Kitsunegirl

Waiting for a heartbeat

2009-08-08T10:10:00.002+12:00

So, it would have been nice if I had gotten pregnant this easily earlier on. In the first 18 months I got pregnant twice out of 11 cycles of trying. In the last year, I've gotten pregnant three times out of 5 cycles of trying.

Now I am around 4 weeks 5 days pregnant. My previous four pregnancies all failed around the fifth week (although with one I didn't miscarry and didn't find out until the 7 week scan).

However, I do have some reason to be hopeful this time around. My hormones are rising much better than they did with my previous two pregnancies where I had hormone monitoring. My levels are below the median, although not by too much, but they are rising faster than average for this stage of pregnancy.

And as every health professional I meet takes great delight in telling me - I still have a 70% chance of it working out fine this time.

At this point, I am waiting for a scan at six weeks where I hope to see a heartbeat. While there will still be many hurdles afterwards, this would be a huge milestone.

Fragile

2009-07-25T10:48:00.003+12:00

So I left you all hanging there for a while.

The outcome from my last pregnancy is that they never found whether it was in my uterus or in my tubes but the hcg levels did eventually decline to nothing within a week or two. So the pregnancy did have some indications of being ectopic but we will never know for sure.

And life goes on, the sun rises and sets. I get up each day and try to do the things I am supposed to and that I need to do and sometime even that I want to do. And some days life has some joy and others it has mostly sadness. And we keep trying to have a baby.

It seems it is possible there is a genetic condition in my family called Fragile X. This condition can cause intellectual disability including autism, learning disabilities and developmental delays. About 20% of female carriers of the condition have premature ovarian failure. So if I have it it could mean that my miscarriages have been caused by poor egg quality. I got tested for Fragile X a couple of days ago and last week I had another test (an Anti-Mullerian Hormone or AMH test) which measures ovarian reserve. I should get the results back in the next two or three weeks.

If I am a carrier I'm not sure where we'll go from here. A Fragile X carrier will pass on the condition to 50% of her children. Embryos can be screened for Fragile X so that it is not passed on - but this means you need to have an ivf cycle where you collect a lot of eggs in order for you to have a decent chance of having a successful pregnancy with a baby that is unaffected by the condition. Its unlikely to be able to collect that many eggs if your ovarian reserve is getting low.

I figure there is no point getting too worried about it until I get the test results back. However, I have started to read more about the ivf process.

I am also having a procedure called an HSG which involves pumping dye into the uterus so that the fallopian tubes can be seen on an x-ray. Its possible, although unlikely, that I have some problem in one or both tubes that could be causing ectopic pregnancies. I only know for sure that one of the pregnancies was in the uterus. In theory, some or all of the other three could have been ectopic.

If you are thinking that looking for the cause of recurrent miscarriage is like looking for a needle in a haystack then you would probably be right.

I can't help but search anyway.

Pregnancy of unknown location

2009-05-24T10:37:00.002+12:00

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

2009-05-24T10:21:00.002+12:00

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

2009-05-18T07:49:00.002+12:00

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

2009-05-14T13:58:00.002+12:00

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

2009-05-11T18:12:00.002+12:00

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

2009-05-09T18:52:00.002+12:00

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

2009-05-08T16:41:00.003+12:00

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.

I've turned into a women's magazine

2009-04-25T09:16:00.002+12:00

You know how those women's magazines always announce pregnancies of celebrities by publishing a photo where a female celebrity has a tiny suggestion of a pot belly or perhaps an item of clothing that is slightly baggy or wrinkled around the midriff and they photoshop in a large arrow and add a caption that says BABY BUMP? Then at least 70% of the time it turns out that the celebrity was just slouching in a minorly unflattering way and is not actually with child.

I am now chanelling the women's magazines. If ever I meet a woman of child bearing age (or even one that is arguably borderline) who appears to have a belly of some kind I am transfixed by it and start wondering - is there a baby in there? It's getting so bad that I am having to bite my tounge to stop myself from asking some of them if they're pregnant.

Endurance

2009-04-17T09:50:00.002+12:00

So I got depressed after the surgery I had in March. I felt teary every day. Ordinary levels of stress made me feel overwhelmed and unable to cope. It got to the point where I felt like I was walking around with a large and heavy stone on each shoulder. I used to feel like this a lot on and off (basically throughout most of my teens and 20s) until I started taking antidepressants. SSRIs changed my life so much for the better. Once I found the right ones and they kicked in it was like I had been sitting in a room while dusk had fallen and hadn't noticed how dark it had gotten until someone turned on the light. Some people say that antidepressants flatten out their feelings but it wasn't like that for me. My feelings were already flatlining and because of the drugs I suddenly felt a much broader spectrum of emotion than I had for years. Previously my main emotions had been anxiety and despair.

Since I started on the SSRIs back in 2003 I have only been depressed twice. (Thats not to say that I haven't been unhappy, but unhappy is different from depressed and I would say a normal and healthy part of anyone's emotional life.) The first time was in late 2006/early 2007 when I stopped taking the drugs in preparation for trying to conceive. I took about 6 weeks to taper off the drugs and it was all looking good but then shit happened - in an 8 week period I had a big dramatic fight with some close family members on Christmas day, a had a painful run-in with a work colleague that shattered a lot illusions I'd had about my job, my job was seemingly disestablished and I was told by email, L's stepmother died. My mood crashed. I couldn't even cope with simple things like ringing the electricity company to query a bill. I wanted so badly to have a drug free pregnancy but when my GP suggested I go back on the medication, at least temporarily, I was relieved. I decided that the risk to my mental health of being off the meds (which was high) outweighed the risk to a future child of being on them (which was low).

The second time I got depressed was last month. In some ways this time was scarier because this time it happened while I was on the meds. I don't know why the surgery was the trigger for depression when there have been so many other more stressful life events happening over the last year. Maybe it was just culmulative.

As luck would have it this bout of depression got pinged pretty early on and it pretty much gone now. The great saviour this time was traditional chinese medicine. I know lots of people don't hold much stock in TCM , L being one of them. And while TCM has been proven effective for a limited number of medical conditions depression is not one of them. On the day that I felt weighed down by heavy stones I happened to have one of my regular acupuncture appointments. When I told my acupuncturist about the depression she treated me for it through both needles and herbs and I felt better straight away and pretty much a lot better within about 3 days. Now you can say thats a placebo effect but I have to say that its the best damned placebo effect I've ever come across.

Still, here I am now not depressed but I would have to say that I'm not so happy either. I remember being happy and excited about my life and the future and the last times I can remember feeling this way is right before I got married in 2007 and then again in mid 2008 when I got pregnant for the second time before I miscarried. I know that life goes in phases and I have to say that 2003 to 2007 were pretty happy times for me. Lots of stuff went right, I found a job I loved, I got promoted, I got together with L, I bought a property, I got a car and learned to drive. All long held goals that suddenly all came together. Now I am in a phase where it feels like my long term goals are being thwarted and where there has been a lot of loss and sadness. I guess when I take the long term view I see that I will at some point move from this phase and into a happier one but in the meantime I am learning endurance.

Overwrought

2009-03-24T19:46:00.002+13:00

Is how my state of mind has been in the last day or two. Last night I became convinced that the abdominal and lower back pain I was having must be the beginning of a pelvic infection from the hysteroscopy (camera through the cervix thingy) I had last week. So after 60 minutes at the after hours clinic and and expenditure of $83.50, I had a packet of 30 ibuprofen and advice to come back again if I started to get a temperature or feel sick. L was very good to refrain from saying 'I told you so' and chauffeured me both ways with no complaint.

Anyway, so I found this article, where Dr Lesley Regan, who runs the top recurrent miscarriage clinic in the world (based in London) says "We have done studies that have shown that the levels of psychological distress and disturbance in couples who have repeated miscarriages and lose babies is very similar to that in psychiatric hospitals. It really is an enormous burden on people."

So the first thing this makes me think is "Yay, finally some validation for my wonky emotional state." Cos seriously, infertility and pregnancy loss hardly ever show up in official literature about stressors that impact on emotional health.

But then I start to wonder "Does this mean I should be institutionalised or is it just that the UK its easier to get into a psychiatric inpatient unit?"

Brittle

2009-03-23T07:59:00.002+13:00

I feel like a window pane with a crack in it. There is a truth at the core of me and sometimes I feel it could make me shatter - I want a baby, I want a baby but my arms are empty.

Thanksgiving

2009-03-22T14:04:00.017+13:00

Sometimes its good to give thanks

for waves and sunsets

and rainbows

and playing in the sand

for food prepared with love and generosity

for grace and beauty

for wit and the creative spark

for friends and community.

Thank you HP for bringing us together in celebration.

Clean as a whistle

2009-03-19T14:59:00.003+13:00

is how the gynae consultant described my uterus after looking into it with a camera yesterday. No scars, no fibroids, no polyps, nothing out of the usual - completely normal. It seems that it's reasonably common for a scan to show that something is a bit odd but for nothing to be found once the doctors get a real inside look.

So after being told that I might have to wait six months for this procedure it turns out I only had to wait three weeks, which just confirms my previous assessment of the quality of care in the public health system - highly variable.

And I have to say, this was way easier than having the D & C basically because this time I wasn't in the midst of an intense emotional crisis. Although I have to say the anaethetist scared me a little - I ended up concluding that either he had very poor interpersonal skills (mumbling in a monotone and refraining from eye contact as he went over the risks of GA), or that he was going through some kind of personal crisis (he was late to work and everyone was waiting for him before they could start). Given that patients can't really say "OMG is the anaethetist wacked out?" and still expect to get prompt treatment I decided to just cross my fingers and hope that he was just aspergic. I seem to have survived the procedure with few ill effects so I guess he did his job alright.

Anyway, in a burst of unwarranted optimism, I'm thinking that maybe this is the end of the line for me in terms of reproductive crap. Maybe things will just be really easy from here on out. A girl can dream can't she.

Journeys

2009-03-12T07:50:00.002+13:00

The other couple who live in our apartment complex had slightly premature twin babies in mid February. The babies were in the hospital for a while but now they have come home.

Since they came home I've had glimpses of their presence every now and then - rows of baby onesies hanging on the communal washing line, faint newborn crying. But the other day we had a odd confrontation. L and I were carrying our mountain bikes up some steps to the driveway and removing the front wheels so we could load them in our hatchback. At the same time, our neighbours were valiantly trying to load their double stroller, two baby car seats and assorted baby paraphernalia into their vehicle.

We chatted a little and I got my first good look at one of the babies - a small sleepy bundle. It turned out this was the first time they were leaving the house with the babies since they had come home. S, the mother, was looking a little grey with fatigue. When I asked her how it was all going she simply said "It pretty full on".

It was an odd moment because if my second pregnancy had worked out I too would have been lugging around a newborn right then. Or if my third pregnancy had worked out, I would have had a visible bump and been able to trade stories about the trials of pregnancy. But as things were, I was still footloose and fancy free, about to spend the afternoon whizzing around on my pretty new bike with my partner and to spare no thought for the needs of any other. And at that moment, although I would happily give a kidney or some other body part to have a baby myself, I was glad that I was not the one weighed down with responsibility and the awful slog of wrangling two new borns.

Last night I was walking past their lounge window on my way to the car, and as I have been doing habitually since the babies came home, I tried to subtly catch a glimpse of the interior. This time I saw J, the father, in the cosily lighted room, cradling a newborn gently on his lap, gazing enraptured at his child. And I felt like the orphan child in the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale who presses her nose against the glass of the rich house on Christmas eve to glimpse the beauty of the Christimas tree and the glorious presents wrapped beneath.

Tick tock, turn the screw, raise the stakes

2009-03-11T07:51:00.002+13:00

So the same day that I saw the beautiful ob/gyn in his private practice I also fronted up to Wellington Hospital for a publicly funded consultation. (The public ob/gyn got pissed off when I told him I'd had the two appointments in one day, I guess because he thought I was wasting precious public resources - but if they hadn't double booked me and left me waiting for an hour in mid-Feb then I would have felt confident enough about this public appointment would go ahead that I would have cancelled the private one - after all I had to wait three months for both of them).

The hospital started the ball rolling with a 3D ultrasound scan which involved the use of a large vaginal probe with the appearance of a joke sex toy. I love the way they know how to put you at ease.

Anyway it seems that me and scans have bad karma because it turns out there is something amiss in my uterus. A very small something - the ob/gyn described it as the size of the end of a ball point pen (you know the little sticky up bit) - only a few millimetres in diameter. In this area, there was no uterine lining growing. It seems the most likely scenario is that this is scarring from my d & c. I knew that scarring was a risk - however no one told me that there is research that indicates when you are having a d & c for a missed miscarriage as I did that there is a 30 % chance of scarring. At the time I was so focused on having the chromosomal testing done that I was prepared to take what I thought was a small risk. Was this the right decision? Is this another betrayal of me by my body unfolding in its unseen depths?

On the other hand this could be a 'something else', from my internet reading most likely a fibroid or polyp, and this something else could have been the cause of at least some of my miscarriages.

So the next step is to put a teeny tiny camera through my cervix to look at my uterus from the inside to see what it is and then to possibly operate. The waiting list for this procedure is six months, although people keep making vague statements about how they think I'll probably get it done sooner than that.

I feel like I'm whooshing down the slipperly slope of medical intervention at full speed. Every procdure that involves dilation of the cervix can weaken it ultimately making it to weak to hold together during pregnancy. Every entry into my uterus risks perforation, infection and further scarring. Surgery to remove adhesions, polyps and fibroids if done improperly can damage the uterus to the point that conception becomes difficult or impossible.

And then theres the issue of whether we should continue trying to conceive while we are waiting for the 'something' in my uterus to be photographically diagnosed. Public ob/gyn said it was fine as long as there was no possibility of me being pregnant at the time they stick the camera in. But there are vague online statements about pregnancies in compromised uteruses leading to miscarriage in the second trimester, prematurity and post-birth hemoragghing. Yay.

It seems that without any conscious volition on my part we are on the track to keep trying despite the ambiguous status of my uterus. I can't bring myself to stop again.

Missing the mark

2009-03-09T20:21:00.003+13:00

I went to see a private fertility specialist the other day. A man only a year older than me, who is renown as being the young sexy ob/gyn about town. He was beautiful, and personable and sympathetic but he still doesn't really understand how it is to be the one sitting in my chair.

After I told him we'd been trying to have a baby for two years, he asked me if I had gotten sick of taking the folic acid every day.

Uh ........ no
I'm sick of having sex just to get pregnant when I'm tired and stressed and not in the mood
I'm sick of the roller coaster wait each month to see if it worked
I'm sick of all the people around me swelling up with child and bringing their babies into work
I'm sick of wondering what went wrong and could I have stopped it and will it happen again next time
I'm sick of the impact that the grief and the stress has on my life and my relationship

But frankly, no, I'm not sick of taking a teeny tiny pill every day. I'd be willing to do a great deal more, if it would help.

Then of course, there was the cool, serene acupuncturist who poleaxed me when making polite conversation and asking if I was sick of waiting to get pregnant.

Hello, I'm not infertile I'm a recurrent miscarrier, I've already been pregnant several times. Have you even read my file lately? And frankly, "sick of waiting to get pregnant" is the biggest understatement I've heard in a long time. When I'd been trying to get pregnant for six months with no result, THEN I was sick of trying to get preggers. Now, I've visited the deepest reaches of soul and come to the understanding that I have absolutely no control over what fate chooses to dish out to me and yet I've still scraped together enough courage to keep on trying and risk it all again. OK?

Sorry if I don't call you

2008-12-20T18:56:00.002+13:00

I wrote this last week but I had technical difficulties posting it. I just had a phone call that inspired me to dig it out and try again.

It hurts when someone I know gets pregnant - I want to be happy for them but it reminds me of what I've lost.

Sometimes I'm scared to call my friends
The ones from out of town
The ones who I haven't talked to in a while
The ones who I know are trying
The ones who might be pregnant by now
And might be ready to announce it
The ones who already have children
Who interrupt their mother's phone call
And babble in the background
It can be like a knife in the heart
And there is nothing to soothe my broken heart this night.

It helps to know

2008-12-20T11:47:00.002+13:00

This week I found out the cause of my last pregnancy loss. There was a chromosomal abnormality called trisomy 20. Basically, everyone has 23 pairs of chromosomes. In this case, the fertilised egg ended up with three copies of chromosome 20. According to google, trisomy 20 almost always causes miscarriage in the first trimester. It's usually caused by a problem with the egg, probably due to maternal age.

I feel a bit like everything has been turned upside down. Despite fighting to have the testing done, I never really fully believed that the hospital had actually done it. And because everyone kept telling me that the testing was often inconclusive I thought that I wouldn't get a result.

So what does this mean? It means a lot of things.

It means that no matter what I did in the last pregnancy, it was never going to work out - right from the moment of conception. And I did so much. I took time off work to go on bedrest. I took expensive and unpleasant Chinese herbs. I did acupuncture. I used six unpleasant and expensive vaginal progesterone pessaries a day. I took low dose aspirin. I avoided dairy products, wheat, sugar and raw fruit and vegetables. I tried to think calm and positive thoughts. As it turned out, all of this was futile. It was just a matter of time until the pregnancy failed.

Right after the second miscarriage I remember thinking that I just couldn't have another miscarriage and that I was going to do anything I possibly could to make sure it didn't happen again. It's kind of like there is some force in the universe that wanted to teach me that I couldn't control this, that there are some things I can't control. There is nothing I could have done to prevent this. Its a deeply unsettling realisation.

But its also a relief. I had pretty much convinced myself that the miscarriages were caused by some kind of immunological problem and that I would need to seek treatment for that in my next pregnancy - probably with considerable resistance from the medical profession given that no immunological problems were found in the investigative tests. But now I don't know. I still don't know what caused the first two miscarriages. They could have been chromosomal abnormalities as well. Or they could have been due to hormonal or immunological problems. I don't know and I will never know. What this does mean is that the progesterone and aspirin didn't fail - they never could have worked. And if I do have an underlying problem, they could work in my next pregnancy. It gives me more hope for my next pregnancy. Although of course there are no guarantees.

It makes me realise once again that one of the really painful things about miscarriage is not knowing why it happened. It really helps to know.

Anchor me

2008-12-16T06:35:00.002+13:00

Over the last two years, L and I have experienced the following life events:

the death of a parent
the death of a step-parent
18 cycles of trying and failing to conceive
3 pregnancies ending in early loss
an episode of clinical depression
two work restructures
an elopement
2 car accidents
a major dispute amongst the owners of our apartment block.

Many of these things happened in our first year of being married. Before we got married, I expected that we were entering a rich new phase in our lives full of joy from having made a tangible commitment and the adventure of becoming parents. So far thats not how it has worked out. Instead we are both emotionally battered and trying to cope with a significant amount of psychic pain on a daily basis.

And I've been wondering, how do you sustain a relationship through this kind of prolonged stress and grief? How do we support each other when we are both debilitated by our own emotional pain? And while we are sticking together, I can see how major loss and grief can lead to relationship breakdowns.

The substance of loss

2008-11-27T19:27:00.004+13:00

I've been reading articles about the grief that goes with miscarriage, and it is different from other kinds of bereavement in some ways. I found a list of characteristics of miscarriage grief and here are the items that really reasonated for me.

the loss of our dreams for this child and the future
For all my pregnancies I knew the due dates and I made plans. For my last two pregnancies I had planned maternity leave, baby gear, cloth nappies, breast feeding, child care ......

the loss of trust in the body we feel has betrayed us
How could my mind and my body be so at odds with each other? How could I not have known that things had gone wrong before I started to bleed or had the scan?

the loss of innocence for future pregnancies
During the second pregnancy when it looked like things were going well, we were so happy and hopeful. I don't think we will ever have that kind of joy again with future pregnancies.

the loss of the belief system we didn't even necessarily recognise we held that says "this won't happen to me"
How could I be the one person in 100 who has recurrent miscarriages? I have always been so physically healthy. If this can happen, what else could happen?

the loss of control over our expectations of life
I thought that the big part about having a child was making the decision to have it. When I first started I expected I would have a child within the year. In reality we have been trying for 20 months and have nothing to show for it.

not knowing why the miscarriage happened
I feel so compelled to search for a cause because maybe there is some way to prevent it happening again. If there is a discoverable cause and I make inadequate effort to find it, doesn't that make me somehow culpable for any future losses.

the loss of access to successful womanhood (in our own or others eyes)
This is totally irrational but I feel like a failure as a woman.

the feeling we should hide our loss and not talk about it as others think we are over-reacting
Sometimes I don't tell people because I don't trust that they would understand, sometimes when I do it feels like I'm taking a big risk.

to be unable to do what other women seem easily able to do as a 'natural part of life' and our jealousy and anger of that
there are so many pregnant women around me and women that have had children easily and give it no thought. It feels so unfair, why couldn't I have had that?

dealing with others' inappropriate comments, some with the best of intentions
I haven't had too many of these but those I have had have been painful. They tend to be along the lines of "cheer up", "try again", "it could be worse", "there must have been something wrong with the baby".

the feeling we have let our partner/others down
Once again, irrational but after the second and third miscarriage I had strong feelings that I had failed L and by my body being unable to hold the pregnancy I was culpable for the pain it caused him.

Don't reassure me

2008-11-25T20:39:00.003+13:00

Right before I had my d&c the registrar who going to perform it came to talk to me. As you may remember from the post below she told me that the hospital lab was unlikely to do genetic testing on the pregnancy tissue. Because I must have looked upset at this and because she was not offering me what I wanted she tried to comfort me by saying "I know this is very frustrating" (talk about minimising language, try 'devastating') "but 60 to 65% of people in your situation go on to have a baby."

This pissed me off at the time, although I was familiar with these statistics, . After the registrar had left the cubicle, I turned to my mother who was with me and said "how can she think telling someone they have a 60% chance of having a baby is reassuring." It wasn't until I came across this article today, that I realised why it made me so angry. The writer, who suffered three consecutive miscarriages, says:

Yes, there may be some validity to these statistics. Yet, too often doctors seem to use them as an excuse to not help women. When this happens, the underlying message comes across as that the doctors believe that we should find comfort in these statistics and therefore not worry about the fact that we've lost a baby because in all likelihood we won't lose another one. We should not seek treatment for miscarriages because statistics suggest we won't have another one.

For starters, by being recurrent miscarriers, we've often already fallen out of statistical favor. When statistics suggested we shouldn't be in this position in the first place, statistics start to lose their power. After all, if I can be that 1 in 100 women that has three miscarriages in a row, why should I feel comfort that I'll be one of those 6 out of 10 (hardly an overwhelmingly reassuring number) that will carry to term without treatment?

But more importantly, the reason I hate these statistics so much is that they are used to justify an exceedingly cavalier attitude toward miscarriage. Doctors and researchers seem to want us to view pregnancy as a roll of the dice. And it doesn't bother them to just shrug off a failed roll and have us pick up the dice again. We are required to go through a certain number of failed rolls before we can get any help. Yes, even with if we keep rolling the dice, even if they're flawed, we might roll the right number eventually. But for me, each time I get pregnant, that is a child to me. It is not dice.

Most women cannot lose a child with the same nonchalance as we can pick up dice and roll again. Each failed roll represents a little person who will never call us Mommy. It takes great emotional strength to pick up those dice and try again. Each time involves a period of grieving and deep scarring to the heart, sometimes never to heal.

Yes, yes, yes. That is how I felt. The registrar was telling me the hospital lab didn't think it was worth doing testing, which admittedly is expensive, because the results would not change the management of the next pregnancy. In other words, because no explanation has been found for my miscarriages most clinical guidelines say I should not be offered any treatment for my next pregnancy. This is regardless of whether it was found that this latest pregnancy was not caused by a chromosomal abnormality and therefore was not just 'bad luck'. And I shouldn't mind this because its more likely than not that my next pregnancy will work out.

Given the huge emotional and spiritual impact each pregnancy loss has had on me, L and the people who care about us - the days when I could do nothing but sleep, the debilitating depression - shouldn't the medical profession be doing everything it possibly can to try and stop me from losing another pregnancy?

How validating

2008-11-23T21:40:00.002+13:00

After much internet searching I found there is such a thing a a miscarriage blog.

Here's one of a woman who had a child in her early 40s after four miscarriages.

Her blog has a lot of interesting information about celebrity miscarriages, who knew that Courtney Cox had several miscarriages and only had her daughter after having daily heparin injections in her last pregnancy.

Hello! - ever heard of patient-centred care?

2008-11-20T20:17:00.004+13:00

This is what happened to me when I had to navigate the medical system. This is long and kind of confusing, so I apologise in advance, but all I can say is imagine having to live it.

It started when I went for my seven week scan - the first scan I'd ever had. It was a Monday. I drank so much water I could barely walk down the street to the radiography clinic.

Radiographer put gel on my belly and ran a small paddle over it, pressing fairly gently but still compromising my overfull bladder a little. I looked up on the screen - I could see the crescent shape of my uterus with a small blurry circle inside it. I thought maybe I could even see the pulsing of the heartbeat. Radiographer measured things over and over - I started to feel nervous when he didn't say anything for so long. Then he told us he couldn't find the fetus. He offered to give me a intra-vaginal ultrasound, which would give a better view. I went the the toilet to empty my bladder and sobbed while I was in there. I had to take off my clothes and put on a sack-like garment for the internal ultrasound. Radiographer couldn't see anything with that either. The last time my hormone levels had been measured they were around 8,000. Radiographer said he would have expected to see a baby at that level. He said that the scan looked like a pregnancy at levels of 200 or 300.

We walked home in a daze. I googled and found what I had was called a "blighted ovum". Then I slept most of the day. The next day I started calling people - I wanted to know what happened next. I called locum GP (who I had been seeing for hormone monitoring), my midwife, and the nurse at my specialists office. Locum GP was the only one that called back that day. She said she had called the radiology lab and talked to Radiologist - the expert in interpreting scans. She said "This isn't bad news" - the Radiologist said it was too early to know whether or not the pregnancy was viable because it wasn't usual to see a heartbeat until the hormone levels were at 11,000. Locum GP said I should book another scan in a weeks time and have another hormone test done to see what was happening. Tendrils of hope inched their way into my heart. Maybe things would still be ok.

The next day I went back to work. My blood test showed my hormone levels had increased from 8,000 to about 19,000 over a five day period. Locum GP left a message saying that she thought it had increased too much to be a blighted ovum. That afternoon specialist nurse called me back. She was casual when she mentioned that my scan was "not reassuring" and cheerfully noted that my hormone levels were still rising.

The next day was a Thursday. Specialist finally called me. He said that because I was not using him as my lead maternity carer for my pregnancy that I was not under his care and he could not treat me. He told me having looked at the scans that he thought "it was very unlikely the pregnancy was viable". I asked him if I could come and see him after the pregnancy was over to get more recurrent miscarriage testing done. He said there was nothing more he could do for me. I was left feeling devastated. My midwife finally called back after I got home, she told me that she was friends with specialist nurse and the only reason Specialist had called me at all was because Locum GP had rung him and had strong words. Midwife minimised what Specialist had said and thought there was still a good chance the pregnancy would be ok. I was pretty doubtful at this point - I had looked up obstetric textbooks online which said it was usual to find a heartbeat when the hormone levels were at 5,000 or more.

The next day I found my hormone levels had risen from 19,000 to 21,000 over two days. I couldn't handle being at work and had to go home at lunchtime. I slept most of the weekend.

On the following Tuesday I went for my next scan. We went through the same drill as last time with the abdominal scan followed by an internal one because. Radiographer still couldn't see a fetus. So it seemed pretty clear to me that it wasn't going to work out. We went for coffee afterwards and tried to make sense of things. If the pregnancy wasn't viable I wanted to have and d&c so I could have chromosomal testing. All the books I bought after the second miscarriage said this was really important to try and work out the underlying cause. But I had found a website called misdiagnosed miscarriage - it said that lots of people were misdiagnosed with blighted ovums and ended up having d&cs when they had a viable pregnancy. It said that 30% of women had a uterus that tipped in the wrong directions (towards the spine instead of away from it) and this made it hard to see the fetus in a scan. Some people had to wait until 12 weeks or later before they could see the fetus in a scan. I was only at 8 weeks - maybe I was one of those women. And yet - it seemed so unlikely. I spent the rest of the day sleeping.

The next day Locum GP was away so I talked to my original GP and told her I wanted to organise a d&c. She said she would talk to the hospital and that I should have another hormone test. This time it had gone from 21,000 to 28,000 over six days - the smallest increase yet.

The next day was Thursday and I talked to the GP again. She told me the hospital would not give me a d&c unless my hormone levels were falling, just in case the pregnancy was still viable. WTF!

The next day was Friday before Labour weekend. I had so wanted to have the d&c done before the long weekend, so I could recover and get back to normal the next week. I got my next test results back that evening at 6pm, my levels had only risen by 50 over two days. GP had left a message, "expect to start miscarrying over the next few days. If you don't miscarry by Tuesday morning go and get another bloodtest and don't eat anything"

I didn't miscarry over the weekend. On Tuesday morning I skipped breakfast and went to get my blood test. Then I went back to work and waited for the results and what I presumed would be a chance to finally go and have the d&c. And waited...... and waited......and got hungrier.... and light headed. I finally got to talk to GP nurse at about noon - my levels had fallen from 28,000 to 25,000 and the hospital couldn't fit me in today. What I needed to do was get on with my day but the next morning I should fast and wait for the hospital to call me.

On Wednesday morning I skipped breakfast and went to work and waited for the hospital to call. And waited..... and waited.... and got hungrier.....and light headed. At noon I finally broke down and called GP nurse to ask her what was going on. GP nurse got back to me in a 20 minutes.

Seems like GP had made a bit of a mistake. The Womens Health Assessment Clinic were actually waiting for me to come in to have a consultation and then they were going to give me an appointment for a d&c. An appointment, what a revolutionary idea. I went off to the hospital and waited for an hour in a waiting room with a two heavily pregnant women. I talked to Clinic Nurse and Clinic Gyn, having to tell both of them my history and the fact I wanted a d&c to have testing done. Clinic Nurse was pretty doubtful about but Clinic Gyn assured me that it was possible. They couldn't book me in for the d&c until the following Monday morning.

On Monday, three weeks after the first scan showing an empty sac, I turned up at the hospital for the d&c. My instructions were to get there at 6.45am. After filling out forms, changing into a cotton hospital gown that tied up at the back, cottom pajama pants, a dressing gown and paper slippers, and waiting around a lot, they gave me a drug to dilate my cervix. It gave me really bad cramps and made me feel nauseous. They walked me down to the surgical ward and got me to take off the dressing gown, slippers and pajama pants and to lie on a bed under a warm flannel sheet. They made me tuck my hair under a paper hairnet. They gave me more forms to fill out.

Surgical nurse, anaesthetist and Gyn registrar all came to talk to me. I reminded Gyn registrar about the testing. She told me that the Lab usually turns down requests for this type of testing because "the result doesn't affect the management of the next pregnancy". I've read a lot of literature on this and I knew it was not necessarily the case. I tried to argue with her but its hard to do this effectively when you're lying on your back with no knickers on and you are the Patient talking to the Doctor. She left the cubicle and I started sobbing - it was definitely up there as one of the most disempowering experiences of my life. Surgical nurse came in and asked why I was crying, I tried to tell him but his English wasn't good enough for him to understand me while I was so distraught. Gyn Registrar came in and told me she had just phoned the lab and they had agreed to do the testing.

I had no time to calm down before they started wheeling my bed away down a corridor to a room where the surgery would take place. Suddenly there were about six people standing around my bed - one of them adjusting my gown for 'easy access', another sticking a pulse monitor on my finger, another inserting a drip into my arm, another placing an oxygen mask over my face. All of them ignoring the fact that I was still crying - not sobbing but a fairly constant stream of tears. The anaesthetic was horribly disorienting for about 15 seconds and then I was out.

I came to in a different room to someone I didn't know calling my name to wake me up. I felt dopy and with a sore throat but basically ok. I was discharged a couple of hours later.

So, that was my journey of three weeks, dealing with over 10 health professionals, telling my story over and over, having referrals messed up, being given conflicting information and generally having experiences that made an already very distressing situation much harder. I still don't have the test results and I don't know whether the Lab actually did the testing in the end. It was all a thoroughly disempowering experience. There was huge variability in the empathy of the health professionals. There were only two or three who I felt like actually cared about me as a person and didn't see me as just another set of symptoms.

This was the first time I had ever had such a close encounter with the medical system. I hope I don't have to again for quite some time.

Things I have done to try and have a baby

2008-10-29T15:04:00.002+13:00

lie with my legs against the wall for 30 minutes after having sex
take and record my temperature everyday for 18 months and graph it on computer software
become minutely familiar with my cervical mucous and cervical position
had fortnightly acupuncture sessions for over a year
had lots of blood tests to look at my hormones - progesterone, lutenising hormone, follicle stimulating hormone, prolactin
Lost 10kg
have compuslory sex the day before ovulation whether we're in the mood or not
bought and read four books on natural fertility and six books on miscarriage
had lots and lots of investigative blood tests to look for underlying reasons for recurrent miscarriage
taken elevit, high dose vitamin B6, selenium, and flax oil capsules
drunk disgusting chinese herbal remedies
gone on bedrest
used progesterone pessaries
given up wheat, dairy, refined sugar and raw fruit and vegetables
tried to keep the faith

For everything there is a season

2008-10-13T14:38:00.004+13:00

I didn't intend this blog to become what it has - a record of my struggles with fertility and miscarriage punctuated by periods of withdrawl into grief and pain. And it seems my trials are not over and I don't know if I can bear to go on blogging about it.

I had an ultrasound today and there was no fetus, just a yolk sac. At 7 weeks pregnant, this is a strong indication that the pregnancy has failed.

I know there is nothing to say, all we can do is cling onto hope that eventually we will enter a new season.

Come join the rollercoaster ride

2008-09-26T08:42:00.002+12:00

Monday 22/9 - hcg 50
Wednesday 24/9 - hcg 86
Thursday 25/9 - hcg 120

hcg doubling time is within normal range so far

Progesterone suppositories (2 week supply) = $90
Low dose aspirin = $12
GP appointment = $48
Acupuncture appoinment = $55
Chinese herbs (1 week supply) = $35
Counselling appointment = $110

Currently on bedrest til Wednesday.

Good together

2008-07-19T21:58:00.003+12:00

Tonight L and I were out at the movies. About halfway through he leaned over and kissed me very tenderly three times on the cheek. And I felt all warm inside and happy and tingly and I thought, "Yeah, we're good together".

Just in case

2008-07-07T18:30:00.001+12:00

you were worrying, I had a much better day today.

Midwinter shadows

2008-07-06T13:23:00.002+12:00

I feel low, like I've lost my joy. I know that this is grief and eventually I will feel better, perhaps in a few months time.

But I think I've lost something else this time too - a big chunk of my optimism. There is roughly a 20% chance of having a miscarriage in any pregnancy due to one-off problems but there is only a 1% chance of this happening for a women's first two pregnancies. After two miscarriages, the chance the next pregnancy will end in miscarriage jumps from 20% to 30%, a just under 1 in 3 chance. You might say that a 70% chance of a next pregnancy being successful is a reason for optimism and hope, I've said it to people myself. But after the first few days of my second pregnancy, I was very optimistic it would work out, and it didn't. I don't think it will be very easy to be optimistic the third time around.

After my first miscarriage, all I wanted was to be pregnant again as soon as possible. Now I'm scared to get pregnant because I'm terrified of having another miscarriage.

I will probably ovulate sometime in the next week, but we are not going to try this cycle to give ourselves a break. I feel antsy, this will be the first time in a year that we have had a cycle without trying. I am spending a lot of time researching causes and treatments for recurrent miscarriage. I have made an appointment with a specialist and I have ordered 7 (yes 7) books on miscarriage online. I am looking for a naturopath and I'm thinking about changing acupuncturists. I'm not sure that all of this is particularly healthy but I can't seem to stop thinking about it. Very little matters to me as much as this does.

While in the fertility game, anything can happen at any time, at the moment all I can see is hard times ahead. Apologies for the depressing post, I know that things will change in time but right now its hard.

Hot water cylinders and sulky cats

2008-07-01T20:08:00.003+12:00

My cat isn't talking to me and I haven't showered for three days. Thats because our hotwater cylinder died on Sunday and I took the cat to the vet yesterday to have his teeth cleaned. Now he refuses to come in the house except to eat and runs away from me when I try to pat him. He is a very temperamental cat. Plumber came today and managed to fix the cylinder even though it is pre-WWII and I have high hopes for shower tomorrow morning. And incidentally, tomorrow will probably be my first day back at work since the miscarriage.

Physically having a miscarriage like a really nasty period (at least when you're only 5 wks) but emotionally its like someone you're really besotted with breaking up with you.

In some ways the second time was easier - it was less of a shock and less of an unknown. But in some ways it was harder - I know how long it takes to recover.

In way I'm hoping I don't get pregnant again too soon because I think the next time is going to be really hard and I think I'm going to be a bit of a wreck. Still we are taking a break from ttc for the next month and I will certainly enjoy the glasses of wine and hot baths which I will be able to partake with abandon.

Its all over, red rover

2008-06-27T11:32:00.003+12:00

I'm afraid that this pregnancy is now officially kaput. Got back my hcg results from a blood test yesterday and I am only at 13. I should be somewhere between 600-3000 by now.

Just to update this post, I wanted to say thank you so much to everyone who has been so supportive. L and I are very sad right now but know we are going to have a baby one day.

Threatened miscarriage

2008-06-26T20:00:00.004+12:00

Well, here I am again. I wish I had better news to tell all of you but so far its not looking good. I started bleeding this afternoon at about 4.30 and now I'm cramping pretty badly. For those of you who I hadn't caught up, I am/was about 5 weeks pregnant.

Technically about 50% of people who have threatened miscarriage go on to have a normal pregnancy so its still a possibility. But the fact I haven't had any nausea or fatigue symptoms along with my worsening cramps really doesn't give me a lot of hope its going to work out.

I'm having a scan tomorrow, but they tell me it will be too early to tell whether the pregnancy is viable, although it will be possible to see if its clearly not.

I can't tell you how difficult this is and how unfair it feels but I guess this is the luck of the draw in the world of fertility. And my hand isn't that bad compared to many.

I have a shameful secret

2008-06-03T07:30:00.005+12:00

I really want to see the Sex and the City movie.

I don't know why I find this piece of pop culture so compelling - after all I don't even like shoe shopping, haven't been into cocktails since the 1980s, never been with a married man and have never been one of those people who's successful at casual sex. Plus Sarah Jessica Parker makes a really odd heroine, to say the least. And yet it the TV series somehow touched a cord with me.

I don't know, something about autonomy and self-determination and friendship and maybe something about some of the issues women face in their 30s. Maybe its the chance for the length of the movie to have an alter-ego who wears fabulous couture, has a high powered career and is one of those people who is successful at casual sex.

So I've been reading up about the movie and apparently it focuses on the fact that they have all gotten older and are now in their 40s. Somehow I think I might find that kind of validating (even though I've a while to go until 40.)

Anyway, please let me know if you want to go with me because otherwise I'm going to be one of those people in the back of the theatre wearing a raincoat (except not dodgy).

In other news, all my blood tests came back in the normal range but that wasn't really a surprise because I had them done about a year ago and same deal. Still trying to work through the logistics of filling the little plastic jar at a time that Medlab will take it. Also we are thinking of taking some time off from ttc, just because it has been so emotionally draining and kind of hard on our relationship. Will wait and see how I feel about it next month.

Running the high hurdles

2008-05-16T07:19:00.004+12:00

So, guess what. It seems that MedLab was feeling a little overwhelmed because everyone was bringing in their sperm samples on a Saturday morning. So how did they deal with this? Perhaps by engaging extra staff. Oh no, they now refuse to accept them on a Sat. How client-centred is that?

Now we not only have to go through the stress of getting the sample in the little plastic jar and taking it across town to MedLab within an hour, we also have to find some way to do this on a weekday before work.

I have to say that I don't think this approach is particularly compassionate to people who are already stressed because they are experiencing fertility issues.

Grouch. grouch grouch

Vampyric

2008-05-14T18:15:00.004+12:00

Wanna take bets on how many test tubes of blood this is gonna take?

Yes folks, today I started the ball rolling for me and L to see a fertility specialist by visiting my GP. It seems this whole thing involves a rather large number of blood tests for me and a couple of blood tests and a little plastic jar for L.

Plan A is that I find out next week that I got pregnant this cycle. Plan B is for us to go visit the fertility doctor and likely undergo a slew of even more invasive (at least for me) tests.

Lets all cross our fingers for Plan A shall we.

Epiphany

2008-05-13T07:19:00.005+12:00

I think I had a small epiphany last week.

I spent one day on an interview panel to recruit some new people into my team. Several of the people we interviewed appeared to have incredibly boring jobs - jobs that would make my soul shrivel away. They were eager to work in my team, they found the idea appealing.

At first I felt bad, sometimes I get so bored at work. I felt maybe I should just step aside to let these enthusiastic people do their thing. I remember something one of my friends once told me - that he was doing somebody else's dream job. And I realised that essentially I don't really believe that most of what I do makes a difference. I have the Myers Briggs personality type INFP - that means its really important to me to find meaning in my work. And therein lies the core problem. The thing is, I never get to see whether it does make a difference and I, immense cynic that I am, would have to take it on faith. Then it occurred to me that maybe, much of the time my work does not actually make a difference but it has the potential to and I have opportunity to influence whether or not it does. In small ways, its true, but I do.

This has been enough to make me feel better at work over the last few days than I have for a while.

Then this weekend I went to a dinner party with some friends from my last workplace and it made me remember how I got to where I am now in my working life. That workplace was dysfunctional and it severely knocked my confidence in my ability. At the dinner many other people discussed similar experiences. I had forgotten how significant it was. No wonder I stopped believing that I could influence or make a difference.

So now I feel a little more forgiving of myself too.

I really feel that ever since my holiday away a couple of weeks ago I have turned a corner for the better. I feel almost cheerful.

Holy jumper

2008-05-04T15:26:00.005+12:00

Well, I've completed my first, albeit small scale, clothing reconstruction. I bought this jumper from Mary Potter Hospice Op Shop in Miramar. Its made from merino and only cost $10 but had a hole right smack in the middle of it.

Then I bought a bit of clearance quilting fabric from spotlight for $2 and some fusable interfacing for $3. And voila - a wearable garment. After I take the lint remover to it, it might even be work-friendly.

Reconstructed / Deconstructed

2008-04-28T20:20:00.004+12:00

The reason I haven't posted for so long is that life has been a bit unrelentingly grim and crappy and I didn't want to bum out my readers by going on about it. Nothing dramatic or tragic, just hard going. Its pretty much all summed up in this post here. And in case anyone was wondering but was too shy to ask, it has now been three cycles since the miscarriage and I'm not pregnant yet. This is not really surprising because there is only a 20% chance of conceiving each cycle (and that's assuming the egg and sperm get to meet up.) But still every time I get convinced that I'm preggo and it turns out I'm not - not a happy-making experience.

But now, I have something new and exciting to talk about - (at least I was all excited about it this morning as I did my usual 30 minute internet surf in a desperate attempt to avoid leaving for work). Anyway, I went away on holiday last week and bought this book.

And now I'm intensely interested in reconstructed clothing , that is, when you take a piece of fuggly secondhand clothing or fabric and make it into something that you like and want to wear.
The first challenge I am setting myself is to make this jersey (note highly unflattering shape)

that I bought at SaveMart, Upper Hutt about six months ago for about $5, into something I would want to wear.

I have found some really cool blogs about people who have pledged only to wear reconstructed clothing (as a way of saving money, conserving the environment, being creative and generally giving the fingers to consumer culture) like this woman. And this woman really rocks - she wore the same brown dress every day for a year (she washed it) as an anti-consumer, anti-fashion statement.

Late summer At the Bay: a photo essay

2008-03-25T07:35:00.003+13:00

Giant dragonflies & llamas

2008-03-08T20:10:00.002+13:00

Are what I saw today.

We went off in search of Cross Creek. The spot of the old town at the foot of the Rimutaka incline where the fell engines used to cross the ranges before the tunnel was built in the 1950s. There wasn't much left of it. An overgrown tennis court - broken asphalt and encroaching bush. Twined amongst the native bush there were small signs - a growth of ivy, blackberry brambles, a single old fashioned rose bush, heavy with scarlet rosehips. Pieces of old clay brick lined some of the walk ways and across the path of the former railway tracks were the occasional chips of coal - dropped from the steam engines over 50 years ago.

None of the houses remained along the site of the old main street. They had all been transported to Featherston long ago. We found the end of the train line where a giant turntable used to turn the train engines around to go back up the incline and several large trenches that were used to replace the brake blocks after every trip.

On the long walkway from the carpark to cross creek we saw a giant dragonfly, a kingfisher and a herd of four llamas.

Over active

2008-03-04T07:20:00.004+13:00

Everything is feeling a bit like drudgery at the moment. Work is a blur of emails, phone calls, meetings and deadlines. We are very short-staffed. I am becoming terminally snappy. Plus there is an underlying hum of stress as we wait to here about the outcome of our restructure.

Home should be a haven from such things. But at the moment mine is not. This is because I am trying to organise some major construction work on the property where I live. It is an apartment complex which means that all the owners have to agree to the details. This is a challenge. I come home to emails, papers, relationship management and generally making my poor worn-out brain think some more. Did I mention I am becoming terminally snappy?

One might think if I am so bowled over by drudgery that I might have second thoughts about reproduction. Ha, ha. Denial is not a river in Egypt.

On a final positive note - I am, inchworm step by inchworm step, decluttering the apartment. Halleluyah!

Feeling negative

2008-02-26T07:30:00.002+13:00

My period is due tomorrow. I took a pregnancy test today. It was negative.

I really thought that I might just get pregnant again straight away. The interweb is full of stories of such things happening. Its probably a myth but they say you are more fertile right after miscarriage. I almost felt excited this cycle.

Now I'm sad, sad, sad.

Maybe I'm allergic

2008-02-18T20:36:00.002+13:00

I alway remembered Diana Galbaldon's heroine who was tragically parted from her husband for 20 years (mistakenly thinking he was dead). She finds evidence that perhaps he isn't dead after all and is telling a friend about how she is thinking of trying to find him. The friend asks to see her wedding ring and she takes it off and hands it over to him whereby he finds a line from a love poem written in latin inscribed on the inside. Now the hook in this story is the heroin didn't know about the inscription because from the moment the ring went on her finger she never took it off for 20 years.

I kind of wanted to be someone who took the ring off so seldom that it would get stuck on my finger. But such is not my life.

First of all I took the ring off when I had a shower because I didn't want it to get damaged by the soapy water. And I took it off when washing dishes and cleaning. Then I took it off when chopping onions because the acid could damage it. But then my finger started to look like this.

So now I take it off every night when I go to sleep. Its hard to be a romantic in the real world.

Dodgy old friends

2008-02-12T17:50:00.000+13:00

I am after my old friend by the last name H----- ,and you probabaly match the description. Update me on my present findings.Its been a while and I am quite eager to catch up on lost times Can you please contact me and ascertain my findings, wishing You HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Thank Terry Morris.

Okay, so the bad grammar and the fact they didn't mention my first name should probably have tipped me off. But hey, I was sent this through the Old Friends website. I figured the person had mistaken me for someone else and I politely emailed them back to tell them so. Whoops.

Turns out Terry wanted to contact me about, My Late Client Mr.Randolf H ... an oil merchant. Seems Unky Randolf put US$10.5 million into a European finance company and then died without any immediate family surviving. Terry searched high and low to find someone with the same last as his client and finally found me. Now he wants me to make a claim to the finance company to get the dough.

I feel and know that you will be able to make this claim successfully and as a result of this I do not want the Finance Company to be aware that I contacted you first in order to prevent them from going into much investigations on whom you actually are and that can put the success of this transaction on the line.
I want you to be rest assured that this is legal with no risk involved, since all the legal documents that gives you the right to make the claim is available. This is a deal I am offering you and I want you to know that it requires only a mature mind to understand all I am saying and I believe you are mature enough which is the reason I am going further.

I'm so flattered that Terry thinks I'm mature and so reassured that he isn't going to put me at risk. Can't wait to get my share of the 10 mil.

Someone sent me this

2008-02-12T07:42:00.001+13:00

Nobody Knew You

Nobody knew you
" Sorry about the miscarriage dear, but you couldn't have been very far
along."
....existed.

Nobody knew you
" It's not as though you lost an actual person."
....were real

Nobody knew you
" Well it probably wasn't a viable fetus.
It's all for the best."
....were perfect.

Nobody knew you
" You can always have another!"
....were unique.

Nobody knew you
....but us.

And we will always remember
....You.

By Jan Cosby

Nine out of ten people felt better when they didn't move to Featherston

2008-02-06T12:40:00.000+13:00

L and I have had a dream for a couple of years now. The dream of moving to Featherston. For those of you unfamiliar with the area Featherston is a small South Wairarapa town in the lee of the Rimutaka Hills. It is only about this big.

It takes one hour to commute to Wellington from Wairarapa by either car or train and the drive over the hills is very narrow, windy and steep - literally a killer drive. For many years Featherston has been something of a joke - a hick town with ferocious wind and a few infamous child murders. While the Wellington property market boomed, people in Featherston couldn't sell their houses because no one wanted to buy them. When L and I talk about our dream it is not uncommon for people to react as if we had said "We're thinking about moving to Antartica."

The thing is that Featherston is changing. Has been for a while now. Property prices have almost doubled over the last two years. Wellington yuppies priced out of the market are moving in. A boutique Lighthouse Cinema has opened there. I think there may even be a delicatessen. It has begun the process of gentrifying like its sister towns, Greytown and Martinborough.

And Featherston is pretty. It is green and semi-rural and it has a small bush-clad hill running across its southern end and a vast blue sky. It has grown on me and the more I visit the more I find to like. In Featherston there is a street called Underhill Road, a classic hobbit name. In Featherston there is a fully functioning miniature railway that children can play on. And there is a community centre with yoga classes. And you can walk everywhere and people say hello to you on the streets. And best of all you can buy houses like this for $250,000.

And our dream in essence is about downshifting. L & I dream of working less or working in jobs that are more fulfilling but don't necessarily pay as much as the work we do now. (For example, I once looked at becoming a zookeeper, which I would LOVE but the pay range is about $25K - $35k.) And I don't want to have to work full time while we have preschool age children. In fact, I would like to have the option of us living on one income if one of us falls in love with being a full-time parent. Buying a house in Featherston could mean that our mortgage drops by 30-50%.

But it would be a big change and it would be scary. We sometimes go for months feeling luke warm about the idea and then it flares up again with great intensity. We can't sell our current place yet because it needs work done to it. But we keep dreaming .....

Pill popper

2008-01-29T08:17:00.000+13:00

These are the pills I pop every morning. (Don't worry the really big one gets dissolved in water.) How healthy am I! Sometimes I feel too full for breakfast. Apart from the iron and the happy pill all of these are supposed to make me more fertile, more hormonally balanced or less prone to birth defects.

Over the last year, I have been taking these pills, going to fortnightly acupuncture, taking bellydance classes and have lost 8 kgs, all to promote conception and prepare myself for pregnancy. In the last month I have using a traditional Chinese medicine thing called moxa, that I burn over some acupuncture points in my legs every day for about ten minutes. Now the piece de resistance, I have given up caffiene and alcohol. Mary Mother of God bless me for I am a pure vessel.

Aftermath

2008-01-26T06:58:00.000+13:00

Well, as you might imagine its been quite a difficult week. Saturday and Sunday were the hardest. On Sunday we went out to Lambton Quay to run some errands and I started freaking out because I couldn't handle being out in the world where everyone else was behaving like normal. I'm not very good at pretending to be ok when I'm not. The idea of going back to work was hard but I've found that because its been so busy it acts as a good distraction. Of course big doses of grieving and then avoiding grieving leave one rather drained at the end of the day.

I discovered that there are no real social mechanisms for acknowledging miscarriage and it often gets minimised. I've been told by people that its "a set-back" that "worse things could happen" and that I should be "glad that I can get pregnant" And believe me, I'm hugely relieved that I can get pregnant but I just lost a pregnancy that had the potential to be a child and I'm really sad right now. Of course I do have many awesome people in my life who have been lovely and I guess, due to the aforementioned lack of social mechanisms, its difficult for people to know what to say.

Anyway things are getting easier day by day and I have been indulging in some craft-therapy. I have been slowed down on the spinning front because one of the parts needed a hole drilled through it but have now made my first foray and there has also been some continuing sock action. Have a look.

1 in 4

2008-01-19T18:17:00.000+13:00

This has been one of the craziest and most difficult weeks I've had for a long time. I was due to get my period last Saturday but it never came. Each day I took pregnancy tests and each day they came back with lines so faint that I thought I must be imagining them. Every day I expected my period to start. Finally I went and bought some really sensitive tests (the ones I was using I bought from a site called saveontests.com - 25 tests for approx NZ$18). That one came up with a faint but distinct line. The same morning I went to the doctor and got a blood test to confirm the result. My levels of hcg (the hormone you start producing once the embryo implants) were 52. Anything over 5 is considered to indicate pregnancy but 52 is very low. However, if the number doubles in 48 hours its a sign that everything is on track. I went and got another blood test yesterday and the hcg was 110. I started looking at pregnancy books on Trademe. I looked on the internet for midwives. My estimated due date was 21 September.

This morning I started bleeding. We went to the after-hours clinic on Adelaide Rd. The doctor told us this was called 'threatened miscarriage'. When she examined my abdomen there was tenderness on one side. She was worried about ectopic pregnancy (when the embryo implants in a fallopian tube) which can be life-threatening and sent me to the hospital for a scan. The gynecological registrar said my hcg numbers were too low to see anything on a can but he took another blood test and sent us away for two hours. When we came back he told me the hcg had dropped to 80. He told me it was very likely the pregnancy was failing. Basically, barring some kind of miracle recovery, the pregnancy is over. They will keep monitoring my hcg levels until they go below 5 again.

I only knew I was pregnant for three days. I was only just starting to believe it was real. Now its hard to believe this has happened. Its all feeling a bit surreal.

There are some positives here.

We got pregnant naturally once, so its likely we will be able to again. Maybe I don't have to plan for fertility treatment after all.

It wasn't an ectopic pregnancy and so my fallopian tubes remain intact and functional.

I think its better it happened earlier, while its painful and I think it would have been more painful if this had happened at 8 or 10 weeks of pregnancy (technically I was 5 weeks pregnant - they count from the first day of your last period). Also at this point its more of an emotional than a physical trauma.

I'm going to spend the rest of the weekend at home under my duvet reading books and maybe doing a spot of knitting. Love to you all and for those of you who live nearby, hope to see you in the real world sometime soon.

A plague of hedgehogs

2008-01-15T19:57:00.000+13:00

Once many years ago I had a dream I was knocked over by a swarm of hedgehogs in the driveway of the house I lived in from ages 6-14. I remember there were so many hedgehogs rushing towards me that as they started climbing up my legs and onto my torso I buckled under their weight and finally toppled over. I woke up and my heart was pounding with adrenalin.

The last few days has been a bit like that. Lots of prickly hedgehogs have been running my way and I've been using all my energy just to try and brush them off me and keep on my feet. While there are still some of the little suckers milling around my ankles I must say that today has been a sanctuary of calm and serenity in comparison.

My acupuncturist put needles in my ear today

2008-01-11T17:49:00.000+13:00

All I did was innocently ask her whether she was anything she could do to help me give up caffeine. Next thing I know she starts jabbing needles in my ear. When she'd stuck three in I asked her if it looked punk but I think she thought I said 'pink' with a really strong kiwi accent because she solemnly assured me it didn't.

I had only half-heartedly been thinking of giving up coffee but I'm kind of committed now. She sent me away with these little bead things taped to various parts of my upper ear. I'm supposed to press them once an hour and every time I feel the urge for coffee. Apparently, within a few days coffee will start tasting horrible to me. I wonder if she noticed the bad vibes I was sending out to her when she suggested that I drink a cup of ginseng and ginger tea each morning instead of an espresso because that would also have invigorating properties.

Something's fishy

2008-01-09T21:02:00.000+13:00

I have been feeding my neighbours' fish while they have been away on holiday. These neighbours have kept my cat alive and happy on a number of occasions when I have been out of town, including my 3 1/2 week trip to the States. The fish have to be fed every second day, which I think is probably harder to remember than daily feeding. Given the general chaos in which I usually exist, I had developed some anxiety about keeping the fish alive while they were gone.

Today, as I was letting myself into their apartment I came across my neighbour and her daughter, standing in their hallway. (Possibly they had been calling out to me as I was fumbling with the lock but I had my ipod on.) My neighbour was in her dressing gown and had what can only be described as bed hair. She explained that they had come back early and mentioned they had had a death. I was offering my solemn condolences when she explained that she was talking about one of the minnows which she had found on the floor next to the fish tank and had assumed that I had "laid him out" for viewing.

I became increasingly flustered.

I explained that I wouldn't have deliberately left a dead fish on her carpeted floor. We entered a relatively incoherent conversation about how the minnow might have jumped out of the tank or perhaps had died and was ejected from the tank by one of the goldfish. We even speculated that my cat might have snuck into the apartment and fished it out. Of course the problem was that the fish tank has a tight-fitting lid and the whole thing is really darn mysterious.

The conversation then shifted and I got to hear an exciting double annoucement i.e. that my neighbour had resolved to take up tap dancing this year while her daughter had been given a drum kit for Christmas. Did I mention our apartments share a wall?

When you live in Wellington its hard to believe in Las Vegas

2008-01-08T07:20:00.000+13:00

This is the ceiling at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. Its made from blown glass.

It was spectacular.

I only glimpsed it for a few moments, as I dashed into the foyer.

Wellington is where I live. Wellington has many good qualities but when you live in Wellington, its hard to believe Las Vegas really exists.

Maybe I exorcised something from my system by blogging about the TTC merry go round because despite my now being at a phase where I could test, I haven't yet.

But then, I think maybe I've stopped really believing that its going to happen without help.

In other news, my spinning wheel was delivered to work today : ) It arrived in a great big cardboard box with my name on it. It was like the best late Christmas present ever! I took it out of the box and displayed it next to my desk. A couple of times I indulged in some air spinning (like air guitar). It was so relaxing watching the wheel spin round and round.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho

2008-01-07T08:18:00.000+13:00

The holiday is over and now its back to work.

Today I will drink coffee and try to be cheerful and talk about "what I did in my summer holiday."

And all the time my soul will be back here.

'All spun out' or 'A tale of mad consumerism'

2008-01-05T15:01:00.000+13:00

I bought a spinning wheel today on Trademe. It was half price because of 'minor visual imperfections' in the wood. I didn't think I could have a spinning wheel because I live in a very small, very cluttered apartment. But this spinning wheel is super duper compact and folds up and weighs only 5 kg.

What's that? why yes, I guess I have been talking a lot about decluttering lately.... Self-sabotage? That's a bit of a strong phrase to use. Ok I do already have enough yarn to keep me busy knitting for about three years, so what? I will so have time for a new hobby. Shut up. No you shut up... No you....

Sorry, small digression there. Isn't it pretty?

This new dive into the heady waters of consumerism was brought about by my South Island holiday this summer and my visit to the Ashford shop in Ashburton. I made a few other aquisitions at the same time.

Actually, the pink and the white yarn I bought from a shop in Geraldine called, The Alpaca Shop. I need alpaca, you see, because I am allergic to wool. The packet thing is a bead and wire crochet necklace kit.

Also, I have started knitted my first ever sock with yarn I bought in San Francisco from a shop called Imaginiknits.

It is supposed to stripe like this.

But instead the colours turned out like this.

The TTC merry go round

2008-01-04T12:28:00.000+13:00

Here is a picture I took in mid-December in the 'grief phase' of my cycle. I think I will title it "still life - handknitted baby hat with negative pregnancy test". The grief phase is the worst part of the TTC merry go round. (For those of you naive to such things, TCC is short for 'trying to conceive').

Since March 2007 and I been taking my temperature and (apologies to the squeamish) observing my cervical mucous on a daily basis in order to determine when I ovulate. The TTC merry go round goes something like this.

Day 1-Day 4 - period

Day 4 - Day 12 - the chill out phase when I can drink lots of booze and coffee and expose myself to noxious chemicals in the knowledge that I am not pregnant.

Day 13-15 - Sex on demand to make babies. Doesn't matter how tired, stressed, not-in-the moodish either party may be, sex must be had, preferably on multiple occasions.

Day 16 - my temperature rises, indicating ovulation has taken place. This is the first day of what is known as 'the two week wait'. In a cheerful mood because conditions for a possible pregnancy have been fulfilled. Stop drinking alcohol and try to cut down on caffeine.

Day 17 - 22 - too early to take a pregnancy test so try to put the whole thing out of my mind. Underlying feeling of anticipation.

Day 23- this is the first day from which possible early pregnancy symptoms can be felt. I intensely analyse any vague feelings of nausea, fatigue or adominal twinges for all the remaining days of the cycle. I become certain that I have early pregnancy symptoms and feelings of excitement rise.

Day 25 - The beginning of the 'crazy phase'. This is the first day on which I could get a positive pregnancy test. I try to tell myself not to test because it is probably too early and I will get a negative regardless of whether I am pregnant. I break down and test and it is negative. I feel a bit teary but comfort myself that I could still be pregnant.

Day 26 - Same as day 25

Day 27 - Same as day 25 and 26

Day 28 - Same as previous four days.

Day 29 - Period starts and hysterical sobbing ensues. Alcohol consumption resumes. Each time the merry go round is repeated the grieving phase is more intense and lasts longer.

Day 1 - merry go round starts again. With my period comes a new cycle and with it new hope....

Just in case you are interested, today I am round about day 23, the beginning of the crazy phase. Wish me luck for the upcoming week.