I meant to start this sooner but when I tried to setup the blog on Azure I got distracted that my account was deleted and Kate’s custom email stopped working. So here we are writing in a word document with the assumption that this will eventually move to a wordpress. I used to love blogging but I stopped when I started Kate and just kind of lost interest…. But now Kate is pregnant and I couldn’t think of a better time to start again.
I found out in Week 3 Day 5 (Kate on Day 4) Which is crazy early. Should note there’s a week 0, which from a Software nerd perspective makes total sense. July 11th was the day Kate started her cycle. Somehow without tracking for the first time in two years we got Pregnant. We have no idea which attempt made it work cause it was all guesswork, and if my niece had come a week earlier for her visit Kate 100% would not be pregnant. What’s fun the day after Sienna left, Kate and I went in for blood tests to start IVF. Starting on IVF was half the reason we weren’t tracking and making half-assed attempting to actually conceive. I mean we failed for two years, why would it work now? So Blood Test for the IVF check. Kate gets her results nothing interesting… per the norm. Then two days later Kate tests positive… but a weak positive. Didn’t tell me.
So that night we got in to a huge fight about me not being engaged enough in the IVF process. I guess it makes sense I tend to block out sad things and I was procrastinating on doing all the necessary paperwork. Fast forward to the next morning and Kate sneaks out to buy thread. Turns out she was being a sneaky sneak and getting tested officially at our fertility clinic. Turns out after 2 years we made it! HCg levels of 36! Anything greater than 10 is pregnant, so holy shit! Kate comes back and surprises me with a cute teddy bear and baby clothes. I am of course confused and take much longer than one would expect to realize she was pregnant. Anyway amazing! I still feel like I am in shock and its been four weeks.
I can talk about the between Week 3 day 4 and Week 7 in a future entry but honestly, I feel like a complete disaster so want to focus on the now….
Kate has been having spotting for the past two weeks. Now a quarter of pregnant ladies have spotting but bleeding is a sign of miscarriage. Of course we go to the fertility clinic for a ultrasound and they say everything is fine, I travel and Kate has even more blood and goes to get another ultra sound (w6d2) Again everything is fine, boring even. Though the Fetal Heartbeat is 97. I wasn’t there but the Dr seemed uninterested. For both the Blood and the Slight low heartbeat.
Here’s the thing I know the spotting is normal (well not great, but it happens) and 97 is barely off the mark of 100 for w6d2. Also detecting a heartbeat that early is crazy but here I am freaking out. Today Kate has just continued her three weeks of nausea, vomiting, cramping, and spotting. I just want her to not be so sick, while of course keeping our little blue berry healthy. I’m just so anxious. I keep spiraling when I look up Kates’s symptoms online. I spiral when I look at reddit message boards /r/infertilitybabies which why do I look at this, we conceived naturally! So I look up symptoms and stories and I see lots of positive and just ignore them. No! show me all the terrible stories. Show me when miscarriages happen.
Kate’s symptoms are terrible and when I go to sleep, I’m afraid she’s going to wake me up at 3 am with terribleness. All her worst things happen at 4 am. When I wake up at 8 to talk to her, she just has this look of pained exasperation on her. We tried for so long to make this blueberry and not only am I terrified of the precarious position its in (which is it really?) I’m terrified what will happen to Kate mentally if something goes wrong. She was so sad when we couldn’t have a baby, I can’t imagine how sad she’d be if we lost the thing we wanted more than anything in the world. I try to tell her your existence proves we can make a baby! Something a lot of people with fertility issues will never know. I also tell her sure her symptoms are bad, but the doctors are always uninterested. It never occurred to me how utterly panic inducing having a child could be. Every night I pray, I pray for your health. I tell god that if you are safe and healthy that I will always try my best to be a good father. I desperately want to fulfil that promise.