If you’re anything like me when you get back from vacation, it’s hard to get back on track with pretty much everything. When I got home my biggest priority became getting enough sleep while I got back into the work routine, it’s still a work in progress. For some reason I’ve been wide awake tossing and turning in bed for hours each night since I’ve been back. My house has a massive laundry monster sitting on the counter that needs to be put away. But hey, at least it’s all clean clothes. My biggest priority now is making sure I am getting the nutrients I need for this upcoming FET, while also continuing to exercise despite the fact that I still want to hibernate while it’s cold out.

 

Catch-up on Previous FET Prep Posts

FET Prep Week 1: 3.5 months until FET

FET Prep Week 2: Supplements, WTF Email, & Increased AMH Level

FET Prep Week 3: You say Future Tripping, I say Future Planning

FET Prep Week 4: Bad News from SIS Test

FET Prep Week 5: Surgery, Depression & Trip to Nevada

FET Prep Week 6: Relax! You’re on Vacation.

Countdown Until FET: 67 days (as of 2-17-2020)

 

Food Plan

If you’ve been following my previous FET posts you know that I’ve been trying intermittent fasting. Well it kind of worked, until I seemed to have hit a plateau. I lost a few pounds fairly quickly but then the scale was not budging at all. You know the saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well I think my intermittent fasting was “broke” and I needed to figure out something different. 

I think this is a critical time to make sure I’m getting all the nutrients I need. I’m going to focus on getting more fruits and veggies in my life and less processed food. Ideally, I’d like to have a green smoothie for breakfast, salad for lunch, and a healthy dinner. I think that’s a reasonable plan to help up my nutrient intake. I want to get back into the routine of using the MyFitnessPal app to track my calories. It’s not going to be the end of the world if I don’t meet my weight loss goals before my FET, but it would be nice to drop some more pounds.

 

Medical Debt

So I’m happy to report I’ve been getting some more hours at work and have been able to pay off a pretty good chunk of one of my larger medical bills. Last year I was at work when I started having my fifth miscarriage. I was working the overnight shift. I called my doctor in that early morning and she urged me to leave right away and go to the ER, mostly because her office wasn’t open yet and she couldn’t see me. Part of me regrets listening to her advice because if I had just waited another five hours I could have seen her at her office and maybe avoided the nearly $3,000 ER bill. 

My previous reproductive endocrinologist had a completely different approach and told me it was okay to naturally have my miscarriage at home, and to just call if there were complications. But now I had the second RE telling me the exact opposite and almost yelling through the phone that I needed to go to the ER right away. Sometimes it’s hard to know the right thing to do, and maybe I did avoid an even worse scenario by going to the ER. But I still feel like that $3,000 bill could have been avoided. Even though these handful of remaining medical bills are a s***ty reminder of my miscarriages, what I do feel good about is knowing that I’m keeping up with my bills. They aren’t paid off quite yet, but I hopefully will have them paid off soon. 

 

Post-op Follow-up 

My local OBGYN went over my hysteroscopy results on Wednesday. He showed me pictures of the inside of my uterus and the scar tissue he removed. “You see that there, you had some extra scar tissue just kind of floating around.” I’ve got to be honest, I am so weirded out by seeing those pictures. “Would you like to keep this?” he asked me about the photos. “I’m good,” I said. I don’t need a macabre reminder of this royal pain in the ass scar tissue that keeps returning, causing my FET to be delayed. 

He said I should contact my Seattle fertility clinic about the next steps to prepare for my FET. He seems to think that I won’t need to do a repeat SIS. I hope not, because this last SIS was $1200. I just sent off a message to my clinic’s patient portal asking about the next steps. I really hope I can stay on track with my April FET timeline. But it’s not the end of the world if my schedule gets thrown off. I was originally planning on doing this FET April of last year. But Mom was diagnosed with cancer and I wanted to help in whatever way I could to be there for her after her surgery. It was a high stress time, so we decided to postpone the FET. And then later in the year I had my miscarriage from natural conception which caused a major complication, I was being told I was at risk of developing uterine cancer. My doctor said I absolutely should not get pregnant for six months. So here I am now, two months away from being out of the absolutely-no-baby window.

My doctor had some really kind words for me with this visit. He said, “You have been through so much. Much more than any of my other patients. I’ve never seen anyone handle all of this with so much grace.” He really emphasized the word grace. I thanked him and said, “Some days are definitely harder than others. It is what it is. But I just try to keep moving forward.” It was really nice to hear someone acknowledge my struggle and tell me the way I am dealing with it is admirable. He wished me well with my upcoming FET and said, “I hope next time we meet we’ll be making plans for your baby’s delivery.” 

 

Imagining Motherhood

I’ve been dealing with miscarriages and infertility for four years. When I think about what it will actually be like to be a mother (biological or through adoption), it seems almost unimaginable. I’m so used to this struggle and not having kids, that picturing myself as a mother seems kind of surreal. I’ve been told by different people over the years that I would be a great mother. It simultaneously melts my heart while also putting me in a state of disbelief because I have zero experience with being a mother. How is it that everyone so easily envisions me as a mother, but I’ve somehow developed a mental block of actually seeing it come to fruition?

I used to imagine what it would be like to be a mother. Picking up the kids from school, doing craft projects, going sledding, teaching them the alphabet and on and on. I had so many dreams of what my kids and I would do together. But with each pregnancy loss and each year that went by, I think I stopped myself from dreaming so much. As a couple, we decided to stop thinking about baby names until I reached the second trimester. But I never ended up reaching the second trimester with any of my pregnancies. Recently a friend of mine asked what baby names I’ve thought of for my future kids. The question totally threw me. What were those names? It seemed like so long ago that I had them picked out. Now I can’t even remember them? I had to actually take a full several minutes to try to recall the names I used to always have ready to rattle off quickly for both boys and girls. 

Some people say you should visualize your dreams often to help them come true. But sometimes doing that can be painful and actually counterproductive. These days I try not to get ahead of myself and I only think of the next step I need to take. I used to play out all these scenarios in my head of “If A happens I’ll do B. If B doesn’t work I’ll do C” and on and on until there are no letters left in the alphabet. I’d say I have run through the whole English alphabet of possible scenarios, and now I’m using other languages’ alphabets. It can get overwhelming to think so far ahead, and I find it much easier to cope if I look at what’s right in front of me. I find comfort in the quote from E.L. Doctorow, “It’s like driving at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

 

Mini Victories for the Week

Messaged Seattle clinic about next steps for FET.

I’ve been replacing coffee more with tea instead.

Monthly hCG results are still negative and I’m happy to report no signs of GDT.

 

Work in Progress

Go grocery shopping for more healthy foods.

Break my hibernation mode more often with daily exercise.

Clean the house more to create a more zen and relaxing environment.

 

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