More Proof That We're In A Good Place

Our doctor has been in the news lately! And not in a bad way, either! 

Most Rewarding Gift is Having a Baby
Dr. Perloe, Atlanta Journal Constition Feb 4. 2009. 
Read this article online

Octuplet Birth Sparks Fertility Debate
WebMD and Mark Perloe, M.D., Feb. 10, 2009. 
Read this article online

Too Many Babies, What Went Wrong?
MSNBC, Dr. Perloe, Jan. 29, 2009 
Read this article online

Getting Better All The Time

It's amazing to me how life throws things at you just to see how fast you can duck. Or, as Brett puts it, all of the sudden, life smacks you upside the head. I think he added, "and then runs away laughing" but that might be my brain putting words in his mouth. However, the general thought around here is that God can't possibly give you more than you can handle. Brett & I must be, HAVE TO BE, the two strongest people anyone has ever known. Ever.

After over a month of feeling pretty rotten about ourselves and others, this morning we both woke up feeling the sun warm on our backs. That is to say, I didn't cry myself to sleep last night, consider bolting this morning (though I need new tires & B. says Not Until I Say I Won't Bolt), or think I would spend the day in my jammy pants. Instead, I feel here. I feel decent. Mostly, I feel.

You're curious as to whether or not we've made a decision. No. We haven't. Well, I guess we have, but before we commit to it, we have to decide how far we're willing to go with IVF before we say OK that's cool, and move on to our next option.

Here's the dealeo about me feeling better about all this. Kathleen & I were talking last night - the first time she & I have had any sort of conversation since all this happened (sorry K.) and she made me think about it all very differently. First, she said that it's perfectly normal for me to be miserable and mopey, and I'll get out of it. It may take me running away to Mom & Dad Ramsden's for a few days, but I'll come through it. Brett & I have struggled with IVF because we were sad that New Beans would be Scientifically Created instead of Created the Old Fashioned Way. Here's what Kathleen said to that: It's not that they aren't created out of Love, but instead they are created out of Great Love. They are so wanted that you (Brett & I) are going to go to great lengths to get them to be in our family. Isn't that a nice way to look at it? Leave it to Kathleen.

So, all of that being said, for today I'm Pretty Good. I'm looking at Life in a way that I haven't seen it in quite some time. We ARE getting better all the time. I'm so very glad that I talked with Kathleen - she generally can, in her own special way, make things better. I'm so grateful for the friends & neighbors who've stopped by to talk with me, to share their stories of hope & to lend a shoulder. 

For a family of Science Lovers, the next year or so should be very interesting. I'll bet you can't wait to see what happens next. 

We'll keep you posted.

Love you.

Answers for Better or for Worse

I'm not even sure where to begin this. 

Today we went to see Dr. Perloe to get the answers from the pathology report. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, so Brett will comment below and add anything I missed or fix anything I said wrong. It's pretty scientific - as this whole baby process has been - so bear with me.

They found that the baby had a chromosomal abnormality. More specifically they found 69-XXX which means that there were three sets of chromosomes. Normally a person has two. The bean had three (it was a serious overachiever). There's no way to know for sure if it was an egg problem (like it let in two sperm) or a sperm problem (like it was faulty). Again, no way to know for sure, but given the number of miscarriages that we've had, it's probably something that's not really going to go away. Dr. Perloe's guess is that if we were to get pregnant again "spontaneously" (as if any of our pregnancies has been spontaneous), there is a 50 - 60% chance of all this happening again. While PCOS has something to do with the loss of the babies, in this case it was chromosomal. Most likely, according to Dr. Perloe, because this one was such a weird chromosomal abnormality, all the other may have been too. That's a lot of mights and maybes, but there it is.

So what does all that mean? It means that Brett and I have to start making some serious decisions. 

Our Choices:

1. Try again naturally and see what happens.

2. IVF

3. Adoption

If we go with choice 1, there's a fairly good chance (to repeat myself) of having yet another miscarriage (50 - 60% if you weren't listening). Dr. Perloe said that it's not hurting my body, but the question is how it's hurting my brain. Given that I have been in a fog and avoiding most people for the past three weeks, I'd say it's hurting my brain.

Choice 2, IVF: Ordinarily, the embryologist at Georgia Reproductive Specialists looks at the embryos through a microscope and he finds some that are doing their thing and implant those embryos. HOWEVER. Given that nothing can be simple for this Lemon (meaning me), we have to go through a geneticist who would do serious testing on our embryos. That's an over simplification. What happens is that they would take a bunch of eggs and fertilize them. Then, after 3 or 5 days (depending on which test we decide we want them to do, which comes down to $$), they would test the embryos for chromosomal stuff. Of that bunch of eggs, according to Dr. Perloe, there is a likelihood that they'll find MAYBE three, more likely one or two, that are good viable embryos. Those two they'll insert and we'd start hoping for implantation. There's a chance that this won't work also in which case there is another option. At that point, I stopped listening. I couldn't focus on more than one battery of information.

Choice 3 is Adoption. I'm not sure we aren't called to adopt. I don't want to hear anyone say, "Oh You're Young, You'll Get Pregnant." At this point, that's horse hockey. If we go with the adoption option, we are sure that we'll have a baby that we'll love and adore and take care of. It's definitely on the table as a good option for us, we just have a lot of thinking to do about it.

Now, that's what we learned at the doctor, and that's some of what we discussed in the car on the way home. Well, we discussed that and whether or not the whispers on Lost were in Latin or not. It was a long drive home. 

If you have questions, please post them on here and I will respond as best I can. That way I don't have to answer questions over and over. I don't know if you've read between the lines on this, but this is an extremely touchy subject for us and we now have options that are terrifying and require a lot of thought and prayers. Please be sensitive to that and don't call to ask us questions. It's a lot easier to write answers here on my own time than to be on the phone and having to answer then. 

We have a lot of information that Brett & I are going to have to go through and we have to talk to the geneticists and then figure things out. We'll probably start making decisions in the next few weeks. Stay posted!

We love you all so much and we're so grateful for the support you've given us. It's going to be a long road, whatever path we choose, so please be patient with us. It's hard to ask for compassion, but that's what we're asking for. This really and truly sucks on so many levels, but I am completely sure that with so much love behind us, we'll get though and we'll be able to give some little soul a wonderful home. 

So, here we go.

Much Love.

Thursday

Okay, as hard as this is, we're going to keep writing. That way we don't have to keep telling the same story over and over.

First, thank you very much for your love and support while we've been trying to heal. It's a very long, hard process, but we're very grateful for the prayers and the calls and the care that everyone's shown us while we've gone through this awfulness. Thankfully, there isn't a time limit on the mourning deal, so we don't have to feel like there's a clock ticking. "Ah, it's been three weeks, Adele & Brett must be healed." Fortunately, no one GETS to tell us that. We're still sad. We still cry together. I mean, shoot, man, we've lost SIX freakin' babies! No one gets to tell us how quickly we have to be done being sad or feeling lost. We'll get there when we get there.

Now: on Thursday, we'll go to back to Dr. Perloe's office for more blood work (my HCG levels haven't gotten down to pre-pregnancy levels yet) and for the pathology report. Not really sure what we're hoping to get out of the pathology report, but maybe and perhaps we'll have some helpful and hopeful news. Not really expecting GOOD news, after all, how can it be good? But we'll have answers and most likely our next steps.

Seriously, we appreciate your prayers. It's amazing what losing your babies will do for your spirituality. We'll post Thursday's report on Thursday so we don't have to tell the same story over and over and over again.

XOXO.

We're Trying.

this sucks so bad.