My Traveling Red Dress Experience

The history of the dress

I bought this dress a little over seven years ago.  

It’s been worn exactly twice, and languishing in my closet the rest of the time.  It was bought for me to wear as a bridesmaid in a Christmas wedding, the wedding of two of my best friends who soon started trying to have a family.  After a two and a half year struggle with infertility they were finally able to conceive, and now they have two of the most beautiful twin girls I’ve ever seen (saw them just last week).

When my husband and I started our attempts to have a baby they, along with another close friend who has PCOS like me, were my inspiration.  From tests to treatments to disappointments they had been through it all before me, and held my hand (literally and figuratively) through it all.  Then four years in I started with a new group of fertility specialists and FINALLY got pregnant.

It was the last week in January 2011 that I wore this dress for a second time.  I’ve been deeply involved in music from very early on: sang before I could talk, piano lessons from age 3, music major in college, and through it all I’ve had debilitating stage fright.  I try over and over with mixed results to force myself to sing/play/speak in public.  That January, the same week I started new treatments for what was wrong inside me, I decided to work on the outside as well.  America’s Got Tallent auditions came to Atlanta, so inspired by theblogess and her red dress wearing encouragement I went to the auditions, red dress and all.  The good news is, I’m not bad enough to make it on TV.  The bad news is, I’m not good enough to make it on TV either.  But I made it through, and with that boost of confidence I didn’t embarrass myself to badly.

Only two weeks later I found out I was pregnant for the first time.  I was overjoyed, only to have a miscarriage three weeks in.  It was devastating.  I tried to see the good in all this.  I mean, at least this proved that I COULD get pregnant, something I hadn’t managed in four years of trying.  But to have our hopes raised and dashed in such short order, only to be followed by month after month of disappointment seemed more than I could take.  My self-image went to pot!  From January to September I had gained nearly 20 lbs.  Nothing seemed to matter, not how much I ate or exercised, I’m sure all the crazy hormones I was on didn’t help, so we decided to take the rest of the year off to focus on getting healthy and then decide how to face the new year.

In October I started having horrible lower back and stomach pain, similar to monthly cramps, but instead of a day or so and then my period they went on for nearly a week with no sign of change.  I finally realized that they were in the same location as pains I had had during my first pregnancy.  Turns out, I managed to conceive, no timing, no drugs, no idea how this happened after almost five years of trying everything under the sun.  I spent the next two months terrified to eat the wrong thing, exercise to hard, expose myself to any chemicals, anything at all.  I was so terrified of another miscarriage.  Add to that terrified to tell people I was pregnant again only to have it end in disappointment again.

The dress moves on

So when Jenny mentioned having a new red dress photo shoot a few days back, http://thebloggess.com/2012/01/the-traveling-red-dress-revisited/, I looked at my body and said, no way am I fitting into that dress.  But it got me to wondering, if I can’t wear the dress, who could?  I mean, it’s a beautiful dress, and it’s spent the majority of the last seven years crushed in my closet gathering dust.  So I offered it out.  This was the response I got:

I need this dress. My struggles are with infertility, and weight. I turned 30 back in June, and every day my hopes of becoming a mother just slip further away. My life is consumed by the tremendous booming of my biological clock. We can not get pregnant without IVF, but financially we are fish out of water. Asking us for $15,000.00 is like asking for a million. 

I wake up every single day, chocking back the tears and just feeling damn sorry for myself. I can’t seem to shake it. I don’t want to work, or be social, or even cook a meal for my husband. For the life of me, I’m trying to summon the will to do anything-absolutely anything. I haven’t allowed photos of myself to be taken in over 8 years, because I HATE what I see looking back at me. I’ve completely lost my own worth. And I need to find it again. I have to. I have to wear that dress.

I swear only God could have let this person see my little comment way down on theblogess’s website offering the dress.  To have this dress offer encouragement to someone else going through the same struggles I’ve been through means so much to me.  So as this dress is on its way to its new home in Idaho it goes with all the prayers and blessings and love I can send with it, for the next lady who will wear it, and the next, and the next.

Well, I thought I was taking a break (warning, probably contains over-sharing)

I was just looking through old drafts and realized I never posted one from a month and a half back called "Taking a Break."  You know how they say that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans?  Well, I'm thinking the folks that say that know what they're talking about!

After years of trying and months of invasive and painful treatments, we decided back in October to stop trying for a baby.  Well at least through the end of the year.  All the ups and downs were getting to me.  The weight gain, the hormones, sex on demand, the uncomfortable and sometimes painful procedures, knowing that THIS month was FINALLY going to be the month only to have something go wrong and have my hopes crushed, again.  I just couldn't take the stress.

So instead of another round of treatment starting in October I went on a diet and lost 8 lbs.  My husband and I went on a cruise.  I drank all the martinis I wanted.  Sex was spontaneous instead of planned, and I avoided thinking about anything having to do with anybody's reproductive schedule.  When the end of the month rolled around without a sign of my period, well, we all know I'm not likely to ovulate on schedule if at all, so I took a pregnancy test (negative) and started the standard progesterone to reboot the system another month.  But after a week, I realized I was feeling kinda weird.  My back hurt, not all that unusual for me, but my stomach hurt too, and then I realized that I was hurting in the same places that I hurt back in February with the pregnancy that ended in miscarriage, and I began to wonder.  Oh, I didn't feel as bad as I had back then, but then things could be early on.  Some stuff I could account to the progesterone.  My boobs had hurt in other cycles when I hadn't turned out to be pregnant, but my stomach, that was hard to discount.  So when I got home that night I looked, and I had one pregnancy test left.  I told myself I was stupid for wasting it.

I put it off until after dinner.  And then I took it, and watched it.  You know how you're supposed to wait three minutes for the line to develop?  Well I didn't even have to wait 30 seconds.  I was shaking when I showed it to my husband.  My next call was to the doctor's office to confirm.

I spent the next week and a half terrified at every twinge, looking for blood at every trip to the bathroom.  When I had my miscarriage in February I had no idea that there was even a possibility that anything was wrong.  I hadn't worried that anything would happen until it did.  This time I knew just how badly things could go, and it was a rare moment that I wasn't terrified that something was going wrong.  Then this:

In case you're wondering, that's a heartbeat there.  Now, can anyone tell me how to stop being terrified that something will go wrong at any minute?

The waiting game

When I talk to my friends with infertility they often talk about the month after month of disappointment.  And while that's horrible, I don't find that to be the worst of it.  See, with disappointment at least you know.  What we tried didn't work, so it's time to formulate a new plan, there're plans to make, and stuff to do.  There's always something different to try, and having something different to do makes it that much better.  It gives something to hope for.

No, the worst part of it is the time of the month where you just don't know where you stand.  You've done everything you can, and you have no idea whether it worked.  Every month you spend a couple weeks talking to your body, saying "Please let it take!"  "Everything's ok, you can focus on reproductive stuff now."  "Please let everything get together and do the right things this time."

And I'm afraid to do anything that could be the wrong thing.  I found myself watching a funny TV show last night, and laughing, wondering whether if I laughed to hard if it would jar anything loose and it wouldn't take.  I'm afraid to exercise to strenuously because I might get dehydrated and cause a problem.  I'm afraid to do anything that could cause a lot of pain or stress on my body, lest my body decide that maybe now's not so good a time to put the focus on reproduction.  I kick myself wondering if the incident with the legs I burned with expired dilatory cream could have triggered some sort of fight or flight stress release that caused my miscarriage.  I don't know that I'll ever know.

So here I am; afraid to eat the wrong thing, afraid to get sick, afraid to move the wrong way, afraid to even laugh to hard!  Tired, and yet waking up in the middle of the night unable to think of anything but what MIGHT be going on inside me now.  Is it any wonder I'm no fun at all?

Terrified, Annoyed - Confessions of wigging out

Ok, so my one and only pregnancy thus far was an unmitigated disaster.  From the Sunday before I knew I was pregnant I started having horrible pain anywhere from 2-4 times a day, and each pain lasted anywhere from 20 minutes to three hours.  This lasted for the entire duration of the pregnancy and only stopped well after my miscarriage was in progress.  I can count on one hand the number of nights I was able to sleep through during that almost three weeks I was pregnant.  Each night I'd wake up with pains shooting across my middle, wrapped around to my back, and sometimes down to my knees.  Unable to get comfortable in any position I paced the house, often for hours at a time.  Of course if they hit during the day when I was stuck in a meeting I was in worse luck.  Sitting made the hurting worse, so I found myself shifting in my seat, unable to concentrate, unable to focus on anything but the pain.

I told one doctor about this and he told me that normal women whose ovaries work right go through this every month.  Right.  I'm not buying that normal women have PMS three weeks out of the month.  If they did there would be a LOT more voluntary hysterectomies.  For another thing, I don't think I'm THAT wussy!  I know what PMS is, I've had it, and it's nothing to write home about. It's DEFINITELY nothing that would keep me up at night. 

And then my world crashed down.  Having a miscarriage the same week Grandpa died... I don't even have the words.  It's been over a month now and I still don't have the words to express how much the world was against me.  I remember one time when I was in middle school, 8th grade I think, and I had the flu on the heels of strep throat.  I was in bed much of that time, and the very first time I went outside in over a week I sat down on a cross-tie next to the driveway and as I straightened up from sitting a bird pooped on the back of my head and down the back of my shirt.  Having a miscarriage?  Worse than that!

So now, a month later, I'm looking at our next steps with more than a little trepidation. I'm terrified, and I feel evil for being terrified.  I'm terrified of getting pregnant and losing the baby, and I'm scared of the pain that I had during my first pregnancy that kept me up at night and made it near impossible to think at work.  And I'm just all around scared and nervous volunteering for this process again.  I came home a few nights back and went straight for the jellybeans and chocolate.  I've really noticed this miscarriage has caused huge stress eating.  The week of the miscarriage I went through a large bag of dark chocolate peanut M&M's in about two days.  And then there were the jellybeans.  Add to this that my doctor asked me to cut my thyroid medicine in half for this try, and I've gained 10 lbs since January, most of it since the miscarriage I'm sure.  Of course I was to upset to go near a scale so I don't really know when all this started.  I'm just now starting to get my focus off the comfort eating and onto trying to be healthy again.

I know I'm just wigging out from nerves.  I WANT a baby, I DON'T want to loose another one.  This is not the same as thinking I can't handle it.  I can handle quite a lot without dying, or throwing myself off a cliff, or staying in bed for the rest of my life, but I know that losing another baby would be very HARD to handle.  I'm scared of the pain that went with my last pregnancy coming back.  I was seriously miserable and couldn't sleep through the night for something like two weeks.  I had people calling me a wuss, telling me to get over it, and telling me to get used to it because this was going to be what motherhood is like.  So, I'm still trying, but I've lost all joy in it.  And I'm scared.  

That's my confession, sorry for pouring it out like that, and I'm sure that really is TMI.

A guide to helping your friend/family member/co-worker/complete stranger through personal tragedy

1. Say you're sorry to hear about fill in blank here with the applicable trial, tribulation or loss.
Some common options include:  the death of a family member, the loss of a pregnancy, a bad haircut, your infected hangnail... the options are endless.

2. Have you said you're sorry for whatever?  Good.  Stop! 

Have you personally gone through what the person you're consoling has gone through?
Are you ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN you know all of their situation, what led up to this and if there are any extenuating circumstances?

If the answer to either of these questions is no, DON'T SAY ANYTHING!

If you haven't had a miscarriage I don't want to hear your suggestions of what I did wrong this time.  If you haven't had fertility issues you have no idea what I've been through.  If you haven't suffered a great loss then you can't identify with mine.  So say you're sorry for me, that you wish things were different, that it was a bloomin' shame and then move on to a completely different topic. 

Things folks have said to me in the couple weeks since my miscarriage that made me want to rip their beating heart from their chest and stomp on it:

"I had no problem getting pregnant once I quit my job.  You should stay home and you'll have no problem having children." 
The response I would have given if I thought well on my feet, "I've been trying to have children for four years.  During that time I've worked three different jobs, and I've been unemployed for a while as well.  At this point I need the job to pay for the fertility doctors."

"Don't worry.  You'll be pregnant again in a month and it'll go better next time."
The response I would have given if I didn't work for you, "This is the first time I've shown any signs of being pregnant in four years of trying.  While I certainly hope it won't take another four years, it could easily take months or years for me to get this far again."

"It was just the wrong egg at the wrong time.  There's nothing you can do but try again."
The response I gave, "Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the definition of insanity."

"It's normal to have a miscarriage when you first get pregnant after having taken birth control pills."
Ok, I'll give you that this is my first pregnancy after going off birth control pills FOUR YEARS AGO!  Sometimes people have a specific medical condition for which birth control pills are the prescribed treatment.  There are lots of reasons to take birth control pills, and taking them does not equate to saying "I never want children."  Also, studies have shown that taking birth control pills does NOT increase your chance of having a miscarriage, even if you get pregnant while still taking them.

"You just need to get into the best shape of your life, and then you won't have any problems at all."
Fuck off!  See this weight?  I'd challenge you got not gain weight when you have poly-cystic ovarian syndrome, and under active thyroid, and are taking all the hormones I have to take just to get pregnant.  I eat plenty of vegetables, without an excessive amount of sugar or fat.  I walk often, ride my bike and am generally active.  Would I like to loose 50 lbs? Yes!  But I'm happy enough with the 20 lbs I've lost since I was properly dosed and medicated, and don't need you judging me!

Trying to find the bright side of miscarriages

Hot dogs.  They're not allowed when you're pregnant.  They go the way of all processed meats, like lunch meat.  I think it's because of the nitrates.  I've had 23 hot dogs in the last two weeks.

Pain.  I'm not in any.  At least not physically.  Apparently being pregnant through fertility treatments is a very painful process with all the hormones going crazy and stuff.  I was in pain up to a level 7-8 (on a scale of 0-10) anywhere from 2-4 times a day with each time lasting anything from 20 minutes to two hours.  It woke me up at night, and kept me from working in the day.  It hurt to sit, it hurt to lie down, about the only thing that helped was to get up and pace my house.  Which I did.  For HOURS.  That stopped with the miscarriage.  The doctors didn't seem to think it was anything serous.  Hmmmm.

My husband gets to keep his car a little while longer.  Not that he wouldn't gladly trade it in for something with a back seat.  We're supposed to be going to the Atlanta auto show in a few weeks to look for a car that will allow him to have the new baby in the back seat.  This takes the pressure off.

Basil.  It's my favorite herb.  It's thought to trigger contractions so pregnant women shouldn't have to much, at least until they're ready to give birth.  Course when my sister-in-law was overdue we went out for Italian so that she could get all the basil she wanted to trigger labor.  I gave it up while I was pregnant.  I missed it.  Tonight I'm having lasagna made with home made sauce.  The sauce has a cup and a half of basil in the recipe.  There's basil in the meatballs too.  Mmmm, basil.

Vodka.  It helps you forget.  It helps you feel good.  I'm trying not to drink to much because I have a feeling that I could EASILY fall into a depression if I had to much right now.  But a little bit helps a lot.

4 years, 5 doctors, where are we now?

Four Years.

That's how long it's been since my husband and I decided we were ready to start our family. We actually made the decision earlier, at his cousin's wedding. I remember lying in bed with him in the hotel that night after the reception. Talking. We always lie in bed and talk. It's the place we go to solve the worlds problems and our problems. It's hard to be mad at each other when you're wrapped in the other's arms, faces inches apart. It's intimate, both physically and emotionally. It's hard to fight in this position, and easy to cry. But there was no fight this night, nor any tears. We'd been married a year and a half, and loved our time together, but thought it was time to invite someone else into the family. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't apprehensive. We couldn't agree on much about names, we both vetoed the other's favorite girl names. I didn't know if I would be a good parent, but I knew I would try.

Five Doctors.

I knew heading into this there were problems. One doctor had suspected I had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and had told me that I probably had never ovulated on my own. So when I went to her to tell her we were ready to try I was VERY surprised at her plan of attack. She wanted us to try on our own for a year. This seemed like a total waste of time to a person who'd been told only a year before that she probably didn't ovulate on her own. But we tried. For a year. And nothing happened, just as I suspected. So I went back and we tried fertility drugs. Three months I spent on Clomid, with migraines so bad I would come home and go straight to bed crying. I couldn't stand light, I couldn't stand movement. It's really hard to get pregnant when you can't stand for your husband to touch you.

So I went back, a glutton for punishment. She told me that sometimes women with PCOS need to loose weight before they can get pregnant.

800 Calories.

She suggested I try Weight Watchers or South Beach. I tried both, and gained weight on them. She insisted that weight loss is as simple as calories in & calories burned. I started out at about 1000 calories a day, but when that didn't have the results I wanted, I slowly found ways to cut down. 100 calories for breakfast. 200 calories for lunch. Maybe a 100 calorie snack in the afternoon, and a small dinner. I never got below 192 lbs. I went back to the doctor to tell her my results, and she accused me of lying.

So I found a new OB/GYN. This one was nice, but completely out of his depth. He suggested I try a reproductive endocrinologist, so I started looking for one. Of course our insurance didn't cover any much closer than twenty miles away, so instead I found a local PLAIN endocrinologist. On our first visit I told him my ultimate goal, to have children. He ran a great many tests. It was during this time that I adopted a new weight loss plan called "give the doctors all the blood they want." It was not unusual for me to give 11-12 vials of blood every few weeks, and for a few months I saw this doctor quite often. After a while I began to feel that tests were being run with little or no definitive results. So I sat down and specifically asked this endocrinologist if we were getting any closer to anything that would result in me being able to have children. His answer surprised me. He said, "I suspect you have PCOS, but if you want to know for sure then you should probably see a reproductive endocrinologist." I looked at him like he had two heads. He had told me pretty much what I knew when I started seeing him.

I felt like I'd just lost 5 months of my life, and we were no closer to having children than we were when my doctor accused me of lying to her. Then, upset, I went to see my chiropractor. Not for fertility issues, but she's given me good advice in the past, fixed my TMJ and we'd discussed in passing that I was trying to have children. We discussed how I was getting nowhere fast and she said that she knew two doctors, not specialists, but they focused on hormonal balance. I decided I was faced with two paths. I could drive twenty miles to a fertility specialist and use the brute force method of getting pregnant. Or I could go a more natural and hopefully gentler, closer, but also more expensive (not covered by insurance) way.

I spent a year and a half on the bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. I won't call it wasted time. We found that I had an underactive thyroid (no wonder I couldn't loose weight) and now I'm free to not obsess about food and I've lost twenty pounds. I'm healthier than I've ever been, but after a year and a half and still no sign of a baby (and a job change that resulted in better insurance) we agreed it was time to try the brute force method.

27 days

That's how long it took the fertility specialists to tell me I was pregnant. Of course it wasn't that simple. I'd been hurting for five days, and knew something different was going on. Horrible pains in my abdomen and lower back that would wake me up at night, or keep me from being able to sit at my desk during the day. When they came on there was no rest, no sitting, no lying, and no bending or stooping; just slow pacing in circuits around the house, sometimes for an hour or more at a stretch. On the few occasions I was stuck in meetings when an attack came on I would be completely unable to concentrate. I left meetings shaking and barely holding back tears for the pain. So when I went in for the blood test and mentioned it to the phlebotomist, and she said, "Well that's good, sounds like something's going on, you wanna talk to the doctor?" I said sure. I can handle pain. I don't exaggerate (I had someone at work ask) and I can work through almost anything and still be productive. I wasn't expecting a pity party or anything, but I did expect to be taken seriously. So when the doctor (it's a group, and I haven't seen this guy before) studied my chart and came in and told me that this was probably just PMS cramps and I haven't had them for 5 days before because my ovaries hadn't been working in the past, but normal women whose ovaries work go through this every month; I was a bit skeptical. Because I swear if normal women went through this every month we'd have a LOT more voluntary complete hysterectomies! I promise!

Still, I was reasonably prepared for them to come in and say the test was negative. They said they would call me with the results, but I wanted to stick around and find out, and they said it would only be an hour or so, and I'm not normally at work until 10:00 anyway. So I waited. She walked by and said the results are coming in now, and then I waited a while longer and wondered what was keeping her. She was in with the doctor, who was as surprised as I was when he heard I was pregnant, after just assuring me that I almost certainly wasn't.

3 weeks

That's how long I was pregnant before I miscarried our child. Our first child, the one I've been struggling to have for over four years. I keep telling myself we've made such progress. This is the first time there's been any evidence that I could conceive. I should be jumping for joy at the potential, shouldn't I? But I can’t find that in me. I’m raw, torn; I feel like my emotions have been tied to the back of a pickup and dragged down a gravel road. I find myself staring into space with an expression on my face, horrified, like I’ve just witnessed a gory murder. Well, I’m partially right.

1 miscarriage and I'm devastated.