Monday, November 4, 2013

Uterus Repairs Completed


11/4/13.  I am currently on CD5 and awaiting for ovulation aka my fertile window to arrive. I have started temping again this cycle and will be using OPK's so I can have the best knowledge available to me of when ovulation will be occurring, so we can have sex at the best possible time so we can hopefully get ktfu again. 

I'm really excited to be able to try and get pregnant again. I'm not scared of getting pregnant or worried about getting pregnant because I KNOW we will get pregnant. I am scared of staying pregnant. Staying pregnant is the goal but I am terrified that I will never stay pregnant. It is a chance I'm willing to take at this point in time.

At my last appointment with my RE I told him I have hope but absolutely no confidence. RE thought I described this perfectly and at this point in my journey was to be expected. I do have confidence that RE knows what he's doing and is great at his job, but I really have no confidence that I will ever achieve a pregnancy resulting in a live baby. Hope yes. Confidence none. 

I know how awful and sad I must sound. This is one of the things that multiple pregnancy loss does to you. It strips you of your confidence and takes away all naivety. I know I will never have a normal pregnancy, I will always worry that something is going to go wrong. It's not fair that I live in such fear and have began to expect failure. It is what it is at this point and I hope to be proven wrong about failure. A girl can dream, right?







First Period And Hysteroscopy After Septum Surgery

After finishing the estrogen and progesterone last month, I was to contact my RE when my period(AF: aunt flow) started so I could get a follow-up hysteroscopy scheduled. My period showed up in a timely manner and I got the hysteroscopy scheduled on 10/18/13 (CD12).

My first AF after the septum surgery was longer and a lot heavier than my normal pre-surgery periods. This was to be expected since the purpose of the estrogen was to build my uterine lining to flood the surgical site to help prevent & minimize scarring.  On my chart below, it shows AF was mostly moderate to heavy flow and lasted 8 days. My normal periods are 4-5 days and mostly light to moderate flow.

On 10/18/13 I had my follow up hysteroscopy. This was an office-hysteroscopy, meaning no surgery prep and if anything leftover, scarring, whatever else to be found would be found, nothing would be done about it at this time. Thankfully, everything looked great on the hysteroscopy and both fallopian tube entrances (Ostia) could be visualized. No scarring was seen and the surgical site looked great. Things looked so good RE gave me clearance to try to conceive this cycle. The original instructions said to wait 8 weeks before getting pregnant & I was only at 6 weeks post surgery. I let RE know that if ovulation occurred in it's typical pattern I would only be about 7 weeks out from surgery. He still decided this was fine but mentioned he didn't think I would get pregnant this cycle due to all of the hormones I had taken during my surgery cycle.

After the hysteroscopy, everything was great until a few hours later. I started having intense cramping, this happened to me the last time I had this procedure also so I wasn't really surprised. What did surprise me was I had some continued cramping the next couple of days after. Looking at my chart below you'll see (on a scale of 1-5) I gave cramping a 5 the day of my hysteroscopy, a 3 the day after and a 1 two days after. This is where things get a little crazy & my mind (also crazy) takes over and gets the best of me.

I had egg-white cervical mucus (EWCM) the day after my hysteroscopy CD13. This is usually a great sign of being fertile. At first I attributed the EWCM to the hysteroscopy and assumed it was just cm that had been stirred up since my cervix & uterus had been messed with the day before. My thoughts started taking over when the cramping continued -- as I didn't recall having any extended cramping after my first hysteroscopy. I had 3 different brands waaaayyy expired OPK's so I tried them out in the morning on CD14. The first one was ALMOST positive, the second one was a definite negative, and the digital was a definite negative. After work that evening I bought new opk's and tested them to which both brands were negative. I continued to do daily OPK's and each day the test line got lighter until it was almost nonexistent. I wasn't really sure if I was going to have a wacky cycle and ovulate really late or if I wasn't going to ovulate. Since I wasn't temping I had no idea WTF was going on.

To my surprise, my period showed up on Halloween. The only sign of AF showing was crying. I cry about everything for a week before AF shows. So when AF actually did show up I was pleasantly surprised. What's strange about this though is that my cycles are typically 30-35days long, so 24days is UNHEARD of for me. If I really did ovulate, it would've most likely been on cd12-cd14 which is also UNHEARD of for me --- I typically ovulate on CD17-CD22 (see my chart below the line that says stats with the green boxes, those are my predicted ovulation days based on my normal ovulation pattern).



Sunday, November 3, 2013

Post Surgery: Final Days

When I left off in my last post I was 7days post surgery and on CD13 on 9/11/13.  The chart below is my completed chart from my surgery cycle and shows everything that went on. I'll explain it briefly after the following highlights:
  • My CM (cervical mucus) continued to be pretty amazing. Just a reminder that the ****'s noted represent light bleeding/spotting along with my CM. Anywhere you see the asterisks I needed a pad--it was that heavy. 

  • On CD22 9/22/13 the balloon catheter (aka Ballooterus) was removed & I started progesterone.

  • There are a lot of days with cramps marked on them. If the cramps aren't noted with a numerical value, it was really just a dull ache that I noticed off and on throughout the day. Only cramps with numerical values were when I needed a pain reliever (like ibuprofen).
 


The last 4 days before ballooterus was removed I had some intense cramping off and on, so I was extremely ready for the removal. Two days before the removal I was pretty uncomfortable and was having a weird sensation, so I started "feeling" around--mainly just touching my labia, when I felt something hard & plastic coming out of my vagina. I made DH take a peek & a picture, all he could see was a tiny little white plastic tip of some sort. I did some pelvic thrusts and started feeling a little more comfortable & could no longer feel the plastic catheter tip. The balloon catheter removal was 2 weeks after the surgery. The removal itself was really quick and there was brief pain during the removal. I had taken 800mg ibuprofen before the removal and was glad that I did. After the removal I went to work and my day was normal, no unusual cramping.

After ballooterus was removed I started progesterone(Provera) along with my estrogen(Premarin). When I was on the estrogen only I did have quite a few days of hot flashes. When I started the progesterone I felt fine at first, but as time went on I became pretty crazy--hormonal/emotional. As you can see above my mood was all over the place. I was bad enough that I knew I was crazy. I had been advised that Provera can cause fatigue & I concur with that - as I had quite a few days of feeling tired while I was on it.

My period returned 4 days after finishing the estrogen & progesterone. I called my RE's office and scheduled my follow-up hysteroscopy.