Leery Polyp

So, About That Adoption Thing

Here's the thing.

Our agency will put your application on hold, if you become pregnant during the course of adopting.  Basically as soon as we tell them, we are out of the game, though not permanently; if something goes Horribly Awry^TM, we're back in and we don't have to repeat the things we've already done. Mollie's description of her agency's reasoning (in yesterday's comments) is very much like ours:

I think the reasoning was based on the idea that it is indeed overwhelming to have two babies at once, and in the interests of the child who would be placed, the parents should be as long on resources as possible. The agency advocates for the child, not the would-be parents. And my agency felt is was definitely a detriment to have a bio kid stealing the thunder, and the resources.

I have to agree with them.  From our standpoint, it would just be exhausting beyond measure; also, if I were a birthmother, I would have a very hard time placing my child with someone who was either already the new mother of a bio kid, or about to become same.

That part is not the hard part. The hard part is deciding where to draw the line: when to throw our lot in with the sea monkey, when to tell the agency, when to be put on hold knowing full well that anything can go wrong at any time. There is -- not discord, exactly; let us say there is a range of opinion, in the House of Leery Polyp, on where exactly that line ought to go.

Sean, a reasonable, rational, scientifically-inclined person who is equally deep-feeling and emotionally well-rounded, is of the belief that it would be best to go to our Thursday class, see what next Monday's ultrasound reveals, and if it should happen to be a beating heart, well, then we have to fess up. We don't want to waste our mental energy or that of our social worker or the other couples in the group; it wouldn't be fair to anyone.  Plus why keep shelling out? We ain't exactly rollin' in it.

I am also a scientist, and according to an article I recently published in the Mid-Atlantic Journal of My Chocha, things are VERY SCARY up until the end of the first trimester, and then SLIGHTLY LESS SCARY after that, and so why not just wait? Until potty-training?

Marriage is compromise, and so we are doing pretty much what Sean wants, since I am able to recognize that it is indeed the sane and reasonable thing to do, and we don't lose anything but time that way if, you know, Horribly Awry^TM. 

Still, though. It's hard, and it does feel like loss.

But look at me, counting my chickens before I see their little heartbeats on the ultrasound! Not cool. Not cool at all.

P.S. I should add that we were going to use birth control, honest. It just never occurred to me that I could actually get pregnant. In fact I am still not entirely convinced. Heh.

Deep Breath. Deep Breath.

You know I actually forgot for a little while that I was pregnant? At the Hanukkah party we got to talking with some of Sean's family about their own experience with adoption (international, about 18 years ago), and they had such great, encouraging things to say, about how bonding is no problem, and about how the hardest part for them came in adolescence with the whole identity thing, but if they'd had an open adoption they think it might have gone much more smoothly, and I got all warm and happy and teary and excited and damn if it didn't just slip my mind altogether, that whole being just a touch pregnant thing.

Adoption is such a normal everyday part of life in that part of the family. People talk about it, use the language (like birthmother or first mother rather than "real mother"), even make comfortable jokes about it. It's beautiful to see, lovely and ordinary. And I want that in my own little branch of the family.

There's no way to know what will happen with this (grrx, um, er) pregnancy -- a heartbeat next Monday doesn't guarantee us a heartbeat a month from now, doesn't guarantee us the absence of some new terrible thing. In the adoption world people often remind themselves and others that there are no guarantees, whether you adopt or have biological children, in an effort to combat the widespread belief that adoption is more of a gamble -- but right now this, my own pregnancy, feels like the more dangerous path, fraught with peril and uncertainty. How on earth does anyone do this?

One foot in front of the other, I guess. Deep breath. Deep breath.

Something good will happen, one way or the other.

Crazy Times, Man

We've told a few people, here and there, in dribs and drabs.  Well, okay, and I kind of told THE INTERNET, but all y'all know better than to say that thing about the relaxing that makes my hands go strangle strangle, so that was cool.  We're telling the people who would need to know about it if things went Horribly Awry ^tm, and that's pretty much it.  One of them started to quote THEM, about how sometimes when people adopt. . .and Sean cut him off right then and there with a sobering tale of miscarriages.  Friend got the message.  How I love that man of mine.  If this pregnancy should make it to the point where we're comfortable announcing it to the world and family at large (say, when the child is accepted into graduate school), I plan to issue a preemptive statement about how if any of you, and I can see you thinking it, if any of you say that thing about how when people adopt they always get pregnant, I will scream, and run out of the room, and then I will run back into the room when you're not expecting it and kick you square in the shins.  And I will go on to explain precisely why that is so infuriating, which is 1) that it's utter bullshit, statistically speaking, and therefore just a useless thing to point out, and 2) it carries nasty implications about who is second prize and who is first.  And that, beloved family, is very, very hurtful.

Tonight is the Big Giant Enormous Hanukkah Festival of Latkes and Getting Sort of Drunk, and though we have already procured a fakeout bottle of sparkling cider (not Martinelli's! That would be far too obvious!), I have a reputation for enjoying my wine, and when one makes that sort of thing such an ingrained part of one's social identity, well, family members might quietly observe my cup of cider and think certain thoughts, very sneakily, to themselves.  Fortunately I have also cultivated a reputation for falling asleep on the sofa in the middle of family gatherings, so that won't stand out.  Anyway, we are being very guarded about this around family.  It is so early.

And I am feeling extremely tentative.  Tentative bordering on ghoulish, the way I speak matter-of-factly about miscarriages and what would happen when and whether I might want a D&C this time, or to go all natural like last time.  It's far too easy to watch that future unfold, in my head.  So mostly I try not to envision any future at all.  Who knows, anyway.  It could all be okay.  Still, one doesn't wish to get overly attached to any particular outcome, not at this point.  I can't even bring myself to make a category for this, for the sake of sweet Jesus Gay.

Our adoption class is this coming Thursday.  I am still excited about that, when I'm not busy being completely freaked out, when the EEEEEEEP sound my brain continues to make isn't blotting out every other mental process.

Did I mention I'm completely freaked out? Yes? Good.

It feels absolutely unreal.  Saying the words "I'm pregnant" feels as authentic as a pillow stuffed beneath a stretchy T-shirt (I know I'm not the only one who did this).  I'm not quite buying it.  I'm tired, and hungry, and I have to pee all the time, but that's really not so different from the way I am normally, except that ordinarily I don't depend on a twenty-pound archival box balanced on my knees to prevent me from falling out of the chair in which I have lost consciousness.  What I'm saying is that I fell asleep at work several times, but that's the progesterone supplements.

I would feel a little better about this enterprise if the morning sickness would kick in.  Now, before you start smiling like that and telling me to be careful what I wish for, allow me to point out that last time I was pregnant I was sick, a lot of the time, and I know what I'm getting into.  Even though that one crashed and burned. Hm.

So, um, yeah. Freaked out. Completely.

Shrine of the Sea Monkey

I offered up my forearm this morning, with its rotten-looking vein, and -- get this -- they turned me down!  Nobody wants my blood anymore.  Hell, even the Red Cross won't take it now.  I can't give it away.

But the ultrasound!  Oh, the ultrasound.  I give good ultrasound, even when I have to pee, which is much of the time now, and even when a yeast infection rages unchecked through my nether regions to the point that it causes my delicate tissues to erode, and me to scratch myself viciously in my sleep until I wake up at five in the morning due to the combined factors of relentless crotch-itch, having to pee again, and being unreasonably hungry.

No matter.  Here's what you came for, yes?  We saw: a gestational sac; a yolk sac; and a fetal pole.  No cardiac activity yet, at what I estimate is 5 weeks, 5 days.  Dr. S proclaimed himself "not terribly concerned" about that.  I don't know how to unpack that language, so I just won't, and in the meantime, I am, he said, "clinically pregnant." 

I am due back on the 20th, when either we will see a heartbeat and rejoice, or we will ... not.

But I can be patient, with my little brine shrimp safely ensconced.  I can wait.  And when we get there, we'll see.  We'll see.

The Year Mozart Was Born

1756.

It's a start.  It's a start.

Ultrasound on Friday.

Wheeeeeee Jesus.

Feh.

So the Pixies show was amazing, and a weekend spent with brand new baby niece was wonderful, as there is nothing like an actual baby to distract one from an imaginary one the size of a grain of rice.  Good times.  For real.

Thank you, everyone, for your encouraging words, hope, shaking of chicken bones.  But I have to tell you, I don't have a good feeling about this one.  Those numbers, yeah, they're going up, but they're so, so low to begin with -- 81!  153! -- and my initial progesterone was 15.7 -- and anything below 15 is suggestive of ectopic pregnancy, as well as just plain non-viable pregnancy.  Absolutely nothing I've come across in my Googlings has led me to believe there's any chance this will work out in the traditional pregnancy way.  There's some anecdotal evidence here and there, but that's all pretty useless; since I tend not to be of the encouraging-anecdote makeup myself, really more of the parable-of-warning type, I have a hard time applying it to my own situation.

I don't know if it's that I'd bludgeoned Hope into unconsciousness, or just sent her over to live in a new town called Adoption.  I just can't work up anything more than a vague sense of foreboding about this pregnancy, and you know?  My vague senses of foreboding have never been proven wrong.

Maybe this sounds unnecessarily gloomy to you.  Maybe it is.  My brain can't think good; I can't consider the future even as far as Christmas at this point.  We'll know more tomorrow, and next week, and the week after that.   I try not to imagine the inevitable grim ultrasound.  I hate to have to cry with my pants on a chair across the room. 

I don't even care what the answer is.  I just want an answer.  I just want this fucking grueling uncertainty to stop.

153

Yeah. Friday's beta was 153.  So according to the handy calculator at IVFer.com, that's a doubling time of 52.3 hours, and a daily rate of 1.37.  Not the A+ that a 48-hour doubling time would have been, but I have been a solid B-student kind of girl ever since college, so I will accept that gentleman's B and have done with it.  Extra credit for the progesterone of 72, though.

I would probably be in better shape if I hadn't run through a three-pack of Fact Plus ("As insensitive as your ex-boyfriend!") in a pathetic attempt to assess relative line darkness with regard to sample dilution.  For some reason I got a very pale positive this morning, after a dark midafternoon test yesterday, and am inclined to view it as evidence of a dropping hCG level, but whatEV.  I might like to be disabused of that notion.

Julie suggested a home beta-testing device along the lines of a glucometer: instantaneous readings, whenever you need a little reassurance (or fuel for the engine of doom).  Hey, if they sell home Dopplers, why the hell not.

So. I don't even know what to think, or how to feel. Other than hungry. But that's just the progesterone.

Mere Anarchy

Just FYI: I haven't got the results yet; this is not, I promise, a lengthy preamble to anything significant.

It's been a morning of crappy omens. 

I arrived on time to the doctor's office, signed the sheet, and sat down with December's Elle, notable for its interview with and life-size head shot of Jake Gyllenhaal.  I drew the magazine close to my face, my lips nearly meeting his.

"June?" bellowed the receptionist.  The only other patient and I shrugged.  No June.  Back to Jake.

Five minutes later: "June! Is there a June?"

Gee, lady, since it's still just the two of us, and neither of us will fess up to being June, do you really expect things to be so different?

"Well she signed her name but she's not in here!" chuffed the now-exasperated receptionist.  Oh shit, I thought, and got up to check the list.

"Um. Excuse me? Do you mean, 'Joanna'?" I asked, ever so timid, pointing to my neat, legible handwriting on the sign-in sheet.

"Yeh. Bloodwork only, no co-pay."

"Well, but, you charged me my co-pay on Wednesday for bloodwork." And I remember thinking at the time there was something funny about that.

"Oh, that must have been for bloodwork and ultrasound. There's a co-pay for that."

"No, um, I'm sorry, but I only had bloodwork." Not that I'd turn down the opportunity to ride Sweetybooty's magic wand.  But you'd think I'd remember a thing like that.

And she heaved a mighty sigh, the sigh of the eternally put-upon, bakers of unappreciated casseroles, unthanked removers of spousal ring-around-the-collar, and said brusquely, "Well you'll have to call the billing office.  Have a seat and the nurse'll be right with you."

"Will do, you illiterate sow," I said, but under my breath, so that only Jake could hear.

Waiting and Seeing

Well.  So I am having the same intermittent cramping I've had for almost a week, and the spotting is still there (despite my single dose of progesterone -- how long does it take this stuff to work, huh?), very much on and off, this morning just the faintest brown that I had to, um, go digging for because it didn't show up on the toilet paper, and then a little while ago some red to reddish-brown (that I also had to go digging for).  And then nothing.

So. Yeah. I'm not particularly hopeful on this one, but right now that's okay.  Perhaps some of my relative mellowness can be chalked up to the Valium-with-tequila-chaser-and-a-side-of-roofies effect of the Prometrium I'm taking, but around here, we take what we can get. 

I wouldn't say I'm cautiously optimistic. More like just plain cautious.  Grateful for every second, but beyond that? It's -- do you remember, in The Neverending Story, The Nothing?  Like that.

Good vibes and prayers and burnt offerings appreciated, as always; updates as events warrant, and definitely tomorrow afternoon when I get that second beta.

God, how well I remember why I decided to drop out of this game.

Golden Ticket, Long John, Stun Gun, Atom Bomb

It finally came in the mail, our very own Golden Ticket -- an invitation to Educational Course I, courtesy of our agency. We promptly drafted the requisite $300 check and dropped it in the mail to ensure our reservation for a day of Talking About Loss and Why Open Adoption? and Lunch Break. I anticipate a delightful afternoon of heavily perfumed and after-shaven New Jerseyans alternately weeping and swearing and asking alarming questions including but not limited to "If the real mother takes the baby back, do we get our money back?" and "But will my baby know who Mommy is?" and "Healthy white baby? What else you got?" (Note: I am not making those up. Those were actual questions asked at the orientation.)  (Except for the last one, which is a line from Raising Arizona, the finest film ever made on the subject of infertility.) Since I am very much the fitting-in type, with my tiny discreet nose ring and barely discernable tattoos, I am sure they will just love, love me. Also I am way into the crying in public thing. Way in. And good at. 

So I will be sitting there, in the back of the class, an unscented dry-eyed poorly-executed-hair-dye-having weirdo with a heart of granular, dessicated Slim-Jim.  Rest assured that all comical dialogue will be rendered faithfully.  And that I will gorge myself on maple long johns and Boston cream Dunkin' Donuts during Lunch Break.

So that was Tuesday, and I finished the day out with a little pre-period spotting, that kind of stopped, and started, and stopped, and started, and since I was taking Bactrim for the latest UTI ("Your reward for freaky G-spot-stimulating sex since 1994!") and kind of concerned about, you know, possible effects, I thought, well, hell, I might as well...

just...