Still Waiting!

For the record, I'm still just sitting around, waiting for AF so I can schedule (then wait for) my saline u/s, which will be performed to confirm what I am 90% sure is true.

CD25 and I haven't even ovulated.

I hope there's an extra special reward in heaven or on earth for patient waiters like me.

Here's some inspirational quotes posted by a gal on the MA Yahoo! Group:


I've started to realize that waiting is an art, that waiting achieves
things. Waiting can be very, very powerful. Time is a valuable thing.
If you can wait two years, you can sometimes achieve something that
you could not achieve today, however hard you worked, however much
money you threw up in the air, however many times you banged your
head against the wall. . .

--"The Courage to Change" by Dennis Wholey

The people who are most successful at living and loving are those who
can learn to wait successfully. Not many people enjoy waiting or
learning patience. Yet, waiting can be a powerful tool that will help
us accomplish much good.

We cannot always have what we want when we want it. For different
reasons, what we want to do, have, be, or accomplish is not available
to us now. But there are things we could not do or have today, no
matter what, that we can have in the future. Today, we would make
ourselves crazy trying to accomplish what will come naturally and
with ease later.

We can trust that all is on schedule. Waiting time is not wasted
time. Something is being worked out - in us, in someone else, in the
Universe.

We don't have to put our life on hold while we wait. We can direct
our attention elsewhere; we can practice acceptance and gratitude in
the interim; we can trust that we do have a life to live while we are
waiting - then we go about living it.

Deal with your frustration and impatience, but learn how to wait. The
old saying, "You can't always get what you want" isn't entirely true.
Often, in life, we can get what we want - especially the desires of
our heart - if we can learn to wait.

Today, I am willing to learn the art of patience. If I am feeling
powerless because I am waiting for something to happen and I am not
in control of timing, I will focus on the power available to me by
learning to wait.

--"The Language of Letting Go" by Melody Beattie



That said, I'm trying my darnedest to just live my life. I have plenty going on to keep me busy. I am calm; I am patient.

Birthday Today

I was supposed to have a baby when I was 25. I hope that can still be true!




That is all.

New Theory

MAYBE during the HSG, the pressure of the dye from the catheter pushed my septum to the side, mimicking a blockage. That HSG sure did hurt. I renew my supposition that the HSG will eventually be disregarded, and I find myself wishing that Dr. M had been in on all this from the beginning.


I told you it was going to be a long month before the next test. Stuff like this goes through my head NON. STOP.

My Crazy Uterus!

My uterus is strange. My uterus is a mystery, a shape-changing enigma just waiting to be figured out by the medical professional who endeavors to study it.

I got a call back from Dr. M today. There's good news and weird news. (No bad news!) I'm liking lists lately, so here's the good news:

• He's already looked at my HSG and U/S, only three days after our appointment, two days after I dropped them off.
• Based on the U/S, he thinks it looks pretty clearly like a uterine septum with maybe (MAYBE) a little bicornuate-ish (his words) split on the outside.

Weird news:

• Paraphrase from voicemail: if both CDs didn't have my name on them, he would have thought they came from two different patients.
• Based on the HSG, he would not have called my uterus abnormal: not bicornuate, not unicornuate, no septum. He would have called it a normal uterus with a fallopian tube blockage.
  
• "Looking at the ultrasound, there is nothing that looks at all like the HSG."

He mentioned the possibility that films got mixed up. If I hadn't witnessed both tests myself and already known how different they were, I'd agree with that as a possibility. I still vote for disregarding the HSG, but I know all things should be taken into account for now. And that's why Dr. M will perform a saline u/s, which I will schedule when AF comes to town again, in about three weeks.

So for the timeline update, it looks like I'll have a saline u/s around mid-June, and I'll most likely have a septum resection, probably in July. That would mean being able to try again by August! That would help keep with my goal of being able to try again before the EDD of my first pregnancy.

Even though this is going to be a long month before the next test, and even though I wish things could be moved along a little faster, I'm in a good mood right now. It won't be long before my "Womb for Improvement" is cleared for renovations! Then I can hang an imaginary "room for rent" sign on my cervix.

(That was a little crass. I don't apologize.)

:)

Back from RE

I like Dr. M. He knows what he's doing, so I don't have to, and that is a great relief. We have a plan! And he confirmed the plan by sending me a letter via the patient portal on their website within minutes after our appointment. I like that.

The one frustrating thing is that due to HIPAA stuff, he has not yet been able to look at the images from my HSG or U/S, so I will have to obtain those and give them to him. If I had known that already, I would have gotten them ahead of time. But luckily, I don't have to worry too much about wasting more time. Without further ado, I present to you Our Plan, which I will transcribe/paraphrase from the letter.

From this point, there will be one of three outcomes:

1. If I have a definite bicornuate or unicornuate uterus, then he will not do surgery now but instead have me attempt pregnancy.
2. If I have a uterine septum, he will discuss hysteroscopy further for septum resection.
3. If he can't say with certainty what I have, he will perform a hysterosonogram [saline ultrasound].

Whatever the outcome, we can expect to be able to try again within a few months. Hooray! I'm still putting all my hopes into SU, since pregnancies can be so complicated and uncertain with BU or UU. (Even though my HSG report says UU, that's extremely unlikely, so I can pretty much not worry about that one.)

Some other things of note which Dr. M shared:

• 1 in 200 women has a bicornuate uterus.
• Surgery is not usually done right away for BU, but is considered if it is determined to be the cause of multiple miscarriages.
• He has performed surgery on BU, but only about once a year or less. (That sounded like a lot to me, which means he's experienced!)
• He can usually tell from hysterosonogram the difference between SU and BU, and if it's SU, he does the resection via hysteroscopy. He said there would be no incision, so I guess he does not feel the laparascopy is usually necessary.
• He performs septum resections several times per month. (Yes! Yes! Yes!)
• He saw no reason to do any other kind of infertility work-up, blood work, semen analysis, etc. I love that he's not ordering all kinds of unnecessary tests!

So, by tomorrow I should be able to have obtained digital images from my HSG and U/S. I'll drop them off at Dr. M's office (which is less than 10 minutes from where I live!), hope he has time to review them soon, and find out what happens next!

Hopeful Mother's Day

My MIL wished me a hopeful Mother's Day. Her wish is coming true! Turns out, I'm just not bothered at all. Though I honor all mothers this day, I realize that it is kind of a made-up holiday to sell cards and flowers. Just saying.

But anyway, Erich FTW!

I came home to this yesterday afternoon. Here's the note:

It's perfect!

I love these reminders that it's all about him and me. We want children badly, but it starts with us and our love for each other. Pardon my mushiness, but it's true!

To all mothers: Happy Mothers Day!
To all mothers of lost babies: Hopeful Mothers Day!

To all women: You are special on this and every day!

Mother's Day

Talk about a hairy subject. I still don't even know what to think about it. Prior to 2/13 I was kind of looking forward to it--my first Mother's Day! Now I feel as if it's been taken away from me. Sure, I'm a mother, but the world doesn't see me that way, and even if they did, the fact remains: Mother's Day is not a happy occasion for a mother like me.

So now, as usual, I'm torn between wanting to be acknowledged and hoping to be overlooked while focusing on mothers around me who have been blessed with the ability to hold their children. As the day draws closer, the more I realize I wish it didn't exist at all.

I've also noticed another trend: my fertility journey has been defined by small incremental steps. Between each step, I go through a particular emotional process:

Part 1: Frantically try to process newly learned information.
Duration: ~1 day

Part 2: Experience relief that another step has been completed.
Duration: ~2 days

Part 3: Wait patiently with hopes that the next step will be progressive.
Duration: however long it takes to get to Part 4

Part 4: Worry that the next step will not be productive, nothing new will be learned, and/or I'll have to tell the doctor what to do or find a new doctor.
Duration: 5-7 days preceding next step

Part 5: Depression. Preparing myself for the worst: total and hopeless infertility.
Duration: concurrent with the final days of Part 4

Guess which part I'm experiencing right now? Yes, part 4. And Mother's Day comes just two days before my RE consult, so I'll probably be in the depths of part 5 just when all of America gets gooey about new and expectant moms. I'm not trying to be pessimistic, but I can't help it that my excitement wanes as my worries resurface.

So I'll cling to something totally arbitrary and choose to call it a good sign: my RE appointment is May 13, exactly three months after I failed to hear my baby's heartbeat.

Baby Mama

Erich and I went to see Baby Mama last night, the new movie with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. I knew I wanted to see this movie because it looked pretty good and both those women CRACK ME UP. But I knew I HAD to see it when I found out that Tina Fey's character has a t-shaped uterus.

Did you know that a t-shaped uterus is a Müllerian Anomaly? If all your info on MAs has come from this blog alone, you probably didn't. I haven't discussed it since it doesn't apply to me. It's one of the rarest MAs, and it usually can be traced to the mother's ingestion of diethylstilbestrol, or DES. Sometimes prescribed to mothers between the 1950s and early 1970s, DES was thought to help prevent miscarriages. Despite insufficient study data, doctors continued to prescribe it through the '50s. In the '60s, data suggested that miscarriage rates for mothers prescribed DES were no lower than the general population, but doctors continued to prescribe it. And finally, in the '70s, scientists began to discover all the bad side effects of DES. In addition to uterine malformations (sometimes lacking a uterus entirely), the so-called "DES Daughters" were also more prone to various cancers, including cancer of the vagina and cervix.

In the movie, Tina Fey's character is 37 and trying to get pregnant via a sperm donor. All her attempts fail, which a doctor finally blames on her t-shaped uterus. (The line often featured in promos: "I just don't like your uterus.") In reality, a t-shaped uterus doesn't necessarily effect fertility. Like other MAs, it's associated with higher miscarriage rates as well as heightened risk of preterm labor, incompetent cervix, and fetal malposition. Also, her mother claims to have taken DES (though I don't think they name the drug in the film) to cure liver spots. I don't want to give any spoilers, so I'll just say that in sum, the movie has several inaccuracies.

Did these inaccuracies bother me? Not in the least! Anyone would be crazy to go into a comedic film hoping for a science-based anatomy lesson. Her uterine anomaly is simply a device to get to the main plot of the movie, which is the rocky friendship between Tina Fey's character and her hired surrogate mother, played by Amy Poehler. I really liked this movie. It was very funny and sweet in the right places without being sappy. And it is quite refreshing to see a real comedy with substance headlined by two female leads. My verdict: thumbs up.