Surgery done, septum out!

I can't begin to explain the relief of having that damn thing out. It was just hanging out in there rent free for like 34 years (the uterus forms surprisingly early in fetal development). The worst part was actually the meds I took Thursday night to make my cervix open up. I loaded up on pain meds, but couldn't take anything after midnight, so by Friday morning I was hungry, thirsty, nauseaus, and crampy. That made for long drive to the hospital and long wait in pre-op. But the rest was a snap just needed one shot of pain meds in my IV after and haven't taken anything since. Friday afternoon I actually felt spectacular, which was strange. It was probably just the IV and that I had felt so bad before. Now I'm on estrogen (Premarin) for 3 weeks and Progesterone (Provera) for the last of those three. Then hopefully AF will come soon thereafter and we'll be back in the game. I have my post-op appt. on Thursday. I got some pics from the procedure that I thought I'd share, hope they don't completely gross you out. I think they are kind of cool.

Before resection, looking up from the cervix, the septum is quite large, taking up most of the uterus...


But once she cut into it, you can see that it is fibrous (not vascular, i.e. no blood flow). I think it looks like fiber optic cable filaments...



Then after resection, what is left will be absorbed back into the uterine wall to leave a nice wide hopefully baby friendly place. It's starting to look a bit more normal. Pretty cool...


Normal Ute (AdvancedFertility.com)

New nephew finally arrives!

My sister E finally had her baby yesterday @ 8:05am, a week late just like the other two. His name is Isaiah Richard (after his godfather). He weighed 7 lbs., 15 oz. and was 20 1/2" long. E and baby are doing well. Now off to the hospital myself!

What we're doing when we aren't getting pregnant...

So I wrote a "holiday" letter for 2009, but couldn't bring myself to send it out because it marked our second holiday letter that wasn't announcing that we're expecting a little one. So I thought I'd post it here so you could see what we did last year, when we weren't getting pregnant...

"Dear Friends,
We hope this update finds you all doing well and enjoying the holidays with family and friends. 2009 was another very busy year for us…

After nine years with TS, S started a new job in May as a senior engineer with SC in Chicago. He is working in business development and helping them build their transportation practice. Even with the stimulus spending, it’s been a tough time for infrastructure projects, so we are hoping things pick up in the new year. After passing his professional engineer exam last fall, he also passed his professional traffic operations engineer license exam this spring, so now he can now put all of P.E., PTOE after his name, which I like to tease him about. He also started his own business last year, MME, which has gained momentum in 2009. He is the U.S. sales rep for pedestrian simulation software firm SS, based in Switzerland. He pitched to NYC Transit, sold their software product SimW to a professor in Canada and is now working with a consulting firm in Atlanta on the design of an entertainment complex in Saudi Arabia.

After two years with A, I started a new job in October with Z, where I am a senior manager on their proposition development team. I develop new commercial insurance products for a broad range of industries. I am also taking professional development courses through Notre Dame which will lead to an executive certificate in business administration at the end of February. In my free time, I continue to serve on the associate board at the Ravinia Festival, and was this year nominated to their executive committee. Ravinia is an outdoor music venue and the summer home of the CSO, but they also do community outreach in schools to provide music education to under-privileged children. It’s a great organization and don’t be surprised if I ask you to help support the cause. S is also doing pro bono work for Ravinia, in their development of a new pedestrian tunnel under the Metra tracks.

This year we continued to travel as much as our busy schedules and vacation time allowed. We went to Miami/The Keys in January, which was lovely even though we were there during a cold snap and given the recession things were very low key on South Beach this year. In March, we traveled to New York City, where in addition to visiting with friends and family, we took in the sights and experienced the first tornado to hit near the city in some time. In May, we went to Bermuda. It was one of the best places we’ve been in awhile, sunny and gorgeous every day. We did a lot of walking, sightseeing, laying on the beach. There weren’t many shells, much to S’s dismay, but we both enjoyed the blue skies, pink sand and can’t wait to go back. In July, I took a solo trip to Cape Cod to catch up with some old friends. Lastly, we went to Montreal and Quebec City over a long Labor Day weekend and had another great trip. Lots of good shopping (Rue St. Catherine…) and sightseeing.

On the family front, we welcomed niece N just before New Year’s and we are looking forward to a new nephew’s scheduled arrival in late January.

This Christmas, instead of heading home to Wisconsin as we usually do, we traveled to Ohio to visit my grandmothers, E (92) and L (87). My younger sister, J, has moved in with E so that she can live at home as long as possible, and L is “wintering” nearby in assisted living. E is doing quite well after fracturing her knee cap over the summer, which kept us from her 70th college reunion at Berea, much to our shared disappointment.

Next year, we hope to see more of S’s family, perhaps meeting his parents in Dubai (where his brother V lives), even though we’d love to take another long trip to India.

Here’s to a blessed 2010 to you and yours!

Best, K&S :)"

What didn't make it into the letter is that we went to the RE in April to figure out what was going on with our reproductive parts. A okay except for the polyp and septum. Polyp came out in May, and septum is just now coming out this week. I thought I was going to lose my job after my project got cancelled and A had massive layoffs. I sat around for over three months until they put me on anything new. I then got a great job offer in Boston in the Spring that even included an amazing relocation package, but S decided that we should stay in Chicago. :( S heard he was going to get an offer from SC the same day, plus there's that pesky housing market and finding a new job for him where he has no contacts. Spent six months talking to Z before I finally got an offer. The same day I got my results from our first RE visit, my sister E found out that her three month old N needed neuro surgery (which she had in July at Mayo) to fixed her skull bones which had fused prematurely. When they were at Mayo they announced that they were again three months along with another baby (this one unexpected). So three babies for E in less than three years. My mom has now retired to help her take care of them. My best friend from college announced she was having her second, since getting married in 2007. I joined FB, late I know, but now I can see all of the people I grew up with with all their kids and all their pregnancies. I say good riddance to 2009...

The waiting game...

So the week has finally come (not that I'm counting down or anything) to get my pesky septum removed. It was nine months ago (ironic much) that I found out that I had this lovely defect. Funny thing is my sister E is also due (as of last Saturday) to have her baby. So we are both waiting, patiently. Her last two babies have each been a week late, so we'll probably be in the hospital at the same time. Except she gets to come home with a baby and I get to come home with nothing. The general concensus is that with the septum out I will get pg right away, but I've been through too much to put much stock in this. I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist plagued by bad luck. Here's to the week going by quickly...

Random musings from a numbers gal...

So I was thinking today, it's been almost exactly 20 YEARS since I first got AF. I know this is not a Hallmark holiday or one that I ever note (wouldn't that be weird?), but I guess it's just symbolic of how long I've theoretically been fertile. That's a long effing time. Of course I emphasize the "theoretical", because even though my drs. and acupuncturist think I AM in fact fertile, we are of course not getting pregnant...for over a year. Hence the brand on my forehead that says INFERTILE. It has taken me awhile to get used to this idea. How was it possible that after spending ten years taking care of other people's children (babysitting from ~12 and nannying summers in college) and then on BCP for ten to keep from having any, that I would now be in a situation where I've finally got all my shit together (6FS, DH, big house, etc.) and it would be so hard? S and I have been together for 5 years, bought our house 4 years ago, and married 1225 days ago (thank you Knot). We initially thought we'd start TTC a year after we got married, but then that became two. So I was beyond ready. Why does this only seem to happen for people who DON'T have their shit together?

My ABC's...

A = AF (yes she's here and she's very mad apparently)
B = BCP (for the first time in over three years they have crossed my lips)
C = Coco (he said goodbye last night and I actually managed to stay up to see the whole show, he's a class act)

So I got an unexpected visit from my dear sister J yesterday (well she did call a day ahead). She was on her way up to WI to be there when sister E has baby #3. I have missed the birth of the previous two, so I figure why break my streak now. It's too far to go and sit and wait for her to go into labor and once again this year, I'm in a new job and saving PTO for when we ever get pg. We went out to grab a bite and then played a friendly game of Scrabble (I proudly tied the english major, with the help of a dictionary) while we listened to the "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon. I am still so sick about what has and is still happening there. S was out late at his ITE dinner. Got up in the middle of the night with extreme cramping (wow I love it when the ibuprofen wears off in the middle of the night) and had to lay with heat for over an hour before I was able to fall back asleep. I don't remember the last time I had a good night's sleep... I'm sure that's really helping my fertility. I had my regular weekly acu appt. this morning, and I just love P, my acupuncturist. I really going to miss her next week when I'm post-op, as I won't be back to see her until the 6th.
It is so grey here today, I'd just kill for some sun. The upside is that's in the high 30's (a veritable heat wave) and the dirty snow is melting. Sadly, it is still still January in Chicago, so I know that it will be a LONG time until we will crawl out of the deep freeze. Looking forward to my GTG with ladies from The Bump boards tomorrow at WFM. It will be weird meeting them IRL, but it's healthy not living my life online. I'm still getting used to this blogging thing, so thanks for being patient. I'm going to pretend that someone might be reading this, it gives me an audience to play to. But I'm not really on top of my game today. Off to nap and do laundry!

Great, another thing I'm not good at... (1st post)

So not only am I not good at making babies, I'm also terrible at journaling. Always have been. I was an econ major for crying out loud. I've tried, really tried several times (as a child, in college/summers on the Cape), but it just ends up sounding trite and looking like a medical chart. Did this at 0800 hours, that at 0900 hours. But on the recommendation of the IF therapist I went to see last weekend, I'm going to give it another try. So here goes, my IF history...

S and I stopped using birth control some 15 months ago and I went off the BCP some two years before that. We were married in September 2006 and had gone to my OB/GYN for a pre-conception visit in Aug. 08. Great start, just go totally out of order. Good work! So my cycles are regular, oh so regular. It was a quite a pleasant surprise actually, as my cycles were never regular before I went on the BCP when I was 20. And as happy as I was on them I had heard that when you go off, you go back to your own normal. But unfortunately for me, a regular AF is not apparently a sign of fertility, as I would quickly find out. I think the first month we started TTC we just kind of winged it thinking that we are so young and healthy, we must also be fecund. Fat chance!

Not only did I not get pregnant, I was sick the entire 2ww. Something very weird was happening to my body. All I remember of this now is sitting at home watching the election of a Chicago president that I had met in 2003 when he was running for IL Senate and being too sick to get up off the couch. I felt awful. Everyone we knew in Chicago had made the trek down to Grant Park to soak up the beginning of a new era in politics (we were all so hopeful then) and I was home curled up in the fetal position watching it all on TV. I should have known then that something was wrong...

So the next month, I got serious. I got an OPK and knew that if I could pinpoint exactly when I was ovulating, we would be fine. So I started POAS when the OPK instructions told me to and for as many days as I had sticks and no dice (no positives). I talked to my sister E about it at Thanksgiving as she had gotten pg on the first try THREE times at that point (she lost the second very early, but in 11/08, she had a 23 month old and was six months pg with what would be her second). She said that she had tried an OPK once and it didn't work except she got pregnant anyway. Ugh! So I realized I was on my own here.

I did a little more research and talked to some people who I knew were trying. I decided I needed to get a fertility monitor, so I ordered the CBEFM and laid out all my sticks. This was going to be it. FAIL! So I managed to get through the holidays and S's b-day without having any good news. In 2009, I continued to use the CBEFM and also bought an at home fertility test called Fertell. It had two parts, to test both my ovarian reserve and S's sperm quality. We passed with flying colors. I again figured we must not be trying hard enough. I talked to more people and did more research. Even though my Dr. had told us to have sex every other day, I decided maybe we weren't having enough. So we stepped up our game, we planned many trips to coincide with my dates so that we would be "relaxed". Still no dice.

In April 2009, I finally broke down and called an RE to see if we could get some diagnostic testing done. We both went in to meet with Dr. B and she was very nice and told us she was glad we came in as soon as we did and that we would both get checked out and we would see what we were working with. Fast forward, the tests showed that S is fine and my BW looks fine. My u/s showed a small polyp and a uterine septum. Dr. B said that she didn't recommend removing the septum since that would likely cause more problems (i.e. scar tissue) and since I wasn't presenting with multiple m/c (the biggest risk of a septum) that she wouldn't touch it. She told us we could get the polyp out or just keep trying with it or get more aggressive. We decided to get it out. So in May, it came out. Then we kept trying, and charting, and worrying.

In October, we went back and told her we were ready to get more aggressive. She said the first step would be Clomid. But wasn't I already ovulating? I'd been charting for months and I was most definitely ovulating. She convinced us that it would "improve" our egg quality even if we were ovulating. So we went through not one but two cycles of Clomid/IUI. The second round, in November was a complete disaster. Not only were the side effects (headaches, hot flashes) getting so bad I was feeling completely crazy and not sleeping, when we went in for what should have been our last monitoring u/s with two good big follicles, Dr. B wanted to wait for more (?). So we waited, and of course we ovulated. So not surprisingly, when I went back the follies were gone, but they did the IUI anyway. I decided it was time to get a new RE.

Around the same time we started to get aggressive, I also found a place called Pulling Down the Moon. Started by two former IF patients (one who called on me in my ad agency days), it offered complementary IF services (yoga, acupuncture, nutrition, etc.). I went to the orientation for yoga and acupuncture and decided to sign up for yoga. It was a six week class and was actually more support group than yoga class. I hadn't realized how much I needed the support. I later started acupuncture (which I love and highly recommend). PDtM is affiliated with FCI (the biggest IF clinic in the Chicago area), so I decided to find a new doctor there. We went for a consult w/Dr. F in December and she was very nice, but wanted to do more tests. She was concerned about my septum and had no information on how big it was, so she gave me an order for a pelvic MRI. She also mentioned that based on my records that my E levels were borderline and that I should NOT have been put on Clomid as it's an anti-estrogen and was basically guaranteeing that I would not get pg for the months that I was taking it. Great, more wasted time and all that misery for nothing. So we got through the holidays, and I got my MRI. We find out the septum is huge (nearly 3cm, extended nearly down to my cervix). I am very angry with Dr. B for not doing her due diligence, but I've moved on. So we are getting it out on Jan. 29th.

In preparation for surgery, I've finally gotten AF (late for the first time in a long time) and have just started on BCP and then post-op I will be on estrogen for three weeks to help speed healing and progesterone for a week to bring on AF. One week to go to surgery on 1/29.