The Plot: How I Got Here

Hello Invisible (Non-Existent?) Fellow Infertile Friends of Mine!

Welcome to hell, better known as, actively trying to conceive. Errrrr.

So this is not a dream blog of mine I conjured up because I've always wanted to be a writer of blogs and fertility seemed fun, and popular. I always have wanted to be, and am attempting to, be a writer, this is not a fun forum (trolls) or favorite topic (shoot me) of mine. It just so happens, after years of being responsible, going to school, launching a career, ingesting chemicals to ward off the pregnancy beast, I must have scared her off for good. Oh, goodie.

The first emotion at the discovery of my fertility woahs were sad, but not tears of sadness, but just a sad (pathetic) thing to latch onto in the mind-brain of an unpreggo eggo. Please, please DO judge me. The first thing that comes into my mind when I find out that this pregnancy thing is science, the kind of science I have to pay attention to to get right! My first thought is not, "Oh no, I'm broken!" or  "I'm never going to have another baby!" (my first/only child is 10-an ooops miracle), or "My poor husband will never have a baby of his own!" All these did come shortly after, but the first one was....

"Why the hell was I on birth control for 16 years....WTF?!"

and then...

"Why the fuck did anyone let me swallow pills as a 16 year old idiot?"

right after that...

"Why did anyone let me inject myself with reproductive radiation as a 20 year old?"

after that...

"Why the hell did I let anyone stick a piece of metal up my hoohaa when I was 23?"

And then these came....

"Aren't there tests I should be REQUIRED to take before taking years of reproductive crushing birth control, some of which was never going to work for my body?"

"So I went to the doctor every 8-10 months for 16 years and no one knew I was not really likely to get pregnant without medical intervention?"

"What about when I got pregnant on ortho-tricylin when I was 20? No one decided to look into that little fertility quagmire?"

And then these flashbacks raped my brain for a little while...

"Never mind the fact I was accused of flushing my birth control pills by my sons fathers insane mother who ranted that I tried to trap her gem of an unemployed loser son by getting pregnant on purpose.

(Yes, you crazy bitch. I would love to get knocked up by your abusive, alcoholic, unemployed, illiterate son. It sounds much better than what I have going on, let me throw away my full ride-athletic scholarship in my junior year of college, my tickets to Spain to study abroad for the summer, quit my amazing internship with an amazing company, and sit on my fat ass and collect welfare checks the rest of my miserable, white trash life. Yes, what an opportunity, I just cannot  pass this up. Your sons is such a catch, sign me up. There is only one of him! I need to snatch him up before the rest of the trailer park tries to! Who really wanted to be successful in life, anyway?)"

So after I ponder all those and the obligatory....

Life isn't fair!
Why am I an idiot?
What have I done to my life/body?
Why is there a show called 16 & Pregnant?
Why the hell is there a show called Teen Mom?

Then I decide my husband is a great (irrational) target for why I am not pregnant...

If I would have just pushed harder on the timeline of babies!
He should have known that I would have a hard time he shouldn't have MADE me wait!
How selfish of him, Im 3 years older, he should have known better!

They are all RIDICULOUS, but the last one is just DEPLOYARBLE.  First of all, no one has ever MADE me do anything (or not do) in my whole life, unless it was my idea or there was something in it for me.  To accuse my husband of anything other than sainthood, is just not even possible. He is pretty perfect in the husband department, so far anyway. My biggest complaint is that he falls asleep too easy, we can never get through an hour of television unless he is up cleaning...yes cleaning. That seriously turns into our biggest fights, and I am a brat. I deserve it, hate me. Call me a bitch, I know.

I am however, angry about most of these things, not to a damaging jump off a cliff extent, but if I think over them, yah, its irritating and I get mad.

But being mad, or sad, or letting my self pity get the better of me for too long isn't going to help me get pregnant any faster.  Trust me, everyone deserves, and even needs a woah-as-me pizza & pajama party, wine or dirty martinis, and a few sick days over the TTC unsuccessfully mission failed.  I need them, still.

Peeing on a stick every day of the month sounds easy, but its exhausting. Charting temperatures every morning sounds as simple as brushing your teeth. Symptom checking for ovulation, no biggie. Checking cervical mucus and positions sounds gross but hey, were trying to change dirty diapers for fun...what's a little EWCM compared to daily baby vomit? Its nothing!

Except it is!  It is a total and complete mind-fuck. Every. Single. Day.

I have loosely charted my whole life, mostly to make sure I could plan my summer beach trip around Aunt Flows visits, and keeping track of when I need to go get another Depo Provera shot, and then the birth control pills, all of its pretty well documented in some form or another. So when I say I am regular, I mean it. I've never been more than two days in either direction off of my expected menstrual arrival date.  The real charting and keeping up with cycle days came about 7 years ago when I started getting excruciating migraines. My family doctor had maxed me out on Maxalt and migraine meds and sent me to a neurologist. They are not all created equal. He wouldn't even see me until I had charted my periods for two solid months. Which turned out to be complete bullshit. He never educated me on how to chart, what to look for, the tools to use, nada. Just..."Hey, little girl, you're probably PMS'ing, so go write it down as your punishment you silly little woman."

So I did that, and since he really didn't have me record any valuable data, it showed exactly what I knew it would. I have 32 day cycles, my migraines are spread out no where near my period, and you still need to figure out what the hell is wrong with my head. You. Complete. Asshole. Jerk.

But really... after looking back on my migraine journals, they might have been a little worse around my cycle. This journal had to be burned because I was afraid if I died someone would come along and assume I was obsessed with bodily fluids, excrements, and organic foods. It included everything from food intake, calories divided by fats/carbs/proteins/animal fats/vegetarian intake, EXACT fluid intake, exact fluid expulsion (gross), bowel movements, the color of my menstruation...it was intense. And the guy wouldn't even look at it until I charted my period for another two months.

After 3 years, 4 neurologists and multiple scans, in an exploratory micro surgery on my spine after my migraines started causing (we thought) twitching in my spine, they found I was leaking spinal fluid. The surgeon did a blood patch and I literally woke up out of a fog of a 3 year headache I never knew I had. My spinal headaches had been so frequent, they wouldn't have time to subside. I would have relief of symptoms but they would not resolve. But I woke up without a headache. Unfortunately I had to have several more reconstructive spinal surgeries and metal plates to correct the reason the leak had happened in the fist place, but none the less, here was this beautiful documentation of my life that this idiot disregarded, that I wish I still had now.

My migraines were the most intense during ovulation, that's what that journal would have told us. I still get them during ovulation, right around the LH surge starting, but who would have ever known.  He didn't ask me for that, he asked me to write down

1.)When
2.)When Is It Over

And then compare them to my migraines.

When in fact, the headaches that required injections, those were probably all within 5-6 days. He didn't know what to look for, and most doctors, even brain surgeons, don't have a clue. 

All this information is all great and exciting to know, but man, I wish I would have put all this together when we first started ATTC this year. Another revelation too late was how long, or rather not long, my LP isn't. (luteinizing hormone phase) isn't. It is the key to the golden city. If I had known this, or had I known that it was a concern, I would have told my doctor after really charting for 5 months. I did realize it, because on my phone app that I use, it pointed it out, highlighted it for me. I even read the stats out loud when I saw her. She never even blinked. Its the sort of thing that I am so thankful that I am not a year further into this and don't know, because I just didn't do my research. Shame on everyone. Me, mostly, because I knew I should be asking for progesterone at the beginning of my pregnancy, but I just "let the doctors do their jobs." I wish I had it to do again.

I would have grabbed her face, made her look at me and said...

"My LP is only 7 days, it needs to be 10-12 at least...give me some progesterone."

And maybe she would have written me a script. And maybe I would be pregnant right now. But I never knew that my LP was too short. I honestly, for the first few months, was like,

"Hey all these llamas complain about this TWW (two week wait) and I'm over here, I can know in like a week. Lucky me!"

And at first, I was lucky. The very first month of ATTC we got pregnant, and it was a really, really short LP. It was only 6 days. And I was so excited. I got pregnant, and we are good at this and we're going to have tons of babies and we must be really fertile!

Yah, I hate that girl. That girl is stupid.

Wrong. It was beginners luck. After a month of swollen boobs, hands, feeling just a little tired, I miscarried. The baby never had a heartbeat that we could see. It measured just 4 weeks and 2 days when I was for certain at least 8 weeks along. So my LP was most likely the culprit. 

The first ultrasound was at 6 weeks, it was only measuring the same 4 weeks and 2 days, and she pulled out her chart and told me I must not have known the right ovulation days, I must have written down my LMP dates wrong, etc.  All the things you tell someone who accidently gets pregnant. I argued that there was no way that could be right, I had gotten a positive pregnancy test on X date, and even if I was off by 10 whole days, which I wasn't, the measurements were scary. She basically told me I was a moron, pulling out my phone to show her my very detailed Fertility Friend charting. So she dismissed me and scheduled another follow up sonogram for two weeks later. But I never made it to the next appointment. Instead, I started bleeding a few days before the appointment. There was never any suggestion to look into the causes of my miscarriage, never any questionnaire to be filled out to try to gain some insight. I was told some giant percentage number that I am purposely deleting from my brain, of women miscarry. They sent me home to miscarry unless I wanted to remove the pregnancy surgically. They did ask me if I wanted pain meds.  My husband was surprised when I declined the pain medicine, who doesn't need a little mental vacation during this horrible time?  I'm certainly not one who usually would decline that invite. I spent the next 4 days in the bathtub with my laptop sitting on a chair next to me. I didn't sleep there, but I woke up and got in, got out for lunch, then stayed in until dinner. In the middle of the night, I would get up and take two or three baths. Our water bill was almost $70 more that month.  It was the only place I could cry.  Every time I would go to change myself,  it was just a reminder I wasn't pregnant anymore. After the first half day, I just laid in the tub, refilling it when it got cold or I could see any unpleasant side effects. I never had to clean myself if I never got dirty. The clots and all the visible signs of a miscarriage are the worst parts.

I am going to save the details about my fertility specifics for later. Right now, I will just say that I am more than excited to start my new round of doctor appointments, which are about 3 days away and I should have more information then.

In the mean time, I will be googling all I can google about follicles, Clomid, trigger shots, HCG shots...and everything in between.  I never wanted to be here, but I hope I find some good friends and advice along the way. Positivity can only help at this point, so I am going to try to do that.