Monday, December 15, 2008

Returning to normal.... if there is such a thing.

Well, I'm back to temping again. For those of you who haven't ever tried to get pregnant with charting (yep, that's probably most of you, if not all), that means that I get up every morning at the same time and take my "basal body temperature," or BBT, which is the temperature that your body is after sleeping for several hours, your resting body temperature, if you will. It also includes watching your body for other fertility signs. With women, their BBT changes throughout their cycle because of the various hormones in their body, estrogen being dominant during your period and before you ovulate, and progesterone taking over after you ovulate and during pregnancy. The cyst in my left ovary continued to make progesterone after my baby died, thus continuing the pregnancy and preventing my body from restarting a cycle.

The good news is that my basal body temperature was down this morning from the ~98.7 that it was during pregnancy and that it still was on Saturday, even though I had miscarried, to 97.9 degrees! That means I am well on my way towards my 97.5-ish that I normally am before ovulating. I also really hope that means that my HCG levels have dropped considerably and that I will soon be "not pregnant" to my body. I mean, come on, Body, the rest of the world has figured this out. Why can't you?

I am charting now because charting reveals a lot about your body's hormones and whether your cycles are normal or still "off" because of birth control pills, vitamin shortage, hormone levels, etc. It will help us to know when I am fertile (so we can avoid conceiving for the next two cycles) and may give us valuable information about why I am not fertile, if that happens for some reason.

By the way, I would just like to point out that I lost three pounds on Thursday night (not since Thursday night, ON Thursday night). Dude, that is a lot of blood/gestational sac. No wonder I almost died on Friday after walking around for a few hours.

I really miss my baby. I wish I knew for sure if he/she was a boy or girl, so that I could name him/her appropriately. I almost want to call my Ob/Gyn and beg them to test the tissue and find out. Can I do that? Maybe I will ask them on Thursday if they can do it.

UPDATE:
They can't karyotype the tissue, because they would have needed to preserve it a different way. But, they did take my HCG levels again today, so they can tell me Thursday if they're going down or not. I officially declare this baby to have been a boy (sorry, baby, if you are actually a girl, but mommy needs to picture someone, not some genderless thing), and I'm going to name him if Jonathan doesn't mind. I'll let you know later what I pick.

UPDATE #2:
My HCG levels are down from Friday at 4800 to today at 674. Praise be to God, and please pray that they keep dropping!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it wouldn't hurt to ask them to test it. It might not be covered by insurance, but the knowledge would probably be worth the price.

~Amy

Melanie said...

Hello Abbie,
My name is Melanie and we have went thru the same thing! I too miscarried-missed abortion at 12 wks, baby died at about 8wks. I too took Cytotec and if I met you before I would of told you "don't do it!" I ended up having an emergency D&C anyway! Ok we really need to exchange emails. Please email me at butterfly082402@yahoo.com.

mandie lane said...

abbie, i am so very sorry for your loss. i've been there- my first miscarriage, in may '07, was very similar to yours (missed m/c at 11 weeks). it still hurts to think of that baby and that sad ultrasound with no heartbeat...and my heart hurts for your loss, too. you, your husband, and jonathan are in my prayers.

(i kept a blog through those tough days, if you want to read it: www.mandiefrazier.blogspot.com. i know it sometimes helped me to read other women's stories and feel less alone!)

take care.