Trying and trying and trying and failing

I started back to work when my son was about 3 months old.  I extended my maternity leave a week to recover from my dermoid cyst removal surgery. 

After the surgery I was sore.  I managed to never tap into the heavy drugs they had sent home with me from the hospital.  I took it very slowly when laying down or sitting down, and then again when getting up.  Stairs were a challenge.  Picking up my baby was a challenge.  Bumpy car rides were the bane of my existence!

Showers were also weird.  At first I couldn't expose the wound to water.  Then I didn't know what to do.  I was afraid of the incision.  I didn't want it to get infected, but I didn't want to touch it either.  Luckily, my ambiguous neglect was okay.  The follow up doctor visits showed it was healing fine.  Finally I was able to have the stitches removed.

By the time I started back to work I was moving fine.  I was still uncomfortable in the car, and standing the 15 minutes in a moving train during my light rail commute was pure torture.  But I could walk and pick up my baby without pain.  That's all a post operative girl can really ask for.

While I was on maternity leave I had been reassigned from the project manager of my dreams to the project manager I had prayed to never be assigned to.  The project, without me to work on it, was several weeks behind and very off kilter.  I was in for a lot of late nights and a lot of time away from my new baby.

I felt vulnerable and overwhelmed.  There was no way I would even consider having another baby.  It took me two years after the birth of my son to begin feeling that I could handle another pregnancy, another birth, another baby.

The first month we started trying to conceive we "baby danced" every night.  We would HAVE to get pregnant, there's no way we could miss it, even if I ovulated at some weird time of the month.  Really I had no idea how this stuff worked, so I went with the blanket method.  Cover all the possibilities with one big blanket.  I was shocked when we weren't pregnant, discouraged and tired... so very tired...

After that I decided to get smart and downloaded an app on my new smart phone that gave me a half flower on my fertile days and a full flower when I ovulated.  It was based on the theory that every woman has a 14 day luteal phase, so after the first month it knew exactly the day I ovulated based on my cycle length.  Brilliant!  Except that we still weren't getting pregnant.

In the mean time my now three year old son had gone crazy, I mean totally over the deep end.  It would take me an hour to calm him out of a screaming, kicking, running, punching, sobbing meltdown after picking him up at school.  I had started going in to work early and leaving early to pick up my son.  Except when my husband was out of town for business.  Then I went in late and left with early, with little or no change in with load.  I had switched over part time when my firm, devastated by the financial meltdown, asked employees to volunteer to go part time so they didn't have to make more lay offs.  My husband was out of town more and more as he had to look outside of our once flourishing town to find work.  I was falling off the deep end, too, and we were still trying to have a new baby, when we had the time and energy - both at the same time.

After my hands returned from a week long trip out of town I asked him, "when are you going to get a big raise so I can quit my job?"

"Do it!"  He said, deadly serious.  "Just quit."  So the next day we took a look at our finances, I even started up late and put together a spreadsheet.  The following day we let it soak in and the third day I gave my notice at work.

Okay, now that my stress load had just diminished by 75%, I would get pregnant.  Simple.  Except I didn't.  It had been a year and a half of trying and trying and trying and failing. 

It was time to see a specialist.

The beginning of the end: The cycle before ivf begins

Remembering when I used to cry as I watched my son sleep.  Realizing he was growing and changing in front of my eyes, I would mourn the loss of my delicate newborn to the chubby 3 month old, then lose my laughing 6 month old to an inquisitive 9 month old.

Today my son is 5 and some odd months. He wears size 7 jeans that have holes in the knees and just barely reach his ankles. He is impatient and smart, tough and silly,  demanding and cute, loving, strong, kind and fun.  Today as I listen to him trying to make his dad laugh when he should be going to sleep, I think about the new thing I will learn about him or watch him discover tomorrow.  I can't wait!

This is the status I posted on Facebook yesterday evening. 

This week I had planned to write about the start of our journey in trying to conceive a sibling for my son.  Instead I am enjoying the last month before starting ivf.  This cycle I don't have to take pills or pee on sticks or in cups multiple times a day.  I don't have to give myself shots or wonder if my mood is my own or a side effect of the medicine.

It is the end of March, almost Easter.  It has been unusually sunny and dry.  It feels like the start of a new beginning.  I don't know if this beginning is the start of a new baby or if it is the start of what I have discovered in these last few weeks.  I have found a true contentment with our family as it is.  Just the three of us.

I'm looking forward to discovering what is going to happen.  I know the next few months are going to be a hard scrabble.  My ivf protocol involves lots of shots and exams, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be swimming in a cloudy sea of hormones.  But in comparison to the last three years, it will be over quickly.  I will finally be able to emerge from the grey skies of uncertainty and dwindling hope.  I will get to live under the clear blue skies of spring, smelling the emerging blossoms and enjoying my life as it is, however that may manifest.

This is the calm before the storm, and though I had planned to focus on the beginning of this struggle this week, where it all started, I can't help but focus on the end.  We're almost there and I can't wait!

I promise to force myself to continue the story next post.

Slice me open and pour me out: the surgery to remove my dermoid cysts

After the MRI, the doctor determined that a laporotomy would be the best way to get my dermoid cysts removed.  He asked us at each preoperative visit if we wanted more children.  Our sleep deprived faces would sag and we would admit that it was a distant possibility.  My son was 4 weeks old at the time of the MRI.  The surgery was scheduled for his 6th week in the world.

I don't remember much about the detailed results of the surgery. I do remember going in.

My husband and I went in to the surgery prep area.  I had an oversized room, white and bright with diffuse sunlight. A huge white curtain hung from the ceiling and seemed to move in the wind like laundry on the line on a breezy summer day.  The nurse questioned me about my health history and whether I had taken the medications and stopped eating so that my intestines would be empty in case a nick opened them inside my abdominal cavity.  She gave me a hideous hospital gown and left me to empty my bladder and change.  When I was ready she tried and failed to start an IV.  She called in the big guns, the "blood man".  His sole job in the hospital is to get blood from a stone, I mean a patient with difficult veins.  He got my IV started on the first try.

I vaguely remember that the nurse explained they would start a sedative through the IV.  I think I remember being rolled out into the hall on a bed.  Then I remember waking up on a rolling bed, maybe the same one, shivering.  I was aware of several similar beds around me occupied by other people in various states of consciousness.  There was one man who was talking loudly, perhaps shouting.  Was he talking nonsense or was it just my impaired brain not comprehending what he was trying so hard to impart?  No, it was him, not me.  A nurse was trying to calm him with words, then I think some people had to hold him down.  They were explaining to him that he was coming out of the anesthesia.  That must be what I was doing.  Why was I shivering?

The nurse came over to ask how I was doing and explain the medications they had given me and the process of coming out of them.  She asked how I was doing. 

"Fine," I said.  "I'm shivering and I can't seem to stop," I added as an afterthought as she began to walk away. 

"Oh, that is sometimes a side effect of the anesthesia.  I can put a medication in your IV that will stop it." 

Good, it wasn't a permanent state of being, it was a known thing, something that could be controlled in this bizarre room that seemed a little out of control.

At some point they wheeled me into my recovery room, my home for the next few days. Due to the undisclosed amount of weight I had gained during my pregnancy, they hesitated to transfer me to my hospital bed.  One nurse said, "She can help us.  You can scoot over a bit at a time, right?" 

Could I?  My insides had just been cut open and dissected.  I had a huge hole, probably neatly stitched, somewhere on my body.  Wouldn't I writhe in pain, wouldn't the stitches tear,  letting what was left inside spill out?  "Okay," I said.  My mother had raised me to be a good girl.  If the nurse said I should scoot, then I would scoot.  If my organs fell out on the floor in the process, well, I was in a hospital they could put them back in, right?

So I scooted.  I didn't feel pain.  Nothing fell out. Inch by inch I was on my new bed.

My husband came to the hospital to keep me company.  We mostly watched tv and took walks up and down the halls.  My aunt watched my son so I could recover and my husband could stay with me. 

I missed my baby.  We had just started really bonding.  After my mother left and my husband returned to work, it was just me and him.  We got into a routine, nursing while I watched dvd's, napping together, even making it out of the house now and then.  On the other hand I was in no condition to nurture a baby and  I felt a sense of relief to be a single person again, if only for a short while.  It was just me.  Since finding out I was pregnant, this was the first time I was truly alone in my body. 

I was on a liquid only diet for a day.  When I got approval for "solid" foods, I had to poop before they would let me leave the hospital, thus the walks up and down the halls. I shuffled slowly, trying not to use my abdominal muscles.  I had to drag the IV and pole along beside me.  I also had a pain killer in a little pressurized ball the hung from my stomach.  A small tube went through my incision, directly into my abdominal cavity.  I didn't have to use as much pain killer as I may have without it, but it also seemed to be the main cause of my discomfort.

The day that I was to leave the hospital, I had the pain killer ball and tube removed, but I still hadn't had a bowel movement.  In a last ditch effort the doctor prescribed a laxative suppository.  Of course in my condition I couldn't "take" the suppository myself, so a very kind nurse helped me through one of the most humiliating experiences of my life.

The laxative now on board, the doctor gave me the okay to go home.  The ride home was painful.  Every bump in the road sent stabs of pain through my body.  Car rides quickly became one of my least favorite activities.  Once I climbed the two flights of stairs to my apartment,  I went directly to the bathroom.  The laxative had done is job.

I don't remember if we picked my son up on the way home from the hospital or if my husband picked him up later.  We will forever be indebted to my aunt for those three days.

My husband stayed home from work for about a week to help care for me and my son.  I remember struggling to nurse again, and giving up.  My son was fond of kicking during nursing, not a good combination with abdominal stitches.  He had also become fond of the ease of bottle feeding.  My husband was ecstatic that he could feed my son, I was heart broken that I could no longer perform one of the basic functions of a mom.  I also came to hate pumping, and my breasts soon understood that they weren't in high demand anymore.  They slowly started to produce less and less milk during marathon pumping sessions.

At eight weeks, my precious, helpless baby started day care.  He was there full days for a week, then went to part time as I became stronger and more comfortable being a full time mom again.  The week before I started back to work I kept my son with me the whole week.  One last week, just him and me.  Where had the time gone?  I thought it would never end, but it had ended, just like that.

Now on with the show... my pregnancy, my son's birth and my dermod cysts

So we left off with me being pregnant, jobless, in a new city... and absolutely ecstatic!

The pregnancy went smoothly, no worries, no problems, just happily eating away, gaining undisclosed amounts of weight and growing a big healthy baby boy. Of course I scrambled to find a job before I started to show. It turned out people who didn't know me well couldn't tell I was pregnant by looking at me until about 5 months, possibly due to the undisclosed amount of weight gained.

Then the baby was almost due.  The midwives had me in what seemed like every day to take measurements, check heartbeat, and poke and prod me (is my pee really that fascinating?). Of course our luck had to run out sometime, and it did, two weeks before my due date.

My belly measurements swelled one appointment, then shrunk the next. That wasn't good. We happened to have a nurse midwife we had never seen before, when my belly decided to act up. She had just come off a surgical rotation at a hospital, and had been absent during the previous 8 months of my pregnancy while she dealt with emergency births. She ordered an ultrasound suspecting loss of amniotic fluid. At the ultrasound they found two things, my son measured 11-13 pounds and I had cysts on my ovaries.

The nurse midwife was adamant that we HAD to induce ASAP. We could not wait the few days until my son's due date, we certainly couldn't wait for him to come on his own. He would be a monster by then and require emergency interventions.  Much better to be safe and force him to come now, she argued. I called everyone I could in my pregnancy support circle and no one could offer me a lifeline. I was only a matter of days away from my due date and I could feel the changes happening to my body in preparation to give birth, but we couldn't wait for the natural process I had planned.

I wanted my precious boy to experience the cascade of hormones that preceded a spontaneous birth, which I had read article after article about. I had learned in the final hours before my son's birth, my body and baby would work together to prepare both for the separation. Those final moments would give my son the last developmental push before having to survive without the protection, nourishment and comfort of my womb. I wanted with a mother's heart to give my son that first advantage in life.  I decided with a mother's guilty heart to show up for my Friday induction appointment.

The rollercoaster had left the station and the nurse midwife was not going to let me get off. My husband convinced me to take Friday off work. I was certain I could work the day and then go to the hospital right after work, really I could! So, that Thursday I tied up whatever loose ends I could at work, in between regailing my co-workers with stories of my giant baby, then went home to prepare for an induction the next day.

Late Friday afternoon, I walked into the hospital feeling out of place. If this were a TV drama I should be hunched over, leaning on my husband, holding my swollen belly and breathing in heavy panting breaths between exclamations of pain and distress.  Instead I waddled in, excited and nervous, but not panting or in pain. I carried my hospital bag (packed months earlier), my labor music, a change of clothes for me and baby and a HUGE bag of snacks. Later a nurse snickered as she spied the bulging bag and said, "you won't be wanting those."

They got me checked in and assigned a room, then gave me a Cervadil suppository to ripen my cervix. I changed into my labor clothes before they strapped a heartbeat monitor around my belly, taped an iv to my arm, and instructed me to lay on one side so that the baby would rotate into the correct position by morning. I laid down on my adjustable hospital bed, ready for a nice restful evening's sleep. The induction wouldn't truly start until the pitocin was added to my iv in the morning. At least that was the plan!

The belly strap was incredibly uncomfortable. It felt like a vice grip around my middle. I was stuck on one side by the nurse's orders, like a beached whale, I felt my overly flexible hips and shoulders bending under the weight of the undisclosed pounds I had gained and my enormous baby boy. I had to pee every few minutes, dragging the heartbeat monitor and iv behind me like a lifeless limb. Wait, was that pee? Or was that amniotic fluid? Yes! Definitely amniotic fluid.

Wake up, wake up! Yes, it's 1 am. Get the nurse! My water just broke! Yes, really! And that vice grip around my belly isn't really coming from the heartbeat monitor strap, it's getting stronger... I'm in labor! GET THE NURSE!

This was the point that the TV drama began. I was walking around the empty halls, hunched over, leaning on whatever person or large object was close by as a contraction crept up on me, breathing heavily between exclamations of pain and fear. Nineteen hours, a relaxing soak in the labor tub (followed by an infusion of pitocin), lots of apple juice (no snacks from the bursting snack bag), a switch to a scalp heartbeat monitor, a few moments of panic when the heartbeat monitor showed a slowing heartbeat, an invasive dr's exam or two, a cold towel placed on a nurse's forehead instead of mine, two hours of pushing, a list of questions intended to prep me for an epidural and c-section, lots of yelling, groaning and bleeding later, my son decided to wake up and participate in his birth process and was born without surgery or even pain killers at 9 lbs 14 oz, mostly head.

I had accomplished my revised first goal as a mom, get him out. Try to keep both of us (mostly) in one piece and avoid pain medications that could dull the crisp experience of birth for both mom and baby. I was exhausted, of course, and promptly fell asleep during the baby bathing demonstration.  My husband has been in charge of baths ever since.

Later I discovered that baby weight measurements are incredibly inaccurate so close to the baby's due date. The measurement is heavily reliant on the size of the head, but at that stage the head is engaged and too low to get a clear picture in ultrasound. Well, also my son was mostly head. No, really, people on the street noticed, really!

I also later discovered that my ovarian cysts were not shrinking like they should after the hormone changes of giving birth. I was referred to an ob-gyn, the same one who had performed the invasive exam when my son's heartbeat had dropped during labor. We knew eachother.  Well, he knew me very well.

He sent me in for an MRI. It was the most relaxing few hours I had spent since my son was born. I wasn't on high alert for babies crying. I could lay down and enjoy some music of my choice without interruption, except the occasional, "don't move or breathe until we say it's okay" followed by incredibly loud, sci-fi like pounding sounds.

The doctor diagnosed dermoid cysts on both ovaries. One side was the size of a football and the other not much smaller. I'm still not sure how a 10 pound baby, an undisclosed amount of weight, and a football or two could all fit in my body at once, but they did.

In case you don't know what demoid cysts are, here's the definition from. Merriam Webster:

"Main Entry: dermoid cyst
Function: noun
Date: 1872
a cystic tumor often of the ovary that contains skin and skin derivatives (as hair or teeth);called also dermoid"

Yes, skin, hair, teeth!  On my ovaries! Those needed to go! Surgery it was.

The view from the mountaintop (my perfect plan) vs. the climb (reality)

How did I get here?  It's not the mountaintop I planned for myself, or even imagined. It's not really a precipice I saw coming.

It all started when my son was born...No wait.  When we found out I was pregnant...  No, I think it started when I got married. Yes, I can start there.

I got married twice.  The first was what we consider the real wedding. The first was not what I had planned for myself (this is getting to be a repetitive phase, I guess for good reason). It was the second, big colorful Indian themed bash, complete with Indian buffet and sindoor smeared on my scalp like a fresh bloody wound, that was closer to the fairy tale wedding I'd imagined. But instead it was the first ceremony that touched my soul.

The first was in my small one bedroom apartment, perched atop a 100 year old, four story Victorian, clinging to the mountainside.  It had a breathtaking view of the gently sloping historic graveyard across the steep street, the colorful bustling town beyond and the grey waters of the channel that bled into the grey sky and framed my world. I wore a pale blue satin strapless ball gown, crusted with sparkles and topped by a golden lace shrug. My husband wore his best tie. Five friends (including my mom) witnessed as the officiate walked us through our vows and into our new life as husband and wife. We stared into eachothers stormy, pink rimmed eyes as we pledged or loyalty and love, in sickness and in health. Then we shared Thai take out from the best (and only) Thai Restaurant in town (which had a big sign in front of the storefront - always crowded with people bundled against the drizzle, waiting anxiously to be given refugee and a warm meal - stating they were a small family business and couldn't accommodate to go orders). And then we were free to enjoy our newlywed bliss for five years before the burden of a baby, according to my plan.

A baby would come after I'd established myself in my career. When my husband was ready to go back to school for his PhD and be a part time student and a part time stay-at-home-dad. When we were living in a three bedroom, two story home of our own, complete with shining bamboo floors and polished concrete countertops.

Abrupt transition here. Let's skip two years ahead (hear that sound of a record scratching as you move the needle). We had just moved from our small town back to the lower 48. To the "big city!" I intentionally didn't have a job lined up. I was finally getting a month off from the sleepless nights of school and the cortisol pumping days of work. I had yearned for this break from the rat race since I graduated college (this marriage thing wasn't so bad). My husband had a job that had paid for our move plus a signing bonus. Not exactly his dream job, but it was a big company with room for growth. Most important, the job got us out of the depths of snow we'd been buried under for months each winter. We'd planned out our near future. We would get pregnant in a year, once I'd established myself in the new architectural scene, gotten my dream job and made a name for myself.

I spent my extended vacation lazing on the mattress on the sparse bedroom floor, and then on the oatmeal colored vintage sectional, once it was acquired. I unpacked boxes, played on the computer and watched the new flat panel tv... ...and ate. I ate a lot. Why was I bone tired and bottomlessly hungry? It must be the let down from years of stress and relentless "doing" suddenly turned to nothing.

One night we had special plans. We decided to try out the big city version of one of our favorite pastimes from the small town: the gallery walk. In our small town we would walk the windswept streets in our carharts and rubber boots, rushing into the warmth of glowing shops, sipping wine and hot cider, nibbling cookies and cheese, chatting with rosy cheeked friends. Eagerly we made purchases of tiny, but rich new creations while absorbing the nourishing words of artists that we knew on other days as our hair stylist or co-worker.

Now in the big city we dressed in our urban best. We ran from white echoing gallery to cavernous modern industrial storefront, escaping the downpour, wishing for our rubber boots. I told my husband in a voice loud enough to be heard over the pelting rain and our heavy breaths "I'm not feeling well, let's go home.

The next morning I woke up at 5am, shaking off the nervous sleep of the night before. I dug out the pregnancy test we had left from our previous "what ifs" and I peed on it. I couldn't imagine that 3 years later, this ritual would become my obsession. On this day, new to the big city, I was jittery with anticipation and a drop of fear. In a few seconds tiny grey letters appeared in the tiny grey digital screen: "pregnant" (now hear sound of a wet piece of meat - my heart - dropping to the floor).