Pregnancy of unknown location

This is my latest diagnosis. It means that my hcg is being funky (by neither rising - as it would if it were viable- or falling - as it would if it were an ordinary miscarriage - as it should) and they cannot see signs of pregnancy in either the uterus or the fallopian tubes when they look in a scan. So basically it means I might be having a (very small) ectopic pregnancy or else just a really weird ordinary miscarriage.

Some people like to 'do' countries by travelling around them, apparently my quest in life is to collect obscure early pregnancy complications.

Rats - NB post not suitable for readers with rodent phobias

I don't usually feel sorry for rats but I did for the one I found last night cowering next to my hall cupboard, no doubt a prime example of 'something the cat dragged in'. It was only half grown and it was brown and fluffy with a curled up tail like an earth worm. It appeared to be trembling.

I used my standard operating procedure, which was to throw an old towel over it so I could pick it up and take it outside to the very edge of our property where the cat was unlikely to find it again. As I went to scoop it up it made the most pathetic, whimpering/squealing noise. I felt so bad for it. (BTW, don't you love my non-traditional relationship where the girl gets to deal with the vermin.)

Anyway, the rat was officially liberated and we went to bed.

This morning we found the corpse of rat #2 sprawled in the hallway in front of the kitchen door. This one was decidedly less cute and rigor mortis was starting to set in but I still felt kind of sorry for it. I know he's just doing what comes naturally but sometimes my kitty can be a nasty little predator. He hasn't been in yet this morning so he must be out in the rain, attempting to pull in a little more of the rat bounty.

No not yet, maybe not ever

So in the last 48 hours I've been asked if I am thinking about using donor eggs and whether I am considering adoption. Clearly I've hit some kind of threshold where people are starting to think that I am pursuing a lost cause and that maybe I should give up.

This raises lots of issues for me.

First, adoption and donor eggs are generally expensive and difficult, neither are a sure bet and both have a whole lot of complex emotional issues attached to them that come with parenting/giving birth to a child with a genetic makeup different from his or her parent(s). Moreover, even if we did decide to pursue this as a couple we are not necessarily a good candidates for adoptive parents given our relatively advanced ages and the fact I am being medicated for depression. And it could be that donor eggs wouldn't work any better than my own eggs, if the cause for the miscarriages is some kind of underlying condition that stops the pregnancies from progressing.

Second, there is still a good chance that I will have a pregnancy that ends in a live birth of a healthy child. There are interventions that I haven't tried yet (basically because they are unproven and the doctors wouldn't give them to me until I had four losses or because they are really expensive). Plus most women with recurrent miscarriage eventually have a successful pregnancy if they keep trying. Its really about how many times you can bring yourself to go through it.

While my feelings on this stuff can fluctuate like mercury, right now I feel certain that we will be successful if we keep trying.

Rollercoaster blah blah

So today the blood test showed my hcg is dropping, which means the pregnancy is almost certainly non-viable. I kind of feel like some higher power is cruelly toying with me.

So shall we just go back and replay Friday's post.

And for those of you who feel like something really carthartic there is also this song.

OMG, this stuff can mess with your head

So it seems, despite all indications to the contrary, that this pregnancy may be viable. My hcg levels have risen from 20 to 55, which is a 49 hour doubling time, with the average doubling time for normal pregnancy being 48 hours. Still bleeding though.

Sorry, again, for traumatising everyone with my post the other day. After everything that has happened. and with everything looking so bad it was self-protective for me to assume the worst.

It will still be weeks before the danger zone for miscarriage is past and things could go kaput at any time. From here on out I will have three-daily hcg tests and a scan at around 6 weeks - it will be a waiting game to see what happens. Wish me luck.

Anthems

I really didn't mean to traumatise anyone with yesterday's post. Today I am feeling ok, although a little introspective and fragile. I am not sure really how to process all of this or what it means. It could mean:

a)I am really unlucky and have had a string of mcs from sporadic one-off events
b)I have some kind of undiagnosed underlying condition that is likely to reocur
c)Some strange mixture of a and b

I don't really know what to believe. Statistics still say I am likely to have a child one day. Although they also say that my chances have dropped a somewhat with no.4. Statistics have stopped holding much power with me now. Its now turning into a matter of faith.

Anyway, I thought I'd share with you my two anthems for this part of my journey.

Maybe tomorrow

and

Something good

I can't even say how I feel right now

Its come to the point that when we get a positive pregnancy test instead of being excited we cry. This morning L and I hugged and I cried when I thought about how difficult the last pregnancy was. But I don't think I need to worry about this pregnancy playing out in the same way as that one, I think this one's going to be over pretty quickly.

This time around I got caught out in that classic way, when I started bleeding on Saturday I thought it was my period. It was a pretty convincing imitation - but it dragged on longer than my period does and after tapering off the bleeding started intensifying again. So this morning I took a home test and it was positive and then I went and got a blood test and the hcg level is only 20 (it really should be around 100). And then I read up (again) about bleeding during early pregnancy and found a lot of people saying that the kind of bleeding I was having was indicating a miscarriage.

So I've found out about the pregnancy and the miscarriage on the same day. And my head is kind of spinning. What are the odds of four miscarriages in a row any way? The next medical professional who tells me that I have an excellent chance of my next pregnancy being successful is gonna get slapped in the face!

And I'm more and more becoming 'that' woman - the horribly unlucky one, the one that other people pity, the one that people can't deal with because all they can thing is "god, I hope that never happens to me", the one that miscarries over and over again and no one can tell her why. I am becoming the 'barren woman'.

So far I have learned patience, I have learned endurance, I have learned a kind of surrender. But, apparently I still have more to learn in this miscarriage milarky.