I’ve been trying not to get too invested in this theoretical June cycle, just in case tomorrow my doctor tells me he wants me to take another month off. Even though my incisions are healing very nicely. I just find it hard to trust that anything will happen when I actually want it to happen. Or, at all. Just not big on the whole trust thing in general, really. I’ll just wait until tomorrow.

In the meantime I have been hit by the gardening bug, and I’ve been itching to get out there and start pulling some weeds. Today I managed to do that, and put down mulch around the base of Devin’s tree. It looks far better now. I’m hoping it will also function better, but again, we’ll just wait and see.

I am very excited about my vegetable garden, and trying not to rush it. Since last year was actually successfull – in the definition that I actually kept up on it and didn’t wander off looking for shiny objects – I have decided to improve on it a little bit. Last year it was more an act of desperation and keeping busy hands than anything, so I just cleared a spot of earth and planted things. This year I’m going to build a little raised bed! It will look much neater, and be easier to maintain. I will, of course, be taking photos.

I’m also trying to figure out what trees we should plant around the yard. We definitely want trees, and we don’t want boring, typical ones, but then we have to figure out where is best to put them (have to take into account, the future fence, the future pool, the future house expansion, what lawn area we want to keep open, shade and sun… etc). The next one may just end up being a Yoshino Cherry (Devin’s tree is a fruiting cherry variety), and I think I want at least one Elm tree in the back. Eventually we would like to take down all the stupid pine trees in the woods and replace them with Elms, Birches and other such trees.

I don’t really know where this sudden interest in gardening came from… well, some combination of grief and family predisposition (my dad is an avid gardener, as was his mom and almost all of his siblings and cousins). I guess my interest needed to be kickstarted. Maybe it’ll die off in time, maybe not. But for now it certainly holds my interest.

A part of it, I am sure, is that by doing this I am still working towards our future, especially with the trees. The veggies and flowers are yearly distractions, but the trees are a part of a bigger picture. I can see in my head our children playing ball in the shade of an Elm and admiring the Japanese Red Maples. It’s a way for us to shape this house and land to get it ready. Every month that I am not pregnant I feel this drive to keep moving forward, to keep getting things done and getting prepared for a child we will bring home. I know this house will never be done, but every completed project brings me a sense of accomplishment, pride, and relief.

Which is really a very good thing. Some weeks it just feels like I’m doing the same things over and over again and getting nowhere. Pregnancy is at least forward motion. Even active IVF cycles feel like forward motion – even though they may just dump you out exactly where you started, at least it feels like forward motion for the duration of the ride. But in between? Stagnant.

We all need something to keep us moving. I guess this is mine.

Today I sneezed. A full sneeze, ahhh-choo! This is noteworthy because for the past week and a half I’ve been holding back my sneezes, little atch..oo… because it hurt my poor belly every time.

I am really feeling better every day this week. Just Wednesday to Friday my recovery has bounded. Today I didn’t have to hold my belly much while walking, it didn’t bother me to crouch down. There are still times when it reminds me it is there – I will not be dancing on a stage anytime soon – but it’s nice to walk and sit normally.

While my body is getting better, my emotional state is getting worse. Remember I had mentioned that a coworker is pregnant? She’s starting to show already. And I want to make clear here that I do not begrudge her what she has – she’s a lovely person, and is very sensitive and aware of what I’m going through. It is just very very hard to be reminded of what I don’t have. I know that it would be hard regardless of the fact that I was pregnant, too… but that does make it worse. It’s a reminder every week of where I should be, too. I know it will be a couple of months before I might be pregnant – no guarantees there, of course – months that will be difficult. We haven’t hit the hardest part yet: when customers start noticing. That, above all else, just hits me hard… listening to them chat happily, ask question, and constantly comment on how wonderful it is. I’m hoping it will be another couple of months before we hit that point. Hoping… but doubtful.

I find myself being a lot quieter when around people. I have been in some kind of… well, not state of disbelief, because I didn’t really believe in the first place. But it was a pleasant numbness. I felt fine. I was focussed on my physical state and healing, and just pushing the emotional aside. Not willingly, not conciously… but I knew that’s what was going on. And now it’s creeping in again. Not sadness at the events of the last week, specifically… but the overall depression and frustration at this whole fucking situation.

I am angry that people who don’t want babies get pregnant without trying, don’t treat their bodies right, and never have a single damn problem. And then me and my friends – people in healthy relationships who truly want to be parents, who go to every appointment and eat right and do everything they’re supposed to… we lose. It makes NO sense. I just can’t put into words how freaking angry it makes me to think about. So I try not to think about it.

I think the thing that bothers me the most is the emptiness. When I am pregnant – even when it was 2 weeks of freaking out – I felt more than myself. I felt whole again. There was just something in me that glowed with a happy secret. And now it’s gone again.

The coldness is seeping back in and there is simply nothing else that can fill that hole – not my wonderful husband, my pets, my home, my work. They each have their own space in my heart… but that one still remains broken.

I feel like I’m having trouble adjusting to the miscarriage… because I’m not having much trouble adjusting to the miscarriage. I just figured I would be more angry, more sad. Every time I thought about how there was always the possibility I would miscarry I thought it would be this terrible event that would send me crying in bed for weeks. But it doesn’t feel like that. It just feels like another frustration, another setback. Maybe after so many of them you realize it’s rather futile to freak out every time… or maybe you just get a little numb to it. Maybe a little of both.

I was always a little dismissive of therapy of any sort, especially since my first experience with it just made me want to roll my eyes. I need more than someone who just listens – I have a lot of friends, and I have my blog. If I want to just be heard, I can get that without sitting in a chair for an hour recapping my life in brief overview. What I need is feedback. Not just feedback… but observations. Friends are absolutely wonderful for providing emotional support and saying, “Yeah! That sucks!” I need that sometimes. But once in a while I need someone to step back and provide some insight. And that’s why I’m happy with my therapist. She has a way of giving me a different perspective, of pointing something out to me that I just wasn’t seeing. I find myself running over things in my head before my appointment, knowing that if I tell her what’s bugging me she’ll be able to help me figure out why.

And this whole not-grieving thing has been bugging me. Of course the answer is obvious, and my therapist helped me see it a little more clearly: I didn’t allow myself to bond with the pregnancy. Because of the previous loss, because of the very rocky start and continued bleeding, I really held myself back. Cautious excitement at the prospect of being pregnant, yes – but with some very large disclaimers written all over my heart.

I didn’t refer to a baby. Oh I referred to the hypothetical future baby that may result, but at the current time? I didn’t use the term baby in my head. I would say, “the embryo” – because that was something I was comfortable with, obviously there was an embryo since I watched them put it in. I would think to myself, if there’s a heartbeat, if there’s a baby… then I’ll be okay, then I’ll calm down. I just want to see it on the ultrasound first. I just kept picturing an empty sac, or something that stopped growing very early on and had no heartbeat. I am jaded. I know that it’s not a given that there’s a baby in there. I was holding my heart suspended until I was given the okay to start believing in it.

So in the end my fears were confirmed, there is no baby. And to me there never was – just an embryo that implanted in the wrong spot and wasn’t allowed to grow into what it could have. All my embryos were potential babies. I guess that’s another reason I’m dealing with this so matter-of-factly. This is not the first embryo I’ve lost. The first one I’ve lost after it actually implanted… but still. Every IVF cycle is an embryo, a little bundle of cells, a little baby-to-be that never makes it far enough.

The combination of all of it just leaves me feeling very unsurprized that it didn’t end well. I remember last Wednesday before my ultrasound appointment I was at work. I left just for an appointment, everyone assuming I would be right back. But I felt like I should clean up my stuff, close out my work. Just in case.

I know that I am far from giving up on this. The litany of my history has an almost comedic quality to it at this point, but the fact of the matter is that I’ve gotten pregnant twice. It works, damnit. Not every time, but it does work. It’s been dumb rotten luck that both times they didn’t end in a live baby – Devin’s case was such a freak accident, and with the ectopic it was just bad luck that it implanted in the wrong spot. (That part bugs me. If it had just implanted in my goddamn uterus I’d probably have a healthy baby inside me.)

Right now I am feeling extremely thankful that it has been over a year since I was pregnant with Devin. With so much time between the losses my memories of being pregnant are almost dream-like. Me being not pregnant is the “normal” state – I have had a long time to get used to it. I think about how I felt about my body for months after losing Devin, the feeling of disgust and overwhelming anger at no longer being pregnant… if I had gotten pregnant only to lose it again I think hell would have broken loose in my head. At least now I am able to process this loss for itself, and not as an extension of our loss of Devin… they feel like two very separate events.

Belly is itchy. I don’t really think it’s infected but the nurse said it’s worth taking a look at tomorrow morning just in case.

It is difficult for me to use the term “miscarriage,” as it relates to myself and my own situation. Pregnancy loss, sure. Ectopic, definitely. But miscarriage? To me a miscarriage is when your numbers don’t double, or when the ultrasound reveals a lack of growth… a miscarriage is cramping and bleeding. And mine, well… it’s not your typical miscarriage. I had an embryo where it wasn’t supposed to be, surgery, and then a very mild period. No cramps.

But, technicall, I guess any early pregnancy loss is a miscarriage. I’ve been using the term now and then. “Since the miscarriage,” I write, and then pause to let it sink in. Weird. Just… weird. Yet another term to adapt to, that I never really expected would apply to me.

It’s fine, I’ll get used to it. It’s just strange, is all.

::

Tomorrow is my first day back at the bank. Today I suddenly realized that I really ought to call them and let them know how I’m doing – I had told them last Wednesday that I was going to be off the week, which assumed I would be back this week… but I never actually said so. I feel bad about that… it just didn’t enter my brain.

So yes, back to work. I think I’ll be fine… I’m mobile enough that constantly getting up won’t bother me too much. My only concern is whether or not my pants will fit… I’m kind of bloated. And, more concerning, whether or not they will bother my incision. Maybe I’ll just make sure to wear a baggy shirt.

I came home today and found some kind of plant in the middle of my dining table. I asked Den what it was and he directed me to a card beside it, explaining: it was a bonsai plant for me, from my bosses and coworkers at the bank. I’ve never had a bonsai plant before, it looks really quite interesting… I’m rather excited to have this plant.

And for whatever reason this plant really hit me. Maybe because of the flowers we received when Devin died, but something about that ritual, the giving of a living plant in memory of a loss, struck me. I look the same. Most people didn’t know I was pregnant, and don’t know that I’ve had a loss. I wasn’t pregnant for very long, just 2 short weeks, and half of that was while I was on vacation. It doesn’t quite feel real. But here on my dining table is this plant, this corporeal recognition of our loss. A reminder that even if most of the world doesn’t see it, there are people that do.

I wasn’t sure if telling the people at work was a good thing to do or not. With my situation with IVF it was hard not to, but it was a choice I made. But this… this reminds me of why I chose to tell, to be open. Of course I hoped that it would have a good ending and that I would have nothing but cause for celebration… but I knew there was a pretty high possiblity that it wouldn’t work out like that. But time and again I am reminded of the decency of people, and their ability to be sensitive, understanding, and supportive.

::

People aren’t always sensitive, understanding and supportive. In fact, some people are far, far from it. I have seen things in the last year – really the last 3 years – that really make me doubt simple human decency. It just makes me angry, the treatment that some people receive.

The thing is, this society is changing. It used to be simple fact that you did not talk about your loss, whether it be a pregnancy loss or the continued loss of infertility… and unfortunately there are still people who believe that those of us who do are “dwelling” and refusing to move on. That those of us who blog openly about our struggles are selfish and looking for attention. They don’t want to hear about it. They don’t want to know about it. And they don’t think anyone should.

Well I call bullshit. You know what this is? It’s called life. It isn’t always beautiful and happy endings, and I refuse to pretend that it is. You look back through my archives, and you’ll see it all: anger, fear, joy, hope. My goal in life is to live it. All of it. Where I am right now is the day that I am living.

I started this blog for myself, because writing helps me, and I wanted to have a written record. But it is public because I like human connections. I love forming relationships with people, through our words, through our shared experiences. It makes life richer. It even makes it a little easier to get through. I love blogging for the simple fact that it is optional. I put my words out here for the possibility that people will find them interesting, or helpful in some way. Those that don’t can just move on. I am not monopolising a room full of people, I am not forcing someone to sit and listen. I whisper my words and those who wish to can come and hear them, leave them, take it with them as they choose.

For the most part I love the way blogging is changing society… or maybe it’s the way blogging is reflecting the way society is changing. It is certainly not the only path to connecting with others… but it’s a new one, and a powerful one. It can be about the stupid, inane, trivial daily things, sure. But it’s about people. It’s about stories. It’s about seeing more than you see day to day, the “How are you”s that don’t wait for a response. It’s about hearts and souls. It’s about learning that everyone has struggles and that no one is perfect. It’s about understanding. How can we possibly ever hope to truly help one another if we don’t understand one another?

It is not about me by myself. It is about all of us offering up a little piece of ourselves to the world.

I am a little concerned about my main incision, but at this point it’s really hard to tell if it’s something normal or a little weird. To me it looks weird, but I don’t exactly get injured very often. It’s a little bump under the healing incision site, a little pinkish, but it’s not scary red, not weeping, not hot to the touch. So for right now I’m just watching it to see if it gets worse or better.

Of course Den peered at either side of my belly button and frowned. I sighed. I have a rash there – from where my bandaid adhesive was. Yep. Little pink spots in exactly the shape of the bandaid. WTF? Never gotten that before. And where the other bandaids were, on my lower incisions, no rash. Plus the area below my belly button has faded into a nice bright yellow bruise. All in all it’s very sexy.

::

I called the nurse again today about whether or not I can take birth control pills this cycle. She called back to let me know that she… doesn’t know. She’s put the question in to my doctor and will get back to me tomorrow hopefully. I would just really like to get this cycle set in some kind of known schedule, rather than sit around waiting for my body to maybe ovulate at some point… but obviously the first concern is getting my body back to “normal” after this miscarriage.

I’m just tired of the unpredictable. I want something to be a little bit dependable… as if there were such a thing in this journey.

I overdid it yesterday. Den was cleaning, I was mostly supervising… getting him things when he needed them. But, I was standing. And apparently standing is not good for any length of time. I’d sit down, stand up, sit down… I felt guilty with him doing all the work – he was cleaning with a feverish determination to get the crap out of our kitchen and actually be able to see the corner.

By the time we headed to the grocery store to get some food for dinner I was not well. I can’t even tell you what it felt like… it wasn’t a piercing pain from the incision site, but more of a general abdominal feeling. Possibly from gas or who knows what. But it made it hard to breathe, and standing wasn’t fun. So we hurried out of there and I went home to lay down for several hours, which felt a lot better.

It’s a lot easier to sleep now. My incisions are itchy, but not so tender and sore. I have been sleeping with a pillow between my legs, pressed up against my stomach. It just feels better to have something gently but firmly pressing against it than to be bumping the mattress here and there.

This morning I took off the bandaids and the lower incisions look great… healing up very nicely, they actually look more healed than I expected them to. My navel, however… not so good. It has a reddish lump under/beside the incision, it’s very firm and unyeilding to the touch. I do not recall anything like this from my previous lap. Lovely. Guess I’ll be putting a call in to the doctor’s office, and possibly driving in there again. I could be wrong, right?

I am going in to work today, but just the job where I get to sit at a desk and play with kitties. Last week I lined up someone to take over the heavier duties because I was pregnant, so I don’t have to worry about that at least. And even though I probably won’t be pregnant again very shortly, I think I’m just going to give up that stuff permanently from now on. I am assuming at some point I WILL be pregnant again and have to hand it over permanently. Besides, I have enough stuff to do.

My body is a mess. I’m bloated and gassy, I’m sore, I’m tired, my face is greasy and breaking out, my hair is limp and irritating… it’s just a mess. It’s very irritating having all those pregnancy hormones hit my body, having the intial adjustment craziness, and then it all crashes and I go through it all in reverse. Ugh.

Off to my therapy appointment today. Boy do I have an update for her (it’s been a month).

No meltdown yet. I kind of wish it would just happen, as I’m wound really freaking tight and am being a major pain in the ass to poor Den, who I think has taken to tip-toeing around the house. Everything irritates me. It’s like I’m just on sensory overload right now. Maybe I could use one of those fancy padded rooms.

::

What I have been through physically in the past several years… I never would have thought I could handle that like I am. But there I am laying in a hospital bed in pre-op, the nurse asking me, “What’s your pain level?” and I think for a minute and say, “A five… ouch! Maybe a six.” “Do you want something for the pain?” “Nah… I’ll be fine as long as I just lay still. Just don’t have me moving around or anything.” In a way I was glad to have something physical to focus on right then.

I took my bandages off today. The lower ones are very small incisions and will probably give me scars similar to what I had before. The belly button, on the other hand… right now it looks pretty gross. And I totally forgot about the whole belly button sealing shut while healing. Gross!! I stuck another bandaid over it just so I don’t have to look at it. Yuck. I’ll just have to see how it looks after it heals up a bit. Also the other thing I forgot is the pain around the belly button from the gripper things they use. I have two nice little pinpricks that itch, and the entire area around it is red and sore. And itchy.

::

I really want to start gardening. I should be used to sitting around doing nothing, since it’s one of my favorite pasttimes… but right now I have nothing to do except think about where I should be right now. I’m not going to be liking weekends for a while.

It is just so overwhelmingly frustrated to think you’re in a countdown… and then be back in limbo. More months waiting, wondering. Who knows if the next FET in June will work. And if it doesn’t? Then there’s another 2 month process of a stims cycle, which is so freaking stressful for us. And that’s, what, August? Fuck me.

I can’t say that I will ever be done with this process – I’m too damn stubborn to ever give up. But there are days, oh there are days, when I wonder just how much I can take.

I think I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning… or maybe I finally woke up in reality. But I’m feeling kind of grouchy and wondering what the hell is up. (Not that I don’t know what is going on, but… you know.)

I was expecting two calls today, didn’t get either. I kept checking my voicemail, nothing. It left me wondering if I had the right day, is my phone not working, do I smell funny?

I have a headache this evening, and the bleeding has started… I could feel it coming all day. Hormone levels must be crashing, the lack of fake estrogen and progesterone plus the sudden removal of all the cause of the HCG has got to lead to a nice big nosedive. No cramping yet, though… kind of odd. I wonder if it will get worse. I’m glad I have the weekend off, just in case it does.

My belly button is still quite uncomfortable. I’m feeling a little better about moving around, but it’s definitely still reminding me I’ve got a big incision in it. I have not peeled any of the bandaids off yet… to be honest seeing any kind of healing things just makes me gag a little. I may replace the bandaids on the lower incisions, but I have no desire to peek under the big one.

I wonder how quickly these will heal up. It makes me a little sad, knowing that my next pregnancy’s belly pictures are going to have these scars on them. :( I know it’s not the end of the world, but it just feels so wrong. I guess Den was right… no bikini for me this summer.

I’m slowly starting to come back to the real world and realizing that tomorrow is the start of the weekend… weekends were supposed to be my celebration days, a new week of pregnancy. I wonder when I’m going to stop counting. I wonder if, in December, I will stop to remember the date. In a way I really just want to forget. Not forget that it happened, but forget all the future “dates” that will never come to be, because it’s not important anymore. Like every time an IVF cycle fails, I delete the pregnancy calendar that could be and start a new one with the new dates. This one I just got to spend a little bit more time believing in… it will be harder to move past.

I think it’s a fine line for me to walk. I don’t want to ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen, because obviously that’s not how I function. But I also don’t want to give this loss more weight compared to the other challenges I’ve been through. And I’m talking mentally here… how I percieve this, how I portray it to others.

Here I am again, hand resting gently on my belly, knowing there lays an empty womb below it. And for a fact it has been empty all along, but for a little while I thought it wasn’t. While not too surprizing, it is still so very sad. We thought we had something… but we didn’t.

I am really lucky to have so many people checking up on me, wanting to make sure I’m okay. I really really appreciate all of your kind words of support.

I’m fine. Not great. But not terrible, either. I’ve been through hell already… this feels more like a speedbump. Another delay, another failure… but it is NOWHERE near the level of devastation of losing Devin. Not even close. It’s all perspective, I guess. If this had happened first I think it would have knocked me out in grief and fear.

I was very careful not to think about the pregnancy as a baby yet – because I wasn’t sure there WAS a baby. People would look at me funny and say, “But of course there’s a baby,” and I would hesitate and say, “It’s not a given.” Until I saw something on the ultrasound I just couldn’t really commit myself to this whole baby thing in anything but an abstract mode. Not with the bleeding, the light HPTs and low betas. It could have been just fine… but I was just going to wait and see.

So for me, for us… I think we really did mentally prepare ourselves for this. It just doesn’t feel like a huge shock.

And there are a lot of positives, too… oh yes, I’m walking away with a lot of positives here.
* I only lost my tube, which I don’t need for IVF. My ovaries and uterus are intact and healthy.
* My tube did not rupture. I can’t imagine that kind of pain, plus it would put my own life in danger.
* I’m thankful that the loss happened early on in the pregnancy, and not later.
* We know I can get pregnant again.
* We have a chance at a fresh slate… a healthier pregnancy next time.
* We know an FET can work and we have one more embryo in the freezer.
* We only have to wait out one cycle.

We are, obviously, upset… frustrated… disappointed. Another loss, another setback. There have been times today when I can feel the sadness creeping in… at having that hope and joy so briely and having it taken away. But I kind of pushed it away. I’m not ready to cry yet. I think my stomach would hurt to sob, so I’ll just ignore it for right now.

Physically I don’t feel too terrible. My main incision is definitely bugging me if I move the wrong way… just laying here is great, I don’t notice a thing. But I can’t just sit up… I have to roll to my side and push myself up. I’m also still quite bloated… although part of that is because it hurts to use my stomach muscles at all, so it’s all just hanging out there. I walk around with a hand carefully holding my belly. I haven’t peeked under the bandages yet, but I know the bellybutton incision is bigger than it was for my last lap.

I didn’t really get much gas pain this time, which has been great. But I am noticing it in my ribs a little bit, for some reason. If I’ve been upright for too long I can’t take full, deep breaths. And my shoulder will start aching just a teeny tiny bit. So I just lay down for a while and I’m fine.

I’m definitely glad I don’t have to work, I just couldn’t imagine trying to navigate up and down from my chair every 5 minutes like we normally do. I’m good with sitting still… not so good with moving around.

So I’m kind of in this weird place. Yesterday in the hospital, being admitted, being wheeled into an OR… all during a day that I should have been at work. It was just so very strange. Like I stepped out of my life for a day, again. Just a little step, this time, but still. And now I am at home, in bed, where I will be for several days. I am really glad I have this time off. Before my ultrasound I was trying to figure out how I would handle it if we had a miscarriage, would I take time off? Would I be allowed to? The surgery thing kind of decided it or me.

But going back to work is going to suck… especially since my coworker is pregnant. This is precisely what I was afraid of. Hopefully I am pregnant again in a couple months, before things start getting really hard.

Oh, and here’s the kicker… I’m not bleeding much at all. That just figures. I guess it’ll take a couple of days for my body to figure it out. I think it will just be a normal period… since there is nothing else in my uterus… it was all removed with my tube.

Now I’m looking ahead and hoping they will let me start the birth control pill when I get my period. I’m fine with waiting out a cycle, but given what my cycles were doing before we started the IVF, and the fact that I just lost a pregnancy, I have no idea if my body would ovulate on time. And I honestly just don’t want to waste any more time. I’d rather be on the pill and not have to worry about it.