Friday morning when I woke up I discovered I was bleeding. It was bad. I had to wait until 8:00AM when the RE's office opened to call. They told me to come in for blood work but I knew it was over. I skipped my English class, called into work and went to the clinic. Of course there was a hugely pregnant woman on the elevator ride up with me (there's an OB/GYN group next door to the RE). They drew my blood and then I went home and spent the day crying. Doug stayed home from work with me, he's not one to cry but he was just as upset. By 3:00PM the nurse called to confirm, my HCG level had dropped to 33, miscarriage was happening, come back Sunday for another blood draw to make sure it's going down.
One of the worst parts was having to email/text/call the family and close friends who have been so supportive and cheered me on during this process. I'm okay if I can keep myself occupied by knitting or reading or watching tv, but if my mind wanders slightly I'm back in tears. Saturday I told Doug we had to get out of the house, so we drove to Nashville. There's been a Dale Chihuly exhibit at Cheekwood (Nashville's Botanic Gardens) and we had previously talked about going to see it. Well it was not such a great idea. The exhibit was lovely but there was a Day of the Dead festival also going on and everywhere we turned there were babies, children, pregnant women - it was painful. We had lunch and then went to the Frist Center to see their new Impressionist exhibit from the Musee d'Orsay. We had to wait for the 3:15 entrance and guess who's right in front of us in line? Another hugely pregnant women and her small child. Really. I could not get away. I also started feeling light-headed and weak, I went to the bathroom and discovered more bleeding (apparently this is normal). Doug drove home and we listened to a David Sedaris audiobook which made me laugh. When I got home I had several supportive emails from friends and a phonecall from my best friend since the 3rd grade, we talked for a long time and she kept me entertained with stories of her nursing school experiences.
I'm feeling all those traditional signs of grief, shock - anger - depression. I seem to do well for a few hours and then the wave of grief will hit me so hard to almost takes my breath away. To have had this small glimmer of hope so cruelly ripped away feels indescribable. I think about how much money we've spent (again) on this and I want to cry even more. We're supposed to meet with our RE in a few weeks to discuss the next step. I want to know if he thinks we could have success with IUI with donor or if we should move on and consider embryo adoption. We could probably swing another round of IVF if we hadn't used up our lifetime max on infertility drug coverage. Bravelle (the drug that I stim with) cost us $60, without insurance it would have been around $5,000 - for a two week supply.
Traditional adoption is still an option too but it's so expensive ($20,000-$30,000) that it would be cheaper to do another round of IVF or a few IUI cycles. I know that when people say "You should just adopt" they're trying to be helpful but instead I want to punch them in the face. Adoption can sometimes be just as difficult, if not more, than IF treatments and you still aren't guaranteed a child in the end.
I've read online that it can take 2-3 cycles for your body to be strong enough to support pregnancy again, that would put us at January/February to try something again. I know my body needs time to heal but having to wait even longer and not being able to do anything to move forward is frustrating. Like I've said before with infertility there's a lot of waiting.
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