New Methods of Vaginal Humiliation

I'm sick of feeling vulnerable.

I'm sick of laying down and putting my legs in stirrups and bracing myself for whatever they're going to find.

I'm so tired of being wheeled into yet another procedure, brought down the long, sterile hall, alone with the doctors and nurses, because it's my body that's broken and needs fixing, and no one else can go through the surgery for me.

I'm long over laying on the couch, losing another sunny day to feeling like shit, or bleeding too much, or crying the hormones out.

I don't want to worry anymore about heartbeats or complications. Can no longer handle being the 1% standard deviation patient.

I had the surgery, on Wednesday. They successfully removed my submucosal fibroid.

And now, having thought I'd suffered every humiliation possible in this quest for children, I learned but wait! There's more. There's something called a balloon catheter that they sometimes put in your uterus after something like a fibroid surgery. They blow it up with saline and shove it in there so the walls of the uterus won't touch and form scars. My witty friend S. suggested that perhaps they could put candy in it instead, so you could be a human piñata! That would only be mildly less humiliating.

Last night, the tube of this catheter fell out of my vagina, which they warned me may happen. So now? I have a long, plastic tube hanging from me. This feels nothing like the tampon string the doctors suggested it would feel like. They should really test these things out before they go making such declarations. What it feels like is a big, heavy piece of plastic hitting the inside of my thigh and shifting around every time I walk. I now know roughly what it would feel like to have a really skinny penis and it makes me sort of understand why guys are always adjusting themselves.

But back to the surgery. So I finally settled on a surgeon and center, though I still had reservations. It took me years to build enough trust with my old doctor to the point where I never questioned her, and surgery became if not comfortable, at least less panic-inducing for me. I'm still trying to process exactly what happened, but it seems like she missed the fibroid in the cavity when she scoped me in March, before the last pregnancy. That pregnancy was chromosomally normal. Did it land on the fibroid? Would I still be pregnant with a healthy boy if it had been caught? Was it indeed there, or did it surface during or after the pregnancy? I am asking questions about a doctor I adored and trusted wholeheartedly, and constructs of reality are being torn down. So I don't know exactly how to trust a doctor I really don't know at all.

I got my period last Friday, of course, the day we headed off with H for a much-needed mini vacation after a summer of moving and settling in. I called the office, scrambled in for blood work and the surgery was scheduled for Wednesday. And even after all I'd been through, every prior surgery that told me this one would be okay, I was terrified. We dropped H with a generous friend willing to watch him and then I was in my pre-op room, waiting.

I wanted my husband to do it for me. I wanted to run away. I wanted to pick up H and enjoy the sunshine at a park. They wheeled me in. I said I wasn't sure I could do it. They called in an anesthesiologist who "specializes in anxious patients." I asked the other guy if I scared him away. The row of doctors and nurses lined up at my bedside laughed. They gave me Versed, the edge was gone, and the last thing I remember is being told a random story about the anesthesiologist's first job.

When it was over, I couldn't wait to leave. I bounced up, relief overshadowing the need to move gingerly. I was standing in my friend's driveway talking about H's time with her when I felt the first gush.

I got home and assessed the damage. Lots of blood. Pad the heaviest I've ever seen, densely red. I called. They told me it's normal, it's probably less than I think, when you've been laying down a while it gushes out sometimes. You know what? I've been to this performance before. I know a pas de bourree from a pirouette. I know the difference between blood coming out and coming out in a way that almost hurts. They urged me to lay on the couch a while and see if it slowed. When I moved at one point and saw that my couch cushion looked like a b-grade horror film scene, we were back in the car on the way to the ER.

I sat on the toilet in the ER, giant clots coming out of me, and just thought I'm done. Worst-case scenarios whirled through my head. They tell you there's a risk of their piercing your uterus during surgery. Don't they say that because it happens sometimes?

That wasn't what happened to me. I was in a 1% complication bracket with the complication it was, but luckily it wasn't the kind of 1% that required more surgery or worse. It was a bleed at the site on my cervix where they put the tenaculum. Apparently bleeding at that site is common, but usually resolved at the end of surgery. Mine reopened and needed cauterization. Then I could finally go home to the couch, still dizzy from the meds. I slept on and off for two days straight. I felt like I'd had a run-in with a large truck. I'm still exhausted.

On Monday, the balloon catheter comes out. Then I meet with a doctor to determine an IVF plan.

I've known for approximately forever that I wanted kids. It's deeply part of the fabric of me, like feeling the first chill of autumn somewhere in my soul and loving Nora Ephron movies. I can't change that. I had a beautiful baby boy 3.5 years ago and it didn't cure me of wanting kids any more than winning the World Series makes a ball player pine for retirement. For some reason, the one thing I've wanted, more instinctively than anything else, is hard. Damn hard. Harder than anything I've ever done. And unexpectedly, despite all the time I've spent in this zone of fighting for it, I feel like I have fewer answers than ever about what it all means or where I'm supposed to go or how long I'm supposed to fight.

What's in a Name

So somehow I ended up moving to the fertility capital of the universe. No one told me this was the case when I was looking around. This was not a point included in my realtor's tour of my new town. But shortly after arriving, I looked around and realized that everyone -- my husband thinks this is an exaggeration but it is not, it is literally everyone -- has at least two kids with one on the way. Having four children here is not unusual. And no, I did not move to Utah. As you likely surmised from my last post, I have moved to the suburb of a -- perhaps the -- major metropolitan area of the country.

If this quest for number two is ultimately a failure and I remain a parent to one, I will rock it, don't worry. I'll take the money I would have spent on diapers, buy a Birkin bag and send around a birth announcement about my new baby that doesn't cry, poop or keep me up at night. But for now, now that I'm still trying to take down secondary infertility with everything I've got, it makes me feel like a bit of an outlier. I'm new to town, and I've got this baggage, this thing that may ultimately make me different from most everyone else here. It makes me feel, for the moment, just a little bit more alone.

The other day I met some very nice moms on the playground. As we were chatting, a nanny came over with her charge and as soon as she said her name, this mom chimed in and started asking her about it. The mom said that her sister has been telling her to use it if she ever has another girl. It's a relatively unusual name that you don't hear often, and it happens to be my girl's name. So much so that my husband and I use it in casual conversation to refer to a future child that may live in our house. As in, that would be __________'s room. In this conversation about the name, the woman went so far as to use the actual nickname we were planning to use, saying her sister wanted her to use that too. It was sort of like watching a horror movie that you somehow can't put on pause. I wanted to jump in and say that's my girl's name too! But for obvious reasons I did not. Because it would have made me look weird, because I may never have another child, girl or otherwise, because it was too painful to even hope that someday I may actually have the problem of having a girl, selecting this name, bumping into this woman and looking like a shameless copycat. So I stayed silent.

My husband doesn't get why this bothers me so much. He thinks it's ridiculous that I would even worry about using the name, even if I end up running in the same circle as this mom, which is unlikely since our existing children are different ages and what is the likelihood that I will have another child that happens to be the same age as the children this woman will obviously be having, most likely without difficulty or complication?

I'll tell you why it bothers me. Because I have a funny feeling that in a couple of years, when I'm running around town with my Etoupe Birkin bag anchored on my arm, I'll hear this woman calling after her newest charge, calling out the name I so wanted to use too, and it will sear my chest like an arrow. I'm bracing myself right now.

Good RE Hunting

I decided over the weekend to get a second opinion here. I like the new doctor we've seen, but I just wonder if I'm more of an academic medical center kind of girl.

If anyone out there knows anything about NYU's program and its physicians, please email me at goodegghatched@gmail.com.

Keeping the Dream Alive

I want this space to be about more than my continued battle with infertility and loss. I want it to be about playing in the sand with my H, and how sweet three is, how good it is to wake up every day and know I'm his mom. Because that's what my life is like, too.

But when you struggle to conceive and deliver, and you dare to wish for more than one child, there's this background noise of that struggle that won't be ignored.

I thought I was going for a routine saline sonogram today with my new RE, to make sure there was no scarring from the May D&C. I thought it would be straightforward, even if there was a small amount of scarring. But the truth is, and I never, ever say this, you know I'm a worst-case-scenario girl, I thought it would be totally clean and we'd be ordering IVF meds today. Instead, you know what was there? A new fibroid. In the cavity. That he wants to remove in the OR.

So let's review the deck stacked against our heroine at this point:
-PCOS/unexplained infertility
-Asherman's
-Recurrent/unexplained loss
-MTHFR
-Slightly hypothyroid
-And today, a bonus fibroid

I have a history of a few fibroids that until now, did not excite anyone. They were out of the way, and even as recently as in March when my longtime RE did a hysteroscopy, there was nothing inside the cavity. So of course I'm totally weirded out by this whole thing (where did it come from? did it move? how did it just spring up out of nowhere?) and since I hardly know this new RE and had years of trust built up with the one that got us H, I reached out to her. She was so lovely to call me and talk about it and look at today's images, which I emailed her. And then I asked her if she could do the procedure, and she basically told me it's time to cut the cord.

I know she's right. But sometimes I don't like the sound of the truth. I heard a lot of that kind today.

So where are we? Hell if I know. I'll tell you what it feels like: It feels like someone is trying to tell me something.

All I know is it's hard to keep on dreaming when the facts keep whispering to you that the dream is over.

It's Not Easy Being...Well, You Know

I believe in global warming, just as I believe in gravity, osmosis and medicine. It's science, it's real, and I know we ignore it at the serious expense of future generations. Politics aside, I think it's up to all of us to find small ways in our busy lives to try and do what we can to preserve resources and reduce our footprint. But I'm also a realist, and I know that the really big changes are up to the powers that be -- the scientists behind the products and infrastructure that really operate the country and the world. Without real fundamental change, I suppose I feel a bit fatalistic about the whole thing -- like what can I really do as an individual to make a difference? Other than vote. Which I do.

Global warming aside, I must admit that the real reasons I look for eco-friendly, nontoxic products for health & beauty and home cleaning are selfish ones. When I was pregnant with H, I started to think a lot about what I was putting in my body. I know I went over the top at times and grossly overestimated the potentially harmful effects of given products and foods. But I did a lot of reading about the variety of chemicals in everything, from food to moisturizer, and it disturbed me. As an oncologist recently told a friend, at this rate we're so chemical-ed out that for too many women it's not a matter of if they'll get breast cancer, it's when. It's a sobering thought.

So I try to maintain a healthy balance for me and for the kiddo (the husband too, though I can't get him fully on the bandwagon). I do use chemicals in products, and there are certain things, like foundation, that I just can't let go au naturale. But I read labels and try to avoid parabens, phthalates, etc. I just don't buy the argument that "we're all going to die anyway" or that "there are harmful things everywhere." I just think, why not try to limit some of that junk and avoid carcinogens? Again, it's science. I mean with those arguments, why not avoid the doctor and try blood letting next time you're sick, too?

Anyway I started thinking about it all again this week as I am setting up cleaning service in my new house (the old-school, hardscrabble New Englander in me still feels very tentative and slightly embarrassed when talking about my cleaning ladies, but yes, I have them, I love them, and I just think people have different gifts, that mine is not cleaning, and my time is more wisely spent on other things). I'm trying to get cleaning products down and it's hard to get the right balance between "green," nontoxic choices and things that will really work. I think I've got it down to vinegar and water for floors, Bon Ami for scrubbing sinks, etc., Whole Foods Green Mission all-purpose spray (or similar) for general purpose cleaning, and a harsher Tilex or Soft Scrub in showers around once a month for build-up. Oh and this great product called "Spit and Polish" for stainless steel from a company called Murchison-Hume.

That's my lineup, at least for now. What green products are you loving these days?

Royal Joy

The royal baby was born today, and instead of bitterness over the blatant fertility on display (or envy over the Duchess' embarrassment of fashion riches at her disposal), what I thought today was that an adorable couple was expecting a baby, and it was everything that event is supposed to be: fun, exciting and bringing joy to a family, a nation and a fleet of admirers across the globe. It reminded me that although bringing a baby into this world, for me, will never be without a dark, murky underbelly, at its core it's about new beginnings and promise and hope, not only for the baby but for those who love him (or even fans from across the globe who are a little enraptured with the glamour and tradition of the royal family).

Thank you, Kate, for putting the fun back into it for me, vicariously, if only for a day. My wish for you is that in spite of the press corps, the hoopla, the restrictions of protocol, you get what every mama deserves, to relish all those magical first moments with your sweet little boy.

In the Moment

My sister-in-law is pregnant with twin boys, and as of last week when contractions intensified to under 10 minutes apart, on bedrest. This is an IVF pregnancy, and I need to state upfront for the record that I don't begrudge her a minute of much-deserved joy (and I personally could not be more excited to meet my nephews). But I can't help but feel envious of her.

I've sat right where she's sitting, and I know how nerve wracking bedrest can be when you don't yet know the outcome of a complex pregnancy. But oh, the sweet anticipation. To spend the day searching online for nursery gear, all the highs and lows of parenting a baby still in front of you -- I just want five more minutes in that fleeting space. I want to wait for, and then meet, my sweet H all over again.

It's so hard to fully appreciate where you are, without looking back, to grasp that today is the yesterday you'll look back on soon enough. I really do get that these days, with my three-year-old boy, are just as precious, just as fleeting. I want to marinade in them, to be better at taking mental pictures, to just appreciate. So often I find myself zoning out, thinking about the next thing, the work I have to do, the things I want to buy for my new house. These moments are rushing by, every stage giving way to a new one, and sometimes I'm just not present.

I may not have another baby. But right now I have a three-year-old boy and I want to make every moment of that count. Every single day I am grateful and amazed that he's even here, but I want to somehow apply that better to the day-to-day with him.

How do you make the moments count?

On another note, for some reason Google decided to do away with Reader, and I now find myself without a blog reader or my list of much-loved blogs. I did download my data from Reader before they turned that off, though Google doesn't really provide much guidance on how to use it, so I may have to start from scratch. If you a) know how to access the data and/or apply it to a new reader once you download it from Google, b) have found a new blog reader that you can recommend, or c) write a blog you think I read or would like to read, please, please leave me a comment so I can piece my blog life back together.