Surprise Natural Pregnancy...Ended in Ectopic...

Earlier this past week I ended up in the clinic for what I was assuming at the time was a ruptured cyst. Instead I went downhill very very quickly and shortly after the PA came in to examine me I was being wheeled to the ER and after a CT and blood work I was rushed into emergency surgery. We had our Life IVF baby 10 months ago and out of six years of trying for a baby I've never had a natural pregnancy. My previous two chemical pregnancies and previous ectopic were from IVF cycles. I lost my left tube two years ago from the ectopic and this natural pregnancy decided to set up shop right next to the nub that was left on the outside of my uterus. I had no clue I was pregnant. I had just finished a period (since the pregnancy wasn't in my uterus) and was on cycle day 18. What I thought was a cyst rupturing was instead the pregnancy. I lost two liters of blood. Thankfully my doctor was able to stop the bleeding and she saved my uterus and my right tube is still intact. Our baby was 6weeks1day. I have a very long road to recovery ahead of me after losing almost half of my blood volume. But I'm thankful my daughter still has her mom.

Future IVF Plans for #2

Has it really been 7 1/2 months since baby girl entered our world?!!

I love my little girl like crazy. We're still trying to figure out a schedule and most days I feel like I'm winging everything, but we get through it. A quick update on baby - she's still growing like crazy. Best guess is she's about 18lbs right now. She's wearing 9-12 month clothing. She has her bottom two teeth and I think she's starting to work on the top ones. She crawls like a champ and pulls herself up to stand on anything that's at least four inches off the floor. I've decided this is the give mom a heart attack phase as every time I turn around she's pulling up on something. She's taken some pretty good tumbles and I've just accepted the fact most days she'll be sporting a bruise or two on her forehead. She desperately wants to walk and has started moving herself along furniture and has even transferred from one piece of furniture to another. She will frequently use just one hand to hold herself up and occasionally has balanced for a moment or two without holding on to anything. I really wish she wouldn't walk until a year old, but I doubt that will be the case! Her core muscles are crazy strong - she's done several sit-ups from laying flat on her back. I never would have guessed I would have such a strong baby! Several weeks ago we switched to baby-led weaning and it's going awesome. She does so well and I'm no longer wasting time making baby food. It is definitely a messier form of eating. I bought the antilop high chair from ikea and it makes cleaning up after a meal so much easier! (And it was ridiculously cheap!)

Sleep is one giant shit-show around here. Naps are good and she goes down easy for them. Her morning nap is 30-45min, afternoon nap is 1 1/2-2 1/2 hours which usually includes a wake up in the middle for a quick snack, and her evening nap is 20-30min or not at all. Night time is another story. She will go down fairly easy around 8, but then wakes up 45 minutes later to eat again (It makes no difference how much or how little I feed her before she goes to sleep at 8) and it's anyone guess if she'll just go back to sleep or spend the next two hours fighting it. She still nurses every 2-3 hours at night. I refuse to let her cry it out. No one is ever going to convince me an infant cries just to be an asshole. It's their only form of communication and if they're crying it's because they need something. I'm not going to leave her alone and let her think her needs aren't important or that mom doesn't care. I also refuse to let her cry because she's had one thing after another going on for the past couple months and has legitimate reasons for waking up at night. When she does nurse at night she often will eat off both sides, so I know she's hungry. And no, feeding her before bed doesn't make a bit of difference and if my mother-in-law says it will one more time I may completely lose it. She also nurses 2-3 hours during the day. I think we have a combination of having a high needs baby and having a baby that keeps racing ahead of the curve on so many developmental milestones she just needs to eat all the time. And really, this time is going by so fast and it won't be long before I miss the middle of the night snuggles. The way I see it, it means I get more time with her while she's little. Of course I would love more sleep, but a vast majority of the time it really doesn't bother me. But it sure seems to be a big issue for relatives that don't ever take care of her at night...

I started working out a couple weeks ago. I may have lost the baby weight, but I sure didn't keep any strength! I'm so out of shape and core muscles are basically non-existent right now. My husband got me several sessions with a personal trainer for Christmas (my request!). I go twice a week and use the drop-in daycare at the gym for baby. First day I could hear her screaming before I got back to the room. Second time she was napping. I'm hoping it gets better. I know it's good for her to be around other babies - for social interaction and to boost her immune system! It's also good for me to spend a little time focusing on myself. As much as I hate working out, I always feel so good afterwards. Here's hoping I can get fit again relatively quickly!

We have tentatively decided on a plan for baby number 2. Six years ago when we started trying to have a baby we had talked about having 3-4. Well, now we're happy with the one we have and if we can give her a sibling, even better! I'm 35 already and with that comes the label of 'advanced maternal age'. I've been in a bit of a panic thinking about how quickly we needed to get moving on frozen embryo transfers. We have 6 embryos left on ice, but only one is of good quality. Two are okay quality and the last three are such poor quality they probably won't make the thaw - and my clinic uses vitrification so that tells you how poor quality they are. We transferred 7 embryos over four transfers to get our daughter. So my fear is that it is going to take multiple transfers for our next baby, too. I'm still nursing and I haven't yet checked with my IVF doctor if I can be nursing and do embryo transfers. My daughter's pediatrician said she is fine with me nursing and doing embryo transfers - she said during pregnancy my body makes more progesterone and estrogen anyways, so the added amounts from a transfer wouldn't have any effect on baby. She just said to check with my IVF doctor because some do want you to be done nursing. Which is a hard balance - I want to give baby girl until at least 18 months to nurse, maybe even up to age 2. If I cut her off early for an embryo transfer and we never get pregnant again, I'll regret cutting that time short. If I give her as long as she wants, then we may not be able to get pregnant again. So the tentative solution I came up with is to do a couple of egg retrievals later this summer/fall. They will either be natural or mini. I have to check to see if I can be on clomid while nursing. If not, then they will have to be natural cycles. This should hopefully give us a couple more embryos and would then let me be a little more relaxed about waiting a bit longer before doing transfers. I would hope to do embryo transfers around baby girl's second birthday. As exhausting as babies and toddlers are, I really don't want two close together! Hopefully baby girl would be starting preschool around the time we had another baby - which would give me more one on one time with baby.

This is all hard and I don't think there is ever going to be a perfect answer. For now, we're planning on egg retrievals this year and transfers next summer. Hopefully all goes well and we do end up lucky enough to have a second. If not, we can at least know we gave it our best.

I'm Thankful For My Infertility

I never thought I would be thankful for infertility.

But I am.

Infertility is a horrible road to go down. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone. And yet, I'm thankful for our journey. Of course I never felt thankful while we were going through it. Of course it's one of those things that doesn't really make sense until you're on the other side of it all.

I am so very thankful for our daughter. I'm also thankful for the hard road it took to get to her because it made me a better parent.

I was one of those little girls who grew up excited to someday be a mommy. I loved playing dolls. I loved babies. If there was a baby in the room chances are I would ask to hold it. I loved babysitting and I heard all the time growing up that everyone thought I would be a wonderful mother someday. Even our wedding video is filled with comments from family and friends about how we needed to be parents.

Then infertility hit. Hard.

At times I thought I would never get to be a mother. And then it finally happened to us. I was thrust into the midst motherhood and at times found myself like every other mother out there asking myself what the heck happened?! Motherhood is overwhelming and hard and absolutely wonderful. Our beautiful little girl can often be found snuggled in my arms. I can't get anything done around the house and that's okay. It can all wait. She was less than a week old before I found myself snuggling her to my chest and telling my husband "I already miss this..." Even in the really though moments I remind myself how worth it she is and how I will miss even the hard moments. I feel like I'm hyper aware of how fleeting this time is with our little girl and I try to soak it all up. I spend hours watching her sleep, soaking in every last detail. I find myself at the grocery store holding people up because I'm gazing at my baby and completely forgetting where I'm at in the moment. I also think about had we gotten pregnant easily on our own we wouldn't have been where we're at in life right now. Things we didn't have when we first started trying include living close to family, owning our home, being able to upgrade to a larger vehicle, all the baby stuff we've been able to get for her, my husband having a job that allowed for him to be able to take an entire month off, my husband's schedule he has that's week on/week off, a stronger marriage from going through the struggle of infertility together, the time we had to just be husband and wife. I'm thankful for all of those things and more.

I don't feel my baby is more special than any other. But I do feel that for me personally I have a much deeper appreciation and gratefulness I wouldn't have had if pregnancy had come easily to us. Of course I still would have loved her. Of course I would still savor every moment, but infertility has just pushed everything to a stronger awareness of it all.

And for that, I am thankful. So very thankful.

Annnnnnd....She's Already 12 Weeks!

I made the mistake of blinking and now I have a 12 week old!

Once you finally have your own baby you finally really get it when people say how fast it goes. It's crazy. Her head changed shaped before we even moved into the post-partum room. Her cry changed before we even left the hospital. I felt like I never had a delicate newborn since she came out so big and strong. She's had head control from day one. She rolled over on day 9. She's been standing and sometimes even balancing on her legs for several weeks. She's just a few ounces away from 14lbs. And she's already out growing 3 month clothes. Slow down baby, mommy can't handle you changing and growing so fast! It's possible her newborn clothes are still piled up in her crib since I just can't bear to pack them away yet. She outgrew them by four weeks! I also may have squished her into newborn size sleepers for far too long. The night I finally tried a 3 month sleeper it fit way too well!

Post-partum Recovery

Oh god. Why doesn't anyone tell you just how awful this is??? The doctor tells you the stitches dissolve in two weeks. Lies!! Down there was so painful and sore and just plain miserable for many weeks. I think I used dermaplast and tucks pads for three weeks. Then at four weeks those damn stitches started working their way out. I pushed my post-partum check-up out to almost 9 weeks because there was no way I wanted anyone near that area. I finally weaned off stool softeners a couple of weeks ago but I'm still keeping my fiber intake up. And what's with the squishy belly that won't fit in your old pants and isn't solid enough to hold up maternity pants. Thank goodness for yoga pants. Lots and lots of yoga pants - capri, shorts, pants - I have them all! At my check-up appointment I of course was offered birth control and I declined. Yes, I know there's a tiny chance in hell I'll get pregnant naturally and I would welcome it if it happened. My doctor did IVF and then less than a year after she had her twins she had another baby, so yes, it does happen. Since getting pregnant and having our daughter I've had so many people ask if we would be able to get pregnant on our own now. I've had to do a lot of educating on how pregnancy does not "cure" infertility. But I'm happy to do my part to spread awareness. I've also run into so many more people suffering from infertility and I have two people that are at the beginning stages and have come to me often with questions. Talking with them brings back the memories of when we started this journey and even though I don't need the reminders, it does help me cherish our daughter that much more.

Breastfeeding

Oy. My poor nipples. Little miss was a champion feeder from the get-go. Her gusto with feeding led to cracked and bleeding nipples within six hours of her being born. I swear she had little retractable vampire teeth! She did awesome in the hospital. After the initial feeding frenzy she settled into every three hour feeds. And then my milk took five freaking days to come in... Yea. When you give birth to an eight plus pound baby they're hungry. All. The. Time. We actually ended up giving her some formula through a little tube taped to my boob on day four because she was constantly crying in hunger. Once my milk finally did come in, it came in too well. I ended up with over active letdown and an over supply. Nothing like hearing and watching your poor little baby choke and gasp while she drowns in milk. We were saturating a burp rag and both of us at every feeding. Little miss ended up with colic and explosive all day long poop which of course led to a nasty rash that took many weeks to resolve. I ended up having to only feed off one side for long stretches of time - up to 12 hours at one point. The other side was left to get painfully engorged, but it paid off and after a few weeks my supply settled down. Even now I pump maybe once a week so I can take longer to run errands without her with and even that's enough to ramp up my boobs. But she's old enough now that she can deal with it better. When the over active let down was at its worst her way of coping was to clamp down on my nipple as hard as she could and shake her head back and forth. This lead to a sizeable crater in the middle of my left nipple. Thank goodness for nipple shields! It's the only way I was able to continue feeding off that side and luckily once it healed she weaned off the nipple shield rather quickly. Nursing now at 12 weeks is a piece of cake. I'm so glad I stuck with it even though I wanted to give up so many times in the first month.

Little Miss

Our beautiful little girl has stolen our hearts forever. She can be feisty like her mommy and loves naps like her daddy. It's amazing how one day you have this little person that's here to stay forever. She's strong and she's healthy and has become more happy than not. She had a few bumps in the road with feeding issues and colic. She also had two very miserable weeks after the rotavirus vaccine, but she's finally over that. She loves messing with her daddy - she likes to make huge poop messes for him. She can be a momma's girl - especially when she had those rough two weeks, but she's starting to really like her daddy too. I think what helped their bond was all the skin to skin they did after bath each night for the first month. We'd give her a little sponge bath and then dressed only in her diaper she would take a long nap on her daddy's chest. She also ended up taking a lot of naps on her daddy's chest throughout the day - I think this was daddy's way of getting lots of extra naps, too!

Number Two? Maybe?

I hate that we can't just enjoy our sweet baby without already thinking about number two. I turn 35 in a couple of months so I think we may lean towards sooner rather than later, but I'm not sure when would be the best time for us. If we decide to try and have the second one due around the time she turns two that means in less than a year we would be gearing up for FETs. And that seems way too soon. But if we wait another year I'll be 37 when baby is born, provided it doesn't take as long. Part of me is always secretly hoping I'll end up in the small percentage of those who get pregnant naturally after IVF. One can only hope!

For now I'm just going to enjoy and soak up all the snuggles I can. Because all too soon she will be grown and out on her own.

Little One's Birth Story

I'm a firm believer that if you've suffered from infertility you should automatically get an easy labor and delivery. Nature proved to me that I am delusional!

Turns out Thursday night was my early labor. I didn't get much sleep at all that night and was up the next morning for a memorial service for a family member. It was just a very small service and I had agreed earlier in the week to have everyone over to our home afterwards for dinner. After five hours of contractions Thursday night, they tapered off considerably. During the day on Friday I had the occasional strong contraction, but was able to hide it from family - I may have just taken extra trips to the bathroom, but when you're hugely pregnant no one seems to notice! Our plan all along has been to not tell family when I went into labor. We wanted to have those first several hours with baby all to ourselves.

The last family member left our house about 7:30pm. I was exhausted so after picking up around the house I headed for bed at 8:30. At 9:00pm strong and painful contractions hit full force. There was no easing into things! I was moaning and sometimes screeching through the contractions. Most of them were in the 5-7 minutes long range with only about a 2-3 minute break in between. My husband called our doula and she could hear me moaning in the background. She told him I sounded like I was in active labor and to call labor and delivery to give them a heads up. By midnight I couldn't take it at home anymore. I had tried drinking lots of fluids and a warm bath. My coping skills were running out as the contractions had only increased in intensity. When my husband called labor and delivery they said I could come in and be monitored, but with contractions lasting for so long they didn't think it was active labor. Once we made the decision to head in to the hospital my husband seemed to panic a bit. He was rather frustrated when I decided I needed to put makeup on before heading to the hospital. This ended up taking a lot longer than normal since I had only 2 minute breaks from contractions to try and put my make up on. The trip to the hospital is only 10 minutes from our house, but seemed so much longer. I had some very painful contractions in the car and it was so uncomfortable not being able to move around.

We had to go through the emergency room since it was after hours. I was wheeled up to labor and delivery where our doula met us. My nurse came in the room and said she would do a cervix check and put me on the monitors for a bit to see how things were progressing. She checked my cervix and it basically hadn't changed from my OB appt earlier in the week. I was dilated to one and about 70% effaced. She said she would monitor me for a couple of hours and if I didn't progress they would send me home. I flat out told her I wasn't leaving. Contractions continued to get more miserable and intense. My doula told me I was getting to the point where I looked like I was in transitional labor. And still, my darn cervix refused to budge. I finally thought to mention I had cervical stenosis. I had been meaning to tell my OB about, but kept forgetting at each appointment. The nurse kind of freaked out on me and said she didn't find that anywhere in my chart. The decision was made to try a shot of morphine to see if it would relax my body enough  to let my cervix dilate more. I burned through the morphine with my next contraction. My doula then suggested maybe we needed to do an epidural and then do manual dilation. The doctor on call agreed this was a good idea. I had planned on not having an epidural but after 7 1/2 hours of painful labor and no progress I welcomed the sweet relief. I get it now why people go with epidurals. At 4:30 am the epidural was placed and 20 minutes later the nurse started doing a manual dilation. She said she had to break through some scar tissue and was then able to get my cervix to open to about 4 1/2cm. I was then allowed to rest for awhile to see what my body would do on its own.

The epidural of course slowed my labor. The doctor came in around 8:00 and broke my water. Then pitocin was started to get my contractions going in a more steady pattern. The doctor's guess was that I would be ready to start pushing around noon. Well, my body had other ideas of course. It took longer than expected to get my contractions strong enough and for my cervix to finish dilating. A little after 2:00pm the nurse told me it was time to get ready to meet my daughter and to start pushing. This was the moment when it truly hit me I was finally having a baby after all our years of infertility. I just started bawling. I started pushing at 2:25pm. Two hours into pushing and the epidural was no longer doing anything for me. I have never been in so much pain. The last hour of pushing I remember screaming several times that I didn't want to do this anymore. Baby got hung up on my pubic bone for awhile. At one point they brought in a mirror so I could see my progress, but who were we kidding, I could see I wasn't making any progress and eventually told them to get rid of the mirror. Eventually the doctor came in with the delivery team and said it was time for me to have this baby. My husband is a physician and so he was allowed to help deliver our daughter. Near the end of pushing baby's head got stuck in the opening. The doctor asked me probably four or five times if she could do a small episiotomy since baby seemed to be stuck. I finally gave in and after a few more pushes baby finally came out at 5:56pm after 3 hours and 31 minutes of pushing. I ended up with a second degree tear in addition to the episiotomy.

The doctor delivered baby's head and shoulders and my husband took over and helped deliver the rest of baby. We had planned on doing delayed cord clamping, but baby came out blue and not moving. She was placed on my stomach and the doctor said, I'm sorry, we can't wait to cut her cord. My husband then cut her cord and she immediately started screaming. The nurses were poised to take her over to the warmer and the doctor said absolutely not, leave her on mom. I pulled baby up on my chest and we stayed like that for the next hour. Despite her initial appearance her apgars were 9 and 9. Throughout my entire labor and delivery baby always looked perfect on the monitor. It was only during the last five minutes of pushing that her heart rate started to dip a little bit during contractions. That's the only reason they allowed me to push for so long. Most of the doctors will lean towards doing a c-section if mom has been pushing for two hours. My doula works in the labor and delivery department where we delivered and she said she personally has never seen a patient push as long as me.

While I was snuggling baby the doctor was delivering my placenta and then sewing me up. I happened to notice there seemed to be a rather large amount of bloody rags piling up and I could tell my doctor was looking concerned. I knew my history of endometriosis and IVF pregnancy are at a little bit of increased risk for post-partum hemorrhaging. I asked if everything was okay and the doctor told me she needed to reach into my uterus to remove some blood clots. Then she was mashing down on my uterus. I asked if I was going to end up in the OR and she said I shouldn't need to. By that point baby was starting to nurse and my uterus decided to start cooperating and the doctor then focused on stitching me up. I didn't ask how many stitches and I don't really want to know. When she was nearing the end of the stitches she hit an area where the lidocaine didn't take. She kept injecting more lidocaine, but every time she tried stitching again I could feel everything. So the past several stitches were very painful. We hung out in labor and delivery for a couple of hours and used that time to snuggle our daughter and to start notifying family.

My next post will be about post delivery and baby's first several days.

She's Here and She's Perfect!

Baby Girl arrived four days ago at 39 weeks 1 day. She's perfect! We're so in love. Birth story coming soon since I do want to remember the details. A very quick recap. I labored for 21 hours and pushed for 3 1/2. Baby was a rockstar throughout, but mommy kept hitting roadblocks and we only did 5/16 things on our pretty basic birth plan. But she's here and she's healthy and that's all that matters.

39 Weeks and Early Labor???

Last night I started having very painful contractions every 5-10 minutes.  I was moaning, huffing and puffing and even screeching at times. Finally after two hours I gave up sleeping and started cleaning instead. The contractions continued but I just kept working through them. Around 3am I started losing my mucus plug. Then about 5am the contractions  tapered off and I slept for a couple of hours. Throughout the day I've continued to have bouts of painful contractions but nothing regular. I'm going to try and get some sleep now. Hopefully baby makes an appearance this weekend because these random bouts of painful contractions are getting brutal.