The Graduate

Guess who has two thumbs, is officially graduated from her infertility clinic, AND weaned from her meds?

THIS GIRL!

No more 5:30 am wake-up calls for progesterone shots. No more sticky estrogen patches that no amount of scrubbing completely remove. More than anything I'm thrilled that my body seems to be doing what it is supposed to: producing the hormones needed to sustain a pregnancy and grow this sweet baby.

We are just a few short days from hitting the 12 week milestone and 6 days from our first appointment with our OB and another ultrasound to see our little one (now the size of a fig!). To say we are excited would be an understatement. Stay cozy Embry!

A Letter to Embry

I had my first dream about you last night. As dreams tend  to go, it was brief and fleeting, but it was particularly vivid. I was bent over your infant carrier watching you sleep. You were so tiny! As you slept you were smiling and making tiny sleeping baby noises. I had the distinct feeling that you were a boy (forgive me if I'm wrong!) and you were absolutely breath-taking. Technically, you woke me from my dream, as I stirred to wake up and use the bathroom in the middle of the night. I desperately wanted to fall back asleep and see you again! I guess I'll have to wait two more weeks until our next ultrasound, but that grainy black and white image does not do you justice.

In other news, you are now the size of a kumquat and I think the cravings have officially begun. My current favorite foods are BLT's on sourdough and spicy dill pickles from Heine's produce stand. All my pants are snug and I wore my first pair of maternity pants to work today...talk about freedom! Visit me in my dreams anytime little one. 

Moving On

I never thought I would be sad to be released from the care of my Reproductive Endocrinologist, yet here I am 9 weeks pregnant and a tiny bit sad to leave the amazing staff at Conceptions Reproductive Associates. Monday we had our last ultrasound at CRA and filled out the patient release forms so all our records can be sent to my OB. I will still go in for a quick blood draw next Tuesday so they can work out a plan to wean me off my medications, but other than that we are done. No more consults, no more exams. My care will be transferred to the amazing care of my OB who I absolutely adore! I've been seeing him for my annual exams for the past 6 years and he is a remarkable doctor who makes his patients feel special and important. I can think of no one else I would want to care for me during pregnancy and deliver our precious little one, but the transition is bittersweet.

When I would sit in the waiting room at CRA, I knew I was not alone. There was a room full of other hopeful men and women waiting to be promoted to daddy & mommy. There was a comfort in knowing you were among fellow travelers on the path of suck-ass infertility (yea, I said suck-ass). There was a tenderness and caution among the staff and they approach their patients with care and kleenex. I feel a strong attachment especially to our donor egg coordination team. For those of you who have been through IVF, you know there is an incredibly sensitive timeline that has to be managed. When you add in the component of of donor + an anxious recipient, the process is even more complicated. Our nurses coordinated our care seamlessly and somehow, without conveying any identifying information, made me feel connected to our donor in a very special way.

As we prepare to move on from "infertility patient" to "expectant parents" I wanted to provide some small token of our appreciation to our nurses, sonographers and phlebotomists who helped make this step a reality. Today I assembled some goody bags to deliver along with hand-written thank you notes. 

Lest you think I'm incredibly creative, I will credit the idea to a blog I found via Pinterest. Thank goodness for other creative people I can copy emulate.

I'm working to figure out how to navigate these new waters. I still don't feel like I have left infertility behind. It's far too fresh and far too early. I also don't know that I want to leave it behind. It is a cause I'm incredibly attached to. In case you couldn't tell from my rather lathered up post a couple of weeks ago, I am passionate about making sure that the message of infertility is shared broadly. It's about education. It's about men and women understanding how many people this disease touches and realizing that if may be part of their reality. It's about support for people struggling, and it's about changing the way our legislators and insurance companies view infertility. In honor of Independence Day, I encourage you to put to use your rights and email your legislators today and encourage them to support the Family Act. I have emailed, faxed, and sent written letters to my elected officials three times in the last 2 months. I have received nothing but stock form letters in response, but I'm pretty tenacious. I REALLY want to see a CO legislator supporting this bill. So before you leave for the fireworks, I encourage you to spend 5 minutes to send an email to your legislators here. If your legislator is already sponsoring this bill, write a note of thanks for their support!

Ok, off the soap box. Happy Fourth everyone! :)

Little Miracle

Yesterday we had our second ultrasound.  I wasn't the nervous wreck I was last time and actually had a healthy normal blood pressure when they checked my vitals. When our sweet sonographer began, her first words were "Oh My!" In just two weeks little Embry has more than doubled in size. We heard a beautiful rapid healthy heartbeat of 185 bpm. After checking to make sure my ovaries and uterus looked healthy, we got a guided tour of our little one. She pointed out the head, arm and leg buds, spine, and heart (now with four chambers!).  Baby Gage measures right at an inch long and is about the size of a large grape. While I can't feel any movement, we were able to watch our baby move and wiggle during the ultrasound. 

I know I am guilty of overusing the words "awesome" and "miracle" in everyday conversations. "That lemon tart was awesome!" "The mailman made it to our house before 5pm, It's a miracle!" Yesterday's appointment put these words into perspective for me. I have a tiny, grape-sized miracle growing in me and that is truly awesome. 

Stats, Data and Minimalization

This morning I tuned into Good Morning America and found my favorite morning crew discussing a new article in Atlantic Monthly titled "How Long Can You Wait to Have a Baby?". Of course my ears perked up to hear about fertility being addressed on such a public and popular forum. If you haven't read the article yet, please do. Jean Twenge expostulates the "myth" that women have decreased fertility after the age of 35. She points to new studies and research that suggest that healthy women are just as likely to conceive if intercourse is timed appropriately between the ages of 35 - 39 as they are from 19 - 26 and that the studies suggesting otherwise are pre-victorian, dated, and rubbish.

I'm not a scientist, reproductive endocrinologist, or statistician, so I will not argue with the information she's bringing to light in the article. I will point out that even if everything she's saying in the article checks out and "healthy" women have been having self-induced baby panic over their ticking biological clocks for years for no good reason, this still does not address the 1 in 8  who are not "healthy" reproductively. It minimizes women who struggle with infertility and those stats are crystal clear. 7.3 million people in the US alone are battling this disease.

Ms. Twenge is one of the lucky women who waited until after 35 to start a family and did so with ease. She conceived her children without the staggering expense of ART and had happy, healthy pregnancies. I'm thrilled for her (seriously, not being sarcastic here). My fear is that this new research and her article will give women who do not know that infertility lies in their path a false sense of hope that they can continue to wait and will have the families they dreamed of when they are ready. 

Towards the end of the article Twenge does acknowledge that no data is perfect and that if women are concerned about their fertility they can check out "new (albeit imperfect) technologies" to freeze their eggs. It comes in as an afterthought to a piece that (to me at least) screamed "Don't worry, all those doctors and crazy infertile people are wrong! They're a minority. You can have your family on your terms and your time."

I married at 27 and six months into my marriage began trying to conceive. At 29 I found out that my ovarian reserve and egg quality were more suited to a woman 40 years old. I certainly did not expect this news (no woman does). I honestly thought I didn't have to worry about egg quality until I was at least 40. I mean, celebrities are having babies at 42 all the time right? I sincerely hope that this article does not lull women into a false sense of hope. You may be lucky and conceive at 37 after a passionate night and too much red wine, but you should also face the fact that at 34 you may conceive after investing nearly $40,000 with your spouse shooting you in the ass every morning along the way. 

First Ultrasound!

Today was our first ultrasound since finding out we are pregnant. I have been anxiously awaiting this day for a long time and things seemed to move in slow motion all morning. Once we arrived at the clinic and they called me back, there were multiple stops before the ultrasound room. Blood work, vitals check, weigh-in, urine sample...all steps between me and the opportunity to see my baby. When we finally made it back to the ultrasound room the sonographer stepped out so I could get undressed from the waist down. I always wear a dress on ultrasound days, drop the undies and you're good to go! I'm not one to waste time, plus every time I haven't worn a dress I'm always mid-undress when they tap on the door and I do that awkward "Just a second!" yell and hobble over to the table and the modest cover of my paper blankie. Of course today I was on the table in 20 seconds flat and today was the day they gave me PLENTY of time to get settled.  C'mon!  Show me my baby! :)

Anxiousness and impatience aside, it was a really beautiful appointment. We were able to see our precious little bean, the yolk sac, the bulge of the teeniest tiniest heart and a beautiful rapid flash of white on that black and white ultrasound screen for every precious heartbeat. Yeah, I cried big fat happy tears. Little Embry now measures 1 cm (about the size of a blueberry) and has a healthy heartbeat of 145 bpm. We get to go back for another ultrasound in two weeks to see how things are progressing and at this appointment we'll actually get to hear the heartbeat and not just see it. 

Tonight I will sleep soundly knowing that our little one is safe, healthy and growing. This week Embry will develop arms and legs and in addition to that tiny heart also has an appendix, intestines, a pancreas and liver. Hello tiny miracle. I'm in awe of you!

The DH

My DH (Dear Husband) and I have been married almost 7 years and together for almost 8. We had a whirlwind courtship and married one day shy of knowing one another for a year. He is handsome and has a razor sharp sense of humor, just two of the big reasons I decided to hitch my wagon to his. In addition to looks and humor, he's incredibly smart and capable of figuring out just about any home improvement project which is fortuitous since our 1971 charmer is in frequent need of repair. Today, in fact, he is finishing off the install of a new bathroom vanity which required him to run new pipe and fix a leak. Nothing is ever as easy as originally planned. 

I don't have any particular reason for writing this post other than the fact that I woke up this morning with a major crush on my husband. Even after "all these years" I still have moments when I look at him and get that nervous feeling in my stomach. Our journey through infertility, while challenging and heart-rending, has brought us a closeness that I'm not sure we would have experienced otherwise. He is truly my confidante and best friend and I can't imagine going through this with anyone else. 

Ken never ceases to keep me on my toes and surprise me. While I devour information on pregnancy and busy myself reading Dr. Oz's YOU: Having a Baby before bedtime my husband is more stealthy in his preparations. He recently mentioned that he thought we should invest in a new washer and dryer. While I would love a new washer and dryer, I'm fine with our current set, they're not new or high-efficiency, but they still work. Ken replied that we would need a better set since we are going to be washing and drying cloth diapers soon. Turns out he has researched the cost/benefit analysis on cloth vs. disposable. Gotta love a man with a mathematical mentality. :) 

He has been a rockstar nurse through all of this and still administers my shots each morning with TLC and a dose of silliness. If he catches me trying to pick something up or carry something (usually something well within my limits, I must add) he takes it from me and says, "no baby, you're pregnant" which after 6.5 years of trying makes me giddy. I'm thrilled to be married to a man who not only wants children, but desires to be a REALLY good father...and it doesn't hurt that he still makes my heart flutter.