I'm not dead, just a bad blogger...

So I bet you all have wondered what planet I fell off of.... Believe me, I have been incredibly busy. But this blogging as the pregnancy progresses contains a huge amount of guilt for me. I guess because I had such a hard time reading about most others successes, that I know were I in the shoes of some of you (waiting to cycle, after a failed cycle, lost babies, bad cycles, taking a break, TTC naturally for a while), reading a blog like mine would just hurt. And all our you have helped me so much, and been such a support, that the last thing I desire is to cause someone pain by visiting here.

But I am living "the dream." This is what we're all praying, hoping, dreaming, striving for, is it not? We all desire a pregnancy with a live baby at the end of it first of all. Sometimes that door closes, and we pursue other options. But I guess I want to be honest, and my living truth is that the pain and money and time and negative after negative are so worth it, when you're this close.

I am just now 8 months pregnant (31 weeks). This Baby Girl kicks and moves and hiccups and plays games with her Daddy. He will poke at her, and she will kick back. It's very intentional, when she chooses to play that game. My husband has only been home a little over 2 weeks from our 71 day deployment, and I have been in heaven with him here again!!! The very first night back, Baby Girl very obligingly moved underneath his hands and he was enamored with her. He loved my new pregnant shape, and was amazed at how active this baby is. When he left, she was so tiny only I got to feel her little "flutters". Seeing his heart melt at her just now, makes me that much more eager for her to come in person and me to be able to watch him with his long-desired and much-loved daughter.

The pregnancy goes well most days. Occasionally I have a day with tons of Braxton Hicks and round ligament pain, and it is annoying if it coincides with a planned outing or shopping trip. But I would put up with so much more. Plus, all things considered, I've had so few problems this pregnancy, and I've mostly just had regular expected symptoms. Pregnancy you don't always feel beautiful and glowing and wonderful, but feeling the baby move makes all that fade. I love pregnancy for that one reason only. It's this special connection only I share with her right now.

Getting this far has done something to my mind, though. I no longer distrust my body. For the first 28 weeks, every pain and ache I was sure was a foreshadowing of something terrible, and threatening to the baby. Then finally, around week 28/29, I realized I trusted my body. I did not think it was going to betray me or the baby, and that it would keep nourishing her like it should, and it would work like it should to bring her out at her time. It was odd, after 3 years of feeling like my body could only fail me, to suddenly not distrust it.

And yet, around that time-frame, I was sitting on the couch, and I got a pain that was so reminiscent of a period cramping. And with that simple pain, that I haven't had since March (before I started BCPs for IVF #2), all the feelings of what a those cramps signify came in on me and for a minute I felt angry, hurt, bitter, sad, failure, and dispair. That feeling brought on the wave of emotions you get after TTC so long and getting repeated failure. Yet there I was, with Baby Girl safe inside me, free to realize those feelings did not relate to today, but were stored up from the past. But it made me wonder what kind of life lies ahead, when my body starts to cycle again.

I don't know. I can't figure that out. I let my mind wander occasionally to what may happen, or what or when we'd choose to try with our two frozen embryos. I can't even begin to figure that out, and I shouldn't, but I am aware, in the back of my mind, that trying again, even with a precious baby girl in my life, will probalby still involve emotional pain, tempered with the beautiful joy of knowing we have succeeded once. We have gotten what we prayed for. And for that, we will always always give thanks and remain humbly grateful for what we never though we'd get.

Infertility has changed me forever. Miscarriage changed me forever. Those scars are still there, and always will be, through they aren't as tender as they once were. Having a live baby will change me forever. I can't be as hurt and negative as I once was. I can only pray for all of you, that in your lives, whether you're pursuing ART, natural TTC, adoption, surrogacy, donor embryos, or peace with your life as a couple right now, I pray your lives would be blessed with a child, in the future, and that the waiting time, when it's over, would hold no more power over you for sadness.

Absent

Sorry I've been absent... This month has been busy. And now, in just a few days my husband will deploy for a ~70 day stint to the Middle East. I've been spending all my excess time with him... We even went this weekend to a lovely, luxurious mountain cabin in south-western NC. It was magical, and so perfect. But now we're back and counting down the days.

I did happen to do the Clomid Challenge Test this month, and I am so very pleased at how my FSH is looking.... On CD3 it was 7.34!!! Now, you all know I've been worried as I've only ever seent these numbers go up... And I know all the stuff about there that you're only as good as your worst FSH, but I don't have the profile of a high-FSH'er and now, with such a good number (for me) I'm thrilled. This past month I specifically prayed for a pregnancy and for my FSH numbers to be "fixed." I think I at least got that answered. Previously, I'd just worried myself sick practically about it. Then I figured, gosh I should pray! I'm so glad.

I had my second HSG (hysterosalpingogram). If the doctors (yes, the first one had such trouble he called another one in!) hadn't taken 25 minutes finding my cervix, it would have been "a breeze." I was really worried about this, because my last HSG was terrible. Not the procedure itself, that felt like an IUI. But the post-HSG was so painful, for about 22 hours. At one point I neraly couldn't walk right after it. This time? The dye was in and out before I even knew it! I hardly felt it. Both tubes open, uterus looks good. Same as last time. I have no idea why you have to do it pre-IVF because they don't care about the tubes anyway. Whatever! It's done.

We have to get our check out next month for IVF. The clinic "appears" to have changed their prices, but what they've really done is charge up front like you're doing ICSI, and if you don't end up needing it, they refund you that portion back. I want to discuss with the doctors whether to do it or not, but I lean VERY strongly towards it, because we had a lot of our eggs fertilize "abnormally" (i.e. multinucleated). Basically, to recap:
17 Eggs Retrieved
15 Eggs Mature
12 Eggs Fertilized
8 Fertilized Normally (4 were multinucleated)
This is an 80% fertilization rate, but only 67% normal fertilization. J has a lower-that-we'd-like Morphology, and that's something an Embryologist can look at to choose the most perfect looking sperm. This of course is just my opinion, that's why I'll have these stats in hand and talk to the RE's there and see if doing ICSI will help at all. Gosh, even if it'll just help those 3 eggs that didn't fertilize to fertilize, that's 3 more embryos to get a chance to grow.

I did hear from the clinic that their baseline dates start from the week of April 7-28. I think I'll be in the week April 21-25. If their baselines are still on Thursday, then I will very easily be able to predict EVERYTHING about the cycle (I actually had a spreadsheet for the IVF #1 before I actually did it, predicting if my baseline was such-and-such a date, & I started stims on such-and-such a date, then here's my predicted Retrieval/Transfer date. I was EXACTLY right.

Now, of course, I am due to ovulate this week (clomid always makes me late, the later I take it, and for the CCCT I took it CD5-9, so probably CD16-18 O date). So we'll have a chance at pregnancy, but I am just going to pray and hope.... It would be so nice not to have to do IVF again. But I'm ready, if it comes to that. At least I'll know this was our last chance before that. I actually never have minded IVF, and if it were closer I'd go so far as to call it pleasant (booking airfare and rental car, being out of my home, being away from my husband, all make it not fun). But anyway, I'll take delight in "shooting up" again.... And pray I get a live baby out of this.

After 5-8 (don't want to count) pregnancy announcements these last 2 weeks from people I am close to or acquainted with, I've decided to just stop thinking about it. People get pregnant, I'll don't think I'll ever be one of those people who get pregnant their first month trying, and can be uber-excited and not fear miscarraige, but it's life & I've gotta deal. It's my crisis, no one else's. Can't expect understanding from women- except from you my dear online friends!!! I cherish your support so much!

All Quiet on the IF Front

Well.... after my last post I don't have anything else to add. Except that sometime around Wednesday/Thursday there was a turning point in my spirit (mind, will, emotions). I had the grace necessary for each day. I had the grace to smile and laugh and my spirit wasn't weighed down anymore. I call it a spiritual breakthrough. It's nothing I did differently than any other day. I think I just had to persist and wait for it. I think God will offer us grace, but then we have to receive it. I can be so caught up in my own pain that I don't see it or don't want it when it's there. There is a fine line between being genuinely discouraged and then having an opportunity for release from it - and refusing to take it. A funny situation that occurs and gives you impulse to smile or laugh (when you haven't in days). An offer of kindness by a husband or friend (Starbucks, Target shopping) that is turned down because if you leave home people might forget you're sad (and yet you do want to go). Maybe just a feeling that life isn't so bad, and yet inside you are afraid of life without the pain, so you deny that feeling. Whatever it is, I know the moment I have the choice to make. I know when I'm refusing to partake of the grace offered to me. This time, I didn't refuse.

In Polishing God's Monuments (a book I can't recommend enough), the author states this, in reference to having a huge loss come into your life:
"We feel overwhelmingly sad and empty. No matter how much we still have to be thankful for, the loss of what we value is so crushing and the relative value of everything else is so diminished by the price we put on what is gone, that nothing could offset our pain enough to alleviate it. Once we had the little world we wanted and now it is gone. Thereafter nothing would satisfy but to have things back the way they were. Our emotions balk at any relief less than a return to the status quo."

I know this has been me at times. Nothing less than having my pregnant state back and my baby returned to safety in my womb would make me content. The "status quo." It's painful to realize that I have to settle for less than that. It's been ordained.

So, I am trying to now receive the grace that comes to me. Though outwardly I have no more hope that I did a week ago when I was so lost and distressed, inwardly I have hope in God's working. I am ready to return to prayer with faith, prayer for a miracle this month. And if He doesn't give it, I pray I will be able to be content to wait, in expectancy of a good work sometime (just not my time).