Today, I did something I swore up and down I would not do when we started this process: I talked openly with my mother about it. And now I wish I could turn back the clock and take it all back.
It had started to come out slowly. Several weeks ago, early in the IVF cycle, I told her I had PCOS and that we were "pursuing treatments" to try and have a baby. I suppose there's not a huge leap between telling her that and talking about IVF, but it seemed like talking about it in general terms left a veil -- however thin -- of mystery around it. "Treatments" could be almost anything -- injecting yourself every night with FSH before having your eggs harvested, or eating more broccoli. She didn't know the particulars, the mechanics.
Then came the miscarriage and I just felt like that changed everything. I found it impossible to get through Christmas Day without telling her -- it was an ugly elephant in the room -- so when we found ourselves alone that night and she guessed that I'd lost a baby, there was nothing to do but nod my head. I was tired of suffering in silence. And she made me glad that I told her. She was unconditionally supportive and it felt great to have another source of comfort, another outlet for expressing my overwhelming emotions.
She came over today to help me with a sewing project (lest you be impressed with the sound of that, rest assured that we didn't get very far with the sewing), and somehow I just started talking and it all came out: the Clomid, the failed IUIs, the arrival at IVF, the excitement of learning I was pregnant. I spent most of last night wide awake, thinking about everything that had happened, and I think it felt like a relief to talk about it for a while. To tell the whole story.
For a long time, I've wished that I could have my mother's support through this time. It just felt like too much of a risk to seek it. Our relationship, like many between mothers and daughters, is complex, and it makes me feel vulnerable to have shared all of this with her. I worry what she might do with the information, how she might process it, whether it might come back to bite me somehow. I worry about other people finding out. I'm not embarrassed about needing IVF (I've long been desensitized; it now seems more "normal" to me than doing the deed to get pregnant), and over the past year have grown more open about it. In fact, I see myself more and more as having a responsibility to share my story, as if in the telling I might somehow help another infertile woman somewhere. But I am still cautious; talking about it feels like revealing something deep and true about myself.
I wish I could take it back, but clearly my only option is to trust whatever instinct told me to put it out there today. And hope that soon, there will be a baby -- a child and a grandchild -- in front of us, and how he or she got there will be a distant memory and a minor concern.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Auld Lang Syne
It wasn't over. Even after the horrible night on Monday, even after passing what appeared to be all of my internal organs, it -- unbelievably -- was not over. And I have a night in the hospital, marks from three IV sticks and another surgery under my belt to prove it.
Like some sort of miscarriage vampire, my symptoms had again disappeared during the day on Tuesday, only to return like clockwork at 7 p.m. Tuesday night. This time it became clear there would be no avoiding medical intervention. The bleeding was alarming, and everything just seemed "off." My husband called the on-call doctor again to let her know we were coming in to the ER.
I wish I could say that I felt brave during the hours that followed. That I felt more like a mother (albeit one losing her baby) than a child. But truthfully, I felt vulnerable and small. What we learned through hours of waiting, testing and more of the same, was that while the main "products of conception" (i.e., the gestational sac) were completely gone, my endometrial lining was still too thick at 12 mm (they wanted it under 10). I was also developing an infection -- my white blood cell count was highly elevated -- and they suspected the cause as retained products embedded in that thick uterine lining. I needed to spend the night in the hospital ("night" being relative, since at this point it was 2 a.m.), they said, so they could administer IV antibiotics while I waited for a very necessary D&C in the morning. I don't know if upon hearing this news I became the biggest crybaby the ER had seen, but I didn't take it well. I was exhausted, starving (they'd banned food and water since I'd arrived, apparently having seen enough of these cases to know where mine was headed) and anxious, and I just wanted to go home where I could feel safe in my own bed. But of course I knew what I had to do. Smart doctors were taking all of the mystery out of it, and even with my fear there was comfort in knowing that the ordeal of this failed pregnancy would soon be over.
Combined, my husband and I probably got a half hour of sleep all night. Once I got admitted to a room at 4 a.m., there were countless interruptions for bloodwork and questions about my health history and noises from the patient next door. Despite my having successfully conquered my fear of anesthesia for the egg retrieval in November, I still had reservations about having it again. I was also worried about potential complications from the surgery, including scarring (the one ovulation problem is more than enough, thank you very much). But I was well aware that the D&C was no longer optional.
The anesthesiologists, surgeon and attending physician trickled into my room once the light started filtering into my window. Even in my fatigue-, fear- and fever-induced delirium, I was adamant about their using as little anesthesia as possible. I am sure they all thought/knew I was a huge nutjob, but in the end the experience proved what you'd think I would have learned by now but so clearly have not: that my fearful anticipation is always, always worse than the reality of an experience. It's not like the D&C was fun -- I mean, I wouldn't necessarily want keepsake photos or anything -- but it was painless and over in a flash (I ended up with local and very light "conscious sedation"). And I instantly felt 1,000 times better.
I'm not sure yet what the big lesson is in all of this -- all of the physical and emotional pain of losing this pregnancy. I did learn that taking the miso*prostol to try to avoid surgery did nothing but prolong the inevitable and wreak havoc on my body. And that ER doctors are not the gentlest with a speculum (I mean, really. No pleasantries, all business. And ow.). I also learned that morphine is a very nice drug if you ever find yourself in the ER with excruciating cramping (ask for it by name). Maybe a bigger lesson will slowly come into focus.
There have been several points along the way of trying to conceive when I have thought that if I got pregnant then, I would be able to look back and think that getting there hadn't been so bad. That all of the pain and frustration and physical discomfort I'd endured would sort of fade away, as they say about the pain of childbirth. At this point, I can safely say that that seems like much less of a possibility. Still, as I look out on the snowy afternoon of this first day of 2009, finally feeling like myself again, it does seem possible that someday -- and maybe someday just around the corner -- these days might seem like long, long ago.
Like some sort of miscarriage vampire, my symptoms had again disappeared during the day on Tuesday, only to return like clockwork at 7 p.m. Tuesday night. This time it became clear there would be no avoiding medical intervention. The bleeding was alarming, and everything just seemed "off." My husband called the on-call doctor again to let her know we were coming in to the ER.
I wish I could say that I felt brave during the hours that followed. That I felt more like a mother (albeit one losing her baby) than a child. But truthfully, I felt vulnerable and small. What we learned through hours of waiting, testing and more of the same, was that while the main "products of conception" (i.e., the gestational sac) were completely gone, my endometrial lining was still too thick at 12 mm (they wanted it under 10). I was also developing an infection -- my white blood cell count was highly elevated -- and they suspected the cause as retained products embedded in that thick uterine lining. I needed to spend the night in the hospital ("night" being relative, since at this point it was 2 a.m.), they said, so they could administer IV antibiotics while I waited for a very necessary D&C in the morning. I don't know if upon hearing this news I became the biggest crybaby the ER had seen, but I didn't take it well. I was exhausted, starving (they'd banned food and water since I'd arrived, apparently having seen enough of these cases to know where mine was headed) and anxious, and I just wanted to go home where I could feel safe in my own bed. But of course I knew what I had to do. Smart doctors were taking all of the mystery out of it, and even with my fear there was comfort in knowing that the ordeal of this failed pregnancy would soon be over.
Combined, my husband and I probably got a half hour of sleep all night. Once I got admitted to a room at 4 a.m., there were countless interruptions for bloodwork and questions about my health history and noises from the patient next door. Despite my having successfully conquered my fear of anesthesia for the egg retrieval in November, I still had reservations about having it again. I was also worried about potential complications from the surgery, including scarring (the one ovulation problem is more than enough, thank you very much). But I was well aware that the D&C was no longer optional.
The anesthesiologists, surgeon and attending physician trickled into my room once the light started filtering into my window. Even in my fatigue-, fear- and fever-induced delirium, I was adamant about their using as little anesthesia as possible. I am sure they all thought/knew I was a huge nutjob, but in the end the experience proved what you'd think I would have learned by now but so clearly have not: that my fearful anticipation is always, always worse than the reality of an experience. It's not like the D&C was fun -- I mean, I wouldn't necessarily want keepsake photos or anything -- but it was painless and over in a flash (I ended up with local and very light "conscious sedation"). And I instantly felt 1,000 times better.
I'm not sure yet what the big lesson is in all of this -- all of the physical and emotional pain of losing this pregnancy. I did learn that taking the miso*prostol to try to avoid surgery did nothing but prolong the inevitable and wreak havoc on my body. And that ER doctors are not the gentlest with a speculum (I mean, really. No pleasantries, all business. And ow.). I also learned that morphine is a very nice drug if you ever find yourself in the ER with excruciating cramping (ask for it by name). Maybe a bigger lesson will slowly come into focus.
There have been several points along the way of trying to conceive when I have thought that if I got pregnant then, I would be able to look back and think that getting there hadn't been so bad. That all of the pain and frustration and physical discomfort I'd endured would sort of fade away, as they say about the pain of childbirth. At this point, I can safely say that that seems like much less of a possibility. Still, as I look out on the snowy afternoon of this first day of 2009, finally feeling like myself again, it does seem possible that someday -- and maybe someday just around the corner -- these days might seem like long, long ago.
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