Hello/Goodbye

I haven't written in a while. I have been stuck, yet again, in a horrible limbo. I had a short period of time that was beautiful--a time when I thought we were finally on the other side, where things looked so promising and the world of parenthood was laid at our feet. And then yet again we found ourselves in a position of waiting, of trying to find hope where there was very little if any to be found, until we finally found ourselves on the other side of an experience I've hoped in vain to be spared from.

This frosty cycle, this sixth transfer of embryos 14, 15, and 16, was a short-lived success. I was pregnant. Robustly so. I got an honest to goodness congratulations call, the call we've been waiting for. And then I miscarried.

And now I am stuck in a place of sadness. I am so sad I can't even really cry. I just sit and stare into space. I don't understand this. I don't have any satisfying answers for why and how this could have happened to us. We really are colossally unlucky. Unfortunate. How can this be so heartbreakingly difficult to achieve? How can we keep inching closer to the prize but only just an inch at a time?

I have all my numbers memorized. I could tell you all the HCG rises I had with my ectopic pregnancy last summer (12-26-74-142-488-1161). And now I can tell you that my somewhat normal uterine pregnancy went 67-137-333-894-2036-259-129 and is still counting backwards. I saw a sac. Of course I saw a sac after bleeding and falling spectacularly apart in a terror I've never experienced before, but it was there. And the "debris" is still there. Because I started bleeding last Monday afternoon and it stopped by Monday night. I was on bed rest for days until my numbers plummetted. And I am still, STILL not bleeding. I lost that little babyling, but my body will just not cooperate enough to let me lose everything all at once. I have to have a dragged out experience. I have to feel every last bit of pain possible, apparently.

7/21/12. The day I got my unadulterated congratulations call. The first time I've had a strong first number.
7/30/12. The day I had a scary bleed and showed up at my RE's office in tears, begging for an ultrasound. And I saw a sac, which should have been joyous and exciting but instead was frightening and sad--was this Hello/Goodbye?
8/1/12. The day I was told my numbers dropped. A nearly 1800 point drop. A drop so severe and so crazy that we weren't the only ones thinking it could be a mistake. I mean, what if someone left off a zero? What if it was 2590? That would make more sense.
8/2/12. The day I was told it wasn't a mistake. My numbers dropped further, solidifying that the pregnancy was doomed and had probably already been lost. But I couldn't accept that, not when a sac had been visible after the heaviest part of the bleed. Even though the numbers were clearly bad, I would not go off my meds until I saw that my uterus was empty.
8/6/12. Ultrasound confirming somewhat empty uterus and definitive miscarriage. Follow up appointment with our doctor. Large quantities of wine consumed in the evening.

What's really upsetting is that this state of not-bleeding, of incompleteness, could go on for a while. I have to keep going in for HCG blood draws to make sure my numbers are dropping steadily and don't plateau. Because my body relaxed its cervix to let my baby out but didn't finish the job and clean house, my cervix is still acting like a gateway. And my uterus is not shooing out the detritus within. And so I am at risk for infection. Because nothing could be SIMPLE, even tragically simple. My body can't seem to figure out how to get pregnant, stay pregnant, or even expel a failed pregnancy. WTF. So it's really messed up, because I can pee on a stick and it will tell me I'm pregnant. I did it yesterday morning. I'm out of sticks, so I won't keep torturing myself, but I actually called up the company who manufactures my digital stick that taunted me with "PREGNANT" on the screen and asked what the threshold for HCG detection was. 25. So as of yesterday I was still at least at 25. All last week I felt pregnant. I feel a little less pregnant now, probably because I'm mildly hung over, and also because mentally I have accepted that this loss occurred. Last week I didn't accept it. I was, yet again, in a place where I was begging for a miracle. Trying to think of situations where this could end well. It was the longest of long shots. No miracle for me.

And so here we are, at a place of tough decisions. We can't keep doing what we've done. There is obviously an issue. I can get pregnant, but most likely the embryos aren't chromosomally ok. They won't stick. Or they won't stay stuck. Or they get lost in a freak ectopic situation. We have hard choices ahead of us. But at least we have choices. And right now I choose a break. I need time off. I need time to heal in every way possible. I need time to be a couple with my fabulous husband and not have the specter of 16 bygone embryos overshadowing us every minute of every day. I need a holiday season where Santa doesn't bring me butt shots, where I can have some holiday cheer without fearing that I'm screwing my egg quality. And then we can try again. In a new way. We haven't quite figured that out yet, but we have time.