Happy New Year!!

Happy 2011 to all my friends and family!! Gosh, I can't believe the new year is here already. THE year. Stuff just got very real, peeps. I know how silly it sounds (it makes more sense in my head!), but I was putting off a lot of serious decisions and planning until "after the holidays." We need to figure out so many details - particularly how my company will allow me to handle leave and scheduling after the baby. And what we'll do with the baby while working.

I really have no idea what we're going to do.

But, on the less stressful front, it was a wonderful holiday! The picture is me on Christmas Day, so at 22 weeks. Of course, I'm behind on pictures but this weekend will be 24 weeks. That sounds momentous to me for some reason, so I will really try to remember!

New Year's was nice, despite a different vibe from previous years! We went out to dinner with some wonderful friends, then spent a bit at a local bar with friends, and were home for the ball drop at midnight. To see out the last year we'll be a family of two. Whoa. That's deep.

I posted my photo and was puzzling over how huge my feet look. I just remembered that's because I am wearing Rob's slippers. :)

Half-Baked!

I have reached the halfway point! I am totally amazed. Maybe, just maybe, I could end up with an actual baby at the end of this! Mind-blowing.

There really hasn't been too much going on in the way of pregnancy developments. I must be getting big - you should have seen my sister's face when I saw her for the first time in a week. It was priceless! Shock and disbelief...so I guess things are really poppin'!

I took the picture above myself (as if you couldn't tell). Rob is sick this week. I love him to death but it is funny how it's as if he is the only person to ever get sick with the most awful cold in the history of the world. So it's been a quiet week for me - I had to cancel my quilting lesson Monday, and I've been taking care of the dogs and scrapping together random food for dinner. I always loved to cook so much, but I have been totally not inspired or ambitious this whole pregnancy. Which is a shame because boy do I love to eat!

I feel pretty good generally, and I continue to be so thankful for that! My lower back is starting to ache a bit, but it's not a surprise when you think of how fast my center of gravity is changing. And that's about it! I am knocking on every piece of wood in my office right now that things stay somewhat smooth!

I have been feeling the baby like crazy, and at random times. So far, the morning appears to be a popular time for some baby jazzercise. I can't wait until you can feel it on the outside to Rob can start to feel more connected! I know he's jealous. He enjoyed speaking into my bellybutton (or what's left of it) as if it's a microphone to say hello. And also sticking his finger in my poor, shallow, wide bellybutton. I guess he's kind of right that it's the closest he can get to the baby right now. :) But it feels WEIRD. I always had such a cavernous bellybutton, very deep but thin, that I don't think the skin way in there ever got touched. Now it's so shallow and it's opening up like it's going to flip inside out that you can access the previously-unexplored regions. I think I'll have to put a band-aid or something on it when it flips so it doesn't rub on my clothes!

Also, my belly is ridiculously hairy.

It's fun...but definitely a little disconcerting to look down at this weird body that seems to belong to someone else!

So there!

FIVE pounds, per the scale at the OB's. Suck it, fat scale at my GP's office!

Nothing really new at the appointment yesterday - baby looked good in the ultrasound, NT scan bloodwork showed low risks of the birth defects for which they test, and baby sounded active and strong on the heartbeat scan!

I was wondering if they put the sex of the baby in your chart after the anatomy scan but just didn't tell the parents, but apparently the tech didn't write it in. The doctor was excited that I didn't know. She said it's more fun for the doctors. :) Glad I can bring some excitement to the table!

Almost halfway there!

Sometimes, it feels like I've been pregnant forever. And then alternately, time is flying by! Very strange. It's also weird how sometimes I feel very pregnant and other times totally normal. I think my belly is bigger some days than others, too. It felt really big when I took the picture above, though!

I can also say I am 100% sure I am feeling the baby! In hindsight, now that it happens pretty consistently I suppose I have been feeling it here and there for maybe two weeks. It's a nice little feeling and it makes me smile! It's also tremendously reassuring to know the little one is in there and dancing around.

So the baby is a mango this week. I was not amused when What to Expect When You're Expecting described it as a "mango dipped in greasy cheese" due to the vernix caseosa. Despite not having had more than a whiff of nausea during this pregnancy, that really crossed a line. Not cool, WTEWYE!

So that's really all that's going on right now! The baby is moving and I'm growing. My back is getting a bit sore. As I mentioned in the last post, according to my general practioner, I've gained 6 pounds since I got pregnant...but she has a fat scale and I'm waiting until I see the OB tomorrow to get the real measurement. :)

Anatomy Scan

We saw the baby again! And look, s/he is waving to you again! The position was so funny to see, with the legs way up to almost the head. Although it feels like this baby is taking up a ton of room, apparently it is folded in half. Heaven help me when it decides to stretch out!

Again, so amazing. Even more this time when the baby doesn't look like Alien. It looks like a real person!! The purpose of the ultrasound is to check on organs and such, so it was totally cool to see the four chambers of the heart. AND the technician didn't slip and tell us or show us the sex, so it was a win!

And since he'll probably never read the blog, Rob is almost as much fun to watch as the baby during these things. He has such a grin and gets all teary. :) Also, aren't those feet the cutest picture ever?

Besides the appointment, not much else is new! I'm feeling good but getting big. I'm up 6 pounds since getting pregnant...which I think is borderline too much, so I should reign it in! Some days, though, I am just a remorseless eating machine - I can't stop!

I had an appointment with my general practitioner yesterday and she literally squealed when I told her I was pregnant. My last appointment was right around my first IVF cycle and I was definitely at a different place in my body and mind.

I hope everyone who actually reads what I have to say had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I am thankful for all my family and friends. :)

Infertility - Getting here

So now that I'm "out" on Facebook and have shared my blog, I thought I should finally update with the last piece of our story on getting pregnant. I've really been avoiding it, honestly. I'm not sure I've really recovered from some of the emotions, but I am hoping my sharing I'll seem (a little) less neurotic. Maybe people can understand some of my hesitation to just enjoy and relax.

The picture up top is not the first time I've posted embryo photos. But these two are no more - they're the ones transferred during my "fresh" (vs frozen) cycle. They didn't make it. I'm not trying to get into a philosophical place here with when life begins, etc. Despite my liberal views on these issues, there are emotions that linger from these two beautiful little potential babies not making it. I think I mourn them (as well as the potential twin to the child I'm carrying now), and I also feel varying degrees of sadness, remorse, guilt, and shame. I'm still rocked by the idea that my first cycle didn't work despite our success with the second.

So an IVF cycle. How to sum it up without getting too bogged down in the details? It's intense. It's a very strange thing to put your body through. It's all-consuming when you're going through it. I've been pretty laid-back through treatments and got pretty good at distancing myself mentally from the physical procedures, but IVF is just so in your face. Let me explain what my cycle consisted of here. "CD#" refers to the cycle day, or days after my period. Also, you start with a month of birth control pills (a heavenly tease for someone with PCOS).

CD3 - 13: Injection of 150 iu of Gonal-F (FSH, or follicle stimulating hormone)

CD8, 10, 12, and 14: Monitoring appointments (bloodwork and internal ultrasound)

CD14, 15, and 16: Injection of Ganirelix (a drug that stops the follicles that you'd normally ovulate from releasing, allowing the smaller ones to catch up)

CD16: Injection of Novarel (a "trigger" shot to stimulate release of all mature follicles)

The process is strict about exactly what times drugs are injected, so I had a few times where I sat with an ice pack on my belly in a parking lot to prepare for the Ganirelix injection (that one is particularly painful for some reason). For the most part, Rob did my injections. Not because I couldn't (I could and I did!), but so he could see what I was going through and feel more involved. Share the pain, you know. :)

Then on CD18 was the egg retrieval. They put you under (thank goodness) to remove the follicles using a vacuum needle guided by ultrasound. Not as painful as it sounds! Then three days later, they put the best embryos back, also ultrasound-guided. This was on Memorial Day to give you some reference. The embryos that aren't transferred are then frozen if they're high enough quality. You start a progesterone injection nightly until your pregnancy bloodtest. It's weird stuff, though - suspended in an oil, so it leaves weird butt bumps.

Physically, the act of producing that many follicles is painful. We retrieved 20 eggs, 14 of which were "mature." I gained several pounds in bloat over the process. And it got to the point where I swore I could feel my ovaries bounce when I walked. Ironically, I looked pregnant with the bloat. Mentally, it becomes completely impossible to see how this could fail. Until it does.

Oh my gosh, that telephone call. After sweating every little symptom for two weeks, you go in for a pregnancy bloodtest. And then wait. When my phone rang that afternoon, I can't explain how excited I was. But then I heard the doctor's voice and just knew it had failed. I had failed.

I think one of the biggest issues I had with it was feeling like I was depriving my husband of the chance to have children. Watching him with kids is magical and I felt for a while he would be better off without me. Also, there was such a profound feeling of being broken, that they actually put these beautiful, handpicked embryos in me and my body killed them. I don't think the broken feeling goes away. I still don't understand how anything worked after that cycle didn't.

This is all very heavy, I apologize. There was a bright side - the doctor really thought it would work in the future and thought my ovaries had been hyperstimulated, preventing implantation. And I had nine high-quality embryos frozen and waiting for me to be ready to try again. The frozen cycle worked and was so much easier on me, mentally and physically.

But I'm still sorry for those first two, and I'm still hurt in places I'm not sure will scar over until I can actually hold my baby.

Checking in!

Surprisingly, I have less to say than I would've imagined. Hard to believe if you know me, right? Ha. But being pregnant is not the action-packed adventure I might have expected. I just took this picture so you can all marvel at how much I've grown in 3 weeks!

Nothing is really new! I'm 16 weeks tomorrow. It definitely feels different in the past few weeks. I actually feel not pregnant at all! Pretty much since hitting the second trimester I feel more like myself. Not that the first trimester was miserable at all, I know how lucky I was! But I was definitely exhausted. That has passed for the most part, thankfully!

I had an obstetrician appointment this week, so that's new. It was the first time I actually heard the heartbeat with the Doppler (basically, a belly microphone). Super cool! I think the heartbeat was at 151 beats per minute. It was also neat to hear the baby moving around, it sounded like static. Rob was upset he missed it, but he's been working crazy hours. Thankfully, I have a friend who is letting me borrow her Doppler - isn't that the sweetest thing? I am so grateful. Rob is dying to hear it, and I think it will be nice to check in on the babe when the mood strikes.

And call me crazy, but I think I may have felt some movement! It was kind of like little bubbles near my belly button. Of course, it could have been gas... :)

We also scheduled my big anatomy scan, the next ultrasound. For 12/1. I'm looking forward to seeing the baby again! But I'm definitely disproportionally worried about them slipping and telling us the sex. Fingers crossed no one breaks the news!