The bubbly ache has changed again, now it feels like my belly is being squeezed. Not hard… just… lightly. Like a giant balloon. I feel bloated, round. I feel tender. I feel pressure.

And I realized it’s freaking me out a lot because it feels way too similar to my early labor pains. Except, my uterus isn’t up that high. It’s most tender/full just below my belly button – my uterus is somewhere down in my pelvic bone still. But, still…. the similarity in feeling is really really unnerving me.

I came home and wept into my pillow. I feel so devoid of emotion… anything other than fear. Fear that this is over. Fear that I will wake up to much more blood. Fear that we will be back to square one again, will have to scratch my name off lists, will have to take down all my joyful things and pack away my heart.

The cramping feeling has gone away, my lower back is still hurting from the pinched nerve, which made me think, hmmm, maybe that’s why my right side is a little achy, the nerve’s on that side. I’m still bloated – not unusual – and still bleeding – also not unusual. And I’ve been peeing like a mofo.

But I had the on-call doctor paged anyways, I just spoke with him. He asked me a bunch of questions. He basically said an ectopic is a possibility, but this early it’s not a huge immediate risk and that they’ll see what’s going on tomorrow morning at my ultrasound. So no need for the ER tonight.

Honestly I’m starting to think the pain is stress-related.

So, as most of you have seen on twitter… those of you who suggested ectopic… DING DING DING, you win. It’s in my right tube.

I woke up this morning feeling very very bloated. Like, bad. I kept thinking gas, it’s got to be gas. I drank gingerale and water and tried to poop or fart or throw up or *anything* to relieve the pressure. Didn’t work. I kept telling myself, it’s just gas, it’s just gas.

At my appointment they got me right back. I thought they must have been prepared for me, they’re never that quick. I quickly ran through everything – the bleeding, the bloating, the achy back and “ovary” area. She said, “Well let’s just see what’s going on.” Got my feet in the stirrups, ultrasound wand in, scanned quickly. I saw her measuring my uterus. It looked empty. She said, “I’m sorry, honey, I don’t have good news. It’s ectopic.” She moved the wand and there was a little circle, not in the uterus. Fuck. Fuck.

I mean, really. Yesterday I sat down and went over the statistics logically. I was probably freaking out needlessly. Stressed, worried, pregnant and gassy. Worst-case scenario, I said, was that it’s ectopic. But I mean, that’s the least likely scenario. I researched it… IVF ectopics happen in like .5-3% of IVF pregnancies, from some sources. It happens, but not likely. And I’m paranoid, right?

Oh we should be playing the fucking lottery.

I cried a little, sure I did. Frustration and disappointment and all kinds of crap. But, I knew it, didn’t I. I knew it in my heart. When she first said, “Ectopic,” I just nodded. I knew it wasn’t right.

This is why I’ve been bleeding the whole time. My body is confused. My uterus is empty, so it tries to bleed, but my hcg is up, so it doesn’t. This is actually a huge relief to me. I knew something was wrong. My body doesn’t do that for no reason. I knew SOMETHING was wrong, I just didn’t know what. Even if it was just a subchorionic hematoma, I just wanted to know what it was, why it felt wrong. So this at least answers that. This reassures me that my body wasn’t just bleeding for the hell of it. (And that next time if I start bleeding I’m heading into the office RIGHT NOW.)

Also, this is why I’m so bloated right now… she said fluid is leaking out the end of my tube into my abdominal cavity.

I asked if the baby had developed normally. She said no… there was a sac, but it wasn’t measuring right, no heartbeat…. probably because it wasn’t allowed to grow properly in the tube. That made me feel relieved. It would be ten times worse if they had to remove a baby with a beating heart. A hundred times worse.

She got the doctor in the room. He patted my knee sadly and said he was sorry. He shook his head and said with a sigh, “You called it, didn’t you.” He looked over everything with the ultrasound. When we got dressed he came in to talk to me about it all. At first I thought they’d just give me a shot to induce a miscarriage, but they need to do surgery to remove it. Dr said he *could* try to remove just the pregnancy tissue and leave the tube intact, but that creates scar tissue and *increases* the risk of another ectopic. My thoguhts: a) hell no and b) I don’t need my fucking tube. So I nodded enthusiastically and he set to scheduling the surgery. A laparoscopy, by the by. Might be a larger incision than last time, though.

So. I hurt more now, physically.. the pain is definitely getting worse. If I hadn’t been thinking something was wrong before now, I most certainly would be today. I want it all gone. I look forward to being put out.

More pissed off than anything. Totally, utterly pissed. But not really surprized. I think I’ve been grieving in bits and pieces for 2 and a half weeks. Grieved a little when I started bleeding, grieved more yesterday when I just let it all loose. And I never really gained that back. I never really fully believed. I wanted to, I tried to, but I didn’t.

And, like Den said after we found out, “I really wish you weren’t always right.” Me too. Me too. I so wanted to be wrong.

I am surprizingly not in much pain. I do have to help myself sit up. And there were times last night when my belly button was itching almost painfully. But laying in bed I do not feel much. Just still bloated. I can feel the bandages on my belly, covering the incisions. I think they are bothering me more than the incisions.

I was in far more pain yesterday before my surgery. That night I posted that something was feeling wrong, it was just pressure. In the morning before my appointment I was walking tenderly, trying not to jostle anything. By the time we drove to the hospital for my surgery I was gasping every time the car hit a little bump, hand clenching the car door for stability. I walked hunched over, very very carefully. Just laying in the hospital bed, waiting for the doctor to arrive, was an act in meditation. Of course he was delayed an hour.

Apparently the anesthesiologists have nothing to do during the day. First the one who was going to be in the OR with me came by and went over all the paperwork and “Do you have any allergies? Have you ever had any bad reactions to anesthesia?” questions. All was in order, just waiting for the doctor. He left. About 15 minutes later, another anesthesiologist came by and said she was going to go over some paperwork. She asked me the same questions. And then said, “Oh, so-and-so already talked to you? Okay then, guess you don’t need me!” and left. Half an hour later… another anesthesiologist came over and rifled through all the papers yet again, asking me the same damn questions, and then walked off without a word (WTF?). I looked at Den and said they must be really bored.

I really didn’t like having that extra hour. I tried to nap, but was too uncomfortable and the pre-op area was bright, with nurses talking and working. It was in that hour that I started worrying. I really didn’t care too much about losing my tube, but what if something went wrong during the surgery? What if I lose my ovary? Or… worse? I reassured myself that it was, in many ways, a routine surgery… it wasn’t a rupture, it wasn’t some completely strange case… the doctor has removed plenty of tubes in his years. But I was still really wishing they could put me out already.

Finally my Dr showed up, someone put some drugs in my IV, and the nurse wheeled me down the hall. I was waiting for the drugs to kick in, but they didn’t damnit. Into the OR, got me to scoot carefully over to a different bed, arms out to the sides, stickers on me everywhere, warm blankets. And still I’m looking around quite lucidly. Finally they must have kicked in the heavy stuff and welcomed the deep sleep.

Afterwards I didn’t come awake all at once. I could hear nurses chattering beside me. I thought I heard something about “ruptured ectopic” and I was confused… and worried. But my mind wasn’t all that with it and I fell back asleep. When I woke up the next time I felt much clearer. I got the shivers really bad… they kept asking if I was cold, but I wasn’t, I was just shivering uncontrollably. I realized – though they probably did not – that it was a reaction to the drop in hormones, just like after giving birth… I did the same thing after Devin was born. It took about 15 minutes, but finally it calmed down and went away.

They gave me some ice chips and then called Den down from the waiting room. He greeted me with a soft kiss and I of course immediately asked him what the doctor had told him, did it rupture? He looked puzzled. No, the doctor didn’t say anything like that. He said it all went quite well. Tube was removed through my belly button incision (which is probably why it’s bugging me more than the others – he had to make it a little bigger). Everything else is intact. So I have no idea if a nurse said something incorrectly or if my mind was just playing on my fears while I was drifting in and out. I felt so relieved.

We went home shortly after. The nurse took me by wheelchair to the front door, I eased into the car and Den drove me home. It feels good to be in my bed with my laptop. I have the week off work, on doctor’s orders, so I can just lay here and rest and let my poor belly heal up. It’s still a little bloated, but nothing painful like it was yesterday. I am very used to being bloated, but not like that.

Den said it was just so weird how my ultrasound was scheduled that day… the day that it got BAD. If I hadn’t had something scheduled that morning I would have been rushing in regardless. Tuesday I was not sure that something was really wrong… Wednesday I was pretty sure there was. I mean, I still held out hope that it was normal. I still was waiting for them to say that it was okay. I didn’t really want to believe that it wasn’t.

The strangest thing is that we – both Den and I – feel a little bit… relieved. I’ve been writing about a little of what I’ve been going through, but trust me when I say it was much worse in my head. Now we know that wasn’t normal…. that next time it SHOULD NOT be that bad…. I should not be bleeding, I shoud not be freaking out every single fucking day. I told Den, on the days when I didn’t bleed at all I was really quite happy and hopeful. Even despite our previous loss, which will of course make pregnancy more stressful no matter what, that bleeding, that feeling that something was very wrong, was above and beyond what I would expect in terms of fear and paranoia. Next time we’ll get a fresh start. Next time we’ll get a healthy pregnancy.

And we won’t have to wait too long. My doctor just called to see how I was doing. He said the lap is a pretty easy procedure to perform, and easy to heal from. He wants to wait one cycle and one normal period, but then we can probably start protocol for another FET, so June.

He also talked to me about the procedure and how it went. The embryo implanted not just in my tube, but all the way at the end in the fibula. What the fuck? How does that even HAPPEN? My tube was quite swollen. This explains why my ovary was bothering me – it must have been pressing right against it. But he said that my ovaries looked fine, my left tube looked fine. And also he saw no adhesions or signs of endometriosis.

So. Now we just wait a month. I’ll be working on my garden, like last year. I have some peas to plant.

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.

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.

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 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).

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 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.