First day of renewed hope and immune talk

Before I start, thank you as always for the amazing support as I endured/endure my second miscarriage. I so appreciate it. You guys are awesome.

Today I have finally plucked myself out of the gutter and have started to do some reading. A couple of weeks ago I had an email exchange with my doctor about the way forward, but I have put that information on the backburner whilst I have wallowed in despair and given up on hope. For some reason, today I decided to do something different and started reading and trying to process our current situation with my head, not just my heart. I am going to tell you what my Doctor has said, because I would very much value your opinion. My doctor would like to do the following immune tests:

Antithrombin 3
Factor 5 Leiden
Prothrombin 20210

Are there any other tests you think would be important, from your experiences?

Call it instinct, but when I fell pregnant I actually nearly asked him to do immune testing on me. My father has Psoriasis and my brother rheumatoid athritis and so there has been a nagging voice at the back of my head with a very vague message about immune issues. I wish I had spoken up sooner. Nevertheless, he also recommends (and this is a copy and paste of his email to me):

1. No transfer for a period of at least 6 weeks after the loss we had.

2. To thaw and fertilize the remaining eggs, do PGS on the embryos and transfer only a single euploid (normal) embryo into the uterus

3. Adjuvant therapy will include Intralipid leading up to the transfer of the embryo as well as Clexane 40mg from the day of ET

4. Unfortunately there is no “extra” monitoring to be done other than weekly scans up to about 9 weeks for reassurance.

What do you guys think of this? There is a part of me that feels we may be onto something and that hopefully, we might eventually end up with a positive outcome. Maybe this isn’t the end of the line for me after all.

Give me my unicorn!

I really hate my job right now. It’s a feeling that’s been building for quite some time, but it’s particularly strong at the moment. Truly, I’d walk away from it tomorrow if I could. I am a psychologist and so it is my job to be present, to listen, to heal and to help people grow…. To read between the lines and to help them understand themselves better. Normally I enjoy this and feel privileged to do it, but as my own internal turmoil and pain grows it has become more and more difficult, neigh impossible. Every single day feels like an act, a great pretence. It is a huge problem and one I am going to have to face sooner rather than later. However, it’s not the subject of today’s blog.

This aspect of struggle aside, I increasingly hate my job from a values-based perspective. Whereas I once hoped to help people, and especially children, in distress, I now find myself helping parents and children to fit into very small, very well defined little boxes labelled ‘normal’ and ‘easy’. Parents and schools with unrealistic expectations of children, parents who don’t have the time or patience to deal with the normal ups and downs of childhood and parenthood… parents wanting easy solutions, a quick fix, value for money. I’ve become part of a consumer-based, convenience-driven culture and I hate it.  Tonight, as I ranted at the dinner table to my husband, I likened this crazy dance of expectation to the following dialogue:

Parent: I would like to buy a unicorn please
Me: unicorns don’t exist, I’m afraid I can’t sell you a unicorn.
Parent: but I have lots and lots of money and I’m really desperate for a unicorn and you don’t know for sure that unicorns don’t exist so please please just see my child and try and figure out whether or not you can conjure up a unicorn
Me: unicorns don’t exist and I definitely won’t be able to conjure one up if I see your child, but just incase your child is actually in legitimate distress, I will see your child
Parent: Thank you

Later:
Me: All is well with your child, she is not in distress and is essentially well adjusted. Unfortunately unicorns don’t exist.
Parent: whhhaaaattttt???? But I paid X number of Rands for a unicorn and you haven’t given us one!

Arghhhhh, i just can’t. I don’t have a magic wand. Today I gave feedback to parents whose beautiful, perfect, well adjusted but infuriating four year old daughter doesn’t like the feel of too-short, long sleeve shirts. She’s four. I tried to read between the lines, to figure out whether or not this little symptom was part of a bigger problem. It’s not. Buy her the shirts she likes and give away the ones that are too short. It’s the first of many infuriating preferences that she will make in her life and these opinion won’t always match yours or be convenient or pleasing. Deal with it. Don’t expect freaking unicorns.

Breathe in. And out.

Breathe in.

I’ll start this post by taking a deep breathe. I’ll try very hard to calm my body, to find some way of thinking about this without spinning out into a complete panic attack.

Breathe out.

We, or maybe I, am at a crossroads. 10 days ago I had a second miscarriage and DNC following a donor egg transfer. My first miscarriage was from my own eggs and having been diagnosed with Diminshed Ovarian Reserve, this donor egg transfer was meant to be our answer. And it was. Genetic testing showed that we had a perfectly healthy boy growing inside of me.

Breathe in.

The pain of writing that sentence literally takes my breathe away. I have to remind myself to breathe, to open my eyes. Have some tea, take a shower, brush my teeth and get out of bed. If I didn’t, I might not. I might stay in bed, not talk, not drink tea, not get out of bed. I might just try to remain very, very still and hope that somehow, my reality might change. But it doesn’t.

Breathe out.

Why does knowing the gender make it more painful? I didn’t mind whether we had a boy or a girl, I would have been delighted with either. But knowing….knowing, makes it so much more personal and painful. My heart could literally break. He was perfect. But he died.

Breathe in.

And so we have to face a new reality, a new diagnosis. Another stumbling block on the way to becoming parents. We don’t only have difficulty becoming pregnant, but staying pregnant as well. A double whammy.

Breathe out.

And with so many problems, what are we meant to learn? To do? To feel?

Adoption is not on the table right now because my husband can’t reconcile himself with it. And I would not willingly bring a child into a home where there is ambivalence about its very existence. So now what?

Breathe in.

I really, truly don’t know. The future feels bleak, black, despairing. I literally do not know what to do next. Breathe in, and out. That’s all I know right now.

Breathe out.