Doctor's Orders; or, The Follow-Up

Dr. Wonderful called this morning to discuss yesterday's results. It was a good conversation--a little scary, but also reassuring and she took lots of time to answer all my questions.

First of all, she said she thinks it's a positive sign that we achieved a pregnancy, even if only a chemical one, in our very first attempt at an IUI. She said this shows her that the treatment can work for us. I'm going to take that and try to find comfort from it.

She then told me to prepare myself for this pregnancy not to last, and I said that I'd basically been anticipating that ever since I saw those ghostly shadows of lines on the pregnancy tests. Those were not lines that suggested a promising ending.

She said she considers this a different category of loss than our miscarriage and that chemical pregnancies are extremely common and an "underdiagnosed" condition. It may be just a fluke--a less healthy egg that happened to be produced and fertilize, which she said all women have.

But we're still going to do an RPL (recurrent pregnancy loss) panel once my betas get back down to zero--karyotyping on Lawyer Guy and me and clotting disorder testing on me. Dr. Wonderful warned me that this will involve a lot of blood work for me. Lawyer Guy is going to see a urologist and Dr. W said that his new doctor may recommend additional testing of LG's sperm based on the morphology stats.

At the same time, we're not going to hold off on treatment until the results come back. Dr. W said she's ordering the panel because she wants to be thorough and leave no stone unturned, but she doesn't think that anything will come back positive. Once my levels drop and I get my period we'll start the RPL testing and also begin treatment for next cycle: another dose of Clomid and another IUI.

Right now I feel a lot of conflicting emotions. I'm glad that Dr. W wants us to go forward with treatment; I'm glad that she thinks we've got a real shot at a healthy pregnancy with IUI; I'm glad that she thinks (or at least says) that the RPL testing is more of a formality than anything else.

And I'm also scared that I've now had a second loss. Even though chemicals are so easy to miss that many, many women may have had them without knowing it, I'm still bummed to be in that tiny category of women that have more than one lost pregnancy. Ever since we lost the m&m, this was my greatest fear: that we would have trouble both conceiving and maintaining pregnancies. That each year we'll get pregnant once only to lose it (I'm eerily prescient, aren't I?).

I'm trying to hold onto the hopeful stories I know--the many women who've had chemical pregnancies and losses and yet are currently cooking babies that seem to be doing well: People like Leslie and Al and Mo. And it's also encouraging that I've now got a doctor whose expertise is exactly this-- someone who responds to unexpected flukes with "Let's be thorough and check everything out" rather than "Eh, chances are everything's okay. Stop worrying."

And like I wrote yesterday, I don't feel like I lost a child, though I also feel considerably more miserable than my usual BFN funk. I never had one moment of "Yay, I'm having a baby!" and I never felt certain that there was anything growing and living inside me. But I also let myself imagine a little--I imagined telling family and friends at Thanksgiving; I imagined bringing 6-week-old twins to my sister's wedding. And those daydreams, fun while they last, create an awful sting when they fall apart.

I guess I'll just sit here for now in this very comfy chair and maybe read a little and try to sleep. And hope that things will seem brighter and more hopeful tomorrow.