Knocked Up...Knocked Down

Tuesday morning peestick update (I caved and went in for a beta)

Well, it appears that I can't quite follow through on anything that I say I'm going to do or, more specifically, that I say I'm NOT going to do.  After peeing on a stick this morning and finding another faint line that was no darker than yesterday afternoon's line, I broke down and went in for a blood draw this morning.   My rationalizing reasoning is that even if this turns out to be a chemical pregnancy, it might be a good idea to have it medically documented that there is HCG in my system and to find out what the exact HCG and progesterone numbers are.  The nurse is supposed to call me with the results this afternoon.  Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, I won't be able to get another follow-up beta until Monday.  As usual, waiting is the name of the game.

Emotionally, after my initial freak-out, I have been doing fairly well, all things considered.  I have been praying often and asking God for strength to get me through this regardless of what happens and to help me to stay calm.  That is helping me a lot.  (Of course, I am also praying that somehow this one will work out well, but I'm not counting on that prayer being answered with a "yes."  Can't hurt to ask, though.)  For now, I am just thinking "Today I have some HCG in my system; tomorrow we'll see."  It's trite, but I'm really trying to take it one day (sometimes one hour) at a time. 

I do wish that I was still naive enough to be very happy, excited, and hopeful about actually having a baby when I see a second line on a peestick.  But after four miscarriages over 3 1/2 years, that type of euphoria and unbridled hope is just not possible anymore.  However, I keep telling myself that, unlike the past several months that resulted in negative peesticks, right now there is a chance that I will have a baby in 9 months.  So today there is some hope.

Physically, I'm not having any pregnancy symptoms, except that I am tired.  However, that could just be regular, garden variety tiredness.  Through repeated poking to check, I have determined that my boobs are not the least bit sore.  Also, I slept through the night last night without getting up to pee.  Since fatigue, sore boobs, and frequent urination always have been pregnancy symptoms that I have experienced very early on, it concerns me that I am not having any symptoms.  However, as the nurse reminded me, it is still so early (cycle day 28 and about 13 or 14 dpo) that it would be normal not to have any symptoms yet.  Who knows?

I am taking some comfort in the fact that I am still ovulating and can conceive on an unmedicated cycle, because I had been worrying about that, especially since I'm 37.  Staying pregnant has been my problem, so I didn't want to develop a new problem of being unable to get pregnant on top of it.  (Of course, ovulating and conceiving don't do me much good if I can't carry to term.)   

Basically, the lines on the pee stick still are faint, I'm not having any definite pregnancy symptoms, and I had a significant amount of bleeding on Saturday, so I'm not too hopeful.  I have some hope, but not much.  We'll see what the beta says....

P.S.  My husband and I decided that each of us would tell one person about this pregnancy, for the purpose of hopefully getting support and prayers.  He told his mom (whom we trust to keep it a secret), and I told the Internet.  Thanks so much to all of you who left kind comments on my last post.  You guys are the best, and I really appreciate your support and prayers!

Technical difficulties and hormonal hijinks...now with a second line!

I appreciate that you're still here, because "Knocked Up...Knocked Down" has been experiencing technical difficulties.  I wasn't able to post for the past week because not only was I having trouble with Typepad, but my computer also died.  It was quite frustrating, I can assure you, and I almost went to the local library to try to post on one of their computers...except that it was cold outside and my cozy couch was beckoning me and, well, you know...it's hard to say "no" to a beckoning couch.   But I'm back now, and with a brand new I-Mac and high-speed Internet to boot!  So our PC that we bought in 1998 is resting in peace, and I have officially emerged from the computer dark ages. 

Maybe it's for the best that I didn't post last week because I had a wicked case of PMS.  My moods  careened from grouchy to weepy and back again.  Watching a re-run of "Little House on the Prairie" set me off on a crying jag that lasted for about two hours.  'Nuff said.

My PMS mood swings have been bad periodically (no pun intended) ever since puberty.  However, for the past several years my PMS symptoms have abated, and I have been able to stay on a fairly even keel all month.  Therefore, I am always surprised when I have a cycle, like this past one, in which PMS angst rears its ugly head. 

The weird hormonal hijinks continued over the weekend, when it appeared that my period had shown up a few days early.  On Friday, I had menstrual-like cramping off and on all day.  Then I was awakened at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning, cycle day 25, by more cramps, followed by one day of red bleeding.  But on Sunday, there was only spotting, and today there's nothing at all.  This is not normal for me.

Due to this weirdness, I ended up peeing on a stick on Saturday.  Normally, I would have restrained myself from doing so, but since I had started my period, my husband and I were planning to do a house project that day that would entail inhaling dust and fumes that I probably shouldn't be inhaling if I was pregnant.  My dear husband, who really wasn't into doing the project and was grasping at straws to avoid it, talked me into taking a pregnancy test just to make certain that I'm not pregnant before we started the fume fest.  Actually, I didn't really feel like tackling the home improvement project either, so I was happy to oblige.

Well, we didn't do the project after all.

There was the faintest whisper, a mere ghost, of a second line.  It was almost imperceptible.

The next morning, a similar second line appeared, except that it was ever so slightly darker.  However, it still required squinting to see it, and it wasn't even visible to me when I held the test away from me at arm's length.

I am not sure what to make of this.  Maybe it's nothing.  Maybe the tests reflected the last vestiges of a chemical pregnancy.  I am not even daring to hope that it could mean something good, because I don't see how it could, considering the red flow that I had on Saturday.

Still, it's odd, and I'm not sure what to make of it.

I decided to wait until tomorrow morning to pee on a stick again.  Hopefully by then the second line or lack thereof will be more clear.

You might be wondering why I haven't scheduled a beta under these circumstances.  Basically, it's because if it's a chemical pregnancy, I don't really want to know.  My thinking is that where chemical pregnancies are concerned, ignorance is bliss.  I mean, why deal with the grief of a miscarriage when you could be lulled into thinking that your period was just late?

The second lines over the weekend were so faint that they are ambiguous, so at this point I truly am assuming that I am not pregnant and am assuming that I just had a weird period.  Always before when I was pregnant, my boobs were sore even before I missed my period, but this time I can poke them like crazy, but there's no soreness whatsoever.  So I really doubt that I'm pregnant, and if I was and it's fading away as I type, I don't want to know about it. 

Right now I'm going to pretend I'm an ostrich and stick my head in the sand because I want to enjoy Thanksgiving with my family without being on pins and needles while I wait for my RE's office to call me with beta updates.  We are spending Thanksgiving at my parents' house this year, complete with my mom's traditional stuffing, cranberry salad, and pumpkin pies in which everything is made from scratch.  My parents both have heart disease and are cancer survivors, and they are 78 years old.  I don't know how many more Thanksgiving dinners my parents are going to host or attend, and I intend to savor and enjoy every moment of my visit with them.  So, please pass the mashed potatoes, but no betas this week, thank you.

God, Typepad, and my computer willing, I'll let you know what happens when I pee on a stick tomorrow morning.  But please don't get your hopes up, because I don't want to disappoint you. 

I'm certainly not getting my hopes up.

************

Update: 

Okay, I know I was going to be strong and wait until tomorrow to pee on a stick, but I couldn't take the suspense any longer.  So on my lunch hour I went to a nearby drugstore and bought a box of three First Response Early Result peesticks, which the cashier kindly put in a discreet paper bag.  I went back to my office and sequestered myself in the far stall in the ladies' room with a peestick and a watch.  Tick, tock, the three minutes went by, and a light but definitely discernible second line appeared.  I don't have to squint to see it, and it's visible even when I hold the peestick at arms length.

Gulp.

Here we go again.

I AM FREAKING OUT!

However, I do have a game plan:  at this point I'm just going to try to be cool and enjoy Thanksgiving with my family, maybe with some secretive compulsive peesticking to see if the second line gets lighter or darker, and then next week I will start the beta rollercoaster.  And most importantly, I'm going to pray like crazy.

If any of you are the praying kind, please pray for me that I can remain relatively calm and sane and that things will work out with this one.

Thanks!

I just said "no" to drugs

Last Friday evening rolled around, and I still had not made a decision about whether or not I was going to stick a needle full of Gonal F into my stomach.  I had the drugs and I was all prepared, as a practical matter, to do another injectables cycle this month, but as an emotional matter...well, I guess I wasn't prepared after all.  I didn't do it.

I think my hesitation is a reflection of the deep ambivalence that I currently feel about pregnancy.  Yes, I would love, love, LOVE to give birth to a healthy baby who is the tangible result of the love between my husband and me and whose face reflects a unique blend of the two of us and our families.  But I have completely lost faith in my body's ability to do it.

For me, as a recurrent miscarrier, pregnancy has not meant maternity clothes or a baby shower or decorating a nursery.  Most importantly, it has not meant a baby.  Ever.  Without exception, it has meant failure, heartbreak, loss, and grief.  It has meant physical and emotional brokenness.  It has meant the worst experiences of my life.

Is it any wonder that I feel ambivalent about pregnancy?

Not only am I afraid of another loss, I am sooooo tired of having my body invaded.  I am tired of blood draws.  I am tired of being skewered with an ultrasound wand.  I am tired of the tyranny of my cycle and of having sex when I'm completely not in the mood, just because it might be a fertile day.  I am tired of HSGs and IUIs and all other invasive acronyms, especially D & Cs.  I am tired of needles full of hormones that make me crazy.  I am tired of progesterone suppositories.  I am tired of taking prenatal vitamins that make me burpy and queasy, for nothing.  I am tired of not being able to have wine or soft cheeses or decongestants during the second half of my cycle "just in case I might be pregnant."  After three years and four months, I am tired of it all. 

I would like to have my body back to myself again, please.

Isn't that ironic, since I am trying to get pregnant and gestating a baby is the ultimate in not having your body to yourself?   

Adoption is looking more and more appealing to me because ultimately, what I really want is to love and raise a child.  I want a child to live and grow up in my house and to call me "mom." To be honest, I never particularly wanted to experience pregnancy and childbirth. The truth is, for me they always seemed like just an unpleasant means to a desired end.  How strange that I now have experienced the unpleasant means four times without the desired end.

If I adopt, I think I would miss having a biological link with my child.  I would really miss looking into his or her face and seeing hints of my husband or my parents.  But I don't think I would miss pregnancy or childbirth. 

There are days when I am ready to be done with trying to conceive, with miscarriages, and with the fragile hope that my body somehow will get it right next time.  There are days when adopting sounds like the best thing to me.  My husband isn't quite there yet, though, and adopting is something that we have to be in agreement on before we proceed with it.

So this month we are trying to conceive the old fashioned way, with no fertility drugs and a little bit of progesterone and baby aspirin thrown in, but I'm feeling unhopeful about it.  Unhopeful about getting pregnant in the first place and unhopeful about being able to carry the baby if I do.  There is a big part of me that doesn't want to get pregnant this cycle because I don't want to miscarry during the holidays.

Did I mention that I feel ambivalent about pregnancy?

Math problem

It is cycle day 30 of an unmedicated cycle, and my period is nowhere in sight.*  Since I usually have unmedicated cycles of around 25 days, that means that I am officially late.  However, I have not yet peed on a stick because I am convinced that I am not pregnant, and I am tired of wasting money and frustration on negative peesticks. 

Normally, in cycles in which I ovulate, my boobs get noticeably sore during the second half of my cycle.  But this month there is no soreness and no other telltale symptoms to indicate that I ovulated.  I didn't use an OPK this cycle or chart my temperature, so I don't really know what's up, but I suspect that the injectables that I did in my previous cycle screwed up my system a bit so that this cycle is anovulatory and therefore a bit irregular and longer than usual.  If I make it to cycle day 37 without a period (i.e., Tuesday, November 1), then I will pee on a stick.  (This isn't a totally random number of days; I picked 37 days because the longest natural non-pregnant cycle that I have ever had is 36 days.)

Basically, I am not holding my breath or getting my hopes up that I am pregnant.  Really.  I'm not.  In fact, when my husband noted that I was late and hopefully said, "Maybe you're pregnant" I replied, "If I am pregnant right now then my name is Butthole Jill." * 

I am counting on my period to start just the same as I am counting on the sun to go down this evening.  While waiting for Aunt Flo to arrive, I started doing some figuring to determine whether the injectables cycle accomplished its purpose.  Okay, we know that it did not accomplish its MAIN purpose, which was to result in a pregnancy that hopefully would not end in miscarriage.  But did it at least result in a net increase in chances to attain such a pregnancy?  Did it result in a net increase in the number of eggs that I have ovulated since I stuck the first shot of Gonal F into my belly?

Let's find out.  My injectables cycle started on August 25 and lasted 32 days (it was longer than normal because I couldn't pee on a stick until 18 dpo at the earliest due to the HCG shot I took on 7 dpo to build up my uterine lining, plus the progesterone supplements delayed my period, blah, blah, blah).  Despite the shots and the hormonal craziness, I only popped out two mature eggs at best and maybe only one as a result of the drugs. 

This cycle has lasted 30 days so far and I don't think that I popped out any eggs at all.  So, let's do the math:

I'll take the number of days in the last injectables cycle (32) and add it to the number of days in this cycle so far (30).  That equals 62 total days. 

Normally in 62 days I would have 2 1/2 cycles because my cycles are usually around 25 days long.  And I almost always ovulate.  Therefore, those 2 1/2 cycles would probably have resulted in three eggs being ovulated during that time period without any injections, ultrasounds, or financial  or emotional cost to me. 

Instead, during that time period I subjected my body to all sorts of needles and other insults, not to mention the resulting bloating and weight gain, and I ovulated only one or maybe two eggs at best in the injectables cycle and probably none in this following unmedicated cycle.

Thus, the number of eggs that I popped out during the injectables cycle and the cycle after it = one, maybe two.

The number of eggs that I would have popped out during that time period if I hadn't done the injectables = probably three.

Therefore, the injectables cycle appears to have resulted in a net decrease in the number of eggs that I ovulated.  In other words, it appears to have resulted in a net decrease in the number of chances that I had to become pregnant.  This is disheartening because the whole purpose of the injectables was to INCREASE the net number of eggs that I ovulated, thus increasing my chances to get pregnant.

I am a bit disgusted about this. 

And, as soon as my period starts, I have to make a final decision regarding whether I am going to do injectables again in that new cycle.  I don't want to do another injectables cycle.  It certainly wasn't fun, and it didn't have great results the last time. 

Sometimes I decide "No!  No more fertility drugs!" because I think that I probably don't need them, and I don't even necessarily trust them.  Sometimes drugs that are thought to be great later turn out to be not so great after all (the miscarriage preventative drug DES, for example).  Therefore, I tend not to like to take a drug unless it is absolutely necessary.   

Are the injectables absolutely necessary for me?  They are just supposed to help me get pregnant; my doctor doesn't think they will help me to stay pregnant.  Since I have gotten pregnant four times on my own without fertility drugs, do I really need them?  Probably not.

But on the other hand, I worry that if I give up on the injectables too soon that I might be throwing away my only good chance at a healthy pregnancy.  After all, the injectables seemed to have made a big difference for other recurrent miscarriers.  Maybe they could work for me, too.

I don't know what I'm going to do.  As usual, I am confused.  I don't like making decisions.  I have a hard time deciding what to order at a restaurant or what movie I should see, for crying out loud.  Having to constantly decide what to do after each miscarriage or failed cycle or negative peestick is like having bamboo shoots shoved under my fingernails.

What to do?  What to do? 

Ugh.

*Update:  It's Wednesday, Oct. 26th, the day after I originally wrote this post, and it appears that my period has decided to show up.  That means that now: (1) I am not pregnant (and therefore my name definitely is not Butthole Jill), and (2) the pressure is really on to decide whether I am going to be sticking a needle full of Gonal F into my belly on Friday or not.  I'll let you know what I decide.

Adoption thoughts

Yesterday I had lunch with a dear friend and her beautiful new baby.  My friend suffered through years of heartbreaking infertility, including four unsuccessful IVFs, one of which involved an ectopic pregnancy.  Last year, she decided to start the ball rolling on a domestic adoption, and her referral came in late July of this year--a beautiful newborn baby girl who I got to meet yesterday for the first time.  She is wonderful:  healthy, cute, sweet, happy, and totally laid back.  A perfect baby.

My friend is over the moon.  She told me that she is so thrilled that she is giddy all the time, drunk with a joy that she didn't think she would ever feel during the years of hormone injections and despair.  She and her husband lie in bed at night and marvel at how blessed they are.  They are totally in love with their daughter.  I have known my friend for about 10 years and have never seen her so happy.  She told me that the adoption is by far the best decision that she ever made in her life, and now she wonders what took her so long to do it.  She said that she will always bear the emotional scars of infertility, but her drive to have a biological child has left her because she realized that what she really wanted most of all was not a pregnancy or a genetic connection, but a child to raise and love.  She has that now.  My friend said that she couldn't imagine being more bonded to her daughter or loving her any more if she had carried her and given birth to her.

At the same time, my friend is realistic and concerned about the issues that they will deal with as an adoptive family.  How will her daughter feel about being adopted?  Will she someday seek a close relationship with her birthmother?  If so, how threatened will that make my friend feel?  Despite these issues, my friend still thinks adoption is the best thing that has ever happened to her.

I have to admit that seeing my friend really made me think.  I have considered adoption and have thought about it more frequently as the years have passed, the miscarriages have racked up, and the despair has grown because there still is no baby in our house.  After my recent failed injectables cycle, adoption has been looking more and more appealing, and seeing my friend and her daughter made it even more so.

I just kept thinking "I could do this.  I might not ever be able to carry a baby to term, but I could do this."

Sometimes I wonder why I continue to beat my head against this brick wall of recurrent losses.  I am losing hope that I ever will successfully carry a baby to term, especially since I'm 37 and it is becoming harder for me to get pregnant in the first place.  I hate the hope and drugs and needles and ultrasounds and blood draws and peesticks and disappointment.  My husband and I have decided that we are never going to do IVF, so the next few cycles of injectables are the end of the road for us as far as medical treatment goes.

Sometimes adoption feels like a "get out of jail free" card to me, a way to achieve my goal of having a child without ever having to endure the black pit of despair that another miscarriage would throw me into, again.   I have been on this twisting road toward a biological child for over three years, and I am weary.  Weary of repeatedly pulling myself out of that black pit.  Weary of trudging on.  As the Bible says, "hope deferred makes the heart sick."

My husband and I are becoming more certain that if I don't get pregnant in the relatively near future, or if I do and have another miscarriage, we will start filling out the paperwork for a domestic adoption.  I know that road is not easy, either.  It has its own twists and potholes, but at least it seems more likely that we will find a child along that road, eventually. 

My fingers look like sausages

And now back to our regularly scheduled infertility programming....

The last time I talked about my cycle, I had just been confronted with a negative peestick and was planning to crawl under my desk to gorge on chocolate and to wait for my period to start. That was on Sunday, and I didn't have to wait for long.  Later that night, I was awakened by horrible cramps that turned out to be a harbinger of the arrival of the Period From Hell.  Apparently, the HCG shot that I took on 7 dpo to thicken up my uterine lining and the progesterone did their jobs very well.  So as not to gross you out, I will not say anything more about the flooding that ensued, except that I considered building a life raft. 

But I just have to complain about the cramps.  Oh. my. goodness.  They hurt like hell and were the kind that make you sick to your stomach.  I haven't had cramps like that from my period since I was in high school.  I felt so miserable that I actually stayed home from work on Monday.

Around the same time, I noticed that my pants were digging into my waist, my fingers looked like sausages, and my feet were so swollen that I could barely fit them into my shoes.  I weighed myself and realized that I suddenly was four pounds heavier than normal.  Since I was monitored closely by my doctor and I know that my ovaries did not hyper stimulate (not even close), I am chalking this up to an extreme form of garden variety menstrual bloating exacerbated by excessive amounts of chocolate covered peanut clusters. 

I feel disgusting.  My belly (which is normally somewhat flat except for a little pudge that I, ahem, feel it is necessary to maintain in case hard times involving food scarcity arise in the future) is distended and is so hard that you could crack a coconut on it.  I felt so bloated and uncomfortable yesterday that I couldn't even bring myself to eat dinner.  Today I am wearing a skirt with an elastic waist band and am not feeling very fabulous, to say the least.  I wish Aunt Flo would pack up her crap and get the [bleep] out of here.

Yesterday morning I had to go to my RE's office for a hot date with the cooter cam before work in order to ascertain whether the injectables had left me a thoughtful little hostess gift of giant cysts on my ovaries.  Thankfully, they didn't, which means that I have a green light to try to conceive this cycle.

I had not previously met the RE who wielded the wand yesterday.  He appears to be in his 50s, with graying hair, a lilting accent, and a soothing demeanor that reminded me strikingly of Mrs. Doubtfire (but not in a creepy way).  He apologized for my discomfort several times as he was poking around, and he carefully explained the images on the screen to me.  As he left, he paused, patted my shoulder and said, "I hope that things work out for you soon, dear."  I was so hormonal that this little gesture of kindness made big tears well up and spill down my cheeks.  The weeping continued until I got into my car and became distracted by looking at the angry red lines that the leather on the instep of my kitten heels was etching on my turgid feet.

Since I am not a masochist and therefore do not relish the Angst and Bloat Fest that I have been experiencing, I decided that I just COULD NOT bring myself to stick a needle full of Gonal F into my swollen belly last night.  Not gonna do it.  I have decided that I am going to try this month au naturel (well, au naturel with some baby aspirin and progesterone supplements thrown in), and if that doesn't work, I will do another injectables cycle in November.

So, onward and upward (and hopefully less bloated and crazy).

Can you hear the fat lady singing?

It's official: my first injectables cycle was a bust.

I'm not pregnant.

I took a home pregnancy test this morning, at 20 dpo, and all it revealed was one line and a pristine expanse of whiteness where I was hoping to see a second line. The needles and poking and prodding and sore boobs and hormonal upheaval were all for naught. I can't say that I'm surprised at all, but I'm disappointed, sad, and discouraged nonetheless.

On the bright side, at least I know I won't be miscarrying in the next few weeks.

Now I'm going to crawl under my desk to sniffle and stuff my piehole with chocolate while I wait for my period to start. When I come out I will regale you with tales of the mayhem that occurs when you mix a daughter jacked up on hormones with a hip replacement surgery and the most stubborn dad in the universe....

I'll be back next weekend

Thanks again to everyone who wrote kind words in response to my last post. I really appreciated it. I talked with my RE's nurse last week, and she told me not to give up hope on this cycle just yet. You were correct, the progesterone from the supplements does not show up in my blood, but it should be doing its job in my uterus nonetheless. So, I'm not getting my hopes up for this cycle, but I'm also not totally ruling out the possibility that I may be pregnant.

I must keep this post short because I am leaving right now to drive to my parents' house, which is about three hours away. My dad is having hip replacement surgery tomorrow, and I am going to go help out him and my mom for the week. Since I won't have access to a computer while I'm there, I have to say good-bye to the Internet until Sunday, Sept. 25th. When I return, I will have news of whether or not this cycle has resulted in a positive pregnancy test or not. In the meantime, I hope that you all have a good week.

It looks like this cycle is going to bite the dust

I just received a voice mail message from my RE's office concerning my 7 dpo progesterone level, which was checked in order to determine "the quality of my ovulation" during this cycle. My progesterone level was only 9.3, which is "not as high as they would like to see it." Only 9.3, despite the fact that I am shoving progesterone supplements up my hoo-ha twice a day! After doing some frantic Googling, I have determined that my chances of emerging from this cycle with a healthy pregnancy are very slim.

I feel so disappointed that I'm sickened.

What is going on? In the past, my progesterone test results have always been stellar, both with and without progesterone supplements. Now, on the cycle in which I have spent lots of time and money and incurred stress by poking myself with needles full of hormones in order to boost ovulation (not to mention getting prodded in my nether regions at my RE's office every few days), my progesterone level is crap.

I don't understand.

Support

One of the hardest things about having recurrent miscarriages has been that I often have not felt supported by many family members and real life friends.  A few people have been great and I thank God for them, but they definitely are in the minority.  I think that the remaining majority probably care about what my husband and I have been going through, but they have never experienced pregnancy loss and therefore they just don't "get it."  For example, all of the members of our families of origin have had children and are incredibly fertile. They all conceived their children while on birth control, while not really trying, or immediately after they started trying.  None of them have had even one miscarriage. 

And then there's me.

I know that it is unrealistic for me to expect fertile people who had their children so easily to understand what my husband and I have gone through over the past three years.  However, that doesn't stop me from wanting and needing helpful support and feeling sad and disappointed when it's not forthcoming.  All I really want them to do is to acknowledge that we are having a legitimately difficult time and to say "I'm sorry."  If they want to get fancy, they could throw in a hug, an offer to pray for us, or an offer to listen if we want to talk about it.  Maybe an occasional question about how we are doing with everything would be nice, too.  That's all.  Why is that so hard for so many people?

I find that people's unhelpful reactions generally fall into a few distinct categories:  (1) they know about the losses, but are uncomfortable and don't know what to do or say, so they pretend like nothing happened and say nothing, not at the time of a miscarriage and not afterward; (2)  they are uncomfortable and don't know what to say, so they fling around some cheap platitudes and then leave or change the subject as quickly as possible; (3) they feel the need to give unsolicited advice; or (4)  they minimize my pain by not hiding the fact that they think I am overreacting to losing an unknown little blob of cells.  To them, a miscarriage is just a minor medical event, no big deal, and being childless has its advantages like sleeping in and traveling more. 

I could give you examples of comments that have been made to me that would illustrate all of the above four points ad nauseum, but I think every infertile knows what I'm talking about.  If you're infertile, unfortunately you probably can think of plenty of examples of your own.

Curiously, several people have reacted by encouraging me to do more child-oriented volunteer work.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe they think that would be all I need to completely fill up the hole in my life where my child should be.  (I can tell you from personal experience that it's not.)  Maybe they think that I have more of a duty to contribute to society through philanthropy because I am not contributing a child and will have extra time and money as a result.

And then there are the people who were fairly supportive during my first couple miscarriages, but who subtly or not so subtly have let me know that they think it's foolish for me to keep trying and that I have used up my quota of miscarriage support from them.  Maybe in the past I would have thought that a woman who had four miscarriages would be crazy to keep trying.  Heck, sometimes I wonder if I AM crazy to keep trying.  But it still hurts to know that other people have given up hope that I will ever have a baby.

That's why I so greatly appreciate all of you who read my blog and leave comments on it.  In this infertility blogging community, unlike in real life, people "get it."  We understand how hard the struggle to have a baby can be, and we know how to provide helpful support to each other.  We understand why people keep trying in spite of many past disappointments and shaky prospects for future success.  It's so nice to be with people who "get it!" I am thankful for all of you, for the way that you share your stories on your own blogs and the way that you provide comfort by commenting on other people's blogs.  It has made me realize that I am not alone, and that has made a huge difference.