More children that is.
Can I tell you how sick I am of this question? I have absolutely NO RIGHT, considering I am constantly asking my friends and family with small children this question. Have you noticed that as soon as someone has a baby, they immediately want to go out and recruit?
As soon as RD and I were married, the interrogations came flying from every direction, "When are you having kids?...How many kids do you want?...When do you think you'll start trying?...Water, huh? Are you pregnant?...Anything you want to tell us?" We quickly put a stop to the questions when we insisted to everyone that we would not even think about having kids until RD was done with his residency. We believed this to be the complete truth at the time. We were not anticipating me being (unofficially...long story) diagnosed with endometriosis, and being told that my fertile years were numbered. So, with that information in mind, I started taking prenatal vitamins, and three months later we started trying. First try - success - or so we thought.
We wanted to keep my pregnancy a secret; at least until the second trimester. Everyone was clueless, which was wonderful. No one suspected a thing when I wasn't drinking alcohol or doing my best to hide my nausea, because we had convinced everyone that kids were way off in our future. By my 8th week, the nausea was really getting to me, and I had an ultrasound and got to see and hear her (we would later find out it was a girl) heart beat. And you know what they say, once you hear the heartbeat, the chances of a miscarriage go way down...blahblahblah. So we let the cat out of the bag.
Fastforward to Week 11 - my OB wanted to do another ultrasound because they couldn't find her heartbeat using the doppler. "This is totally normal," she said, "Don't worry. It's often hard to find. The ultrasound is just to put your mind at ease. Really, don't worry." Well - there was reason to worry. There was no heartbeat. The ultrasound showed that she had stopped growing probably sometime in her 9th week. One benefit of your husband being a physician is you're treated with extra care - a professional courtesy. Being my first pregnancy and miscarriage, it's not the norm to do genetic testing; something they usually do after loss #3. Lucky me, I got the white glove treatment. I'm sarcastic only because it's a tough subject for me. I am very grateful that they did the testing, as I know the "what if's" would've driven me insane - AND I would've assumed the first miscarriage to be the same result of what I would be tested for in later miscarriages. The next morning I underwent a D&C. The testing would show that I lost the baby due to Triploidy - a chromosomal abnormality. The ultrasound tech told me, "You should be happy the baby did not survive. She would have had many problems." Oh, yeah. Thank you. I feel much better now.
I really didn't want to go into my whole reproductive history, but I felt it was relevant to "having more." Anyway...
I was told we could not try again for at least two full cycles. This just killed me. RD was hurting as well and he wanted to wait even longer. Maybe he was scared of it happening again or maybe he felt he needed more time to heal, but I could not wait. I was obsessed. How strange to go from being scared to death of becoming pregnant to having every thought revolving around having a child.
So what happened next? I got pregnant - again and again and again. Five more times that I know for sure. After loss #6, I stopped testing. These next pregnancies were lost very early. Yes, I was sad, but I still yearned for the first. Those last five - I didn't get to see the little sac, the little head, her heartbeat. It was different.
I began to feel like a joke; almost embarrassed when calling to make an appointment with my OB, "Yes, this is Mel _____. I'm pregnant. Again." I could just picture the receptionist rolling her eyes. I'm sure she wasn't, but the depression I was in...I can't even explain. Every visit, I was directed to the Nurse Practitioner (standard for your first prenatal visit). I finally insisted on seeing my OB. With the pattern of the last miscarriages, she guessed immediately that it was an immunological problem and referred me to the Sher Institute. I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty details of my testing here (if you are going through something similar and would like me to share my story, I would be happy to e-mail you privately), but I consider my visit to Sher a blessing.
Skipping the testing and consultations, let's get to the good part - we decided IVF was our best option. You're probably asking yourself, "Why did they need to do IVF? GETTING pregnant obviously wasn't a problem." You're right, but the treatments that were necessary to prevent a miscarriage needed to be administered very early - before pregnancy testing was possible - meaning we would have to spend thousands of dollars on these treatments under the assumption that I was pregnant. Again, I can discuss details with you privately. That was too high a gamble for us, so that's where IVF came in.
Due to my young age (29) and good health, my doctor explained that they would only transfer two embryos, since the chances of implantation were high (normally they would transfer a higher number). After a very long month of twice-daily injections, our big day had arrived. It was the "transfer day" and we were waiting in the exam room. My doctor walked in with a long face, looked at each of us and said, "I'm not happy with the quality of these embryos. (insert lots of medical jargon here) I would like to transfer three embryos instead of two." RD and I looked at each other, fear in our eyes...THREE?! We expressed our concern; afterall, hadn't I proved that GETTING pregnant wasn't a problem, and he wanted to transfer THREE? The doctor nodded in agreement, but again stressed that the quality of these embryos were not very high, and in order to better our chances of getting pregnant AT ALL, he strongly advised we transfer three, "Besides," he said, "the chances of triplets are very low." Are they now?
Long story short...I really did not plan on getting into all that, but anyway...here we are - three beautiful, wonderful children, and as scared as I was at that first ultrasound, I can say with 100% certainty, I would not have changed a thing. We are so lucky and so blessed to have our two sons and daughter in our lives. A few people have asked us if we could have the same three kids, but at different times, my answer is no. I love watching them interact, getting to compare what stage they're in to each other, seeing them bond with each other, and in some ways I wonder if it's easier getting these stages all "done at the same time" so to speak, instead of having a few years between them.
Now comes those nagging questions again, "Are you having more?...Are you going to try again?...Are you done now?" It doesn't bother me because I think they're rude or because of the repetition of it all, it bothers me because I DON'T KNOW. I don't know if I want more. What answer I give you really depends on what day you ask me. As we get further and further along, it is becoming quite clear to me that RD wants more - at least one. If his desire is that strong, I feel I owe it to him to at least give it careful consideration.
"Why do you think we should be done?," he asks.
The answer to many may seem obvious, but it's not that simple. I joke, "How are we all going to fit in a car if we have more?...Vacation's going to be a b*tch!...I'll have to go out and get a job - the horror," but truth is, I don't know if I can go through what we had to go through again. Obviously, the end result was well worth it for me, but...we didn't have our family yet at the time, now we have three beautiful kids. Will my yearning for another child be strong enough to go through that again? Maybe. But after so many losses and so much pain, it feels so wonderful and so easy to just say, "We're done."
I guess we'll just have to wait and see. The thought of holding a precious little baby in my arms again....
Maybe we're not done. That's not so bad.
