Keeping busy - The plan for day 6 of bed rest

I'm so grateful for the opportunity to still work from home while on bed rest. It helps me keep my mind off of the clock. I also looked at my pile of crocheted stuff - there are 5 blankets and a purse LOL.  Clearly I've been a crocheting mad woman!!! So this is sort of what my day looks like :

1. Wake up and shower
2. Eat breakfast
3. 1 morning conference call
4. Type up a few documents 
5. Watch an episode of cheaters
6. Eat a snack
7. Take a second conference call 
8. Watch an episode of First 48
9. Eat a snack 
10. Take a 3rd conference call
11. Draft a workplan
12. Draft some emails 
13. Post on my forums
14. Crochet for half an hour
15. Get on Blogger and post something else :)

Wow... my life has dwindled to pretty much what I can do on the couch or within arms reach. I should add that there are about 7 bathroom trips in the middle of all of that too. I'm also on another forum - www.keepemcookin.com . I get tweets from them about interesting things to check online. Right now www.bored.com has made it on my bedrest survival kit!

So begins day 6 of bed rest

I'm coming up on my first week of bed rest. So far so good. I'm sooo eager to go to the doctor tomorrow and get a read on how my cervix is doing. The most frustrating thing with incompetent cervix is that you're totally asymptomatic until you're about to lose your baby. I'm doing alright - and not going completely crazy yet.... but then again I've got 14 weeks and one day to go!

My second trimester pregnancy loss (at 20 weeks)

I got pregnant by surprise. In fact - it was nothing short of a miracle - except I didn't realize it at the time. I found out when I was 11 weeks pregnant. The story of how I found out was actually kind of interesting. I was driving into town one day, and I suddenly felt really really tired. Not tired - like I should go and take a nap tired, but tired like my eyes are closing right now. I was cruising in the speeding lane, and I noticed a loud fast thumping sound. That was me waking up as my car started skidding into the barriers in the speeding lane! It hit me - I had just fallen asleep!


Completely freaked out, I drove straight to the doctor's office. I simply told them what happened and said I'm not leaving here until you tell me what's wrong with me. They ran tests on me for hours. I went from one office to another. They thought I had a virus, thought I had a UTI, thought I had some kind of infection, and then hours into it - one doctor came in and said... ummm... you might want to sit down for this. I sit down - and he's like you're pregnant! We do an ultrasound and confirm I'm 11 weeks pregnant. How could I have gone almost 3 months without knowing I was pregnant? In retrospect - it was actually pretty easy - I was PCOS and having a period was a rare event for me anyway!


Moving forward, at about 19 weeks and 6 days, that evening, I wasn't feeling so hot. It wasn't anything major but I felt a little bit uncomfortable. I didn't think so much of it because I was scheduled for a doctor's appointment the next day. I distinctly remember going to the bathroom before sleeping, and I saw a little extra yellow discharge in the toilet. It wasn't a huge amount, I wasn't in pain, and it really didn't seem that significant. I went to bed, and then in the morning drove myself to the doctor's office. When I got examined, the doctor's eyes got real wide. He stepped out for a bit, came back in a few minutes and said - you have to go to the hospital immediately - the labor and delivery entrance. You're 4 cm dilated!!! Are you sure you're not in any pain? 

I was in complete shock. I was in no pain, and had no discomfort. I called my husband and told him to meet me there. I got to the hospital and was admitted and put in a critical care ward in  Labor and Delivery. There I got the news, I was in danger of losing my baby. They put me in the Trendelenburg position. It's sort of a way to raise your legs over your hips to help the baby "slide" back in and reduce pressure on the cervix. The picture to the left is an example of it.


That experience was a blur of nurses and doctors. People would randomly come in, lift the sheet and poke around there and move on. I distinctly remember telling the nurse that I am this child's mother, and she's not coming until I say so. Hollow words in a dire situation. The doctor's wanted to put in an emergency cerclage but I started to get contractions. My contractions wouldn't stop. On day 3 of this wait-and-see game, I felt some moisture between my legs. I called a nurse who did a test for amniotic fluid and gave me the bad news. My water had broken - and my baby wasn't going to make it. I then prepared myself to deliver my baby knowing she had no chance of making it at 20 weeks. 


Another thing I didn't realize... at 20 weeks - you go through a full delivery - except you come out empty handed. I had an epidural put in and the doctor warned me that the baby might cry but I shouldn't take that as a sign she will make it - it wasn't possible. Fortunately our baby died in childbirth and I didn't have to hear her die. The delivery was fine. The nurses wrapped the baby in a blanket and left her in an incubator for me. I took one look, but I refused to get too fixated on it. I never named her either. I sort of needed to accept what happened and to move on. The rest was pretty standard, I recovered, was released from hospital and was sent home. I was an emotional wreck but I got through it. 


I'm a bit tired now - so I'll pick up later with the next piece of this story .... what happened when we realized that the placenta was not fully delivered and I was still passing chunks of tissue days later!


Part 2 of this post is here : http://pcosflowerchica.blogspot.com/2011/03/my-second-trimester-pregnancy-loss-at_25.html

Day 5 of bed rest

Well it's roughly 6 pm - so I guess I can almost count today as over. It's actually been a pretty decent day. My mom's here to keep me company - so that's helping - because I have someone to talk to all day long. Not that my cell phone isn't ringing off the hook since I'm working from home.

Today the baby has been kicking me. Yesterday she was kicking so low that I found myself googling "baby kicking low" and "cerclage failure" for an hour. I haven't been on bed rest long enough to have lost my mind, however, I am definitely beginning to feel the start of cabin fever. For example, I haven't been outside in 5 days. I look out the window  - but it's been too chilly to go out. Even if I did go out - I can't really go much further than the yard. I did find some cool bedrest t-shirts on www.cafepress.com - 4 reasons prison is better than bed rest :

1. daily showers
2. conjugal visits
3. An hour of exercise
4. An hour outside every day 

If 10 weeks from now - I'm still on bed rest and I haven't lost my sanity - I'm definitely buying that t-shirt. I've also been working on keeping busy. I've got more than enough gadgets and television and I can even crochet. I have knitting needles - but after 30 minutes of trying to copy a youtube how-to video on how to knit - I've pretty much discovered that it isn't for me! From time to time I'll post some links to things that have really helped me out. My first item is the most awesome tray that my husband bought for me : 

I'm absolutely loving it. It has 3 joints so it can configure to any height you need. Well that's enough rambling for one day...I'm going to count today as a win in the bedrest battle!

Survived Day 4 of bed rest

Thanks to my incompetent cervix - I'm on an indefinite bedrest - well probably closer to 15 weeks. My mom just arrived today to spend an indefinite amount of time with me :) That's cool too. I'm heading off to bed. I've managed to be somewhat productive today

1. worked on migrating one of my websites
2. made some progress on my 6th baby blanket
3. surfed the web
4. played some tower defense games
5. watched entirely too many movies!

I'm headed off to bed to make day 4 of bedrest end even faster! 3 days until I get my cervix measured again. I hope this week of rest has helped it.

Getting a PCOS Diagnosis

Let's face it - PCOS sucks. It sounds like a death sentence for a woman. I'm mean, let's be honest, women have a lot of self identity issues. We already have the whole, I'm not thin enough, I'm not pretty enough, I'm not wanted enough etc set of issues. However, one thing that we normally go through life believing, is that no matter what - I can reproduce. That makes me different from men. It's my one gift that no one can take away from me - right? Well.... there's also the pesky problem of finding a suitable DNA donor to make sure you spawn high-quality children, but in a nutshell - you're good - you can have kids. Now the catch to this is how do you know you really are fertile until you start trying? I mean I never had a normal cycle. And I had a whole string of (now I realize) crappy OBGYNs who made false promises of how birth control pills will regulate me. They all claimed that when I came off of the birth control pills, I'd be fertile and ready to have kids.

Boy were they totally off base there. I won't go into it today, but I did get pregnant on my own once, and that ended up in a miscarriage. This story starts a year after miscarrying and being ready to try and get pregnant. Funny thing, how when you want to get pregnant, you can't.... but when you're not trying - it just happens. Well when I wasn't trying - I got pregnant. When I began to try - I came to realize just how defective my reproductive system was!

So I came off of my birth control pills. About 90 days passed and not a maxi pad in sight! I went back to my obgyn, and they gave me provera to start my period, and said come back in 90 days if you don't have a period. Well another 90 days passed and still no period. Please note - I'm now 6 months into Trying to Conceive! My OBGYN didn't think anything strange of this. He simply said, let's do some rounds of a drug called clomid to see if that makes you ovulate. Each clomid cycle takes roughly 30 days + the time it takes for your period. You also need to use provera to cause a period before you start your clomid. So you can assume a clomid cycle is close to 60 days. Well 3 rounds of clomid ( increasing doses of 50, 10, and 150 mg) and NOTHING. I charted and I monitoring my temps and blew through a ton of ovulation predictor kits. NOTHING! Although I should say my last cycle gave me an ovulation positive that lasted 2 weeks straight. We're counting that as a negative. My poor husband was subjected to the emotionless sex of baby making as I demanded his seed as my cycle dictated. What a total waste. By the way - baby making sex can completely destroy any passion in a relationship!

So 3 rounds of clomid later - I'm still feeling barren as ever. I'm now roughly a year into my Trying to Conceive. Well... my OBGYN gave up. He said I probably need to speak to an endocrinologist. So I scheduled an appointment and went off to my first specialist. That was quite the experience. She looked at me, looked at the 6 hairs I have under my chin (yes just 6) and looked at my waist line and said - yep you have PCOS. I'm going to prescribe metformin for you and you schedule an appointment with me in 3 months.  It was not a terribly informative doctor's appointment. So I got in my car, drove home, started to cry a little as I felt bewildered and didn't understand what this PCOS disease was I had. I went to the pharmacy, picked up my prescription, and drove home.

My dear sweet husband decided to take me out to dinner to make me feel better about everything. I figured that would be a good time to take my first pill, since it needed to be taken with meals. We went to an italian restaurant - CRITICAL MISTAKE #1. I had a pasta dish - CRITICAL MISTAKE #2. I also split a dessert with my husband - CRITICAL MISTAKE #3. At the end of the meal, I popped my metformin pill - CRITICAL MISTAKE #4 -  and we drove home. About half way home I heard a gurgle in my stomach. I told my dear husband that I thought maybe dinner didn't agree with me. By the time we got home, my stomach sounded like one of those water coolers you see in offices. I went to the bathroom - and experienced what can only be described as explosive diarrhea. It also lasted until 4 in the morning. I literally thought I was going to die or maybe crap out part of my large intestine. I've never had a stomach run so bad. It felt like my system was ejecting everything I had ever eaten. I told my husband that if my stomach did not stop by morning, we'd have to call an ambulance. It was so bad, I couldn't risk sitting in a car with my stomach running the way it was.

Around 4 am it subsided, and I was feeling brave enough to get into bed. I called my doctor in the morning, no answer. I called 3 times a day for the next few days - but no one called me back. I decided at that moment that I needed to get educated about my condition and my medication and I needed to get educated FAST! I went online and googled metformin and PCOS and landed on Soul Cysters. For those of you in the PCOS community - you know it's the largest PCOS support forum out there. I started to read about metformin (and its side effects) as well as PCOS. The more I read, the more I realized I needed to speak to a fertility specialist. So began my road towards dealing with my PCOS....

Introduction to my little infertility battle

It's going to take me quite a while to actually tell my whole story, so I'll just start with where I am in my battle right now. As the days pass (and they will pass slowly as I'm on bedrest), I'll give a full breakdown of my story.

Where I am right now: 
I'm in my low 30's right now, 21 weeks pregnant, lying on a couch using a funky little laptop tray. This is pretty much going to be my life for the next 15 weeks. I'm on doctor ordered modified bed rest because my cervix has decided it's not interested in staying closed for 9 months. I have PCOS. Many of you will know what this is  - but if you don't - it's PolyCystic Ovarian Syndrome. In plain english, my ovaries have way too many cysts. Well the cysts are more like baby eggs that never grow into full mature eggs. Thus.... my infertility. To add insult to injury, not only do I have trouble getting pregnant, I also have an incompetent cervix. I've always hated that term! This means my cervix has a nasty tendency of trying to open up in the almost impossible event that I get pregnant. Yet here I am, pregnant against all odds (for the second time), lying on a couch, contemplating how I'm going to survive another 15 weeks lazying around the house without going crazy.

I guess I should also add another disclaimer, the first time I got pregnant - I managed to do it on my own. That ended up horribly. Pretty much at 20 weeks, I walked into a doctor's office for a routine checkup and was dilated. 3 days later I lost my baby. This was after oh.... 6 years of rampant unprotected sex with my husband. That pretty much sums up just how infertile I really am! This time around, 4 years later, I went the super star route and did IVF. It actually worked and here I am pregnant - trying to stay pregnant and not lose all the out-of-pocket money we spent getting me pregnant!

Where I'm going
Well obviously, I'm working on having baby #1. But I'm not planning on stopping here. I'd like to have a real family - at least 2 kids. Not only that, but I totally plan to beat this PCOS thing. I've been lucky and I don't have many of the painful side effects of PCOS - like hairiness, obesity, skin tags (although I do have one boob darker that the other!), depression, anxiety, etc. All I have is a little belly fat that won't go away, a constant extra 15 pounds of weight that's stubborn to come off, and ovaries that are so polycystic - they look like bunches of grapes on an ultrasound! Goal #1 for me is to become a PCOS mother, then a PCOS mother of 2, then to be a PCOS mother with regular periods, and if all goes well a PCOS mother who doesn't develop Type II diabetes!