As I said before, we both took the miscarriage of our twins pretty hard. For me, I always wanted to have twins. My dad was a fraternal twin (from two different eggs), and I remember growing up we had two sets of twins at our high school. Definitely not your everyday occurrence. Sure it adds lot more work, but like Kristi says, it's a instant family.

After the news, we were given the choice of either letting Kristi miscarry naturally, or to do a Dilation and Curettage (D&C). Well, given that it could take several weeks for it to occur naturally, Kristi wanted to do the D&C. My sister had the procedure after one of her MCs. The good thing is that it removes any tissue left behind that might make getting pregnant again harder. So that's what we did.

One byproduct of this procedure is that they do a routine test on to see if there were any issues. Turns out there was as they found genetic abnormalities in both girls, called Trisomy 13 (more on this later).

So Kristi and I both had blood work done (Kristi's office had to search high and low for the right vial). My doctor didn't even have any of that "cap" so I had to go directly to the lab. Shows you how often they do that test! Kristi's test came back right away as normal, as hers was sent to Quest Diagnostics. I ended up going to LabCorp, who was inundated with lab work. It took over a month to get the results back (must everything involve agonizingly longs waits?) and it showed that I was the one who had the genetic abnormality. Something called Balanced 13/14 Robertsonian Translocation.

***WARNING! SCIENCE CONTENT AHEAD!***
So what is Balanced 13/14 Robertsonian Translocation? Well, it took a bit of Google searching, and reading about it a few different ways before I finally "get" what's going on. So each of our cells are made up of 22 chromosomal pairs that make up genetic code (along with either an XX or XY pair that determines our gender). During normal reproduction, the man and the woman send over half of their chromosomes along with either an X or a Y. (In the case of men, we always send an X chromosome during mitosis). This results in a new set of 23 chromosomal pairs with half of the genetic material from each parent. Pretty slick for maintaining diversity in the human population, eh? Well, in the case of a Robertsonian Translocation, one of the chromosome fuses to another during this process. In my case it was Chromosomes 13 and 14. It turns out that I have the correct amount of genetic material, which is why I was born a healthy baby. But, when it comes times to reproduce, problems arise. See, I have normal 13 and a normal 14, and then I have one that is fused out of both the 13 and 14. If I send my normal 13 and 14 to Kristi to pair up with her normal, we have a 100% genetically normal child. If I send *just* my fused chromosome with Kristi's normal pair, we end up with a carrier, like me. A completely healthy baby, with all genetic material, but will face reproductive issues later in life like we do now. If I send my normal 13 or 14 with with my fused gene, the baby will have extra genetic material. This is called Trisomy. If I only send either my normal 13 or 14 (since the fused gene gets "split" it only goes half the time), the baby ends up with not enough genetic material. This is called Monosomy. Best way to think about it is that Mono = 1 and Tri = 3. The times I send 3 genes to Kristi's 2 gives too much, and the times I send 1 gene to Kristi's 2 gives too little. I've included some pictures to show you what I'm talking about:


13/14 translocation Image


14/21 possible outcomes from reproduction. (just substitute 13/14 for me :)

***END SCIENCE CONTENT***

So we met with a Genetic counselor, and she mapped all the above out for us. We also did a "genetic history" of our family. What's interesting is that my sister has also had a history of miscarriage. She's miscarried three times. It's highly likely that she too is a carrier. My mom knew of three, maybe 4 miscarriages that my Grandmother had. Also, she remembered that my uncle, and some cousins also had them. You can see how this gets passed down from generation.

At first, this was hard news to deal with. If you've been reading the blog, you'll know that Kristi wants nothing more than to be pregnant and have kids. And she chose me to spend her life with and here I was denying her the one thing she wanted more than anything else. (After finding the love of her life, of course. That part was easy :) You want to be able to provide anything you can to your loved ones and I basically blamed myself.

But after time passed, I realized that this was actually good news. How so? Well, the hands down, absolute worst part of infertility is not knowing what's wrong with you. Going to the doctor, getting poked, and prodded, etc. and still not being able to have a baby drives you nuts.

But we do know what's wrong and even more important, there is no reason why we can't get pregnant. When we do get pregnant, we might miscarry more than most. But if you don't miscarry, over 99% of the time you will have a perfectly healthy baby. (We miscarry when things go wrong, and 4 out of 6 times, things will go wrong for us. It's very rare to carry a Trisomy or Monosomy baby to term). My sister, if she is a carrier, has had two beautiful healthy girls.

We still had the eight frozen eggs from our first retrieval, and knowing my problem, they could actually do genetic screening on them before another transfer. So with the much appreciated help from my parents and Mavis, we attempted a Frozen embryo transfer. The normal transfer went well, in that we got pregnant, so being able to screen for bad embryos seemed like the winning ticket. Back she went on the drugs, with me doing the shots again. And remember that intramuscular shot I couldn't do? Well, turns out Kristi's progesterone was low, so she needed to get it via a shot this time. With a REALLY BIG NEEDLE!! And at $75 a pop to have a nurse do that everyday was out of the question. So I manned up and did it myself, checking to make sure I didn't hit a vein and all. It was so crazy long, but it had to be to get into the muscles. And we made it to our second transfer. The scheduled day arrived, and we went to the doctor and literally 30 minutes before the procedure we had the good news: 2 of the 8 frozen eggs were normal/carrier. (The genetic test they do can not distinguish between them, as they have the exact same genetic material). Naturally, we were excited. I got too look at the eggs under the microscope. From my untrained eye, they looked good.

Another anxious two week wait went by and then we went in for a pregnancy test. Alas, we weren't pregnant. It was weird, but I just felt like that was the time. But, unlike last time, I had "steeled" myself against getting too excited. So finding out we weren't pregnant wasn't as bad this time. Still not good, but not soul crushing. Kristi, however, took it harder than I did. She also thought that this was the time. (In fact, it's probably good to always think positive). You've heard part of her story about from a previous blog, and if she wants to talk in more detail about it, it'll make for an upcoming post.

Kristi of course wanted to try again right away, but we just didn't have the financial resources for another IVF (for which our debts still remind us). And I was ready for a break. A break from the mental hardship of fertility treatments. It's a stressful situation unlike anything else. And knowing we *could* get pregnant, we didn't need to start looking at alternatives, like adoption. So with Kristi pulling out every reserve of patience she has we both agreed should go back to the natural method for a year or two. If we still had issues during that time, we would look at doing another IVF to help things along (with the hope that we'd have saved up money by then or at least freed up enough debt on the cards to fill them up again).

And so, we settled back into the natural routine, and I felt like a weight had lifted off my shoulders. No needles, drugs, temping, or any other fertility travails. Just enjoying being a married couple like the first months were.

And as irony would have it (and if you read the last post you'll see where this is going) the *very next month* we got pregnant. How crazy is that. So crazy that it'll have to wait for another blog to talk about. (Took me long enough to write this one, lol)

Kristi and I are both excited and hopeful that this is one of the 2 out of 6 times we'll have a healthy baby! More to come...

Good news! There are a ton of emotions that go into this positive test, and I want to talk all about them, but for now, let's all just relish the joy of a natural pregnancy!! Stick bean, stick!

We had our first ultrasound today and the baby is measuring 5 weeks 6 days and his (I'll tell you why I think it's a boy later) heart rate was 102 beats per minute. Hopefully he continues to grow strong and healthy.

The picture of the embryo itself is pretty blurry, although there isn't much to see. He is the little peanut looking thing in the middle of the black hole. We were able to see his heart beat, it was incredible.

More on this great discovery at a later date!

I realize that up until now, all I've given you is a sob story. Poor me, poor Mark, right?
Well, I wanted to take some time to count my blessings, because I am blessed.

First and foremost I have a loving, supportive, appreciative husband who does more for me than I ever thought I deserved prior to meeting him. He provides for me, listens to me, laughs at and with me, sees and accepts me for who I am (and doesn't want to run in the other direction). He understands me, he thinks I'm beautiful and above all, loves me and tells me so all the time.

Secondly, I have a great immediate and extended family. My mother, who has been my one and only source of support for many years and pretty much raised me on her own, has been my biggest cheerleader and the one who feels my pain as if it were her own. She's the best.
I have a big big big family on my mom's side with 11 aunts and uncles and 52 first cousins, most of whom live in Iowa. I have my family in Colorado that mean very much to me and have made me feel like I'm a part of something bigger instead of feeling like an only child.
I just became a part of a new family as well. Mark's family is wonderful, I couldn't have asked for a better family to come into. I joke that even if Mark and I didn't get along, I would have had to have married him anyway, just for his family. :D

C. I have good friends who are able to make me laugh when I most need it, bring me back to earth when necessary, and are just good, solid people who I need more than they might know.


Lastly, there's everything else:

• I have mental health (although some days are certainly better than others)
• I have a roof over my head
• I have food to eat
• I can shop for clothes and do so whenever I need and/or want them
• I have a dependable, and new car
• I'm healthy
• We have a really cute dog, who drives us crazy but will prove to be worth it someday
• I have a job, and Mark has a better job
• There are countless other things I could list off here, but these are the most important, so I won't bore you with those.
  

So, there you have it, I'm blessed. I try to acknowledge and remember these things each time I get to feeling down about not being able to have a baby.

I thought about setting up my own blog for the occasional fertility topic I might want to comment on, but since everyone already visits here, I figure showing up as a guest from time to time would work just fine.

So Kristi has very eloquently articulated her side of our fertility struggles, I figure I'd share some thoughts from the masculine perspective.

To say that Kristi was excited about getting pregnant is an understatement of epic proportions. So after being happily married for several months, we both decided we’d get the process going. We went about it the natural way for a couple of months. Being that Kristi’s only fault might be some impatient qualities (what, Kristi??? :) she mentioned it to her doctor at a routine visit. Her response was that she wouldn’t have even considered it a fertility issue unless you’ve been trying at least six months, but a year isn’t that unrealistic. So we kept at it, thinking nothing of it. Somewhere during this period, Kristi found a drug more addictive than Crack – the Trying To Conceive forums at AmericanPregnancy.org. Here she learned about everything from Temping (tracking your temperature daily to see if you are about to ovulate) to the Two Week wait (the time from ovulation until your next period. I.e. the agonizingly long timeframe where you hope on hope you are pregnant). It turns out that on the forum you speak in tongues. Terms like DH (Dear Husband), BD (Baby Dance – no explanation needed), BFN (big fat negative – a negative pregnancy test), OPK (ovulation predictor kit – a test to see if you are ovulating, assuming you aren’t temping), etc. etc. There are tons more, but that’s not what this blogs about.

Anyway, after around a year of trying we decided start the infertility investigation. We did the routine non-invasive tests to detect some common fertility problems. I did the whole “Cup” thing and Kristi was given blood work and ultrasounds. We both decided we didn’t need to do genetic testing, (like that would ever happen to us), which turned out to have been a very costly mistake. But more on that later. It turns out that everything looked good in my department. I had high motility (my boys can swim!) and count (they want you to have around 25 million sperm per payload, and I delivered 80 million in my first test. That’s like shooting fish in a barrel with a shotgun :) So, it appeared that I was OK and they amped up the investigation with Kristi. It seemed as though Kristi had a mild form of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS in forum speak) and she also underwent a hysteroscopy/laparoscopy to remove some Endometriosis. Both are kinda complicated things that I welcome you to Google about, if you are interested. Kristi was definitely my little trooper!

So it seemed we had figured out what our issues were and were excited to take the next steps. Our doctor recommended doing an IUI (Intra Uterine Insemination). Basically they actively monitor ovulation and then deliver my half directly to the fertile grounds, in hopes of improving your chances of the sperm meeting up with the egg. When two rounds of IUI weren’t successful, we had finally made it to the pinnacle of the fertility mountain climb. The IVF. In Vitro Fertilization. Test Tube Babies. Better living through Chemistry.

This was a whole new stage of fertility treatment. It involves using lots of different drugs to totally manipulate the menstrual cycle to whatever whim they need. But first, you need a lot of eggs. A LOT OF EGGS. Given that a normal female drops one each month, some serious chemistry is involved. And also needles. A LOT OF NEEDLES. And, bless her heart, Kristi just didn’t have the heart to administer the drugs to herself. So, that job fell to me. I can, without a doubt, say that I was extremely nervous. But, when the time came, I rose to the challenge. And it turns out, it wasn’t that bad. You just have to hold it like a pencil and make a quick single motion, press in the plunger, and then remove it. The only part I felt I couldn’t do was the Trigger shot (to make Kristi ovulate when *they* wanted her to ovulate). It’s a whole different class of scary needle, and it’s intramuscular. The scary part (other that the sheer size of it) was that you had pull back on the needle and check for any blood. If so, discard that needle and pick a different place. We hired a nurse to do that shot. Phew. So the egg retrieval day arrived, and they got 18 eggs from Kristi. Those were then fertilized with my sperm and as luck would have it, 12 of them were successfully fertilized. The best two of those where chosen for our first transfer, and they froze the rest.

So the big day came, and our excitement level was at an all time high. We did the transfer and for two weeks, we redefined the term “two week wait”. It was agonizing. Finally, the day of the blood work came. Kristi and I went in, and blood was drawn. A mere 8 hours later, we got the call we were dreaming of. Kristi was Pregnant!!! They promptly scheduled our first ultrasound, a mere week away. And it was on that Friday that we discovered we were doubly blessed. We were pregnant with Twins. Can you imagine, after all this time of trying to learn you have an insta family? It was an amazing feeling. It’s one of the highest highs you’ll ever know.

But, we wouldn’t be writing this blog if it was all rainbows and butterflies. Our babies heartbeats seemed a little low (100 b.p.m instead of 110-120). Nothing to be worried about. (Or so we thought). We came back the following Monday to learn the most heart wrenching news we had to face as a married couple. Our twins heartbeats had dropped to 50 b.p.m. Our insta family was gone. I was so devasted I didn’t go back into work that day. In fact, I didn’t even let anyone know I wasn’t coming back, because in my joy on the previous Friday, I was showing everyone the ultrasound of my twins. How do you go back and tell everyone the bad news. It was easier not to deal with it. We had also told all of our family as well. While it’s still kinda hard for me to write all of this stuff down now, dealing with any of that at the time seemed impossible. We were both utterly crushed.

To be continued…

I just wanted to post an update to how our "new stop the want baby plan" is going.

We are on our "break", yet still trying on our own. However, this time unlike the other year we spent trying, I am not taking my temperature every morning and charting all my fertility symptoms. We are just enjoying each other, etc.

But, my baby wanting mind is still in overdrive. Yes, I'm still delusional and overly optimistic. I was sure I had lost all this craziness when we found out we weren't pregnant after the last embryo transfer, but alas, it is all back, and with a vengeance. It's only been less than a month since we found out the bad news and here I am thinking that this is our month and I will get or already am pregnant. Like I said before false hope is a dangerous ingredient in this stew of infertility. It's a hard line to walk. You want to be hopeful, but in order to hold on to some semblance of sanity, you need to be realistic as well. I have yet to master this delicate balance.

My hopeful mind tells me that we'll get pregnant on our own, and soon. (Really this is the only mind I want to listen to at this point). Since we have no other options at this point but to try on our own, this is what will keep me going.

But then, there's the reality of our situation:
At the end of this month I will get my period, or aunt flow (AF). I'll be crushed, reality will set in and the cycle of false hope will start anew next month.

Then, as if to broadcast my failure, I see families everywhere and pregnant women seem to follow me. I know I can't avoid these things, and I certainly don't expect others to go out of their way to shield me from these people. But it is hard. I am, afterall, only human, and seeing a pregnant lady only makes me realize where I have come up short.

It's funny that when I was in my mid-20's, although I hadn't found "the one" and knew I wasn't ready to start a family just yet, I couldn't wait to be pregnant. Everyone thought I was crazy because being pregnant isn't what you look forward to, raising kids is the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. I wonder if I somehow jinxed myself for wanting to be pregnant so badly. It hurts to think that maybe I won't ever get to experience that for myself.

This would become my biggest loss in all this. I say this because if we should fail to have children ourselves, we would absolutely consider adoption. So, one way or another we will have our family, and again, the biggest loss to me would be missing out on being pregnant and giving birth to a child that Mark and I created.

I guess the reason we aren't looking into adoption right now is because we know it's possible to have a child of our own. We aren't quite ready to give up that fight. It would be a different story if we knew kids of our own was not a possibility. As I've said before, if only we had bottomless resources, and by resources I mean money, I think we would continue to go through IVF until we were successful. I've heard stories of woman going through at least five IVF cycles. I don't know how many unsuccessful rounds we'd go thorugh before throwing in the towel, but I can say that after just one, we are not through yet.

I think I went off track again, whoops.

In any case, I'll find out at the end of this week if I'm pregnant or not.
Here's hoping!

You are probably wondering by now if this whole blog will be related to my self-centered complaints on not being able to get pregnant. I wondered about that myself until I actually started writing about it all. I have so much to get out and relate, that it could take some time before I've said everything I need to say, and I may have to say it two or three times, so be forewarned.

I don't want it to turn into the pity party I had once envisioned. But, as I said, I have some stuff to release here, so please give me some time to spew and then I hope to turn the corner into learning and growing land.

How do I stop wanting a baby? It seems that I've been consumed with nothing else for at least the last two years. I think I must be becoming an obsessive compulsive over this. To quote National Lampoons Vacation, not really, I'm on a quest to have a baby, praise babies! (the real line is "I'm on a quest to see a moose, praise Marty Moose").

Now the we are on a break from conceiving through medical intervention I find that my consumption with babies is at an all time high. They are everywhere I turn. When I finally have found peace from kids I run into pregnant ladies. The world is filled with families. It is especially exaggerated to me now that I can't have one. It would make it a little easier to dial down the desperation if I weren't bombarded with what I want most on a daily basis.

I wish I was one of those strong women who could see the silver lining here. I wish I turn this into a chance for personal growth or some shit like that. I feel like I'm taking the opposite road here and becoming a selfish, bitter, jealous woman instead. I think I'm, at heart, a good person, I hope I am anyway. I fear I will be so changed by this experience that until I have my baby I will be unbearable to be with. Which leads me back to my original question, how do I stop the want???

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I wouldn't wish this on my worst, most hated enemy. The funny thing is is that when I find out people I know are pregnant, I feel the worst case of jealousy. Why do I feel this way when I wouldn't want them to experience this?? I should be happy for them that they don't have to experience, month after month, the negative home pregnancy test. I guess I just wish I could be part of that group as well.


Mark and I have devised a plan that I hope will help stop the want:

Step one: Enjoy each other again without the weight of the drugs, doctors, sterile procedures and hormones weighing down upon us.

Step two: Travel. Now that we are still unfettered, why not see the world? We want to try to save some money for round three, but we also want to get out and explore while we still can. This step, in essence will add to and support step one.

Step three: While this step may not help, we are going to try to conceive (ttc) on our own. Just go back to nature and the basics on this one. It will still send me to the toilet with test in hand each month, and it will continue to feed my addiction for peeing on a stick (poas) but I don't think I couldn't not try right now.

I'm sure we will discover more steps as we find our way and become more comfortable in our new world of relaxation, and fingers crossed it will all help stop the want.