Moving forward.

This past week has been such a whirlwind, I don't even know where to begin.

I lost the baby. No, that's not true. I know where my baby is, but it's just not with me anymore. It's not lost. It was taken from me by some strange, cruel force that I couldn't stop. And so, the pregnancy ended. My baby is just gone. And now I'll have no new birthday to celebrate. No first cry to hear, praying for a healthy baby, hoping to see ten fingers, ten toes. None of it.

R and I met with the doctor on Wednesday and saw what was left of the pregnancy on the ultrasound. The doctor confirmed that the pregnancy was no longer viable, but it was so strangely comforting to see that little, tiny, non-functioning sac. I don't know how to explain it, but it still made me happy to see it. I still felt so connected to it, even though I knew it wasn't really alive anymore. It was just proof-positive that I was actually pregnant. That after 23 months of trying to create a life, we did it, even if it was only for a few weeks or even days.

The whole appointment was such a bizarre experience. At first the doctor didn't even know why we were there. It wasn't until I told HIM that I was pregnant, but with low betas, that he understood why we were there in the first place. In the end, he was so embarrassed that his staff had dropped the ball that he gave us his personal cell phone number and told us to call at anytime over the next few days. A few things were still left up in the air, so because we were leaving right for R's grandmother's funeral the RE gave us a basic plan for the next few days. He was wary of letting me sit in a car for five hours, given my shoulder pain and incomplete diagnosis, so he actually hand-wrote a note to give to any doctor should I need medical attention during the time we were in NY. He was worried that the ultrasound may have missed something and that I would end up in the ER with a problem. Here's what he wrote, in near-perfect handwriting and on a yellow sticky-note with a perky little girl riding a scooter at the bottom. Very professional...:

(At the top he wrote my name and date of birth, neither of which I feel like divulging here...)
IVF pregnancy
Retrieval date 1/8/08
By above, 6w1d on 2/6/08
U/S on 2/6/08
- small collapsed sac in the uterus
- NO FF or adnexal mass
Betas
1/23/08 35 miu/ml
1/25/08 85 "
1/28/08 217 "
2/4/08 421 "

And then he signed it, on top of the perky scooter-girl.

So, there you have it. My chart laid out on one yellow-sticky note, complete with perky scooter girl. I did some searching on the "No FF or adnexal mass" line and found that FF means 'free fluid' and the adnexal mass means he couldn't find evidence of an ectopic pregnancy. They did have me run my fifth beta (I think I'm going for a record here) and when he called on Thursday afternoon he told me it was in the 300's. E was screaming in the background, so I didn't catch the exact number. But, I did catch that he was still concerned that it was so high, considering that the baby had already died. Then, late Thursday night I started bleeding. And it was official. At 6 weeks, 2 days my baby was leaving.

I called the doctor on Friday morning to give him the latest news and he was glad to hear that my body was taking care of this 'naturally'. Don't get me wrong, I am glad that I didn't have to have yet another uncomfortable experience in the RE's office. It's still just so wrong, natural or otherwise. But, he said that it's possible that because my body is taking over, the beta levels could drop low by Monday and we'll be cleared for another cycle sooner than we thought. Another cycle.

God. Another cycle. I am so torn about another cycle. We'll be using our frozen embryos this time around, but I hate to say that I don't have much hope in these frozen ones. We've been having such a terrible time with embryo quality that I don't know if they'll survive the thawing process. The RE gave me some speech about how the lab insists on the best quality for the embryos they freeze and all that, but it bothers me that we've already lost 10 day five embryos the first cycle because of deterioration and then lost an additional two more day three embryos the second cycle.

There's nothing we can do to improve embryo quality, so that part of it is out of our hands. As the doctors have told us, it's a matter of odds at this point. We just have to keep moving forward and eventually, we'll get pregnant again. Eventually, the odds have to swing in our favor. It just might kill us in the process, that's all.