Chapter 2

OK, I am back. I have to be honest, these posts have been somewhat emotionally draining, and I find that I need some recovery time in between them. My emotions get thrown out of whack, and I forget why it was I started writing about this in the first place.

Which is, indeed, a good question. One that the therapist in me can't help but ask. Why now? There may be a couple reasons... my babies are now a year old. They are no longer fragile infants- instead, they are active toddlers with very distinctive personalities and minds of their own. My role as their mom is changing. I am considering part-time daycare so that I can increase my college counseling hours AND find time to work on my dissertation. I am sure that on some level there is a sense of guilt in leaving them for any amount of time, and for picking up pieces of my adult life that lay dormant during their first year of life and to some extent during the previous years of treatment, pregnancy, more treatment, more setbacks (read on for more about that!), more treatment, and then pregnancy. And then there is also the issue of my dissertation topic- focused on infertility's impact on marriage- that has me re-examining my own experiences as I delve deeper and deeper into trying to understand others'. So for these reasons, and I am sure others that I am not fully aware of, I have returned to this process.

Recently, I posted a comment on a blog regarding how, for me, grief has a cyclical nature. Rather than a linear process of "moving on", mine seems to be one of moving around that black hole of grief... getting a little distance from it, gaining a new perspective, and then returning to experience it once again from a new vantage point.

This is a time in my life when, for whatever reason, I am returning to this experience. "Rapprochement", we might call it in psychological terms. And it is hard, but hard in a good way. I feel closer to the babies I lost, I feel their presence in my life. And I know their spirits live on within me.

That said, I find that this blog triggers a certain sense of vulnerability. There are so many people who I know both in real life and online, who do not know this side of me. They may know that I lost twins, but they know little about what this experience meant to me. In their eyes, I am Isabelle and Julien's mother... there are two children in our family, not four. And so I feel, quite honestly, a little apprehensive about what they might think should they stumble across this blog. It all seems so dark and heavy! How can this part of my life be more integrated with the parts of my life that the outside world sees? How can I live as the mother of four children- rather than two? I so want this truth to be told, and feel so lacking in terms of a finding a way to tell it. I hardly want to respond to the question (often asked by strangers): "are these your first children?" with "no, I had another set of twin and lost them when I was 20 weeks pregnant". It feels way too personal to share, yet at the same time, there is a part of me that I am denying the very existence of my children, and feel horrible in doing so. And so, Carynne and Lucas have become parts of my innermost, most private identity. And quite honestly, I think this blog has become a place for me to "try out" making their presence known more publicly.

And so, I return to my story. January, February, and March of '06 were a blur, really. I remember the day I returned to work quite vividly. It was about a week or so after my loss, and I was eager for the routine distractions of my former life. The first day was hard... each time I faced a colleague for the first time, there was that horribly awkward moment in which the dark truth of what had happened needed to be addressed. Even not addressing it represented a response laden with meaning for me- there were certainly people who seemed to think that ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room might be easiest, might be best. Sometimes it was. Often it wasn't. Honestly, no response was the right one because nothing could diminish the sense of loss that lay just below the surface.

Nothing, it seemed, except moving forward mentally and logistically to my next IVF. I needed that next "fix" of infertility drugs to keep me going. My breasts were still leaking when I attempted my IVF in March, and this is telling both in terms of my emotional and physical state. The pregnancy was still living in me, fighting to hold on, had not yet let go. But I moved forward anyway... foolishly... thinking a new pregnancy might be just the solution we needed. I think my inner ambivalence manifested itself on many levels. I have no recollection of how many eggs were retrieved- only that they weren't great quality. The day after my transfer, I walked 3 miles- not exactly the way to support a potential pregnancy. My mind may have longer for another positive pregnancy test. My body and my emotions were simply not ready- and no good could come from this misalignment. The pregnancy test was negative.

I jumped right back on the trying to conceive train. By mid-May, I was doing a frozen embryo transfer. The quality of the embies upon thaw was so crappy that they stuck all four of them back in me (which in retrospect, makes me realize how pessimistic my dr was about my chances). I wrote the cycle off. Surprise, surprise- two days after our second wedding anniversary, I had a positive pregnancy test.

My beta was very low, however. And in the subsequent weeks, it behaved abnormally- sometimes doubling, but in general remaining way too low to be a viable pregnancy. If only the story ended here! This pregnancy proved to be extremely complicated. There was a sac in my uterus. A blighted ovum, most likely. But there appeared to be something in my tube, as well. So, I got a shot of methotrexate to eliminate the pregnancy. Went back for another beta. I was in the bathroom at Target when I got the call (this I remember vividly). My beta had gone UP, not down, following the treatment. Got yet another shot of Methotrexate. Everyone was optimistic that this would do the trick.

I didn't feel good that weekend. I had heard of people having GI issues as a result of the treatment, I figured that was the case. Called my Dr on Monday am, just to let her know. She asked that I come in for an ultrasound, just to be safe.

I walked into the clinic before work, thinking I would be in and out. Much to my surprise and everyone else's, the U/S revealed that my abdomen was filled with blood. My tube had burst. My wonderful Dr drove me in her car to Duke Hospital, where I was met by my husband and rushed into surgery. I lost my tube, but fortunately, the rest of me remained intact.

Everything except my sense of being able to continue to try to achieve a pregnancy.