Wanting to feel crappy

Until the start of this week, Turbulence was a very, very good girl. She made me upchuck the entire bag of greasy popcorn I had consumed at the movies on Sunday. She made me cramp on and off too. I was miserable, but ecstatic to have such proof that she is doing well. Who cares if you look horrible and green outside when you are beaming mentally within?

Past three days, there has not been so much going on. There is the occasional mild wave of nausea (so mild I convince myself that its *really* there). Not much heartburn. Very little to no cramping. And of course, I'm miserable. I alternate between feelings of optimism and doom so violently I'm giving myself whiplash. 

My ultrasound is tomorrow, and it won't be a moment too soon.

And of course, my brain being the hyperactive thing that it is, I'm running through my mental lists. What is the possibility of a second miscarriage at this point?

Very, very low. Thyroid ( a possible issue in the last pregnancy), has been dealt with. I don't seem to have other antibody-related autoimmune issues. As far as overactive T and NK cells (linked to the thyroid issue by certain studies) go,  who knows, but those are usually an issue with implantation, and as we all know, I have absolutely no worries in that area.


About the thrombophilias, it seems highly unlikely. I had read a paper a while ago which looked at Indian women with recurrent m/cs. The authors examined the possible causes and found thrombophilias did not crop up. Also, there is my vast, unbelievably fecund family. Everybody reproduces without trying. My family does NOT have pregnancy losses, atleast, not that I know of. What they have, is lots and lots of babies. They are the disgustingly fertile lot everybody wants to desperately be, myself included.   
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And finally, there is genetics. Although chromosomes  were normal, my overactive imagination has conjured up scenarios where there is a highly unusual single gene incompatibility between me and my donor, in such a case, 25 % of all of our kids would be at risk. Yes, knowing too much is an UTTER curse, combine with this a tendency towards neurosis and you've got yourself a nail-biting monster on your hands. I wish I was like my mom, she is calm, thinks positive, and nothing ever rattles her.  She is the calm center in any crisis. Wish those genes had not passed me by!  Hopefully they will skip a generation and show up in Turbulence.

My one loss was an unusual and mostly inexplicable one so I've got some reason to be nervous .But then, the possibility of a second loss is statistically very low and a lot of bases have been examined and covered.  This much fear is unreasonable. I'm just utterly glad I'm having frequent ultrasounds, and right now I just wish I would upchuck and cramp so I could get through the days in between comfortably.

Randomness

I'm home early today and have nothing to do, so I decided to write a blog post. This stuff is addictive I tell you- soon I'll be one of those poeple who cannot shut up about themselves...ACK!!!!

The reason I'm home is I had a mucocele (trapped salivary gland in my mouth) cut off today. I now  have a lipful of stitches that stick out like whiskers, I look like Angelina Jolie gone wrong and I'm on a-don't-eat-anything-you-need-to-chew diet. So I had a ginormous glass of home-made creamy yogurt for lunch and dessert is going to be this---------->
Yum.

In TTC-related news, I woke up this morning and my temps had not shot up like I was expecting them to. So I panic and fall back on the doctor's plan of going in for an ultrasound today to decide if I need a 2nd insemination.  Turns out I did ovulate yesterday, they could see the start of the corpus luteum.  As soon as the doctor and the nurse see the lining, they say in unison- 'beautiful!', but I  freak out a little when the doctor measures it at 8.5 mm instead of 9.. how could it have shrunk? They then assure paranoid little me that different operators can come up with different numbers (yesterday I had the head honcho and today I had the junior partner). But still, I was concerned that it had not grown between yesterday and today- I'm obsessed with size apparently. I want to be a 12, but I'm only 8.5-9. I wanted my follicle to be a 21, instead its only 17. Boo hoo.

As you could probably tell, I'm angry with myself- why the obsession with numbers and patterns, with all the resultant anxious overanalysing?? Why the wish to be 'perfect', especially when you cannot identify what are the factors that lead to successful creation of a baby in 9 months? This road may be long drawn and twisty, and if i don't just let go and let nature take whatever course its determined to, I'm going to end up in a self-created hell.

Its quite annoying when you can clearly identify all the issues with the way your brain and personality function, but cannot fix any of them. I'm trying though. Every time my idiot brain tries to come up with a new worry-inducing permutation and combination, I've been repeating to myself  'Let go and let god' like a mantra.
Lets hope it works.

I'm a gloom and doom kinda gal and....

I need a BIG rap on my knuckles for it! I've been an impatient and overanxious knucklehead. I've had my scary test results for over a week now (because I made them give it to me), but thanks to the inefficiencies in communication between my OB-GYN's office and my RE's office, have not had the official medical interpretation until today. The part that was driving me nuts was my cardiolipin antibody levels (slightly elevated, but nowhere near the big, scary danger zone) and the fact that I could not interpret my lupus anti-coagulant test results by myself, with no reference ranges. Its a complicated test, I I think even docs would have a hard time with that one. Btw- its called the 'Direct Russel Viper Venom test'- kinda cool.

Anyway, I finally got the verdict from my doctor- I don't have to worry about clotting issues!!! They will retest if I make them (and I will) but right now its nothing to worry about. Most people trust what their doctors say implicitly but with my training and my neither-here-nor-there knowledge of medicine and science, cannot help second guessing them, which can be both a good and a very bad thing.

I still have the anti-thyroid autoantibodies and I start synthyroid before pregnancy to see how I respond. Its quite amazing how we adjust to new realities. When I first found out about this, I was a mess (with guilt and fear) but now I'm shrugging it off.

Finally- its CD2 of my new cycle and looking at my day 1 and day 2 temps (low, low, low) I know I'm going to ovulate early this cycle(by day 15-16) and its probably going to be a pattern similar to the one I conceived and lost in. I had sworn I would avoid such a pattern again because I thought there was something wonky with it, but now I'm not so sure it had anything to do with the egg and I'm sick of waiting. Oh for a crystal ball!