The Healing Process

A short update for here, since I hate coming back and always just seeing the last post. Pictureless and not really edited but here's how it's going. It's been a week since everything happened and I can assuredly tell you that these last 2 weeks have been some of the longest in my life.  Never in a million years did I actually think things would go from seeing what looked like something a bit strange on ultrasound on one Monday to having to make the decision to let go of that baby the next Monday. Not my idea of reality. Last Monday and Tuesday really seem like a lifetime ago. But I'm making my way through the healing process.

My mom just left yesterday morning and having her here was so helpful during the last week.  Randy and I were rather numb after  last Monday and Tuesday and Randy had to go back to work on Wednesday.  Honestly those two days, while burned into my memory, are but a blur... Wednesday seemed to be my "purge" day...Mom and I took back some maternity things, diaper bags, etc...(I hope I will need them again someday, but at this time I don't need the constant reminder of what could have been slapping me in the face every time I go in my closet....) I also decided to thoroughly rid my closet of everything that was too small, out of style, or I hadn't worn in the last couple of years.  This resulted in 11 garbage bags going to Goodwill...I don't even remember half of the stuff that I put in there.  All that activity and winding up on Wednesday made for a super spiral down on Wednesday night...I think everything kind of came to a head emotionally and it was a really rough night....but as always, night becomes a new day and the week became progressively less painful.  My mom and I did a lot of talking, Randy and I did a lot of talking...although his coping mechanism is to not talk and that makes it a little bit difficult.  But my coping mechanism is to put walls up and shut everybody out from my little cocoon...

Thank goodness for friends that still knock on that cocoon and let me know they are there and thinking of me.  My wonderful, caring friends....thank you so much for the flowers and cards and angels and fruit baskets and texts and emails and messages.  Your love and care and concern was so genuinely appreciated and helped me so much knowing people were out there for us. 

I went back to work yesterday and hadn't really cried for a couple of days so thought I'd be pretty strong, I could just swallow that "lump in my throat" ...I "thought" so at least, my walls were up...But I headed into work, slightly nervous (who knows why, you just can't explain emotions sometimes...) and wasn't able to keep the tears at bay when everyone was hugging me and expressing sympathy and welcome backs.  The wall cracks.  But I was trying to hold it together because I thought that I'm supposed to be "better" after having the week off to grieve and heal.  Everyone at work makes for such a comforting environment, I'm grateful to have such an understanding group of people.  They all have been part of my journey towards pregnancy (voluntarily or not :-) through the last year and a half and I know they shared in my loss....

Hopefully we'll be able to get pregnant again, without it taking another year and a half...I'm rather bummed that I need to wait a few months but I also want a healthy environment, physically and emotionally to try to bring another baby into....

I'm off the rest of this week too....but for an entirely different reason, a planned ahead reason.  My focus has to shift quite a bit so that I can prepare for my acupuncture exams this weekend.  I'm so nervous for these exams because needless to say I haven't been studying as I should have been over the last couple of weeks.  I tend to be a bit of a crammer for exams and now I'm **really** going to have to go into cram mode.  I genuinely wish that I didn't have this stress going on right now but hopefully I'll be able to resume focus and prepare the best that I can for this exam...I'll be breathing a sigh of relief when next week comes.

In memory of Baby Boy Taylor Moore

                                                   A much loved and much wanted baby....


Unfortunately we did not receive positive news from our visit to the specialist yesterday. The diagnosis that I suspected, posterior urethral valves, was confirmed and a severe case of it as well.  It's a simple but very major anatomic defect which causes obstruction of the bladder and prevents them from urinating normally.  This in turn causes the urine to back up into the kidneys and causes kidney damage and eventually kidney failure.  When the urine can't be released naturally as it should be into the amniotic fluid then the fluid becomes drastically increased and leads to problems with the lungs forming properly.  Increased bladder size can also encroach upon the chest cavity and compress the heart and lungs. 

It's not a condition for which absolutely nothing can be done, however the statistics are very bleak.  If your amnio testing comes back clean, devoid of any chromosomal abnormalities and the baby's kidney function is still intact, then a fetal shunt can be considered to shunt the urine back into the amniotic fluid.  Unfortunately it still doesn't actually "fix" the problem with the obstructive valves, but it's some sort of bandaid. However, they usually have to go in 4-5 times to replace the shunt as it gets obstructed, gets pulled out, etc...There is a 40% mortality in utero of the babies they place a shunt in (100% mortality if no intervention.)  Then of those that make it past the shunting, usually they are born severely prematurely in the 29-30 week range with greatly impaired lung function.  Quite a few of those little ones will pass away within hours or days.  The 15% that make it this far are then faced with a couple of surgeries immediately upon birth and usually looking at several years of dialysis and a kidney transplant as almost all will have kidney failure.

The high risk fetal specialist that we saw was quite surprised at how big the bladder was at such an early period of time and feared for a complete obstruction. He was also not happy that he already saw evidence of kidney damage. Definitely times you don't like to hear the head guy go, "ohhhhh" :-(  He gave us the above options but ultimately was very guarded.
We went back over to my regular ob and discussed things further, she seemed more "hopeful" and offered the same things but when I pushed her and bluntly asked if any of these had a good outcome with a living child now, she said "no."

"Luckily" Randy and I had done our research before hand, I had been reading everything I could find over the last week, trying to find a shred,a glimmer of hope for this condition (and hoping more and more from what I had been reading that I would be wrong) ....we discussed open fetal surgery but it's still experimental and hasn't proven any good outcomes.  This baby was much loved and wanted and we truly wanted to do anything we could for him (yes it was a boy) and while we believe in the wonders of science and medicine, we also very much believe in the quality of life and don't want to only have a 15% chance of going to term and then having that little baby boy have to go through so much.  With then likely lifelong urination and kidney problems.  Seems so crazy that a "little" defective valve can wreak so much havoc.  Seems pretty crappy that a 1 in 8000 chance found me :-(

With a heavy heart but a clear conscience in our agreement we have chosen to let this baby go and not have him go through the terrible odds.  Never in my worst fears did I ever think it would get to this point at ALL! Where I would even need to consider anything remotely like that!! Especially when I got such a GOOD report from my ultrascreen last week.  Sigh.  I guess we can only hope to try again and be successful and at least go on a nice vacation in a month or two (what the heck, I've got all my saved up vacation! :-(

My Mom flew down here last night and she'll be here the week with us so the comfort will be nice. This blog will probably be a bit quiet for a little while until life is back in order and there's anything related to put on here.

Thank you so much for all your hugs, thoughts, prayers, kindness, support and empathy...one day hopefully this will work well for us and we'll have a beautiful healthy child.

Maybe I shouldn't ultrasound myself at work??

I'm not sure what's going on.  I'm worried that something is wrong with the baby.  It's been a very long week.  Maybe I shouldn't ultrasound myself so much at work, but then again maybe I caught something in the early stage?

On Monday, just because I like to see the little one moving all around, I ultrasounded myself at work and saw what appeared to me to be a really big bladder.

But I had no idea when bladder formation was complete, when they learned to pee, how big the bladder got etc, etc...So of course, knowing me, I went to the Internet to try to find *normal* fetal bladder ultrasound pics.  I was really happy when I started seeing images that looked just like mine but then became quickly worried when all the ones that looked just like what I was seeing on ultrasound were for anomalies.  All pictures from ultrasound journals on how to make diagnoses.  Cue panic attack.

Yeah, that's NOT the same picture as the one up above, but just flipped...it just looks like that. :-(
(And this one from a u/s journal showed the bladder size at 9.6mm....mine has gotten up to 27mm)

However, I knew that I had an obgyn appt that Wednesday, so I *tried* to not fret too much, and tried not to overload myself with Internet information.  (tried.)  After a VERY long 2 days, I had my appt on Wed and was just dying to hear, "oh, you silly thing, quit ultrasounding yourself, it's nothing at all!"  However, I only saw the nurse practitioner and she told me that usually she doesn't start looking at the anatomy for a couple more weeks so she didn't really have a good reference range to know if the bladder was big but she would run the pictures by the doctor and see what she wanted to do.  I wanted to say, "but all the pics I was finding online were from 12-15 week ultrasounds!!"  (I'm 14.5 weeks)  But, I didn't...I didn't want to be overreacting and she didn't seem too concerned, she didn't do an ultrasound that day and I went on my merry way.

Well, I had to wait alll day on Thursday to get the call from the dr's office.  And then at 5:30pm I finally get the call saying she wants me to go to a maternal fetal specialist. Cue panic attack #2.  The nurse said the ob didn't have "too much emotion" about it, she wasn't like "oh, that's nothing, it's fine" and she wasn't "oh my gosh, get her in stat."  So I have an appt set up with the specialist on Monday.  Actually, the specialist doesn't take my insurance so I am going to the hospital to their special imaging center for further ultrasound imaging.  Then what?  I don't know if they sent that info back to my ob, if they tell me something on Monday while I'm there or if they send it to a specialist??  I guess only time will tell....for right now, I"m kind of a wreck because (of course) I've checked my baby every day on u/s to see if the enlarged bladder resolved on it's own, but instead it's just getting bigger and bigger.  If I am correct (AND MORE THAN ANYTHING, I HOPE I'M WRONG, but deductive reasoning is my occupation), but.... if I am correct, it seems likely that what this is is a PUV...a posterior urethral valve problem. 

A problem with the valves in the urethra that doesn't allow the urine to empty out, thereby causing the bladder to be obstructed, get enlarged, and then back up into the kidneys resulting in kidney failure along with potential heart and lung defects from the lack of amniotic fluid.  No wonder I'm freaking out.  However, before I think about posting a bunch of information about this, I'm going to wait until after the ultrasound/specialist appt on Monday and see where things are at that point.  All prayers, good thoughts, fingers crossed would be much appreciated....

Wow! It looks like a baby!!!

Wow!  How time flies!  I've already had a couple of ultrasounds and it's amazing how quickly just a little "blob" turns into a little person with hands and feet already! Here's from my ultrasound at a little over 12 weeks:

 Crazy huh?!?  Well, at least I thought so!  The little one was moving all around and thought she'd say "Hey, what's up?!"  with this cute one:

I got my results from my ultrascreen which was a combination of bloodwork and a special ultrasound looking for markers for genetic disorders such as Trisomy 18 and Down's syndrome.  I got the call from the nurse that all was looking good.  She said, "In fact, everything looks really great!"  So I was super happy to get that phone call!!


I started taking the obligatory belly pics.  These are from 12 weeks.  I look like my regular slightly pudgey self, but I think I was trying to suck in the pudge a little bit so that therefore made my boobs look gigantic.  Great.  But Randy didn't have a lot of patience so these were the 2 I got.  (Where are the girls to take these pics when you need them that will let you keep taking pics until YOU think you look good? :-)

 So this is the good news from this week....I'll be updating soon with why maybe I shouldn't keep ultrasounding myself at work...

Happy Birthday to me!!

Hello all,
Hope everyone had a fantastic holiday season and is enjoying the New Year. Been a little while since I've had a blog update, but there's been reason for that!!  I received the best Christmas and Birthday present I could wish for, I FINALLY am pregnant!!  Wooo-Hooooo!!! 

 
My birthday today officially marks the first day of my second trimester, so I thought it was a fitting day to announce the wonderful news!

 

So let's catch up now, shall we?  Well, when we left off, we weren't going to pursue any fertility treatments in December, just wanted a break from the stress and the costs and the disappointment. I was going to pursue acupuncture but ended up not fitting it in during the holiday season.  So December, I talked to Randy and said, let's just not even THINK about it this month....And we truly didn't!  We partied with friends (yes, for the first time in over a year, alcohol was involved :-), I dropped 20lbs at the gym, working out HARD (aerobics, belly dancing, hot tubs etc...) and doing massive deprivation dieting and had a wonderful Christmas holiday with family and friends!  So wonderful and stress free in fact, that it looks like a little Christmas miracle was conceived on Christmas Eve :-)

Well, enter the New Year...I'm still dieting, working out, drinking and overall not too concerned with reproductive safety and health ( yeah, I had REALLY put it out of my mind, figured it hadn't happened, wasn't going to, wasn't even thinking about it!)  I thought I'd pulled a boob muscle at the gym one day because it was really hurting (yeah, still not even on the radar)....thought my period was coming because I was crampy...well, just popped a couple of Ibuprofen and moved on, was still crampy for a couple of days but didn't think much about it.  Had a fun game night with a bottle of wine with friends and then the next morning, early in the morning I was laying in bed and I started doing some math in my head...counting...and realizing that I was over a week late.  Well, I figured that didn't mean much since I've been late before and usually the kiss of death to bring on the "monthly curse" was to take a pregnancy test.  I wasn't really even thinking much, just was kinda like "meh, I've got an extra pregnancy test here, let's just take it for giggles."  Usually I gear myself up for the test by flipping it over and making myself "busy" for the next 3-5 mins and then slowly flipping it over with anticipation which then has quickly been followed by month after month disappointment. Well, holy crimoly, the test turned positive before I even flipped it over.  WTF??  I seriously sat there in shock and disbelief....and then proceeded to go wake Randy up at 5:30 in the morning with the good news.  His response? "Mrhuh?" , waking up a little more, "huh?", then, "You're WHAT? "  We were both absolutely overjoyed!!   And then I took 3 more tests :-)

It's been a wonderful first 3 months, I've had absolutely no morning sickness at all.  I was a little crampy in the beginning with sore breasts but all in all it's been just great.  I now know how those people can say "oh my gosh, I didn't even know I was pregnant until the baby dropped out at 9 months in the bathtub!" Not really, but it's been a lot better than what I've anticipated!  I was a nervous wreck in the beginning, worrying about miscarriage and things I couldn't control but as the days turned into weeks, I greatly settled down. The day I found out I took that as an excuse to stop my crazy dieting and I've had a wicked sweet tooth (half a sleeve of Thin Mints for breakfast?  I think that I will, thank you very much!)  but that's kind of tamed itself a little bit too!

I've had 2 ultrasound appts, this first one is from 71/2 weeks where you can just see the little tiny peanut on the top (has the 2 little + marking size by the obgyn).  She said everything was going great and I couldn't ask for anything better!

This second one is from 10.5 weeks and already I can't believe how much she's (:-) grown!  Arms and legs and movement!  It's amazing!

I'm due for my ultrascreen ultrasound this Monday which is a specific ultrasound combined with bloodwork that looks for risks such as Down's syndrome and other genetic mutations.  So we'll all keep fingers crossed that all will be ok, since after all, I *am* advanced maternal age :-)

So glad to be able to share the good news with everyone, I'll keep the updates coming, now that it's "official" :-)

Thanks for all the support!

Just a quick thank you to all of you that have reached out and offered support, empathy and suggestions.  It's amazing (and frankly a bit daunting) to know how many friends out there I know that are going through this similar situation.  It's nice to be able to recognize other people that know what I am experiencing.  I'm happy to report too, that almost ALL the friends that were going through this have had a child or are now pregnant!  Yay!

It's very interesting to learn of all the different ways that work for everyone.  Hopefully one day, mine will be but another statistic of "what I had to go through to get pregnant" :-)  A special shout out goes to one of my vet school classmates who has gone through a lot (has a beautiful baby boy now!) and I think, will be able to help me out immensely!  Thanks K!

Going in for my first acupuncture consult and session this evening, also trying to get my hysterosalpingogram scheduled however it's not looking good for scheduling this month.  I have a feeling this month is going to be acupuncture a la natural...certainly takes away a lot of the stress...if only the financial aspect could go away too :-)

This is why I don't believe in magic.

So, while everything appeared to line up this last month with getting all the fertility treatments done in a narrow window of time, the egg + sperm were NOT one of those things that lined up according to plan.

Another month of big fat negative.  I think this picture is rather humorous.  I, of course, had a "helper" with me at 4am while I was doing my test 14 days post I.U.I and I believe she is smirking in this photo...saying, "ha-ha, we're going to be the only kids you're going to have!  4-legged ones are the best!"  (Or, in Delilah's case here, 3-legged :-)

It's been 12 months now that we've been trying.  4 months since starting fertility treatments and 2 cycles of I.U.I.  Sigh.  It really does wear on me both emotionally and physically.  I thought I had gotten a urinary tract infection from the last I.U.I since I was having these miserable bladder symptoms (peeing every hour, never feeling like I was done with horrible lower abdomen discomfort...) turns out that *this* was rolling around in my bladder and causing the irritation.  Ugh!

I really need to commit to drinking more water since I've had kidney stones 3 times now and this is the second time with an extremely irritating bladder stone.  I think I'm going to put myself on SO.  (Veterinary urinary diet for animals with or susceptible to stones. :-)

Since I'm JUST now feeling better after a weeks + time of bladder misery, I'm just *not* really in the mood for lots of foreign objects up around in there. I think I'm going to shake things up a little bit.  Randy and I talked and I think I'm going to go forth with the hysterosalpingogram (yeah, even I had to look that one up!)  The"hsg" is an x-ray test that takes a picture after dye has filled the inside of the uterus and fallopian tubes. The picture will reveal any abnormalities of the uterus as well as tubal problems such as blockage and dilation. Sometimes forcing dye through the tube will dislodge any material which blocks it. A number of women have become pregnant following a hysterosalpingogram without further treatment.  I wouldn't start placing your bets yet.

Following this procedure, I'm taking this month off from fertility drugs and I.U.I.  I'm going to start acupuncture and take some deep breaths and a little focus off of trying, trying, trying. I'll keep you posted as new events unfold.