July 04, 2009

AMALGAM

I'm trying not to get ahead of myself and look forward to this right now, but I am looking forward to it someday:

One of the best things about parenting? Getting to do things twice, and seeing things from entirely different perspective, you get to see tiny people learn to walk, talk, run, swim, ride bikes, you get to jump on a trampoline, and shoot your kids high in the air, and laugh until you cry...

and you get 3 hours of rabbit jokes...most of them bad

I want to be an amalgam of all my friends' parenting styles...

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June 27, 2009

CHARLIE WANTS A BABY

When Charlie was acting all depressed, he trudged out of our room like Eeyore.  "Where are you going?" I asked him.  "What's wrong."  My husband followed him and then chuckled.  "Oh, I get it, Charlie is sad because he wants a baby."



Yes, that's our spare bedroom.  Yes, it's looked like that for over a year.  Yes, it's absurd.  But leaving it up seemed less weird to me than taking it all down and leaving the room completely empty.  (OK, mildly less weird.  Also I'm just lazy.)

But apparently what Charlie wants, Charlie gets.  After a week of doing everything wrong -- lots of booze, sitting in hot tubs, eating sushi, taking large doses of NyQuil -- it turns out that I am pregnant again.

We laughed that this is our "unplanned" pregnancy.  My friend's mother, an OB nurse, asked me what my doctor's plan was now.  Plan?  There isn't one this time around!  This was our Hail Mary.  This was me looking at my husband one night and saying, "We could try this and potentially save $12,000...whaddya think?" and then completely putting it out of my head because, seriously, neither of us thought it would work.

I took a pregnancy test to confirm that I was not pregnant, before I contacted the IVF doctor to get my PGD bloodwork started.

I took a second one because I didn't believe the result of the first one.

We have no plan.  I ran and hurried to take a prenatal vitamin because, let's face it, after two and a half unsuccessful years I had gotten pretty lax about remembering to do that.

Anyway, I'm just putting it out here because, well, this is where I cash chips.

I told my husband that my feelings about the miracle of life have actually regressed, gotten creepier.  I was always a life-starts-at-conception person.  And now, now I feel like we have to wait around and see if this becomes a baby.  It has a 50% chance of being a baby or a 50% chance of being...a lump of mutated cells.  I hate that this is what this process has done to me, that it's made me detach myself so much.  That I'm like some gross abortion advocate who only sees a lump of cells.  But that's where I'm at these days.  It doesn't become a baby until it has a heartbeat.  And even then...Baby #2 had one of those...

I'm just hanging back for the next three weeks or so.  Hey, three weeks, that's when my husband deploys.  How convenient.

So one of two things will happen.  1) This will be a baby, in which case my husband will already be deployed by the time a heartbeat can be detected and will still be deployed when the baby is born.  What marvelous timing.  Or 2) It will be a lump of cells, in which case there will be no heartbeat, I will take care of business because I am now a pro at miscarriage, and then I will start the bloodwork for the PGD and proceed as planned, only a month or two behind schedule.

Either way, whatever.

I know no one knows how to react to this news.  I told AWTM over the phone and her reaction was like "Um, yay?, er, right? Hooray! er..."  so I just decided to put it here instead.  If you don't read my blog, I'm not telling you.

You can feel however you want about the news.  I'd prefer if you didn't get too excited, or tell me that the fourth time's a charm or something.  But happy's OK.  And hopeful is good too.  (Note: Do not tell me that this happened because I "relaxed" or I will ban you from my blog.  Or I would if I knew how to do that.  Even though this is our "unplanned" pregnancy, there was nothing haphazard about it.  The day was specifically chosen to maximize success.  We just didn't plan for it to work.  Hence the booze and hot tubs.  This is as close to a whoopsie as the Groks can get.)

At this point, I don't know if I'll talk about it anymore, at least not until Heartbeat Week.  Not until I know anything for certain.

But let's see if we can get Charlie that baby he wants...

Actually, I'm pretty sure Charlie just wants to play with all the baby's toys.

And my husband says that if this baby lives, he wants to name it John Elway.  (Now that's a bit of guy trivia that I didn't get: three Superbowl losses before a win.)  AWTM says we should name it Bellagio if it's a girl.  We got jokes.

My husband says he just really doesn't want a Jim Kelly baby.

(How does that man remember how many Super Bowls every quarterback lost but can't remember where anything is located in our kitchen?)

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June 26, 2009

FULLY CONVINCED?

When you don't have children, you spend a lot of time convincing yourself of all the silver linings about not having children.  For example, you can go to Vegas for a week and watch naughty shows and do whatever you want.  And when you're sick, as I have been since we got home, you can sleep until 9:00 and take naps in the afternoon and remind yourself that it would be so much worse to be sick and have to take care of children.

And I've done such a darned good job of convincing myself of all the silver linings that I am afraid I might have trouble switching my brain back someday...

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June 05, 2009

LUDICROUS

Mary Katharine Ham wrote an article about oversharing online.  Guilty as charged.  The thoughts in my previous post were weeks in the making, but they prompted people to check on me and make sure I'm not depressed.  For the record, I'm fine.  I am so burnt out on the whole issue that it mostly doesn't register as sadness anymore.  The fact that I have a baby stroller, a dresser full of baby and maternity clothes, and a even most of a nursery set up, complete with crib filled with handmade stuffed animals, is no longer sad to me; it's just absurd.  It's so ludicrous I can't begin to be sad over it anymore.  It makes me laugh.  When we go to sell our house, that spare bedroom will be a nursery whether we have a baby or not.  I don't care who you are, that's funny.

So really, I'm not even thinking about this anymore.  The IVF is less concrete than the dentist visit I have scheduled for September.  I don't want to do it, so I have pushed it out of my mind.  I haven't even called the doctor back in over a week.  Don't care.  I'm done thinking about it.

But I still like laughing at the Johnny Jump Up in my garage.

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June 04, 2009

ONLY SLIGHTLY BIZARRELY UNLUCKY

CaliValleyBoy's first birthday is this weekend, and it's a sad reminder of my own fate.  If our first baby had lived, that baby would also be celebrating a first birthday soon.  I imagine we would already be thinking about trying for Baby #2 in that alternate reality.

We would have a one-year-old child instead of a vial of frozen sperm and a prayer.

Yesterday I stumbled across the first post I wrote about preparing for baby:

Of course, anyone who knows me well is probably laughing, because they know there's no way on earth I'll get pregnant until I've read both books cover to cover and used different highlighters to color-code important information within. My husband and I are the ultimate planners. We spent months researching the type of dog we wanted, for pete's sake. My husband did so much research on our Mazda5 that he knew more about it than the salesman (an advantage which helped him get it at invoice). Right now he's been spending all his free time making intricate spreadsheets comparing different mortgages and the time value of our money to see how we can save $300 over the next five years. We're pretty intense people when it comes to Decisions That Affect Our Future, but heck, we even consult Consumer Reports to decide which dishwasher soap to buy. So while it might've seemed funny to the girls at Goodwill, those who know us aren't shocked that I bought pregnancy books for the baby we'll probably have in 2008.

"The baby we'll probably have in 2008."  Sniff.

I had a bit of a freak-out on Facebook the other day when I was hit yet again with how frozen in time I am.  Back in early 2007, one of those darling boys from middle school passed through town and met me for dinner.  He was thrilled about his new son and wanted his wife to start trying for another baby right away.  She was resisting.  I had just started trying too, and he said it was the greatest thing in the whole world.  He wanted another one right away, but he was losing the debate.

It seems like he finally triumphed, because his wife just had their second baby.  And that conversation came flooding back to me: his life has moved forward and mine has not.

I got interviewed this week for an article in a local paper about prenatal genetic screening.  The writer said I sound remarkably upbeat and positive and full of perspective.  And I am like that, most of the time, at least outwardly.  But other days I threaten to set everyone else on fire.

At least I'm not one of these people.

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May 15, 2009

FROM CRUSHINGLY DOWN TO RELATIVELY ASSUAGED

When I first found out about my balanced translocation, I was so happy to have a reason.  I felt this weight lifted, that now I finally knew why I was doomed to so much sadness.  I was happy knowing that there was a plan and a way to solve our problem.

But today reality set in, and I feel despair.

I met with the doctor today to discuss IVF.  As usual, this man channels my inner Mrs. White.  And I left in a daze, not knowing whether I was more disturbed by the flames on the side of my face or by the lump forming in my throat.

Call me naive, but this process is going to cost far more than I anticipated.

All my initial ballpark figures I'd been working with, supplied by people who've done this here in town before and the genetics counselor, well...they doubled today.  The PGD that I was told would be around $2000?  Nope, it's $5000.  Oh, and we have to pay to freeze sperm, since my husband will be deployed.  And then we have to pay for the more expensive, extra special IVF that they have to do with frozen sperm.  The numbers that I had in my mind of how much all this would cost was half of what it really will cost.  And that's even with the sizable discount we're getting because we will be using a military doctor.

And that's per month.

The sick thing is, we have the money.  We could pay cash tomorrow for this and not really blink (especially in this absurd economy, where money ain't worth the paper it's printed on).  But that's the rub that makes the choice kinda rough.

The local clinic said that they've never had anyone do PGD.  The receptionist said that the pricetag scares people away, so no one has ever taken them up on it.  And if we didn't have the money either, we would have to resort to good old trial and error: keep on babymaking at home and hoping that we flip heads instead of tails one month.  The choice would be made for us by the fact that we had no option to do the expensive treatment.

But it's a bit harder to have that choice to make.  It's hard to know that you could just keep flipping that coin for free and eventually end up with a baby, and conversely to know that we could spend many thousands of dollars and still end up with nothing.  There are so many ways this hinges on luck.  The doctor said that he could probably get 15-20 eggs from me.  He said usually about 80% will fertilize.  So on the low end, that means 12.  Statistically speaking, half my eggs should be duds, so if we could get six good ones, we'd do the first try with three.  If we get pregnant, hooray.  If we don't, we have three back-ups to try again another month (at a decent-sized repeat fee, of course).

But that's statistically speaking.  Of all the eggs I was born with, half should be good.  But all those eggs is a far bigger sample size than what they can extract.  Heck, we've already flipped three tails in a row.  A small sample size of 15 eggs is not necessarily going to break down 50/50, just like 15 coin tosses won't either.  (To illustrate: my father is one of 13 children, 7 girls and 6 boys.  But I also know of another 13-child family with 12 boys and 1 girl.)

What if we only get one good egg?  And what if it doesn't take?  What if we spend all this money and come out with nothing in the end?  Could I live with that?

Could I live with not trying for it in the first place?

My husband got home from training while I was writing this post.  I hurredly cashed today's chips and told him how stressed I was about the whole thing.  My husband, the stingiest man on the planet, waved off concerns of money and said resolutely that we are going to go through with this.

Oh, but we can't even begin to get these ducks in a row until at least September.  So I had asked the doctor about babymaking at home for the two months until my husband deploys.  I asked: if we got pregnant and we had another miscarriage, would that prevent us from going ahead in September?  It shouldn't.

So I asked my husband if he wanted to try to take the cheap way out, if he wanted to take another gamble at home and try for a healthy baby the old-fashioned way, to see if we could get away with not spending those many thousands of dollars.  He vehemently declared that he is done with babymaking at home and does not want to spend our last weeks together fussing over basal thermometers and pregnancy tests.

My husband managed to take the edge off over this whole thing.  I feel much less panicked now than I did when I sat down to start this post two hours ago.  (He also said he doesn't want me stressing our for the next few months each time I want to buy a ball of yarn either, because he is the most fantastic husband on the planet.)

So I guess we're going to do this.  I think.  My husband said, "We paid $500 for that ol' dog, and look how much joy he brings us.  The baby will be even better."

Someone with kids assure me that a child is 24 times better than a dog...

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May 09, 2009

WE'RE GONNA NEED A TRACKING NUMBER ON THAT PACKAGE



At the end of my appointment yesterday, the genetics counselor said that I seem remarkably well-adjusted and calm about my predicament.  I told her that some experiences have been easier than others, and when I started explaining a few of the more difficult ones, I got choked up.  Especially when I explained how I feel frozen in time while everyone else around me moves forward with life.

I sometimes forget how deeply this cuts.

When I first learned of the balanced translocation, I went through a vengeful stage.  I wanted to knock on the door of everyone who told me to just relax and punch them.  I wanted to point out everyone's wrongness and tell them to their face that it was even worse than they could've ever guessed.  I wanted them to feel bad for all the stupid advice over the years and for their nonchalance in telling me I just haven't been patient enough.

I'm kinda over that, mostly.  Somedays moreso than others.

The genetics counselor said that my specific translocation isn't the worst one in the world, and that if my husband and I wanted to keep trying the natural way, we'd have about a 50% miscarriage rate.  We've flipped three tails already, but with a large enough sample size, we'd eventually get a heads.

When I pointed out that my husband is gone for nine-month chunks and I'm 31 1/2 and we don't have a great track record of getting pregnant quickly and we're just flat out done with gambling, she agreed that PGD might be a good option for us.  Especially since I already have a military fertility doctor to offset some of the $20,000 pricetag.

The next step is meeting with my doctor to find out how quickly we can get started and which company we will do the PGD through.  She guessed it would be someone in New Jersey.  Then I asked how that works, like do they run a test on the embryo and mail the data to NJ for interpretation?  She said more likely they would have to send the entire embryo to a cellular-level specialist.

Let that sink in for a second, because it was the most interesting thing she said all day.  My husband and I would start babies here with our doctor.  The babies would then be FedEx'd to an embryologist who will take one of their eight cells out, test it, give the babies the thumb's up or down, and then FedEx the babies back to us so they could be injected into me and hopefully nestle in for nine months.

FedExing a replicating and growing baby.  Of all the wonderments...

I definitely will be following that tracking number.

If we manage to have a baby through this process, imagine telling our kid that story someday, that we loved him so much that we swaddled him in bubble wrap and sent him on a trip to a doctor to make sure he would grow up healthy and strong.

Or her.  Or them.

Hopefully them.

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May 05, 2009

MEET THE NEW CLINIC, SAME AS THE OLD CLINIC

Now it's my turn to rip on civilian medicine.  My case manager here on post called the civilian doctor's office and said I needed genetics counseling, and they booked me with the wrong guy.  I wasn't supposed to go to that doctor yesterday at all; he is just a regular maternal fetal medicine doctor.  Absurd screw up on their part, costing me $14 in gas and a day's worth of confusion.  Oh, and costing my fellow taxpayers the amount of the worthless visit.  Which I'm sure is sky high.  I hope Tricare sticks it to them by only paying the bare minimum.

New appointment with a genetics counselor set for this Friday.  I have high expectations for this one.  I want Punnett squares and PowerPoints and a much higher level of detail than found on Wikipedia.

My case manager here was horrified and very apologetic.  I said that she ought to hear the litany of screw-ups over the past two years.  She said, "I know, and I was trying to stop that cycle, not make it worse!"

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May 04, 2009

UNPRODUCTIVE

I would wager that the internet has had a profound effect on the medical field.

If I had discovered my balanced translocation 15 years ago, I would've been completely overwhelmed.  To find any information on the topic, I would've had to visit my local library and use the card catalog for books or the goofy old Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature to find articles.  It would've been far easier to have an expert just explain it to me.

But in 2009, within an hour of coming home from the doctor two weeks ago, I had a basic understanding of a fairly specific genetic problem.  By the end of the day, I was educated on two chromosomes in particular, the risks of PGD, and had even managed to find a medical article from 1982 on someone with my specific translocation.  Eventually I even read about translocations in Swedish.

So let's just say that when the doctor at my appointment today started drawing chromosomes on a paper, I had two thoughts: 1) "It's much clearer if you do it with play-doh" and 2) "No, you're doing it wrong, chromosome 22 is one of the short ones and you've drawn it equal in size to chromosome 7."

Therefore, all in all, the appointment was a disappointment.  The man was neither a geneticist nor a genetic counselor.  I don't quite understand why I had to meet with him and what we were supposed to accomplish.  I plan to spend tomorrow trying to answer those questions.

I did learn one thing though: this process could even be harder than we originally thought.  I got another blood test done today to see if we're at risk for eggs carrying 22q11.2 deletion syndrome.  Fantastic.  If so, it means that even fewer of my eggs will be able to create a healthy baby.

Just one more frustrating and unproductive day to add to my collection.

[A special hat tip to my librarian cousin for reminding me what those goofy green books in my high school library were called.]

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May 01, 2009

ARMY OF ONE

I got lucky and there's an opening with the geneticist this coming Monday morning.  Unfortunately, Monday morning is the only day next week that my husband has training he cannot skip and cannot reschedule.  So it was either go to the appointment alone, or wait three weeks for the next available appointment.

I think they need to designate Army wives as the Army Of One.

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April 30, 2009

TIME IS TIGHT

A SpouseBUZZ post: I'll Take "Wasted Time" for $200, Please

In the coming days, I plan to write up a summary post of my whole infertility journey.  After emailing with Julia from Here Be Hippogriffs, I decided that one post with everything laid out might be a good resource for new readers or people finding me via google.

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April 27, 2009

I WILL SET THEM ON FIRE

I want to murder my doctor and everyone who works for him.

(Despite that intro, this will be a boring post about playing telephone tag.  But I have to bang it out or I will go crazy.)

Last Tuesday when the doctor hit me with the bad news, he told me to call Tricare Referrals the next day.  (As per the discussion at the conference of making your blog non-military friendly, that is our health care system.  To be seen off-post by a civilian doctor, I need a referral through the insurance before I can make an appointment.  I have never had to do this before.)

I called Tricare Wednesday: no referral in their system.  Same Thursday and Friday.  The prerecorded message said it could take 72 hours, but on Friday I found a customer service rep to talk to.  She informed me that, despite the fact that my home is most definitely not located in that region, that I was calling the wrong number and should be calling the North division.  Hung up, called them, they didn't have the referral either.

Called back Monday morning: still no referral.  Got grumpy.  Left a cranky message with my doctor's secretary to check again and make sure the referral was made because we've already wasted a week of precious time.

The secretary calls me back hours later to say that, whoopsie, I wasn't supposed to be calling Tricare after all.  Who told you to do that?  Us?  Our bad.  You just need to confirm your referral in our own hospital.  Here, let me just transfer the call...yep, disconnected.

I wrote during the second miscarriage about how it's impossible to reach an actual human being in our medical system.  So she had disconnected me, and all I could do was call her back, leave another pissy message on her machine, and wait several more hours for her to call me back.

I finally get the right number to get connected where I'm supposed to be, and that is also an answering machine.  I leave a message, she calls me back an hour later, confirms my referral, and then tells me that it will take seven days from today until the referral shows up in Tricare.

At this point, I don't know whether to scream or cry.

We don't have time for this.  My husband deploys in less than three months, we've been told it will take us at least a month to get an appointment with this geneticist, and we just wasted a week playing phone tag?

What in the holy fricking shizz is wrong with my doctor?  Why did he quite clearly tell me to call the wrong place?  And I told him flat out that I have never had a referral before, so he knew I needed instruction.  They dropped the you're-a-mutant bomb and then shoved me out the door without even bothering to tell me which phone number to call for follow-up, so I wasted a week that we simply do not have time to waste.

At this rate, my husband will be gone before we can even get this process started.  And, ahem, we kinda need him around for the process.

I swear, these people are gonna scream so loud when I set them on fire.

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April 22, 2009

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

One of my cherished new readers pointed out last night that there is a blogger who wrote about her family's ordeal with balanced translocation. I am reading the archives of Here Be Hippogriffs now. One post I think might be educational for my readers, especially the chromosomes made out of play-doh: Balanced Translocations 101.

I don't know if this story will type as well as it's told in person, but I was doing some research on my chromosomes yesterday. I told my mother over the phone that chromosome 7 was related to things like schizophrenia, cystic fibrosis, and deafness. "What?" she asked. "DEAFNESS." "Huh?" she asked right at the same time I was repeating myself. "Being DEAF," I practically screamed. Then we both cracked up.

Thank you for your kind words and your wows and your tempered optimism for the future. Everyone has responded beautifully. I am doing OK and letting everything slowly sink in. I am still on the high of having an answer, but actually, this is a crappy path to be on. I don't want to do IVF. I really don't want to do IVF by myself while my husband is in Afghanistan. How am I gonna give myself shots in the butt alone? I dread that, truly. Thinking about it already makes me panic.

But, distractions abound. I am happily attending the 2009 Milblogs Conference this weekend. And...my husband will be going with me! I am excited to see my imaginary and real worlds collide. We will be staying with AirForceFamily, which is always fun, and Charlie gets to torment pit bulls again. Plus I am excited to see AirForceWife's knitting. She has been at it for a while, but I've never gotten to see her stuff. She's all nonchalant about it; conversely, I am all "everyone should see how jacked and tan I am" about my knitting. So yay.

And I think I get to see someone I haven't seen since 1995. So that's fun.

So yeah, check out those play-doh chromosomes...

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April 21, 2009

ORIGINS: SARAH

wolverine.jpg

Remember when I said my husband and I should play the lottery? That we had managed to hit 1% and 5% probability for our pregnancies?

I just hit 0.16%.

Yesterday, due to yet another snafu with The Fertility Clinic Of The Absurd, I got a preview of today's appointment: something did indeed come back on our genetic testing. I spent all night and all morning freaking out. I could barely concentrate on anything, barely breathe even. And when I got to the clinic and shared a bustling waiting room with jovial nurses and at least six very pregnant ladies, I broke down crying. Not my finest moment. (I absolutely hate that fertility patients meet in the regular old ob-gyn clinic. Talk about having it rubbed in your face constantly.)

We finally got into our own room, and the doctor handed me the results of the chromosome analysis.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am an X-man.

I am the 1 out of every 625 people who has a balanced translocation between two chromosomes. Luckily, google was invented so I could figure out what in the heck that means.

A translocation is a change in chromosome structure in which chromosomes are attached to each other or pieces of different chromosomes have been interchanged. An individual with a translocation is unaffected if there is no extra or missing chromosome material and if the break in the chromosome did not disrupt gene function. If there is no additional or missing chromosome material, the translocation is considered to be "balanced." A translocation is "unbalanced" if there is extra or missing material.

Individuals with balanced translocations typically have no medical issues though some do have fertility concerns, such as reduced fertility. The concern regarding having a balanced translocation is that, though the individual is healthy, the egg or sperm of that individual can have an unbalanced chromosome make-up that leads to the resultant embryo or pregnancy being unbalanced. The presence of an unbalanced translocation can lead to an embryo not implanting, a pregnancy being lost or a child being born with mental and physical problems. Individuals with a translocation may, therefore, experience multiple pregnancy losses or have a child affected with physical and mental problems that may be lethal.

Translation: no natural babies for us. We have been referred to geneticist at a Big Name Hospital in the nearby metropolis, so I will be calling tomorrow to try to get an appointment there. They will be able to tell me if the particular translocation I have means that I can even procreate at all, and if so...it won't be in our bedroom.

See, I told you it wasn't stress! (wink)

If we are to have any chance at all, it will have to be with IVF using Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis. Google again, how did I live before you?:

Preimplantation genetic testing is a technique used to identify genetic defects in embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) before pregnancy. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) refers specifically to when one or both genetic parents has a known genetic abnormality and testing is performed on an embryo to see if it also carries a genetic abnormality.

I know we discussed this a little when I wrote that post on designer babies, and I debated whether to even mention that this is the route we'd have to take. But I decided that I have no ethical qualms about investigating this line of action, so I truly don't want any commentary if you think this is "playing God" or something. Please. I respect your position, but I'd prefer if you not advocate for it here.

Once we meet with the geneticist, we will have to decide if creating a Baby Grok will be worth the extraordinary complicated and fretful process. Nothing guarantees that PGD will even work: in this clinic in New Jersey, "in approximately 22% of cycles, all the embryos were chromosomally abnormal." But, if we could get some embryos who aren't mutants like their mother, the end results look promising...or at least better than the crap sandwich we've recently been eating:

Reduction in the Chance of Having a Child with the Translocation
Our personnel have performed PGD of translocations in over 100 cycles. Normal or balanced embryos were available to be transferred to the patient in the majority of cycles. Pregnancy occured in approximately 40% of the cycles with transfer. None of the delivered babies has been found to have and unbalanced translocation.

Reduction in Pregnancy Losses
The PGD procedure significantly reduces the chance of pregnancy loss. The patients who achieved pregnancy after PGD had experienced miscarriage in the majority (~85%) of their previous pregnancies. When these same patients underwent PGD, just fewer than 10% of pregnancies were miscarried. This is a significant reduction in pregnancy losses.

So that's where we're at.

On the plus side, we have an answer. We finally know the reason this has been happening to us. It is concrete and there is a potential workaround. I also have found some peace about the previous miscarriages: those poor babies had severe defects. It was not my immune system attacking them, as I had feared. I now know they died because they weren't growing properly, which comforts me somewhat.

I also am overwhelmed with relief that the problem is on my end instead of my husband's. I have puzzled people with that statement before, but I love my husband so much that I would rather bear the burden of being the "cause" of our problems than to watch him have to live with the guilt I am certain he would feel. I know I would not love him one tiny bit less if he had been the mutant, but he is the type of person would've been disappointed in himself, and I am glad to spare him that feeling. I also know, because he told me, that he wouldn't trade me for a non-mutant wife, and I believe him.

Plus he gets to tease me about being an X-man; he begged me not to take side with Magneto against normal humans like him. Heh.

So I'm afraid my experience is no longer very applicable to others who are struggling to have a baby or losing the ones they do have. Unless you too fit the 0.16% like I do -- and why do I keep giggling, imagining onlookers muttering "Freak!" like on Deuce Bigalow? -- your journey won't end up like mine, being forced to cherry-pick embryos from amongst the FAIL ones to create a frankenbaby. But hopefully my experiences and writing will still bring people some bit of knowledge or empathy.

So that's my story. Snickety snickety.

For further reading, see:
Balanced Translocation and Recurrent Miscarriages
Handbook of Genetic Counseling/Balanced Translocation
Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) for Translocations

I also have decided that I need a blog category for infertility. No one sets out on this journey to need that kind of label, but that's where I'm at, and for a while now I have felt that filing these posts under 'personal' just isn't cutting it anymore. I plan to comb through 2+ years of posts and re-categorize them.

P.S. I feel pretty OK today, and I am going to get loads of mileage out of calling myself a mutant. I am happy to have an answer and ready to see what we might learn in the next phase. So no need to worry.

Posted by: Sarah at 10:04 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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April 20, 2009

DEAR DARLA, YOU'RE THE BEST

Darla and I are currently going through much of the same -- a break from babymaking, upcoming deployments, etc -- and she wrote a great post about it.

I'd be lying if I said it hasn't been a little calmer around here since we took a hiatus from the baby making.

This past month has been very relaxing for us. No thinking about babies, no trying for babies, nothing. I had honestly been afraid that we might never be able to go back to "normal," that two years of forced coupling and repeated heartbreak might be hard to undo. But we have spent the past month happy with each other, as happy as we were before this whole mess began. So that was a relief.

I'd be lying to say I wasn't enjoying last weekend. [...] As slightly inebriated baby sister and I stumbled down the streets of Portland in the wee hours of the night behind our spouses, it was a bit of a relief to not be neglecting any children or having to place their care in someone else's hands while being completely stupidly unresponsible for myself. Sometimes it's joyous being an adult, and yes I know they have these things called 'sitters' but those barren like myself have to see silver linings everywhere.

I am quite good at the silver linings game by now. This weekend I ran to the grocery store to buy carrots for Charlie's birthday cake. I wandered around the store for a while, checking everything out. $30 in groceries later, I checked out and went home...to find that I'd left the carrots at the store. Back in the car, run back in the store, back home.

That was annoying, but imagine the ordeal toting a kid. I try to remind myself of stuff like that all the time.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't melancholy on occasion.

Snort. Sitting here doing nothing and then bursting into tears for no reason is just a way of life for me anymore.

Yet, as is the case in life, some evenings are crazier than others and sometimes the littlest stupidest thing, like someone's FB profile photo, can remind you of the exact spot you are at in life. For instance barren, at 29, here, now.

Replace that last sentence with "habitual aborter at 31" and that's me. I can't stand Facebook updates about other people's ultrasounds, and their healthy babies, and their profile pics of their bellies. Sometimes I have to stop myself from making mean comments.

Tomorrow we head to the doctor to find out the results of the tests on our genes and my immune system. I have completely freaked myself out by reading the book Is Your Body Baby Friendly? and now I am imagining the worst.

But truly the worst would be to hear that there's no cause for the repeated miscarriages. Then what?

And Darla, for Easter we had pork wrapped in pork. Mmmm.

Posted by: Sarah at 11:40 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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