And then, there was one...

My little guy didn’t make it. I went to my first OB appointment and the ultrasound showed one very healthy fetus measuring 10 weeks with a heartbeat of 173 bpm, and one very small fetus/embryo measuring only 8 weeks with no heartbeat. It was sad, but honestly, I think I mourned his loss the first day when the doctor told me he probably wouldn’t make it. I almost felt some closure with the discovery of no heartbeat. We are no longer in limbo wondering how many babies we will have. The other thing that has me relieved is that after researching vanishing twin syndrome (which is what this is), I found that it can be very dangerous for the other baby if it happens later in the pregnancy. The body can try to expel the “material” because it’s much larger. All along my goal was one healthy baby. We obviously wanted both babies once we saw them, but one baby will be easier in many ways. I do really wish I could have banged out a whole family in one fell swoop, but it didn’t happen. I’m still very pregnant with a healthy, squirming, beautiful baby, so I’m dedicated to focusing on that.

Everything else about my OB appointment was surprisingly underwhelming (they treated me like all they see all day long are pregnant women). I did have to wait in the lab for quite a while for the “expert blood girl” to come in and draw my blood from my hand since my good vein has been tapped so many times, anyone less than a complete expert fails to get it to work. My OB’s office is “wallpapered” in pictures of her with newborn babies and moms. This pattern goes on throughout many of the rooms. As I was waiting for the expert blood girl, I was glancing around at these pictures and all of a sudden I began to feel kind of scared. I have spent the last several years concerning myself with getting pregnant. Now that I am pregnant, I have to actually deliver this baby! I don’t know why this didn’t really occur to me before, but it is a little concerning for me now.

My emotional state has been much more accepting of the fact that I’m actually pregnant. I still have times where a couple of hours go by, and I don’t feel my ever-present friend, nausea, and it starts to seem impossible that there is a human being the size of a lime or a prune or whatever, with a beating heart and arms and legs, and maybe even fingernails, attached to my uterus and growing inside me! I have my moments of doubt, and I so wish I had an ultrasound machine at home to peek in on the little one whenever I was having a weak moment, but generally, I’m starting to accept that I may actually be nurturing a real human life in there.

I will have to tell my boss about the pregnancy in the next 2 weeks but that seems crazy to me as well. It is wonderful to me that I’m 10 weeks into this, but it is still so delicate. I don’t really want to come out yet. I have no choice though. My current job is that of an executive assistant/project manager. This type of job lends itself to a fairly close personal relationship with the executive you are supporting. My comings and goings are very obvious to him due to the role I play in his work life. During my fresh cycle in August, he totally guessed what I was doing (he and his wife did IVF 8 years ago, so he knew what to look for), but I wasn’t about to tell him, so I conceded that we were having difficulties conceiving, but we were hoping to avoid IVF (what???). I told him I was having a laparoscopy for endo (this is a true story, but it happened in 2008, I have no idea what I was thinking telling him this). I should never have lied, I should have just told him or found a way to nicely tell him I didn’t want to discuss it, but I was a deer in headlights and the lap story just poured out. In retrospect, it may have been an awkward conversation had I actually become pregnant during that cycle. Anyway, this time, I was able to keep the frozen cycle from him by taking personal time instead of medical time on the day of the transfer, and the ultrasound appointments. This was easier since there was no ambiguity about when this would all occur, I knew the transfer date weeks in advance.

Well, he’s onto me again because after only two doctor’s appointments (one week apart) he asked if these doctor appointments were related to becoming pregnant. I cautiously told him that yes, they were related to that. He then asked me if I would need time off to do fertility treatments and I told him I would know more in the upcoming weeks. I can’t outright lie to him, obviously, but I wasn’t ready to tell him during that conversation. I was only 7 weeks and hadn’t seen the heartbeat yet. It might have been a pointless conversation. Well, I have an infusion next week, an appointment with the high risk specialist (for my “advanced maternal age”…nice) on the 24th and an appointment with the OB on the 26th. He will definitely be wondering what’s going on. I’m thinking it might just be easiest to come clean next week before my infusion appointment. I hate to do it this early, but if something happened to the baby at this stage, I would definitely need some time off, either for a medical procedure or for just emotional time. I can certainly trust him to keep this confidential from other co-workers until I feel more comfortable.

The thing that’s going to give me away is my belly! I don’t know if the growth of the belly will slow since I only have one baby actually growing in there now, but I’m already pushing the limit in all my work pants, and I’m down to only one pair of jeans that I can button, and they were previously too big for me. I love the changing body, it’s so exciting. It’s just another exciting part of this journey. I cannot wait to have a cute little basketball tummy (I’m hoping it goes that route, and not the massive beach ball look).

That's it for now...

Ultrasound Update

Generally our appointment on Monday went well, but we didn’t get any new news about our little guy. Our healthy twin is doing great, measuring between 8 weeks 2 days and 8 weeks 4 days depending on the angle. He was moving around and you could clearly see arms and legs and even what looked like eyes. It was amazing. Everything is perfect with him. Our little guy still had a strong heartbeat and was measuring 2-4 days behind our healthy one, which is the same as last week. His sac is still small and the doctor is still giving us little to no hope of him surviving.

It just seems crazy to me that there is no hope for this little guy. Anyone with a strong heartbeat like that must have hope right? I still have hope for him. I know many doctors who have been very negative about a situation only to have things turn out fine in the end. I am just so incredibly thankful that I do have my one healthy twin in there. If all my hopes were on the little guy, I would be a complete wreck. How terrible it must be to lose a baby, particularly once you’ve seen a heartbeat. It just seems so unfair. Of course, I’m still a little nervous about both of them since we’re only at 8.5 weeks. I will be 12 weeks on January 16th, but it seems that my 2nd trimester doesn’t begin until 13 weeks, so maybe I need to hold my breath until the 23rd.

My “morning” sickness has been progressively worse and worse. Monday night and yesterday it was as bad as it has ever been. I was having a lot of trouble sleeping, then getting ready for work and getting anything done. It was so difficult to eat anything too. Today, I have that familiar sick feeling, but it’s not nearly as intense and for the first time ever I think, I’m welcoming the relief.

Also, I have either become bloated or I’m actually beginning to show, because I cannot button any of my jeans. This started a couple of weeks ago, leading me to believe it’s more bloating, but it’s not uncomfortable, I just feel like I have a big belly. Either way, I don’t think anyone else would notice, but I am having to secure my jeans with a ponytail holder, or in some cases I have been wearing a bella band which actually works pretty well.

Well today is my “Friday”. I work until 3:30pm today then I’m off until January 3rd. I’m so excited. I think the timing is perfect because it should make the next week and a half fly by and it also gives me the freedom to rest and relax if I’m feeling bad. When I get back to work I’ll be 10 weeks, which isn’t there yet, but definitely closing in on the end of the 1st trimester. I also have my appointment with the regular OB on December 29th. I’m very interested in hearing her opinions on my little guy.

Friday! Ultrasound countdown

Well, just a few more days until my 2nd ultrasound. I am feeling awful these days. I still don’t have intense nausea, like I’m not actually vomiting or even getting that close to vomiting, but I am moderately nauseas almost all the time and now I’m having a very hard time eating anything. I am worried about this and hope it passes or lessens soon, so I don’t lose any weight. I may try to take some unisom + B6 tonight to see if I can manage the food aversions, but I don’t know if it has the same effect on aversions as it does on nausea. I would just like to be able to eat again without very slowly taking bites and trying to swallow them.

I am so glad it is Friday today. We have kind of a fun weekend planned, so I’m looking forward to that. Tonight is just chill night. We’ll watch a movie and I’m planning to pick up something/anything that sounds remotely non-nauseating for dinner (I’m not cooking) and chill on the couch. Tomorrow, we have TW’s work dinner. This should be fun and because my husband is adorable, he has already told EVERYONE at his office about my pregnancy, so there is no need to fake drink or anything. I can just be me. I am hoping that I can be interested in at least something on the menu. Then on Sunday we are going to church, then to lunch and then to see A Christmas Carol at the theater with friends. It is supposed to be very good and I just love getting in the Christmas mood with shows like that. I’m hopeful that the weekend will be relaxing and low stress, because first thing Monday is my ultrasound.

So here is the bad news. I have tirelessly been researching the situation my little guy is in. My two sacs are remarkably different in size, but my two embryos are only differing by 3 days. I continued to find more and more reassuring stories about one embryo being a couple days behind, and began to get a much more positive attitude about little guy. Until my hopes came crashing down when I read this

“from 5.5 - 9 weeks the gestational sac size should exceed the crown to rump length by 5mm. If the difference is less, spontaneous demise exceeds 90%.”

This is very bad news for little guy. I think it would be a real stretch for his sac to be 5mm larger than his crown to rump length. A less than 10% chance is very difficult for me to swallow. I still have hope, but I’m much less optimistic. I can totally deal with the idea of one baby, I just hate the idea of losing my little bean with a heartbeat. As a result of this discovery, I was kind of down yesterday. I’m hoping that Monday presents us with a much rosier picture, but I am also prepared to see a slower heartbeat or some other sign of little guy struggling. I knew I would never be comfortable that my pregnancy is safe until the day when the fetuses are viable outside my body and even then maybe not, but I did think seeing a heartbeat would give me some comfort. So far, I’m of course thrilled that we saw the heartbeat, but it is just one of many more milestone’s we need to hit before this is over.

Infertility is a crazy thing, even when you’ve “overcome” it, you still have the burden and the fear holding you down. I want to be happy, overjoyed even by this pregnancy, but I can’t shake the fear. I actually am overjoyed that I was able to get pregnant, I’m just not able to feel confident that this will result in a living, breathing, squirming infant(s).

Ultrasound #1 7 Weeks 1 Day

We had our ultrasound and I’m completely relieved and excited to report that we saw two! heartbeats that were both beating at an acceptable rate (not sure what the exact measurement was). The only sad part is that Twin B is measuring 3 days behind Twin A and to the naked eye, the difference is astounding. Twin B’s sac is maybe ¼ the size of Twin A’s sac. The fetuses look to be much closer in size (hence the only 3 day difference in measurement). Obviously we are overjoyed to have one healthy twin, but I can’t help but hope that little Twin B rallies and has a little growth spurt to catch him up. I will be happy with one or two children from this cycle but after seeing two heartbeats, my heart aches to have them both.

I wouldn’t be that nervous about this difference because 3 days doesn’t sound like much, but the R.E. was pretty negative about it. He said usually when there is a disparity like this there is a reason and the smaller twin eventually stops developing and reabsorbs. At the time I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask what the chances were…50/50? 90/10? I guess I’ll know more next week. The pictures are below. The second one shows both sacs in the same frame, and you can really see the difference in size.

We are scheduled to go back next Monday to take another look before I am released to my OB. I will be 8 weeks 1 day next Monday. I’m really hoping for both little ones to be measuring in better sync this next time. I’ve been picturing myself as a mother to twins ever since my high HCG level on my first beta. I’m having difficulty picturing myself as a mom to only one, but there are most DEFINITELY benefits to having only one child at a time. I guess I was hoping to put IVF in my rear view mirror forever and build our whole family in one shot. Either way, I’m beyond excited that there are heartbeats! I’m for real now. I’ve joined the club of pregnant women!