(just in case you check here again) if you searched for that phrase because you are pregnant after your third IUI, congratulations! That’s wonderful news, welcome to the club - sorry it took so much to get here. If it’s because you are hoping that it will happen for you, then I hope it works for you, too. And I’m sorry it’s taking so long.
It’s strange to feel such a kinship to search engine terms.
After the server died, I re-created this blog by cutting and pasting from an RSS feed that only went back to Aug. 2006. Since I only started blogging in March 2006, and I hadn’t posted all that many times, I didn’t worry about missing some of the earlier posts. I knew I wanted my “I’ve got your answers right here” post, so I got that from a google cache. But as for any others, well I’d have to remember enough about them to find them on google and then add them. So I figured I’d wait and see if I thought of any that I wanted to save and pull them up on google then. I’m a bit of a procrastinator - you can see where this is going. Now all my posts are all gone from the google caches, and now I’m remembering a few that I wish I still had.
So here, then, is my attempt to re-create the few posts that I miss. They are mostly here to help me remember a little Your job here is to imagine that they were thoughtful and extremely well-written posts.
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A year ago today, I saw my first ever positive pregnancy test.
I had no reason to expect a positive test. By the time February 27, 2006 rolled around, we had been trying for 22 months. I had seen my doctor countless times before she gave up and referred me to a fertility specialist. This was our 7th month using the drug Clomid, the third month trying an IUI with clomid and a trigger shot. There was nothing different about the month, except that my uterine lining was at its thinnest (thicker is better), and I had only produced one egg this time. I had even met with my fertility doctor the week before to talk about what our next steps would be when this cycle failed. Sure, he phrased it differently, “maybe none of this will even be necessary if this month works for you.” (spoken with a thick Chicagoan accent). But I could tell he wasn’t particularly optimistic. So that morning when I took the test, I really didn’t have any expectations of seeing anything but the “Not Pregnant” phrase show up in the results window.
. . .
In the trying to conceive world, there are two kinds of women, those who love the home pregnancy test, and those who hate it. The women who love to take pregnancy tests will test early and often - even multiple times a day - and spend all their time on message boards telling the rest of us to test! test! test! I’m pretty sure that the women who love peeing on sticks are those who are used to seeing positive tests, or at least those who have not yet been beaten down by negative after negative. Those of us who are not so lucky tend to avoid taking pregnancy tests and their inevitable negative results. There’s something about the simple act of testing that gets your hopes raised up just enough to really hurt when they were inevitably dashed. The sad thing is, those of us who hate the tests are often the ones who have to take them the most often. I rarely took pregnancy tests because I thought I might be pregnant, but rather because I had to take some medication or undergo some test that would be detrimental to an existing pregnancy, so my doctor would require a negative test before allowing me to continue. Even the test a year ago was not because I had any signs of being pregnant, but because I was taking progesterone supplements, which can keep your period from showing up so long as you take them. I needed to take the test to find out if I could stop the supplements and move on to my next cycle.
. . .
It was a Monday morning. I woke up first, as was and is our routine, and stumbled into the bathroom. After peeing on the appropriate end of the test stick, I carefully placed the test where I wouldn’t accidentally see it. No need to see a “Not Pregnant” before I was ready for it, particularly not first thing on a Monday morning. I was continuing on with my morning routine when my gaze swept across the test. I tried desperately not to notice anything about the results window, except, wait a minute, it looked like there was only one word in the window. It was like the movies when the background music screeches to a stop. I grabbed it and confirmed that only the word “Pregnant” was showing up. I ran into the bedroom and woke Chris up, demanding, “Does this say what I think it says?” Which is probably an unfair way to wake someone up. He looked at the test groggily, gave me a big hug, and then said, “I’m going to go back to sleep for a few minutes before my alarm goes off.” (To be fair, I would have done the same thing.) Less than a week later, I started posting semi-regularly to this blog.
. . .
A year ago today, I was excited, thrilled, terrified, and optimistic. And I still am today. Crazy what can change in a year, and what things still remain consistent.
This afternoon, I blew off my Science Museum volunteer shift and instead went to a MOFAS (Minnesota Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrom) event. They had a fashion show, a non-alcoholic drink mixing contest, and door prizes (and yes, I know that by putting my name in for the door prizes, I have put us on all sorts of mailing lists, but it was going to happen some time anyway), and all the preggers got diaper bags filled with a variety of goodies and coupons. I was already feeling slightly guilty for skipping the Science Museum shift, but I just didn’t feel up to entertaining a bunch of kids this afternoon. Then there’s the fact that while I agree that FAS is a real problem - and an easily preventable one at that - I am not one of the militant absolutely no alcohol while pregnant women. For the most part, I have given up alcohol, but I let myself have a small sip of a drink when someone orders something particularly interesting, and I’ve twice had a half a glass of wine with dinner, so in all, I’ve had maybe 2 drinks in the past 7 months, but I still think the good folk at MOFAS wouldn’t approve.
Anyway, it was quite fun, the fashion show was cute - Pea in the Pod has nice maternity clothes that I can’t imagine spending money on since I’m down to only 6 weeks left. But were someone to give me a shopping spree there, I’d take them up on it. And I would definitely consider getting a friend a gift certificate there if she were pregnant. Plus they had really good cake and other pastries from a local bakery, and the mixed drink competition was fine. The four contenders were mostly ok, though I wasn’t a fan of the ginger lemonade concoction.
The door prizes were really nice. There were only one or two of them that I definitely didn’t want, and quite a few that I would have loved to have. I could tell whenever they called a name that it wouldn’t be me, because the cards for the drawings had an upper part that was detachable, and I took mine off, but apparently everyone else left there’s on. Plus, the woman who took my card folded it in half, so every time they pulled an unfolded, undetached card, I knew I hadn’t won. And then they were down to the final three grand prizes, a designer leather diaper bag in fuschia, a changing table, and a bumbleride stroller. Guess which one I won? The fuschia leather diaper bag - worth something like $250 - $400. (!?!) I can only laugh. I’m not really the fuschia leather type, but it is a good quality bag - I’m trying to decide if it might grow on me, or if I should try selling it. We already have 3 others. But none of those are fuschia.
So summarize, I skipped a volunteer shift, went to an event put on by an organization that probably disapproves of my views, won one of their top prizes, which I’m now contemplating selling. Hmm.
Chris turned 30 on Wednesday. Yay Chris! Yay 30! Youngun. To celebrate, we went out with a bunch of friends to a local drinking establishment and had a fine time. During a couple of my many trips to the bathroom, I learned that being pregnant is apparently a great way to pick up the ladies. First was the woman who followed me out of the bathroom. “You have such a cute waddle,” she says - clearly she had been checking me out from behind. I kind of half turned, and she said, “you are pregnant, right?” and then seeing that there was no doubt, followed up with “oh, good, that would have been awkward, but you really are adorable.” So that was kind of strange, but flattering. Later, though, as I came out of a stall in the bathroom, I almost walked into a woman who had the biggest eyes I’ve ever seen. “I…I can’t find my purse,” she syas in this trembling voice. I turned around to see if it had been left in the stall, but it hadn’t. So I turned back and told her I was sorry. “I hope my bf, I mean best friend” (yes, she did indeed call her best friend “bf” at first) “took it, but I can’t find it.” I again apologized, and that’s when she looked at me and reached out to pat my belly. At this, I inexplicably blurt out “she didn’t eat it.” I swear I’d only been drinking lemonade, but it made sense to me at the time. Anyway, she then asked when I was due and if we knew the sex. When she found out it was a girl, she asked if what her name was. I said we hadn’t chosen a name yet, and she pointed at herself and said, “Kathryn, K-A-T-H-R-Y-N.” I smiled and she went in to the stall. At that, I hightailed it out of there, before she came back out and asked me more about her purse. But when we left a little later, we ended up walking past her and she reached out and grabbed my arm and gave me a very sincere “good luck.” I’m telling you, of our little group, I got by far the most attention from the tipsy females.
I had another appointment today, this time with a midwife student. She was very good (I’ve liked every midwife I’ve seen at my clinic, and feel very fortunate in that regard) and was able to feel how the baby was positioned (feet down, head up). She felt around and finally found the head and commented that it’s hard to tell the head from the butt sometimes (heh there’s a joke there somewhere), but that you can tell the head because you can wiggle it back and forth. She says this as she’s got her hand over the kid’s head, demonstrating. I was like, hey, that’s my daughter’s head! And maybe she doesn’t like having her head wiggled all around. But then the midwife had me feel, and I have to admit, it was kind of fun wiggling her little head a bit and I keep trying to come up with excuses for finding here little head for a wiggle. Now I’m supposed to visualize the kid flipped around and do other things to encourage her to do some headstands. Except that visualizing her is still really strange - it was strange enough to have someone point out a body part (inside my body!) - but then to put all the parts together is just a little bit freaky. But I do think it’s got to be the cutest little head that I’ve never seen. It just needs to start heading down in the next few weeks.
note: almost all of these are questions I’ve gotten at some point. I’ll leave it up to my dear readers to guess which aren’t real, and which ones annoyed the heck out of me.
When are you due?
November 7 - election day. Yes, we’ll be voting absentee just in case.
Do you know what you’re having?
Almost certainly a human. And probably one with girl parts. Unless the ultrasound tech was wrong. But she seemed pretty certain.
Have you felt the baby move yet?
Yep, starting around 17 weeks (three or four weeks ago). She doesn’t kick a whole lot, but I definitely feel her move every day. I love that part.
Have you had any food cravings / aversions?
No real cravings, though there was one night that I made Chris make me french onion soup. I love that man, he made it from scratch and it turned out really good. My one real aversion is to coffee, which sucks because I really love coffee, and there’s a few mornings when I’d really, really, really like a cup of coffee to get me going.
Have any strangers asked to touch your belly?
Not yet, though a surprising number of people keep talking to the belly. And they always wave their hands in front of the belly. It’s a little disconcerting. The belly can not hear you, can not answer you, and certainly can not see you waving your hands.
Was this a planned pregnancy?
Hah! It’d be hard to have a more planned pregnancy than this one.
So you were trying for a long time?
Yes. 22 months. Actually, in the world of infertility, it’s not such a long time, but it really felt like a very long time for us.
But at least you had fun trying for those 22 months, right?
Um, no. The whole trying and failing at the one thing that your body is supposed to be able to do gets old really, really fast. And watching everyone else get pregnant and give birth, while you’re still unable to even get to that first step, not fun. Then add on to that the dozens of ultrasounds with the dildocam, the blood draws, the shots, the catheters. Yeah. Again, I’ll go with not fun. But thanks for asking. Really.
So, you’re saying you had to have medical help?
Yeah. My body doesn’t seem to like to ovulate on its own. So after a bunch of testing, I went on Clomid, which is kind of the starter fertility drug. It induces ovulation, but has a relatively low rate of multiples. After 4 unsuccessful cycles of just that, we were referred to the Reproductive Medicine Center, where we did IUIs (intra-uterine inseminations). Our third IUI try was the winner.
Is IUI where they fertilize the egg in a test tube, and then put it back in?
No, that’s IVF. With an IUI, they usually induce ovulation - for us, with Clomid and a shot to trigger ovulation - and then they use a catheter to inject the sperm directly into the uterus. It’s only takes about 20 minutes and it’s not really painful, but I would recommend the traditional method of getting pregnant if at all possible.
Well at that point I think I’d just adopt.
That’s not a question. Go ahead and ask someone whose been through the adoption process about how easy it is to just adopt. In any case, I have great health insurance, which covered 6 tries of IUI. Health insurance doesn’t cover adoption costs. While we had seriously started investigating adoption, it’s expensive, and time consuming, emotionally draining and not easy. Which isn’t to say that I think adoption is bad, or that I don’t understand why someone might choose that over the route we took. We just weren’t at the point where we were willing to give up on trying to conceive
Did you mean for this post to be a rant about fertility treatments and annoying questions that you get from well-meaning people?
Well kind of, but not really. It’s something I’ve been meaning to post about for a while now. I want people to know what we went through. In part because I felt so lonely while we were going through it, and I think that it helps to know when someone else has struggled with it. I never wanted to really talk about what I was going through, but it would have been nice to know someone else who’d gone through it that I could occasionally complain to without having to explain everything. Which is to say if you’re reading this and end up going through something similar, I’m happy to be that person you need to complain to without having to explain everything. Plus, I haven’t found a way to talk gracefully about this in real life without coming across as bitter.
Is that because you’re still bitter?
Yeah, probably. I don’t want to be, but I don’t think I can escape the fact that this is something I had to deal with that I wouldn’t wish on anyone else. I’m mostly just really happy and excited about being kicked from the inside, and I can’t wait to meet the kicker. The ultrasounds with the dildocam, the blood draws, the shots, the catheters, they were absolutely worth it, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish it hadn’t happened another way.
Could you have made that last sentence any less convoluted?
No.
What if I have more questions about your pregnancy?
Um, hello. I’m a reference librarian. Questions are my forte. Just ask me, or post them in the comments. I’ll try to answer to the best of my abilities, though as a librarian, I reserve the right to look some of them up in a reputable source. I’ll try not to get too bitter.
