Baby Stuff

I haven't talked about what has been going on on the baby front for a while. And considering that has been the most dramatic part of our lives right now, perhaps that hasn't been fair.

Well, things have been going on. And I have not set aside any time to talk about it. I really shouldn't be setting time aside right now, but there is a lot happening and if I don't, I'll just come out shouting odd words like "hooha" and it will be all too confusing.

So here is the scoop.

Soon after our last miscarriage, Dave and I decided that yes, we are willing to keep trying to get pregnant, but we are also going to start down the adoption path. We even sent away for adoption info which has yet to arrive. Nonetheless, that door is now fully open, at least in our hearts.

We also decided after I searched like a wild woman on the Internet that we were not going to delay at all in trying to get pregnant again. My reasoning is that if a good egg pops out, I don't want to waste it. Also, the research is not conclusive that getting pregnant immediately after a miscarriage is unhealthy. Apparently, doctors just want to be able to date the pregnancy and they need a cycle start date for that. (That is, they do if the woman getting pregnant is not me who KNOWS when everything is going on) Again, they encourage waiting to help with the emotional healing, although for me, the lack of hope---"we aren't trying and we can't be pg"---is more emotionally devastating than the risk of getting pg again.

We had our post op follow up with the doctor was week which was relatively uneventful. They did not have the chromosonal tests back so he had no news on that. And he could do little more than react when I told him that no matter what he said, we were going to start trying again right away. (I said it nicer than that!)

There are some concerns he expressed---perhaps I have a clotting problem, perhaps we have a genetic problem, perhaps there are other antibody issues that we haven't discovered yet.

Perhaps there are. But it doesn't make sense to me why Conor was so easy to conceive and was such an easy healthy baby if I had these Really Big Problems.

Instead, I think I'm just an old hag and the miscarriages have had genetic problems. Maybe I'm wrong (and we will know soon about the last one), but it just doesn't make sense to me probability wise if I "won the lottery" on the first try without much effort.

But the doctor wants to do something to help us have a baby, and I truly appreciate his sincere interest in helping us out. So he has prescribed progestrone supplements to help us out. He readily admits that the research on its helpfulness is mixed (I'll blog more on that later), but it is not likely to do harm and it is possible it might help.

The supplements are interesting. First, I have to use a gel after ovulation. And then, after a positive home pregnancy test (we're thinking POSITIVE, people!) , I have to stick pills up my hooha for a couple of months. That's right. I said Pill and I said Hooha. Now, these are not ordinary "suppositories". I even found out yesterday that yes indeedy, these are pills designed to Look Like Pills one takes orally. But you stick them up you hooha. Two pills twice a day: once at night and once in the morning before I come to work.

The word last night at the dinner table was "Clinch". Talk about your eight hour Kegel exercises!! Maybe the reason this thing works is NOT that the extra progesterone helps, but because you're squeezing so hard the baby has no choice but to stay in there and get healthy.

I just really don't want to be walking down the hall and drop a pill on the carpet. It was bad enough walking around with breast feeding paraphenalia, but this could top it quite easily.

So now you are up to date. We are talking no time off between the D&E and trying to get pg again---we don't have that luxury. And if we do get pregnant again soon, that will be very good news. But I'm not looking forward to walking around my office. I just have to be honest with you.