Why Can't I Get My Shit Together?

It's a shift perceptible only to me, but I am most definitely depressed. Which blows. I don't want to be - I tried not to let it happen. But if I could control it then it never ever would have happened to me before. Five times. Maybe more.

I feel like I'm moving through my grief well, and I'm hardly incapacitated....but so very overwhelmed that I'm shutting down. I have a week to pack but keep dragging my heels. I'm "looking" but hardly being proactive about finding a job. I have yet to set foot in the gym. There's a mental/emotional block that I just can't seem to break down.

The thing I hate most is that I know it's there, and I know it's a problem I want to eliminate, yet I can't quite put my finger on what exactly is holding me back? Dealing with so many things at once certainly isn't helping matters but I know it's more than that. Something I need to resolve...but what?

I just know I need to resolve this crap soon. Fact is, we close on our house in a week and our belongings aren't going to teleport over there. And I'm pretty sure I have gained 5 lbs back of the 30 I lost. Not cool. I worked hard for that dammit! But I can remedy that easily enough....I just need to get my ass through the door of the gym. And my motivation is that said ass is noticeably less firm than it was a month ago.

Time for some serious personal reflection I think. I need to uncover exactly what is getting me down and deal with it ASAP before I stumble into a hole I won't be able to get out of. We'll resume TTC in August and depression is the last thing that I will let get in the way of that. So I need to ensure I am as emotionally and physically healthy as possible by August!

~Michelle

How Do You Pick Up the Pieces?

I'm glad I didn't try to post on Mother's Day. Between losing our Baby and my own mother's death ten years ago....well, I think it's best that I limited myself to my pregnancy loss discussion board. No one who hasn't experienced this kind of loss would be able to understand the intensity of the pain I was in. It actually left me feeling quite unsettled, to realize such raw pain was inside of me and as much as I fought it, it forced itself out anyway. The day was spent in fits of ugly crying - complete with hyperventilating in front of my in-laws - and by the time night fell I was completely empty and numb. I think that had to happen though - I have felt a lightness ever since that for the past month I didn't think I would ever find again.

I'm still sad. I loved this Baby with everything I had and I will never forget what never came to be. But I do feel I can start to move forward again. I'm just not quite sure how to do that. It's one hell of a learning curve.

I find myself starting to consider what I can do to increase our chances, and battling PCOS is at the top of the list. I found this great article about the relationship between PCOS and diet, and I was stunned to realize that this is precisely what I had been doing in the two months before I got pregnant. Eureka! The "diet" is my Zero Sugar plan for weight loss! How convenient that the same eating plan that enables me to actually lose weight (when nothing else has ever worked!) could very well regulate my cycles and increase my fertility. Imagine that. This is something I have control over. I cannot control my fallopian tubes - I need to leave decreasing my chances of another ectopic in the capable hands of my fertility doctor. But I can get pregnant. I did it already. And I think I have the key to it now.

We're allowed to resume TTC in August, once I have an HSG (Hysterosalpinogram) to check/flush my tubes. So in the meantime? I need to prep my body. Time to resume my Zero Sugar plan and see how much weight I can lose by August! This time I'll be adding supplements that I have been researching as well, but that is another post on it's own. Unfortunately, since losing the Baby I have been drowning my sorrows in ice cream and chocolate so I'm going to need a sugar detox first. Having done this twice already, I can tell you it isn't going to be pleasant. Sadly, sugar is my drug of choice and my withdrawal is on par with what you would expect from an addict desperate for their next fix. But once I survive the first week, it becomes natural and easy. Nothing feels better than nourishing my body with real food.

I've lost 8 lbs in the past three weeks, but it's not the right kind of loss. It's loss that stems from eating nothing until 4 p.m. most days, then surviving on junk until I finally fall asleep at 3 a.m. Headaches, insomnia, breakouts, fatigue, low motivation.....you name it. And it's the sugar. Once it's out of my system, I know my mood will improve and I will find the energy I need to get back to the gym.

So as I have sat and wondered for the past three weeks, "How do I heal? What is the next step?", I seem to have found my answer. I need to start taking care of my body again. Until now I just didn't feel that I deserved it, but after my emotional purge on the weekend I have finally found myself in the right headspace to care about Me again.

This is going to be one hell of a week....but I know it will be worth it.

~Michelle

The Aftermath of an Ectopic

So what exactly happens following an ectopic pregnancy?

Well, initially, not much of anything.

I spent the first week in a haze. A great deal of sleeping and crying. I honestly don't remember much. I know anyone I told was as supportive as they could manage to be, given that you can't possibly understand when it isn't you. I know that some people who Jon told seemed to avoid me....I know it wasn't ill-intentioned, but I felt incredibly isolated. Pregnancy loss discussion boards and one Facebook  friend who suspected and reached out to me became my lifeline.

Physically, there was some bleeding but I'd had worse periods before. I wondered, is this it? But that wasn't it.

One week after my shot my pregnancy hormone level was 3300. The shot wasn't working. My doctor asked me to consider a second shot of methotrexate, as not everyone responds to the first one. Fine, just get it done.

The second shot worked. Three days later I was in agony. The methotrexate is so successful in fighting cancer because it attacks "rapidly dividing cells" - what my Baby had now been reduced to. As the drug destroyed my poor little embryo, inflammation ensued. Well guess what? The fallopian tube is not designed to expand. So when it does - it's agony. I felt like a ticking time bomb. Confined to the couch, all I could do was wonder if my tube would burst. How much pain was too much?

But it didn't burst. And Percocet got me through it. I think it numbed some of my sadness and anger too. Allowed me to sleep without nightmares.

A few days after the shot my HCG had fallen from over 3000 to around 400. One week later it was 94. I'm still waiting for zero. Then I can safely resume my "Project Baby" nutrition/workout/supplement regime to try and pass the time while I wait two cycles. Then they test my tubes to assess the damage. And then hopefully we are given the go-ahead to try again. It feels like forever...

But somehow I think I'm handling it okay. I still have waves of bitterness and anger. I still cry at least once a day for the miracle Christmas baby I don't get to have. I'm planning a forget-me-not tattoo in memory of the Little One who I already loved and will never forget. But I also know that sinking into that black pit of depression that I know so well will not bring back my Baby. And it will not help us try for another. So I am trying very, very hard to move forward and try to see the positive. I expect to hit many bumps along the way, but I'm done with the secrecy and I'll reach out and work through things as they come up. Because that black pit isn't going to do me any favours.

~Michelle

Shattered

It looks like I haven't posted in ages, but that's not actually true. I have five new posts - great posts - all saved to draft, just waiting for the perfect time to publish them and share the exciting new turn in my life with the world.

But that won't happen now. I can't publish those posts anymore....though I know I will never be able to delete them either.

I was pregnant. I was one of those women who "just knew" within days. I told Jon that I knew something was different this time, even though a dozen home pregnancy tests argued I was wrong.

We went for our first consultation at the fertility clinic at the end of March and I told the doctor my suspicions. She ordered a blood test and the next day I got the call: Pregnant. Just barely....my levels weren't even high enough for a urine test to work yet.

I was in total shock that we had actually done it on our own. I was scared too. I didn't quite trust that my body could actually do this amazing thing for me, given how unreliable it had been so far. But mainly I was more happy than I can even find words to describe. We were getting everything we had ever wanted and we felt so incredibly grateful and blessed!

But I just couldn't shake a nagging doubt; that things weren't so perfect after all.

At almost seven weeks, I went for an early ultrasound. Our fertility clinic follows patients very closely in early pregnancy. There was no evidence of an embryo in my uterus. That's when time stopped and the tears began to fall. I was right. I had known. Our doctor sent me to the hospital for a hi-res scan, which verified the pregnancy was developing in my right fallopian tube. Ectopic. If our clinic hadn't been following me so closely it could have ruptured. I could have lost my tube. I could have died.

It was found early enough to avoid surgery - the one small consolation. But I had to make the choice to have a shot of methotrexate - chemotherapy - to end my pregnancy. Really, I know it wasn't a choice at all. But on some level it hurts even more that I had to give permission for it to be done.

We had thought everything was finally falling into place. We let ourselves believe that after two years of waiting the universe had decided we had suffered enough. But then I fell into the 1-2% of pregnancies that are ectopic. Even when I don't have a single one of the few known risk factors for it! What are the fucking chances of that???

The whole day at the hospital we felt that fate was mocking us. The woman in the waiting room playing with her happy, healthy baby boy. The smiling woman with the gorgeous baby bump skipping out of her ultrasound. The strong fetal heartbeat I overheard on Doppler from a few rooms down. The happy couple being wheeled from labour and delivery cradling their brand new baby girl, on their way home to begin their lives together. My heart had already been shattered into a million pieces, and then those pieces began to cut my insides completely raw.

It may sound dramatic, but if you haven't lived it then you just can't possibly understand.

I know we'll heal with time, though we will always keep a special place in our hearts for our Baby who already meant the world to us. I was due December 8th...

We aren't allowed to try again for three months and I'm scared for what is to come. My heart can't wait two more years for our next miracle, so we won't be dragging our heels on fertility interventions this time.

I know these things are rarely discussed openly, but we aren't embarrassed or ashamed. No one should be. Trying to heal in isolation is never healthy. For me, grieving means sharing my feelings and in a way, I want people to know how much our Baby mattered to us. It was real to us, and this loss has cut us very deeply. We would have done anything possible to save our Baby, but it was out of our hands. There is no reason to hide that.

~Michelle