Gird your loins, verbal diarrhea ahead

My head has been a mash of mess in the last week. Has it already been a week? Seems like a year.

We met with Dr. Troche on Friday to talk it over, a sort of WTF meeting, if you will. He was amazingly kind, and his staff was wonderful. Really, I can NOT say enough good things about this doctor and his associates, and BELIEVE ME I know doctors.

Basically, he thinks my body just took too long to respond to the Follistim, and the eggs took too long to mature. When they did mature they looked beautiful, but he thinks my lining was too "old" for them at transfer time. We couldn't have frozen any embryos, because their quality made them less-than-ideal candidates  for freezing. The leftovers that we tried to freeze didn't make it to day five. I had seven babies. Now I have none. How could this have happened? I also apparently had what is called a "chemical pregnancy", where I had one implant and then stop growing. So I had a few days of being pregnant and then lost it. He is pushing us to try again, saying that he can use a different drug protocol and supplements to help with my egg quality. He was very positive about future chances, and frankly said that he tells people when it's time to quit but it's not our time yet. If only we had the money. Insurance only covers a third of one cycle. Each cycle is about $15,000.

When we got home Friday I started to bleed. It's all so final once that starts. And to add insult to injury, I started having horrific abdominal pains that evening. They lasted throughout the night and then became unbearable around five Saturday morning. I was bleeding extremely heavily, heavier than I ever have (hellooooo, more information about my vagina that you probably could have done without) and I couldn't breathe. Chad had left before the sun came up (not knowing I was writhing all night) to grade an army PT test, and I couldn't reach him. I called the doc, and she wanted to see me right away. She was on call for Dr. Troche and had just finished some procedures at the office that morning, and would wait for me to make the drive to Glendale. My mom took me and they discovered a few things: I had free fluid in my abdomen, probably from the fertility drugs, and blood outside my ovaries, maybe from a cyst bursting, maybe from the retrieval, they weren't sure. I was also shedding a thicker-than-normal (15 mm) lining and essentially having a very early miscarriage. She wrote me a script for pain pills and gave Chad (who, after checking his phone freaked out and drove to Glendale to meet us) strict instructions that I was to do nothing for the next 72 hours, just rest and drink tons of fluids. (Vodka is a fluid, right?)

So how fun is THIS.

I am now eating my feelings (sorry, neighbors, I hope you didn't want any croissants from the Fry's across the street - I have purchased and eaten them all) and am swaying between feeling 'eh' and curling up into the fetal position and bawling. So I'm basically getting fatter and my eyes are very, very red.

People ask me how I'm doing and I don't know how to answer them.

I angry. I don't want to hear any more about God. God can suck it, if he's even there.

I am so, so sad. I'm not ready to let go of the dream of holding my newborn for the first time. I had all these plans, names picked out, which room would be the nursery, even though I knew it was far too early to make plans like that. But I let myself get excited. Chad did too. This is the kind of thing that can ruin a marriage but at this point it really has strengthened ours. He's holding me and saying all the right things when I suddenly burst into tears out of nowhere. I had to run to the car from the credit union because a woman and her two adorable toddlers were in front of us in line and it hit me that I would never have that again and I started randomly sobbing. Don't mind the crazy lady kids, she just needs to cry it out in the car.

Nobody has said this yet, but everyone is thinking it. You have Emma. You should be happy. OF COURSE I'm happy that I have Emma. She's wonderful, she's funny, she's the light of my life. But I had other dreams too. Of giving her a sibling. Of having a house full of kids. I was supposed to have lots of kids. That's what I've always wanted. I'm a good mom. I deserve more kids. Even if I'm a heathen when it comes to religion. It's not fair that homeless crackheads give birth every day, that women who depend on welfare and refuse to work have five, six kids, and don't appreciate them. It's not fair that I have a job that reminds me every day what I won't have.

I'm also trying to find nice ways of answering the question that I got asked this morning at Emma's orthodontist:

Them: "Oh is Emma your oldest?"

Me: "She's the only one."

Them: "So do you want more?"

I can answer this one of three ways:

A. No, we had her and then I realized that I hate kids. Do you want this one? She's for sale.
B. I am currently losing all my hope of having a baby. Right at this minute. Would you like to see?
C. Don't you want to be skinny? Then why are you fat? DON'T ASK STRANGERS QUESTIONS LIKE THAT.

I can't find any nice ways quite yet. Hopefully I'll have some more answer options in future.

I know this will take time. I KNOW THAT. I see myself marching in and around and through all the normal stages of grief, just like they teach in nursing school. I know I need to take time to grieve, but nobody wants to deal with me in the meantime. TRUST ME. Knowing that I need to go through this process doesn't make this any easier. I don't want to go out of the house. I don't want to talk to people. I don't want people to call me and ask how I'm doing. I don't want to be reminded. And I want a baby. I'm consumed with trying to find ways to save up enough money to do this again. But can my body take it? I would do anything for a baby of my own. I would burst every cyst on each ovary if that's what it took. Fill my abdomen up with fluid. I would inject myself with anything I needed to to grow a tiny person who looks like Chad. Chad doesn't feel the same way. He's had enough of watching me hurt physically and emotionally, sidelined while I put my body through all of this. He's done injecting oil into my hind end with inch-and-a-half long needles and then watching it bruise and blister. He doesn't want me to cry anymore. And he keeps reminding me that we don't have the money. Which we don't.

So if anyone finds $15,000 lying around, will you please let me know?

I just want a baby.

Nope

We are heartbroken. A baby probably started to implant but didn't go any further, which was why I got a faint positive and then nothing the last two days. Blood test confirmed it today.

We said this was our last time. We're trying to come to terms with that. Part of me wants, so badly, to max out every credit card we have and give it one more try. But we've done that. We actually just made the last payment on the attempt from five years ago. It's no fun making payments (for five long years) on something you never got.

This whole thing is so unfair.