And it hurts with every heartbeat.

Today marks 3 weeks since the real miscarriage. Last post was just the preliminary round. I'll start by saying we're fine now; we're okay. Emotionally, I'd say we're back to stable. Physically I'm still dealing, but it's nothing I can't handle.

As I said at the beginning of these preg posts, we didn't want to tell anybody--not even our families--until the news was definite. We'd planned to wait until 12 weeks on the dot before we let the cat out of the bag.

But we happened to have a trip to Wisconsin for a wedding at 10 weeks. It seemed silly not to tell the family, since we'd be there, with them, in person. And since we could feel the joy and the hugs and so much love, in person.

So, right before our trip, at 9 weeks, we went to the doc, got checked out, got the OK that all was well, and off we went to spill the beans in Wisconsin.

There was joy. There were hugs. There was so much love. It was a very happy weekend, filled with excited gabbing about futurebaby. Everyone we told was thrilled, and it finally felt real. Now that everybody knew.

Two weeks later we went to the doc for the big one. The big 12-week checkup. We'd planned to publicly announce the pregnancy (meaning, like, on Facebook) later that day, once we were assured that we, and Poppy, were out of the woods.

But Poppy would never get out of the woods.

Poppy's size was no bigger that it had been on our last visit 3 weeks prior. And the heart that had beat so strongly then had stopped.

So Thayer and I went home together. We cried and hugged and held my belly together. We said goodbye together. I took the miscarriage pills and we sat on the couch all day together. And the next day we did the same.

The guilt was heavy for taking the miscarriage pills. It's not anymore, and it was the best thing to do, for me. But at the time, I wondered: If Poppy had died 3 weeks before and was still just fine staying put, why should I be the one to kick it out? Why shouldn't I be fine with letting it stay? For as long as it needed to.

But ultimately, I am a modern woman, and maybe that means I'm selfish. So I cried some more and apologized for maybe being a horrible person because I wouldn't let it stay until it was ready to leave.

And pretty soon, it left.

And we had to do what we intended not to do. We had to tell everyone.

But as it turned out, it was better that way. So much better. So much better than if we'd never told our families. Because since they knew, now they could be there for us. And they were.

We got sweet daily calls, emails, and texts. Offers from moms to come visit. Edible fruit bouquets and beautiful flower arrangements.

Thanks, mom and dad.

The rally around us made us feel warm, loved, cared for, and just so lucky. We wouldn't have felt all that had we kept it from our families.

So now, we move on. Recover and work and do stuff and have good times. You know, live. It will be a bit before we try again, per doctor's orders, and per the orders of our hearts, which are rather overtaxed just now.

It will happen, though. Someday, and soon. In the meantime, on we go.

Naturally, Robyn's got the words.

Up and down and up...

So, I went to a nurse practitioner last week to see if all was going well with Poppy. We've been calling it Poppy because when we first found out we were preggos, it was the size of a poppy seed. It has a better ring to it than "rice grain" or any of the other comparable sizes it can grow to be.

Back to last week. The NP did an ultrasound and it looked like this.

WTF?

That round black spot at the bottom? Poppy's house. Or sac, rather. It was too early to see Poppy itself, but the sac was promising. It meant we weren't hallucinating and the four pregnancy tests we took were not kidding.

To be sure we were all good, they drew my blood twice, two days apart, and tested it to make sure the HCG hormone levels were increasing as expected.

The nurse practitioner called me last Friday afternoon to tell me that the HCG level had dropped, actually, which meant "the fetus hadn't thrived" and I would miscarry. She said if I didn't get my period by the following Friday, I should come back and they would give me what I call "the magic miscarriage pill" so that my body could restart and we could get on with our lives.

It was hard to digest. I went and cried in the bathroom stall at work, and then my friend Kristin came in and we cried together in the bathroom stall at work. High school styles. Then, later, I went home and hung out in bed for a few hours, alternately reading Entertainment Weekly and bawling my face off. Then Thayer cooked dinner and we watched Dirty Dancing and I felt a little better. The next day we went to the beach, because it was nice out and I was feeling melancholy like this:

Sad Girl on a Beach

But after a few hours of chilling with our friends the Bentons and jumping into the freezing cold Puget Sound, I felt like this:

Girls Alive on a Beach

I'd decided not to coffee or booze it up, because it just felt wrong while it was still in there. It felt disrespectful somehow. So I waited it out, feeling stranger every day that I was pregnant with... nothing. That I was just waiting to miscarry.

Today was the day I went back to the doc. The day of the magic miscarriage pill. I've been dreading today all week. Thayer, too. We were going together. To hold each other's hand and bear it together: the confirmation, the visual proof that it was gone.

And gone it was, as the nurse practitioner searched and searched with her ultrasound wand and could find nothing. "No, it's not there anymore," she said.

And then--

Her brow furrowed and her eyes got wide and she mumbled, "Well now, of course, as soon as I say that..." Goosebumps covered my entire body, and I squinted my eyes and thought as hard as I could, Please don't say anything unless you're sure. 

"Yes, there it is. There's the sac. And there's a heartbeat."

It was hard to see with all that water in my eyes, but I saw Thayer's hand cover his mouth, and his eyes turned pretty dang red too, if I'm not mistaken. And I'm not.

"Well, I guess the roller coaster continues!" she said after we WTF'ed all up and down that clinic room.

I had another blood test, and my HCG levels are sky-high. We're on track. We are on track. I thought today was going to be the gateway to a record shitty weekend, and instead, here we are. Still pregnant. And beyond stoked about it.

Penguin house

See that penguin-shaped black thing left of center? Now see that tiny white dot in the penguin's belly? That is Poppy.


.

Round 2 WIN

That title says it all, non? WE WON. We just found out that we won round 2 of the sperm shooting and the prize is a poppy-seed sized baby!

BUT FIRST! Other things happened, like the actual sperm shooting which was on July 25th. Then more other things happened, like my birthday on August 2 wherein I turned 31. Woohoo 31! Seattle bestowed one of its precious few sunny afternoons on me that day, which was very sweet of it. Thayer and I had dinner and drinks in Post Alley with the Bentons, and that Thayer -- he showed up with a pretty little blue Tiffany bag for his wife. That man is a keeper, I'm telling you. And no, not just because he's good with the gifts, although, I mean, look how shiny this is!

 It has an H engraved on it.

A few days after that, I thought I got my period, so that made me grumpy. To combat the grumps, I met my good friend Cynthia for happy hour on the deck at the super posh Edgewater, which looks like this:

and we pretended to fit in with the clientele there while drinking a few of these:

 Why yes, Mr. Belvedere, I will have another.

As far as consolation prizes go, it wasn't too shab. Add to that some deep fried asparagus spears, and the band-aid was pretty much in place! ("What?" you say. "Deep fried asparagus spears?! Surely such a delectable treat does not exist!"  Au contraire, friends. It does. At the Edgewater.)

On Friday I had some of my favorite peeps over for birthday celebrations on our patio, and it was delightful, and life went on.

Until Sunday when I realized that that period I got a few days before? Kind of a nonstarter. I was pretty sure it was the same caddywompus as I'd experienced the month before, but even so, I wanted to take a test and rule out pregnancy so I could continue moving on.

Luckily, we had just such a test lying around the house, so whilst Thayer was out buying car parts with our friend and current house guest, Michiel, I snuck off to investigate.

What I got was not the minus sign I'd expected. What I got... was this:

Am I hallucinating that plus sign?

When Thayer got home, I could not contain my inner freak-out. He was digging through a drawer looking for a tool or something, and I went and stood next to him, practically bouncing with adrenaline.

Thayer: Hi! What's up?

Me: SOMETHING.

Thayer: [looks curious] What's going on?

Me: Something CRAAAAZZZYYYYY is going on!

I proceeded to drag him into our bedroom to show him the phantom plus sign, to which he responded with bug eyes and justifiable confusion. Neither of us were satisfied with that pathetic ghostly plus, so off Thayer went to the store for more tests. He came home with what my good friend Amy later referred to as "the dummy test." 

Here is what the dummy test said.

 Come again?

That was when I texted Amy with my findings to ask her what it all meant. She is a nurse practitioner after all, and like any medical professional with a bedside manner worth her salt, she gently informed me, "It means you're pregnant, you idiot!"

Pssht, whatever. I took another test the next day. It agreed with the other tests.

Now, you're probably thinking, Oh, Hayley. It was sooooo obvious. Why would you take three tests? Tsk tsk, so foolish.

I will have you know that this particular neurotic behavior is perfectly common among women! Even Amy the nurse practitioner medical professional took multiple tests including the dummy test. And if you there, reading this, are a woman who has gotten pregnant... well, you did it too, didn't you. DIDN'T YOU?

So that brings us to today, three days after THE DISCOVERY. We are stoked, to say the least, but we're also trying to temper our excitement because we know it's so early that anything can happen. It doesn't feel quite real yet -- no symptoms or anything. It feels like it could all just go away in a moment. But we hope it stays. 

We hope the little poppy seed clings on.

-->

Round 1 bust

Well, there's no gentle way to report the news that Round 1 was a no-go. Over the two weeks that we waited to test, I wanted to spill the beans to EVERYONE I SAW OR SPOKE TO that we'd begun trying to make a baby, but it is at this point that I appreciate having kept it on the down low. Telling the few in the know that the answer is no is no fun at all.

TMI territory? Depends on your sensitivity level. You've been warned, at any rate.
I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've been happy to see my period. You may know that I've not often had partners with whom I needed to be concerned about accidentally getting pregnant. Thus, I've had very few PHEW! experiences with the monthlies. Mostly my take on it has been like a "Ugh, you again."

But never before have I been so intent on denying that it was happening. This time I tried my very hardest to pretend it was something else, but alas. To use a terribly cliched and uninspired phrase, It was what it was. Ew. You just winced a little, didn't you. Promise I'll never say that again.

Now, you're probably going, "Girl, you're upset because it didn't work THE FIRST TIME? Please."

To which I say,  "I KNOW, RIGHT?"

It's ridonkeykong. Intellectually, I knew the odds were against beginner's luck, but that didn't stop me from secretly believing I would have beginner's luck.

And dudes, it's friggin' difficult to reign in your sky-high hopes about this, you know? To come at it from a level-headed mindset? Yeah right.

Next up, Round 2. Ovulation predictor kit is in full effect and next sperm shooting will be near the end of July. Takes forever, non?


.

Round 1 begins

This week has been super exciting so far, and it's not even So You Think You Can Dance night yet.

First off, lots of excitement around my new business venture. I went live with my Red's Edits website and Facebook page yesterday, and the feedback has been so wonderful I could float away by the sheer strength of my own giddiness. Thank you, family and friends, for this powerful burst of support. It is seriously motivating.

The other source of excitement: on Monday we had our first sperm shooting appointment. As I mentioned last post, I was tracking my cycle. This means I was hastily doing several ovulation "predictor kits" every morning in the midst of my regular daily routine. Hey, the more predictor kits, the more solid the prediction, right? I mean, isn't that what they say? No?

I'm not actually so neurotic that I would go out and buy multiple predictor kits, okay? It just so happened that a good friend was kind enough to bestow two of her kits upon me. But one of them, a fancy little compute-y gadget, was already calibrated to her cycle, and the instruction booklet advised not to put all my eggs in its basket. As it were.

So Thayer went out and got me my own kit, and I continued using all three just for funzies. Plus the P-Tracker app on my iPhone, which is basically a glorified calendar.

Well. P-Tracker was convinced Sunday would be my lucky day, and what do you know -- Sunday morning all my devices were a-bling with ovulatory excitement. They were all very psyched for me, what with their double pink test lines and their digital egg graphics.

Next day, I called the doc and the fertility clinic sperm storer-thawers and told them it was game on. I went in that afternoon and picked up "THE SPECIMEN."

Half my future baby might be in there?

I know what you're thinking. "Surely they didn't just send you off with the vial all exposed and unprotected like that!"

Oh, come on. Of course they didn't.

They sent me off with the vile cradled in the safety of this foam coffee cup stuffed with tissues.

It was not actually hot, as the lid so thoughtfully cautioned.

So, off I went across the skybridge to the medical tower next door, sperm lockbox in hand. Thayer met me in the waiting room there--ten minutes late. I was so afraid the doc would come out and summon me all business business business. "We wait for no man!" she'd say. And Thayer would miss it all.

Instead, Thayer and I waited there together for another half hour or so.

Finally we were called in and the doc was friendly and supportive and sweet as pie. I hopped up on the exam table, glamorous as can be, and Thayer patted my arm while the doc proclaimed everything "gorgeous" and shot the sperm. Only slightly ouchy. Over in a flash.

And then she sent us off with sincere well wishes, but not before advising us not to start preggo testing for AT LEAST TWO WEEKS.

That's a joke, right? I'm supposed to chill out for two weeks not knowing what's going on in there? This is the year 2011, is it not? You're telling me there's no fancy robot that can tell me the verdict instantaneously? I'm calling bullsh*t.

To celebrate and calm down and divert our attention, we went out for pizza, because only pizza can solve problems such as these.

Here's happy Thayer on the drive to the pizza:

 "You're a dork," he is saying, because...

Here's happy me on the drive to the pizza:

 This upside-down thing is totes going to work, guys.

Well, dear readers, that's it for Round 1. I'll let you know how it went IN TWO WEEKS when our ancient detection methods start picking up signals.

In the meantime, I'mma see if Frank and Stu have any special animal sensing powers. I bet they do. They'll tell me for sure.

If you like it then you shoulda put a baby in it

All about babymaking.
So, my plan is to keep this blog about the process of getting preggos, but not actually make the posts public until after we're preggos. As of right now, we've told very few people that we're at the starting point. We have not told our families or most of our friends, because when the time comes, we want the news to be like BAM!

Maybe you're reading this now and feeling all irritated because why didn't we tell you?! But we've seen firsthand what it's like for a couple to dive headlong into babymaking and then... nothing. Nothing for a long, long time. And lots of people asking all the time.

So to prep ourselves for the four to eight attempts that the cryobank says is average, we've decided not to make the babymaking public knowledge. But think -- isn't it fun now that you know we're pregnant for sure and you get to find out about how we got there?

Oh, sorry, did I just skim over that whole cryobank thing? Well, that's how it all gets started on the Hayley and Thayer choo-choo train to Babyville. [Shoutout to KJ for that brilliant segue.]

If the cryobank thing threw you for a loop, our sitch is this: We will be using donor sperm. It's something we always knew we would need to do, so even though it might be news to you, it's old news to us. It's not like we just found out and are uber devastated or anything like that.

In fact, I guess you could say we can count our blessings that way. We were never under any illusion that we could make a baby together the old fashioned way, and now we're going ahead with it the way we'd always planned.

And to that, let me just say WAHOO! We are friggin' stoked. About everything. The future baby. Even the process. And let me tell you about this process. I mean, who knows: maybe you stumbled upon this blog because you're looking for info on how to have a donor baby. Well, here's how we're doing it.

There are cryobanks all over the US, even all over the world, that you can access online. We found a donor we like at a cryobank a few states away. His name is 11200. The cryobank gives info on stats like height, weight, hair, eyes, build, complexion, interests, studies, personality, heritage, AND? Celebrity look-alikes. Which... how great is that. I love that. One of 11200's celebrity look-alikes looks remarkably like Thayer. Plus, he's studying accounting and finance. Meant to be? Please. Is there any doubt?
So next, we added the sperm to our "basket" and checked out like we were buying some gadget on Amazon.com. Straightforward and easy, as online shopping should always be.

Would you like to know how much a vial of frozen sperm costs? It costs $575. And of course, this vial was not in Seattle, which didn't do us much good, being in Seattle and all. So we had to ship the vial. It costs $195 to ship the vial. Naturally.

Now you are wondering if we have a vial of sperm in our freezer, which would be hilarious, but I assure you that we do not. Luckily for us, we've got some close friends who have gone this route before us. Thus, we inherited the wisdom they gained through trial and error, and we don't have to do the trying and erring.

Their first tip? Do not try this at home.
Sure, it seems romantic, they said, to make your baby in the comfort of your own home. But really? There's no romance in thawing frozen donor sperm and amateurishly trying to get it to its final destination. Just go to the doctor and have them do what it is their job to do. Because, like... they know how. And if you do it yourself, you'll probably f*ck it up and there goes your first round of $770 and the first month of your time.
 
Hence, our next step was to get the sperm from Elsewhere to Seattle and have it stored somewhere they'd know what to do with it. So we signed up with the Pacific Northwest Fertility Clinic for a free month of storage, and they're conveniently affiliated with the Seattle doc who will be doing what I affectionately call "the sperm shooting."

It seems hella steamlined, too. How it works is: I track my cycle until I'm ovulating, I call my doc to tell her it's go time, I call the fertility clinic and they thaw and prep the sperm, and I go see doc the next day and she does the shooting.

Oh, did I tell you that to buy the sperm from the cryobank in the first place, I had to have an authorization note from my doc to ensure she was supervising the whole bit? Ridiculous, right? I mean, most people just have a free sperm supply and can do whatever they want with it without a doctor's permission. It just made me wonder... what is the cryobank afraid people are going to do with their sperm? What are people doing with $770 frozen sperm, if not trying to make babies? Ideas, anyone? Please--I'm dying for answers.

Someone suggested maybe they're afraid people will conduct their own interspecies hybrid experiments. That... sounds like a pretty legit concern, actually.

Anyway, back to human babies. Where we're at right now is: our vial of sperm is in storage in Seattle waiting for me to ovulate. In a couple of weeks, it will be go time for round one.

LET'S DO THIS.

Art

I am a very very talented artist, you see, so I wrote this haiku and drew this picture to illustrate my current state.


Period goblin
says, "Feed me chocolate and booze.
Where are my sweatpants?"