FAQs: (In)Frequently Answered Questions

Herewith, the latest installment of (In)Frequently Answered Questions, a compilation of questions asked...with answers...

1. How you are feeling pregnant? [asked from when I was around 14 weeks] Aside from the doppler, how would you know you are pregnant?  At 14 weeks, I had some heartburn/indigestion, occasional uterine fullness/pinching feeling (about 2x/week), ginormous breasts, food aversions (less powerful than previously but powerful enough), leg cramps, and bloating. Now that I am 19 weeks, there really is no question. I look pregnant. I can feel my uterus at times in my abdomen and it comes up almost to my belly button. I think I might be feeling the little one move occasionally. And I think I might be having the beginning of Braxton Hicks...sometimes I feel my whole uterus tighten up...doesn't hurt...just strange. I also have almost daily leg cramps, which are making it difficult to sleep, and even more ginormous breasts than I had in the first trimester (yowza).
2. I've been wondering about the other meds you've been on (prednisone/claritin/pepcid). What doses? When did you start them? How long did you stay on them for? I took Claritin (10 mg 1x/day) and Pepcid (20 mg 2x/day) starting a week before transfer, and took them throughout the first trimester, stopping at 12 weeks. I also took prednisone 5mg 2x/day throughout the first trimester, also beginning about a week before the transfer. All of these were supposed to help with recurrent pregnancy loss and were recommended by the Denver clinic.
3. May I ask, if you remember off the top of your head, how much was your Natural Killer Cell %? No chance I would ever remember this off the top of my head, but I looked it up for you...my NK Assay panel had two abnormalities: CD56 (which was 2 points above normal at 14.1%) and CD19 and CD5 cells, which were 10 points above normal at 20.8%. I think if I'd only had NK issues, I could have used intralipids, but I also had TH1:TH2 abnormalities, antiovarian antibodies, a DQ alpha partial match, and leukocyte antibodies. Based on this, my RI recommended IVIG.
4. What do you and Will call Lucky #7/Lance/Yumster? We call her mostly "The Baby." I know, not very original, but it gets the point across. Sometimes, lately, we call her "Magpie." I am not sure why we do this, but it seems to have stuck a bit.
5. Have you kept up with the anti-inflammatory diet? If so - have you gotten used to it? I was religiously keeping up with this throughout the first trimester. I have to admit, I have slipped, and have allowed gluten back into my diet. The funny thing is that Will went on this diet with me because that's the awesome kind of husband that he is, and he has discovered that he now has major GI issues whenever he consumes even small amounts of gluten. He got the blood sensitivity test, and tested negative, but reliably, even when he is unaware of having consumed it, has major GI repercussions the day after any gluten. Me, the one with the supposed blood-tested sensitivity? Nothing. I feel great when I have a bowl of cereal or a piece of bread. So...well...yeah...I haven't been as good about it as I probably should be.
6. Are you taking belly pics? If yes, can we see them? We have been very hesitant to take belly pics (it feels dangerous in some way, as though it is assuming we are having a baby, which might somehow doom the pregnancy). At the same time, I am sad we haven't been taking them. We took the first one a few days ago (after much urging from all of you!). I will post it later this week.

Mo

Click here to subscribe

FAQs: (in)Frequently Answered Questions

There has been a build-up again of questions, so I thought I would take a post to answer some of the ones that have come in lately. Sorry if this post is boring - since many people have asked the same or similar questions, I thought this might be an efficient way to handle answering them.

1. I was wondering what your immune issues were/are and how they were treated? What?! You don't have our reproductive nightmares committed to memory? Of course, you don't. You have a life. So long story short, after our fifth consecutive loss, I saw a reproductive immunologist for some of the more controversial/ less mainstream testing that REs don't usually do. He did a ton of blood work and told me I had the following abnormalities:
   
   positive for antiovarian antibodies, abnormal TH1:TH2 cytokine ratio, high natural killer cell assay, abnormal leukocyte antibodies, DQ Alpha partial match with my husband.
   
   He recommended IVIG. Because it was so expensive, and I wasn't convinced by the lack of science behind it, I tried intralipids for pregnancy #6 (much cheaper and easier on the body). After I lost that chromosomally normal pregnancy, I tried IVIG for pregnancy #7.
   
   I'm not totally convinced this is what did the trick, but things are definitely going better than ever now, so I am sticking with it. My fourth IVIG is coming up soon.
   
2. What are you going to do with this blog once you have the baby? Um, keep writing it? Honestly, I haven't considered this exactly, because I'm so busy with the trying-to-stay-pregnant and being-pregnant thing. It's actually a good question, because I know some bloggers stop writing or create a new space. I'm imagining I'll keep writing here, although obviously the writing will change. We've always hoped to have 2 or 3 children. Now that it looks like we might actually get to have one (one step at a time - not getting ahead of myself!), we are starting to talk about what we would and wouldn't be willing to go through to have another child. I certainly won't spend another five years and have six more losses to do it, I'll tell you that. But if we decide to try for more, we might adopt, or use a donor egg, assuming the frozens we have can't make a baby (which they likely can't). Point being, even if we reach the miracle outcome of a real live baby, I'll still be super infertile (just damned lucky). So I think this space is still the right place to write.
   
3. Does your list of blogs on the sidebar get a lot of traffic? Does it bring a lot of traffic to your blog every day? i have to admit, sometimes i come to your blog just to find new blogs, the blogs that you have stumbled upon somehow. i wonder how much traffic they get coming from your blogs every day?! Some of those on my blogroll may have to step up here and comment, because I don't know how much traffic their sites get from me. To be honest, I don't really put a lot of emphasis on traffic. I write because it helps keep me sane, and because I've grown fond - very fond - of this community and the people in it. I'm lucky to have a strong readership who've stuck with me during some really tough times. I'm super grateful for that. Occasionally, someone who I've newly put on my blogroll will email me because they've seen readers coming to them from my blog, so I know some folks definitely click over. But honestly, I put blogs on my blog roll that touch me in some way, or that I can relate to. So mostly it's something I do for myself, so I can follow those blogs. But it would be a nice bonus if they got some new readers that way.
   
4. I see you're using the term "gender" of the baby. Do you make a distinction between sex and gender? Just curious since you and Will both are in the medical field and you're in psychology. Ooh. Good question. There of course is a distinction, but no, when I wrote gender on my blog, I was commingling it with "sex" - as in, will the baby genetically be male or female. So to be more correct, I should have said "sex" of the baby. Good catch!
   
5. How much does it cost to freeze your eggs? I don't really know, as I haven't done this (despite doing or thinking about doing so many other things!) I'm thinking it's about $10,000-$12,000 per attempt. And if you were trying to preserve your fertility you might want to freeze two or three cycles worth, because an egg is not an embryo. And an embryo does not necessarily a baby make. Believe me. If eggs = babies, I'd have 110 babies (move over, Octomom! But well, we may get one baby out of it all - which is unusually terrible luck, I grant you, but still, you get the idea). My recommendation? Call a reproductive endocrinologist's office and ask about egg retrieval/freezing costs. Much better than relying on my best guess. One other thing is that when I talked to Dr. Schl. about this in regards to my sister potentially needing it, he said he would only recommend two centers in the U.S. for egg freezing. His own (no surprise), and a well-known clinic in Atlanta. You'd want to do some research on the best places to be sure whatever clinic you pick has a top-notch lab and vitrification capabilities.

That's plenty of questions for today. Feel free to leave any other questions in the comments section. I promise to answer them sometime-ish soon. And yes, I know, absolute Yay!! that I'm not having any calamities and therefore can do things like post with answers to questions.

Mo

Click here to subscribe

Frequently asked questions

I thought I would take a post to answer a few of the questions that have appeared recently by email or as a comment here. Have a burning question? Ask away. Chances are someone else is wanting to know, too. I'll try to answer as soon as I can.

1. Could we put up a pregnancy ticker to make things easier for you guys to follow along? I actually have two pregnancy tickers tucked down at the bottom of the blog page. I suppose I could put another one much higher up (gulp). How about this - I will think about it. Does the placement make a big difference to you? (Oh wait, I'm supposed to answer questions here, not ask! But let me know, anyway).

2. Are we still considering using a surrogate - not as a back-up plan but as a way to add to our family in addition to the baby we are already carrying? Good question. The answer is no, not right now. We hope to be very lucky and maybe have our hands full come this fall with this little one (fingers crossed). The embryos we have remaining are not very good quality anyway (although they are chromosomally normal). I don't have high hopes that they could make a baby. But if things turn out ok with me this pregnancy, I would imagine that I will try to carry any pregnancy that could potentially result from them.

3. Did the technician doing the nuchal give us a guess on the baby's gender? Nope. We didn't ask and she didn't offer. I think it's early to see the gender at this point by ultrasound. Will and I are thinking it might be a girl. But we shall see...

4. What is our guess on why we transferred three chromosomally normal blasts but only got pregnant with one, particularly since this time we have the immune issues taken care of?  Ooh. Another good question. Your guess is as good as mine, but here's my guess anyway. I think it takes a lot more than normal chromosomes to make a baby. And given our track record (110 eggs retrieved through all our IVFs....and this is the farthest along we've gotten...), I'm betting we have some other issues that make our embryos less likely to grow into living children. Like maybe mitochondria or other non-genetic but still lethal problems when the cells try to divide and replicate. It's also possible that even with the immune treatments, my uterus is still not the easiest place to implant. It would be interesting to get Dr. Schl.'s thoughts, but this is my best guess.

Ok, that's it for now. I'm tired, and I'm also out of time. More to come, soon. Thank you guys for all of your thoughts and encouragement - you have no idea how helpful you are.

Mo

Click here to subscribe