I have trouble temping at a regular time because I wake up early and can't go back to sleep easily. And while you're supposed to take your BBT at the same time every morning, it's particularly important to take it before you move around and after at least 3 hours of interrupted sleep.
Well, if you have two partners whose alarms go off at 5 or so, sometimes you temp at 5, sometimes at 6 when the theme from Firefly plays, and sometimes--like this morning--at 4:30am because you're awake for no reason at all.
96.82
That's below my coverline, which is probably something like 97.1. Which sounds like a smooth jazz station.
Anyway.
So, that's kind of not good because to cook up a baby you need sustained high heat. (What, that isn't how baby science works?) Maybe it would be more accurate to say, you need progesterone, which among other useful baby-making hormonal activities, raises your temperature. I could have predicted the end of my first early-early pregnancy when I saw the drop in my temperature. Once I started to bleed, this was followed by an even more precipitous drop. It reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Bart keeps replaying video of Lisa telling Ralph Wiggum she's not his girlfriend: "Look. You can actually pinpoint the second when his heart rips in half." Only, you know. On a fertility graph.
But here's the confusing part. If my temp is dropping like this, menstruation should come next. But it's too early for me to bleed. And I have no pms symptoms at all. (Of course, the progesterone cream I'm taking can ease pms symptoms, so maybe they're just masked). So it could be (1) just a weird temp (it's cold this morning), (2) a herald of an early period, or (3) an implantation dip.
Remember that one? It's this little temp drop that happens about a week after ovulation for some people, but about twice as frequently among people who are pregnant. So no implantation dip doesn't mean you're not pregnant, and having a dip doesn't mean you are, but it could.
This is just a teensy weensy bit frustrating.
I lay awake for probably an hour after temping. Socks lay next to me. He is beautiful. And I mean empirically, incomparably, startlingly beautiful, and never more so than in sleep. He and Mr. Fish sleep the sleep of the innocent: lips slightly puckered like little children, eyelashes fluttering every few heartbeats, chests rising slowly and evenly. I flop and sprawl throughout the night. Sometimes when the three of us sleep together, I'll get up partway through the night so as not to disturb them with my midnight swim routine. Mr. Fish and I wake up all at once, but Socks goes through the seven ages of man every morning. And while I prefer to let him wake slowly, only gaining language after an hour of waking and falling under again, I know I that if I need him, he wakes to full responsiveness.
So when I felt mild, but unmistakable, cramping this morning, I could have waked him. But it's different now than the first time. We each had our hearts broken so, the last time. There was such giddy hope, even as we tried to stay grounded. Mr. Fish is trying not to think about it much, until there's something clear to focus on. I don't know about Socks. Probably the same.
I feel lonely, though not alone. I know they're both full of love and attention, as much as I need. But it's something that inside of me only. So instead of waking Socks and saying, I think maybe I've experiencing implantation, I just lay awake. I can choose not to get them involved in the uncertainty and minutia, but I can't keep myself from being here, deep inside myself. Right now I feel so still, so quiet. Lonely, but not sad. Just quiet. I'm drifting, and I don't feel like I can connect with anyone, unless maybe I found someone else waiting to find out if their future was about to change or if the next weeks would be full of disappointment and waiting or if hope would be followed by loss, again.
I want to lie curled inside of another person who is waiting. We would lie in bed all day and maybe not talk at all. Just spoon each other and wait for news.
This morning is fine and cool. My fingers are a little numb, typing clumsily. Two of our three cats are curled into their tightest configurations, triangle heads tucked under fluffy tails. My bed is something of a fantasy--lofted by multiple mattresses probably four feet above the ground, a canopy swathed on all four sides in sheer white fabric, shot through with sunlight. And in the time I've been drawing and writing, I've felt cramps two more times.
Either I'm bleeding early, or we are starting this hope-and-fear process again. I will go to the doctor tomorrow and explain what I need. I don't know what she'll say or do. I'm afraid of not being understood. I want to put her hand right here on my belly, above that place where the deep inside feelings originate. I am doing something right now. Help me hold on this time.
I'll let you know.
Showing posts with label chemical pregnancy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chemical pregnancy. Show all posts
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
In the words of the great philosopher Thomas of Petty...
The anticipation is the most challenging aspect.
Chance conspired to give us only one try at conception this month. We had two last time, and three is the goal. This is our second cycle, and it's both harder and easier than the first time. There are new fears: my luteal phase is too short, this pregnancy will fail like the last one, since we only got one try, it's not going to work, etc.
There are hopes, too. My body started a pregnancy the first time we tried. That makes it likely that I am fertile and reproductively capable, and that swim team Iron Will is going for the gold. (We threatened to get Will a swim trophy, because his little dudes clearly have what it takes). As for the short luteal phase, I'm lucky that it's fairly minor. Mine is 9-11 days, but I've seen people online allude to 4-6 day phases. That means that the body starts flushing the uterine lining before a fertilized egg even gets to the uterus! I'm trying everything I can to lengthen my luteal phase and raise my progesterone. I'm taking 100mg of B6, 120 mg of Chasteberry, and a bioidentical progesterone cream.
I'm also trying to get in to see my doctor. This experience had led me to appreciate the little things that make such a difference when your heart is on the line. I called my doctor's office. Her smile is dazzlingly beautiful, and her bedside manner is gracious and warm. Everyone is "gorgeous" and "honey." I'd give her a B+ on gay stuff, a C on queerness, and probably a D- on trans. That's not unusual. It will be interesting to see if she takes the opportunity to learn, as I've had several friends of the queer/trans variety ask for her information and become her patients. She is African American and her staff is entirely people of color of whom several seem to be gay/queer and her clinic shares office space and patients with a Chinese medicine and acupuncture outfit, and she takes many, many kinds of insurance. If she brushes up on care for queer folk, she'll be running about the best, most diverse, most welcoming local clinic in town. Her staff is professional, friendly, attentive, and I've never had a bad stick there. She's great about giving you the clearest information in a way you can understand. She wants my cholesterol down, which I know is responsible, but it kind of annoys me because I don't want to take statins, my diet is healthy and very low cholesterol, and the pattern for women in my family is (a) until 30s, low blood pressure and low cholesterol, (b) 30s through middle age, low blood pressure and highish cholesterol, (c) after menopause, high blood pressure and highish cholesterol. This seems to hold true depite many variations in lifestyle, climate, diet, and medication. I know it's unusual for a person to have an army of clones for medical reference, but that's how we do in my family. A bevvy of females. A matriarchy with my grandmother at the head (and my mom next in line of succession). We're all slight variations on a template, so you only have to look around the family tree to see your future.
Anyway, a week before I was due to ovulate, I realized that while I'd seen (and taken) over the counter progesterone, the medicine people were talking about on all the TTC websites is available by prescription only.
Boo.
So I call my doctor and (unsurprisingly) she is booked for the whole week. One of her staff, a beautiful young man named Alfonso, took my call. It would have been easy to just schedule me and note "would like advice on a prescription," but he paused and, hearing the urgency in my voice, asked if I would be willing to tell him more about it. I poured out the facts as quickly as I could: I am a queer person starting a family and trying to get pregnant through assisted insemination, I've been charting for months, my luteal phase is on the short side, last month I lost an early pregnancy, I need medical support to sustain a pregnancy, and the sooner the better because I was about to try again. Alfonso repeated everything back to me and said, "I'm going to talk to the doctor as soon as she gets out of her next appointment. I'll call you back before 4." I hung up on the verge of tears, just because someone seemed to take my needs seriously. I felt like I had support.
When he called back, he said that my doctor was willing to prescribe the cream, but wanted a hormone panel first. I came in the next morning, got a perfect stick (as usual--seriously, I can't tell you what a big deal it is to have someone competent draw your blood!) and--you guessed it--waited.
Our one insemination happened over the weekend. I figure that if I ovulate on Sunday, the (potentially) fertilized egg has a week to travel before it implants. That meant I had about a week to get my progesterone up and/or extend my luteal phase if I wanted to support implantation. On Monday they got my hormone panel back, but the conversation was really, really frustrating. Again, I still haven't seen the doctor, so I haven't gotten to communicate clearly about what's happening and why I'm asking for help. The message I got was that (1) based on the panel, she doesn't think my hormones need support, (2) she'd like to put me on birth control to regulate my cycle, (3) which means 6-12 months before I can get pregnant. Also (4) my vitamin D is a little low and my cholesterol is a little high and she'd like to straighten that out first.
...
Fun fact! Often ellipses imply a trailing off into silence. In this case, they indicate simmering rage.
I'm trying to chill because I know I still haven't talked to her, so my doctor probably doesn't understand that I'm a healthy person without severe fertility challenges who needs support because we have to borrow sperm for each and every try and I'm 34 so this is not something we can just dick around with okay??? <sigh> I can't imagine if we were paying for sperm and each cycle cost thousands of dollars. How many times could be try before we were forced to give up for simple financial reasons, if we were even willing to consider making a child that couldn't know the beginning of its own story? I don't know how to tell Will and Tink what it means that they choose to help us make a family, and are committed to being a family to us and to Tk. My fear says they'll give up on us, or it will become too awkward or inconvenient. I think it's just a miserable stupid fear, but it gnaws at me when I imagine letting more time slip by because of obstacles that could be removed. If progesterone cream is not going to give me cancer--and research suggests that it isn't--then I'm not interested in hearing about why I can't have what I believe will make a healthy pregnancy happen.
I have an appointment for this coming Monday, which likely means that any help I get will be too late for this attempt--hence the B6, chasteberry, and OTC progesterone cream. Unless you've tried to get pregnant (and I know there are so many people who have it so very much harder than I do) I don't know if you can understand the wordless animal need to make this happen. There's an emotional/intellectual side that wants to parent, wants to meet Tk, wants to continue the experience of family that so enriches my life, wants to make Tk's future as full of opportunity and possibility as it can be. And then there this bloody, hungering, primal goddess-not-like-Aphrodite-think-like-the-Morrigan-or-the-Gorgons. She has teeth and claws and a red ripe womb that's fit to burst with life, and god help you if you get in the way, because she will slash you to pieces and drink you dry.
Ahem.
I might not mention that last part to my doctor. Anyway, I'm taking Socks to the appointment if at all possible, and he's good at medical stuff. We can take turns playing good cop, bad cop.
Because come hell or high water, I am having this baby. And everyone else can help or get out of the way.
Chance conspired to give us only one try at conception this month. We had two last time, and three is the goal. This is our second cycle, and it's both harder and easier than the first time. There are new fears: my luteal phase is too short, this pregnancy will fail like the last one, since we only got one try, it's not going to work, etc.
There are hopes, too. My body started a pregnancy the first time we tried. That makes it likely that I am fertile and reproductively capable, and that swim team Iron Will is going for the gold. (We threatened to get Will a swim trophy, because his little dudes clearly have what it takes). As for the short luteal phase, I'm lucky that it's fairly minor. Mine is 9-11 days, but I've seen people online allude to 4-6 day phases. That means that the body starts flushing the uterine lining before a fertilized egg even gets to the uterus! I'm trying everything I can to lengthen my luteal phase and raise my progesterone. I'm taking 100mg of B6, 120 mg of Chasteberry, and a bioidentical progesterone cream.
I'm also trying to get in to see my doctor. This experience had led me to appreciate the little things that make such a difference when your heart is on the line. I called my doctor's office. Her smile is dazzlingly beautiful, and her bedside manner is gracious and warm. Everyone is "gorgeous" and "honey." I'd give her a B+ on gay stuff, a C on queerness, and probably a D- on trans. That's not unusual. It will be interesting to see if she takes the opportunity to learn, as I've had several friends of the queer/trans variety ask for her information and become her patients. She is African American and her staff is entirely people of color of whom several seem to be gay/queer and her clinic shares office space and patients with a Chinese medicine and acupuncture outfit, and she takes many, many kinds of insurance. If she brushes up on care for queer folk, she'll be running about the best, most diverse, most welcoming local clinic in town. Her staff is professional, friendly, attentive, and I've never had a bad stick there. She's great about giving you the clearest information in a way you can understand. She wants my cholesterol down, which I know is responsible, but it kind of annoys me because I don't want to take statins, my diet is healthy and very low cholesterol, and the pattern for women in my family is (a) until 30s, low blood pressure and low cholesterol, (b) 30s through middle age, low blood pressure and highish cholesterol, (c) after menopause, high blood pressure and highish cholesterol. This seems to hold true depite many variations in lifestyle, climate, diet, and medication. I know it's unusual for a person to have an army of clones for medical reference, but that's how we do in my family. A bevvy of females. A matriarchy with my grandmother at the head (and my mom next in line of succession). We're all slight variations on a template, so you only have to look around the family tree to see your future.
Anyway, a week before I was due to ovulate, I realized that while I'd seen (and taken) over the counter progesterone, the medicine people were talking about on all the TTC websites is available by prescription only.
Boo.
So I call my doctor and (unsurprisingly) she is booked for the whole week. One of her staff, a beautiful young man named Alfonso, took my call. It would have been easy to just schedule me and note "would like advice on a prescription," but he paused and, hearing the urgency in my voice, asked if I would be willing to tell him more about it. I poured out the facts as quickly as I could: I am a queer person starting a family and trying to get pregnant through assisted insemination, I've been charting for months, my luteal phase is on the short side, last month I lost an early pregnancy, I need medical support to sustain a pregnancy, and the sooner the better because I was about to try again. Alfonso repeated everything back to me and said, "I'm going to talk to the doctor as soon as she gets out of her next appointment. I'll call you back before 4." I hung up on the verge of tears, just because someone seemed to take my needs seriously. I felt like I had support.
When he called back, he said that my doctor was willing to prescribe the cream, but wanted a hormone panel first. I came in the next morning, got a perfect stick (as usual--seriously, I can't tell you what a big deal it is to have someone competent draw your blood!) and--you guessed it--waited.
Our one insemination happened over the weekend. I figure that if I ovulate on Sunday, the (potentially) fertilized egg has a week to travel before it implants. That meant I had about a week to get my progesterone up and/or extend my luteal phase if I wanted to support implantation. On Monday they got my hormone panel back, but the conversation was really, really frustrating. Again, I still haven't seen the doctor, so I haven't gotten to communicate clearly about what's happening and why I'm asking for help. The message I got was that (1) based on the panel, she doesn't think my hormones need support, (2) she'd like to put me on birth control to regulate my cycle, (3) which means 6-12 months before I can get pregnant. Also (4) my vitamin D is a little low and my cholesterol is a little high and she'd like to straighten that out first.
...
Fun fact! Often ellipses imply a trailing off into silence. In this case, they indicate simmering rage.
I'm trying to chill because I know I still haven't talked to her, so my doctor probably doesn't understand that I'm a healthy person without severe fertility challenges who needs support because we have to borrow sperm for each and every try and I'm 34 so this is not something we can just dick around with okay??? <sigh> I can't imagine if we were paying for sperm and each cycle cost thousands of dollars. How many times could be try before we were forced to give up for simple financial reasons, if we were even willing to consider making a child that couldn't know the beginning of its own story? I don't know how to tell Will and Tink what it means that they choose to help us make a family, and are committed to being a family to us and to Tk. My fear says they'll give up on us, or it will become too awkward or inconvenient. I think it's just a miserable stupid fear, but it gnaws at me when I imagine letting more time slip by because of obstacles that could be removed. If progesterone cream is not going to give me cancer--and research suggests that it isn't--then I'm not interested in hearing about why I can't have what I believe will make a healthy pregnancy happen.
I have an appointment for this coming Monday, which likely means that any help I get will be too late for this attempt--hence the B6, chasteberry, and OTC progesterone cream. Unless you've tried to get pregnant (and I know there are so many people who have it so very much harder than I do) I don't know if you can understand the wordless animal need to make this happen. There's an emotional/intellectual side that wants to parent, wants to meet Tk, wants to continue the experience of family that so enriches my life, wants to make Tk's future as full of opportunity and possibility as it can be. And then there this bloody, hungering, primal goddess-not-like-Aphrodite-think-like-the-Morrigan-or-the-Gorgons. She has teeth and claws and a red ripe womb that's fit to burst with life, and god help you if you get in the way, because she will slash you to pieces and drink you dry.
Ahem.
I might not mention that last part to my doctor. Anyway, I'm taking Socks to the appointment if at all possible, and he's good at medical stuff. We can take turns playing good cop, bad cop.
Because come hell or high water, I am having this baby. And everyone else can help or get out of the way.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Conception II: The Reckoning, Part Deux
So why are we trying again? Didn't it work out the first time?
Yes and no.
Yes.
But subsequently no.
Let's go back to the filmstrip about where babies come from. Not the one in the gym. That one reeeally doesn't track with my experience. The one in science class. Sperm is introduced into the "vagina" (or "man cave," or whatever the owner of the orifice in question calls it). The ones who get their act together survive the acidity of that region probably with the help of super-friendly eggwhite-consistency cervical mucus. If they make it to the cervix, they swim up up up the fallopian tubes, headed for the ovaries. If an egg is already present, it's party time. If not, they hang out and wait. (I don't think that eggs are inherently female, but I suspect that they're inherently femme).
Side note: your average ejaculatory emission contains about a quarter of a billion sperm. 250 million. Of these, maybe 100 will get a shot at the egg. Those may be discouraging odds, but I do like that the body sets a nice high bar for making humans. If you're still chasing your tail 24 hours after being introduced to a nice cervix, I don't think you should be fertilizing anybody. And even if you're a clever little sperm, zipping up a fallopian tube, there's no guarantee that the ovary you're headed for is the one that released an egg this cycle. What's more, if you make it to the right destination but the egg hasn't arrived yet, you're going to have to wait. Female sperm live longer, so if insemination happens days before ovulation, the sperm who are still around to greet the egg are probably going to produce a girl. Alternately, if insemination is timed very close to ovulation, the race is to the swift--which tend to be male sperm. So it's a tough combination of speed and endurance that generally yields a 50-50 chance of creating a boy child or a girl child, even among DIY/assisted insemination conception. (Also, in 1 in 100 live births babies show signs of sexual ambiguity, suggesting that biological sex itself is more of a spectrum than a binary. That's another blog post).
We inseminated, and then we waited. If you knew me, you'd know how very not-at-all-good I am at waiting. See, even if fertilization occurs, you're still looking at a week of travel for the zygote to be passed back down through the fallopian tubes to the uterus where it implants. (If it implants anywhere but in the wall of the uterus, that's bad). So that's a week where you feel normal, but there's something of great interest taking place that you can't see or sense. All the early pregnancy symptoms are pretty much just like PMS symptoms, and most of the clear indicators don't happen any sooner than your next missed period. So it's waiting. For me, I spent the time being obnoxious. If I had a headache, I would announce in a grave scientific voice that this was clearly a "pregnancy headache." I was also burdened with "pregnancy allergies" and "pregnancy munchies." But I really was just playing around until the morning I woke up and instead of getting my coffee and perusing the internet before work, I jumped Socks's bones. Like whoa. They next day I did it again. This is about a week after my ovulation, which means that it would be about time for a fertilized egg to implant in my uterus and for my body to ramp up production of pregnancy hormones. All of the sudden I was almost annoyingly aroused, kind of all the time. I had read that this can be caused by increased blood flow, but for all my "pregnancy munchies" jokes, I really didn't have any reason to think that I was pregnant--or wasn't! It was frustrating, because it was a total coin flip; just no clue on way or another.
Then exactly 7 days after ovulation, I found light pink blood on a tissue after urinating. (Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome! So much mucus and urine for sharing!) Socks tripped on one of our doofy cats while I was in the restroom and hollared, "I'm alright!" I stared at the tissue and after several seconds, found my voice to say: "I don't think I am." Socks and I jumped up and down in the living room. "I might be pregnant!" "You might be pregnant!" I felt increasingly certain the next day as I felt cramping that wasn't followed by bleeding. I even had the tiny temperature dip that often corresponds to implantation. My chart and symptoms were textbook.
I had about two and a half days of quiet, almost matter-of-fact joy. I knew to expect that things might not work out. My luteal cycle is between 9 and 11 days. That's on the short side, because your luteal cycle is the maximum amount of time an egg has to get fertilized, head for the uterus, implant, and for the body to release the chemicals that help you support a pregnancy. If there's too short a time between ovulation and when menstuation would usually begin, you may never be able to support a pregnancy without intervention. Fortunately a luteal cycle defect (that's what they call it) is pretty easy to correct with diet, supplements, and hormones. But even everything starts well, something like 1 in 3 pregnancies doesn't continue to healthy birth. Most of those miscarriages happen in the first 12 weeks. Our friends Keds and Eds lost a pregnancy after the 5th week, for no apparent reason, and it was devastating for them. So I was trying to be ready for one or more false starts. But you're not really ready. Especially for something you've simply never experienced.
Friday, 11 days after conception occurred, I felt cramps. I went to the restroom and there was blood, blood, blood. I texted my partners and my sister. I couldn't hold the feeling of having lost that beginning inside of me. The meeting I was in had broken for lunch and I sort of staggered out of the building and down the street. There was a health food store at the corner (because this is Austin) and I wandered in, searching on my phone for supplements that help lengthen your luteal cycle. Socks called me. I was choking up, trying to squeeze out an even voice: "I want--you to research--short luteal cycles for me." Socks murmured, "I don't think that there's anything wrong with your luteal--" "It would really help me right now if you would help me by researching short luteal cycles." I was losing it. "Okay. I will." I can't remember the rest of the conversation. I was blinded by tears trying to speak quietly and calmly in a health food store without attracting attention, and I was falling apart. I bought chasteberry after a conversation about which product the associate recommended. She was friendly and knowledgeable, and I wondered if she could tell I was having trouble keeping it together. I bought myself cheese and a protein smoothie as consolation and went back to my meeting.
I came home to the boys. Mr. Fish was working from home and Socks had returned from an errand. I got in the bath and gave in. This was more than the abstract sense of loss of a potential child. This was physical. This was a part of me that didn't have language, that didn't reason, that just wanted to scream and howl with emptiness. I just kept rocking and sobbing, with Socks behind me, holding me in his arms. I just couldn't hold onto it. Why couldn't I hold onto it? I had it. I had it. I'm not crazy. I had it. I felt insane for grieving something that didn't even test positive on an early pregnancy test. But I also knew what I felt.
Over the next few days I kept looking at my chart: the picture of insemination and ovulation, conception and implantation, and then the 2 degree temperature drop that signaled my body was halting the pregnancy. I just needed proof to show--somebody? everybody? myself?--that my grief had some cause. I was a mess for days. I just couldn't stop crying. I drove down to Houston for my mom's birthday. It was an occasion I was hoping to celebrate with good news. Instead I was just "scattered showers" all weekend. It wasn't like I was in shock or still reeling from the disappointment. I had hardly started to hope! It was just...bare, physical loss. I could be around people for two or three hours, and then I just had to get away. I felt even more wrecked that no one was experiencing the loss the way I was--not even my partners. They were disappointed and sad, and particularly sad for my sorrow, but the grief was located in my body and no one else's and ultimately it just had to run its course.
I'm wearing what Socks described as an art installation around my neck. One necklace is from Socks. It's a gift from his mother, a simple silver heart on a chain. The heart usually catches on a silver cylinder--a souvenir from a church in St. Petersburg, Russia, that holds a prayer for Tk: Come home, Tk: whole and healthy and already loved. Another necklace was a gift from my mother for Tk's altar; it's a gift from a family friend upon her high school graduation, shortly after her father's death. The last necklace in Tink's brass key. I mean to take them off, but they give me comfort. Most people around me don't know I'm trying to get pregnant, and they certainly don't know about my disappointment. I like the tangle of delicate chains, and the chime when I lean forward and they touch. I like that my 9 month old godson reaches for them.
It's strange to write this with detachment now. It's been two weeks, and I feel...normal? This morning I did experience a jolt of excitement and fear, thinking that I may be starting the process all over again, and it could happen again. The having and the losing. It could be worse (as I'm certain that it's worse and worse the longer the pregnancy lasts before ending). I'm taking chasteberry, vitamin B6, and I'm trying to get progesterone cream from my doctor before implantation would be likely. When I go home tonight, I'll see my loves, I'll clean my room, I'll put on the Boss again, and try again.
Wish us luck. Come home, Tk.
Yes and no.
Yes.
But subsequently no.
Let's go back to the filmstrip about where babies come from. Not the one in the gym. That one reeeally doesn't track with my experience. The one in science class. Sperm is introduced into the "vagina" (or "man cave," or whatever the owner of the orifice in question calls it). The ones who get their act together survive the acidity of that region probably with the help of super-friendly eggwhite-consistency cervical mucus. If they make it to the cervix, they swim up up up the fallopian tubes, headed for the ovaries. If an egg is already present, it's party time. If not, they hang out and wait. (I don't think that eggs are inherently female, but I suspect that they're inherently femme).
Side note: your average ejaculatory emission contains about a quarter of a billion sperm. 250 million. Of these, maybe 100 will get a shot at the egg. Those may be discouraging odds, but I do like that the body sets a nice high bar for making humans. If you're still chasing your tail 24 hours after being introduced to a nice cervix, I don't think you should be fertilizing anybody. And even if you're a clever little sperm, zipping up a fallopian tube, there's no guarantee that the ovary you're headed for is the one that released an egg this cycle. What's more, if you make it to the right destination but the egg hasn't arrived yet, you're going to have to wait. Female sperm live longer, so if insemination happens days before ovulation, the sperm who are still around to greet the egg are probably going to produce a girl. Alternately, if insemination is timed very close to ovulation, the race is to the swift--which tend to be male sperm. So it's a tough combination of speed and endurance that generally yields a 50-50 chance of creating a boy child or a girl child, even among DIY/assisted insemination conception. (Also, in 1 in 100 live births babies show signs of sexual ambiguity, suggesting that biological sex itself is more of a spectrum than a binary. That's another blog post).
We inseminated, and then we waited. If you knew me, you'd know how very not-at-all-good I am at waiting. See, even if fertilization occurs, you're still looking at a week of travel for the zygote to be passed back down through the fallopian tubes to the uterus where it implants. (If it implants anywhere but in the wall of the uterus, that's bad). So that's a week where you feel normal, but there's something of great interest taking place that you can't see or sense. All the early pregnancy symptoms are pretty much just like PMS symptoms, and most of the clear indicators don't happen any sooner than your next missed period. So it's waiting. For me, I spent the time being obnoxious. If I had a headache, I would announce in a grave scientific voice that this was clearly a "pregnancy headache." I was also burdened with "pregnancy allergies" and "pregnancy munchies." But I really was just playing around until the morning I woke up and instead of getting my coffee and perusing the internet before work, I jumped Socks's bones. Like whoa. They next day I did it again. This is about a week after my ovulation, which means that it would be about time for a fertilized egg to implant in my uterus and for my body to ramp up production of pregnancy hormones. All of the sudden I was almost annoyingly aroused, kind of all the time. I had read that this can be caused by increased blood flow, but for all my "pregnancy munchies" jokes, I really didn't have any reason to think that I was pregnant--or wasn't! It was frustrating, because it was a total coin flip; just no clue on way or another.
Then exactly 7 days after ovulation, I found light pink blood on a tissue after urinating. (Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome! So much mucus and urine for sharing!) Socks tripped on one of our doofy cats while I was in the restroom and hollared, "I'm alright!" I stared at the tissue and after several seconds, found my voice to say: "I don't think I am." Socks and I jumped up and down in the living room. "I might be pregnant!" "You might be pregnant!" I felt increasingly certain the next day as I felt cramping that wasn't followed by bleeding. I even had the tiny temperature dip that often corresponds to implantation. My chart and symptoms were textbook.
I had about two and a half days of quiet, almost matter-of-fact joy. I knew to expect that things might not work out. My luteal cycle is between 9 and 11 days. That's on the short side, because your luteal cycle is the maximum amount of time an egg has to get fertilized, head for the uterus, implant, and for the body to release the chemicals that help you support a pregnancy. If there's too short a time between ovulation and when menstuation would usually begin, you may never be able to support a pregnancy without intervention. Fortunately a luteal cycle defect (that's what they call it) is pretty easy to correct with diet, supplements, and hormones. But even everything starts well, something like 1 in 3 pregnancies doesn't continue to healthy birth. Most of those miscarriages happen in the first 12 weeks. Our friends Keds and Eds lost a pregnancy after the 5th week, for no apparent reason, and it was devastating for them. So I was trying to be ready for one or more false starts. But you're not really ready. Especially for something you've simply never experienced.
Friday, 11 days after conception occurred, I felt cramps. I went to the restroom and there was blood, blood, blood. I texted my partners and my sister. I couldn't hold the feeling of having lost that beginning inside of me. The meeting I was in had broken for lunch and I sort of staggered out of the building and down the street. There was a health food store at the corner (because this is Austin) and I wandered in, searching on my phone for supplements that help lengthen your luteal cycle. Socks called me. I was choking up, trying to squeeze out an even voice: "I want--you to research--short luteal cycles for me." Socks murmured, "I don't think that there's anything wrong with your luteal--" "It would really help me right now if you would help me by researching short luteal cycles." I was losing it. "Okay. I will." I can't remember the rest of the conversation. I was blinded by tears trying to speak quietly and calmly in a health food store without attracting attention, and I was falling apart. I bought chasteberry after a conversation about which product the associate recommended. She was friendly and knowledgeable, and I wondered if she could tell I was having trouble keeping it together. I bought myself cheese and a protein smoothie as consolation and went back to my meeting.
I came home to the boys. Mr. Fish was working from home and Socks had returned from an errand. I got in the bath and gave in. This was more than the abstract sense of loss of a potential child. This was physical. This was a part of me that didn't have language, that didn't reason, that just wanted to scream and howl with emptiness. I just kept rocking and sobbing, with Socks behind me, holding me in his arms. I just couldn't hold onto it. Why couldn't I hold onto it? I had it. I had it. I'm not crazy. I had it. I felt insane for grieving something that didn't even test positive on an early pregnancy test. But I also knew what I felt.
Over the next few days I kept looking at my chart: the picture of insemination and ovulation, conception and implantation, and then the 2 degree temperature drop that signaled my body was halting the pregnancy. I just needed proof to show--somebody? everybody? myself?--that my grief had some cause. I was a mess for days. I just couldn't stop crying. I drove down to Houston for my mom's birthday. It was an occasion I was hoping to celebrate with good news. Instead I was just "scattered showers" all weekend. It wasn't like I was in shock or still reeling from the disappointment. I had hardly started to hope! It was just...bare, physical loss. I could be around people for two or three hours, and then I just had to get away. I felt even more wrecked that no one was experiencing the loss the way I was--not even my partners. They were disappointed and sad, and particularly sad for my sorrow, but the grief was located in my body and no one else's and ultimately it just had to run its course.
I'm wearing what Socks described as an art installation around my neck. One necklace is from Socks. It's a gift from his mother, a simple silver heart on a chain. The heart usually catches on a silver cylinder--a souvenir from a church in St. Petersburg, Russia, that holds a prayer for Tk: Come home, Tk: whole and healthy and already loved. Another necklace was a gift from my mother for Tk's altar; it's a gift from a family friend upon her high school graduation, shortly after her father's death. The last necklace in Tink's brass key. I mean to take them off, but they give me comfort. Most people around me don't know I'm trying to get pregnant, and they certainly don't know about my disappointment. I like the tangle of delicate chains, and the chime when I lean forward and they touch. I like that my 9 month old godson reaches for them.
It's strange to write this with detachment now. It's been two weeks, and I feel...normal? This morning I did experience a jolt of excitement and fear, thinking that I may be starting the process all over again, and it could happen again. The having and the losing. It could be worse (as I'm certain that it's worse and worse the longer the pregnancy lasts before ending). I'm taking chasteberry, vitamin B6, and I'm trying to get progesterone cream from my doctor before implantation would be likely. When I go home tonight, I'll see my loves, I'll clean my room, I'll put on the Boss again, and try again.
Wish us luck. Come home, Tk.
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