Love Child

This is actually a surprisingly hard post to write. It’s strange to have big news, though, and not be sharing it with this community, so, having just finished dinner, with J and Bram upstairs in the bath together, and with absolutely no desire to do what I should be doing – which is still.working.on.my.almost.due.dissertation – I thought this might be the right moment.

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So, here’s the thing.

We’re pregnant.

I’m pregnant.

With my body. A baby we’re calling (for reasons I’ll explain) Love Child.

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Why this is hard to write. For most of our readers, this will be nothing but joyful news. And I love that. And I’m grateful for that. But I know that some of our readers found their way here because they were unable to get pregnant, or to carry, and they wanted sisters in that. And there is something about sharing the NGP role as mothers who didn’t choose it at first, but who ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY choose it now. Who have embraced the magic that is NGP-hood with a love that is fierce and great and in no way less than. I feel a huge tie to that group of women. I feel like whether or not I’m able to carry to term, I will feel of them for the rest of my life because that was just my path to motherhood. But I know that for me, when other NGPs have gotten pregnant, it has stung a little. I have felt happy for them, sure, but also a little sad for me. Sometimes more than a little sad. Like they’ve left my club, and we fought for this club, and it was hard earned, and it is deeply beloved, and really: can’t we all just stay in the club? For this reason, I almost never tried again. And in part for this reason, I decided to give my body exactly one. more. try. And I can’t say what the next year will bring, so I may not carry safely to term, but I have an awful lot of faith in this new being. And if I do, that will make me both an NGP and a GP. And though this makes me happy, it also makes me deeply sad. And like I’m somehow betraying the single best (loosely assembled) group of women I’ve ever known. And that is hard. But that’s only one part of it.

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So a few more parts. Written chronologically, which is never my thing, but which seems the only way to tell this story.

• A couple of months ago, I went in for an annual/physical. We did a big lab workup, and everything looked great. My thyroid numbers are holding steady and healthy, which is wonderful as I’ve been medicine-free since late July. This was a nice moment for my bodily confidence.

• A week or two after that, we got curious, so we contacted the high-risk clinic we saw near the end of my last pregnancy to see if they’d want to see me before or during a possible pregnancy. They said no. They said to take a baby aspirin a day for the Factor V Leiden, and to see whoever we wanted. That we could go to the low-risk hospital where we delivered Bram. That we could stay with our beloved midwives. We also asked our dear midwife friend and two nurse practitioners, and they all felt confident that what happened to E was about her and not me, and that I could, and even should, try again.

• From there, J left it up to me, and I was fairly set against carrying. I liked knowing that I had support, and that people believed in my body, but the strong, decisive desire I used to have to carry has just faded now, so I felt a lot of ambivalence. It’s been that way for awhile, really: strong, biological urges when I ovulate, but otherwise, I’m fully contended with NGP-hood. [This is still true now. I don't need this in any way.] But then, shortly after my period ended (the only period that J and I shared, by the way, between her pregnancy with Bram and this pregnancy), I woke up with a strong (STRONG) instinct to try THAT cycle and never again. To try one time. To see how it felt and leave the door open for future tries, but mostly: to offer my body to the universe for this purpose one time and then let it go for once and for all. I called J at work a few hours into the day, and she (bless her consummately supportive self) quickly agreed. She’d called our nurse practitioner and our sperm bank by the time she came home that day. It was one of the most spontaneous things we’ve ever done.

• Those two weeks were great. One of the things I wanted out of this try was to see if we were able to be laid back, happy people about it. To make the try as close to a moment of reckless, playful, forgot-to-use-protection sweetness as possible given our, you know, lesbianism. I wanted to know if it could feel fun. I was so worried and stressed and frantic about getting pregnant with Emmett Ever, and we were so grief-stricken when we were trying to make Bram. I wanted to see if we could enjoy just playing around, giving the universe an open door, but being okay whether the universe took it or not. And we nailed it. We had a blast. We dreamed of a baby that could come of that experience, but we didn’t do it with desperation. We were playful.

• The insemination followed suit: intimate, casual, sexy. We put Bram to bed, J made a little nest on the living room floor, and our nurse practitioner stopped by. J did almost everything. It was magical. I had no real expectations, which was so nice. We actually had fun. This, by the way, is why we’re calling this baby Love Child. Yogi’s mama knew we were trying, and she called any baby that came from this try “a little a love child,” and we adored that. Love Child. Yes.

• The next day, I felt hopeful and peaceful, which was surprising to me (the peaceful part, at least). I had expected to be anxious (nervous whether or not I was conceiving), but I just wasn’t. But I also felt strongly that I never wanted to try again. We had had such a lovely IUI, but I didn’t need it at all, and I sort of didn’t want to push further, if that makes sense. I told J that this was my only try, and she was completely supportive. I felt excited for the two-week-wait because I felt that it could be the last two weeks of my life when I might be pregnant; I wanted to enjoy it. Anyway, it was a sweet day. But, though we didn’t know it, my dad fell that day. And when he went to bed that night, he would never wake up.

• We got the call the next morning, and we rushed to him. There was a moment when the rest of my family went to move their cars while I followed two nurses and my dad from the ICU to hospice. It was just us. I told them we’d just tried to conceive because I wanted to tell my dad, and because I was struggling to make sense of the timing. They were kind. And as we moved through the hallways, his bed in front of me, I put my hand on my belly and wished there was a baby there. Someone to make this make sense. Please be here with me now. It was the one and only time I wished fiercely for a particular outcome (instead of just surrendering to the experience).

• In the days between when my dad died and his funeral, I became increasingly convinced that I was pregnant. I was sure when I gave my dad’s eulogy. Not sure in a willful way, but just sure. I told J sometimes, but I tried not to be too confident out loud. I knew that with my dad dying, I would sound crazy, desperate. And I didn’t feel that way. I just felt sure of that little being. Sure that s/he was with me and my dad when I was saying goodbye. [Incidentally, I don't remember ever feeling confident during my pregnancy with Emmett. Deeply desirous, but not confident.]

• This Sunday, J, Bram, and I spent a gorgeous afternoon together. A long walk that ended at the pharmacy to buy pregnancy tests, followed by a delicious dinner. Lots of laughter and sunshine. We had agreed to test Monday morning, but I didn’t want that: the tense waiting, the expectation. I knew what it would say (as insane as that must sound), and I wanted it to be on that gorgeous day, not in the morning, not rushed. So when she took B up for his bath, I tested. Then I ran up the stairs to show her.

• So that’s the story so far. I don’t have a worried feeling, but I could be wrong. A dear friend said, “you know, sometimes souls just head up, and then bounce right back down again.” I don’t know that I believe in that exactly, but it’s the sweetest thing to imagine that my dad is a part of this child. It’s not the tribute to him that I always wanted – that I always thought we’d find only through adoption – but it feels like the loveliest tribute nevertheless. We’re leaving our profile up at our agency because, of course, this little one could not stay. It’s early days. And even when it’s not, there will be higher risks. We wouldn’t want to leave the agency if we didn’t have to. Only time will tell, and we like open doors better than closed ones. But it feels good. It feels sweet and right in a strange, grief-stricken, peaceful, almost wholesome way. Our little Love Child, who we invited in but didn’t beg.

• Oh, and about timing. We probably conceived on the day my dad fell. And this child is due on November 21st, 2013: one year to the day after Saul came into the world. Our second trimester begins on May 10th, which is the day I defend my dissertation, and ends on my mama’s birthday. This baby has our kind of timing.

doors

I closed the door last night to the last classroom I’ll probably ever teach in at this university.

I’ve taught a class a semester here for four years. As I turned off the lights and pulled the door closed in an empty building (I collected essays until 9:15 last night, so I think I was the last instructor there), I reflected on what these past four years have meant to me. When I came to this town, I had only been studying literature for three years, and had only taught for one. I knew I wanted a transatlantic focus, and that postcolonial studies spoke to me, but I was intimidated – completely baffled, really – at the thought of making my own narrow way through such broad spaces. Everything felt new, on the brink. J and I were committed, but not yet engaged. We’d yet to grieve Charleston. To find this little cottage. To find our footing as partners. To meet our wonderful wonderful friends. To sit in silence – in a room full of our loved ones – promising to always uphold each other. To honeymoon in Boston. To be nearly run off a mountain for being gay in rural Ohio. To get pregnant. To lose E. To get pregnant again. To bring our son into the world. J didn’t have an MA or a passion for doula work. We didn’t know I had Graves’ Disease or Factor V Leiden. I’d yet to hear Jack Halberstam speak and feel the puzzle pieces of my scholarship click into place. We had no idea what terrible gardeners we’d become. I’d only just started learning to cook. We couldn’t fathom how deeply we’d love parenting.

When we first got the offer here, we weren’t sure we’d come. I also got a funded offer from SUNY Stony Brook, which houses a higher-ranked program. My mentors in Charleston felt strongly that SUNY’s was the offer to accept. But J and I had a hunch, an instinct, that this was the place for us. So I called the man who would become my dissertation director (though we didn’t know it at the time). Then we packed up everything we owned in a u-haul, put the cats in a carrier on the seat between us, and drove across the country towards a small city we’d never been to before.

Now here we are. I closed that door last night and began to face the prospects of a whole year with no teaching. The last year of a long road of formal education. I found out last week that in addition to the internal dissertation fellowship, I will also receive an AAUW (American Association of University Women) fellowship starting in June. For me, this is a big deal. This is a dream. The AAUW has been funding women in higher education since 1888. They’ve funded some pretty amazing women doing some pretty remarkable things. I’m blown away to be in that kind of company. Truly: aside from my ongoing struggles with medical anxieties and an autoimmune disorder – both of which I’m trying to cure – my life is pretty much perfect. I’ve been striving for so much for so long, and now I’m surrounded by the things I’ve wanted. And you know what? Now that those things are here, they’re even better than I’d imagined.

As I type this – green tea at my side and rain falling steadily from a gray sky outside – Bram is upstairs taking one of his very.few.ever crib naps. (I know I should be doing the laundry, babe. I’m sorry.) We got to spend lots of time this week with our dear C (Kippie), and having her here makes all three of us happier. She even brought us some of this year’s first crop of asparagus, and you know how I feel about that. My mom’s coming on Friday, and we’re planning a trip (B’s first time on the road!) to visit lots of J’s family this summer. It isn’t that things are easy. Really, they’re hard. My writing schedule for the next year is intense. I just finalized the plan last night, and I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me. We need to find in-home childcare we can trust for about eight hours a week, and that’s daunting. Being back at work is hard on J, and though I love doing it, being home alone with B for forty hours a week is tough. We’re both exhausted. But it’s an exhaustion born not of grief, nor of longing, but of doing what we’ve desperately wanted to do. It’s an exhaustion of life coming together.

Now a few photos of that life.

First, Bram and Ramona at three months. He’s not one of those constantly-smiling babies, but he’ll give you one if you earn it, and gods they’re worth the world:

B and his dearest friend. He loves that boy madly:

Bram in Aunt Kippie’s arms:

Sitting up for peace:

B now joins us for family dinners:

I hope this spring is treating all of you kindly. I’m as grateful as ever for this community.

 

the other side

I recently received a comment that meant a great, great deal to me. I first planned to respond only to the woman who wrote it, but since part of what I love about this community is its ability to reach out to people we don’t even know are reading (this woman, L, has been reading Breaking Into Blossom for awhile, but I never knew), I thought I’d share my response here. L wrote that she and her partner also lost a daughter during pregnancy, that though she wants to desperately, she will not be able to carry again, and that they are switching to her partner’s body. She wrote that she has no fears about her ability to bond with a child coming to her in this new way, but that she’s heartbroken about all of the experiences she’s losing out on: the kicks, the nursing, the whole bodily deal. She wants to know how I have grieved this. What’s hurt. What’s helped.

This is a somewhat unusual subject position (a lesbian who wants to carry as much or more than her partner, but can’t). Until L contacted me, I’ve only known of two other women who share it, both of whom I’ve come into contact with via this blog. I’ll offer L – and anyone else who’s interested – my thoughts here, but if you’re out there, and you’re in this position, I’d love to hear what you think. How you’ve made peace with the loss you’ve faced (your child or children, your fertility, your bodily trust). Please share anything you feel safe sharing in the comments section of this post, or, if you have a blog, let us know so we can tune in. I think this conversation is worth having.

The infertility piece itself is one thing, and it’s a thing that deserves more attention. We should be talking about infertility a lot more than we are. Still, support is out there. I’ve wanted to get an infertility awareness ribbon for the blog for awhile now, but I haven’t known if it was right for me to do so. In my case, I could technically try again. I had a relatively easy time getting pregnant. They think there’s only around a 1 in 3 chance of what happened to Emmett happening again. Only, I’m still heartbroken over our little girl. I always will be. I can’t get behind 1 in 3; not where there are other paths. And with the thyroid disease that has surfaced since (as a result of?) my pregnancy, doing so feels dangerous. Pregnancy hormones wreck havoc on women with autoimmune disease. And what I want more than I want to carry is to raise Bram. To raise other children. So I never know whether what I have counts as infertility. I’m making this choice. What I do know is that the longing doesn’t go away. At least not for me, and at least not so far. I don’t even know that it’s gotten better. I do think, though, that I’ve made space for it, allowed that it will always be a part of me. It’s started to feel familiar. There’s an odd comfort in that.

The NGP experience, for a person who has struggled with this longing, is bittersweet. I compare it to adoption in my mind a lot, both because that’s where many heterosexual couples turn when they face what I’ve faced and because that’s where I hope we’ll turn for our next child. On the one hand, you get so many of the experiences that adoptive parents don’t necessarily get. I did J’s insemination, so I am as responsible for why B is who B is as much as J, or as our donor. A different moment or different pressure would have made a different child. And the memories of this pregnancy are so, so sweet to me. That first faint line, and the buzzing I felt in those early days. The protectiveness that sprang up in me. Nursing J through morning sickness. Watching the baby grow inside the woman I love most in the world. Cooking them nutritious food. Attending every single midwife appointment, and hearing all those heartbeats. All those heartbeats. The ultrasounds. The kicks, which I started to feel only one week after J. The reading and the singing to the belly. Those sweet hours in bed with my hand so close to his body. Just layers of beloved flesh away from my beloved son. The labor preparation, and the labor, and the believing my wife when she says that I was pivotal all those hours. Catching my son. Being the first person to touch him. Holding him when he took his first breath. These memories are the sweetest of my life. The level best. They are such a part of my love for him that I know I’ll mourn them deeply if we get to adopt our next child. In this way, queerness becomes a sparkling privilege, one unbeatable ability that outshines all of the rights we’re denied. If one womb falters, for whatever reason, there may be another womb there waiting. J and I were a team in making our children, and I feel with all of my body that we share them both equally. I know she mourns E as much as I do. I know B is as much my son.

But there’s another side to these moments, which is watching your beloved experience each and every moment of something you wish you could do. Watching her feel those first kicks. Watching her grow. Watching strangers congratulate her (leaving you completely out of the conversation even when they know you’re together). Noting her cravings and aversions. Learning about labor with her in spaces that make it clear that you’re very much secondary. Watching her labor with, and then deliver, your child, and feeling none of the pain. Being surprised that you don’t feel the pain. There’s privilege here, but the intimacy of being oh-so-close to pregnancy, and yet not being pregnant, is not without deep sorrow. I often think I had to grieve my infertility more fully as a result of J’s pregnancy. Had we gone straight to adoption, there’s so much I would never have seen, never have known I was missing. All that beauty would have been enough out of my reach that it just might never have haunted me. It did haunt me, though, and it made every second of J’s pregnancy complex. Neither of us could just revel in the glory of it. It was all double-edged, even for her, which broke my heart. We’ve had to grieve that too: that trust. That simple excitement.

If you might occupy this subject position in the future, you should know that the pain you’ll likely feel will be pretty much invisible. Even more so than infertility or pregnancy loss, and those are pretty invisible too. Very few (deeply empathic) people in your life will understand the complexity that is a subsequent pregnancy, not of your body. People will be insensitive, not because they’re cruel but because the subject position will be so far outside of what they can grasp. If your partner struggles with pregnancy (if the hyper-femininity of that subject position is foreign to her), you’ll have to work through that too. You’ll have to sympathize with her, stay compassionate about the parts of pregnancy that are daunting to her, all the while struggling to put down your own jealousy. There will likely be much talk about irony. You will both feel hurt and isolated sometimes.

So that’s some of what you might face. How you get through it, though? I don’t know. I can tell you what I’ve done. I’ve searched for power in the loss, in the vulnerability. I’ve come to understand that this (my infertility) was the only path to this child, and I will say this: this child is the most incredible creature I have ever known. I don’t believe in destiny, but I can’t imagine a wider joy than being my son’s mother. For this reason, I can’t wish away a moment of what it took to get here. I’ve also investigated the assumptions I held about womanhood, and I’ve let lots and lots of them go. I’ve noticed, from this place, how left out fathers and other NGPs are from the pregnancy and birth experience, and I’ve become an activist in that arena. J and I have stretched and grown into roles we weren’t sure we’d be any good at filling. As a result, we’ve discovered that our capacities far exceed what we assumed them to be. She found her female body empowering for the first time in her life. That’s just huge. And I found deep pleasure in nurturing both of them, which I could not have done if I’d had the inherent self-absorption of pregnancy. J found a calling: she’s attending doula training now, and she wants to become an advocate for LGBT parents. To offer consultations, family-inclusive childbirth classes, and doula services. And I found a calling, too, in advocating not just for NGPs but for a redefinition of family that is not about blood. I am passionately devoted to undermining the weight those around me place on biology. Family is about so much more.

I think it would be easy to miss all of the unexpected beauty this experience stands to offer. To stay in the hurt, the resentment, the bitterness so that your eyes are closed to all that you’re being handed. Sometimes I’ve done that, and I think that’s okay. More often, though, I’ve rediscovered myself. I’m proud of who I’ve become through all of this. When I first lost E, I felt like less of a woman. Now I feel like more of one: I am resilient, adaptive, and generous. I am open to vulnerability. I hope that if you’re reading this, and you share this position, you’re able to find a path through that brings you more fully into yourself. I hope that you find a path to motherhood that is full of more joy than you ever could have imagined, even if that joy comes alongside sorrow. And if you ever want to talk, please seek me out. It can be lonely work, this grief business. I’m here if you need a friend.

the post-traumatic fear spiral

I’ve learned a lot this year about loss. About child loss. About infertility. About losing faith in your own body. About fear. Because I’m prone more to anxiety than depression, that’s how losing E has affected me: by making me scared. I read about parents who, after losing a child (or even the idea of a child), can’t get out of bed for weeks or months. Can’t work. Can’t imagine moving on. That hasn’t been the case for me, but I have been shattered in whole other ways.

Last month, my therapist said that, after loss and/or medical trauma, it is extremely common for people to experience medical anxiety for about a year. When someone goes through medical trauma, they see how precarious life is. They see their own bodily susceptibility to disease. To destruction. It’s hard to shake. This happened to me. I feel like I watched life passing away (Emmett’s. Parts of my own. Parts of J’s.) on January 19th, and I just stopped trusting. Learning how to trust my body again has been more difficult than I could have imagined.

Part of this struggle comes in the form of self-blame. There’s this quiet voice since she died that says, over and over again: “there must be something seriously wrong with you. Babies don’t just not have feet. You broke her. And her being broken means that you’re broken too.” I haven’t talked about it much because, when I have, my amazing friends and family have rallied to tell me it isn’t my fault. And I love them for that, but it doesn’t help. This takes self-forgiveness, and I haven’t been ready for that. It also takes self-trust, and I don’t know how to get that back. Things fell apart, and now I wait vigilantly for everything else to unravel too.

Since that night, I’ve thought I was dying of one thing after another. Of Thyroid Storm. Of hemorrhage. Of an allergic reaction to wet wool (seriously). From food allergies. Or Mitral Valve Prolapse. Or some other dangerous heart murmur. Or swelling caused by blood clots. And now I’m obsessed with this particular (and rare) kind of cancer that causes flushing. I’ve had flushing for many years now. Sometimes it gets worse. Sometimes it gets better. My mom had it for decades. Two great aunts. One of my closest friends. Another friend’s whole family. I know it can be caused by anxiety. And thyroid imbalance. And food sensitivities. And skin sensitivities. And I have all of these things. The medication I’ve been on for ten months to treat my hyperthyroidism has made me hypothyroid, and that is causing lots of symptoms (edema. weight gain. fatigue. thinning hair. maybe flushing.). I hope to go off of it soon, but they want me to be even more hypo when I stop because research shows that staying on the medicine for a year, and being firmly hypo when you stop taking it, increases your chances of entering thyroid remission.

So all of that, all of those reasons for flushing, and I obsess over one doctor who proposes that maybe it’s this extremely rare thing that happens mostly to people in their fifties. Mine is in my cheeks, ears, and knees. This rare disease is usually face, neck, and chest. I can see the irrationality of this, but I can’t seem to let it go. So this past Wednesday, I went to see a general practitioner to request tests to rule it out. Because the fear was getting to me. But the person I went to happened to have lost her husband to this very rare disease. What are the odds of this? So, though she tried to reassure me that the odds of me having it were infinitesimal, she also gave me a lot of information. Too much information. She kept calling it, “this disease.” She kept comparing me to her husband. Because she no doubt has PTSD about her loss. So now, as I’m waiting for tests to come back, I’m finding myself in the biggest fear spiral I’ve seen since the months after E. Moments of sheer terror.

I don’t want to live this way. This setback aside, it has gotten better. And even this feels like an opportunity: to mourn a little more. To face and let go of this terror. But it’s hard. And it’s embarrassing. And it makes me feel like a bad friend, and a bad wife, and a bad mama to this boy who deserves the attention I’m giving to fear.

It’s hard for me to write these things, but this community is so full of compassion and love and understanding. And I thought that, maybe, starting to tell the truth about this struggle might rob it of some of it’s power over me. Because I want to be in these beautiful moments I’m living, not in some hypothetical fear-based scenario in my head. I want to be free of this. I won’t have these results until the middle of next week, but I don’t want to need the results to trust my body. I want to acknowledge the fear without letting it drag me under. I don’t want to live this way and, most of all, I don’t want to put this on our little boy, to teach him this. But it is hard to let go of the fear that something will take me from my family. It’s hard to trust again.

 

bodily

Things are going well here in our fourteenth (almost fifteenth!) week with Rabbit River. We’re happily settling into the reality of being here (this house. this town. this version of our lives.) for two more years. J is getting over a lousy summer cold, and though the coughing has brought back her nausea, we’re hoping it’ll abate again soon. I finished an eighty-one page dissertation chapter draft yesterday, and am moving on to the next today. (I’m trying to get as much written as possible before this baby comes, so I can spend most of my time loving on him or her!). J is a finalist for the job she most wants, though this isn’t as exciting as it sounds: it means they’ve offered the two positions to two other people, but if either of them turns the offer down, or fails the background check, that line will be offered to her. She’s super disappointed (and doubtful that in this economy anyone would turn down an offer), but we haven’t given up hope. She has another interview on Monday. Other than the difficult work of hiding her belly for interviews, things are pretty peaceful.

But I’ve been dealing, in the aftermath of January, with two bodily problems, and now that things have settled down, I’m finally addressing them.

The first is a fear that – because so many things happened to my body at once, because things went so wrong and we still don’t know quite why – maybe there’s more wrong with me that we don’t know about. I get swelling above my ankle now, and feel sure it’s a blood clot. I worry that my heart murmur might be a problem. I get scared a lot. That I’m going to die before I get to raise a family, or grow old with my wife. I learned (the night we lost E) just how out.of.control a body can feel, and now I can’t seem to get back my trust.

The second is a resurgence – since deciding that it isn’t safe for me to try to get pregnant again in the future – in the old, old ghost of anorexia. I haven’t acted on it, but not doing so has been a struggle. Like many women, my late teens and early twenties were a battle for self-esteem, and I fought that battle with (among other things) food denial and exercise. It was difficult for me to recover from because, personality wise, I get a lot of pleasure from self-denial. There are pictures where I’m too thin. J hates to look at them, but try as I might, I still can’t believe that I’m not prettier in them. To this day.

I won this battle a long time ago, and it hasn’t come up for me since coming out eight years ago. And it helps that J and I became cooks together because now I love food too much to be as good at denial as I used to be. :) But I hear this in my head all the time now: if you can’t be pregnant again, you can at least be thin and beautiful. I hate this voice. I feel a responsibility as a teacher, as a parent, and as an educated woman to FIGHT against the dangerous beauty standards to which we subject ourselves and one another. I know how influenced I am by the women I look up to – teachers, colleagues, friends – and I take any influence I might have over female students or other women seriously. I am devoted to never passing this on to my daughters. I want to be an influence of health and moderation: I’ve exercised consistently since I was nineteen, and that’s important to me. Strength is important to me. Healthy living is important to me. Food ethics are important to me. But there’s a line, and it would be so easy to cross it, so easy to feel in control that way.

Because that’s what it is, right? I’ve felt out of control, and I know I could get the sense of control back by over-exercising, by obsessing over everything I put in my mouth. I’ve found control that way before, found value in my body that way before. Once you know you can get it so easily, so cheaply, you never forget. I can’t control what happened to my body in January – nor the knowledge of its weaknesses that I’ve learned about since – and it’s hard to just face that. Retaliation and resistance are easy; vulnerability is the tricky part, the part that requires real guts. But I want to learn how to accept vulnerability. Refusing it is an illusion anyway, and I’m not interested in that. So this week, I went to my school’s clinic (the only place my insurance covers me without a referral), and I set up an appointment to help me let go of these false measures of control. Living in fear is not living in the moment. These are (God willing) the last six months that J and I will be a couple without people to parent, that we’ll live alone together. I want to enjoy that. I want to enjoy this Rabbit’s arrival, to enjoy his or her presence, without wasting so much energy on fear. I want to love my body not because it can make healthy babies, nor because it is thin, but because it’s mine, and it’s healthy (enough), and it carries me through this life. And I want to be present for the people I love, not self-obsessed. I think these issues make sense given everything I’ve been through. I think they emerged as coping devices, and maybe I needed them at first. But my goal now is to begin to put them down.

.where i’m at.

My emotions feel like a floodgate these days. It’s like I barely have time to notice that the water is rising before the dam breaks and everything spills over. I struggle with feelings of anger. Anger, though, feels familiar to me. It’s an emotion that I’ve struggled against my whole life, but the deep sadness and the anxiety, those very unfamiliar emotions feel crippling at times. R has been so very very strong through this whole process. She’s walked through hell: three months of near constant nausea and fatigue, then on to the anxiety of bleeding and cramping in the second trimester, being told repeatedly that everything was going to be okay, giving birth to and losing Emmett, being diagnosed with Graves’ disease, finding acceptance with the prospect of not carrying next, and, still, being a consummate partner to me everyday. She is so supportive of my grieving process, too, even when it means I’m being a total nutcase (or a total asshole). I can’t imagine my life without her by my side. Our marriage really is the bedrock of my life.

Lately, I’ve been struggling with wanting to know what exactly happened to Emmett. We know from the autopsy that all of his major organs and skeleton (except his intestines and feet) were normal and in tact, so now we’re just waiting to find out what his chromosomal/genetic abnormality was. I’m such an information junkie that it’s killing me to think that there are some anonymous medical personnel out there who already know the answers, but I’m just having to wait for the giant bureaucratic information machine to make its slow, plodding move back to our midwives clinic. I’ve been looking lots of things up online. I’ll preface this with the fact that I have zero medical background, knowledge of hard science, or any clue about how any of this relates to our situation. That said, there are a number of instances of the absence of feet and/or intestinal malrotation with a syndrome called caudal dysplasia. There’s no way to know for sure until we get the chromosomal study back (hopefully this week), but it does bring me a certain comfort to know that other parents have also been down this road.

We’re having a small blessing for Emmett here at our home next week. R and I picked up his urn last week (we had already picked up his ashes the week before). R found an amazing carpenter in Massachusetts who makes beautiful handmade wooden boxes from found wood. He was kind enough to craft one especially for Emmett. It should be here tomorrow. He sent pictures already and we think it’s absolutely stunning:

We also purchased a handmade stoneware bowl and we’ve asked some close family and friends to bring small stones for Emmett’s bowl (along with a blessing, poem, or letter to share). We plan on putting Emmett’s urn, his blanket, the bowl with stones, our pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, our photos of him, and the many cards we’ve received into the box. The box has a tiny gold lock with a skeleton key, and R just had a very special necklace repaired (it holds the cross her Dad wore through the Korean War), so that she can wear the key to the box around her neck.

We also bought a book this week (R referenced it in an earlier post) about Graves’ disease. It seems really informative and empowering so far. It has a ton of medical and scientific information about the autoimmune disease that is at the root of the thyroid and optical issues, but it also includes information about alternative and complementary treatments (in conjunction with information about more conventional treatment). Plus, there are a number of anecdotal sections written by other Graves’ survivors. I hope that it will empower us as a couple to take R’s health and treatment very seriously. Many doctors (and patients) rush into radioactive ablation of the thyroid only to have the side-effects from the radiation wreak more havoc on their health than the hyperthyroidism did in the first place. It’s a tricky road to walk between between taking proactive measures and maintaining a conservative stance toward aggressive treatment. I believe in R’s body, though, and in her resilience as a person in the world. I trust that she will come through this diagnosis with her health and integrity in tact.

There’s also been a number of conversations happening about the future of our family. With everything that R has been through (and with so many health-related unknowns still to discover), we seem to have settled on the idea of me trying to carry our next child. And we seem to have settled on a sooner, rather than later, approach. This requires a lot of communication and a lot of trust between the two of us (and us with our medical practitioners). We’ve decided to get our proverbial ducks in a row, so that if and when it feels like the right time to try, we can start (or stop) without a lot of scrambling/last-minute decision making. We’ve found a new bank, we’ve found donors that we like, I’ve gotten my annual exam (along with some extra blood-work), and we’ve made adjustments to our financial plan for the year, which will free up more money for trying (for instance, putting off new orthodontics, and getting house repairs done through a county assistance program rather than paying a regular contractor out-of-pocket). I know, I know, my blog posts are always so “informative.” What can I say? I LOVE information; I live for it. My whole world has been turned upside-down, but I’m still standing (albeit, on the ceiling). Now I just have to make sense out of this new perspective. I am heartbroken over the loss of my first child. Nothing will ever take his place in my heart. Even so, my marriage is still strong, my house is still standing, my job is still waiting, the cats are still purring, and the damned under-sink water filter still needs changing (again). There are so many ways in which this new normal is still, well, normal. And maybe that’s the most painful fact of all.

I’ll leave you with R’s favorite excerpt from Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” She just “re-discovered” it this week, as it feels very fitting for where we are right now:

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

graves’ disease

So I have Graves’ Disease, which is an autoimmune disease wherein the body produces antibodies that attack the thyroid (which is in the throat), and the thyroid retaliates by producing more thyroid hormones. This has been confirmed by a pretty fantastic endocrinologist, who performed an antibody test. This is the cause of my hyperthyroidism. It has, apparently, nothing to do with our losing Emmett. It’s just a super rare coincidence. (His chromosomal abnormalities were extremely rare. Only one in five hundred women gets Graves’ Disease. It’s like two lightning strikes at once.)

The cause of my Graves’ Disease is (and will remain) unknown.  Maybe I had a genetic predisposition towards developing the antibodies. Maybe I caught a virus (a cousin of the Bubonic Plague; I couldn’t make this stuff up) that brought it on. Maybe I’ve had it for years and years. Maybe something about how my body responded to pregnancy brought it on. There’s a link between GD and extreme emotional stress (whatever that means exactly). There’s no way of knowing, and really, when it comes down to it, the cause doesn’t even matter. It’s something to fixate on, but it doesn’t matter.

If treated, GD is rarely (directly, at least) life threatening. The biggest risk if it remains untreated is heart failure, but we’re treating mine now, so that risk is low. I’ve been on anti-thyroid drugs since my thirteenth week of pregnancy, which is the first-line medical response to GD. The drug I was on until today was the safer of the two for pregnancy, but it has a greater risk of causing liver failure, so it is not recommended outside of pregnancy (assuming you can tolerate the other medication). Though safer for mothers, the other medication is dangerous to a fetus, which is why Maternal Fetal Medicine put me on the first drug. My endocrinologist was willing to leave me on that drug, and monitor my liver and blood count numbers regularly (as that would be the drug to take if I were going to start trying to conceive again soon), but I decided a few days ago that the risk to my other organs was too worrisome, so he switched me to the safer.for.me/not.safe.for.pregnancy drug yesterday. I’ll start on that today, and we’ll see what happens. It still has a risk of causing liver failure, and aplastic anemia, and other terrifying things, but those risks are a little lower in this drug, and the endocrinologist will monitor me with blood work at every appointment. Blood work is a regular, rest.of.my.life thing now anyway.

Apparently, the anti-thyroid drugs only have a 20%-30% chance of putting me into long-term remission (which is the goal, as the drugs cannot be taken for long). There is a chance that I might enter spontaneous remission. If I don’t go into remission, though, they’ll want to use iodine radiation to kill parts of my thyroid, which is, obviously, dangerous. And if that doesn’t work, they’ll want to operate to remove parts of my thyroid, which is, obviously, dangerous too. We’re not there yet, and I’m committed to keeping us from getting there if it is at all within my power to do so. These paths almost always move patients from hyperthyroidism to hypothyroidism. Then they’re stuck on synthetic thyroid hormone replacements for the rest of their lives. I understand that I will have Graves’ Disease for the rest of my life, but I’m hoping to enter remission for, at least, long periods of time.

I’m scared of lots of this. I’m scared of heart failure. I’m scared of liver failure. I’m scared of radiation and of throat surgery. I’m scared of needing drugs to survive, and of the impact those drugs have on the body’s fragile systems over time. Getting this news within three weeks of losing Emmett is tough. His death made me aware in a brand new way of how vulnerable we all are. I love him so much. I would have done anything to help him stay here, but there was nothing to do. I feel more powerless than I have ever felt. I did everything I could to help him grow, and now he’s gone. Now everything feels precarious. If I couldn’t save my son, what makes me think I can save myself? That’s dangerous thinking, and I know that. My body was always as fragile as I now know that it is. But I love being alive. I love my family. I love time. So I’m threatened by anything that threatens those things. And I’m only three weeks into grieving Emmett, so I don’t have the perspective to make any sense of this. I do know, though, that this is a treatable disease. I have lots of options, and this, in and of itself, is rarely life threatening. But he died. So I can die too. My mind is a scary place to be right now.

But I found a book. It’s called Graves’ Disease: A Practical Guide, and it was written by Elaine A. Moore and Lisa Moore. Here’s the synopsis (as found on barnesandnoble.com):

Emphasizing the patient’s role in healing, this book provides information about this common form of hyperthyroidism which affects three million people in the US. Topics include basic information on the thyroid and its hormones; Graves’ ophthalmology, dermopathy, and acropachy; autoantibodies and autoimmune diseases associated with Graves’ disease; genetic and nongenetic influences; allopathic and alternative treatments; special considerations in pregnant women, children and teens; and anecdotes and testimony of patients with Graves disease. Elaine A. Moore is a medical technologist; Lisa Moore is a writer.

Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

This got me excited. I read an interview with Elaine Moore that made me believe, for a moment, that I might feel strong again once the shock and immediacy of sadness wears off. That I might feel empowered again. I feel powerless to do anything right now, but maybe this book will show me a path. She talks about how the medical community in the United States focuses mostly on the thyroid. But it’s an autoimmune disease. She talks about how to treat the immune system. The underlying cause. I’m excited.

But then there’s Graves’ Disease and making another baby. Because God, we’re ready to raise children. So here’s the thing: I’ve had to put down the idea of getting pregnant again right now. I don’t feel safe on the pregnancy-safe medication. There are too many unknowns with this disease. And the stress of pregnancy does make it worse, and that’s dangerous for me right now. This scares me because I’m 32. I never, never, never thought I wouldn’t have kids by 32. I’ve wanted kids since I was, like, 17. I’ve always wanted to adopt, as well, but I’ve always wanted to carry a child. And then I did. And then he couldn’t stay. And now I’m heartbroken, and my body is broken in some ways too. My prayer is that I’ll go into remission in a year or two, and then I can try to carry again. Being pregnant will probably bring me out of remission, but at least I’d be stable first. I don’t know. This all scares me.

The crazy beautiful thing is this, though (because life is, in spite of all of the pain, crazy beautiful): my wife has always wanted to carry too. It was always our plan to have me carry our first child (because I’m four years older), then have her carry our second child, then adopt one or two other children (maybe siblings). But she’s willing to try to carry now. She’s willing to rewrite years of planning and narrative-building and just open her body up to pregnancy right now. This would give my body time to heal. It would give us time to find answers. Right now, it’s heartbreaking not to have a child to parent. We feel like parents, but no one needs us to fill that role. I made Emmett, but he isn’t here. It hurts so much.

It’s been hard for me to put down the narrative that if we move on to J this time, it means that I’ve failed. Or that I’ll never carry again. That I’ll never make a baby who gets to live. J has been very supportive of these fears. If I need to wait, if I need for it to be me, she’ll support that. But what I’m learning is that none of us knows how long we have. What I want, more than anything on earth, is for us to be a family with children. I want to raise kids with my amazing wife. I want to see them grow, and to discover who they’re going to become. My desire to live a long healthy life, to spend that life with J, and to raise a family together is infinitely stronger than my desire to give birth, or to see my genetic input in a child.

I was still confused, though, and not quite ready to let go of the idea of being pregnant again soon (because with my whole being I miss being pregnant. I ache from feeling so empty), when I saw this: Nineteen year old Zach Wahls speaking at the Iowa State House against a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in that state. If you haven’t watched this, click on the link now. You won’t be sorry. Zach is the child of two lesbian moms. I watched him, and I got some perspective. I want to watch my children grown into adult men and women in the world. I’d like to have the experience of making another child, and I pray I’ll have that, but it’s not as important to me as raising a family. I watched this kid, and I couldn’t imagine that his birth mom was any prouder of him than his other mom. They share the work of raising him, and they share the joy. They share the memories. The intimacies. He’s their son. As a person who always wanted to adopt, who only ever wanted to carry once, I thought I already knew this. But letting go of Emmett, and of the dream of carrying again soon, has forced me to learn it in a new way. So I’ll read Elaine Moore’s book, and I’ll figure out – just as I’m learning how to carry Emmett with me – how to carry Graves’ Disease too. And J and I will rewrite narratives about birth order, physical vulnerability, femininity, parental roles, and a zillion other notions we’ve amassed over the years. My God, I am grateful to her. She is my hero every day.

.scary night.

Per R’s post last week, we had an appointment scheduled for Friday morning with Maternal Fetal Medicine to consult with a doctor about R’s abnormal thyroid numbers. We had a routine ultrasound scheduled for 8am and the doctor’s appt. at 9am. At about 2am on Friday, R woke up having some bleeding and cramping. She’s had some spotting off and on since week six, but this was heavier and more like fresh blood than like dried blood (sorry if this is too much information for some readers…pregnancy is a time of lots of information). R tried to just go back to sleep, but was, obviously, very anxious about what this might mean. She woke me up at about 3am, and we both proceeded to turn into total stress-balls. We called the on-call midwife, L, (who was, thank god, an angel with us for waking her up so late) to ask if she thought that we should go to the ER. Her point was two-fold, 1) since we’re 13.5 weeks, a miscarriage this far along is very uncommon, so that was probably not what was happening, and 2) the ER doctors are not OB specialists, whereas we had an 8am appointment with the OB experts, so we should wait and talk to them. I think that was the longest five hour stretch of time in recent memory. R and I just couldn’t sleep, so we watched three back-to-back episodes of tv on the computer and then got ready for our appointment.

When we walked into Maternal Fetal Medicine, they asked R her name to check in, and she proceeded to burst into tears. Apparently, this is a regular occurrence at their clinic (they see a lot of high-risk pregnancies), so they whisked R away to a private hysterical-patient room. I had been parking the car, so I was a little surprised to find R not in the waiting room when I came in. They were very sweet, offered us tissues and water, and told our nurse where we were. About thirty minutes, and a mountain of paper work and urine testing later, we were taken to a different part of the building for our ultrasound. We were so nervous. It’s still too early for R to feel the baby move, so we get afraid that something could be wrong with Baby G and we wouldn’t even know it. The bleeding and cramping had certainly compounded that fear.

Our ultrasound tech, P, was nice, but very matter-of-fact. I think that in her particular line of work, she sees a lot of bad stuff that can happen in pregnancy, so we probably seemed pretty run-of-the-mill with our nervousness and spotting. As soon as Baby G came up on the screen, I could see the heartbeat. It’s like a little black and white flutter in the middle of the chest. I remembered seeing it like that at our 8 week ultrasound. R and I were both flooded with relief. Whatever else was going on physically, we could deal with it, so long as the baby was okay. And, for the record, the baby is great! S/he is measuring 13.5-14 weeks, with a heartbeat rate of 160 (which is nice and strong). We got to see the baby sucking her/his thumb, kicking, and possibly hiccuping. We got to see ten tiny fingers, two arms, two legs, the stomach, spine, bladder, umbilical cord, eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. Our baby actually looks like a little baby now! We also got to see that R’s placenta is intact and in a good position, that her cervix is long and closed (something we were pretty worried about given the surgery she had last January), and that her amniotic fluid is full and clear. We got some really nice pictures, too, which I will now bombard you with!!

This first picture is Little G in profile. Look closely and you can see the ears, eyes, nose, and mouth!

This is Baby G actively sucking his/her thumb…

The next two are from the top looking down onto the head. You can see the hands (with tiny fingers) on the side of the head.

The only downside to all of this good news (which really isn’t a downside at all), is that they can’t tell us where the bleeding is coming from. In all likelihood, it’s the result of all that extra blood in R’s body causing little capillaries to burst, which is no big thing. But it probably means that we’ll experience that bleeding from time-to-time throughout the pregnancy, and we’ll need to learn to not panic about it. So, needless to say, R and I were feeling a rush of emotion and relief by the time we left the ultrasound. Then we were whisked off to our appointment with Dr. F (whose name I wish I could put on here, because it sounds dirty and makes me snicker). As soon as we walked in the room, most of our assumptions about him seemed right on. He’s a very mainstream doctor-type. Older, white, male, very monotone. He spent most of the session fumbling through all of R’s labwork, but he never seemed homophobic or condescending, just very dry and numbers-oriented. His diagnosis is that R has T3 hyperthyroidism (which he considers a condition, not a disease). It’s pretty much impossible to tell at this point if this is a by-product of pregnancy or a previously existing, but undiagnosed, issue for R. His recommendation was to begin a regimine of a drug called PTU twice a day to start. The hope being that this will bring R’s thyroid numbers back into the normal range, and then she can be weaned down to a once-a-day low dosage for the remainder of the pregnancy. He thinks that the thyroid issue is what has been causing R’s heart palpitations (which are unpleasant), and that, if left untreated, hyperthyroidism can cause a life-threatening condition known as “thyroid storm” during labor. You can read more about that terrifying condition here. Fortunately, hyperthyroidism in pregnancy is almost always able to be corrected by taking the PTU.

R (and the baby) will have to consult with an endocrinologist after the birth in order to make a postpartum action plan, but for the time being, R and I will be able to keep seeing our midwives for our regular appointments (as we aren’t considered high-risk at this time), and we’ll meet with Maternal Fetal Medicine once/month for thyroid monitoring (which will include a monthly ultrasound; so much for only one ultrasound during this pregnancy!). Also, fortunately, it looks like we’ll be working with Dr. H for the rest of our MFM appointments (the young, female doctor who first consulted with our midwives). We suspect that will be a better fit for us. After the doctor’s appt., R had to have blood drawn again. Her numbers came back a little better, but still 1/10th of what they should be to be considered for the monitoring, not medication, approach. I picked up her prescription on campus yesterday evening, and she’ll begin taking it today. The medication is generally considered safe during pregnancy and breastfeeding (especially in the low-dose that we are aiming to get down to), but there is the potential for some serious side effects involving R’s liver and/or bone marrow. Hence the frequent monitoring. It’s also possible for Baby G to develop thyroid issues in utero or during the first six months, but they’ll continue to check-up on the baby and any conditions that arise are treatable and almost always correct themselves by six months. So while having a condition like this and having to be medicated is anything but ideal, it’s also very manageable.  Sorry this has been such an exhaustive post, but I just really want to remember all of the steps that we took along the way regarding this situation. Our next appointment is with our midwife, L, on February 1st (16 weeks), so we’ll keep you posted! Much much love!

thyroid update

We have an appointment with Maternal Fetal Medicine next Friday. The upside to this is that MFM does an ultrasound on all of their incoming patients, so we get an unplanned peek at Baby G. This makes me smile because s/he has grown so much since our eight-week glance. I want to see fingers and legs and a tiny, but fully formed baby face. I love this little being so much.

We were hoping our appointment would be with Dr. H. – who is female and who has been advising our midwife on our case – but she’s out of town, so we’re seeing a doctor from another practice who fills in at MFM sometimes. He’s been practicing for 40 years. So far, this journey has been sort of a sisterhood. We worked with a female-owned sperm bank, the nurse practitioner who helped us inseminate is female (as is her wonderful assistant), and the nurses and midwives we’ve seen have all been women. We’ve also never seen a doctor, which I have found tremendously empowering. Now we’re seeing a presumably straight, white, older, male doctor, which is okay, but I have to admit I’m a little disappointed. I like this pregnancy being completely in the hands of smart women. I’m also worried. This is all based on unfair assumptions, but it seems more likely that a person in this demographic will treat us differently from straight patients. I’ve never once felt discriminated against in this entire process, and that’s important to me. This thyroid stuff – hell, this pregnancy – makes me feel so vulnerable already; I’m not sure I have it in me to withstand any level of bigotry. So my job this week: stop putting these assumptive fears on this doctor. I have no reason to believe that this man won’t treat J and me with respect, and I will work to remember that.

Our hope is that my thyroid numbers have already started to drop. This seems likely, as I’ve been off of the progesterone for four days now, and the HcG numbers should be dropping since we’re in the second trimester. As both of these hormones are known to increase thyroid hormones, my prayer is that this doctor will give my numbers some time to come down and not just medicate me right away. I mean, once I go on thyroid medicine (which is fairly safe for the baby, but not wholly so), how will we know if my body could get by without it? It’s not a cycle I want to begin, so, unless the doctor has a solid reason why I need to be medicated immediately, we’ll ask for time and monitoring instead.

God willing, this won’t make me a high-risk patient. We did find out, though, that there’s a female midwife with an amazing reputation who works out of the MFM practice. This means that even if we’re high-risk, we might be able to have a midwife delivery. This is a comforting back-up plan.

In the meantime, I’m just dealing with the extra exhaustion, insomnia, hair loss, nervousness, hunger, and overheatedness that hyperthyroidism causes. I assumed all of that was just pregnancy related, but apparently, my high numbers are doing their part to bring on or worsen these symptoms. The only worrisome part is the hunger. I’m starving all the time, and I do my best to eat, but I’m losing weight everywhere expect my belly. That’s fine for a little while, but I don’t have much to lose before I’ll be concerned. I’m not good at eating a high fat diet – it just doesn’t taste good to me – but I am trying. A few minutes ago, I had a baked potato with mounds of butter, sour cream, and cheese. And it was about an hour before lunch. It would be easier if this nausea would subside, but it is improving, for which I’m beyond grateful.

This is kind of an anxious little post, huh? I’m sorry about that. My hope is that Friday’s visit will bring a non-aggressive action plan and a little emotional relief. And other than this small glitch, things are going so well. I am in love with my family and my life. All I want to do is protect those things.

.hyperthyroid.

Firstly, I apologize if this blog post seems overly technical. We’ve gotten a lot of numbers thrown at us in the last 48 hours, so I thought it might be useful to track everything that’s happened in one place for easy reference. Baby G is doing fine, and we’ve been assured that this isn’t cause for alarm, but R is apparently having some problems with her thyroid levels. Back at week seven, when we first started with the midwives, R had a battery of blood work done. We got those test results back at our eight-week appointment and everything looked really normal except for one of her three thyroid numbers, which was very slightly elevated (the normal range for t3 is 80-200 and R’s number was 202). Because the elevated level was negligible, and since the other numbers (t4 and the Thyroid Stimulating Hormone [TSH]) were in the normal range, our midwife simply made a note in the chart to monitor these levels.

On Tuesday, at our twelve-week appointment, our midwife had R go to the lab in order to redraw the thyroid labs. Again, she didn’t seem particularly concerned, and even told us that she expected to see that the t3 had decreased. Everything else from R and Baby G’s exam went swimmingly, and we were told to expect the lab results the following day. Late-afternoon on Wednesday we still hadn’t heard anything about our lab results, so R called in to speak with the nurse. The nurse was able to read-off the results, but she couldn’t give us any real context or action plan, which was frustrating. The t3 number had gone from 202 to 243 (a 41 point increase in 5 weeks). The TSH was also very low (.01 where the normal range is .27 – 4.20). We asked to speak with someone who could interpret what these numbers meant, but the nurse told us that the midwives were gone for the day. So we, being the scared information junkies that we are, got onto the internet to do some “research” of our own. Once again, the internet is a terrible place for any expectant parent to turn for information. It’s like a landmine of nightmare scenarios. We read that these levels were dangerously high, could involve R having to go on medication indefinitely, and/or could mean she had to have surgery on her neck. We read that these numbers signified an increased miscarriage rate, along with an increased risk of preeclampsia and/or early labor. Needless to say, we were panicked.

As it wasn’t even five o’clock yet, I called the clinic’s answering service and asked them to patch me through to the on-call midwife. I suspected that we weren’t actually in an emergent situation, but I was frustrated that no-one with medical authority could tell us that. The same nurse that R had spoken with earlier called back about 20 minutes later. Our midwife, B, had gone across the hall (our clinic is inside of the hospital) to Maternal Fetal Medicine (the clinic that oversees high risk pregnancies) in order to consult about the lab results. Dr. H (at MFM) recommended that R’s bloodwork be rescreened for Free T3 (a more specific test, which would help us understand how much thyroid hormone was just floating around in R’s body) and to run a beta-HcG (to determine the pregnancy hormone content of R’s blood). B said that they would authorize and run those tests overnight and that the results would be available the next morning. In the meantime, though, the nurse told us not to panic, and to try to relax and enjoy our evening. She also told us that very very few women miscarry once they’ve heard strong fetal heart tones in the twelfth week, so the pregnancy was not in danger. This was reassuring for us, and we were able to have a normal evening.

Cut to this morning, when the second batch of lab work came back in. We called the clinic nurse around 11am. R’s Free T3 test came back still elevated, but not as dramatically elevated as the Total T3 test was, which is a good thing, though it doesn’t put us out of the woods yet. R’s beta-HcG is extremely elevated (at 136,000), which is still in the normal range for twelve weeks. The elevated HcG could be causing the elevated thyroid numbers, in which case the thyroid levels should drop as the HcG levels begin to drop throughout the second trimester. It’s also possible that the progesterone cream that R was on for ten weeks may have increased the thyroid levels, as well. Many women who have hypothyroidism (abnormally low thyroid levels) use natural progesterone cream in order to boost their thyroid production. So in my humble (not at all a medical professional) opinion, it seems that maybe the progesterone cream in conjunction with the high HcG production may have overly stimulated R’s thyroid in the first trimester.

Regardless of the cause, our midwives have referred us to Maternal Fetal Medicine for an initial consult. They should be calling us today or tomorrow in order to schedule an appointment for sometime next week. This consult is a little scary because there’s a chance that Dr. H could decide to classify us as high-risk (in which case we wouldn’t be able to continue with our midwives; we’d have to be under an OB Dr.’s care). The odds of this happening are small, though, and more than likely they will simply monitor the thyroid issue and make follow-up recommendations for our midwives to carry out. This is, obviously, what we’re hoping for. In the meantime, we’re trying not to stress out (and definitely not looking anything up on the internet). We’ll keep you posted as we find out more information.