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Friday, April 20, 2007

Updates

Embryo-O is growing rapidly, now a ginormous 1.27 cm (.46 cm last Friday). Dr. Quick was pleased and next Friday's ultrasound may be the last with the RE!

Fortunately, I have already scheduled our first prenatal appointment with Little Fruit Midwives (you know us too well, Cali; you were right, of cousre, about our enthusiasm levels). There is little point in my veil of secrecy so I'll go ahead and post the link here: they're called Clementine Midwifery and we're very excited to be using them.

In potentially more disturbing news, I have succumbed to consumerism and started to look at a few baby products online...so far I'm only serious about wheeled bassinets and changing tables (I found The Changing Table, I think; it's all about space efficiency). That's the only furniture we need at first, and a good thing in our tiny apartment. I did look at strollers and car seats, but I still find them both mystifying. I was mightily disappointed with the diaper bags. I don't care how tacky it makes me, I want a diaper bag with P**h on it or that otherwise screams "Hi, I'm a diaper bag!" (though in a gender neutral fashion). And apparently the pendulum has swung so far in the stylish direction that tacky folks like me are in trouble. Glad I know to start the search early.

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I have some other news, about my own bloodwork. When Co was freaking out and convinced she was completely infertile, she begged me to assure her that I would be willing to go instead and have two kids. I said I would, and towards this end, I have started charting, and gotten blood taken to check some basic fertility stuff. I had a cd3 blood draw two days ago. Dr. Mellow called today with some of the results. I have the estradiol levels of a menopausal woman (I think she said 32). She still needs to find out my FSH results but if they are similar then pregnancy is not an option for me.

I take back everything nice I said about her. What a rotten, crappy thing to say to someone on the first warm weather Friday of spring. "I don't have all the information so I might be saying this for no reason but you are all dried up like your mom and you can't get pregnant."

I wasn't expecting anything this drastic, since I have menstruated monthly, ceaselessly, since I was ten and a half years old. My mother and sister were both easily fertile. But I'm broken.

Good thing I am getting to all this non-bio mom stuff early.

(I know I have nothing to complain about. I have a baby on the way, a wife who could most likely bear us a second child, insurance that covers most of it, a local government that will let me adopt my children. But I can't help but feel that the wind has been sucked right the hell out of my sails.)

I will do Photo Friday later this weekend. I'm just not feeling it right now.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lo - that's a serious blow, baby on the way or no. Hugs.

Anonymous said...

Lo- you have every right to be let down even with a baby on the way. no one wants to hear that. i can imagine it must be hard to manage the two emotions right now. hugs and many positive thoughts being sent your way.

Mermaidgrrrl said...

Oh wow - I'm feeling really shocked about your blood results sweetie. Is this something that could be treated? Or we don't know till you have further testing done?

Erin said...

Here's a site that has info on hormone levels. It says that anything between 25-75 is normal for CD3 E2 levels. So 32 should be good? I know high FSH levels are bad, but your E2 sounds fine. Hopefully she mixed up the analysis!

http://www.pinelandpress.com/faq/hormonelevels.html

Lo said...

Final thoughts before I go to bed: I am definitely getting a second opinion from Dr. Quick and/or our lovely new midwives (who also do gyn stuff). It might just be a river in Egypt, but it's hard to imagine someone like myself with regular regular regular periods and NO other symptoms of serious problems suddenly shows up as pre-menopausal.

Erin, I am really overcome that you Google searched this. Or maybe you did it for another reason but thank you for sharing the results. My own interactions with Dr. Google suggest both that 32 is in fact a normal level, AND that if it isn't normal I ought to be having menopause symptoms. Which, um, I'm not. (Bleeding. Right Now.)

Anyway, thanks for your comments, all. I'm off to bed since tomorrow is an action-packed day that will require blogging. :-)

Anonymous said...

:-| blimey. Fingers crossed she was wrong amd will deliver good news to you accompanied by a large unequivocal apology. vee says she shouldn't have said anything unless she knew for sure. I say "hmmph." xx

None said...

For the record, during my own appointment with the same doctor, after I told her I'd been treated by an R.E. and taken fertility meds, she asked, "Is that for your PCO (polycystic ovaries)?"

I told her, "I don't have polycystic ovarian syndrome."

She brought up my PCO once more during that appointment and I once again reminded her I didn't have PCO. Now, maybe she was confusing me with another patient. But I am not willing to put all of Lo's eggs in her basket. There are many, many, many reasons why a woman could seek out treatment from an R.E. and take fertility meds. PCOS is only one of them. I don't trust that she knows everything about infertility based on my brief interaction with her.

I am glad that Lo is willing to consider getting a second opinion. And I agree it was irresponsible for that doctor to even tell Lo about her results without having the FSH levels back. It was especially irresponsible to say something as dramatic as "pregnancy is not an option for you" based on one test result.

Dr. Quick had me complete a battery of tests, and only once all the results were in did we meet to go over them. Far more responsible. My tests all came back fine, but if they hadn't, I wager he may have had me repeat a test just to be sure or he would've possibly given me a different test, just to be sure. And if the results didn't look good, I still can't imagine him saying, "pregnancy is not an option" based on one test result, unless he did an u/s and saw that I had no uterus. Seriously.

Anonymous said...

the nurse was a jerk. Get your second opinion and got for the MIS test to learn a little more about your ovarian function. This is not over.

charlotte said...

dude. that is really shitty and you have every right to be upset. i hope that dolt is very wrong. but also, a baby on the way has nothing to do with your feelings about being pregnant someday.
jeez.

Anonymous said...

Lo, my estradiol levels on the cd3 draw were in the 80's, and my fsh levels were elevated, too. It isn't the end of the world, and this doctor doesn't sound like she knows a whole heck of a lot about reproductive endocrinology, frankly.

Get a second opinion from a genuine RE. My RE just looked at my levels and said that yes, it looked like my ovaries were gearing to shut down, but they weren't shut down yet and so there was no reason I couldn't get pregnant. And with you having regular cycles...

fostermama said...

Oh, wow.
*hugs*
I'm sure you already know this, but don't take one test as the final word.
Still, that's a big thing to have on your mind, and it will be very sad for you (both of you) if it turns out to be true and prevents you from having a bio-kid.

I know, and you know, that it will be OK. But still...

*hugs*

Melody said...

Ouch!! I'm coming to this a little late, but I want to register my anger and disbelief that she made such a quick diagnosis of infertility. Fortunately, you already know a lot more about this game than it seems like she does. Get thee to an RE. What a bee-yatch!

Anonymous said...

fuck, Lo!
I am just now catching up on posts & this is just shitty news.
I am so so so sorry.
((hugs))