It's been a long week

I started and stopped this blog post several times over the last several days, as I needed to write something out for my own sake, but just wasn't quite sure how to get there.  Let's just say it's been a long week.

It started out wonderfully two weekends ago.  We went to St. Louis to celebrate my father's 60th birthday.  My parents, my brother & his girlfriend, and my dad's sister, T and I went out to dinner, went to a Cubs/Cardinals game, and just in general had a great time.  Cheers to St. Louis!

I already was in a bit of a funk on the drive home.  September 29th would have been the due date from our FET baby.  The one that we thought totally changed our world.  October 1st officially marked 2 months of being active at the adoption agency.  Both just reminders that while the world flies by around us, we continue to wait.

On Sunday night/Monday morning (a week ago), I noticed something really odd.  My feet were driving me crazy!  My progesterone allergy was in full gear.  The odd thing was is that I was nearing the end of my period, so I should have no issues at that point.  The allergy should flair up about 6 or 7 days past ovulation, when my progesterone peaks, and then disappear by the time my period starts.  In a normal natural cycle, I don't even really need to take medication when it peaks.  It's just noticeable. 

So, while I'm at work on that Monday with my feet going crazy, I'm at a super loss at what could be happening.  Why my progesterone would still be elevated, and in fact higher than it was the previous several days.  The logical answer for any normal person (or at least a normal person with a foot allergy to progesterone?) is that she is pregnant.  Obviously not the case with me, but I dubiously stopped by the drugstore on the way home, purely so I could put that notion out of my head.

It was positive.  Very light, in no way a viable pregnancy, but still positive.  As in, we did it all on our own.  I showed T, and since we both couldn't accept the truth, agreed that it must be the work of aliens.  It was the only logical explanation.

I took another the next day and the line was almost gone.  My feet stopped itching about a day after that.  In the reproduction world, they call this a chemical pregnancy.  The sperm and egg met, combined, and even implanted, but nothing ever really grew.  My period was a little wonky and started early, which makes sense in retrospect (it represented when I was losing the pregnancy), but really didn't faze me at the time.  If I didn't have the itchy feet, I would never even have known I was pregnant.

But, I do know.  And now when asked how many times I've been pregnant and how many children I've given birth to, I'm officially 3 and 0.

We're still not totally sure what to think.  The adoption process is certainly not stopping.  I called my ob/gyn (I'm never going back to our local fertility clinic), and said I was ready for the recurrent pregnancy loss bloodwork.  She seemed confused.  "Are you trying to get pregnant?", she asked me.  "If you aren't trying to get pregnant, I can just put you on birth control and you won't miscarry."  Obviously, I'm not trying to get pregnant, but God knows I don't want to prevent a pregnancy.  Trying implies that I have a belief that I may get pregnant, that effort equals success.

And I'm still pretty convinced that our 1% chance of success just manifested itself and isn't planning on coming back any time soon.  But I figured we should do the bloodwork just in case.  In case, I can take some blood thinners or thyroid medication or whatever it may be that could help if I ever found myself in this position again with a potentially viable pregnancy.  So I made the appointment for the necessary doctor consult in January which is the first time I could get in.  Ridiculous, but I doubt we are in any sort of hurry.

So, blech.  That seems like the best word to summarize the situation.