility) i would be treating that simultaneously. i've never been tested for clotting disorders, so it's possible. at my appt this week i asked the resident if i could stay on the lov.enox...she contacted the maternal-fetal specialist who essentially said no can do regarding the lov.enox, because if i do have a clotting disorder it won't cause problems until 20 wks or so, and since i'm no longer hemoconcentrated there's really no need to continue the shot. is that supposed to be comforting? i'm supposed to wait until 20 wks to see if a problem develops? Not Even Remotely Comforting.

even more reluctantly i stopped the PIO. a word about PIO. that shot SUUUUUUUCKS. it is thick, and deep IM, and currently my backside is covered in knots and bruises. i even ended up with sciatica down my left leg from multiple deep IM injections into the same area. so, it's not that i like the shot at all. it's that despite multiple assurances that 'the placenta takes over progesterone production at 6-8 wks' i know there are women for whom that is not the case. i also know that you can have a perfectly healthy fetus, but if you don't have adequate progesterone, you don't have a pregnancy, end of story. i also know, that fertility wise, i happen to fall into a rather small percentage of women who need IVF to get pregnant. further, i happened to fall into an even smaller percentage who get severe OHSS. so, at this particular junction i'm *not* interested in playing odds games. however, i can't write prescriptions for myself (yet) and so the best i could do was secure a pro.metrium script for the next several weeks...and i'm sure earn a few "crazy lady" doodles next to my name on my chart.

so my last PIO was thurs eve and i woke up yesterday (sat) with a small amt of pink spotting. i spotted all day. you can imagine the lovely state i was in. i think i put so much progesterone up my vag that i'm suprised it wasn't stuck shut. by yesterday eve my attempts at remaining calm had failed me and i paged the IVF dr on call (mind you i have been passed off to OB at this point, but at my appt last week i was really unimpressed with the level of knowledge they seemed to have regarding early pregnancy, complications etc.). thankfully they returned my call and i drove an hour to the clinic on sat night at 7pm for a thorough wanding.

science babe looked great. waving it's little arm and leg buds, bobbing it's ginormous, egg-like noggin. it's father has a ginormous head, the ramifications of which are just becoming clear to me now. hb 164. i'm sure the collective IVF team thinks i'm just a big pile of crazy at this point, between the begging for shots, wheedling for pro.metrium, saturday evening scans, etc. etc. etc. however, in my defense, spotting 3 days after discontinuing PIO will cause panic. it just will.

oh well. this gets better, right?

Ok

2008-03-17T18:00:00.001-04:00

i begged, borrowed and stole my way into a quick sono this AM and it is still there. Someday, at some point, this will seem less tenuous. i hope sometime sooner rather than later.

crazy doesn't necessarily mean wrong

2008-03-16T23:03:00.004-04:00

so, i've decided not to rent or buy a doppler until another U/S confirms a hb. Ditto for any maternity clothes, including bella band. so, i'd better not gain ANY MORE WEIGHT until i have another u/s or i will be utterly without clothings to cover my shocking paleness with.

i guess i'm happy that i haven't had any morning sickness to date (the only thing i had vomiting with was the OHSS) but a little bit of pukiness just to let me know things were OK wouldn't be terrible. famous last words i know, but i thought i'd put it out there.

tomorrow i have OB "orientation" at beth.esda na.val. possibly the most inconvenient place to get to EVER. i can't wait to see what the orientation entails...if it's anything like the IVF orientation was, i'd call it a solid waste of my time. but i'll go if i can get another sono out of it. *crosses fingers*

it has occured to me recently that perhaps t.o.m cr.u.i.s.e was not so much crazy as just more brilliant than our feeble minds could comprehend...seriously. if i had his kind of $$ to throw around i would not hesitate, pass go, or collect $200, but instead simply dash my bruised, knotty PIO heinie down to the nearest sonogram store and plunk down some cash.

sono glow=2.5 minutes

2008-03-12T16:07:00.003-04:00

i am utterly exhausted all the time, as well as vaguely nauseous and more than a little backed up. my body, it is a wonderland.

my mind, however, is a deep black pit. it wonders if i should fabricate symptoms to go to an ER where i can spend 5 hrs waiting just to get a sonogram to tell me there's still a hb. it's a good thing i'm too lazy to listen to myself much.

i'm contemplating renting a doppler, but i can't tell if that will lessen the crazy or make it worse :?

ba-thump

2008-03-06T00:20:00.003-04:00

we transferred two but there was only one, measuring 7w1d (i'm 7w2d), hr 145, otherwise normal looking for an embryo the size and shape of a bean.

***exhales***

i know it's shortlived, but i'm hoping the sono glow lasts at least 24 hrs. :)

oy

2008-03-03T19:37:00.003-04:00

well, the hb scan is weds am and i am brimming with DBT's for the occasion. my head is going to be a particularly unpleasant place to be for the next 36hrs or so.

does being on PIO mean any m/c signs are masked? does anyone know? i'm just wondering...

back from haiti

2008-03-02T16:12:00.002-04:00

typical depressed look of a malnourished child. this child is at a refeeding ctr

sad child with severe kwashiorkor at orphanage

giving tetanus vax at a health fair

i am back and hoping to relax. i am exhausted, and everyone keeps telling me how exhausted i look.

to my knowledge i did not m/c while i was there, which just makes me super pissed at my mom for basically telling me nonstop for a month that going = automatic m/c. i want to confront her about it but i'm too tired to tip at windmills right now. so, basically i'm avoiding her.

the hb scan is weds am and i am really really nervous about it. i know it isn't everything...it's just another hurdle in a long line of hurdles, but i'm putting alot of stock in it for some reason. i feel like i might be able to relax if i "pass" that test, if i don't...i don't know what i'll do. get by, i guess.

greetings and salutations

2008-02-27T20:03:00.004-04:00

greetings from haitiland! i find myself with access so i'm updating. it is really hard to describe the country in a blog so i'm not even going to try. but some inadequate descriptions follow: in jeremie, the land, the views are gorgeous. from some vantages it even has a terraced/italian look to it. jeremie still has trees and they are wonderful, flowering, heavy with blossoms and fruit. roosters are everywhere as are skinny dogs (btw: total myth that roosters crow at dawn. they crow all the damn time). the poverty is beyond measure. dwellings built of concrete and corrugated tin and aluminum poles as people get money...so alot of people live in partially constructed homes. just a room sometimes with walls, sometimes with a roof. on the negative side, the people here even the small children seem so aggressive everybody wants something and the want it hard. you get followed everywhere. "asked" for a date, marriage, money, food, a treat, the shoes off my feet. i must look like a big white dollar sign to them. i've been to very poor places before but i don't know that i've felt so poked and picked at before. needled. there are a couple of returned pcv's from ghana and they say that in ghana, which is just as destitute if not worse, the adults have more pride don't assault strangers for things but the children will. i dunno. i've never been to ghana but i know what they mean.

today i went to an orphanage/respite home for children that was essentially straight out of something you would see ior imagine from dickens minus the evil care provider. some of the children there are orphans or abandoned, others are dropped off because they are sick or because their parents or care providers can't look after them because the care providers themselves are sick. it's hard to even describe it because it seemed so surreal that even though i only came back a few hours ago it's hard to even think about it. there were 4 large rooms filled with white iron cribs lined up front to back in rows, maybe 50 cribs per room. there was an infant room, a toddler room and two older kid rooms. the infants were all (every single one) way below weight for age. malnourished, no fat under the skin or sometimes the shiny skin from when the edema leaves after kwashiorkor, and the skin itself was absolutely covered in bites, scabies and eczema. most only had fuzz for hair. we went crib to crib and fed infants what had to be some kind of gloppy pumpkin porridge goo from a spoon. most were fed while in the crib on their backs. then they each got water from a cup. there was a baby i probably held for 4 hours straight while i fed and held other kids, i don' t know the name or age but i'm guessing a very tiny 9mos old? there was a blind older child from malnutrition and a really really sick 2-3 yr old with kwashiorkor, a massively edematous belly and feet. he let me rub his palms. all of the staff was so well intentioned but there were few of them and so many children.

having adventures when what i really want is sleep

2008-02-21T00:47:00.004-04:00

the last few days i have been just exhausted. bring-tears-to-your-eyes exhausted. and then i think about all the work i have left to do and it makes me want to cry all over again. i know my hold on your sympathy is precarious, if indeed there is any for me at all. after all, i am an infertile with a BFP, so i'm lucky. and i know i am, even though it doesn't really make me want to cry less.

this friday i'm going to haiti on a medical outreach trip, so there will be radio silence for a week until i come back. the suitcase is filled, and i haven't yet packed any clothes. i think this is a problem. between meals, snacks, gifts for my hosts, tp, baby wipes and the veritable pharmacy i am bringing with me (including 2 injectable meds with associated paraphenalia, mind you) there's no room left for clothes. frick. my mom is convinced (and has zero reservation about telling me, very very frequently in fact) that i should not go, and that going will cause either m/c or birth defects. she says i shouldn't go in the 1st trimester because "all of the organs are forming." which is true, but so what? it also means if i actually do m/c or have a baby with defects, i will never be able to look at her again because i know she'll think it's my fault. always, somewhere in my mind i'll be thinking that somewhere in HER mind is the idea that the trip caused it. i have my RE's blessing...my mom can bite it for now.

i have the hb scan the week i get back, on 3/5. i am nervous as hell for that. i'm going with my sister so at least i have that going for me...she's an excellent support person. i'm not sure if i should wear earplugs and close my eyes and just have j tell me in the car on the way home how it went or what. otoh, if it goes badly i'll probably want to have some conversation with the poor resident about what comes next. so, i am very glad my sis is going with me but i am NOT looking forward to the appointment. yet, i can't just not go either, or my brain would explode from angst. sounds like fun, eh? bet you wish YOU were on my little brain hamster wheel.

notes about haiti from hereFACTS ABOUT HAITI:
Haiti's ecology has been significantly damaged since its independence in 1804. Only 7% of the country's original forest remains unscathed by deforestation. Most of the trees have been cut down and used as firewood for heating and cooking. Some wood has been sold to surrounding island nations to provide much needed income. Massive soil erosion has also occurred due to the vast amount of deforestation. Thus, much of the soil in Haiti has been depleted of vital minerals.

Most of the water in Haiti is also polluted. This includes parts of the coastal areas, such as the Bay of Port-au-Prince, and most of the major ports and some coastal towns. The water throughout the country is nonpotable.

holding back

2008-02-14T23:54:00.006-04:00

my husband lives in sc but is coming up this weekend. we haven't gone out yet to celebrate the bfp; in fact, i was so sure i was m/c'ing a few days ago i called him to tell him it was done. after the beta doubled i said when he came up we should go out to celebrate the bfp. but almost immediately after the words left my lips i regretted them. maybe it is a mistake to celebrate because what if i m/c? what if there's no hb at the ultrasound? we should do nothing to commemmorate it--at least until i get a hb--because what if there isn't one? that would make the whole thing a farce, and celebrating it obscene.

on the other hand, if there isn't a hb, i'll be destroyed whether or not we go out to dinner this weekend. and if i only get a few days/wks of this, shouldn't i at least *try* not to be morbid and enjoy myself, if only for a little while? if it doesn't continue (or even if it does) will i have wasted it completely by spending the whole time expecting disaster?

how do i let go enough to acknowledge (and maybe celebrate) that something momentous happened...but also hold back enough that something of me is left if it all goes to hell? i can't find the balance between holding on and letting go and i need to do both to get through the next few weeks.

it would be nice if i could just go to sleep and wake up 12 wks from now and someone could tell me how it went instead of plodding through it all day after day.

222

2008-02-13T19:48:00.004-04:00

today's beta was 222. according to betabase, that's a doubling time of 41.2 hrs. betabase says the average beta for a singleton pregnancy is 196 at 16dpo and the average doubling time is 37.4 but who's obsessing?

*exhales*

i thought for sure i was going to m/c last night because i was so frikking horribly crampy. today is reprieve. it's far from over but at least i got this far. i'm not going for a 3rd beta, so i'm going to assume PUPO, goddamnit, and not see them again until the hb scan. god willing and the creek don't rise, that's the next time i'll go to the clinic.

thanks so much for all your well wishes and good vibes and keep your fingers crossed for me.

anxious, nervous

2008-02-12T17:05:00.001-04:00

bah! i'm so anxious for tomorrow's beta. i keep trying to tell myself NOT to be nervous because it won't help and nothing's gone wrong yet so far. plus, if i only get two days to be p-word, i might as well enjoy them, right? plus i worry that being anxious might make me miscarry which is a mindf*ck beyond all mindf*cks. either it will double or it won't. if it doesn't it doesn't necessarily mean its over, and if it does i'm far from out of the woods. bah.

my mental state right now=not too good.

beta

2008-02-11T18:36:00.000-04:00

today i'm 11dp3dt or 14dpo
my beta is 99.
this number is exactly average for singletons and on the low side for multiples

cross your fingers for me for 200 or GREATER on weds. (please please please)

24 hrs in peesticks

2008-02-10T10:33:00.000-04:00

beta #1 tomorrow...

this was yesterday morning at 9dp3dt. if you squint at it like i did, you can just baaarely make out the second line. it didn't come up right away and at first i thought it was negative. i peed on it, waited, the control line popped right up. and then nothing. i just had this pit in my stomach, trying to talk myself out of it, the advantages; i can sleep late, i learned so much this cycle it wasn't a total waste, the culdocentesis makes a great story for my friends (right?) etc...when i went back a few minutes later there was just a hint of a line, but it was there.

this was this morning at 10dp3dt. i think the line's just a little darker and maybe it came up a smidge faster, but still light. i'd like to thank leah for her idea of writing the times on the sticks.

for comparison

and finally...because i've been peeing on things right, left and forward (the cats are getting nervous)...

9dp3dt or 12dpo

2008-02-09T12:26:00.000-04:00

there's a tiny faint line, but i see it. if i pee on something later and it's still there, i'll post a picture.

****nervous****

worth a thousand words? (updated)

2008-02-06T00:33:00.001-04:00

i was wondering how they did it...now i know!

i'm headed back tomorrow to see if enough fluid came back to warrant a repeat culdocentesis. i'm actually feeling alot better which is good, but also makes me nervous, since WORSENING symptoms is a sign of pregnancy whereas symptoms resolve with a bfn.

mind you, i'm still bloated as all get out, but there's no denying i feel better. alot less vomiting and diarrhea, and i don't have as nearly much fluid as before.

i never thought i'd feel so bad about feeling better.

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so, my appt this am went reasonably well, besides the 2hr wait. i've still got some free fluid in the abd, but not enough to warrant a tap. i was instructed to eat salty things and drink gatorade and take lov.enox (OUCH! there's a painful shot) for the next several weeks. they don't think the fluid will need to be drained again, but they will if i need it.

i'm 6dp3dt and starting to want to pee on things. but i'm also trying my best to hold off the madness, because once it starts all i can think about is peeing on sticks. they said getting better doesn't mean the cycle didn't work, but i also wonder if they say that to everyone. ahh, mindgames of the 2ww. so lovely.

i forgot to mention; the other embryos did not make it to freeze. they were either in the morula (pre-blast) stage on day 5 so the clinic did not keep them, or they arrested at morula stage on day 5. not sure which.

paracentesis

2008-02-03T13:25:00.000-04:00

the fun, it just never stops. increasing nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. inability to walk upright. tightness in my chest, and my skin felt like it was going to split. last night was just awful; i couldn't get comfortable and woke up at 2am in agony. i almost went to the ER but decided to wait til the morning if i could, and i did.

this morning i went into the clinic and they drained 2.5 liters (over 6lbs) of fluid off my abdomen. the relief was instantaneous. however they told me the fluid would probably come back, and said i might need to come back tuesday for another go. they warned i'd be really hungry and thirsty after the drain, but right now the nausea and bowel symptoms are keeping the hunger at bay.

the update...

2008-01-31T15:15:00.000-04:00

today is day 3. of the 11, we had
grade 1: 0
grade 2: 0
grade 3: 4
grade 4: 4
grade 5: 3

evenly split between icsi and ivf. grade 1 is the best and grade 5 is the worst. we transfered two grade 3's (the ones above) one icsi and one ivf. they will grow out the other 6 and will freeze them if any make it to blast but they told us not to get our hopes up.

i questioned why i went from 50 follies to 23 eggs and they said usu the follicle:egg ratio is 90%. however with hyperstim, coasting and ant.agon all of which i got or had, it drops alot. he's seen as low as 25% follicle:egg but most are around 50%. he said the coasting intentionally kills some off.

lessons learned for next time i guess. still, i'm trying to remain hopeful and optimistic but not too hopeful or optimistic. i was really hoping for some to freeze so i'd never have to stim again, but then if this cycle works i'll get over it pretty frikking quickly.

love to all my cycle sistahs.

kvetchy post (no egg update)

2008-01-30T20:20:00.000-04:00

this is going to be a whiny, kvetchy post in which i give no info on the state of the 11, because i don't have any. which brings me to my first point of contention:

1--the non-responsiveness/non-customer orientedness of my clinic. there are advantages...it's cheaper since it's partially covered by the military...but there are significant disadvantages. the constant rotation of care providers. no-one answering their phones. no one calling me back in anything like a timely manner (like, 3-5 days goes by). they act like they are sort of doing us a favor by providing the service. if this cycle doesn't work i'm strongly considering leaving. i think i'd rather pay more money and have someone who at least acts like they give a crap than deal with this 'you'll-take-what-we-give-you-and-like-it' military mentality. to wit: i called to see how the 11 were doing. i would like to know if any/all were still there. it's not crazy; i put ALOT into this, and i'm on edge here. when someone finally answered the phone they said that there were no updates and they would let us know tomorrow at our appt. basically the only way we hear anything before then is if they all go kaput. and here i thought it was customary to be told how things were going on a more or less daily basis. oh well.

2--it could be the OHSS, but i ended up with far more diminished returns than i thought we would. 23 eggs from 50 follicles seems like a big loss. the rest i guess seems more reasonable: 19 mature from 23 eggs; but then i'm suprised again that only 11 fertilized normally. if they keep dropping at this rate, there won't be any left. i was hoping with 50 follicles that i'd end up with some embies to freeze (and thus NEVER have to go through a stim cycle again) but now i'm not so sure we'll have any. it's weird to go from a relative superabundance to a relative dearth in just a few short days.

3--and speaking of ohss, i'm symptomatic and it sucks. i got albumin in my iv on monday to ward off ascites but my stomach really is just unimaginably bloated. and it hurts. and when i laugh my entire stomach hurts including my sides and my shoulders. and i'm afraid to mention it for fear they'll cancel transfer. i'm hoping the fluid will just get resorbed sooner rather than later.

4--no one told me how much it would hurt to pee the day of retrieval but it did. all day.

5--of course, this could all change in a flicker if tomorrow's report is good

fert report

2008-01-29T10:57:00.001-04:00

23 retrieved
19 mature
11 fertilized.

that's all for now.

so far...

2008-01-28T18:09:00.000-04:00

23 eggs of usable size retrieved
e2 7800
OHSS mild right now, got albumin in the IV at retrieval to try and prevent any worsening of the hyperstim.

i think i'd have had better follicle : egg ratio if i weren't so hyperstimmed. i am not sure if there's any factual basis to that though, have to look it up. it's done now, there can only be lessons learned for next time.

fingers crossed that all 23 fertilize and go on to make me and my hubby proud parents of our own soccer team plus second and third string backups.

ant.agon, i'm sorry i doubted you.

2008-01-26T12:58:00.000-04:00

e2 down by HALF!
this is incredible, unless they switched my sample with someone else's. :P
trigger tonight with all 10,000 units HCG.

i found this old picture of me and my sister. i'm guessing we're 11yo and 9yo but we might be 10yo and 8yo. awwwww...

the rollercoaster continues

2008-01-26T10:06:00.001-04:00

50+ follicles today
the largest was a 21. i didn't track them all, but most were around 14-16 with several 17-18 and a few 20's.
e2 pending
some fluid around the r ovary and in the pelvis
:(

i picked up another ant.agon/ganril.ex shot today. pending the e2 i'll either trigger or take the gan.rilex. one of the dr's who was not familiar with my case reacted with utter horror when i told her the # of follicles i had. i wish i hadn't said anything. another dr who is familiar said they've been talking about me the last few days. never a good sign. these dr's i ran into in the hall, since the wanding was done by a resident that i've never met before...again.

i had a nightmare yesterday that i was in the car with my sister and mother...i was squished in the back seat. the car was on an overpass, and took a sharp zag through a concrete chute into open space. the falling sensation was incredible, i literally felt myself adhered to the ceiling of the car as i fell. i woke up with a start and wondered if my R ovary had ruptured.

i also failed to appropriately set my alarm for 545 and i woke up late...but at 6am. amazing.

good news

2008-01-25T15:13:00.001-04:00

clinic called...ant.agon and meno.pur tonight, sono and b/w tomorrow, hcg tomorrow night, retrieval monday? nobody said the c-word.

e2 for this morning: 6890. which is i guess what happens with 45 follicles. the doc this morning said (with a straight face, mind you) 'we're going to have to watch you for overstimulation.' ummm...ya think?

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in very sad news, please go give your support to the mama of lennox and zoe, who suffered a devastating loss today.

fun with e2

2008-01-25T10:31:00.000-04:00

i'm waiting on today's level, which is likely to be in excess of 6,000. how can this be, since i stopped stims yesterday and am essentially coasting? because this morning there were 45 (!!!!) follicles between 10 and 18. i had 30 on the right (up from 18 follies two days ago)
2--18
4--17
1--16
2--15
2--14
and a bunch smaller.

the left, which had 8 two days ago, has 15.
2--17's
2--15's
2--14's
1--13
1--11
6--10's
1--9

they are going to call me tonight with the plan, but i picked up an ant.agon shot...has anyone ever used this to lower e2?

at least no one mentioned cancellation which i am of course really worried about. ptu! ptu! ptu! ward off the evil eye.

--------------
i actually mostly feel ok except my abdomen feels bloated and tender. like, when my right heel hits the floor when i'm walking, i can feel it in my right lower abdomen. same on the left. also the weight gain, and general slovenliness. but i'm trying not to complain or say anything because i DONT WANT THE CYCLE *whispers* cancelled . PLeasE! i don't even know if i can explain how devastated i would be. :(

coasting

2008-01-24T16:00:00.000-04:00

today's e2 is 4,712...about 50% up from yesterday, but that's actually better...it was up 150% between mon and wed. b/w and sono tomorrow. no meds tonight except the lu.pron. worried that my poor follies will starve for want of fsh (plus unopposed lu.pron is no fun) but i'll take that over some of the other alternatives.

"like gangbusters" (updated)

2008-01-23T13:37:00.000-04:00

RE referring to, of course, mighty righty. i am on day 7 of stims, including today, cd 10. i have 18 (!!) follies on the right, i think i had one 14, 5-6 13's, 5-6 11's and a smattering of littles.

i had 6 on the left, 2 11's, a 9, and 3 6's.

apparently, at least the right, responds well to stims. now we know.

he said they like the e2 to be about 200pg/dl on day 5 of stims, and mine was 3x that. so depending on what today's e2 is determines what happens next. for now they cut the dose of stims again, so i'm on 1/2 dose of bra.velle + full dose lu.pron in the am, and full dose bra.velle and full dose lu.pron in the evening. they want me to come in tomorrow AM for bloodwork but i'm trying to push it to friday because i have class an hour and a half away from the clinic at 0830. so i'd have to get to the clinic at 6am. and let us say...BOOOOO!

based in the info so far, it looks like retrieval (aka big sharp pointy stick in the vadge) sunday or monday. i've yet to find a compounding pharmacy in the area for my PIO, so that's my next chore.

what are the odds that LJ my cycle sistah and chaperone, would have her own date with the vag.inal needle of doom on the same day? crazy.
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ummm, OK. my e2 is 2958. i have to go get my bw tomorrow and i'm sure retrieval won't be later than monday.

MEH

2008-01-21T14:49:00.000-04:00

my baseline was 5 days ago and my e2 was 12pg/dl, which is a good level for beginning stims. today, after 5 days of stims, my e2 is 973pg/dl...which is high. it's very hard to find good ranges for what an e2 should be after 5 days of stims and day 8 of the cycle (and if you know of any, please let me know!) but from what i can gather, the acceptable range is from 100pg/dl to 500pg/dl at this point. so i'm to continue the lu.pron and bra.velle at current doses and stop the men.opur.

in other cycle news, i think i gained 5lbs in one week. so, that plus the high e2 of course i'm all worried about OHSS, and having the cycle cancelled, and other completely undesireable outcomes. i feel like i can feel my right ovary (the good responder). but now i can't tell if i can feel it, or if i just think i can because i'm all freaked out. meh MEH meh.

things your dr doesn't tell you about eyeveeff cycles

2008-01-19T23:58:00.000-04:00

1--there will be bloating

2--and water retention

3--not to mention weight gain

4--and you can kiss goodbye any semblance of bowel normalcy you may have had prior to the art cycle. your farts are now equal parts involuntary, plentiful and deadly. they resemble nothing so much as chemical eff YOU from your poor beleaguered abdomen against all other living beings, and may, in fact, clear a room (strategy for dealing with said stinkbombs: deny, deny deny. the truth takes too long).

i feel like, somehow, i didn't know or no one mentioned that my relationship with my midsection would be completely different in a rather unpleasant way. besides the fact that i'm sticking needles into that poor bastard 2x/day. at least right now i'm visiting CL for the weekend, so he can take up some of the jabbing that needs to be done. he gets to shoot me in my back fat, which is really glamorous for all involved.

baseline=groggy

2008-01-16T00:26:00.000-04:00

well, i had my baseline appt at zero-dark-thirty in the morning today, all the more special because i finished clinical at 2am the night before. the baseline was everything i hoped and more. i got venipunctured, dildocammed, and "chaperoned" by an obliging stranger that i picked up in the waiting room, just as they said i would. "himynameislauraiknowwevenevermetbut..." actually, i was sort of glad i did have a chaperone today. i had a lovely and patient dr, one who i've actually seen before which is a rarity at my clinic. he did one or two of our IUI's and he's really soft spoken and gentle.

these are good qualities, except when the problem is not being able to find your left ovary. my right ovary was very cooperative. it was right where it was supposed to be, and i think i had maybe 20 antral follicles. in the past when i've triggered i've almost always felt it on the right side. the left was just nowhere in sight. and really, the minutes do seem like DAYS when the legs are up and the dildocam is in. finally, failing to find the ovary with more conservative measures, he pushed on my stomach right above the pubic bone on the left, apparently hoping to scare my anatomy into place. i couldn't help but flinch. and i was suddenly, momentarily, very glad for the chaperone. thankfully, the ovary then decided to make a grand entrance and demonstrated it's near lack of follicles, clear disinterest in the process at hand, and whispered off behind a loop of bowel from whence it came.

then i was the chaperone for the stranger, who, coincidentally enough, also had a hiding left ovary. she got the same abdominal treatment i did, apparently to less spectacular results. the doc asked her if she'd ever had abd surgery and she responded 'only the tubal ligation, and then the reversal.' some little evil part of my brain immediately thought: 'well, it's obvious why she needs IVF, what the hell am I doing here?' the doc did eventually find her left ovary as well.

i then got a tentative schedule (the best part of all this so far). i start lupron and stims on thursday, back for more blood work next monday, and more bloodwork and an u/s next weds. tentative retrieval 2 wks from today. i argued passionately that as i give people injections nearly daily, i should be able to skip the injection class tomorrow at buttfugearly. the class won't help the mental block that comes with giving yourself shots and that's really the only part i need help with. thankfully, i was excused. i'll spend my hooky day smoking cigarettes and buying black lipstick, just like i know i should :).

i found out a short while ago (when we were paying the bill, actually...HA! Suprise!) that the clinic has automatically slotted us into the ICSI category because we are using a previously frozen sample. i talked to them about it today and they said that with a frozen sample, there's a 90% chance they'll do ICSI but it isn't 100% positive. i'm having a hard time with the ICSI thing. it seems that if they do ICSI, then whoever is the dr working that day is literally choosing our future child(ren). how do they pick? cutest sperm? fastest swimmer? only boys on tuesdays, only girls on wednesdays? i know it's stupid, but i'm BLAH about ICSI at the moment. it has it's place, and i can totally see myself a year from now typing in something about how ICSI is our last great hope, but for now it sorta weirds me out. it would be nice if the union of sperm and egg were not medically directed, even though most everything else in this process leading up to the union is.

there is some unmitigated good news in all this though: my last bcp was actually sunday night, since due to the short night i forgot to take yesterday's pill. SWEET!

i know they are good for female kind but...

2008-01-12T23:37:00.000-04:00

i *hate* being on the pill. seriously, it makes me feel like hammered poo. i don't know how i was on it for 15+ yrs (HA!) because it makes me nauseous and starving all at the same time. eating helps neither the nausea, nor the hunger. delightful. i didn't notice it before, but i guess in the 3 or so years i've been off the pill, i've recalibrated. and then, of course, there's the rich irony of being on the pill in and of itself.

i'm going to switch to taking it right before bed and see if that helps. cheeky bastards.

are you grateful to your parents?

2008-01-04T16:57:00.000-04:00

i just saw sib*erian a*doption story on DHC and one of the couples portrayed seemed very very odd. besides the weird obsession with a blonde haired, blue eyed "american looking" kid (what does an american kid look like anyway?), they kept referencing the 35K they spent and how they were 'rescuing' their adopted daughter from her otherwise reduced circumstances. they took pictures of their daughter's homeland so that they would have visual evidence of the favor they provided her by adopting her.

now, i'm sure it is infinitely better to be raised in a family than in an orphanage. but i think that couple expecting their child to be grateful she was adopted by them is just a tad bit unrealistic. infants have no say in their birth or adoption. it just happens to them, the same as it happens to all babies. when was the last time anyone gave thanks to their *biological* parents for just being born? or for not being 40X poorer or twice as crazy as they were? seriously, all our parents are crazy, but they could have been a hell of a lot crazier, and then where would you be? if you expect the adopted child to be grateful for her adoption, then you must yourself be grateful for the circumstances of your birth...that you were born to relative priveledge in america and not to, say, a drug addicted sex worker on the streets of bangladesh. now, go give your biological parents a sincere, heartfelt thank you for creating you and not being worse than they were, and THEN maybe you can start wanting your adopted kids to start feeling grateful for their 'rescue.'

people's circumstances are what they are. all of us could have been born/adopted into better or worse, just as easily.

that couple sounded very concerned that after their 35K spent etc. that their teenage daughter would resent them and go looking for her "real" mother. i think if they spend her upbringing hoping she'll be grateful for her adoption, they may actually create that which they most fear.

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i also have a feeling that if i ever do have bio kids and i demand that they be grateful to me for the fact of being born at all because of all the time and heartbreak and expense and invasive vaginal procedures with cold steely probes at zero-dark-thirty in the morning and nowhere to park etc. involved with concieving them in the first place (to say nothing of carrying/delivering etc) well, i think they would be justified in saying 'i never asked you to do any of that!' which is 100% true.
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on a completely unrelated note, look at that cute little baby tushie!!! my teeth hurt it's so sweet :)

getting way way way ahead of myself

2008-01-03T19:56:00.000-04:00

today i was on a parenting board where a bunch of parents (only mothers, actually) were talking about how much work they had to do and how little support they get. stories abounded about fathers coming home from work and heading straight to the computer with nary a glance at the baby; of dads staying up late watching movies and then sleeping in the next morning while the mom was up with the baby all night; of offering to 'babysit' their own children for a few hours while mom gets some rest; of being mad at being left with the baby alone for a few hours while mom goes grocery shopping etc. now, mind you, i am aware that this thread was a rant, and that i was only hearing one side of it.

but UGH. it depresses me because i figure that if those women were divorced, they might end up with more help on average, or at least more free time. this is because the father would have visitation without the mother around. meaning, he would have to figure out a way to deal with the baby during his visitation, and she would have a set period of time in which she couldn't deal with the baby even if she wanted to. i start freaking out thinking about my overwhelmed and overworked future self and start planning the ways to prevent that from happening to me. images of signed antenatal agreements and firm contractual obligations dance through my head.

which, of course, is utter and complete lunacy. i have zero kids and i'm not pregnant nor am i in the process of adopting. i might not ever have this problem. who knows, maybe cl and i might be one of the (seemingly few) couples who actually manage to have shared childcare responsibilties that suit both partners. on the other hand, i could have a medically fragile kid who spends 3 mos in the NICU and i would give anything to be up at night doing the majority of the babycare because at least i'd be doing it and not his/her nurses. i could have a kid with a major disability that required even MORE work than i can currently even fathom. i could never have any kids at all.

i also recognize that seeing my mom utterly overwhelmed and miserable for years on end probably has more to do with my huge irrational fear of being overwhelmed with childcare responsiblities than anything that is going on in my current situation. i will say this for her...she got it done. she stepped in and deserves much credit. on the other hand, i would never EVER want to be in a situation as lonely and overwhelming as hers was. if my options were doing it all myself or never having kids, i'm not sure what i'd choose.

i also think i should worry about things that are more immediately pressing, like, where is my checkbook? where will i work next year? why am i not either a) buying exercise equipment or b) joining a gym? is this round of IVF going to work? i realized in the car today on my way to women's health clinical that even in the best circumstances, IVF doesn't work >50% of the time. that means the default is that it WON'T work. interesting, nu? i feel like right now i'm OK with it not working, but i wonder how many IVF cycles i'll be willing to try. 2? 4? 6??? and there i am again, getting way way way ahead of myself.

on to much better topics
my godnephews ryanbear...

...and andrew (doing his best jazzhands...he also does a mean zoolander 'blue steel')

NYE edition

2007-12-31T22:45:00.001-04:00

and a happy 2008
TO YOU :)

i would post pictures of my nephews (who are just so redonkulously fabulously adorable) but i forgot the cable that connects the camera to the computer in CA so pictures will have to wait a week.

2008 should be an interesting year. On tap:
**i will graduate (HA!!! hopefully anyway).
**i will be able to live with my spouse full-time for the first time in a long time...neat, huh?
**i will probably find a job (check that: i'd BETTER find a job...which probably also means i should start looking for one. le sigh.)
**i'm going to haiti for a week in february to help with ongoing medical relief efforts there.
**i start round 1 of IVF in janury.

speaking of IVF, my baseline appt: 1/15. i'm currently on BCP which means i've had my period for 'round about 3 wks now and let me tell you, the lustre is quite starting to wear off. the clinic is also badgering me about showing up to appts with a "chaperone", but since the appointments are 630a-830a i really don't see that happening on a routine basis. plus, why is the onus on me to provide one, when they are requiring it for basically their own protection? the only person that i could rightly harass about "chaperoning" me is my husband, who is currently activated military in another state. and as they are a clinic that serves military families, is it crazy to think they should have considered that contingency? i said as much to the IVF nurse coordinator who said their contingency plan is that i meet someone in the waiting room and then needle my newfound aquaintance into acting as my chaperone. yeah, because that won't be uncomfortable for all parties involved AT ALL (..."i know we've only just met, but would you mind coming back with me to watch as the dr pokes at my bits and pieces with steely instruments?") i guess if seeing someone's naked hoo-ha 5 minutes after meeting them isn't the cement that long-lasting friendships are built on, well then, ladies, what is?

oh, i forgot...

2007-12-20T12:23:00.001-04:00

i'm a b*tch. i'm only telling this to YOU dear computer because i know you won't judge. right? ....right?

i have a friend inside the computer who got pg after 6 mos ttc. she got her bfp 3-4 days ago. she has ALREADY posted a ticker, made plans for future sonograms and is checking out maternity clothes. she's, like, 15dpo at this point. WTH? what kind of hubris is that? seriously! i wish i didn't find it so annoying, but i do.

le sigh.

and on a different note: this is just like rocco in appearance and deed. bad cat!

holding pattern

2007-12-20T09:42:00.000-04:00

sorry for the long delay in posts. i survived the end of the semester (it was touch and go there for a while) and am now here in LA helping my sis with the nephews. they are both so funny. they express displeasure by coughing, farting and vomiting (as well as screaming, of course) and i have to admire the full body approach they take. its one thing to be upset, but they *really* commit to it.

i think i'm getting a sore throat from the sleep deprivation which is kind of pathetic, considering j has been going on consistently less sleep for far longer.

andrew enjoys an US Weekly (and who doesn't?)

ryan is snug as a bug in a rug (his nickname is the siren...not that you could tell from this pic).

in IVF news, baseline appt is scheduled for 1/15.

knocked up (the movie, not me)

2007-12-12T16:17:00.000-04:00

came across the following very interesting articles today while i should be studying :)

this article on slate discusses how 'knocked up' is just a little bit sexist. and it exactly describes how i felt after seeing the film...it was hilarious but i felt a little squeamish about how different the fun loving ben was portrayed as opposed to the straight laced alison or the shrewish debbie. i think this article raises a critical point...with every story that is told, you have to look at who is doing the telling. in this case, judd aptow is behind the camera and it's ben's story he's telling, its him that you're rooting for in the end. i think it becomes problematic when you assume that it's THE story being told. it isn't. it's ben's story, and aptow does an OK job at putting a little bit of alison's story in. but his portrayal of alison's story has nowhere near the subtlety and humor of ben's. so my point (yes i have one) is this: when watching something it is critical to keep in mind WHO is doing the telling, because that affects the story told. who is behind the lens, and who is in front of it?

this article addresses how alison never really considered abortion as an option. fascinating, actually, considering she barely knows ben, doubts his commitment to adulthood, and is financially dependent (living with her sister).

and this NYT article is an offshoot of the above, i found it interesting. it is from 2004 and discusses how 40% of women have had an abortion, but no one talks about it. i guess it hides in the same space as miscarriage, which is also very common but no one talks about in the public sphere. i'd even venture to say the silence is worse regarding abortion, because of the value judgements involved: miscarriage is passive, whereas abortion is active.

shall we dance?

2007-12-09T17:00:00.001-04:00

so, i canceled my rotation in oregon on friday, scheduled to begin next month. it doesn't sound like much, but the whole oregon thing has been a saga for the last 9 mos. to wit:

in march '07 i made plans to do a family practice rotation in oregon in january '08.

in march i got bfp.
--debated cancelling
chemical shortly thereafter,
---oregon plans left intact.

april:
bfp again following clomid + IUI
--spent april and the beginning of may wondering if i should cancel. figured it was only prudent since how would i get from the right coast to the left coast at 36 or so weeks, assuming everything went as planned? airline travel is certainly discouraged...driving would take 3 days at best one way. and then i'd have to find a hospital out there just in case i went a few wks early. yet didn't want to cancel because what if i m/c'd? decided that i was being morbid, wasn't giving the pregnancy my mental all if i *planned* for a m/c (i.e. not cancelling plans). needed to operate under the assumption of success, at least until proven otherwise. that is the mentally healthy way, right?
---cancelled oregon, claimed conflicting family schedule

m/c late may

july:
contacted oregon health services again, once it was no longer possible for january to be an issue in terms of traveling while in 3rd trimester.
--informed funding no longer available.

september:
oregon rural health contacts me to say that funding is available again, would i like to do rotation in january as previously planned? i alter my plans to visit sister in jan and enthusiastically agree. oregon back on. make plans for preceptorship, travel, accomodations etc.

november:
following yet another chemical following yet another clomid + IUI, clinic moves me into IVF track. next IVF cycle? you got it: january.

december:
spend two weeks trying to figure out whether there is any way to do both jan rotation and jan IVF. unable to pin clinic down in terms of exact dates for baseline, upon which everything else depends. finally give up and cancel rotation. again. 3 wks in advance of scheduled travel. feel like a total a$$.

though it will make me murderously insanely gloweringly mad to hear it, since i've cancelled my trip and all, i'm half expecting the clinic to call and say they can't take me in january after all, for any of a variety of different reasons. it IS par for the course, no?

i think the clinic is south and east of here

2007-12-06T18:05:00.000-04:00

so, IVF orientation was yesterday. i was oriented to several important facts.

a. clinic appt times are between 6:45-8:30 in the morning. ALL of them. so, that should be loads of fun for the dark wintery mornings. sigh.

b. if you are under 39, you will get one or two embryos.

c. if somehow you end up with 3+ gestations and you want to reduce, they support that decision but will not offer the reduction because they are a gov't facility blah blah blah happy to refer you elsewhere blah blah blah. oh, and the insurance doesn't cover it either.

d. birth control starts next cd 2, whenever that is, for all 40 of us sitting in the room.

e. no baseline appointment yet.

f. if you want a baseline appt, you will pay us a deposit. today. we take checks, mastercard, discover, visa, blood, sweat and tears.

so that was that. i paid them the money, and a little bit of my sanity with it, just for good measure. they said we'd hear by the end of the week as to when the baseline appts would be. of course, i haven't heard anything yet so i start the phone nagging tomorrow. i guess i should also cancel oregon tomorrow.

yesterday my clinical got canceled because of the snow so i went home and took a nap at 7:30pm and woke up this morning. i slept 13 hrs straight. rip van winklette, that's me.

i amuse myself

2007-12-01T20:29:00.000-04:00

fark.com

are your highbeams on?

2007-11-30T23:29:00.000-04:00

so, i have a little bit of faith restored in my clinic. the dude that saw me on tues (was it tues? they're all running together) mentioned he was a fellow which made me feel happy, though whether he was specifically an RE fellow or an Ob-Gyn one, i'm not sure because i forgot because it's been a busy week and i've been moving and crap is every-freaking-which-where and the semester is ending and my brain is mushifying. yes, that's right, it's mushifying, so if i speak in circles and walk in jagged edges that's the reason. mind you, it's not that i mind seeing residents (i'm verging on resident status myself soon), and if it was our own newly minted resident i'd be happy as a wee little ocean bound clam. but, somehow i seem to pull confused residents each time, the ones that can't find my left ovary at all and spend 20 minutes looking and aiming the wand at extremely awkward angles before finally going to get help.

so, anyway, where was i? oh yes, dr. fellow with the venipuncture in the study. he had mentioned the prolactin redo with the tsh companion piece which i reluctantly agreed to (i should just move into the venipuncture lab i'm there so much...even with the constantly rotating staff, i'm beginning to become familiar to quite a few of them. it's sad when one is recognizable on sight by no small number of phlebotomy techs. but i'll tell you what's worse. i'm probably recognizable on sight but by my other end to a sizeable contingent of the gyn staff, and they rotate through pretty quickly as well. oy. but i digress...

anyway as i was saying this morning i dutifully showed up for the draw when i saw they had added a testosterone level to the mix. fair enough. i've got no signs of pcos but while they're there, they might as well check, nu? i also saw that the prolactin was a sendout macroprolactinemia panel. which i had never heard of. so, like any good obsessive-compulsive patient i looked it up when i got home. i wouldn't say i completely
understand it but the upshot is it can make your prolactin look like it's elevated when it's not. so i'm glad they're at least checking for that before sending me off into a tube to have my pituitary perused. contrary to popular opinion, i actually do, on occasion, have other places to be during the day besides at my clinic getting my bits and pieces worked over. shocking, but true.

leaving my nipples alone

2007-11-29T21:52:00.000-04:00

i go in for my 3rd prolactin in the am, fasting, and with no nipple stimulation. i'm hoping for a reasonable number for all the right reasons, and also because i don't want to be denied medical clearance for a jan IVF because they want me to get a freaking MRI of my brain. it's funny because after my last marginally elevated prolactin they suggested an MRI. i never went because i'm lazy and my numbers were just a smidge up. so now i wonder if that singular laziness regarding the MRI is now going to come and bite me in the ass.

and, of course, now all i can think about are my poor nipples. they itch (because i can't stop thinking about them) and i'm afraid to scratch them. is it OK if i sleep on my stomach? what if i rub them too vigorously on the mattress during sleep? all this makes me just want to engage in my own individual nipple-twisting party just to get it out of the way. i wonder if one can elevate one's prolactin by merely mentally obsessing over their nipples?

all's quiet on the southern front

2007-11-28T16:28:00.000-04:00

**guffaw**

every now and then it occurs to me that for me, alzheimers is going to be a gentle easy slide for me, like an old man easing into a bath (costanza!). i'm moving this week, and to describe my current state as disorganized is to truck in vast understatements. its a little better today, but for about 2-3 days there, i didn't know where ANYTHING was. i wore the same underwear for 2 days because the replacements were AWOL. my teeth were scuzzily unbrushed as toothpaste and toothbrush were nowhere to be found. my cell ran out of batteries as the charger was lost in the ether. my laptop was in SC, my furniture in DC and my cats in baltimore. i'm going to have to re-buy at least one schoolbook that i know i already have...somewhere.

its also the end of the semester, the time when all good people come together for a collective 'Oh SH*T' as they realize they now have 2 weeks to do what they should have spent 4 mos doing. my paper is due when??? *headdesk*

reproductively, not much going on. my saline sono was yesterday and the results were grossly normal. i had very mildly elevated prolactin levels on two previous tests so on fri i go for a 3rd, plus another TSH (nl last test). my IVF orientation is next tues...and i wonder if it will be like my college orientation, which i barely remember as it occured while i was in a nice ethanol induced haze. somehow i doubt it. i'm having little pangs that maybe i should do another IUI before i go on to IVF. i've done 5 clomid/4 IUI's. was that a fair trial? i got pregnant on it once and almost pregnant with it at least twice. it seems like it almost works.

pregnancy blips + shopping = AIEEEE

2007-11-23T00:03:00.000-04:00

happy thanksgiving y'alls! :)

everytime i have a pregnancy 'blip' (which, unfortunately, has been 3 times in the last 9 mos) i am struck with the consumate need to go clothes shopping until i've depleted either my checking account or my patience with myself, whichever comes first. after the m/c this summer it was rediculous...(though i did end up with some extremely cute summer dresses, truly.) Currently, i find myself ensnared in yet another shopping binge. my current obsession is just the right pair of cute jeans, which i truly don't need, and which aren't practical as i can't wear them to clinicals, but i sorely, wretchedly, desperately want anyway. i feel kinda bad about it, especially as we are approaching the money sinkhole known as IVF... and so now is probably especially not the time to piss away money on frivolities. i think part of the problem is when i'm ttc, i try not to buy clothes because, you know, just in case **roll eyes**. and then when it seems like just-in-case = no-time-soon i want to make up for all the clothes i didn't let myself have before.

(...i also wish i would apply myself to school with such arduous--bordering on fanatical--determination as i do scouting denim deals on ebay...oy).

'at least you can get pregnant'

2007-11-20T18:59:00.000-04:00

a few of my imaginary inside the computer friends said this to me today on a message board i frequent.

it is really the LAST thing i want to hear considering i'm a g3p0 if you count the chems and a g1p0 otherwise...and all that with a ton of effort.

do you think i should say something, nicely but politely, to the effect of 'well, yes, but i rather need to be able to STAY pregnant too, nu?'...or do you think i should let it go and not say anything about it. i know the people who wrote it meant no offense and were trying to be helpful. but, ugh.

a teensy tiny chemical preg (update)

2007-11-20T09:30:00.000-04:00

i got my beta back from yesterday. it's 9.6mIU. the ranges for our clinic are le 5 = not pregnant, ge 5 = pregs.

a 9.6 at 17dpo, well, it isn't great. i'm going back for a repeat this morning.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

this morning's beta = 3. at least i can expect AF soon, which is good. i was worried that this thing would drag on and on for weeks.

my dad is so sweet/i'm an auntie (update 6p)

2007-11-19T15:17:00.000-04:00

we met for lunch so i could give him a few of the newborn things to give to my sister when he goes out to visit later this week. that's right! i'm an auntie. i was worried by the time i went out there in 4 wks none of the newborn stuff would fit anymore. Baby A is Andrew James, 6lbs 6oz, nearly back at birthweight at day 4 of life. Baby B is Ryan Samuel, 5lbs 11oz, who is already down about 10% at day 4 of life. I love how they are both just born, and already heading off in opposite directions as quickly as possible. it sounds like both are doing well, and they are making sure baby B gets enough to eat through a combo of breastmilk/formula via syringe/bottle/breastfeeding. they'll all be discharged later today. at the end of her pregnancy my sister developed pre-e which rapidly devolved into HELLP syndrome, so they all had a 5 day hospital stay. she had a very rough first 2 days, but is feeling much better now. what i feel kind of funny about is during the last month or so of the pregnancy i was very worried she would get HELLP syndrome, and then she did.
------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: this is my own personal blog, and it isn't an open forum for debate. i want to keep this space a positive one, where i can post about myself and my family without recrimination or judgement.

with that in mind: if you disagree with formula supplementation for whatever reason, please keep it to yourself. i don't feel like it should be necessary to post this rule, but this is an open blog and i know people feel very passionately about issues surrounding infant care. and that is great, and you can do it however you want with your own children.

second: the babies are having their bris this thursday which i will also probably write about (even though i can't be there because of school, i wish i could be. everyone else in my family is going). if you feel passionately about infant circumcision, please keep it to yourself. my blog, her children, yada yada yada, refer to above statement etc.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

anyway, i met with my dad for lunch so i could give him the newborn stuff so he could take it with him when he flies out this week. he gave me a little glass heart paperweight as a present, to let me know he is thinking of me. that recognition just meant so much. this is a time of great joy for my family and myself. i'm so glad j is doing well and the babies are too. but there is a slight bittersweet edge to it for me because i'd have been due about now also if i hadn't m/c'd. it was nice to have someone besides myself acknowledge that there is an edge of sadness in it for me, intermingled with my great joy. i'm not even sure he knows how much it meant to me because his general opinion is people shouldn't dwell on the past. also, i think he may have just given it to me because he didn't want me to feel bad about all the attention going to my sister...which is funny, because we aren't 8 anymore, and i don't care about that at all. but still, he thought of me and that is nice. (he's probably right to some degree about dwelling on the past...though his family took it to some extremes. at lunch today i asked him his grandparent's names, his mother's parents. and he did not know their names. his mother never spoke of them as they perished in the holocaust, and he didn't ask).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
i'm waiting on my beta results and pushed back my saline sono to next week. i had a little bit of spotting, but no AF yet. le sigh. i'm sure my pd will come within an hour of finding out the beta is neg.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6p: no AF and no update. the clinic stated they don't have my results back yet. from 11am today. i hope the lab didn't lose the sample.

what new hell is this?

2007-11-18T11:35:00.001-04:00

relevant stats:

--15dpo
--spotting 12 dpo
--no AF yet
-- $ store pg test negative at midnight, pos this am
-- repeat $ store test and FRER this AM with FMU both still neg after 2+ hrs
--what's at stake: besides the obvious, it's also the jan IVF cycle.

i will go in for a beta tomorrow at 16dpo if still no AF. i'm sure i'm having some kind of chemically bullshit going on. can anyone out there in blogland think of a positive outcome if someone doesn't have >25mIU hcg in their urine after 15 dpo? me either.

i had a scheduled saline sono this tues at 5dpo. my original plan was just to show up and have it, esp if the beta comes back <25mIU and just say i'm 5dpo or not say anything at all. except it occured to me this morning that one look at the uterine lining and they're going to know right off it's not 5dpo. think anyone will notice? i think the saline sono is just to visualise the contours of the ute so maybe they won't notice...is it possible?

if i can't get in for the saline sono on this cycle (cd 5-12) it might affect our chances of getting the jan IVF cycle.

anyone know any way i can induce my pd TODAY?
:(

oh well

2007-11-15T09:01:00.000-04:00

12dpo bfn.

good news

2007-11-13T20:40:00.000-04:00

no, not pregnancy good news.

but look! lori mama and blogger extraordinare, has given me the blogger flame of fortitude :)

as i muddle through yet another 2ww i'm not feeling very fortudinous, but i really appreciate the spirit lifting shout out.

so, in turn i'm passing the torch along to geohde, who just had a birthday and is always full of fortitude and also to dmarie who has made a commitment to health and is drinking lots of very very green shakes.

love and supportive healing vibes for my hubby

2007-11-13T13:29:00.000-04:00

well, my hubs is in a very bad mental state. it's not IF related, but the struggle is very similar. i'm looking for advice/support/ways to muddle through.

he is in the ar.my and when his orders were cut, they were cut incorrectly, so as to reduce his income by about a third. only one other person of the many who had orders coming due at the same time were affected in the same way. this means he is working along-side people whose orders were cut at the same time as his, and yet did not suffer the same loss of income. he has basically exhausted his options for redress, and it doesn't look like there will be any. not that people are saying what happened is right, just that it's done and worse could have happened. add to this that the people he works with and under do not cut the orders, that happens at a different level. so there's no one he works directly with or near that either cut the orders or who have the direct ability to fix it. so he feels very very low. doesn't want to do his work because his situation is not fair, doesn't want to not do his work because that's not fair either. spends all his time trying for solutions, realizing there probably won't be any. trying not to make all his co-workers hate him for spending so much time on this, on the other hand, how could he not?

so, how do you go on when you're in an f*cked up situation? one way is you just do because you have to. i think this is true for him...he will go on because even though his situation is bad, the alternatives are worse (iraq, unemployed, etc). this is a mind-f*ck that all of us infertile-types are intimately familiar with. we struggle for that thing which comes so simply and naturally and thoughtlessly to the vast majority of people. we look around at people who confidently circle due dates on their calendar after the first bfp, who never had a loss, or who treat their pregnancies carelessly. we are somehow caught in a different ride than most people, and even the best 'fixes' still hurt. how do you keep your spirit? how do you not feel uniquely targeted, when it feels so individual? what are your strategies for muddling through?

sometimes it just hurts to be female

2007-11-12T14:10:00.000-04:00

right down to my XX chromosomes. we share the world, we're more than half of it's occupants..wtf is wrong with people? i am constantly amazed that our capacity for hate seems to outshine our capacity for love.

anyway, stuck in my hamster wheel right now:

this story about iranian med student Zahra Bani Ameri who was picked up by the revolutionary guard for questions regarding her marital status, and who died in prison two days later of 'suicide'. it seems unfair to me the subtitution: she dies and her jailers live? we exchange a light for darkness.

recent stories about the harrassment women face online. this article on slate discusses the harrassment women political bloggers face, and this washington post article discusses one specifically egregious example of online harrassment women law students face. according to board moderators at this law student themed site, taking down intimidating rape and brutality posts against female law students (including posts providing name and address info and those inciting other readers to snap pictures of the girls on their cellphones and then post them online) constitutes an unfair foray into censorship. much more admirable to host an open forum for anonymous users to post their graphically violent mysogynistic fantasies and racist, anti-semitic threats against female law students. the only positive i can come up with all this is the penn state law student anthony ciolli who was one of two founders/site executives/moderators/whatever he is calling his invovlement these days had his job offer at a law firm rescinded after the WaPo article was published. i hope his student loan debt is considerable and his employment prospects remain dismal.

finally, i posted on a parenting board about the challenges involved with raising our daughters, what with the xrated halloween costumes for 8 yr olds (honey, would you rather be a sexy pirate or a sexy nurse or a sexy chambermaid?) and the stuff outlined above etc etc etc. and a mother responded that that's why she's glad she has a son. oooookay. guess i'm glad i'm white and american, so i don't have to trouble my head about injustices that concern other races or occur in other countries. injustices don't have to occur directly TO YOU in order for you to be concerned about them. yeesh.

9 dpo today. no tests.

the interminable 2ww

2007-11-10T22:38:00.000-04:00

i worked my heinie off today. it was one of those days in the ER where you start dreaming about cath-ing yourself, because there isn't any time to stop and pee. much less eat. at around 3pm i started feeling shaky, and ducked in the back to eat bbq potato chips and leftover halloween candy (it was on hand). then i went back to work a little less shaky but a little more disgusted with myself. at the end of the shift i found out that if i'd worked tomorrow or monday i'd have gotten time and a half. BLAST!

no fertility news of my own to report. muddling through the 2ww. i'm probably going to get 2 nephews by the end of the week though.

CrossPollination

2007-11-08T22:33:00.000-04:00

hear ye hear ye: without further ado, i present the nov 9 crosspollination guest blogger (a little early, more time to guess). please extend a warm hearty welcome to...mystery guest :)

This post is part A of a two part X-pollination, you may find part B here (if indeed you fancy reading part B)

I choose to, rather unimaginatively, entitle this 'Tears Part I'.

The manner in which my latest IVF cycle has slowly, but with much dramatic flair, gone down the proverbial gurgler finally got to me.
Out of ammunition in the form of perfectly innocent clinic staff to rant and rail at, I was left with only self recrimination.

Last night in the shower, and for the first time in a very long time, I cried.

I let the water run over me and oh how I cried. Truly stood there in my pasty white birthday suit and just balled. Great big gulping sobs, streaming mascara, socially inconvenient nose snot, the works. This was no ladylike small tear of regret, but the kind of heaving sobs that leave you with a hoarse voice, puffy eyes and an unnattractively red nose well into the next day.

I cried for what should have been with my first pregnancy, but for a cruel twist of fate.

I cried for what could have been, if only those embryos that looked so divine on the monitor had ever been given a fair chance by my body.

I cried with the combined grief of painful loss and my own repeated biological failures.

I cried for my husband, who may never be a father.

But mostly, I admit, I just cried for myself.

I cried until the water ran cold, and then, shivering like a wet cat, I cried some more.

Thanks for having me.... guess who I am below and then click the link to find the usual post from this blogger.

fertility gods and irony, part 645

2007-11-05T19:45:00.001-04:00

i recently came across the blog of a woman who stated she'd been ttc x1 year with no luck and so went to her ob-gyn who prescribed 50mg clomid. as a comparison, my clinic starts people at 100mg, even for the first cycle. anyway, her first cycle on the clomid, she got pregnant with quadruplets, two of the four being identical twins. the identicals probably would have happened anyway, but that is a hell of a response to clomid even so. and then there's the rest of us poor saps, lucky to get half a follicle on twice as much clomid. further proof--as though any were needed--that the primary motivating factor for "blessings" from the fertility god appears to be side-splitting, head bashing irony. nothing like "would be a good parent" or "deserve this after so much crap" etc. it seems much more along the lines of "i bet if i flipped this switch it would REALLY f*ck things up. Cool!"

2ww and ultimate

2007-11-04T12:41:00.000-04:00

so yesterday after the IUI bright and frikking early in the morning, i asked the very nice and soft spoken doctor about vigorous exercise during the 2ww, does it impact the chances of pregnancy? (this guy is so mild and soft-spoken that my mind wandered into thinking what he was like as, say, an 8 yr old boy. did he play with other kids or was he that kid in the corner building things out of legos while everyone else was playing kickball? was he always just mild and polite or was he a hellion that became this paragon of stillness after adolescence? but i digress...) anyway, the the thing with ultimate is that it's not just a question of elevated heartrate, but, if you're doing it right, also involves lots of lunging, diving, jumping etc. he said there's no real strong evidence either way, but if he were me he would abstain.

of course, yesterday was the end-of-season tournament. and i couldn't let them know ahead of time that i wouldn't be there, since i didn't know the timing of the IUI myself until the day before. so i made an internal compromise with myself. i went to the tournament and played as little as possible. once we were cleared to advance to the next round, i didn't play at all. i came up with some scarcely believable convoluted lie about why i could play just fine the previous two games and then needed to abruptly stop playing. it'd be great if i could have just told them: "well, i'm just not sure how to walk the line between not living my life and not taking risky chances during the 2ww." but, for better or worse, i didn't.

so here i am, right at the beginning of yet another 2ww. let the wild rumpus start.

mighy righty

2007-11-02T13:10:00.000-04:00

todays scan: on the right i have a 20mm and a smattering of littles. on the left i got nothing (this after spending 20 awkward wanding minutes trying to find that sucker). that right ovary is really a producer! i can pretty much count on something happening on the right when i go in for scans, where as the lazy and recalcitrant left is much more of a toss-up. like bartleby, when it comes to making follicles, it seems the left would prefer not to. bastard. i was hoping for more than ONE follicle, but one good one is all you need (in theory) right?

ideally i'd trigger tonight for IUI on sunday but the clinic doesn't do IUI's on sunday. so i triggered this morning for IUI tomorrow morning...poor cl has already started the 8+ hr drive. poor kid.

my request for an E2 was denied. apperently my lining looks good, so adding an E2 would just "confuse things."

really not how i planned it

2007-10-29T11:20:00.000-04:00

subtitle: feeling sorry for myself

i had my follow up appointment this morning with yet another provider that i'd never met before. she seemed ok/knowledgeable. so, this is my 5th clomid cycle, 4th clomid + IUI cyle. they might push it to 7 clomid cycles to have 6 clomid + IUI, but they are also willing to move forward with me and start an IVF cycle in january. the way the clinic works, they do 4 ivf cycles/yr; jan, apr, july, oct.

i feel really sad. :( i don't know what i expected. of course IVF is the next step, what else could we do? i suggested IUI + gonadotropins but the value is probably minimal since i am (mostly) ovulating with the clomid.

on the good side: the cycle in january is the next possible cycle. there's barely any waiting or downtime from now (end of oct). the cost is about 1/4 what it would be if i wasn't in the military health care system. once you move on to IVF you work with a smaller cadre of people, i might actually see these guys more than once.

the bad: i *never* thought i'd be getting IVF. :(. i'm supposed to be doing a rotation in ore.gon in january and i'd have to cancel it (of course it's already set up etc etc etc). or i could go in january and push back the IVF to april. but that has it's own set of problems. i am on scholarship at school, but i have to pay them back by working full time after i graduate. i have a little leeway after graduation, but not alot. if i pushed back the cycle to apr and it were successful, basically i'd start somewhere, work there for 6 wks, and then go immediately on maternity leave. there are worse things, but that sucks also...and interviewing while visibly knocked up probably isn't going to work as well for me as otherwise.

there is a strong part of me right now that just wants to go f*ck it and not do anything. if i get pregnant i do, otherwise i live a happy child-free life full of free time, extra money, the ability to go clothes shopping without spending hours making arrangements first, i can sleep for more than 3 hrs at a stretch. there's an equally strong part of me that wants to go forward with IVF because i know what a unique position i'm in regarding having any of it covered by insurance at all. what will i think of myself now if i let it go and find myself paying 25K for ivf 2 yrs forward?

it's just too much to think about. i'm depressed and don't care.

what the...

2007-10-19T23:34:00.000-04:00

for some reason google directed this searcher to my blog: dildo ascending colon. i have no idea why. and, dear confused google reader, if you *do* have a dildo in your ascending colon, you need a rather major surgery. so put down teh internets and get thee to a hospital, toot sweet. try not to stop for any snacks on the way.

(sadly, someone also found my site using 'men and grief' which does make sense)

the quiet before the redcoat invasion

2007-10-18T12:58:00.000-04:00

relevant stats: 13dpo
bfn with urine test sensitive to 25mIU hCG
temp drop -0.6

i had a bea-u-tiful chart this month complete with i-spotting and everything. there's a lesson in there somewhere...irony? irrelevance of good looking data? need to spend 2ww intoxicated?

i think as long as my mom doesn't mention 'god's will' at brunch on sunday i'll be ok.

frer=2 ute=0 hope=-1 (update with question)

2007-10-17T08:41:00.001-04:00

i guess it could turn around from today's bfn (12dpo), but it's looking less likely for the home team.

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update 1040a: here's my question for you guys. assuming the spotting i had late sun night was implantation related (HA!!! i know, funny, but bear with me for a minute...) i got a bfn today 4 days later. it seems to me even if i do get a bfp in a few days, it's kind of a bad sign. if the placenta/attachment were doing well, i'd have my bfp by now...it shouldn't take me 4 days to make hcg if something actually attached. or am i confused (quite likely!). any thoughts?

frer=1; ute=0 10dpo

2007-10-15T07:28:00.000-04:00

try again tomorrow, thanks for playing.

bad information/rant/updated with bad news

2007-10-14T22:01:00.000-04:00

ok, here is a rant, i know it's a rant. it is also not IF related, so feel free to skip.

there is so much BAD BAD information about vaxes out there. some crackpot writes some conspiracy theory $hit about government and big pharma trying to poison babies for profit, puts it on his web and viola! the idiots applaud his crack stab at entrenched interests. it is absolutely exhausting to try and fight against it. if you aren't restricted up by "facts" you can make on hell of an argument about how unsafe everything is and this one causes autism and that one causes f+ck all. meanwhile, science is not blameless in this...it's hard to argue against propaganda with 'current evidence does not support the hypothesis that x causes y, but research is ongoing.' yea, real convincing there.

i don't know why i care. it's not MY children, and it will never be my children (if i am lucky enough to ever have/raise children). if others want to take such risks with their children, than so be it. it's just infuriating to see such drivel put out as fact, and then to see other people just swallow it as fact. can ANYONE look beyond emotional rhetoric anymore?

and...i am going to FAIL my test on tuesday...i need to put teh internets DOWN and step away...
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and, as of right now, i'm spotting. fuck. guess i'm going to fail my test tomorrow morning too.
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'risk taking' and the 2ww

2007-10-14T10:19:00.000-04:00

all the different ways the 2ww tries our souls. yesterday i ran my a$$ off playing ultimate. it was a great game too, my team really needed me, and i ended up catching the game-winning point :). but should people in the 2ww exert themselves so strenuously? it's all a huge mindf*ck, because, potentially, i could be in the 2ww at least half of the time for the next long while. should i give up my life and sit at home for what could be? should i really give up half of my games? on the other hand, do i risk possibly a bad outcome by running so much? my hr was probably in the neighborhood of 4,000bpm which is well over the recommended < 150bpm. additionally, as i was chasing plastic discs all over the rocky bumpy field that is anac*stia, i thought this about the potential life in my womb: 'if you are trying to implant NOW, good luck little sucker!' i rationalized this way: women have been getting pregnant for eons, and most of them did not sit on their heinies waiting on devil sticks to turn their way. they just lived their life, and got/stayed pregnant anyway. the proof is that we're all here, and only recently has leisure been an option for the vast majority of women. on the other hand, maybe women like me would not have gotten pregnant in the good old days. it comes down to this: do i blame myself more for sitting at home not playing and then getting a bfn, or play my a$$ off and risk a bfn that might have otherwise potentially be a bfp? i decided to play anyway, because i know that when the time comes, there's plenty of blame to go around.

phantom symptoms

2007-10-13T14:40:00.000-04:00

here i am at 8dpiui/8dpo (pretty please) making pretend that i have pregnancy symptoms. that's right...i just imagined i felt nauseous. yet i haven't allowed myself to pee on anything for fear that even if there were some hcg in my system, it would still be too negligible to register on a devil stick. i call that having my cake and eating it too. on the one hand, the hcg is making me nauseous. on the other hand, not enough hcg in the system to set off a stick. heh. not likely!

at least i know the insanity is all mine :)

tired

2007-10-11T18:43:00.000-04:00

i'm TIRED. if i have any 2ww symptoms, it's that. on the other hand, tired is kind of a general condition for me; it'd be nice if i only felt tired 2 wks in 4. would it be wrong of me to go to bed tonight at 9pm? i know it'd be lame, but oh well. i've begun the paper i have to write and i've got a few tests next week. ugh.

one of my clincals right now is in an adult ER. i'm not actually participating in the care of my patients. i go in and get a history and do a physical completely for my own benefit, and because i'm required to do so to pass my class. i guess the school would argue a benefit is having a second set of eyes/ears on board to make sure nothing is missed etc, which is true i guess. i just feel bad sometimes poking at sick people for what is probably nominal gain to them.