My appropriate response

I did it! I had a wonderfully appropriate response to a pregnancy announcement this morning (outwardly anyhow). In fact, it was not soul-crushing. I did notice my hands were shaking a bit after I left the room, but I think that was because I almost blew my cover by knowing way too much about early pregnancy: even warning about the dild0-cam.

So this time it is my department chair. She is up for her three year review in a tenure institution. Having a kid in academia is certainly frowned upon, so I can only imagine she is a bit stressed. I am just a measly adjunct - low-pay, no-benefit, slutting around at other schools and hardly making a cent. The only benefit to having no benefits is you are free from the restraint of the tenure-track process. Your job is constantly unstable - so unstable feels quite normal.

Funny thing was she told me they want to hire me for her sabbatical in the fall. It would be great. It would mean for a few short months I would be making a living wage and finally doing my part to help our little family financially. But there are a lot of variables. I am applying for tenure positions myself. If I landed one, it would start that same semester. But that is just the job part. Then there is the uncertainty of our reproductive future. If I am able to get pregnant with some ease and stay pregnant, then I would also not be available in the fall. Hmm, how does this sound. "Well, even though I have been deemed a habitual aborter, my husband and I are foolishly attempting to cross that threshhold one more time. I might be available. In fact, if we look at my current history, I will be available. But if the cooch-lady did a nice job on my Ute remodel, then there is a good chance I too will be about ready to blow by fall."

So what the hell am I supposed to do? I can:
1. Put TTC on hold and try to time a pregnancy so I can teach through the fall semester. This carries the risk that my anatomy is still faulty. I am 32, so time is not exactly pressing, but not exactly nothing. Should I need more treatment... You see where I am going.
2. Screw it, everything in life is variable. Some plans fail, some succeed. Do what you want - which is to TTC again. Risk here is if I get pregnancy quickly and carry through, I will be out of work from May through (forever?) Spring 2009. This puts a heavy financial burden on my husband who is currently under a one year contract that ends at the end of the summer.

It is such a clusterf*ck that I am leaning toward the "hell with it" route. There is nothing easy about either route. There is also nothing for sure.

And finally, a play-by-play of what was going on in my head when my department chair told me these two things: 1. She is 8 weeks pregnant and 2. they have already picked out names. I wanted to scream, to save her from the potential pain. Don't do it! You are getting in too deep too fast. I do pray to whatever higher power that you have a wonderfully smooth pregnancy. But take a breath. Let your body settle into the process. There is never a moment again in my life where I will share a pregnancy this early with anyone. I will just wait till I can't hide it anymore. Losses happen. It can happen to anyone. Not just habitual aborters like me.

What is real and what is not.

I came across this great article today on the Road Less Traveled. It is called The Blank Space in Our Family Album and deserves a read. It is a rare moment when a publication like the Times sheds some light on the subject of miscarriage and infertility. But like Loribeth, I also take issue with the authors use of the phrase "real babies." Fact is, my babies were real. They existed, if only for a short time, if only ever inside my womb. But they were real, and their loss was real.

So even a woman who has suffered loss and IF herself can mis-step. With just a slight slip of the tongue or keyboard, a single word reveals the pervasive notion of what is real and what is not. And who gets to decide? For me, this gets to the depth of what I have been going through for the last year: the pain of having to endure the loss of someone who is unmentionable. My lost embryos make people nervous. So, apparently, it is my job to keep quiet about them. I am supposed to ignore that they ever existed. I am supposed to suck it up and put on a happy face for the festering ring of pregnant women around me-- because they never knew that I felt my babies presence. That I knew they were there. That even after they were gone, my body could still trick me into believing they were still there.

Some things in the world we can not see. And other things in the world we choose not to see. Miscarriage and infertility fall into the latter. It is easy to ignore something until it envelopes, until it swallows you whole and takes you to that unmentionable place. Alone.

I feel better about being alone every day. With J. gone, I spend whole days not talking to anyone. I don't miss my fertile friends as much as I think I thought I would. It makes it easy not to see them when I know they would fumble around me. Or perhaps I am just numb to the pain of loosing them. Or perhaps I just don't care. Probably another unmentionable subject. But there it is.

Rounding out the year, appearing as a lazy sac-o-shit

The people at tomorrows reunion, they are J.'s friends. Just like his architecty friends, this group from undergrad were never my friends. In undergrad they were all very exclusive -- and I was never "in" with them. So regardless of our circumstances, this reunion is never a fun affair. But this year, I enter with both irritation and fear-- fear that someone will dump the "your next" or "so when are you two going to get to it" on us.

I have been avoiding social gatherings for months for this very reason. Those statements/questions are like land mines and I have no idea how to avoid them, or how to respond to them. Hence the avoidance. I am totally unprepared to deal, especially with a groups of somewhat superficial friends that I only ever see once a year.

The caveat is the A. is REALLY pregnant. Frankly, I give her serious props for coming out. And we were never close, and they started their family years ago - so somehow, for some reason, I think I am ok to see her. I just know that her swollen belly will get people glancing in my direction, even if only long enough to wonder - "why haven't those two knocked some out yet?"

I have been considering my possible rebuttals to stupid comments/questions. What I would really like to do is be able to spazz out on someone and tell them how my body is a baby killer and how they should think twice when they start inquiring about peoples person shit. Ideally this would be someone that I already have some distain for, so I can feel at least a little good about myself afterwards. I was also thinking it would be cool to have a really witty rebuttal, but I am not witty. Pamela Jeane at Coming2Terms gives a great response. "My husband and I have evolved to perfection. Clearly your family tree needs some work!" But I would totally flub the delivery. More likely is that no one will say anything at all, and I will have to live inside of my dirty, dark, shameful, scary secret for another night. A lot of them live in LA + NYC, so mostly they will want to talk about themselves-- and as long as it saves me an uncomfortable moment-- that is ok with me.

It used to be that I could go to these things and I would feel great about myself. I would respond the the standard bevy of question with answers like: "I am finishing grad school" or "I was just awarded a show in Ireland" or "I am applying for tenure track jobs." But this year, the honest answer is something like: "I had two miserable miscarriages, a surgery to resect my uterine septum and all that has taking a pretty serious bite out of any plans that I ever had for myself. Our chance of having children is still somewhat dicey." WHO WANTS TO HEAR THAT AND WHO IS ACTUALLY PREPARED TO RESPOND IN ANY MEANINGFUL WAY? I know I wouldn't be able to respond to that if I was in their semi-friend shoes. So I have to suck it up and pretend like I was busy being lazy instead of getting violated by the dildo-cam and an acupuncturist on a pretty regular basis. Getting your junk in order is a full-time job. Between the scheduling and the inordinate amount of internet research required to advocate for yourself as a patient - I am not sure how I got anything done at all this year.

So basically, I got nothin'. I got no kid, no fabulous job, no exciting news of travels to far off places. Instead, I got a crash course in uterine anomalies and I got real used to having a magic wand jammed up my hoo-haa.

But no one knows that, or will know that. So I just look like a lazy sac-o-shit...

Managing My Spoiled Identity

I have begun investigating pregnancy failure through reading. “Motherhood Lost: a feminist account of pregnancy loss in America” by Linda Layne has been a great resource. To name just a few subjects I am particularly drawn to: the umentionable or “culturally sanctioned non-existence” of pregnancy loss, the assumption of the “natural” process of pregnancy and birth, and how societies frame “womanhood” around reproduction (or production).

Layne speaks very directly to this notion of "spoiled identity." This term seems to so clearly sum up what I have been going through in the past year-- attempting, though often failing, to understand who I am if children are not part of my future. When your vision of yourself is so tightly wrapped around this one thing, who are you when that very thing starts to fail?

I would like to summarize some of the text's writing about the “fetal subject,” as I think it helps to frame an explanation of why women have such a profound sense of loss from miscarriage, no matter how early it occurs. The book looks specifically at new reproductive technologies that have developed in the last 25 years and how those technologies impact the construction of fetal personhood. The author summarizes that these technologies, that provide us with visual and aural experiences during pregnancy, have altered the way in which we think about, bond to and experience the embryo/fetus. Specifically, bonds begin earlier and earlier, and the assignment of personhood, by others and ourselves, on the embryo/fetus has shifted. Additionally, with the introduction of in vitro fertilization, social construction of the “baby” may even begin prior to implantation. We gather information about these liminal being throughout pregnancy. Each step takes us closer to, not the self of the embryo/fetus, but the “personhood” we construct – an image, an amniocentesis, hearing the heart, learning the sex. There certainly are unmediated experiences, in particular, movement of the fetus, but I just wanted to raise some of these questions about the fetal subject and our mediated experience. I think they shed light on how and why it is that woman are so deeply impacted by loss. A fetus or embryo represents not just a mere cluster of cells, but the beginnings of a life-long relationship with an individual we have yet to even know. With technology, we have access to detailed information about the progress of our unborn child, earlier and earlier-- making that unborn child "known" or "real" earlier and earlier in its development. {This is not a criticism, just an observation}

The text also acknowledges the interplay of the Judeo-Christian, American narrative of progress and (re)production - "the ethic of meritocracy." If you work hard enough, you can do anything! These normalized, idealized narratives, when applied to other goals are often valuable and even true. But when self-imposed upon the issue of fertility, the author refers to this as the "management of a spoiled identity." In many cases, working hard has nothing to do with carrying a successful pregnancy. So when we think about self, and identity, we must consider that some people are "naturally" incapable of fullfilling the one thing which is socially considered a "natural" characteristic of their gender. In some cases, woman can not give birth. And because of that natural fact, the sound of a fetal heartbeat, the sight of a swollen belly, is a mere reminder of the moment they learned of their own failure, again, through mediation (the absence of a heartbeat) or worse yet, through a catastrophic late term loss.

And last, a quote that speaks directly to the taboo that surround both loss and infertility, summing up why some days, I wish I had never told anyone but my husband of our problems:
“The liminality of women who do not complete wished-for pregnancies and superliminality of the dead embryos/fetuses they bear helps to explain why pregnancy loss is a tabooed subject in our society…. Taboo is defined as a “prohibition put upon certain people, things, or acts which make them untouchable, unmentionable, etc”…. Since the mid-1970’s, American women who experience pregnancy loss have found themselves at the nexus of two set of strong, opposing cultural forces. On the one hand, they are subject the taboo surrounding the dead fetuses, and the interdiction on death and any other unpleasant topic that challenges the myth of perpetual linear progress. On the other hand, women’s experience of pregnancy and pregnancy loss is influenced by the increasing prominence of the fetal subject in the public imagery in the last 25 years."

There is little that brings comfort after a pregnancy loss. It is unmentionable, unacknowledged, un-mourned, misunderstood, misconceived, brushed aside, real to you, but rarely to others. Peggy Orenstein's Essay "Mourning My Miscarriage" really helped me at a time when I could not understand most of what I was going through.

6 months of forgetting

Memory triggers are a bitch. I hate that I am making a movie association here, but now I know where the idea for "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind" came from. I want to forget the last 6 months, so I can walk in peace to work, so I can get off the train at 8th street, so I can concentrate on something other than this living nightmare. {My 6 months is a cakewalk compared to most, but it has been a shitty ride none-the-less.}

I teach mornings downtown two days a week. I love my walks to the train in my 'hood', then from the train to school through center city. I love the calmness as I leave my house, and the bustle as I arrive. But now my daily walk is peppered with memory triggers, past places of loss-related incidents. I am unfortunately habitual, so I fear there is little chance I will ever succeed at changing my pattern as a method to relieve me of these triggers. And if I can walk another route, what if that route gets dirtied up with a whole new set of loss-related incidents?

There is one place in particular that snags me every time, pulling me into my own shitty reality. It is a weird little corporate mini-park right across from where a skyscraper is being constructed. It is paved with rust colored stone and always uber-sanitized. At the end of the summer, or maybe it was just a fall day that was too hot, I talked on the phone with my pregnant friend L. there for hours. I tried over, and over and over to explain to her what I was going through. I hindsight, I have terrible feelings of resentment for what she said to me that day. It was an immensely complicated situation that caused the rift. She was unwilling to back away from her position, even though she knew her actions were causing J. and I great pain. In the end, she not only was incapable of understanding why I was in pain, but chose to reveal our very private situation to a colleague who I am have considerable dislike for.

So while I never cared for that place much to begin with, now it serves as a near daily trigger-- pulling back into my persistent and unrelenting pain.

____

AF came one day late and flowed like a bitch. Everything has calmed down a bit, with the exception of the fact that my period is single-handedly destroying the environment! I have been wearing pads (gack!) just to make sure there is nothing preventing the exodus of that (hopefully) nasty clot. Where is my hut when I need it?

___

Last night, over a beer, I asked J. if he wanted to "try" this month if we got the green light from the RE. He said, "Can I think about it?" I am guessing he is not ready. And that is ok. I need to learn patience.
I am signed up for am in office hysteroscopy on Tuesday to see see the results on my surgery... Headache, begin now.

How do you define infertility?

I can get pregnant.
In four months time I was twice pregnant.
But I lost them both.
And I still don't know if my U. will ever work well enough not to reject an embryo.

So if you are a woman who gets pregnant but can not carry that pregnancy to term, are you infertile?
Or are you just someone who suffers from Recurrent loss?

Are there rules to this?

An upnote - a few people get it right

I am a negative person by nature. Not something I am proud of, but it is what it is. I think it is important when I spend a few days dwelling, that I then step back and consider what is not so bad.

In particular, since I have bee more recently obsessed with the loss of my fertile friends, I want to spend a moment thinking about a few people who I can count on right now, and who have been exceptionally generous-- listening to me, and supporting me over the last few months.

1.) My two old college pals S. + H (ha, ha... like the stamps). We drifted apart while I was living in the midwest, but we are finally starting to rekindle our friendships-- and for this, I am so grateful. H. lost her mother in 1998 under really tragic circumstances. Because of this, I think she has a good grip on how to talk to those who are going through something that is both painful and private. And S. is currently breaking up with her decade long partner. We are both in that place right now where we never thought we would be. A bit of a living nightmare. Selfishly, I am glad to have friends that can relate to what I am going through, even if our circumstances are different.

2.) My two great friends, S. + A, from grad school who live out in Seattle. S. had a miscarriage the same time as me (the first one). They had been TTC with a known donor (DIY) for about 4 months. She is pregnant again, but understands how hard it is - both because of her miscarriage, but also because as a same sex couple, TTC is harder. Now they are waiting on an amnio after recent blood test came back at 1 in 3 chance of downs. My heart goes out to them. They are that couple. The couple that really should have kids.

3.) My mom - god, I never thought I would say that, and I may change my mind next week, but she has been really great. She loves a good challenge, especially one with drama, lots of medical terms, and a chance to dole out sound advise to a child. She slips up know and then, but for the most part, she is rockin' the house with the support. Way to go, Peggy!

Sinking, sinking, sunk...

I like to think I do a pretty good job of keeping my chin up. I have had a lot of ups and downs through this whole process (we all have). One of the more distinct moments was when my diagnosis was finalized. I knew that the septum and a pretty large adhesion were preventing me from carrying a pregnancy. It was a moment of clarity. I remember calling my husband on my cell, weaving a dodging a small army of pregnant woman, for the first time with a huge grin on my face. It was a septum.

Even leading up to the surgery I felt pretty good. Scared, but good. A septum could be "fixed." Rumor has it your uterine cavity is close to "normal" after a resection. We'll see about that.

Now the surgery is over, and I feel like I am just bottoming out. I thought I would be happy, but I find myself unsure all over again. What if I had a successful resection and I still can not have kids? God, I am even scared to write that down in fear that it will come true! I just have this wretched forecast in my head. You know the one-- where my thirties are consumed almost entirely by my inability to have children. I am way past down, I think I am sunk.

Even worse, I truly believe that none of my friends or family are capable of helping me. I decided, with great certainly, that I am really ok with alienating all of my fertile friends. 1.) I don't want to feel sad and angry every time I see them. 2.) I don't want to feel guilty about that sadness and anger. 3.) I don't want to be constantly reminded of how self-consumed I have become. 4.) I don't want them to have to tip-toe around me, editing themselves. 5.) Alienation is just speeding up the natural process of what children will do for our relationships regardless. They will have kids and we will not. Their lives will change drastically, and ours will be the same. 6.) I can hardly take care of myself-- I have no more energy to expend on tutoring them on how to deal with me. Besides, I don' believe there is a way to deal with me. 7.) I don't want them subjected to the same thing I am now, and unsupporting friend. They can't figure out how to deal with me and I have no clue how to deal with them.

"Normal" people are allowed to be happy for their friends, supporting them through pregnancy and child-rearing. But that has been taking from me. Along with two potential children, now my friends have been eaten by this whole mess too. And today, I don't even care. I just want to be alone.

Based on the above drivel I have decided to see if my insurance will cover therapy. I have never had therapy before, but based on some of the more disparaging imagery that seems to pop in in my cap these days, I think it might be a good idea. I have tried to go to some support meetings for recurrent loss, but unfortunately, they meet on the nights that I teach. So instead, I'm headed for the couch...

Blurg Again!

Years ago my older sister would probably have been the first person I would have gone to with my problems, especially with my miscarriages. But we have grown apart over the years, mostly because she creates a lot of unnecessary drama in her own life, and in my opinion, has failed repeatedly to protect her children emotionally. She also kind of can't stand her own kids, and it is just really sad to see. I accept that I have been unnecessary judgmental of her, but it is too hard to watch her stand in front of a moving train over and over again.

So yesterday, my sister and her daughter and I were building a little house out of popsicle sticks and A. (niece) says, "Mommy, did you tell Dit (me) about Betsy!!" My sister pauses and kinda frowns. A. asks again. I say, "Let me guess, is Betsy pregnant?" Yep, with twins. She got married about 3 months ago. My response, "Well isn't Betsy a little greedy." (Blurg, who am I?)


My sister and I have yet to speak directly about my situation. She gains her intel from my mom in favor of speaking to me directly. I have tried a few times to reach out, even if slightly, but she never takes the bait. Her response to the above conversations was - "well, that's why I hadn't said anything. You know you can have a pick of any one of my three." I say, "Unfortunately, I think they might be a little attached to you by now."

I know she is trying to help, and I am sure her joking response was more of a nervous reaction than anything, but why is it people like us are such freaks that no one ever knows what to say to us? And why is it that 90% of the time I feel pissed or saddened by their failed attempts to console me? Why is it that I feel like I spend more time talking to my friends and family about how to deal with me than actually getting the support I need?

When this all began, I took the approach that I wanted to be a silence breaker. I did not broadcast my problems, but after the second mis, it seemed stupid not to tell the people who care about me what was going on. But now I am starting to see why people keep quiet. It isn't about shame, or feelings of failure. It is because people have no clue what to do with you. Some of my friends have even pulled away from me.

I have almost zero experience dealing with grief, or supporting my friends who are dealing with it. So chances are I would be pretty bad at it too.

I Measure My Miscarriages in Bricks

This is a very strange correlation that just revealed itself to me as i was browsing through my photos. After my first miscarriage I feverishly build this brick patio in our backyard to distract myself (yep, I'm a real hard-ass.) My acupuncturist told me to "take it easy" but hauling these bricks around seemed to be the only thing that settled me. It is my most distinct memory from the time of that loss.


In late August, during my second pregnancy, I was told by my RE during an ultrasound that there was no heartbeat. J. came to pick me up. We drove half a block and pulled over. I absolutely sobbed on his shoulder. It was that wrenching, hysterical, can't catch your breath kind of sob. When I occasionally opened my watery eyes, I was looking straight at the image below-- the stacked, but porous wall of a parking garage. It is my most distinct memory from that time.


So I guess you can say I measure my losses in bricks. Hopefully, I'll never have to do it again.

To all of you out there with Perfect Uteri

Just to get it straight - I AM NOT INFERTILE. Well, not really, I think. If it were 1852, I would be infertile. But today we can poke little holes in people and root around with a camera. We can also insert tiny, little scissors into a woman's uterus and snip away the wall that divides it in two, making for a remodeled, and hopefully functioning, unit. I hope it works for me. Right now, it is too soon to tell. So I can get pregnant, repeatedly, but my body is a babykiller.

But here is the point.

I have, since May 2007 to present, suffered 2 miscarriages due to my septate uterus while all of my friends (and I really do mean that) have gotten pregnant on near the first try and taken that pregnancy to term. I am surrounded by a festering ring of fertility. I am the statistic. Girls, stay close. You wanna have a kid, stick with me. I am the percentage, the one you hope you are not. I got the shitty end of the stick - so you go ahead and grab the good end. I can take it.

Problem is that people who have kids, and pregnant people, are really bad at talking to people like me. They say really dumb shit. They call their pregnancy a failure because they developed gestational diabetes (the same friend is currently holding her self-incubated son.) Another friend contacted me all upset because she was turned down by a midwifery practice. They will not take her as a patient because she has epilepsy. She is all pissed because now she will have to delivery her kid in a hospital (safety first!) Ummm, guess what. I can't really deal with this. Fact is, your experience will ultimately end in bliss. Mine, repeated tragedy. I don't mean to minimize anyones feelings, but I can only be so generous. Remember who you are talking to, and be sensitive to that. Because, frankly, it hurts like hell-- and in the grand scheme of things, I have had a pretty easy go at it.

So I just stumbled on this today and want to share it with all of you out there with perfect uteri. Here are some really helpful hints on how to deal with people like me (I edited it a smidge). I found it on RESOLVE - which is a national association for Infertility.

• Don't Tell Them to Relax - no amount of relaxing would have dissolved my septum. Nor will it help other people who are struggling with various known and unknown cases of infertility.
• Don't Minimize the Problem - Talking about all the petty benefits to being childless is a sucky thing to do. (sleeping in, not getting barfed on, going out for beers)
  
• Don't Say There Are Worse Things That Could Happen - Great. I already feel shitty, now you are reminding me to feel guilty about my own pain...
• Don't Say They Aren't Meant to Be Parents - I don't believe this crap anyhow.
  
• Don't Complain About Your Pregnancy - This is the motherload. If I have to explain why, then you may possibly be too insensitive to be anyone's friend. Hope your kid loves you, because you are a piece!
  

I can not tell you how to talk to me, or anyone like me (but this article might help.) If a friend slowly pulls away from you during your pregnancy because of their infertility - don't assume that she wants your kid. Seeing pregnant people is really hard for me because it is a constant reminder of my own failure. It is not that I want to be you. It is that seeing you reminds me one more time that i have been forced to adjust the very way in which I imagined my life would be. Miscarriage and infertility are a different kind of grief. They are grief that is ongoing, with intermitted moments of hope, and some really painful drops into despair. It is exceptionally hard for me to feel joyful for my fertile friends right now. I do the best that I can.

If you can have children with ease and have never suffered a miscarriage you can never, ever understand what it is like to be me. That is all there is too it.

What the hell is a Bicornuate Uterus anyhow?

A Bicornuate Uterus is also referred to as a heart-shaped uterus. You may have been diagnosed with this. That diagnosis may have happened during a miscarriage. You may have only had an ultrasound to make this determination. You probably never knew this about yourself. It was probably told you you by a doctor you would never see again. That doctor may have created a rudimentary drawing on a scrap piece of paper for you to show you the shape, then wrote it down, B-I-C-O-R-N-U-A-T-E, then told you to go home and look it up on the internet. They might have tapped you on the knee and said, "don't worry, many women have this and have very uneventful pregnancies. You'll have lots of kids!"

At least this is how it happened to me.

In a follow up visit to see a midwife, I was told we should just try again. Not only that, there was no need to wait, no reason to investigate the diagnosis further. No biggie - just try again.
So we did, and in 2 cycles I was pregnant again. At that point, I was in the begin research Mullerian Anomalies. I was just learning the what, why and how I was born like this (and you can too if you click here.)

Before I knew I was knocked up again I had made an appointment with a Reproductive Endocrinologist - here on and ever referred to as simply, an RE. Arriving in her office pregnant was frowned upon, for the RE is meant to help you get pregnant-- once pregnancy occurs the RE gives you the boot. So my RE was pretty casual with me, said congrats and warned me that we would not be getting to know each other very well. But I felt really scared about this one, and she could tell I was not feeling like this pregnancy was a taker.

A month later during my 7 week ultrasound, the first time I was supposed to see the heartbeat, the shit hit the fan. "Sorry, this pregnancy is not going to work out. There is no heartbeat." So I guess me and this RE were going to get to know each other.

I was a mobile coffin for about a week, then scheduled a D&E. The worst part is that you have these little moments where you let yourself think for just a second that everything is ok-- That the little packet of cells inside you was just playing peek-a-boo, that your ovulation date was off, that the ultrasound machine was busted. Nope, this really was happening to us.

So what I meant to get to is that my diagnosis, done at a hospital during an emergency room visit, with ultrasound as the only imaging, was starting to look like it might be wrong. And what I learned very soon is that the diagnosis of "BICORNUTE" is a kind of catch all for any type of uterine anomaly that appears as though the uterine cavity is divided when seen on ultrasound. Thing is, bicornuate's have pretty good outcomes with pregnancy. More specifically, when they do suffer losses it tends to be second and third trimester. I was having first trimester losses. It just didn't jive.

So I was back where I should have been 2 months prior if any of the small army of OB's, Midwife's or Gyno's that I saw would have even lightly suggested a follow up or second opinion. Here I was, no less than 4 months in to trying to make a roomie. Two were gone, and I was left in limbo. Yeah for our health system!

The Story of My First Mis

J. and I started talking about having children years ago, but we were both still tied up in graduate school, submersed in our work, and not ready to sacrifice our independence. If felt good to think about waiting till the time was right, but we knew children was something we wanted. Despite our wants, I think most of our family believed we weren't the type to have kids. My mother talked incessantly about how we were too selfish to ever have kids, that we had established our lives and wouldn't be able to adjust -- shifting our attention from ourselves to our family. I never really resented that she thought that of us. I just thought it was fun that some day I could surprise her and tell her we were having a baby... And that we did it with our eyes wide open. Not true, I did resent her for saying that. But I knew I could be a really great mom some day. So her slight wasn't going to change my mind.

My grandmother occasionally warned me that my eggs would dry up. And my sister once felt the need to let me know that the rate of birth defects started to raise exponentially after that age of 35, so I better get to it. That was years ago. And I am only now 32.

J. and I joked about how my siblings wanted us to have kids so we could suffer with them. We imagined their envy of our freedom and knew we wanted a few years to be with one another- uninterrupted. J. and I have a very tight bond. We would spend every moment together if we could and very, very, rarely tire of each other. I have proposed to him on more than one occasion our surgical connection. He thinks its weirds. My alternative solution is to make clothes that we can wear together. He is not completely opposed. We don't fight and we share deep intellectual bonds to one another. Yes, I am selfish. I wanted him all to myself for a few more years.

It wasn't till fall of last year till we decided we would make a plan. We had visited friends in Pittsburgh who had a 3 month old. I couldn't stand watching J. hold her. He was so taken by her, and so was I. On the long drive back to Philly we decided. We would begin in the spring.
The funniest thing is I had this ridiculously, conflated plan to get pregnant in a particular month. Here was my thinking: get pregnant in April. Make job applications. Sneak in interviews before I start showing. Give birth in the winter. Have 6 months at home with the kid before my new and amazing and not in Philly tenure-track job starts in the fall. HA! I am such an ass. First I was assuming I would get a job. Second, I was assuming I could get pregnant on command and have the perfect, uncomplicated pregnancy. I could not have possibly been more wrong.

You spend your whole life trying to avoid getting pregnant - and I was really good at avoiding it. I had never once been pregnant, so I wanted to make sure I knew what was about to happen to me and be prepared for it. In the late fall I had a full physical and annual exam to make sure all my parts were in order. When I told my GP we were going to try she just said, " Great! Have fun!" I thought-- easy as that.

I had suffered from poor digestion and migraines for years, so I started seeing an acupuncturist. I had stopped medicating the headaches months prior, because the meds made me feel as crappy as the headache. Turns out the acupuncturist I was seeing, by coincidence, is particularly interested in pregnancy and fertility. So I thought I hit the jackpot when I told her I was there to get ready for pregnancy. With her, I went through learning how to track my temps for ovulation, lots of diet changes, herbs and weekly treatments. Now I know exactly when I ovulate. I have not had a headache in 5 months-- which rocks. But my digestion is still pretty jacked up.

Last, I purchased insurance. In my own stupidity and honesty, I admitted to the insurance company a history of migraine, which bumped up my premium terribly. I tried to tell them that I was no longer being treated for them, but they would not concede to drop my rates. I even ordered all of my medical files from grad school to prove to them that I was no longer being treated, but they only pointed to the "gap" in my treatment since I finished school. A "gap"-- is that what you call having no insurance? Of course there are no medical record for the time I was uninsured-- I could not afford to go to the doctor. I chose the best plan that I could based on my needs. I knew we were going to have a kid so I chose the plan with the best birthing rates and privileges. That puppy sang to the tune of $275 a month.

So here I was. All ready to go-- clean bill of health, fully insured, just tapping my foot until April rolled around. I couldn't believe my own impatience. I bugged J. every month leading up till april. I was constantly up to tricks, trying to get him to let us start early. Unfortunately, in my excitement, I had shared all that I had learned about my cycle and so he knew when I was up to no good. He really kept me in line because he, like me, believed that we would get pregnant and have a kid in no time.

It was an easy thing to convince ourselves of. I felt like I had a million reasons to believe I was exceptionally fertile. For one, I had been pretty responsible with birth control. So there was no reason to believe that I ever had any "accidents" that did not result in pregnancy. I only once had a contraceptive issue and used the morning after pill. I was responsible and in control of my body. Besides that, I am built like a breeder, at least according to the mythologies of fertility. I have big wide hips, big ass and boobs and a tiny little waist. There is nothing tom boy about my figure. That Venus De Milo had me fooled. I thought: curvy body, big hips = baby maker. The women in my family are pretty prolific - so I just assumed it was in the genes. But even more convincing was the rate and speed at which all of our friends were able to conceive. We had heard hots of "hole in one" stories warning us how fast it might happen. So we just figured that we are the same age, pretty health and had no reason to think we were any different.

April (late March actually) finally rolled around. I had been charting my temperatures so I had a pretty good idea of what was going on. Tried, no luck. We rolled in to month number two still optimistic. And after the long, impatient wait after ovulation, I turned up pregnant. The first test I took had a positive line, but it was super light. I spent hours online comparing it to images of other positive pregnancy tests. I toted it around the house all day and looked at it in disbelief. I wondered it we were crazy. We had tentative conversations that week - when would we tell people, what kind of birth did we want, how would we find a doctor. We were hesitant to acknowledge it, though I think that is pretty normal.

On my birthday, the last day of May, I started to spot. I was only 5 weeks, barely even pregnant. I panicked and called a recently pregnant friend who i knew had a spell of spotting. She was helpful, but pretty casual about it. In some cases it is pretty normal. I waited till morning to call the midwife that I hadn't even seen yet. It was hard to get care when you have yet to establish a relationship with an OB or Midwife. The midwives were helpful and ultimately sent me to the emergency room. By that time, I was full on bleeding and knew what was happening to me.

I arrived at the ER on a Sunday morning. I had put off going in on Saturday because we live in Philly, a place where ER's are notoriously busy on the weekends. The visit consisted of about 15 pelvic exams by about 10 different people (exaggeration.) J. had his first look at a speculum, which I think he may have been a little disturbed by. There was a lot of waiting, particularly for blood-work. My HCG level was a very low 25. There was little hope that this was anything other than a miscarriage.

After hours, I was finally taken upstairs to have an ultrasound. I was in a large room with the tech, who would not allow me to see the screen or respond to any questions. She was just there to take the pictures. I knew something was wrong right away. She was doing a regular pelvic ultrasound, when she suddenly jumped way up to my kidneys. I started to panic. Cancer was the first thing that ran through my head. What the hell do my kidneys have to do with my uterus?

Next came the vaginal ultrasound. I was really sensitive on my one side to the point that I winced each time she jabbed me. She spent a lot of time and I could not image what she would need to document so thoroughly. Thorough is great, but this was freaking me out. After she left the room I started to cry again. I was running through a list of a zillion things that could be wrong with me.

Not only was I loosing a pregnancy that I so very much wanted, but I was diagnosed with what is called a heart-shaped uterus-- medically known as a Bicornuate Uterus, part of a group of malformations called Mullerian Duct Anomalies. This blog chronicles my journey through miscarriage and misdiagnosis. I hope it will be a good read for those of you out there who are looking for information, just like me.


J. and I sat on this stoop, and for the first and last time made plans for this pregnancy.