Lord, Give Me Strength.

It’s not been easy this past week. It feels like my diffuser has been on overdrive every time I’m next to it.

I’m not actually 100% certain why I’m feeling this way. Emotional, tired, quietly stressed. I feel like I need another holiday. I want to be removed from everything that is happening. I want to be removed from my feelings. I feel like I’ve barely smiled this week. I want to be happy and I am trying to… not make myself be happy, but just decide to make that effort. I know how sometimes I can get in a rut mentally and be stuck in it with no good reason, then it’s up to me to change things. But it’s difficult to do tbat when it feels like you really need to cry some decent tears but they’ve got stuck somewhere on the way out and nothing is going to improve until they get unstuck. I suppose it’s just another one of those things that I’ll have to take moment by moment.

Karl and I both decided that I should stay home today. I’m thankful for that. He is such a trooper. For 4 years now I’ve been stuck in some state of grief, and he has supported me so well while dealing with his own grief. It seems so much simpler for him. I’m sure it’s not. Sometimes I wonder, why is it that I feel everything so much? Why do I hurt so deeply? I know I feel the positive just as much, but this negative stuff just hangs around like a bad stink. I wish it would go away. I know that there is an element of decision with this too though, and trust me, I try. I know it’s rooted deeply in me not wanting to let my babies go. And I know that will never happen, they’re my babies and I love them. I’ll never forget them, even though I barely knew them. But I also suppose it’s just the unfairness of the situation that keeps these feelings present. With every pregnancy announced and every baby that is born I’m reminded of what I don’t have. Yet again a decision on my part to accept that feeling or to acknowledge it and gently kick it in the bum. And as nice as it is to see people’s happiness, people just don’t stop breeding and it just makes life hard. Once again it’s one of those feelings that I feel so deep. Mother’s day is coming up in a few months and already I’m wondering how I can avoid it. I hate it. Let me smile politely in silence and look happy for you while inside I scream “I’m a mother too!!!” I read this awesome quote the other day (I can’t actually remember where I read it or who wrote it so I’m very sorry I can’t give credit where it’s due)…

Identity shifting is a huge piece of the postpartum experience for every new parent, and yet moms who lose their babies are not able to show the world their mother-ness. If you feel like a mom, and yet are not able to participate in the experiences that the mothers around you are included in, know that this is a shared experience and that, whether or not the world can see this, we value you as a mother too.”

It’s nice to know that I’m valued as a mother too, at least by those who wrote that quote. But those who know that I lose my babies, still no acknowledgement of my motherness. I was pregnant too. I grew life inside me too. My body still told me to “push” too. But I don’t get to see my babies grow up. I don’t kniw what colour their eyes are and I certainly don’t have the joy of experiencing all their firsts like all the other Mums who birth live babies do. Instead I live in silence. Isolating silence.

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Makes sense…

And this is why grief is so horrible and can last for so long.

While you need to remember and think and contemplate in order to process your grief and move forward, it’s also really hard on your body.

Sorry if this is TMI, but my last period was NOT fun. It reminded me a lot of my last miscarriage, which was naturally quite upsetting for me. And when I read things like this, it makes sense. Cramping and pain is obviously part and parcel of having your period. Duh. But combine that with the experience of two miscarriages and nearly 3 years of grief? Your brain just takes you straight back to when you were in the thick of it.

Gone (not forgotten)

Welcome to my dreams board. You’re currently looking at the remnants of v2.0 from early 2015. It’s been “safely stored” under my glory box for a while now (read: forgotten about and gathered sufficient dust for just over 2 years).

You see those pink and blue bits just left of and below centre? That’s where the baby / family goal was. I made this not long after my first miscarriage. I kind of numbed myself to what I was doing when I took that part off earlier tonight. It was very reflectful (if that’s even a word). Tearing off old dreams with the assistance of scissors is a mixture of sadness, disappointment, but also a quiet excitement for the possibilities of the future. Sometimes you have to suck it up and let dreams die in order to be happy again.


I’ve been thinking about that first pregnancy a little bit lately. I think it’s because I know that I won’t have that opportunity again, to see a precious little heartbeat and to see the hidden excitement that only you and your husband know about. I wish I had photos. I never want to forget that special time. That moment when the double line on the pregnancy test becomes a 2D image with a lovely little flicker of a heartbeat. It’s real, it starts to sink in.

The grief and the sadness never goes away fully. It doesn’t matter how many times you re-do your dreams board, or how much traveling you to do bring back some form of happiness into your life. I’ll always miss that little person and that little heartbeat. And it’s phantom sibling who disappeared on us a year later.

Sometimes before I go to sleep, I’ll pray that I’ll dream about my babies. See what they would have been like, meet them in a sense. So far it hasn’t happened and that’s ok because well, one day Heaven will happen and I won’t need to wake up to a life without them.

I never expected

I never expected that at the ripe old age of 34 I would be considering birth control options again. The future always had children in it, the possibility of not having children was always just that, just a possibility.

When you’re faced with not having kids, life changes. It’s sobering. Not only will you not have the joy that other parents have (baby showers, the birth, life’s firsts for your little one/s, the list goes on), but you realise that life ends with you. You are where the line stops. Once one of us dies, the other will be alone.

It’s not that we can’t have children. It’s the fact that my AMH levels are already low-ish, my body has just been purged of over a year’s worth of eggs, and if my egg quality improved with this second round of IVF, but none of the 5 eggs that were able to be injected even fertilised, then do we want to risk more miscarriages through continuing to try unassisted? IVF # 1 was our initial line in the sand. IVF # 2 was the new line in the sand. I wanted my life back one way or another (with or without children), and that is what I have got.

Don’t get me wrong. In amongst the sad and sobering moments of our current position, things are actually quite good. I’m feeling that such a load has been lifted from me. I’m enjoying not thinking about pregnancy. I’m enjoying not giving myself injections and having irrational moody reactions to silly little things. I’m enjoying the fact that I can go and bounce on a trampoline or do gymnastics (aka enjoying life) without the fear of doing something detrimental to an unborn child that I may not even know about. The gold star goes to me for my maternal protection levels but good grief that was exhausting. I’m looking forward to the travel we have planned and actually doing something positive for ourselves. We have been through enough. We don’t want your “prayers for a miracle”, we want your “prayers for God’s will”. And as far as we are concerned, we already know what that will is. Thank you for your hope, it’s lovely, but I don’t want it. I also don’t want your comments of “when we gave up I fell pregnant”. I’d like to exchange it for adventure.

Which brings me back to the original topic. Contraceptives. I probably shouldn’t use the NuvaRing, because well, I’m almost 35 years old. Can I be bothered taking the pill again and dealing with the side effects? Do I want to attempt a diaphragm? No way in the world am I getting any form of IUD (I am an IUD baby by the way), so what does that leave me with? Not a heck of a lot… I’m tempted to chart again and use all the “fertility awareness” methods I have learned over the years to help me avoid pregnancy rather than achieve it. Really, I should just suck it up and go see my GP. But that would mean talking to someone face to face about what we’ve just gone through and well… I’m not quite sure I want to unleash the ugly crying face and relentless snot on some poor unsuspecting health professional.

Anyway. I’d better get some work done. Have you seen Girlboss on Netflix? Feels a wee bit like my life right now… (minus the random sexual encounter in episode 1 and hernia in episode 2).

Results

Well, IVF 1 is done and dusted.

I didn’t really need to wait for the blood test to know the official outcome, but of course being the compliant patient that I am I listened to my team and continued with the plan.

On Saturday night the spotting started. Three or four days from my due date, the changes started happening like clock work. I had read that Crinone can sometimes cause irritation and bleeding but this was just a little too familiar. If I’m going to get a period, this is when the spotting starts.

But of course – we keep an open mind. People with varying degrees of spotting or bleeding end up having successful pregnancies right? But on Sunday the cramping and “light” bleeding became more apparent, and by Monday we had basically a full blown period. Hello cramps, bloating and basically a crime scene in my pants. Sunday and Monday were definitely down days. Plenty of disappointment and teary moments.

I spoke with my nurse who agreed, it didn’t sound hopeful at all. So she recommended that I do my blood test a day early and to continue with the progesterone until we got the results. Yay… That night I did my dose, within minutes the cramping was nearly unbearable, I was on the toilet and let’s just say there wasn’t much of that dose left! I didn’t even bother with the morning dose (I was on 2 per day).

So, yesterday we did the blood test, and as expected it was zero HCG. Not one micro-ounce, so if implantation did occur, it certainly didn’t last long. Getting the result wasn’t awful, but just more of the same. That mildly angry “eff the world” feeling that you get while you’re thinking “Of course it’s negative! Why on earth would it be positive?” You feel like it’s borderline stupidity to expect any other result. This just doesn’t happen, and when it does, it doesn’t last.
So, now we wade through the disappointment, and try to figure out what to do next. This was supposed to be our line in the sand, but naturally that’s easier said than done. Of course we want to keep pursuing it, but we can’t afford the expense of another full blown round. But do we really want another possible failed round? Do we want another pregnancy that could possibly end in miscarriage? Of course it could work out perfectly fine, but with no frozen embryos, this could be a very clear definite “no” for us. We just need to know if we are reading the signs right. If we read them wrong, we risk blowing another multiple thousands of dollars that could go towards something far more positive for us and our marriage. Trying is never a waste, but how much more do we flog this quite possibly dead horse? In some ways I would much rather invest that money on travel and spending time actually enjoying our lives together – something that has been missing for a good two and a bit years now. While I still want kids, I still want my life back. I want the freedom to know that I’m not going to ruin a potential pregnancy by possibly doing the wrong thing (I know, flawed logic, but after losses one gets paranoid). How does one know when the stop?

But more importantly, how do you decide to actively prevent pregnancy? Do I go on the pill (blehh no thank you), does hubby get something permanent like a vasectomy? Because while pregnancies aren’t exactly a common thing for us, preventing a miscarriage is more important for our mental health than preventing a pregnancy. But then again, doing something so permanent is pretty heartbreaking. The whole situation is heartbreaking. We will see what.our specialist says next week at our follow up appointment.

Here’s to discussions. Many, many discussions…

21st January 2017

Happy New Year folks 😊

So much has happened over the past 6-8 weeks, it’s not funny!

• I’ve finished working at the gym (and I’m LOVING it)
• I’ve started PT from home part time
• I’ve become a Jamberry nails consultant for a bit of fun and to help me meet people
• I’ve started working in our workshop with my husband part time (yes, on the tools!)

My “new life” is different and I’m still adjusting to the change in my routine, but I’m so happy to be done with the gym, and be spending more time with my husband. But there is one more change that I haven’t included. Last month we saw our fertility specialist. We decided that it would be a good idea to do a laproscopy and hysteroscopy to rule out any endometriosis, near the end of January provided I wasn’t pregnant. So we re-did all of our fertility screening tests, and had our follow up last Monday. It was a good visit, and despite the original plan of laproscopy and hysteroscopy, we decided that we would just go straight to IVF. Why not huh? 😋😉 Anyway so on Wednesday we met up with our nurse who went over our treatment plan, fees etc, and provided my period doesn’t arrive this weekend, I’ll be heading in early this coming week to get my meds and start the process. At our appointment on Monday, my fertility specialost looked at my AMH and said “ok good we can treat you reasonably aggressively then” (because my AMH was slightly low for my age). So I’m getting a 400 (whatever unit of measurement) dose of some medication instead of a 200 or 250 dose. YAY! Mood swings – here we come! Injecting myself will be a whole new scary adventure but I’m sure I’ll manage it, and maybe even get used to it. I am not looking forward to egg transfer though. I am really bad with pap smears so to have someone mucking around down there for around 15 minutes is not going to be easy. The nurse said I could have some natural valerian beforehand, which I am definitely going to look in to!

So, that’s our news. There are mixed feelings. Excitement and hope, but at the same time a lot of apprehension because if this doesn’t work, or if we have another miscarriage, I just don’t know how I will get through the grief again. Anyway. We will just go through it, and roll with whatever happens. And hopefully a happy live baby happens!

An update, now that I feel better-ish

After posting my hasty “I’m so over this” blog (if you can call it that), I decided that I would journal a bit, get my thought processes straight and chat with my husband.

You see, the worst thing about this for me, is that I feel like my life has been hijacked. I am 10,000% grateful for the presence of gymnastics in my life. Goodness knows what my mental state would be like without it! But still, even though I have the best distraction in the world, and as much as I try to push symptom spotting and hopeful feelings aside, that 2WW is still there, and it’s still difficult even though gymnastics has brought back fun into my life.

We have a local competition coming up early in 2017, and providing it’s not on a Saturday, I’d really love to participate. It’s called Australia’s Fittest Gym and is almost like a mini crossfit games. check out the promo video here. look for the boys in red – that’s the team I coached! We definitely weren’t first on the leaderboard but we had a great time and the boys pulled out some great individual scores. This year I want to enter a guy’s and a girl’s team, hopefully with me in it. What I would really love to do, is absolutely throw myself into training (for this and gymnastics), push myself hard, all without worrying about whether or not I’m pregnant. Just to get my life back and not think about babies is 100% what I want right now. If I can do that (not think about babies), while still trying for babies, that would be the BEST!! All I really need is just a mental break, because I do still want a life with my own biological kids.

So after speaking with my husband about it last night and today, I think we’ve come up with a decent plan. At least for now. For a long time now I’ve been asking myself (and my husband has asked himself that too), how much longer do we do this? How much longer am I going to live in this emotionally drained state? For our own sanity and happiness, we need to know when to call it quits. I thought to myself sometime in the last 9-24 hours, maybe let’s just do 1 round of IVF, and if it doesn’t work, we’re done. No more trying for babies, let’s just get our lives back. Then this morning, my husband said to me the exact same plan, without me mentioning anything to him about what I had been thinking. I’m not sure if this is a sign that this is what we should do, but this is what we’re going to run with. I definitely do not want to do IVF. A drawn out process of daily injections, specialists and multiple hospital visits is not how I believe babies are best made. But, if it’s a means to an end, and it means that we can just move on regardless of the outcome, then I suppose I’ll give it a go.

It does leave us with the questions of what to do with left over embryos if we are unsuccessful, and what will we even do once we decide to stop trying with regards to contraception, but for now I’m happy with this plan. We can discuss embryo stuff with the specialist, and we can think about preventing pregnancy once the IVF is over if it doesn’t work. Right now, I’m happy to stop thinking about it.

In the meantime, we get our referrals, and we start the process. Last month we tried “the stork” conception kit which did not go well, but maybe we will try using it another way this cycle just to get our money’s worth. We will chat about that… sometime before this period is over.

In the meantime, here’s part of my bars routine, and me slipping off 😂

Anyway. Here’s to having a plan. Sort of…