Well, things do sure come and go quickly around here. I went for an 8 week sonogram and got the news I pretty much felt in my heart. I no longer have identical twins (and I really do feel ok about that) but I now have one heart beating strongly in me and some fin like appendages moving around. I really did have a feeling. Now that I have that answer, I actually feel like I have the pregnancy I'm supposed to have. I immediately felt the dread leave me, and I began to feel hopeful. My fear of miscarriage is almost gone, even though this is the point that my last baby stopped growing. God, I hope I don't have to eat my words, but I have a really good feeling about this baby. It measured 3 days ahead of my calendar day, it's heart was beating so strongly, and it was wriggling around strongly. So I guess I feel strongly. At least I'm trying to feel strongly.

I saw the little blob that was left of my other baby. It was exactly the same size it was 2 weeks ago. I got a chance to "say goodbye" to it. My hope it that the life that was there will strengthen the baby that is meant to be. I do feel sad for this baby that it won't ever get to know what belonged to it in the beginning of life. Boy or girl, it should have had a mirror image. That said, if I hadn't had that 6 week sonogram, I never would have known there was twins in the first place. does that make it better? Hell if I know. But I do know that I'm ok.

Well that's why!

Ok, I know I'm posting the second half of the story on the same day, but I had to break it up because it really is two different stories. Forgive me.

So, back I go for my scheduled first scan. This time I've brought reinforcements with me. I've got my "baby daddy" with me, and he's so clearly not a woman who's had a miscarriage. He's hopeful and excited, and the idea of disappointing that sweet face again is killing me. So, you know the drill, get naked from the waist down. Slide down. Open up. Slide down again. Just a little more. In goes the slippery cold wand. This is actually starting to be my favorite part of the whole deal. I just know it's going to go badly. I know it deep, deep, deep in my heart. There is no way I will see a heartbeat.

Up comes the picture. At first I see nothing. Empty black sack and my man's hopeful face that has no idea what he's looking at. Then she says, "I see a little heartbeat, right there." And well, if that stick wasn't propping me up, I'd have fallen right off the table. Seriously? A heartbeat? How could I have been so wrong. Oh, I wasn't wrong. I wouldn't see A heartbeat. I would see two. Seriously. Took her about ten seconds to find the other one. That's why I couldn't see one heartbeat in my mind's eye. There were two. Two. Now, if you're reading this, you probably know me. I ALREADY HAVE TWINS!!! I did this already! Apparently being forty upped my chanced of identical twins. And if there's even a small odd against something happening, you can bet I'll get it. So, a 12 year old daughter (who can't stand to look at babies and has threatened my life if I ever dare to have another) and 10 year old twin boys. Add 2, and you have 5 kids. That is just ridiculous.

And don't think Mr. Optimistic Baby Daddy didn't "I told you so" at least once.

So, first OB app't tomorrow, and I'm sure another scan to come soon. Stay tuned...

Oh the drama!

Ok, so it's almost a month later, and I'm still pregnant. I had a scare that send me to the OB, like a crazy lady, convinced I was having another miscarriage. I began spotting in the same way as last time. I was having nightmares. I just couldn't even imagine an active heartbeat growing in me. And one thing I've learned is that if I can't envision something in my imagination, it's most likely not going to happen. So I leave the kids at home alone, making up a story about needing to go help a friend with a flat tire. I go and wait for the ultrasound tech's last appointment. I sit through the previous app't coming out with her husband and parents, all aglee over the lovely baby growing in her. I hate her. I fake having to go to the bathroom twice just to not listen to them be so damned happy.

Finally, in I go. embarrassed from the waist down, I scootch down to the end and get molested by the internal wand. I'm almost in tears. So what does she see? I'm so positive she'll see a black empty sack I almost can't look. I"m so dramatic I'm annoying myself at this point, so I start making awkward and really not funny jokes. The technician is so darned sweet she pretends to laugh.

So what does she see? She sees the big dark empty sack. And a yolk sac. No heartbeat. But she says that I'm only measuring 5 weeks. Oh, that doesn't sound good. By the calendar, I'm 6 weeks; appropriate enough to see a heartbeat should there be one. But she says that for 5 weeks, you should only see a yolk sac, and no fetal pole. I didn't even know fetus' had poles. So I walk away with no answer except that I'm still momentarily pregnant. It's a whole week (or maybe a year) until my scheduled scan. Stay tuned.

I REALLY suck at math.

After the miscarriage in September, my doctor told me to wait 2 periods before I try to get pregnant again. Did you figure out the plot twist yet? No? Go back and read the title.

Figure it out, yet?

I got through the first cycle, getting my period only 29 days after the D&C. That was good timing. could have taken two months. So, ok, now we have to start doing math. Avoid good sex during the fertile days of this new cycle. But not really knowing now long my cycle is, I had to guess. And add. And that's where the story began to change. Clearly, I can't add. Even I got surprised by this one.

I never thought that I would be the one who got to be surprised by a pregnancy test. I thought for sure that I would be the one doing the surprising. Plot twist. I'm 4.2 weeks pregnant.

And worried about not waiting for that 2nd period. God, I really wish I had been better at math in high school. Stay tuned...

Wrenches at my head

Ok, I get it, the universe sometimes throws a monkey wrench in your plans. Maybe more than a monkey wrench. Maybe a big wrench at your head at 90mph. Having a miscarriage is like that. You survive, but you're scarred and left wondering what the hell just happened.

It reminds me of that scene in the movie, Dodgeball, in which the coach throws a wrench at the players heads and says, "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball." And proceeds to pummel them in the head with actual wrenches. It's one of the funniest scenes in the movie and if you haven't seen it, then stop reading now. Seriously, now. Go rent it. It's stupid and wonderful.

Anyway, so I got hit with one big wrench and survived. I'm still reeling from it, but I know I can dodge smaller stuff if I can survive this miscarriage.

Then the universe, in my opinion, jumps the shark. It takes what, I guess, was funny once (ie, chucking wrenches at me) and thinks it will be funny to repeat that joke many, many more times. Only with smaller wrenches, because, really, the same joke a hundred times is obviously not funny. You have to add a twist, I guess. Everywhere I turn, something is thrown at my head to remind me that I'm not pregnant anymore. Baby nursery catalogs show up in the mail. My son's current event for school was found on a mothering website that prints cloth diaper ads on it's articles. Watching Friends brings the episode where Ross' first wife goes into labor (I mean how old is that episode!) The spot we attempt to pull into at the diner is "For Expectant Mother's Only." Of course it is.

It goes on and on like that. Little wrenches thrown at my head. Why is this funny?

Why I feel like Richard Gere

Yesterday, I watched the recent movie, Amelia, starring Hillary Swank as Amelia Earhart and Richard Gere as her husband, George Putnam. Toward the inevitable and obvious end of the movie, there was a moment. Richard Gere's moment.

I really hated this moment.

It was the moment that he realized that his worst fear had been realized. There was no going back and there you had it. Amelia's plane was gone. She had missed Howland Island, a spit just 2 miles long in the Pacific that even she knew would be a long shot to hit.

Those moments suck. Where you know the conclusion all at once, and yet you still don't really know anything because you can't process it that fast. I had one of those moments this week when I sat in a sonogram and watched the 25 year old technician try very hard not to have to be the one to tell me that the baby growing inside of me no longer had a heartbeat and that it was no longer growing inside of me at all. All at once I felt the truth—that I was about to have a miscarriage at 11 weeks. And yet, I couldn't feel it yet. I could only feel my stomach sink as my heart went into survival mode: get dressed, get out of this office, get to my OB, call my love, melt down out of sight of the entire world. Nothing else would really process.

When I came out of my haze, I realized that that movie moment was so painful for me, because it highlighted one very painful truth—that we are too arrogant or too hopeful to believe that the worse can happen to us. Yes, we know its a possibility, but surely everything will be fine. I mean, everyone tells you it's going to be fine. Until its not.

This is the problem, and maybe the blessing, of having been a fertility patient once. Wait, back up. You've never been a fertility patience once. Let's rephrase: Once a fertility patient, always a fertility patient. My IVF experiences told me that to believe that everything would turn out perfectly, that I would find the Howland Island of fertility, would just be stupid. And nobody likes to be stupid, right? I know I don't.

I had slowly begun believing in this baby after I took 4 pregnancy tests and heard a heartbeat at my 9 week sono. And yet. When I knew I was 9 wks to the day and the technician said i measured 8 wks, my fertility demons started getting riled up. The midwife said it was no big deal and gave me back 4 days. So now I was 8.5 wks pregnant. I don't like that. But I wasn't even supposed to be able to get pregnant. So I'm not going to be picky, right? Right?

When just before 11 wks I stopped feeling pregnant and spotted just the slightest bit of brown, the demons went wild. It was like flying into the Bermuda Triangle. All of my instruments of direction and coping went haywire. I didn't like that AT ALL.

So in I go to the Doctor after my best friend said to go and reassure myself. Everything would be fine. So they looked for a heartbeat, humoring me a little, I'm sure. "Nope, the baby's hiding from us. But you're only 11 weeks, that's not uncommon. Do you want to go to the hospital for a scan just so you feel better?"

Fast forward to my Howland Island moment. Even though my old fertility demons had been been awakened after 10 dormant years after my twin sons were born, even though I should have seen this coming, I was still standing there like Richard Gere, in complete disbelief that it had all ended wrong with one very uncomfortable sonogram technician trying to escape the room. This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

Not for me, anyway. I'm supposed to have a charmed life. And really, I do. I don't mean to dismiss my many, many blessings. But somehow, nothing is supposed to ever go wrong. Maybe I can console myself by putting myself in line with others who thought the same: Amelia Earhart, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana. And that does make me feel better, it does.

In reality, though, what I feel more than anything else, is stupid. I feel stupid for feeling hopeful and letting my hopes get dashed. I know how that sounds. I would reassure any friend who said such silliness to me that hope is essential. That hope keeps us moving forward. And really, I was never supposed to have more babies that didn't involve lots of shots and invasive procedures. I'm a freaking miracle. I have gotten pregnant after having been shown that the cilia in my tubes were dead and would never regenerate. I guess getting happy and falling in love changes all that.

By the time I came home that day, I knew that the baby had stopped growing just days after I fell in love with its heartbeat. I also knew that I would have a D&C the next morning. I didn't, however, know that I would spend that night miscarrying the baby at home first and then still have to go to the hospital the next day.

I had 2 miscarriages last year, before I ever knew I was pregnant, and that was OK. I was enamored with the miracle part of it. But then my love and I got really excited at the idea of creating a family together, when we hadn't thought that possible. I got hopeful and excited. I started to imagine this baby and it's place in my life. I envisioned the future. It's painful when that gets ripped away from you. Kind of like smashing nose first into the ocean at 85 miles an hour.