Awkwardly Social

So, first things first, I’m pregnant!

Ok, phew, that’s out of the way.  Let’s get to how I got here.

On Thursday, I started feeling pretty crappy, bloated, short of breath, and my ear which had been bothering me for about a week was starting to worry me.  Yeah, the ear I got a new ear drum in. So, I called my ear doctor and couldn’t get in until November 1. And I called my GP, was able to get right in, and began to play phone tag with my fertility doctor, the doctor I really wanted to see because I was getting worried about the increasing size of my stomach.  It basically looks like I swallowed a pillow.

There was a lot of phone tag and finally while I was sitting in my GP’s office my fertility doctor called and told me to come over as soon as I was done there.  Thankfully, they are right around the corner from each other. My GP listened to my lungs and didn’t hear any signs of pneumonia and talked to my fertility doctor on the phone and blah, blah, diagnosis stuff.

So I finally waddled into my fertility doctor’s office and the only person left to take my blood was the lab manager, the guy that usually handles the sperm and he took one look at my stomach and was like, “WOAH.”  I was like, “It’s not me! It’s water!” and he was like, “No kidding, lady, we might have to drain you.”  Which, ew.

After getting jabbed, I had an ultrasound, the kind where they put goop on your stomach and press really hard on your painfully bloated belly and take pictures of your fluid engorged organs. And tell you to hold your breath.  Your short breath.

By this point I’m getting a little freaked out about the possibility of a gigantic needle being put in my stomach and drawing out fluid, because seriously, as often as I get blood drawn and have injected myself with medication, big needles freak me the fuck out.

I was called back into another exam room and my doctor, who I think I’ve never mentioned before wears denim scrubs…, took a look at me and was like, “You look uncomfortable.”  He explained that this sort of thing usually happens when you get as many eggs as I had, but generally immediately after retrieval, not like 8 days later.  And then he casually mentions, usually this means you’re pregnant.  I was like, yeah, sure, I’m sure that I’m the rare exception to this rule and not actually pregnant just look like I’m close to full term.

He left the room for my labs and came back with a pregnancy test - PREGNANT.

I had another appointment this morning, they looked at my fluid-y organs again, and did more blood work.  I got the results back, and the numbers are good according to the doctor.

Now, more waiting while we see if I stay pregnant.  If you recall, I’ve been this amount of pregnant before.

For those of you unfamiliar with the infertility parlance, let me introduce you to the 2ww, or in normal English, the two week wait.

I am 5dp5dt, five days past a five day transfer. I take a pregnancy test at the doctor’s office on the 30th. I would much rather never know if I am pregnant or not, just ignorantly go along with my life and nine months from now look down at my body and say either, well, that worked, or it didn’t.  Instead of waiting anxiously for my notoriously delayed results from the lab on a Sunday morning, ready either to get to drinking and sexing or to start my next 2ww while we hope and pray this time we’ll at least see a heartbeat.  It’s a mugs game. And I want no part in it.  I’d rather know today, or not at all.  Since that isn’t a possibility, I have been doing some ‘therapy,’ which has included watching a lot of Parenthood on Netflix streaming.  Believe me, I understand what may or may not be the irony or the premonition of doing this.  There was nothing else streaming that I was interested in.  It has nothing to do with me wanting to be a parent.  Or DOES IT?

I like the story, the characters are mostly believable, and the necklaces, oh you guys, the NECKLACES! I must have each and everyone of them.  But my research has come up short.  Its seems Zoe Chicco has done a couple of pieces for them, but the others I cannot find.  My internet searching abilities have come up dry.  So, here’s where you gaze upon the necklaces from Parenthood, and call your dear friends in the wardrobe department at Parenthood and get their sources and report back to me.  What’s that?  You aren’t friends with anyone in the wardrobe department at Parenthood?  Well, now is the perfect time to strike up that relationship, isn’t it.  Do it for me!  Do it for all of our pretty but bare necks who are calling out for pretty dainty gold necklaces. Laura Goldsmith, costume designer for season 1, CALL ME!

So, without further ado, I present you with several screen grabs from Season 1 and Season 2.
This is Haddie, played by Sarah Ramos, she is the oldest (and only) daughter of Peter Krause and Monica Potter. She is maybe my favorite character. MAYBE. And this is not her “signature necklace” but I love it. I love it so much. It’s so simple, but SO IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND.

This is her signature necklace. It is probably something I wouldn’t wear, but it was the one necklace I found that I had a screen grab for that I found online. It goes for a cool $352 at Zoe Chicco.

This is Gabby, played by Minka Kelly, she is Peter Krause and Monica Potter’s autistic (Asperger’s) son’s behavioral therapist. (Believable in this roll? Um, I don’t know, but she sure is pretty!) And I love this necklace.

Oh, and this one too!

Then there is Kristina, played by Monica Potter, I think she comes in a close second to Lauren Graham in the best necklace department.  Here are a few of my favorites.

This first one looks suspiciously like the one Haddie is wearing in the first photo, which is believable, because if my mom had an awesome necklace like this I would have worn it, too. (Haddie is Kristina’s daughter. KEEP UP!)

This is Christina’s “Date Night” look, which is Season 2, and a little over the top, but I think with a simple black tank and a soft leather jacket these layered silver necklaces would look boss.

Yet another disk suspended from a chain. Why do I love this look so much? Why won’t my internet searches provide me with links. I’ve got money to spend here lady!

My least favorite character is Julia, played by Erika Christensen, maybe because I see the most of myself in her. Her necklaces are also not my favorites on the show, they seem a little too corporate, or something.  Which fits her character! So kudos, once again costume department.

Here is my favorite of her looks.  I love two necklaces together, one long, one not, but I don’t seem to have any necklaces in my jewelry box that would work this way.

This one is also really pretty, so simple.

And finally there is this one, it also appears to be two necklaces worn together. I mean, seriously, they could do an episode on the untangling of necklaces in the Braverman women’s jewelry boxes. They have so many!

This is Sarah, played by Lauren Graham, she is the fuck up sister and the one I find most endearing (I just love me some Lauren Graham), yet also wonder the most about her parenting skills. This necklace is seen in a couple of scenes, and I love that it has two charms on it.

Here it is again, but this time the other charm is in front.

This is my favorite of her necklaces. It has three charms on it. If you tell me you hate it, you are no longer my friend.

This big chunky butterfly cutout necklace is also a favorite. It think this would be hard for me to pull off, but I am willing to try if someone would just find me the damned link!

Here are random disk necklaces, that might be the same one, but they all sort of look different, so… I say this necklace, if someone would find it for me, would be a perfect necklace, because it would always look slightly different. Try searching “hammered gold disk necklace” and you will shoot yourself, just like I almost did.

Oh, here is one more! Are you sick of this yet?

Craig T. Nelson (Papa Braverman) is!

In fact, it has driven him to drink!

Or maybe it’s because Mama Braverman is always asking him to untangle her necklaces…

So, go forth and find me some necklaces! Or, the phone number for the Parenthood wardrobe department. I MUST know their sources.

UPDATE: Eee! Pinterest saves the day! (Well, at least part of it.) Lauren Graham and Erika Christensen are pictured here on Maya Brenner Design’s website! So, at least two of the pretty necklaces are tracked down.  And yes, that did make my day.

I had my transfer yesterday, it is a relatively simple procedure compared to some of the shit I’ve had done throughout this process.  You drink a liter of water, you get acupuncture (or, at least, I did, and I wasn’t terribly crazy about the guy who filled in for my acupuncturist, but whatever c’est la vie), you take a valium, they put your feet in stirrups, crank you open and show you a picture of the embryos.

We had 4 4As. Which, being the overachiever that I am, IS REALLY GOOD. Because our doctor is conservative about twin pregnancies, we transferred only one. The problem with twins is there is a higher chance of birth defects, and a WAY higher chance of pregnancy complications, and because my embryos were good quality, my doctor didn’t want to risk both of them implanting.  So, they call over to the lab and the embryologist picks the best one and brings it over.

They (gently) squirt it into your uterus while watching the whole procedure on an ultrasound, with a wand that is pressing PAINFULLY on your very full bladder.

Then, they tip you back and prop up your knees, you get another acupuncture treatment (or, you don’t, I wanted to) and pray to the fertility gods that you don’t pee all over the table.

They let you get dressed and put you in a wheel chair because these nurses do not know how I like to party, and finally let you pee.  I could have peed earlier into a bed pan, but my peeing in bedpans record is a full zero, and I kind of want to keep it that way.

Then they wheel you out into the waiting room and everyone wonders what the hell they are doing in those back rooms (at least when I was first a bright eyed hopefully patient, that’s what I wondered) and you go home and lay down for 2 days.

They told me yesterday that 3 embryos would definitely be frozen and that there might be more tomorrow (today) that make it to freeze. And I got the call this morning, 5 more were frozen.

My doctor was really excited about this. 8 is very good.  I get an A+++.

Now, I wait until next Saturday for my pregnancy test.

A little while ago, a work friend and I were chatting about my fertility treatments and she, being 8 months pregnant, was like, “Oh, you should go touch the fertility goddess at the Getty Villa.”

Record scratch.

I pressed her for more information, but her pregnancy brain was a little fuzzy, she was like, “Just go to the Getty Villa, out in the garden there’s a goddess over looking the ocean all by herself.  I touched her foot and got pregnant.”

Now, granted, this friend of mine got pregnant on the first try, is about 5 years younger than I am and has not struggled with her pregnancy at all.  But maybe that’s because she touched the goddess’s foot!

So, today, I trekked out to Malibu with my other friend Catherine’s words ringing in my ears.  She told me she wore a snake charm because her MIL said it was a symbol of fertility.  I did some google searching last night and lo and behold, it is a Hopi symbol of fertility. So, not only did I need to touch the foot of a statue I needed a snake charm. But whatever, I’m in this for about $16,000, why not spend $15 for the price of parking at the Villa and another whatever millions for a snake charm.

I got my map of the Getty Villa and in the side bar there’s a list of gods and goddesses and what they’re known for. Demeter is my gal. She’s the one.  She’s the goddess of rich and fertile soil.  So, I start looking for her. Nothing.  NO DICE.  She’s nowhere to be found.

Dismayed I walked down a path and saw a goddess all by herself in a little grotto. Not really looking over the ocean because it was so hazy, but ocean adjacent.

So I went over to check her out and it was Venus, the goddess of love.

 She was the goddess my friend had been talking about.  She has a plaque next to her that says to touch her.  So, I touched her foot.

I felt a little dumb.

So I touched her outer thigh too.  I didn’t mean to make it awkward, it just… happened?

 I wandered around the grounds a little thinking, well, that was weird, hope it works!  I decided to check out the gift shop and see if I could get a take home god.  You know, like some kind of pagan.

I browsed around a bit and there they were, snake rings.  So I bought one.  And I got a miniature bronze cat - the symbol sacred to the Egyptian goddess Bastet, who, you guessed it, is the goddess of love, fertility and joy. And to completely cover my bases I got a Demeter charm. Which is on my person at this very moment.

I believe I have all the ancient gods covered.

But if I’ve missing one, it’s probably cool, Jesus will talk to them up in the gods’ break room and sort it all out for me.

After my weird Getty fertility adventure I had to do boring errands like buy dog food. Talk about a let down. I walked into my neighborhood Petco and went to visit the snakes, just to add a little fertility adventure back into my dumb chore and wandered by the fish.  When I stopped at what looked like an empty aquarium. I looked closer.

There were three of the tiniest baby fish you ever did see. I feel like that was the good sign I needed to push ahead and buy some damned dog food.

Tomorrow is the big day. I am ready for anything.

I got an update this morning and I think my doctor was excited? Or he was covering? Anyway, there are 8 thingies (I have no idea what to call them at this stage) left. He said something about them being between 2 and 8 cells? Honestly, I wasn’t really paying attention, I was just so glad I didn’t have to hear the terrible words, “Nothing progressed.” Or something else doom worthy.

I texted my sister the news and she texted back later that she was doing research and I was doing really well A+++. So, clearly she knows me well.

My transfer is firmed up for Thursday morning, and before hand not only will I be drinking a liter of water (what exactly is a liter? Besides being half of a 2 liter bottle? I cannot visualize this size) I will be having acupuncture before hand. My acupuncturist can’t be there, so there will be a new guy. Which… I cannot tell you how nervous that makes me, but I looked him up and he works with the woman that literally wrote the book on acupuncture and infertility, so hopefully we’ll have a good session and I won’t pee my pants.

This last part is the most embarrassing, but I am planning a trip to see a statue tomorrow. A fertility statue. You don’t have to make fun of me, I’m already blushing.

Both Seth and I woke up kind of nervous on Sunday morning.  Me still bloated and not feeling well, Seth just his normal anxious self.

Our doctor called at about 10:15am to tell us the news.

14 fertilized!

Now we’re waiting until tomorrow morning to hear how those ones are doing, obviously we’re hoping for more good news.

Supposedly the transfer is on Thursday.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

On Thursday I got the call to do the trigger shot.  It seemed so out of the blue, like, really? I’m just going to give myself a shot tonight and this will be happening in 36 hours?

After I got the news I sort of quickly wandered about the house. I was wandering with purpose. I was pointedly wandering.

I would have flapped my hands about but that seemed kind of ridiculous.

I counted down the minutes to give myself the shot, preparing the injection a good 15 minutes early and then watching the clock so I could trigger exactly at the right time.

The night before in a weird fit of Gwyneth Paltrow allegiance, I purchased two of her movies. And then watched them in a row. I’m sad to say Sliding Doors isn’t quite as good as I remembered it. I still love Gwynie’s blond haircut in that one, but there were a few things I didn’t love so much. I’m happy to say Great Expectations is still as good as I remembered. I really love that movie. And Gwyneth is probably her hottest in it.  Then on Thursday after the shot, I rented The Talented Mr. Ripley. There are parts that I really like but mostly I find that movie insufferably boring.

Friday, I woke up feeling fine, great even. I had my usual oatmeal and prenatal vitamins.  About 10 minutes later I started to feel really barfy, so I ate a piece of bread thinking my vitamins were making me queasy.  Then I promptly threw up. I called my doctor’s office to see if that was a trigger shot side effect, but nope, not really. So I laid down and started think it must have just been the vitamins.  I had an acupuncture appointment and you’re supposed to eat a small little something, when I woke up from my nap I was still feeling a little queasy, but I ate a cracker and drank some water, and promptly threw it up.

I got to acupuncture feeling really awful. I had my pre-poke consultation and then before I got on the table, I went to the bathroom to throw up again.  I was not feeling hopeful about getting through a full treatment.  She put the needles in and the whole time I laid there, I was pretty sure I was going to barf. I finally couldn’t take it anymore so I rang the bell and when she came in she said I did great, I had just made the recommended time. She took out the needles and I went to the bathroom to dry heave.

I drove home feeling awful, got into the house and promptly threw up.  I was getting nervous about them canceling my procedure because I was too sick, my mom would have found this very typical behavior.  As long as I have something exciting or important to do, I am bound to get sick the day before.

By 8pm, I was trying to sip ginger tea, and it was making me gaggy.  By the time Seth got home with ginger ale, I was pretty sure everything was going to be ruined.  But I was able to keep the ginger ale down, ate some crackers and tried to hydrate.

This morning I woke up feeling good, a little hungry, but good.

I’ve been nervous this whole time that there would be no eggs in my follicles. I would be all basket. But after the procedure, we were told there were 21 eggs.  Now to an overachiever like me, this is awesome.  I must be honest though and say, it doesn’t really matter how many eggs there are if they don’t fertilize, so tomorrow I get another round of news that hopefully will be good.

Now I’m home, waiting for Seth to bring me my traditional post surgery meal, Canter’s chicken noodle soup and a knish.

A little over (under? I have no concept of time since I stopped working) a month ago, a friend (acquaintance? We’ve never met, but one of her good friends was one of the first people I ever read on the internet, so I consider her a friend of a friend, but also a friend, this internet relationshipping is complicated) asked me to write a little something for the site she edits.

I checked out the website and was like, “YES! But! I don’t really have a garden at the moment….” And she was all, don’t worry about it!

So I promptly freaked out and considered buying a new camera to photograph our house. Then I calmed down and decided to just rent a lens. WAY CHEAPER.

After I sent off the article and the photos, I was pretty sure she would hate it and be all, “I have made a GRAVE mistake!”  And never publish my piece, but then she did.

It went live today. Check it out if you want to read about what I think makes a house a home, and HINT, it doesn’t involve a bookshelf with books facing backwards.

So, if you are coming over here from there, welcome, make yourself at home, I have wine chilling in the fridge. This is my website where I recently have been talking about my infertility treatments and the sudden death of my mother. Which doesn’t sound very homey, come to think of it. But if you stick around, I promise one day, I will no longer be injecting myself with lots of hormones (today I was told to reduce my medication by so much that now I only have to do two shots! Woo!) and I’ll be less sad about my mom. One hopes.

I would like to think I understand the mechanics of a syringe, but I do not. Every time I put the needle in the vial to draw up the mixing fluid, it kind of sucks up part of the fluid on its own. This is why laypeople should not be allowed to give themselves medications. All of those bubbles! It seem so dangerous.

I wonder why no one talks about the cocaine aftertaste with this drug. Seriously, when I get up to put my meds back in the fridge, I taste it. No one in the history of fertility treatments has ever done cocaine? Or they’re too ashamed to admit it? It’s weird. I would ask my nurse about it, but she seems harried enough without having to wonder about my past life drug use.

My first monitoring appointment was Saturday morning, there were only 4 follicles large enough to measure and after I left the office I was despondent. I was sure that this was all going to be a waste of time, so when my doctor called and told me to reduce my medication, I was like, “Um, but?” And he assured me that everything was progressing correctly.

I went in for my second appointment today and the number had tripled (quadrupled?), so I wasn’t surprised when I was told to reduce my medication yet again. I can feel my ovaries. Big time.

I go in for another monitoring session Wednesday.

So, I went and got my lesson on how to mix my medications, but I think I was trying to be such a good student that I totally forgot which medications I could add together so that I wouldn’t have to give myself 3 shots a night. So, now my already bruised stomach is more ouchy and bruised.  Also, unsuspected side effect, aftertaste in my mouth like I just did a nice bump of cocaine. Um… I will be calling the nurse tomorrow.

I have one medication that I have to liquify and when I put the sterile liquid in the vial, it looked like no powder had been in there, so no I’m pretty sure everything is ruined.

That’s basically how everything is going with me.

One minute I’m all, “Tra la la, I ate an Orangic Apple!” The next minute I’m all, “Did I take my medication yesterday for my thyroid?! How will I ever figure this out?! I will now eat 20 chocolate chip cookies to calm myself down and everything will be RUINED.”

I seriously want this next two weeks to go by very quickly. VERY quickly.