Avoidance is getting too hard

For a long time, and very prominently since May, I have been avoiding a topic on this blog that has featured very importantly in our lives. I had plans to let the cat out of the bag when the issue resolved, but now that is not going to happen as quickly as we had hoped/planned. Avoidance is getting too hard, so I'm just going to spill it: Jeff and I are trying to get pregnant.

The full story is extremely long, so I will try to give an abbreviated version. A little over four years ago we decided that the timing was right to have a baby. We had first started talking about it around four years prior to that, but it wasn't the right time with the stresses of grad school (financial instability, future unknowns, etc.). After spending some time trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, we got some basic testing done to see if there was a problem in that department, and discovered that Jeff had a very low sperm count.

Skip ahead to early 2012, and we were making plans to start in vitro fertilization (IVF). We had gone through quite a bit of discussion, consultation with doctors, and even medical intervention, and it turned out that this was our only option if we wanted to have our own baby. After much testing and preparation, we were finally ready to proceed. Then, the day after our appointment with the reproductive endocrinologist (IVF Dr.), my brain bled.

So I had brain surgery in June 2012, and for a good long time after that was really in no position to have a happy, healthy pregnancy. Then, once again after much discussion and consultation with doctors, we decided in early 2014 that the timing was right, and I could physically handle a pregnancy without putting my own well-being at risk.

Saskatchewan is the only province in Canada that has no health coverage for fertility treatments, and since that means we would be paying out-of-pocket anyway, we decided to go to Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) instead of a more local but less well-established clinic. This has involved many phone calls, several trips to Portland, and lots of complicated coordination between very different healthcare systems.

Our road trip to Oregon in June was only part vacation – we were also in Portland for IVF. We had some idea what we were getting into, but didn't really understand how intense a process IVF is until starting it ourselves. There are many weeks of drugs, including a variety of self-administered injections, many blood draws and appointments that are at times daily, and the whole process is very physically taxing. We had originally hoped that we would be coming home from Oregon pregnant, but for medical reasons (related to IVF, not to my other medical issues), pregnancy was once again put on hold. We were able to get six embryos created, but they were all frozen for later use.

After returning home, we started to prepare for a frozen embryo transfer (FET). The preparation involves about seven weeks of drugs, blood tests, and ultrasounds. We went back to Portland for a FET on September 3, and then waited twelve (excruciating) days for a pregnancy test.

Have you ever heard that saying "you can't be half pregnant?" It is supposed to suggest that there are some things in life that really are black and white. As with most things, it turns out that this is an oversimplification. On September 15, my pregnancy test came back "inconclusive," because my hormone levels were in between what is considered to be definitely pregnant, and definitely not pregnant. I went back every two days for blood tests, and my hormone levels were low but rising, indicating that I was not not pregnant, but that the chances that this would be a viable pregnancy were quite low.

Finally, on Monday, it was determined that my hormone levels were not rising quickly enough, and that this would definitely not be a viable pregnancy. Still up in the air was whether it would simply be an early miscarriage, or an ectopic pregnancy (which can be quite dangerous if not treated appropriately). So, more blood tests. Today my hormone levels started to drop considerably, meaning that this failed pregnancy will be taking care of itself, with no need for such careful monitoring or intervention.

People talk about miscarriage as if it is an event that occurs at a specific time, with a clearly defined beginning and end. Maybe in some cases that is how it works, but in my case not so much. It is hard to say exactly, but I have probably been in the process of losing this (very early) pregnancy for about a week, and before it is fully over it might be another week or two (before hormone levels get back down to definitely not pregnant levels).

We can't say yet exactly when we will be headed back for round two, but it will definitely be a few months. We have to wait for my hormone levels to get all the way back down to normal, then let my body rest, then dive back into seven weeks of preparation (lots of drugs, blood tests, ultrasounds) before we can actually transfer another embryo.

So, that is where we are. All this going on at the same time that we are trying to focus on other things, like the start of the semester. I am ambivalent about posting all this. On the one hand, I feel like some people already know more about my personal business, like medical issues, than they need to. Also, pregnancy is one of those things that people tend not to talk about until they have a viable pregnancy with low chance of miscarriage. On the other hand, it feels like I am putting up a front, and to be honest is just really exhausting, to continue talking about what is going on in my life while leaving out what is most central to me right now. Plus, many of the people who read this blog already know parts of this story. I know that some of you are wondering what is up, and since it has been a difficult couple of weeks I haven't really been up to providing an update. A blog post seemed like the most efficient way to do it.