Single Mom By Choice – Part 16: One month

One month… It’s only 31 days of our lives tops, but boy, oh boy! It sounds and feels like it’s an eternity when you are trying to get pregnant and month after month, you hear “maybe next month”, “next month is the one”, “by next month, all this will be behind you”, “you’ll be smiling next month”,… Depending on your cycle, your next month comes sooner, or later, or irregularly – but what we all have in common is that we wish it were this month…

As you can guess, I was told – once again – that it would not be this month.

When my lining refused to grow thick enough last month, Dr Mahutte gave me a 5 day hormone regimen that would reset my body and put me into my next cycle. When that cycle started, we decided that estrogen patches would replace the estrogen pills that I previously took, in the hopes that my body would absorb the hormone better this way. If so, my lining would grow nice and thick, and we would be ready for a transfer attempt.

Why is the lining so important you ask? Would you want to sleep at a hotel that offered a mat with thin, uncomfortable pillows for 9 months?!

After 12 days on the new regimen, I went in for the ultrasound. To our surprise, my lining was still only at 4.6mm (which is nowhere near the minimum 7mm needed for a successful transfer). A bit baffled and disappointed, my doctor decided to double the estrogen patches and test again in a week. As a precaution, he also took a blood sample to test.

Why wasn’t it working? It’s infuriating! You name it. I did it. Acupuncture. Herbal teas. Supplements. Castor oil packs. Viagra (yep, they make little pink pills for women). Baby aspirin. Brazilian nuts. Soy snacks and smoothies. Pom juice. Pineapple juice. Started the gym again. Feet in the air. Meditation. Reiki. Seriously, I couldn’t have done more. So why wasn’t my stupid lining growing…

*** All this may sound a little extreme, as though it was the only thing I thought about and did. But it truly didn’t engulf my every moment. It was a routine that was just added to my life. It was just easier to try it all!

The blood test turned out normal and showed very high estrogen levels. Which means that my body is getting the hormone, but for some reason, my lining isn’t reacting to it. Maybe the double quantity of patches would make a difference.

It didn’t. Once again this month, it had the opposite effect and made my lining even smaller. When I saw 3.2mm, I just sighed… I didn’t get it. Dr Mahutte didn’t get it either.

That’s when he advised that I stop the hormones cold turkey. He explained that my body had undergone A LOT in the last year and that it was possible the gland responsible for regulating my hormones and my body is just slacking off because I’ve been ingesting so many hormones. So, basically, since I haven’t needed it to work in the last year, it’s taking a break, feet up on the desk, checking it’s Facebook and playing video games!! Dr Mahutte thinks that maybe cutting out everything will kick start that gland again and my body will naturally make my lining grow better. No resetting of my cycle, we are just going to wait this month out and see when the cycle naturally comes back and what it will bring.

Wait this month out. A month… lost… a month added to the tally of “not yet”, “not this time”, “not pregnant”… a month of growing older and maybe less patient. A month felt like an eternity in that moment.

I started crying. Despite fully understanding the logic and agreeing with the next steps. I just hated THE MONTH!!! “It’s just pushes me one month closer to being 42 by the time these quadruplets come into the world”, I said through my tears. And we laughed. Dr Mahutte reassured me that he is confident that I will get pregnant. I have amazingly strong embryos and there is no reason to lose them to an unready body.

I get it. I do. I just wish I didn’t have to wait a month.

So now it’s detox. It’s exercising. It’s trying not to get into my head (because seriously, the only times that I do stress about this process and have anxiety is in those waiting months – the ones that make you wonder if you are just not meant to have a child). It’s trusting the universe and it’s positive thinking. The baby gods wouldn’t have given me Sarah, Matt, Vinny & their 7 embryos for them to go to waste. It’s using my vivid imagination to think that maybe the storks are just taking a long vacation and they will be back in full force NEXT MONTH!

(TO BE CONTINUED)