Waiting

I hate waiting.

Another negative HCG test on Tuesday. No surprise for me. I'm pretty in tune now that I think I could tell I if was pregnant right away.

So I stopped taking the progesterone suppositories. Hurray. Now the waiting game. Will I get my period anytime soon, and if I don't I have to have yet another HCG test done. I mean, come on. It's day number 37, if it hasn't happened yet, I don't think it will. I sort of feel like I should just take this next month off. Everything has be messed up since the positive HPT's in September. All the clomid and progesterone are just cluttering up things. But my husband thinks that we should just plod along, and I also feel that way too, even though I feel like my body desperately needs a break.

I want to have a baby so badly, not just get pregnant, but have a baby, that I can't imagine not trying.

Fruitcake

It's that time of year again, time to start baking like crazy people. This was our project today, make the fruitcakes. We soaked them in whiskey and will do it again before we send them to the far reaches of the country, from Maine and Connecticut to California and Arizona

Next up, Christmas cookies. You just wait... :)

2.0

"How to Have a Happy Life" (According to Shannon - Version 2.0):

High school

College (was it ever an option not to?)

Get a job

Find a guy (or girl)

Get house/get married

Have kids or not (a baby won't fulfill you, only you can do that)

Be happy (or at least "fake it til you make it")

Version 1.0

An Article

A Planet of Pain, Where No Words Are Quite Right

By N. WEST MOSS
Published: October 20, 2008

There are no pink ribbons to wear if you’ve had a miscarriage, no walkathons or T-shirts to encourage awareness and prevention. And to the extent that we have a language to talk about miscarriage, it’s full of airy platitudes: “Don’t worry, I had one once, too,” or “I had two, and then — poof — Davey was born, and he’s graduating from college this week.”

But until you belong to the imaginary club of Mothers Without Children, it is a secret planet of pain, all but invisible to the outside world.

I recently had my third miscarriage in a year. It happened early in the pregnancy, and it was dismissed as no big deal — “chemical pregnancy” seems to be the term of art. Let’s not overreact, no need for hysterics, keep moving. “We’ll treat it as though you’re just getting your period,” as my doctor put it.

But honestly, it is not just like getting your period. Psychologically, of course, it is nothing like it, but physically it is different, too. I had cramps for hours that left my ribs feeling bruised, and then four days later I was back at work and exhausted because I was still bleeding a lot — not an alarming amount, but enough to make me schedule meetings in rooms near bathrooms, and to send me home in the afternoon for a two-hour nap. I wonder how men would cope. All of the pain, mess, furtive tidying-up, shame and soldiering-on seem so fundamentally female to me.

People act as if a miscarriage were a locatable event on a calendar, with a beginning, a middle and an end. But in fact it starts when you feel that first unmistakable twinge that something is totally wrong. It continues through the rough days of sorrow and deep cramps, and then it meanders through every single day of the rest of your whole stupid life. I will probably mourn about this miscarriage in some outwardly unremarkable way until I either have a healthy baby or die.

Talking about miscarriages is so loaded and pitiful and hushed and fraught with meaning about age and usefulness. It feels as though having three miscarriages in a year means I did something wrong, when the reality is that most miscarriages take place for chromosomal reasons out of our control.

Yet a woman who has had a miscarriage has likely asked herself why. “God must not want me to have a kid,” she might think, or “I am too old.” There are moments when you can feel that the miscarriage and the calamities of the world are your own doing and you should have somehow known better.

Maybe we don’t talk about our miscarriages because we don’t want women with children looking at us with pity, or teenagers in their immortality-flushed way thinking, “That’ll never happen to me.” We do not want happy families to whisper, “Thank God that’s not us.” We don’t want to wonder if men are thinking, “If they can’t have kids, then why are they here, anyway?”

I cannot tell you, though, what you should say to women who have had miscarriages. While it can be touching to hear other women’s stories, it can also be irritating: it makes our moment of extraordinary sadness feel ordinary and unremarkable. Why would I want to hear about your miscarriage when I am lying on the floor trying to lift 500 pounds of failure, disappointment and crashing hormones off my chest?

I can tell you that I want people to know. I don’t want it to be a secret or a shadow or something that is endured only alone. I want people to know that I have been through something, that I am tired but optimistic, that I’ve been knocked down but don’t help me up because I can get up myself.

It’s fair, I think, to want witnesses for our suffering. But with the sorrow also comes hope. And after all, we are resilient creatures. A friend of mine said it well in an e-mail message after she heard my news. “I hope you don’t give up,” she wrote. “I want to take a picture of your child one day against the tallest sunflower.”
N. West Moss is a writer in New Jersey.

Roller Coaster

Yesterday was a rough day. I think as good as it was to go to the seminar on Monday and be validated and feel like people cared about me and what I had to say and be able to honor Isabella and Sean, it also seemed like it set me back a bit lot. It was like I had started to block out all the pain and misery my life has been the last 7 months, not to mention the last 18 months. But in preparing what I might say I had to go back to that place. I had to muddy the waters and drag all those bad experiences back to the surface. I feel like it all just happened all over again. This is the roller coaster that is my life, I was up on top for a little while there, only to plummet and hit bottom.

Maybe I shouldn't have stopped taking the Zoloft last week. Maybe I should have waited until after this seminar. I had no idea how hard it would hit me.

Will I ever climb out of this hole?

---

**A letter to my OB/GYN**

November 12, 2008
Dr. XXXXX,

I want you to know that I have a lot of respect for you as a doctor and I think you’re great, as does my husband, XXX. But I have had a lot of heartache through some of the actions of your office. I was invited to a seminar on Monday, November 10th geared towards the medical field to teach them how to better handle families when a baby dies. I was asked to speak on the “parent panel” about my losses. Thinking about what I would say and in trying to prepare for it has brought all of these bad memories back to the foreground. There is so much that could easily have been done differently that could have made my experiences just a little more bearable. One person on the panel said of their experiences that you may not remember the good things were done or said, but you will always remember the bad things. Seven months later I still remember the bad things. I hope that by writing this it might be better for someone in the future.

I had to put this in bullet/outline form because I couldn’t write it like a letter.

U/S on April 8th

• Is there a rule about the tech saying there’s a problem?
  
• The tech left the U/S probe inside my vagina while looking for a doctor to discuss “my case”.
  
• I could tell by 3 different indications that there was no heartbeat, but because I’m a layperson it’s assumed I have no clue.
  

Your office

• Getting to the window and having the receptionist have no idea why I’m there. (I thought bad news travelled fast.)
  
• Having to wait with all the pregnant women until I could go to your private office to have the bad news confirmed.
  
• You stopped me when I was leaving to have me sign a form for the D&C, but instead of having me sit in your office or an empty exam room, I had to go back out to the waiting room where pregnant women were discussing baby showers.
  
• I left after 5 or 10 minutes but what seemed like an eternity because I couldn’t stand to sit there crying for my dead baby while everyone else was talking about their alive ones.
  
• I called the office on my cell phone on my way out to tell them I had left and the receptionist asked what was wrong, I exploded saying “my baby is dead!”
  
• Not 2 minutes later whoever was to witness me signing the form called.
  
• I couldn’t have it faxed to me because they had to “witness” me signing it so I had to go back the next day, at least that time I went right in and the waiting room was empty.
  
• Why was it I couldn’t have signed the form the day of the D&C?
  

Complete Miscarriage April 9th

• In the evening of April 9th the bleeding began and I passed all the “tissue”.
  
• I called the office around 7:30pm to have the on-call doctor call me back. Dr. XXXX called me back and basically said to just wait it out and call the office in the morning. He was very unsympathetic and cold on the phone.
  

Second U/S April 10th

• I had the same tech in the radiology department for the second U/S to check to see if anything was left behind in my uterus.
  
• Drinking 32 oz of water is useless for me since she couldn’t see anything the first time trans abdominally, so after waiting an additional 20-30 minutes past my appointment time to get called in for the U/S I said to just forget that part because I had to go to the bathroom right then and I would not wait.
  
• Then after the U/S was over I had to wait 45 minutes to an hour, and I wasn’t even sure what I was waiting for until you called me through the radiology receptionist’s desk phone.
  
• I felt very uncomfortable having that conversation with her sitting there and others in the waiting room able to listen in.
  
• I have a cell phone which is the only number listed in my chart and I could have been home already or on my way home since I then had to rush home to get the passed “tissue” to bring back to the office for pathology to look at.
  

D&C Cancelled for April 11th

• When I spoke to you on the phone at the radiologist’s office, after finding that my uterus was empty, you said that you would have my D&C cancelled. The next morning I got a call from the (outpatient center) asking where I was because I was late for my procedure. It made me really angry that something as simple as a phone call to them to cancel for me was so easily overlooked.
  

Countless times I feel like my time is wasted through your office. I realize I’m not a surgeon and I’m not saving lives, but my time is important to me. One person at your office who stands out is XXXX. She has called me several times to tell me my message was received. What is the point of that? I would call to get results to a test and she would call to say they weren’t in yet. Wouldn’t it be a better use of her time and mine for her to wait until there were results and then call me? Not only that but she’s been very rude to me.

Last month when I first went on the progesterone suppositories and was confused about the transition back to having a period, she and I went back and forth on the phone several times until finally you called and got me sorted out. It was a waste of a lot of time and much agonizing on my part to deal with her.

Today again I’m having the same issue. I had a blood test done this morning for pregnancy and it was negative, she cheerfully called me with the results and told me it would be repeated in a week if I still hadn’t had my period. That made absolutely no sense because being on the progesterone suppositories will prevent me from having a period.

You may not know, but I have been so depressed since these experiences that I stopped working for 2 months this summer and almost quit my job completely. That I’ve been on Zoloft, Trazadone and Ativan. I was in the “Partial Hospitalization Program” and I’ve been seeing a therapist weekly for over 7 months now. How I hate my husband’s family because of their treatment of me through this whole horrible experience. How people innocently ask me when/if I’m going to have kids, because XXX and I have been married 4 ½ years now and we don’t. Every day of my life is affected because of these losses, I’ve lost sleep, time at work, respect for my in-laws, faith in God and my marriage has suffered greatly for it.

If yours wasn’t “the only show in town” I would have long ago changed to a different office. At this point I would rather drive an hour just to not have to deal with some of the staff at your office.

I’m at a loss for what to do next or where to turn. I feel like having a baby is hopeless and I should just give up.
-Shannon D.

---

I'm debating sending it...

Misinformation

I am so frustrated with my doctor’s office. As if my life doesn’t suck enough they have to make things harder for me. As I posted before I’m on progesterone suppositories in the chance that I might get pregnant and it would help me to stay that way. So because of the progesterone I won’t get my period even if I’m not pregnant. So like last month I went in this morning (today is day 29) to have a blood test done, the HCG level was negative. Some nurse or whatever just called to tell me. She said “to wait a week and if I still haven’t gotten my period then they would repeat it.” This is completely wrong information. I find it reprehensible that I have to REMIND them that I’m on progesterone suppositories and therefore will not get my period so that advice makes absolutely zero sense. She cheerfully stated she would ask him and call me back. Whoop-de-do.

Last month when I first went on the suppositories there was a lot of confusion about what I should do. I called the office with questions only to get information back that made absolutely no sense (so why should I be so surprised today?). Finally after going back and forth with the same dumb whatever who had no clue and shouldn’t be allowed to talk to patients, my doctor called me himself. I even told him it would have been so much easier if he had just called from the start. I know one time in the past I requested that only my doctor call me back, I think I might have to reinstate that. I could just be nasty and say I don’t want the idiot chick to call me ever again. They always say who’s calling when I answer so I know it’s the same one time and again who is rude and incompetent.

I feel like I’m going to snap at this woman and say something like “should I just look into adoption, because this seems like a hopeless cause and the continuous misinformation from your office is making this harder than it needs to be.”

I just want to give up. Forget the clomid, forget the progesterone suppositories, forget it all. And screw everyone who says: “Don’t worry, it will happen.”

Regrets

I think I did pretty well at the seminar, not great, but ok. Of course after I wished I had said more, like how last year after Isabella died and my husband and I sent an email to a select group at work to let them know, people we had specifically told that I was pregnant which included my manager at the time, and my manager took it upon himself to forward that email to the whole department, which some of them forwarded to other people at work. Imagine my surprise/embarrassment that I was getting emails sent to my personal email address from people who didn't even know I was pregnant before they received the forwarded email. I really hate when people forward your personal private email to other people. I still can't imagine what he was thinking when he thought he had the right to do that. So this year, after I flipped out and stopped going to work, I called my manager and told him why. I told him about my miscarriage in April and how I hated my job and there was a whole host of other things going on that I was drowning in. I told him how my old manager forwarded my email last year and how upset that made me, so he said that he wouldn't tell anyone about my situation, which I thought was nice. At least while I was away from work I felt like people weren't talking about me losing another baby, but just wondering what illness I might have come down with for why I was out so long.

Getting back to the seminar, it was hard for me because my experience was so different from the other parents on the panel. I didn't spend any time in a hospital, no overnights, no maternity wards. My biggest complaints were for how everyday people treated me, especially my husband's family. I also feel like my mom knew how much they upset me so she went out of her way to treat me differently (better?) but I wonder if she really felt like that's how I should be treated or if she just wanted to one-up them. Obviously there's nothing anyone in the medical field can do about your family, friends or co-workers to somehow make them more understanding, more empathetic, more caring. (I just had an idea, wouldn't it be great if my therapist would write a letter or even an email to my husband's family to tell them how hard it's been for me and how their treatment of me has actually stalled my grieving/healing process. I doubt it would do any good, I think I've beaten the dead horse enough.)

For the little bit that I did have to deal with the medical field, there were definitely things that I wish could have been done differently. Like when I had my ultrasound for Sean, when we found out there was no heart beat. Why is it the tech can't say anything? When everything is great, they're all smiles and oh look at this etc etc. But when something is wrong, they say absolutely nothing. I think that is worse than if they said there was a problem and they would get someone to discuss it with me. When I said yesterday at the seminar that the tech had left the vaginal ultrasound probe inside me while she went to find a non-existent doctor to discuss my case with me, everyone made noises of disbelief. Yeah, I was in disbelief when it happened. But she couldn't find a doctor so I was sent to my doctor's office in the next building. I got to the desk and the receptionist had no idea why I was there. She joked saying "weren't you here earlier?" So I had to wait in the waiting room with all the pregnant women sitting and talking happily about their pregnancies. When I got to go back to my doctor's private office he didn't have to say a word, I already knew. During the ultrasound there were 3 indications, I could tell there was no heartbeat just by looking at the baby, I could see when she put the Doppler cursor on the baby that there was no heartbeat to be detected and she clicked it off very quickly, and when she put the screen to show blood flow (the red and blue splotches) I could see blood flow all around in my uterus, but not on the baby. The medical field, or at least this ultrasound tech, must think that "lay-people" are really dumb not to figure anything out on their own. In my doctor's office while the tears streamed down my face we discussed my options. I decided to have a D&C. I couldn't have it for 3 days because I was on my blood thinner injections and I would have to stop taking them for a couple days before the surgery. So we went to leave, numb, eyes red, and broken hearted when my doctor stopped me just before I got to the waiting room door. He needed me to sign a form for the surgery (why oh why couldn't I have done that the day of the D&C, I don't know) so instead of inviting me back to his office to wait for the form, or putting us in a spare exam room, we were sent back to the waiting room to listen to the pregnant women discussing baby showers. After what seemed like forever but was probably only 5 or 10 minutes I told my husband I was leaving. We went back to the car drove home and I crawled in to bed, defeated. I had to go back the next day to sign the form because they had to witness me signing it, so even though the last place I wanted to be was in that office, I had to go back. At least that time they took me right in and I didn't have to wait in the waiting room. Not an hour after I got home the bleeding began. All the tissue passed that evening. I went in the next day for another ultrasound with the same crappy tech to see if everything had come out. It had. (In the future I am going to refuse to drink the 32 oz of water before those ultrasounds. You can't see anything with the trans abdominal probe because I have a "retroverted uterus", so might as well just go for the full monty from the start.) Then I was told to wait in the radiology waiting room after the ultrasound. At least there weren't any pregnant women around. After 30-45 minutes my doctor called me and I had to take the call at the receptionist's desk. I felt that was pretty ridiculous since I have a cell phone (the only number listed in my chart) so he could have just called me on that and I could have been in the privacy of my car or house when I talked to him. But no, I had to waste a bunch of time waiting for him to call so I could talk with a receptionist sitting there listening. I also could have been on my way home to pick up the tissue (my dead baby) that came out and I put in a ziplock bag in my fridge (gross I know, but I wanted to have at least a remote chance that they could do some tests to find out what went wrong). So I got off the phone and we rushed home to pick it up and drive back before his office closed. How messed up is it when you have to walk into your doctor's office with a ziplock bag with bloody paper towels inside. I wrapped the bag with another paper towel because in my haste I couldn't think of anything else to put it in to conceal it for the walk from my car to the office. My doctor had told me on the phone at the radiology department that he would have my D&C cancelled. So then the next morning, when I would have been getting checked in for that, I was home resting, taking a "me" day. The outpatient center called wondering why I wasn't there. So many simple things could have been done, if someone had just made a phone call, thought about our feelings, or just been considerate.

I got there a little early yesterday, I had to drive an hour to get there after all so I wanted to make sure I didn't get stuck behind a big truck and was late. I got to hear some of the talk directed at the caregivers, nurses, chaplains, etc who attended the seminar. One of the things that really struck me was when Cathi said "you could sleep at night because you know you gave the best care possible." It made me think about all the sleepless nights I've had because I didn't get the best care possible.

The tears were already welling up.

Seminar

Today I'm going to Carol's "Compassionate Caregiving When a Baby Dies" seminar. I'm on the "Parent Panel". I was trying to think of a way to prepare for it. Should I make some sort of list of things that worked or didn't when Isabella and Sean died? Should I just talk about those days and surrounding days or should I mention how depressed I was that I stopped working for 2 months and almost quit my job completely? How I've been on all kinds of medication for depression and anxiety? How I've been seeing a therapist weekly for over 7 months now? I guess that's the thing about loosing a baby. It's not like it's only that day or following week that is a total bummer, but how it makes living life a bummer. How different would this summer have been if I didn't lose Sean? His due date would have been Wednesday, November 12th, but I would have had him already. Because of my blood clotting issues, I would have had to stop taking my blood thinner injections and be induced. He would be with me now. I would be on permanent maternity leave. I would actually feel like a mother. I would be a mother.

I still feel like an impostor. Even going to this seminar, I feel like a fake almost. I don't know if easier is the right word, but for women who actually looked pregnant and lost their baby at least people knew. I feel like part of my isolation is that no one knew. That's the Catch-22 of when do you tell because if you tell and you have a miscarriage (like me) then everyone knows you lost your baby, and does that make them care? I don't know. But if you don't tell and you're sad or sensitive about being around babies and people wonder why, do you then have to tell then? On some levels it's nice that people don't know, because they aren't pretending to care or trying to say the "right" thing. Or eating their foot and saying exactly what you don't want to hear. But then I also want to shake people and make them realize that something so innocent as asking if my husband and I are planning on having kids can feel like a kick to the gut. How do you answer that without "showing your hand"? Or at least without biting their head off?

That's the thing about this... it's not easy at all.

Missing Sasha

Today is the 3 year anniversary of Sasha's death. I still miss her so much. I won't apologize to you non-cat-people, or folks that think a pet is just a pet, she was a part of our family. She was the best cat ever, even the things she did to get in trouble were adorable because she was so smart, she could open cabinets and get into anything she set her mind to. (Which is why we have latches on lots of things in the kitchen.) I swear she would check the bedroom doors to see if she could push them open to snuggle on the bed all day.

I got Sasha and Katie in Drummondville, QC at a pet store. I know that a lot of folks are against pet store animals because of puppy mills and all that, but I just went in to see if they had any cute critters, just to look. I wasn't planning on taking 2 adorable kittens home. But there they were, Sasha was the most adorable little fuzzy calico bundle, she really caught my eye. I got to hold her and she mewed in my lap in a cute little kitten voice. Katie was a fuzzy little bundle too, wearing her tuxedo, and so adorable, but Sasha sealed the deal. At the store there were 3 kittens, Sasha, Katie and their brother. He was already spoken for (I wonder if he wasn't if I would have taken him too!!), he looked just like Katie, so much so they had to check to make sure she was the girl when I decided to get them. It was April 13, 2002.

Sasha is so pooped out, but Katie is taking a moment to clean her tummy.

Katie stuffed Sasha in the couch cushions...

So precious when they snuggled together...

I was dating a guy who lived in Drummondville (our relationship was on the way out so this provided a distraction) we took them back to his apartment and set them up with a litter box and food, we played and played and then they napped and napped. I took them home later that weekend, snuck them across the border. I always joked that Sasha and Katie were "illegal aliens". The boyfriend and I broke up, and then I started dating my future husband. I knew he was a keeper by how my kitties took to him. It's lucky for him that he's a cat person.

Katie sidled in to snuggle up with Sasha.

My husband (boyfriend at the time) was getting his masters part time through a distance learning program while working so he would watch his classes online or on videos FedEx'd to him. Sasha would love to sit with him while he worked. When we bought our house she would watch the videos with him and then sit with him at his computer while he did homework and if he got up to get a snack or drink she would follow him down to the kitchen and then back up to the office. It was like she got her masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering too.

Every night they would be locked in the (furnished) basement and every morning my husband would let them out. Katie would immediately run up to snuggle with me in bed and Sasha would hang out with my husband for a bit and then come up to see me. She stretched up on his leg, rubbed against her favorite corner and then that was it. She dropped to the floor, kicked a few times, went limp and was gone. My husband yelled to me and I ran down to see her on the floor, I ran to get my phone and call the vet, we rushed her to the animal hospital, but it was too late, there was nothing they could do. We took her home and buried her outside Katie's window later that day. November 4, 2005.

>^..^<

Sasha Marie

March 2, 2002 - November 4, 2005

Reproductive Update

Yesterday I started taking the progesterone suppositories again. Yuck. I feel like I'm going to wet myself continuously. I swear I won't complain about them again if it ends up working.

My husband's presentation was today, so he's on his way home (actually in the air right now). Now that it's done it's likely he won't have any more travel for work for a while. So if this month is a wash then maybe we'll have better luck next month with him home more than a few days here and there.

I need to call my OBGYN and find out when/if I need to have a blood HCG test done and if it's negative if I have to do the provera again or what. Has anyone had experience taking progesterone suppositories and what they did if they didn't get pregnant?