Twinge

The tears don't come at appropriate times: hanging laundry in what should be the nursery, seeing the neighbors' newborn, calling my cat 'my little boy', soaping my flat(ish) stomach in the shower.  Instead, I have to stop my face from contorting into the 'ugly cry' while on the bus or sitting at my desk at work.

Looks like #4 was a bust - I took an HPT this morning and it was negative.  On to round #5.

Beta on Thursday.

Of 11 eggs we ended up with one single viable embryo, which of course stuck to the catheter during transfer and required a second attempt.

This whole cycle has been rather craptacular.  We got 11 eggs, all of which were ripe.  Of those, only 4 fertilized and only 1 of the 4 passed genetic testing (polar body testing of the egg only - PGD is illegal in Germany). 

To compare, last time we had 9 eggs, 7 were ripe, 7 fertilized, 2 were transferred and 3 were frozen.  (No genetic testing was done).

I'm going to get back in touch with that adoption counselor.

I didn't know where else to save this, but I don't want to lose it off of my phone.  It's a text message from the remaining cat, as dictated to my lovely friend who stopped by our apartment this afternoon to make sure Stevie wasn't too lonely without Tibor.

Hallo Mama.Mir geht es gut.Gabi und Nanka haben mich geweckt,als ich so schön in Deinem und Papas Bett geschlafen habe.Aber dann habe ich einen Stick bekommen und bin gar nicht mehr böse.Jetzt sitzen wir draussen und genießen die Sonne.Ich soll schön grüßen von den Beiden.Kiss,Stevie

Translated:
Hello Mama.  I'm fine. Gabi and Nanka woke me up while I was sleeping so well on your and Papa's bed. But then they gave me some stick (ed: treats) and now I'm not angry.  Now we're sitting outside enjoying the sun.  I'm also supposed to say hi from the two of them.  Kiss, Stevie

Chalk up another point against me in 2009.  We had to put our cat Tibor to sleep over the weekend.  Poor guy's kidneys failed - there was nothing useful to be done.

Three pregnancies and one cat lost in 10 months.  Damn it.

I want a do-over.

I'm a former Catholic.  There are many, many reasons why.

Here's a big one:
http://www.catholic.org/prwire/headline.php?ID=6395

What may be surprising to the millions of women who cannot conceive and bring a child to term is that NaProTechnology, taught by Dr. Hilgers, is nearly three times more successful than IVF for assisting infertile couples, according to the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction, a group founded by Dr. Hilgers at the Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha.

Infertility at the institute is treated by determining the fertile time of a woman’s cycle, as well as by using surgical techniques such as laser treatment and ovarian wedge resections.

Infertility treatment usually begins with discovering a woman’s fertile time. This can be done with the Sympto-Thermal Method of Natural Family Planning.

Believe what you want about faith, but don't flat out lie about science.  Who honestly believes that people turn to IVF because they don't know when their fertile times are?

GAAH.  And pass that bacon.

It was a boy, and it was trisomy 16, the most common form of genetic defect.  I was ready to say that I have a hostile womb and just can't carry a baby.  Still can't rule that out, but at least that wasn't the cause this time.

Three doctors at two practices believe this is just incredibly crappy luck.  If there is a different cause each time, it's easier to believe it.

Thank you so much for your kind words.

As I thought, this third miscarriage has hit me harder than I thought.  But we're looking forward to our next shot at IVF, probably in 4-5 weeks.  It sounds like an eternity from now...

Third miscarriage.  I don't quite know what to do with myself tonight.

D&C on Friday.

We had our first ultrasound this morning, and I'm not very hopeful.  There was a heartbeat, but it was hard to find.  On the up-side, it's not small like last time.  The doctor didn't measure anything, so I have no idea where we're at.  He did pull out the sonogram from last time and you can immediately tell the difference.

But this heartbeat thing is freaking me the crap out.

I've got to stay away from Google.  Everything I've read says that there should be a strong heartbeat by now, and that a weak one nearly always means miscarriage.  A third miscarriage is going to hit me much, much harder than the other two.  Let's just hope it doesn't come to that.