blah.

Posted by Randi

I feel very blah today. I don’t really know how to describe it other than that. I’m tired, I’ve been randomly nauseous all day, and I have a wicked headache.

I know these things are normal, but I can’t help but think about my previous pregnancy. I took a medicine for nausea with K that I didn’t take with Landon–could that have contributed to her death? I definitely don’t want to take that medicine this time around, but if my nausea gets as bad as it was, how will I function?

I think of how tired I was with Kenley. I remember how amazing Shane was about letting me nap whenever I needed to. Now, I can’t help but think, “Well, you’re going to have all the time in the fucking world to nap while Landon is in Kindergarten, and you are all alone without your daughter”. I know it’s irrational to think like that, I do, but I can’t help but have those thoughts.

The same irrational thoughts go along with this current pregnancy, and getting congratulations about it. I don’t want congrats. In my mind I’m getting these congrats on being pregnant because a series of really fucking shitty events happened in my life that led me here. My daughter who I tried so hard for, died, without warning and stole the light from my soul. I went through (and am currently/will always be going through) the worst time of my life. I went through IVF, and paid completely out of pocket (how much is IVF, you ask? We’re looking at a cool $23,000 after this cycle is said and done). And countless invasive procedures to get where I am. Yes, I am pregnant. I am so thankful for this pregnancy, and I will love this child (if I get to keep her) with all of my heart.

It’s just hard. I think that people heard we’re pregnant again and immediately think “ok they’re done grieving”. Nope. Not anywhere near what the truth is. I am not ok with being around your baby. I do not want to see your baby bump or talk about your pregnancy. I am not okay with being around large groups of people yet. The pain of these things, is not gone just because I am pregnant. I don’t know how to explain this to people yet, or how I can make them understand this. I know that some people will never understand it; they will always think that I should “be ok” by now.

I know that people are going to expect one thing from me during this pregnancy and I’ll probably be over here doing the complete opposite, but I hope that they try to understand. If I don’t want to come to the christmas get together this year, I hope you understand. If I don’t want to buy a million gifts, and celebrate this year, I truly hope that you get it. If, on thanksgiving, I would rather be with my family at my house, alone, I hope you understand why I need that. This year of first’s is going to be the hardest, and I need people to just fucking understand it.

I think we need to take a vacation for Christmas this year. Santa can find Landon anywhere, so why not, right?

joy.

Posted by Randi

I’ve been struggling to feel any sort of “joy” lately; not just surrounding this new pregnancy, but in daily life. I just feel so, I don’t know, empty? It’s like I’m here, physically, but I just don’t feel very “into” anything.

I know this feeling is depression, I’m well aware. I am on medication for this, and I can tell that it’s helping, because honestly if it wasn’t I don’t know that I would be anywhere near where I am today.

We went to therapy today (haven’t been since we found out we were pregnant). Our beta was last Wednesday- Therapy Day – so we had to cancel. When we got there today, our therapist was waiting on the edge of her seat to hear our news.

When I told her that we were indeed pregnant, she screamed out of sheer excitement for us, and she cried. SHE CRIED. Our therapist was so happy for us, IS so happy for us, that she legitimately cried tears of Joy for us.

I want to feel joy again. I hope as time goes on that I am able to.

weird.

Posted by Randi

This weekend has been weird. Friday, I had my repeat betas and they were great; doubling within 44 hours. I have my third beta on Monday morning and when we get those results back we will scheduled our first ultrasound.

Ugh. First ultrasound; It brings tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. The last time I had an ultrasound with a baby in my ute, she was dead. No heartbeat, no movement, no life. To go to another ultrasound and possibly hear a heartbeat is so, so, so intimidating. It’s absolutely frightening. I want to be excited, please don’t get me wrong. It’s just causing me anxiety, and I feel zero joy right now.

I want to feel excited for this baby; for Landon and Kenley’s little sister growing inside of me. I am just having a really hard time right now. I figured I would take a test, see 2 lines, and cry. Nope, didn’t do that. I figured when I got my first beta back I would feel so great that the number was “this high” or “perfect“, but I didn’t. When the repeat beta came back more than doubled, I figured that I would feel some reassurance…But, you guessed it, I didn’t feel any. I literally just feel empty, which is so ironic because for the first time in 7 months, I’m not alone anymore…even when I am.

I’m guarded.

I don’t want to be.

I honestly don’t know if I will ever be ok during this pregnancy. If this baby is my “Rainbow baby” (side note: this word cuts through my heart like a knife. Kenley was my rainbow. She is supposed to be here, and be my fucking rainbow) I will love her with the same love that I have for Landon and Kenley, I know that. It’s just so unfortunate that the joy of any future pregnancy is shadowed by the fear of loss.

It is unfair.

I don’t care how childish that sounds, it’s the fucking truth.

This is all so unfair.

I miss you, my sweet girl. I am trying to be strong, I swear it to you. I try every. single. day. Sometimes it’s just too much.

The days where it’s too much end with me crying in bed, asking your daddy to promise me, to swear to me that he will bury your urn with me when I die.

No one should ever have to utter those words to their husband in the dark through tears.

Life is so incredibly fucked up.

8dp5dt.

Posted by Randi

Landon’s spending the night with my mother in law.

Tomorrow at 9am we go for our blood draw that will tell us if we are pregnant or not. Results should be back around 2pm.

Send all the good vibes, if you have any to spare.

5dp5dt

Posted by Randi

I don’t think I have ever read a more accurate quote regarding trying to conceive after a loss. I can feel every word of this quote in my bones.

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2dp5dt.

Posted by Randi

We had therapy this morning as usual, and I always leave us so exhausted. It is so incredibly hard to sit there for an hour and talk about Kenley. It inevitably always turns to sadness, or things surrounding her death that make me so incredibly mad. Today we were talking about how I like to destress. Our Therapist asked if I was the type of person who believed in “visualization” of something- If you imagine it for long enough, and hard enough that maybe it will come to fruition. Well, I’m not that type of person…at all. I’m a very matter of fact person. If I am pregnant, it’s because this bundle of cells that the RE implanted into my uterus attached to my uterine lining- that’s all. SCIENCE.

I cannot visualize that and make it happen.

Anyway, we talked about that and I told her that I feel like I’ve been better about not randomly crying anymore. Shane chimed in and said that he sees a big improvement in my attitude and tolerance toward babies (I don’t agree with him though). He referenced the GoT episode we watched last night in which a baby cried for literally 3-5 minutes of the segment. He said he saw me pick up the remote control like I was going to mute it (I actually did pick it up to mute it but then the show ended). He said it was frustrating to him as well and he could it tell it bothered me. He didn’t mention it to me at the time during the show, but he said it today. I told him that he should have muted it because 9/10 we are feeling the same exact thing- I just don’t have a filter and say what I feel.

Then, the Therapist said ” Of course that is hard for you two, you didn’t get to hear Kenley cry. It wasn’t how it was supposed to be, or how people expect it to be.” And I lost my shit. I started crying pretty hard. It’s true, I didn’t get to hear her cry; I NEVER WILL. I grew this beautiful human inside of me and I will never get to hear her sweet cry. Things from there just went to more sad things- her nursery, using her things for future baby, moving and being faced with the feelings of leaving her only home behind. It’s just bullshit- all of it.

Back to decompressing/ destressing- I told her that meditation and things like that don’t work for me. Destressing comes from hanging out with Shane. He is my best friend and being with him is relaxing. When we go on a date, or watch tv and hang out it’s literally the best time for me. Nothing else calms me down more than being with him. He’s like my giant safety blanket I guess. So anyway, today just sucked. I have a love hate relationship with therapy.

We got home and went to the grocery store, and I passed the pregnancy tests. I decided not to buy any right now because they’re so freakin expensive. $20 for a pack of 3? Like I haven’t spent enough money already, people. My blood test to tell if I’m pregnant is Wednesday at 9am. Some (most) people test at home before their blood draw so they know what to expect. I’m pretty sure I will do that…but I guess that means I need to buy a test before Friday. Can someone just knock me out, and wake me up Wednesday after my results are back? Kthx.

So far I’m feeling tired; I think it’s probably from my PIO shots. I’ve been having cramping since the procedure, but I figure that’s probably normal, too. Yesterday night I got so hot that I had to take my robe off in the middle of Game of Thrones and stand there cooling off. It was like a serious hot flash.With Kenley I was sick immediately. She implanted, and I was sick until the day I had her; I threw up the morning she was born. If this baby has implanted, I assume that I will be sick again. Maybe that is why I’ve been feeling nauseous today? A girl can hope, right?

PIO.

Posted by Randi

I started my PIO (progesterone in oil) shots the other day, and for some reason they hurt really bad this time. After my egg retrieval my RE had me start the same shots “just incase” our embryos sucked and didn’t make it to day 5 for PGS (can you tell my Dr has like, zero faith in my body? I don’t blame him, really) and they didn’t hurt at all! Shane was a pro then, maybe he’s just rusty. He says when he’s doing it this time there is resistance. Yeah…I know. I feel it.

I watched a few videos today of others giving themselves the shots, and I feel like I could do it but I figure we’ll give it one more shot with Shane doing it. I think tonight when he gets home, I will warm the oil by rolling it in my palms for a few minutes, and have him give me the shot while I’m laying down.

( * I ended up holding the vial of progesterone for a while to warm it up, which made the withdrawal so much easier. Once the syringe was filled I held it in my hand for another 5 mins and laid on my bed when Shane gave me the injection. Perfection! Didn’t even feel the shot at all *)

For those who don’t know about PIO, it’s to support the uterine lining during the luteal phase of a FET (frozen egg transfer) or a fresh transfer.

The set up looks like this (not my photo):

The one closest to the bottle is an 18g needle. It is used to draw up the medicine. The one on the right is a 22g-1.5 inch needle used to administer the injection. The shot is intramuscular.

And the shots go here:

Um Ouch.

If our embryo sticks, and we are indeed pregnant, we will continue this for 12 weeks. TWELVE. Every. single. night. I’m sorry – I know I should feel so pumped and excited, but it’s just not that simple anymore. I’ve lost my naivety toward the situation; I know too much.

I know what can go wrong if your hormone levels are off, or if you start spotting. I know that you can have an ectopic pregnancy and lose a tube, or an ovary, or fucking die. I know that your cervix can “not do it’s job” and you can lose your baby at any time even when you think you’ve past the scary points. I know that, even a week before you’re scheduled to have a normal repeat C-section, you can hear the words that will shatter your world forever; “This is where her heart is, and unfortunetly there is no heartbeat”. I know that you can truly feel like you want to die for the foreseeable future because your child died inside of you when you were in the clear; your daughter died when she shouldn’t have.

Those things could happen to us again. Any of them could be a possibility and I hate that I even have to worry about it. I know that we will be monitored so intensely, but my mind just goes back to “well, shouldn’t I have been monitored this well anyway? I am growing a human for fucks sake”. Sadly, that’s not the case. Monitoring for normal pregnancies is a joke. I had a shitty NINE MINUTE (yes, nine minutes…normal scans can range from 20 mins to an hour for some people) anatomy scan, an intake scan at a new OB that was probably 25-30 minutes long, and a scan at 36.5 weeks…and somehow, no one detected a possibly anomaly with Kenley’s cord. Maybe, just maybe, if a Biophysical Profile Ultrasound was done on me my daughter would be here. Maybe, if my doctors sent me to an MFM because of my history with Preeclampsia, they would have done one on me. I should have been sent to an MFM. I was failed by doctors. All of my doctors failed us during Kenley’s pregnancy.

There is a standard of care, and a general guideline to follow when sending your patient to an MFM…and I ticked many boxes, yet I wasn’t sent.

I will never forgive myself for not advocating harder for my Daughter.

The medical field needs to get their shit together. 26,000 stillbirths a year, and yet we just can’t figure it out?

Unacceptable.

Medicine failed my sweet girl, and it’s hard to believe that anything positive could happen for us now.

lining.

Posted by Randi

Today we had an appointment to check the lining of my uterus. It was 8.1 and “beautiful” per my nurse and RE. I’ll take that; a beautiful uterus lining- every girls dream. Jk.

My estrogen came back at 94, and my progesterone at 0.5. These numbers are good, and I will continue to stay on 2mg of estrace 3x a day

On Wednesday I will add in my Progesterone in oil ( PIO) shots. I will also start taking my Medrol (steroid) and Doxycycline (antibiotic). They gave us papers that state our transfer is set for Monday at 11am.

This official paperwork made me freak the hell out a little, but also gave me a glimmer of hope. Hope that maybe, after all this bullshit life has thrown my way, I will be able to bring a baby home. Maybe my body will work right and things will go as planned. I don’t want to hold my breath, though.

I asked Dr.J what he thought our chances of this working were. He stepped back, and said he has never had a negative pregnancy test with a patient he has performed a PGS normal FET on. He has one woman miscarry early on, but they don’t know why. He said our chances of success were 70%.

70%

Holy shit. Hearing that was like a sense of relief and a sense of sheer terror.

I needed more PIO so we called it into the pharmacy– $257 for a 30 day supply. Par for the course though, amirite? I’m really hoping that because my insurance has been covering ultrasounds, I will have a little extra money left to put toward the FET from the $11,440 we paid them already.

Shane and I went to lunch after the appointment and we looked over our PGS testing results. All of our embryos were on this paper and it turns out (if they all had been normal) we would have had 4 boys and 3 girls.

I wish they all were normal. I would have had each and every one of them; I still plan to have the 3 we have that are normal.

2 boys and 1 girl.

My sweet babies. I can’t wait to hold you in my arms and some day be able to tell you how incredibly wanted you are. I will love you until the day I die– I already do.

next.

Posted by Randi

Tomorrow, if everything looks good at my scan, I will be a week away from my Transfer.

A week.

7 days.

I will hopefully be carrying our next child, soon. I don’t even know what to call this child. Kenley was my rainbow, yet…she wasn’t.

If anyone knows the answer to this, I would love to hear it. I suppose this next child would be my rainbow…but what would this make Kenley. Life is weird.

The RE has my beta set for 8 days after our transfer. I’m almost 100% positive that I will not be able to wait that long to find out if it worked or not. On the other hand, I don’t want to test early and get a false negative. There’s just so much to think about, but in all reality I should just calm the hell down and wait for my beta.

I don’t think I can wait though. Dr.Google has shown me that a bunch of ladies have gotten + tests as soon as 4 days past a 5 day transfer. I don’t know how I can rationalize not testing early.

I really want to talk to a loss mom who is a few months ahead of me. I want to pick their brain, ask them a few questions. How did you control your stress? How did you not worry every second of every day? How do you make yourself feel that you are worthy of this pregnancy? Did you have issues connecting to this new pregnancy?

Just a few things I think about whenever I think about becoming pregnant again.

I did feel something like excitement today when thinking about another child…so there’s that.

anxiety? stress? frustration? guilt.

Posted by Randi

Yesterday was a rough day for me; I felt my frustration getting the best of me. Landon kept pushing my buttons, and I had enough for the day, so I left. I got dressed, and I told Shane I was leaving…and I did. I grabbed my book and purse and off I went. I didn’t know where I was going to go, but a few things flooded my mind.

• Go shopping (I did this)

• Go rent a hotel room BY MYSELF and read my book all night. Relax, maybe get room service, and just be…

• Go to the airport and buy a plane ticket to somewhere (I won’t lie, this would have been a super high possibility had I brought my medication with me)

So ultimately I’m a rational person and decided to go shopping. What did I buy? I used a gift card to Ulta and bought myself two nail polishes, a new BB cream, dry shampoo, and moisturizing foot treatment sock things. Then, I bought 4 shirts for myself. And finally I went and spent $30 on dog treats because he was the only thing not annoying me.

I know that it’s not 100% Landon’s fault that I have a short threshold lately, I really really know that. But, he has been not listening a lot lately. On the 4th of July he broke a window at a cookout because his cousin told him to. He cried because he felt so bad, and I’m glad he felt bad. He knows better than that, and I don’t know what happened. He got caught up in the “fun” they were having and just lost his head. He had to apologize to his Great-Grandpa and tell him what happened. Of course great grandpa wasn’t mad and felt so bad because Landon was crying.

I’ve been trying to tell him to listen to me the first time I ask/tell him to do something because he’s been slacking on that as of late. I know he’s changing and growing up, but I have to keep on him so much sometimes that I feel as if the only thing I say all day is “No”.

Today, he was playing Garden Warfare for a minute, and was a sunflower. He shot a letter “K”on the ground and said “Mommy, look. I made a K for Kenley”. Then he immediately asked me if I was going to cry. He’s noticed that if he talks about her lately, I don’t cry like I used to. I suppose this is a good thing, but sometimes he takes me by surprise and I will cry. He keeps asking me if I’m pregnant again; I think he hears us talk about IVF and he’s catching on. I told him not yet, but that’s the plan soon. We ask him if that’s something he would want to happen, and he always says no. Always. Without hesitation. I get it, Landon. I am terrified too, buddy. I’ve had to explain to him so many times that what happened to his sister was a fluke (…ha) and that it will not happen again. That I will be going to the dr many more times than I did before etc etc, but how do you explain this to a 5 year old. He doesn’t know how to grasp these things. He was expecting a sister, and instead got his mother back as an incomplete human who can barely function some days.

So I fuckin get it, dude. I’m scared as well.

He keeps asking me for a brother. I know he doesn’t understand that right now, but it cuts me like a knife. It makes me feel so incredibly guilty, and sad for him. I couldn’t give him a brother or a sister to play with when it really counted, and when I was SO CLOSE to giving him one, I couldn’t even keep her alive. I know that someday he will understand, and he will really understand when/if he has children of his own some day. Losing Kenley was a huge smack in our family’s face, and sometimes I feel like Landon has the heaviest part of this all. He’s 5, and he has to watch his parents fall apart and “knows” why, but will spend his entire childhood wondering truly “what happened”. And the saddest part? He will probably forget about her.

I hate life after loss. It’s incredibly difficult to navigate, and I feel like I’m not doing a good job.

I feel that somedays I’m just failing everyone.

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