Fertile yet Infertile ?

Fast Forward

Well - a fast forward to where we are now.

Recovery from that last loss was rough.  Rougher than the previous two.  But somehow all the things that happened to us - and made us feel like we had no control over our situation....got us to a place where now we do.

The chromosome results turned out to be triploidy - 69 xxy for those of you familiar with chromosomal arrangements.  I had various run ins, which don't need to be recapped, with just about every medical professional we had worked with over the past 3 pregnancies.  By Christmas, we had decided it was time to dump the whole lot of them.  My huge, impersonal, ob/gyn practice was the worst offender.  A well run practice from an administrative standpoint - and with 20 or so docs it was never difficult getting an appointment . . . but it was just so hard to bounce from doctor to doctor.  Some of them were good and kind - some of them indifferent and aloof, and one or two of them were complete ass holes.  And they add new doctors every 6 months - some of them were so young!  I just started feeling like our situation just didn't fit their mold anymore.

Second we won't be going back to our perinatology unit either.  I have a Dr in mind from some recommendations - and he will be affiliated with a different hospital, and therefore different perinatology group, thankfully.

Last but not least - I took the advice of the one ob/gyn I trust from the humongo practice.  She told me to seek out some more opinions on my situation - and recommended an RE affiliated with a large well-respected city hospital near me.  Turns out she was a resident at the hospital and worked with this guy.

We spent January to May meeting with the RE.  Having tests, talking about the losses, cycle monitoring, and hysteroscopy.  Finally we came to a conclusion:  our best bet at being able to bring home a real, live baby - IVF with PGD.

I should be starting b/c pills to suppress my cycles within the next two weeks.  On to our next advenutre!

Pregnancy 3

As I am writing all of this - it feels like I am watching a video tape on fast forward.  It seems so weird to look back on these events and try to get them down into posts in a narrative format.  I'm obviously glossing over all sorts of stuff in this very abridged version - but ultimately I'm wanting this blog to be more about my current experience (starting ivf) than my past.  But then again if I ever have any readers, I'd like them to have the background too.

Anyway getting back to our story.

It took us over a year this time to be ready to try again to get pregnant.  Believe me, there were so many times we thought of just giving up.  Getting back to being a normal couple - not constantly dealing with grief and pain.  But in the end we decided we could do it once more.

It was September of 2005.  I went back to monitoring my cycle and we had our well timed sex.  Boom - I was pregnant.  First time.  I look at our record and am amazed.  Two times out of three, we have gotten pregnant on our first try.  The other time it only took 2-3 months.  SO many people have said - "well at least you know you can get pregnant!"  I suppose that is meant to be comforting in some way.  But its just not.

And this is where the title to the blog comes from.  So many doctors we have seen, people we have spoken to . . . have told us we aren't infertile.  We've had one doctor tell us we were actually very fertile!  How can you consider yourself fertile when you have been pregnant three times and have nothing to show for it but a very long nightmare?

Well this pregnancy seemed to go more smoothly than the last, at first anyway.

We went to the doctor at the usual 7-8 weeks.  We were terrified.  I remember thinking how this could not possibly happen to us again.  Not three times in a row - this one HAD to work.  We went to the ultrasound room grudgingly.  My heart was pounding.  And soon enough - there it was, the little flicker on the screen.  Our baby had a heartbeat!  I was relieved!  Thrilled!  This had to be it - the one that would stick!

Unfortunately within a week, I started spotting.  This led to many more ultrasounds.  Some just for reassurance, others regularly scheduled.  We were seeing a doctor - either the perinatologist or the regular ob - once a week.  Lots of stress and anxiety.  It was awful.  Before each ultrasound, I noticed I was steeling myself - bracing for something bad to happen.  I would let this scene unfold in my head - how I would react when the doctor told me that something was wrong.

We went through a few weeks like this where at each ultrasound, things continued to look ok.  But yet I was still spotting.  I did let myself relax A LITTLE, but still continued to worry.

Finally one night, around 11 weeks - we had an appointment with the regular ob.  It was an evening appointment, and the u/s techs had gone home.  The Dr. wanted to reassure me about the bleeding and rolled in a little portable ultrasound so we could see.  He spent a good 15 minutes poking around but couldn't visualize much.  I was only 11 weeks and had just emptied my bladder so I was not surprised.

The Dr didn't seem concerned and said what he could see looked "good."  But he also made me schedule an internal ultrasound for the next morning so we could see for sure what was going on.  I was fairly worried now because I figured he wouldn't have told me to come back the next day if he thought everything was ok.  But then again he kept saying things looked ok to him.  So I had another sleepless night and headed back to the office the next day.

Well, I think you all know where this is going by now.

The next day was not good.  Awful, in fact.  After much poking around with my best friend the vaginal ultrasound wand, the tech said simply, "I'm sorry, there's no heartbeat today."

Devastated, I cried - no, make that wailed, on the table.  Uncontrollably.  Very unlike me to have such a public display of raw emotion - but there you have it.  I guess that ultimately - I just never believed it could happen again.  That this could happen to us now - three times.  THREE TIMES!

From there we were told once again how important it was to have a D&E, get the chromosome analysis on this baby, etc.  Unfortunately the couldn't schedule me for one until the following week.  Well, I showed them - started bleeding a lot on a Saturday, so I had to go to the hospital and have them call in a surgical team just for me. 

Oh, the sheer joy of it.

Recovery # 2

It took a long time to get past this one.  I started seeing a therapist who pointed out that going through this again - inevitably brings up the pain from the last time so that you feel even worse.  And boy did I.

In the first few days after it happened, I remember thinking all I wanted to do was go out and get pregnant again.  Soon.  But within a week or two I had completely changed my mind.  I was crippled with fear.  I was depressed all the time.  I was anxious.  I considered going back on anti-depressants - though I never did it.  I thought about giving up - knowing I would never have to go through losing another baby seemed so comforting.

This whole time - I just found myself in a constant state of self-loathing.  How could I not hate myself?  Why could I not do something that was supposed to be natural - that so many other women do without any problems?  It just had to be my fault.  My stupid body.  I felt like such a failure when I looked into my husband's eyes.  He was so hurt - and I felt like it was all my fault.

This time our recovery period lasted about a year.  We sought out a geneticist who looked at all of our records and offered the opinion that the two losses were unrelated.  She felt our next pregnancy would most likely be successful, and that we would have no increased chance of miscarriage.  We went back to our perinatologist for a consult.  He told us he thought the best course of action was simple - "Just get pregnant again!"  Easier said than done!

Pregnancy #2

So here we were, pregnant again.

It didn't last very long.  We went to our perinatologist (high risk ob) at around 7 weeks or so.  Hoping to see a heartbeat, all we saw was a blob.  The sac measured more like 5 weeks.  Not good.  The Dr tried to convince me I could just be off on my dates - though I knew I wasn't.

We went back one week later.  I had started spotting so I knew that couldn't be good.  Still no heartbeat, no growth.  Another "missed abortion" (God I HATE that phrase) and another D&E needed to be scheduled.

Miraculously they were able to schedule me for later that day.  It was important to have the D&E so they could collect tissue and do an analysis of the chromosomes - the results of which could be helpful to us in figuring out what to do in the future.  The results ultimately revealed a trisomy on chromosome 9.  Typical miscarriage cause - and incompatible with life.

This loss hit us hard.  Harder than the first.  Because we just didn't believe it could happen twice.  And we never really had many answers about what went wrong in the first pregnancy.  I had a CVS test while I was pregnant which revealed a normal male karyotype.   However all the doctors we saw were very anxious to see what the chromosomal analysis would reveal once they did the D&E.  Which led me to believe they felt the cvs had failed to show some sort of genetic error.  Well the hospital screwed up big time and never did the test - and disposed of the tissue.  So we never really got any definitive answers to speak of on that.

Looking back - that whole debacle where they never did the test after my first pregnancy - and we didn't find out for months . . started me down a path leading to almost total distrust and ultimately dislike for the medical community at large.  A theme that continued, unfortunately into our third failed pregnancy.

Recovery #1

The next several months I spent a lot of time trying to regroup.  I was very angry.  Feeling betrayed by my body.  Starting to dislike pregnant women - you know the kind who have problem free pregnancies and take the whole scene for granted?

During this time period as well - we had a particularly difficult time with some family members.  T's brother J and his wife P are devout Catholics.  They did not believe in what we had done regarding the termination.  Though they did not know all the intimate details - the extent of the abnormalities of the fetus growing inside of me, they judged us.  And let us down in a way that hurt so much - that even now, three years later, it still stings when I think of it.

We have mended fences now, but the relationship we once had will never be the same again.

Some time around April 2004, we were feeling apprehensive, yet ready to try again.  We went on a wonderful vacation to Riviera Maya in Mexico in May and started our trying in earnest while we were away.  I got pregnant again in July.

We were on the rollercoaster once again.

The beginning and Pregnancy #1

I suppose it is somewhat appropriate to introduce myself before diving into my complete reproductive history.  My name is Sherry.  I live in a bustling metropolitan area in the Northeast US in a modest little split level with my wonderful husband, T.  T and I have been married almost 5 years now - 3 of which we have spent in utter hell - dealing with recurring pregnancy loss.  A small glimpse back to the past:

In June of 2003, I said farewell to my newly found friend, Ortho-Evra - the birth control patch. T and I did not "try" to get pregnant, as we were supposed to wait for my cycle to regulate itself, but we certainly did not "try not to" either. By July 4th, I was thinking how getting off birth control must REALLY mess up your cycle. I was about a week late by that point. I vividly remember talking to my cousin at a party that weekend about her experiences with stopping birth control and then her quote, "Sherry - three words: buy a test!"

Well I did and it was positive. We were floored. I was scared, excited, freaked out, happy, sad, you name the emotion, it was there. Unfortunately, this wild roller coaster ride of feelings and emotions was just beginning.

Somewhere in mid-September at a routine first trimester screening, things started going downhill. I was about thirteen weeks along at that point. This was - you know, one of those screenings that holier than thou people say "well I wouldn't get any of that testing done because if something was wrong, we would NEVER do anything about it."

I have grown to hate those people. It is so easy to say something like that when you are not in that situation.

While we never expected it to be, (we were in that "pregnancy ignorance is bliss" place) turns out something was wrong - very wrong. I now look back on this time as the end of my carefree days - I would never again be one of those gleeful pregnant women whose biggest worries are stretch marks and trimming their pubic hair prior to their check ups.

Test after test, doctor after doctor, ultrasounds galore, all revealed severe problems with this poor baby. Most wondered how I had even gotten this far along. All agreed he (yes now we knew it was a "he") would not survive to term, and even in the unlikely event he did, would die shortly thereafter. Words that no pregnant couple should hear.

After much discussion, we decided the best course of action was to terminate the pregnancy.  While the words are easy to write, the pain behind having to make such a decision was excruciating.  It turned out to be only the tip of the pain iceberg so to speak.

In mid October, now about 16 weeks along, I went to the hospital short procedure unit for a D&E.  I was referred to another doctor for this procedure - the only one in our area who would perform one at such a late stage of pregnancy.  I went to his office twice in the days leading up to the procedure for laminaria insertion.  These are seaweed sticks meant to soften and open up the cervix to make the procedure easier.  The most painful (physically) thing I have ever had done to me.  Mostly because I had a huge fibroid somewhat blocking the way to my cervix.

The actual procedure day is a blur now.  I remember them wheeling me into the operating room, weeping.  I remember saying goodbye to T, who was also weeping.  I remember waking up in recovery, barely able to talk from having been intubated - but asking repeatedly to see my husband, and being so happy to see him when they finally brought me to him.

The coming days and months were just full of emotion for me.  Numbness followed by grief, rage, sadness, dispair.  Not the best time in my life at all.