The perfect 28 day cycle

My cycle has ended. On the plus side it was a perfect 28 days. On the minus side, I didn’t ovulate until day 19 of my 28 day cycle and had a 9 day luteal phase with temps dropping at 8dpo.

See, that’s why I don’t understand why doctor’s hate charting. If you had a 28 day cycle you would assume  you were ovulating on cd14, and therefore completely miss the window of opportunity.

On the super, mega plus side…I have….

Clomid at last

What is that I hear you ask?

That is clomid!!!

Fertomid

Well fertomid, generic clomid. How did I come by this magic medicine? To that I reply, ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.

All that matter is that I have it. And about time too, no more cycles like THIS I hope. Weak ovulations, barely there rises, and short LP’s with early temp drops.

Weak ovulation chart with short luteal phase

I hope, really hope that taking 50mg of clomid, days 5-9 will give me the boost I need to get a strong ovulation and a good luteal phase, and of course the clincher…a baby. I’m not expecting it to work first month, because my lack of progesterone has caused a thinner lining, but hopefully month 2 or 3….

Anyway, I had a progesterone test 7dpo this month, right before my temp plummeted, I’ll be interested to see what that says.

This is my fertility plan for the next couple of years

• 2 months clomid 50mg days 5-9
• 2 months clomid 100mg days 3-7
• 2 months clomid 150 mg days 1-5 or 3-7
• Break month
• 6 months of femara. (a breast cancer drug shown to be very good at helping PCOS women conceive, acts like Clomid, but reportedly better)
• break month
• Pay privately for 2 cycles of injectables and IUI (artificial insemination)
• Break for several months as we prepare (and save) for IVF with egg sharing. This means I agree to share my spare eggs with woman who have no eggs or can’t use their own eggs and I get IVF at a incredibly reduced rate. Around 2k, all in, as opposed to 5-6k.

Then I’m all out of ideas. But hopefully we wont need to go further than femara.

So, the long road ahead. Let’s hope that clomid is all I need to get that ONE good egg.

A Beautiful Rainbow

I notice, when I am feeling at my most down, I see a rainbow.

Today, I realised I was not pregnant this cycle, another cycle with no pregnancy. And, close to tears, we went out, I stepped out my car and saw this

 

A Rainbow

 

It was so big I couldn’t take it all in one shot, so I took two photos and pieced them together, so perfectly there isn’t even a line right? (!)

 

But when I saw that beautifully formed rainbow, fading beautifully into carpet right…

The End of The Rainbow

 

Three things occured to me:

 

1. Gideon is letting me know he is with me
2. I thought of all the angels I know and all the mothers who have lost a baby, also perfectly formed and beautiful, just like the rainbow
3. Does Carpet Right have a pot of gold?

I truly believe my son is with me, he knows when I need to see a rainbow, and he know I will interpret the rainbow as a sign. I love my little boy. He is wonderful.

Alternate Realities and Time Travel

One thing that many baby loss mothers wish for, is a second chance. To go back in time and change what happened, or just to try to change what happened and save our child’s life.

We were strangely discussing alternate realities yesterday. Is there another reality out there where Gideon survived? What if every possibility is played out, and out there Gideon lives, somewhere. Somewhere, I am holding him, somewhere he is laughing and playing and growing.

Of course this led to the idea of time travel, what if I could travel back to before my pPROM, and went straight on bedrest, or told myself to go straight on bedrest and Gideon survived and that therefore becomes my reality. Gideon alive, my other half never knowing what happened to me and Gideon in my timeline. But where does that leave my other half from the original reality? Without Gideon, AND without me, because I left to go back in time, leaving him alone.

So even if I could time travel, it would hardly seem fair to him. Even if we both went back in time we would leave our families without us. Would we do it?

If someone came to me and said “I am giving you the chance to travel back in time,” or Doctor Who came along (David Tennant of course) with his tardis and offered me the chance to go back and save Gideon (although he wouldn’t because it’s already happened in my personal history). If I agreed and went back and told myself to be careful and stay in bed, and Gideon survived, then we went back to the future and Gideon would be alive and well…it wouldn’t be same reality that we left behind. The reality we left would be missing a Gideon, me and my other half, and my family would be missing us all.

You might wonder if this is a strange topic for anyone to discuss, but the reality is, I have spent many a night, wishing and praying for a second chance, the chance to go back and re-do it all. And not just with vague hope, but fervently wishing and praying it would happen, that I would wake up and suddenly I would be pregnant again and it was last February or January and I would have the chance to change it all. I still do it, although less fervently, 6 months down the line.

But what if I did wake up and it was last January. What then? What of this reality? It’s difficult to imagine I would be happy to leave  my other half grieving the loss of his son, and then suddenly grieving the disappearance of me.

It’s probably a good thing time travel doesn’t exist, or my mind would explode with all the thinking.

The Kindness of Strangers

Yesterday, someone did the nicest thing. A woman from my July due date board contacted me to give me the high resolution photo of Gideon’s name in the sand.

Thank you Jill, you know how much this means to me.

So here it is, Gideon’s name in the Sand.

Gideon's name in the sand

My little boy would have loved the beach xx

His Name in the Sand

The lovely people over at Names in the Sand have written Gideon’s name in the sand.

They request I not reproduce the picture anywhere else, unless I buy the high resolution picture, which I intend to do when I have some money, but you can see it here Gideon’s name in the Sand and feel free to leave a comment.

It’s a beautiful thing they do. It makes me smile, and that is a rare gift for a baby loss mummy.

For Our Angels

A Candle for our Angels

Lanterns released for all our angels

Candles on the Porch, for our Gideon to see from up above.

A candle lit,
A heart still broken,
Always loved, always hoping,
Better times and memories,
Fill the night with prayers and pleas,
Arms are empty,
Hearts are full,
We will always remember you.

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. The Wave of Light

Today is pregnancy and infant loss awareness day. Today at 7pm thousands of people are going to light a candle for one hour, to participate in the wave of light.

When I think about all the babies that never made it, never got a chance to grow up, I cry.

My Gideon should be here with me now. He should be in my arms, or bouncing in his bouncer or sleeping in his cot. He should be experiencing new things every day, learning to laugh, to smile, he shouldn’t be just a memory. But he is.

Everyone’s aware this is breast cancer awareness month. No one knows that it’s also pregnancy and infant loss awareness month. Even though 1 in 4 women will experience pregnancy and/or infant loss in their lifetime.

When I think that Gideon could have survived, I get a hollow feeling in my stomach, a lurch of sickness. He could have survived. There are so many what-ifs, so much guilt, and us baby loss mother’s live with this pain, this agony, this grief, these endless what-ifs and the guilt of wondering if we did something wrong.

When I light the candle today, I don’t just remember my Gideon, but all the babies lost and all the mother’s (and fathers) suffering, I remember them.

I will leave it burning in my window all night, not just for an hour. Burning so my Gideon and all his angel friends can look down and know that I remember, that we are thinking about them. They are never forgotten.

Light a candle today. Remember.

Just because a child lived only a few hours, or days, or was born sleeping, doesn’t mean they didn’t influence lives, that they aren’t missed. I’ve lost a lot people in my life, and Gideon’s loss hurts worse than all of them.

And no matter how many children I have in the future, they will never replace Gideon. He is my first born, my little warrior.

Oh ovaries, why art thou so cystic?

Got my scan results today.

6 cysts on the left ovary

Several on the right, two larger ones 28mm and 14mm. The 14mm is filled with blood, a hemorrhagic cyst I think it’s called. It’s the reason for all the pain I’ve been having.

And something about the right ovary looking a bit flattened or something? I didn’t get chance to read everything.

So, no good news really. I sort of expected it, but hearing it upset me. I had hoped we’d get pregnant fast, but I don’t think that is going to happen. It’s going to be a long, difficult road ahead. This must all have happened since pregnancy, because I had an internal scan while pregnant and there was no cysts. How can they become such a mess so fast?

I think this has been the kick I need to get back to healthy eating and exercising, it’s the best thing for my PCOS.

I’m moving on to 3 metformin and I made the doctor agree to do my progesterone test (yay).

All I want is a baby, and knowing how long that road could be is heartbreaking. Truly heartbreaking. But it explains why I haven’t got pregnant yet.

He did say my lining looked okay, which is great because I only had  a 30 hour period this time, but he didn’t understand charting or anything, so he looked baffled by my explanation of temps.

Come on ovaries, I need just one good egg, right? With everything else timed right….

World-Weary

World-weary. Here’s a word I never truly understood until now. I thought I had experienced the full range of emotions in my life, grief, sadness, anger, depression, pain, hope, love, joy, desire, ambivalence, etc. But I never truly understood the term “world-weary”

world-weary

adj

no longer finding pleasure in living; tired of the world

world-weariness  n

It’s a word I never thought to use, but it came to me today and it describes perfectly, the experience of trying to move onwards after losing a child.

I am sad, yes. But I know I am sad. It is ingrained in my life in a way that I know it will never truly go. There will always be a part of me that will be sad, because I lost my son. The heartbreaking, stomach twisting grief has faded somewhat, leaving just this sadness.

And this world-weariness. It isn’t depression, although the symptoms may seem similar. To feel this world-weary, is to feel just so tired, that is the closest word I can think of. Tired with everything.

I am tired of trying to get pregnant. I’ve just had a baby six months ago. If anyone reading this has had a baby, imagine trying to get pregnant immediately afterwards, because your arms are still empty.

I am tired of not understanding why these things happen. Babies die. But they shouldn’t. Babies are just beginning, I don’t understand how they can die. When I hear of another loss, I reach out to them to help, but it makes me even more world weary, I don’t understand why Gideon had to die. But I do understand I will never understand.

I am tired of physical pain too. You wouldn’t think something like physical pain could pull you down so much after losing a child, but of course it does. Simple tooth pain, but every day. And there’s no obvious reason for it, it’s just there and constant.

I’m tired of things happening to me that have no obvious reason. Every time I get ill, no doctor or dentist can give me a reason. No reason for my “flares,” no reason for pPROM, no reason for Gideon’s death, not really. Most babies survive a brain hemmorhage, no one could understand why Gideon was getting worse.

I am “no reason.”

Pain without reason. So the doctors and the dentists make you think you are imagining it, that it’s “in your head” and you start to believe them. So the next time you have pain you ignore it, it’s “In my head” afterall, and then you end up losing your waters or having a tooth pulled. All because you didn’t believe your own symptoms, you didn’t trust what you were feeling.

I am tired of making myself keep going. It is making me world-weary.

I am not angry, I am not bitter. I am just weary of it all.

Because worst of all, I know my life isn’t suddenly going to “get better” there is no reprieve for me. My life has always been this way, maybe I’ll be lucky enough to have a baby one day I can bring home. But I know the weariness of the world will still be there, and I’ll have to fight every day to keep it at bay.

Where once I would face problems with feelings of stress. Oh I have no money, I feel stressed, oh I’m in pain, how stressful. Now, it’s just weariness. Sure. Why not. Life wouldn’t be complete unless you lost a baby, had constant pain AND had no money would it?

World-weary. My word of the day.

And this is the first picture google gives me for world-weary.

World-Weary

(Belonging to this person, hope he doesn’t mind be borrowing it. It’s perfect.)

October 15th is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness day

And to raise awareness I am sharing this badge

I AM THE FACE OF INFANT LOSS

Please share this badge on your blog, or facebook etc, if you too are the face of pregnancy and infant loss. There are also pink badges for girls and pink/blue for twins or if you didn’t know the sex of the baby.

Here

Raising awareness for infant loss. No one should have to lose a child.