I’ve had so many thoughts swirling around my brain and yet, when I go to commit them to the computer screen, “POOF!”  They’re gone.  It’s like they come in one ear and out the other a second later.  I had a dream one night last week that I was bleeding.  I’ve been completely paranoid ever since.  Ultrasound to check for a heartbeat is this Wednesday.  I’m simultaneously excited about it and dreading it.

I’m skiing instead of working tomorrow.  I’m looking forward to it, but I’m also nervous about overdoing it (and I hope my ski pants still fit).  It was a prior commitment and I’m going with two guys from work who don’t know I’m pregnant and my dad, who does.  I know I’ll be tempted to push myself since I’ve never skied with these two guys before (I always feel like I have to prove myself on a mountain).  I did check with my OB office and was told as long as I have no issues, I can ski until my clothes still fit.  I’m thinking this will be my last ski day this year.  That’s just fine with me.

I’m feeling numb this week, which must be my way of dealing with the shock of all this.  I haven’t wanted to write here because, what the fuck am I supposed to say?  I started this blog thinking I had a long, difficult journey ahead of me and the journey is now completely different.  I invited all of you here under one pretense and now what?  This will become a pregnancy blog?  I just really didn’t see this coming and I wasn’t prepared for the guilt.  My god, the guilt.  I know I shouldn’t feel guilty because I’ve done nothing wrong.  But I feel guilty every time I think of all of you out there reading (or not reading) and all of those who have struggled to get  pregnant.

I know I earned my IF stripes.  After all, it took us 3 years, a cancelled IVF cycle, three failed FET’s and finally a successful IVF cycle to get pregnant the first time.  And that pregnancy was no walk in the park.  Nor was the delivery of my twins, the uterine infection, retained placenta and gall bladder removal (which I’m convinced was a direct result of pregnancy) shortly thereafter. But I feel like getting pregnant this easy this time may have caused my IF stripes to be taken away from me.  And I guess I should be looking at it as a positive thing.  And I am over the moon that this happened so easily (only one hysteroscopy to break through scar tissue).  But I still feel like I somehow no longer belong to this community, nor to the fertile one.  I’m in limbo land.

We were going to wait until later to tell anyone in our families that we’re expecting.  At least until we saw a heartbeat.  My brother, SIL and niece are scheduled for a visit the weekend I should be 10 weeks.  We thought this would be a perfect opportunity to tell my family in person and then we would call my husbands family that same weekend.

My parents are visiting my brother this weekend.  We did a video chat with them last night.  My brother said he had some news for us.  My husband and I exchanged glances, having a pretty good idea what was coming.  My brother said his wife is pregnant.  My first question was “when is her due date?”  They responded with October 15th.  I looked at my husband and communicating non-verbally, we decided we had to tell them.  While I had a grin plastered on my face, he countered with “my wife is due October 16th!”

My parents are in shock.  For many years they thought grandkids might not happen for them.  Then came my niece and finally, the twins.  Now, they have two more on the way and will have 5 (assuming all goes well).  And my grandma will have 16 great grandkids.  It’s just unbelievable.

I’m trying not to worry yet about the fact that our due dates are one day apart and my parents will want to be there and here at the same time, which is physically impossible.  I always figured if we had another child, my parents would be able to take the twins when we go to the hospital.  Now I’m not so sure. But we’ll cross that bridge as we get closer to it.  For now, I’m just so grateful that we are in this position.  We’ll figure everything out somehow.

This is for real. Beta #2 yesterday came back at 230!  We were looking for the 85 to double to 170, so this is a really good number.  Can this really be happening?  I’m still trying to understand how having sex gets you pregnant.  This is crazy.  Ultrasound to check for heartbeat is scheduled for Feb. 24th.  How soon can you hear a heartbeat on a home doppler?

HCG = 85

Progesterone=41

I go back for another blood draw tomorrow and will get results Thursday afternoon.  Praying for a doubling HCG.  Of course I have no way of knowing what day I actually ovulated, so it is hard to tell whether 85 is a decent beta.  But based on my estimates, it was done at either 14dpo or 17dpo.  I wish the number was at least over 100.  Even that difference would have made me a bit more comfortable.  The good thing is my progesterone level was “fabulous” according to my OB.  As long as the beta doubles in 48 hours, I can relax a bit until the ultrasound.  In some ways, I wish I had just asked for a “good” or “bad” instead of the actual numbers.  I thought the numbers would reassure me, but they’re just making me second guess everything.  Sigh.

So here’s what happened yesterday.  We were at Target and I grabbed a pregnancy test and threw it into the cart.  My husband did a double take, looked at me and said “really?”  “Maybe” I said.  “I’m no longer hungry” he said.  I took the test shortly after we got home and brought it down to show him.  He took a look and said “what does this mean?”  I said “I’m pregnant.”  He said, “is there any chance this could be wrong?”  I said, “nope.”  Then he asked me why I let him buy a new car last week.

My head is a jumbled mess right now.  I’m having an out of body experience and totally freaking out.  Yes, I’m over the moon and completely excited about this recent development.  But I am in shock.  I never expected it to be this easy.  Yes, it did require a hysteroscopy (which I’m still fighting my insurance company to get reimbursement for), but I never thought it would be as easy as just having sex with my husband.  Who knew that could work?

I have such a range of emotions right now.  I feel guilty.  Guilty for calling myself infertile and still feeling infertile.  Guilty for starting this blog and inviting others into my journey only to discover almost immediately that the journey was to be much easier than expected (the word “poser” comes to mind).  Guilty for even wanting a third child when I lucked out so much with the twins.

I’m also mad.  Why didn’t this happen when we first started trying to get pregnant?  If it was that easy, why did it take us 3 years, numerous invasive treatments with disappointment along the way and a boat load of cash?

I’m terrified.  Three kids under the age of 2?!  When we stopped protecting I figured it would be months if not years before we got pregnant again, if at all, and that it would take more IVF cycles.  It never even occurred to me that it would happen so quickly.  My husband just got a car that is probably not the best for carting around 3 kids in car seats.  Heck, I don’t even know if I can fit 3 car seats into my car.

How in the world am I going to get 3 kids to day care and back every day, not to mention paying for 3 kids in day care?  We will probably start looking into nannies, but I really think the kids get a lot out of day care and being around other kids their age.  We’ve finally got our morning and evening routines down to a science and I can’t imagine throwing a newborn into the mix right now.

How will the kids react to a new baby in the house?  If it is anything like how they react to the dogs, they will just try to beat up on the kid.

What in the world is my work going to say?  How is this going to affect my career?  I’ve just found my rhythm at work again.

I know I asked for this.  I went into this with open eyes and I want this more than anything in the world.  I just need some time to adjust and take it all in.  We’ll figure things out as we go, as with anything else.  I’m just reeling right now.

I’m happy.  Happier than I’ve ever been in my life.  Thank you everyone for all of your well wishes.  And I’m so sorry to those of you who might have been hurt by my news.  I hope all of your dreams come true.  Really, truly.

I am already completely emotionally attached to this baby.  I’m so scared that something will happen.  I called my wonderful OB today to let her know the news.  She asked if I wanted to be treated like a “normal” pregnant woman, or if I wanted more reassurance.  I’m sure you can guess my answer.  She told me to come in for a blood draw today to check HCG and progesterone levels.  I’ll go back either Wednesday or Thursday for another blood draw and pray for doubling HCG.  If all goes well, she’ll do an ultrasound around 6 weeks to check for a heartbeat.  Thank goodness she understands my paranoia and need for reassurance using scientific data (numbers)!

You know when you are trying to conceive, how every month your body/mind tricks you into thinking you’re pregnant?  You could swear your boobs are sore, you’re bloated, nauseated and just feel “off.”  Somehow I thought that once I had experienced a pregnancy, I would KNOW for sure the next time whether I was actually pregnant or just pms-ing.  I remember stretching out in bed early on during my pregnancy with the twins and feeling all sorts of twinges and pulls like I had done a really hard ab work-out and thinking, “this is what it feels like, imprint this on your brain so you’ll remember next time.”  Ummm, apparently I have a short memory.

We have not been preventing.  And my period is due sometime today or the next two days (I’m usually anywhere between 29-31 days).  Do you know what I’ve been thinking for this whole past week?  “Maybe I’m pregnant!”  Ummm, well.  I keep trying to remember what it felt like and I just can’t.  So, logically, I think I must not be pregnant, because surely I would KNOW the feeling.  To make matters worse, I had pee sticks in the house.  On Tuesday night, I lost control and broke them out of the bathroom drawer.  As soon as the moisture creeped up the strip, I swore I saw a line, and not just the control line.  I blinked and it was gone, but there was a mark, a small piece of a line, if you will, at the very top of the window right where the second line would start.  And that mark?  It was pink.  I started googling “evaporation line” like a mad woman and driving myself batty.

I hardly slept at all Tuesday night.  I had to pee and I wanted to wait until morning so that it would be concentrated.  So I dreamed about having to pee.  And then I dreamed about feeling a baby kick and roll around in my belly.  It felt so real.  I woke up convinced that I must be pregnant.  So I took out another stick and it came out white as can be.  No trace of a line whatsoever.  At that point I was convinced I wasn’t pregnant and resolved to put the sticks away.  Of course, the next morning, I took another stick out.  This time, I thought MAYBE there was an extremely faint second line.  I was squinting at the thing so hard I gave myself a headache.  I think it was probably just as white as every other negative pee stick I’ve ever seen.  WHY do I do this to myself?

We left Friday morning for my parents place in the mountains, a short hour drive away.  I forced myself to leave the pee sticks at home.  I skied with my dad while my mom watched the kids Friday and my husband brought the dogs up mid-afternoon.  I’ve been sick for the past two weeks and thought I was getting a sinus infection, but really just wanted it to go away.  I’ve had sinus infection after sinus infection since the kids started day care last May and I’m so tired of being on antibiotics.  By yesterday afternoon, I was positive it was a sinus infection because my face and head killed anytime I bent over to pick something up off the floor and my teeth hurt.  So I called my doctor and asked the medical assistant if she could talk to the doctor about calling in a prescription for me.  She pushed back a little saying he would need to see me and that I should just go to urgent care.  I told her that my doctor had seen me with enough sinus infections in the past year to feel confident that I know when I have one.  She gave in and by this morning, they had called in a prescription for an antibiotic.  The pharmacy called to tell me it was ready and then it hit me.  “Is this a Category C drug?”  Yep.  What if?

What if by some miracle, I am pregnant.  It is so early on, would it really make a difference?  I don’t know.  Could I live with myself if I was miraculously pregnant and something happened because I took an antibiotic that was Category C?  Nope.  So I had to call the doctor back and they called in a different prescription.  And this whole time, no one in my family has had any clue of the inner turmoil going on in my head this week.

I’m an idiot.

Just the thought of jumping back into ART makes me physically ill.  Here’s how my thought process goes:

1. Maybe I’ll have a miracle pregnancy without medical intervention because now my body “knows what to do.”  This is what happens, right?  Right?!
2. Probably not.
3. Okay, I have to convince my husband not only that he wants another child, but that he wants another child badly enough to go through ART again.  (Bang head against wall.)
4. He’ll never agree to this.  He’ll remind me how crazy, frustrated, upset, sad and angry I was during that phase in our lives.  I’ll tell him this time would be different because now we have the twins and no matter what happens, we will always have the twins.  But would it really be different?
5. I would have to schedule a regroup appointment with the RE.  What’s the point?  I know exactly what he would say.  We have to redo all of the testing (cha-ching) and then get on the schedule for an FET (tick-tock).  (Bang head harder against wall.)
6. We have 9 frozen blasts that were conceived at the same time as our twins.  All 11 embryos at the time were the top grade given by our clinic and the embryologist even had trouble picking out the best two.  How many would we thaw at once?  (Head spins.)
7. What are the chances of an FET working with a transfer of only a single blast?  I love my twins, but I do NOT want another twin pregnancy and another set of twins.  Yikes.
8. The FET(s) probably won’t work.  On to new fresh IVF cycles.  We’d have to consider doing the shared risk program again.  (Brain damage.)

I can’t even think beyond that point.  How badly do I want this???  Am I crazy?

This is my third blog.  Why does one person need three blogs?  For me, each blog has served a specific purpose and I’m at a point in my life where I need an outlet for an issue that doesn’t fit into either of my first two blogs.  I started my first blog in November of 2007 to chronicle and vent my frustrations trying to conceive our first child and coping with infertility.  I “retired” the first blog (although it is still out there for the world to see) and started my second blog on January 1, 2009, nine days after our twins were born.  My second blog is invite only because it has served as a virtual baby book for our twins and I see no need to make that public.

A small handful of my bloggy friends followed me to my new home a year ago and I hope some of them will continue on here as well (and maybe some new readers).  Bear with me as I get used to WordPress, as I’m a previous Blogger user and I’m not used to this yet!  I do have one sort of big request.  If you know me from a previous bloggy life, please don’t make the connection for others by calling me out on here.  I would like to maintain some anonymity IRL on this particular blog and I especially don’t want my family reading this.  But I have decided to make it public because I miss the ALI community.  Even though I still have some of my good bloggy friends, I know there are more out there who don’t read my private blog as it is either just too painful or probably annoying!

I’m starting this blog to express and share my thoughts about secondary infertility.  Although I have two beautiful children, they are the product of 3 years of trying to conceive including numerous IUI’s, 2 fresh IVF cycles, 3 FET’s, plenty of money and heartache and finally the elation of a positive pregnancy test.  Quickly followed by a difficult pregnancy of extreme morning sickness, contractions galore, preterm labor, low fluid, PUPPS, a traumatic delivery including our son’s broken arm, a uterine infection, D&C for retained placenta and gallbladder removal.  It has been quite a roller coaster ride!

So I find myself in a conundrum these days.  I’m finding so much joy in being a mommy that I want another child.  It started as a “maybe” and turned into a definite “YES!”  There are a couple of problems with this.  First, my husband is not exactly on board with trying for #3.  It has been a topic of comical disagreement, with slight tension underneath the surface, for a number of months now.  I say we’re having another, he says were not and then we laugh it off.

Even if I’m able to convince my husband to try for a third, what are the chances we have ANY control over the outcome?  I think it is mostly out of our hands.  Although I knew that if this was even a possibility, I would have to go back to the fertility clinic to figure out why I hadn’t had a period since the twins were born and I had stopped nursing 8 months and still nothing.  So I called my OB and based on my history of retained placenta requiring a D&C, she thought Asherman’s was likely.  Back to the fertility clinic I went.  After an ultrasound and painful hysteroscopy the RE confirmed that I had scar tissue covering my cervix (which he broke through during the hysteroscopy), but the uterine cavity looked fine.  And a few weeks later, I got my period.

With that taken care of, now my focus is back on convincing my husband that he wants a third kid!  And then how long do we try on our own before going back for more ART?  I have no idea.  Until I get too frustrated I guess.  I think I’m starting to make progress in convincing my husband as he is aware that I’m not taking birth control and he hasn’t made any effort in the way of prevention if you get my drift.  I’m sure he just figures that with our history, there’s not much chance we’ll get pregnant on our own.  But stranger things have happened.

Stay tuned.