NYC and a NJ emergency room

M and I left for NYC on Friday 11/19. We spent a few glorious days in the city, and even took a rowboat out on the lake in Central Park. I was fighting a cold/cough, but we still had a great time. On Monday I started spotting. It was light, and brown and visible only when I wiped. It freaked me out.

This is the first time I ever spotted with any of my PGs (except the spotting I got the day before I lost Baby October).

The spotting got lighter Monday evening, heavier Tues morning, lighter Tues evening, heavier Wed morning, and then got progressively heavier throughout the day. Wed night/Thurs morning it was heavier and quite colorful (brown, pink, and red).

That Tuesday evening, we left NYC and headed to the NJ suburbs where my brother lives to stay with him for the rest of our trip. He lives in one of the Oranges (I can never remember which one, but he says it's the "nice Orange"). We did end up making another jaunt into the city the Friday after Thanksgiving to see the Rockettes, but for the most part took it easy.....very easy.

Around 7a on Thanksigiving, I ended up going to a New Jersey ER this morning (thankfully it was before all the "hey, let's fry our frozen turkey" burn victims started coming in, so the wait was minimal).

The good (and bad) news was that they couldn't find any reason for the bleeding. I would have liked to have an answer for why. But, the baby looked good on the ultrasound (the tech did a belly ultrasound) and was measuring at 6w3d and had a heartrate of 120. My betas came back in the 28k range, and my cervix was closed.

After Thursday, the bleeding got lighter and lighter, and now it's about done. I wonder if the combination of the coughing (due to my cold) and the Lovenox (blood thinner) could have been a cause.

We flew back home last night. I couldn't believe the amount of Fertiles on that plane flight. It seems like everyone had 4+ kids, all under the age of 6. Needless to say, it wasn't a quiet flight. It's amazing that reproduction comes so easily to some people. I'm seriously in awe.

Our next ultrasound is at the RE's tomorrow (Wed 12/1). Fingers crossed for good news.

Ultrasound #1

The sac is in the right place, there's a yolk sac inside the gestational sac, and it's measuring right where it should be, based off of ovulation date. Whew!

That little arrow is pointing at the yolk sac.

I go back in for ultrasound#2 on Dec 1. By then, we should see 1.5 weeks of growth and a heartbeat. Fingers crossed!!!

3rd Beta Results: 3,655

I had the third and final beta drawn today.....3,655, which is right on target! Based off of the 270 beta number from exactly one week ago, assuming the betas doubled every 48 hours (as they ideally should), then I would be at 2160 yesterday, and 4320 tomorrow, so 3655 is right in the middle of those two numbers.

Since by my LMP I'll be 6weeks and 4 days on Friday, they are having me come in for an ultrasound. Typically, the heart starts beating in the 6th week. I explained to the nurse who told me this that I'm not going to be 6w4d on Friday, as I ovulated about a week late. She said that they EDD off of the LMP, so I'm 6w4d. I don't think they'll see much besides a sac, but I know the RE can't send my off to an OBGYN until they see a heartbeat on ultrasound, so it looks like I'll be getting two early ultrasounds, which sounds fine to me. More chances to see this little one! M is coming with me on Friday. Fingers crossed for good news!

Kitty Zen Picture Of The Day

It's like Christmas morning each time we come home with a new box (this one is compliments of Costco).

Such a beautiful sight

Ah, such a beautiful sight to behold. I recognize I may be alone (or at least in a small subset of the population), but this picture ranks right up there with sunrises on the beach. Pictures of dried pee. Ahhhhh......

The darkening test line (the line on the left) is proof that the HCG is rising. Every single day the HCG rises, I get further away from a chemical pregnancy/early miscarriage. Not to say that stuff can't go wrong later (been there, done that), but this is the hurdle I'm jumping over right now.


I have one last beta draw on Wednesday, and then our first ultrasound a week later. M missed our first ultrasound with Luke, as he was in China. We're going to go to this one together, work be damned. I know what it's like to be alone in the ultrasound room and told your baby is going to die this year. I can't take another piece of news like that alone.

I'm back on the Lovenox injections in the belly. So far, minimal bruising. Primarily, I get blood blisters at the injection site, about 1/4 of the size of a dime. However, I do have one lovely bruise, pictured for your horror here:

So far, my only pregnancy symptoms are cramping, sensitive nipples, and tiredness. But, the tiredness does seem to come and go. Today, I was excited to finish up the powder room, but I just had to take a nap. 2.5 hours later, I woke up quite refreshed. Now, it's midnight and I'm not tired at all.

Oh, and the dreams. Very vivid, and X-rated dreams. However, the dream I had last night was quite frustrating, as instead of, ahem, finishing the job, I kept getting distracting by spiders. They were crawling everywhere and I kept trying to smoosh them.  ::awaits the hate mail from PETA::

My PSA of the day....the new carne asada bake at Costco is heavenly. M and I went to Costco right at 9a this morning. It was great having the whole store to ourselves that early in the morning. Afterwards, we parked ourselves at the food court and spilt a carne asada bake. I should have just gotten a whole one for myself. Yum.

Tonight we went over a friend's house. There were 4 couples (and three kids), including M and I. Couple A has a 2.5 year old and a 1.5 year old. Couple B has a 1.5 year old. Couple C is 10 weeks pregnant from a successful FET. And, we were couple D. I have to admit....it would have been really hard tonight if I wasn't pregnant, as the majority of the talk centered around babies and pregnancy. I would have felt like the infertile-miscarrying black sheep. Couple A wanted us to take their crib and changing table (very kind of them), but I had to decline (for now). I would have a hard time handling seeing that crib and table in our designated "nursery room" if we lost this baby.

Eh? I'm pregnant?

I'm still scratching my head as to HOW this happened. Well, I know HOW it happened (my mom gave me a book when I was 7 that pretty much explained it and had cartoon drawings of two people who oddly resembled my friend's parents)...but I'm a bit sketchy on the details.

My October cycle was cancelled as I was not producing any eggs. So, I waited for my period to come so we could cycle before we went on vacation in November. Well, I waited, and I waited. I took progesterone and provera in an effort to trick my body into thinking I ovulated so that when I stopped the pills, hopefully a period would come. Well, a week after taking the last pill, still no period.

Just for fun, I decided to take an internet cheapie HPT on Sunday (I had recently ordered 40 of them). Odd....two lines appeared. At this point, I was thinking "You bastards! You sent me OPKs instead of HPTs!" So I peed on another stick. Two lines appeared. Now I was livid. They messed up the entire batch of HPTs, sending me OPKs instead! I dug around in my "feminine product box" and pulled out another HPT from a different order. Two lines appeared. OK, this was getting ridiculous. I tried a different brand. Two light lines appeared.

OMG. I think I'm pregnant. I dashed off to Target to get a digital HPT, and a pair of baby socks to give M if I was actually pregnant.

I got home and peed on it. "Pregnant". Well holy crap. I wrapped up the digital test and a pair of socks and chucked the box at M.

Now, I've been through this before. I've seen "pregnant" two times in the last year, and still no baby. So, I went off to the RE's office on Monday morning to get blood drawn.

16 days after M and I "did the deed", my betas were 78.4, and my progesterone was 17.1. I went for a draw two days later and my betas were 270.

So far, so good. My nipples are slightly sore, I feel tired between 3p-7p, and I have cramps. All good early PG signs. I'll take them.

I asked the nurse how this could happen. How could I have an RE tell me I wasn't going to ovulate, and then bam! two weeks later, a viable egg is released. The nurse's response? "Just goes to show you drs aren't always right."

No sh!t.

My LMP due date is 7/11/11. But, M an I had sex on CD20, and I think I ovulated 2 days later. So, that wouold put my due date around 7/19/11. So, until I have the first ultrasound results (first week in Dec) to confirm how far along I am, I'll call my EDD at 7/19-ish.

Either way, I hope to spend July 4th next year fat, hot, miserable, and incredibly pregnant. Nothing would bring me more joy.

I have told a few people, and was surprised to get the response "oh, since you weren't cycling you must have been relaxed...THAT'S how you got pregnant!". Uh, no. It doesn't quite work that way. Most likely, it was that I had a delayed response to the $3,000 worth of drugs I pumped myself full of earlier in October.

This past month I've actually been under the most stress I've had lately, as I was wondering if my period was going to come in a timely manner, or if we'd have to wait until January to cycle again. So, yes, I was under a buttload of stress this month. The first year and half M and I were trying to conceive? Not a whole lot of stress. Actually none.

So the "See, you relaxed so you got pregnant" comment will earn you a serious side eye from me for saying the most douchetastic and uninformed comment of the month.

Kitty Zen

This cat has never met a box she didn't like

Watching HGTV can get expensive

I spent a relaxing Saturday morning watching a few episodes of I have no idea what on HGTV. Seeing all these people update THEIR living spaces to cool chic designs made me want to update MY living space. For the most part, the house is pretty well decorated. We don't have any accent walls, but everything matches (mostly) and we have tan walls with white trim (in most rooms).

However, the powder room off the foyer does not have tan walls. Instead, it has floral wallpaper. A house warming gift to us from a previous occupant, apparently.

In addition, as every house built in the 90's can attest to, the brass fixtures were pretty overpowering. Brass outlet plates, brass towel rack, TP holder, sink hardware, light fixture.

So, buoyed by my 2 hours of solid HGTV time, I decided to tackle the wallpaper. $150 at Home Depot later (3 trips required, as I kept realizing that I needed more stuff), I was standing on a step stool ripping off the wallpaper.

Problem was, it wasn't the strip-able wallpaper that comes off in sheets. Oh no, that would be too easy. In addition, I'm fully convinced that whoever installed it did not use wallpaper glue. Instead, they used Gorilla Glue or whatever its 1995 equivalent was. I ruined a perfectly good iron trying to make an "at home steamer".

Here's the carnage. I still have a bit left to do. Then, I'm going to wash the walls, scrub them, prime and paint. I got non-brass colored hardware to replace the brass stuff with.

I'm planning on going to Goodwill or something to find a decorative metal wall piece to paint silver for decoration.

After taking down that wallpaper, painting is going to be an effin breeze. Unfortunately, some of the wallpaper is now stuck to the hardwood floors, so I need to remove that too. Le sigh. I can't believe how much work goes into a room this small. HGTV makes it look soooooooo easy!