The one and only....pregnancy

Scott and I were discussing my pregnancy today.  It is funny how you forget the tough stuff and only remember it being blissfully happy.  Scott does not forget.  He labels the trimesters as scary, nice, and grumpy.  It's not that we're complaining....we have a beautiful baby boy.  It was totally worth it.
My pregnancy began on Scott's 30th birthday.  Most men would have some sort of celebration on that day.  Instead Scott got to hold my hand while our eggs were removed, masturbate in an old hospital bathroom, and wheel his semi-conscious wife back to our car.  I did take him out for lunch, but I don't know how good of company I was.  Days later I had to ask him where we went.  We hoped that we would be able to look back at that day as a present to him....and we do, because one of the embryos created on his 30th birthday became our son Jack.
Being that we had thought about eventually getting pregnant for seven years, we were excited to tell our families. We made a shirt that said "Big Sister December 2009" and went to Scott's parents house with Lily wearing it.  The reactions to that shirt were priceless.  Scott's parents initially thought it was a hand me down from someone else, but the date tipped them off to the pregnancy.  My mom stood in stunned silence trying to process the information.  My brother ignored the shirt even though we knew he had seen it.  I think he was too scared to try to guess what it meant.  And his girlfriend asked when we were "getting a baby."  The obvious question as that's what we did before.
Five days before my initial ultrasound I started bleeding.  I was sure I was losing the baby but because we were on holidays in another city, my fertility clinic couldn't really help us.  The morning of the ultrasound was so scary.  When they pointed out that little heartbeat, my own heart skipped a beat.  How could you already be in love with something so small.  They pointed out another gestational sack that no longer had a heartbeat.  I was sad for a moment for that baby, but knew that there was a chance there would be no heartbeat at all and so I celebrated the fact that there was.  We began to show people the picture of the ultrasound.  We couldn't keep it a secret any longer.
At ten weeks I woke up to a rush of blood.  I ran to the bathroom and was shocked to see how much blood I had lost.  I called the OB/GYN at the hospital and she suggested that I wait until morning and then call the clinic.  I did NOT sleep.  In the morning we had another ultrasound.  We saw and heard the heartbeat again.   (Scott pointed out that the sound wasn't actually the heartbeat but the machine creating a sound from the ultrasound.  Sometimes having a diagnostic person in your family isn't too fun. ) I had bleeding off and on for three weeks and ended up having to go on bed rest for two weeks.  Super scary the whole time.  Many sleepless nights and ultrasounds later, the bleeding stopped.
The second trimester was wonderful.  It was nice to be big enough that people could tell you were pregnant but not so big that you were uncomfortable.  I felt beautiful.  It was incredible.  We went on vacation to Vancouver Island.  We hiked, we swam, we relaxed.  It was blissful.
I don't think I was grumpy in the third trimester.  Perhaps my co-workers would disagree.  Scott certainly would.  I was due December 15th but I was sure that "she" would be born on November 30th.  I was sure it was a girl all along.  So much for mother's intuition.  November 30th came and went.  I now thought I would be late.  My mom was really overdue with me and I thought I was in for the long haul.  When my water broke on December 2nd, I had no idea what was happening to me.  I thought I had peed the bed, but was amazed when I kept peeing the bed over and over.  And whoever is telling you that there is no whoosh when the water breaks...well, they're not telling you the whole truth.
During my whole infertility journey, I thought the positive pregnancy test would mean success.  But the fear and the stress never went away until I held my baby in my arms. I thought I would relax after the first trimester, but I didn't.  They say that a baby is viable after 30 weeks, but that didn't do it either.  Labour was long and stressful.  It had it's moments of fear.  I had to actually hold him to know that we had made it.

Miraculous Science

Assisted Reproductive Technology is always a controversial topic.  There are the people who believe that it should (or should not) be paid for by the government.  There is the religious aspect.  The Catholic church is certainly not a big fan.  Much to my mother's dismay, we joked that Jack might burst into flames during baptism.  This was not the case.  I once participated in a chat room where two women were arguing about whether their pregnancies were miracles or acts of science.  I just kept thinking to myself, "Does it matter?  Won't your baby be just as fantastic either way?" There is also the concern about multiples, premature infants, and birth defects.  Trust me.  I've heard it all.

I wish everyone had the opportunity to check out the walls of photos in my fertility specialist's office.  The walls are covered.  I think they might have to use the ceilings next.  These are families who weren't able to be families without it.  It's tough to argue all those other points when you see Jack smile or wave for the first time.  It's tough to think it could possibly be wrong when you stare at his peaceful face when he is sleeping.  I was lucky to have the support of family and friends but I know lots of people who had to keep it a secret because their family thinks it is wrong. 
I know so many people affected by infertility and I have been fortunate to be able to share in so much joy at the birth of their babies.   I also have friends who are currently trying and I can't wait to hear about their successes.  I have a friend who has twins, a boy and a girl, and is currently awaiting her ultrasound to see how many babies there are from her current  IVF success.  I have another friend with a two year old girl and newborn baby boys from superovulation.  I have a friend with a two year old girl from IVF and a surprise one year old boy.  There is the three year old boy awaiting his brother or sister all from IVF.  There are the three year old twins from IUI and the four year old twins from IVF.  These are all close friends who wouldn't have their families without assistance.  I know of so many other acquaintances who have been helped as well.  The issues just don't compare to the love I have seen. 
I'm not going to argue why the issues are right or wrong.  I'm just too busy being a mother to my answers anyway.

The feast

The history of Thanksgiving in Canada goes back to an explorer, Martin Frobisher, who had been trying to find a northern passage to the Pacific Ocean. Frobisher's Thanksgiving was not for harvest but homecoming. He had safely returned from a search for the Northwest Passage, avoiding the later fate of Henry Hudson and Sir John Franklin. In the year 1578, he held a formal ceremony to give thanks for surviving the long journey. The feast was one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations by Europeans in North America. (Wikipedia)

There is something about being allowed to have a large belly during pregnancy that I found comforting.  I have been a fat person in a skinny body, but I have never been a real skinny person.  It seems that everything on the lips ends up on the hips and requires some serious Weight Watchers to be removed again.   It is funny how you meet different people at different stages of your life.  Some think that I was once big, got skinny, and now back to big. (They're right.)  Others think I was naturally thin, but pregnancy did this to me.  (They have been fooled.) Regardless, if I am going to be hanging out on the beach in Hawaii, some serious work needs to be done.
I was fortunate to have a group of friends who all had babies around the time that I had Jack.  Except for a few friends (and I did consider removing them from my friend pool) most of them took some time getting back into their pre-pregnancy jeans.  I watched while they did this, but made little effort myself.  I even considered staying this size.  I had an excuse now, didn't I?  But I did reach a point when it was time to return to WW in hopes of wearing the many clothes still hanging in the very back of my closet.
All was going really well when the feast crept up. The leader at WW spent the entire meeting discussing the number of points belonging to each traditional Thanksgiving food and how to avoid the "bad ones" such as pumpkin pie and stuffing.  The whole meeting there was this insane laughter in my brain as I knew that I was going to be eating a lot of pumpkin pie, stuffing, and well, probably enough other things to make my belly actually hurt from the strain.  My thoughts on the this were entirely different than hers (although I appreciated her effort).  If I want to be a reasonably thin person long term, I am still going to have to be allowed to eat the feast.  My family has many traditions and most of them revolve around food.  We even plan our vacations around food. 
I will diet until I reach a happy weight for me and then I will attempt to maintain that weight when I get there....but I will not give up the good stuff in life to be thin.  Life's too short. 

When your family tree is actually an orchard

This past summer we had the opportunity to spend some time with Lily's birth family.  Before Lily, I would have assumed that a closed adoption would be the best way to do things.  The threat of another family created fear in my mind.  But now that I have Lily, I know that an open adoption is definitely better for her.  It's not like we could trick her.  Eventually she will look in the mirror and notice that something doesn't quite look the same.  And so we have been open with her since birth. Can you imagine dropping the bomb that your child was adopted if it was kept a secret for awhile? And wouldn't it look you considered it a bad thing if you had hidden it from them?  We have taken it upon ourselves to celebrate her adoption.  When she was adopted she became part German and part English.  She was always Canadian.  And when she was adopted a part of us became Inuit.  We are a family and when you are a family you are a piece of everyone in your family.  Adoption is a word that she learned just like shoe, juice, or ball.  I'm sure she doesn't completely understand it, but that understanding will eventually come to her just like understanding the concepts of big and little, or up and down.  We have adoption books in our house.  We read them as often as any other book and when she is older we will take part in events organized by the Adoption Support Centre.  I'm not fooling myself that there won't be issues.  Any parent thinking that they can guide their child to adulthood without issues is fooling themselves.
Lily is lucky to have wonderful birth parents.  It is not my place to tell their story, but I want everyone to know that they are selfless and loving people.  People ask me all the time if they are poor and unemployed. That is not the case.  They have five beautiful children; four girls and one boy. They are kind and smart and sweet.  We are all so lucky to have them as a part of our family.  It will be so much easier to tell Lily where she comes from and about her culture because we have them in our lives.  And of course, their kids are adorable.  They look a lot like Lily.
But we have cultural differences that we have to work through.  We were all uncomfortable at first.  You could tell that they wanted to run to Lily and hold her, but held themselves back understanding that she is shy like their own daughters.  We wanted to do different things in Winnipeg because different things were important to us.  We are in the city all the time so regular city things don't interest us on vacation, but that is entirely different for them.  We all met up at the Forks and went to the Children's Museum.  It was an opportunity for the kids to be kids and Lily spent a lot of time playing with her sisters.  They were really cute together.  There were twinges of jealousy when they would look at her like their own, but I was the one going home with her at the end of the day.  There was an aboriginal festival at the Forks and there was a demonstration of traditional Inuit games.  They were interesting to watch, especially with our own commentators.   And it was really hard to say our goodbyes.  We know we will see each other again.  We just don't know when.
We are so fortunate to have this experience, even without Lily being the joining factor.  Inuit people are part of our Canadian culture and I had no knowledge of their language or culture before this.  I am a better person because of them.

Dreaming....of bears, sandy toes, and palm trees

Once you know that you are ready to start a family, you start dreaming about what it will be like.  Everyone has a different idea of what will be important to them to share with their children.  For example, during our struggles to have a family, Scott would sadly stare at the Build a Bear stores and wish he could go in a make one for his own kids.  Lily got her first Build a Bear when she was four months old.  We had to wait that long because there wasn't a store in Saskatoon yet and we had to go to another city to make it.  Lily is now the proud owner of Charley, Morris, Hoppy, and Shimmery.  Jack is the proud owner of Rufus. 

Scott and I both absolutely love Hawaii.  We both went with our families when we were kids and we have gone together a bunch of times too.  Our favorite island is Kauai because it is quiet, slow paced, and feels like you have actually stepped back in time.  Every time we have gone to Hawaii together, I have thought about my own little baby bums someday running along the long white beaches.  There is something about sandy baby bums and tiny wiggling toes that I just adore.  We haven't told anyone yet but we are going to Hawaii in February.  It is totally the wrong time to go.  I will just be back to work from maternity leave and since maternity leave pays poorly, our money situation isn't at its greatest.  But it's important. I really wanted to go while our kids were small and I really wanted to go with just our little family of four.  Sometimes our irresponsible decisions turn out the be the very best ones!!

What does progesterone do to the birds anyway?

This post isn't really about birds.  But just for interest sake, birds who are given more progesterone hatch more females.  I would have thought it to be the other way around being that progesterone is more of a male hormone.  But that really is beside the point.  This post is really about IVF cycle #1....better known as my costly failure.
Back when I knew that getting pregnant wasn't going to be easy, but before I really knew how difficult it was actually going to be, I used to say that I wasn't interested in trying in vitro fertilization.  To me it was like putting a $10000 deposit down on a car with only a 50% chance of actually getting the car.  As time past and I became more desperate to become a mother, my thoughts on IVF changed completely.  I now suggest that anyone who is struggling at all to get pregnant should get a referral to a fertility clinic early in the ball game.  It often takes a long time to get in and once you realize you need it, that wait is painfully long. So what if they call you and you are already pregnant?  What harm is there in that?

Even though I was pretty sure early on that we were going to have issues, my family doctor made me wait eight months before referring me to the gynecologist.  Gynecologists are female experts, but they are not fertility experts.  They are a good start to help you track your cycle to see where things are at.  I did 13 cycles of Clomid (a drug which causes and improves ovulation.  This is often how high number multiples are created.)  The recommended number of Clomid cycles is never to be more than 12 cycles in your lifetime.  My last two cycles of Clomid were IUI cycles (where they monitor your cycle and then introduce your partner's sperm into the uterus via a catheter at just the right time. Very romantic.)  Usually people do three cycles of IUI but after the two failures, I was starting to literally fall apart and decided to take a break until we could get into the fertility clinic.
We met with the fertility specialist and she recommended that we try IVF.  At this point we had tried everything else and so my opinion on this costly venture had changed.  We first needed genetic testing, which was the first thing we passed in a long time, but it added more time to our wait.  Our first appointment at the clinic was in November and by April things were finally a go.
This is the story of my first IVF cycle.  Everyone is different and every cycle is different, so don't think they all go exactly like this. The ironic thing about starting an IVF cycle is that you are put on birth control.  This is to make sure you are in the right part of your cycle when they want to begin.  It felt really weird after all that time to actually need birth control again.  And then start the vaginal ultrasounds....large object in large condom placed in the vagina to get a good look at the uterine lining and ovaries.  The first time this happened, the room had two doctors and three residents.  My husband, always the joker (but sometimes inappropriately so), made a joke that this reminded him of that time in Mexico.  No one laughed and he became even more quiet and uncomfortable.  Oops.  You are then started on a medication that suppresses the body's ability to make its own hormones.  It is like going rapidly into menopause.  And then start the stimulation hormones which produce a high number of eggs in each ovary.  Every few days you return for blood work and another ultrasound to make sure everything is going well and to adjust your dose.  Unfortunately, the drug that I was injecting wasn't working for me and by the tenth day of injecting and testing, I was switched to another.  This drug worked better but the first drug caused me to produce very few eggs and the ones that we had were of poorer quality.  It was too late in the cycle to do anything about it and so we pushed on.  When the follicles containing the eggs are large enough and your estrogen level is at an appropriate level, you inject another drug which ripens the eggs.  Exactly 36 hours later, those eggs are retrieved.  You start inserting progesterone capsules vaginally three times a day to get the lining ready for implantation.  This continues until a negative pregnancy test or 12 weeks pregnancy.  It is not fun, but you get used to it after a while.  The day of retrieval you are given Ativan to relax you and narcotics by IV.  I'm not going to lie.  Having a needle stuck through your vaginal wall and into your ovaries over and over is extremely painful even on those drugs.  We retrieved six eggs.  I was really disappointed.  We rested for a bit and then headed for home.  I passed out in the elevator and my dear husband had to carry me to a bench and get me a wheelchair.  I can't remember any of it.  And then we went out for lunch.  It had become a routine for us to go for lunch following any procedures and so we went again.  I can't remember that either.  The next day they called to tell us that four eggs were immature and could not be fertilized but the other two had fertilized.  This caused panic because we were putting two embryos back in and what if they didn't make it to transfer?  Not all fertilized eggs become embryos and if they do, not all embryos are good quality.  But we weren't going to have a selection.  I prayed for the next three days.  I don't often pray.  I think that if there is a God that is actually listening, there are so many other things that he or she should be looking after.  But this time I decided I wanted it to be me.  The day of transfer we had two beautiful embryos.  We were hopeful and happy.  They were transferred back into me the day before Mother's Day and so I spent that Mother's Day on bed rest but knowing that I had babies swimming in my belly.  The vaginal progesterone is supposed to keep you from getting your period but exactly one week after transfer, I got my period anyway.  No one knows why, but these things happen.  Unfortunately I was at work and I was devastated.  I called the office and they said that sometimes people have bleeding and still end up pregnant.  I wanted to believe them but I didn't.  Because there was a chance I continued my progesterone up until my pregnancy test a week later.  Because we knew things did not look good, we planned a trip to Edmonton for that weekend.  We needed some time away together to mourn the loss of those babies.  We had seen pictures of those embryos and had become attached to the idea of the family we were to become.  I went to get my blood taken and then we jumped in the car and drove to Edmonton.  I brought the progesterone just in case we had a miracle and I still needed it.  Halfway there, the nurse called my cell phone.  The result was negative.  We were not going to be that family that we had dreamed of.  Without thinking, I opened the car window and let my progesterone fly through the air.  They are perfectly round little balls and they looked really neat bouncing on the highway behind us.  I don't know why, but something about that made me feel a bit better.  In hindsight, there were probably a lot of female birds hatched in that area from my progesterone.

Instinct is Best!!

No one knows your baby like you do. If you think something is wrong, you are probably right.  You see it everywhere....breast is best.  But it is only best if you can produce enough milk and milk that contains the proper nutrients.  I am not trying to discredit those who breastfeed.  You amaze me and you should be so proud of your accomplishments.  Breast milk contains the proper fat content for every age of your infant and can pass immunity to your baby.  This was incredibly important to me being that Jack was born right in the middle of the H1N1 shenanigans.  We were released from the hospital one day after his birth.  I wanted to get home to Lily and start my new life with my baby.  The next day I returned to emergency because I was peeing blood.  It was only a urinary tract infection, but that infection stayed with me for another three weeks.  The day after that, the healthy and home nurse came for a visit and tested Jack's blood because he appeared jaundice.  We returned to the hospital where he was admitted and stayed for three days.  It it kind of funny that they tell you the importance of taking regular baths after giving birth.  There was no bathtub in peds.  I slept on a tiny cot and the room had another baby in it whose mother was not there and she cried most of the night.  Jack was quite sick by this point.  They tried to get an IV into his head 13 times before it worked.  He didn't squirm or cry.  He just laid there sadly looking up at those who were trying to help him.  He was put on IV fluids and was fed formula so the doctors could monitor his intake.  I tried to pump as much as possible, but the pump was in another room and I had to leave him alone to do so.  Between my body trying to fight the infection, the stress of the hospital stay, the lack of actual nursing time, and not pumping as often as I should have...my milk production was low.  I was put on every drug and herb to make milk.  They measured Jack's weight every two days.  He was growing according to the growth chart but he cried....alot!!  They assumed he was a needy baby.  I assumed he was hungry, but I certainly didn't want to fail at breastfeeding...and so I continued.  The breastfeeding struggle only worsened my post partum depression and I had lost my instinct as a mother.  Why did I think he was hungry all the time if he was growing appropriately?  Finally I gave in and switched to formula.  (Which contains the Vitamin D that is missing in breast milk and also has the needed iron to make switching to meats immediately at six months not as important!!)  He smiled, he laughed, he slept longer...and he stopped crying.  No one knew that Jack took after his 6'9" daddy when measuring him on those charts.  I had been right.  He had been hungry.  He grew like a weed and gained a bunch of weight...and he was happy! I truly believe that the very best mothers follow their instinct.  Sometimes that's all you've got!!