Testing, testing, 1, 2...10.

Last Thursday I had an appointment with the last midwife I saw during my pregnancy. The one who rushed through my appointment and showed us Olivia for all of five seconds, who didn't give us a picture, the last time we saw her alive. I wasn't looking forward to meeting her (the midwife) again because I didn't know if I would be angry at her or distraught or what. However, she actually ended up being really caring and thoughtful this time around, and I was glad to have gotten a second chance to meet her and forgive her for rushing through that last appointment.

We talked about how I am feeling physically and emotionally (exhausted all around) and the possibility of talking to a counselor in the future to help me walk through all of this. That part of the conversation was hard because I didn't want to look like a blubbering idiot in front of my doctor during a 15-30 minute appointment, and I know that I haven't really dealt with Olivia's death at all yet, and talking about it started bringing up everything that I have been shoving under the surface for three weeks. But I made it through.

Then we talked about testing. She offered to run tests on me that day, and I was shocked, but accepted immediately. I thought that we were going to have to wait for tests for a few more months, until our new insurance could go through and we could get another doctor up on our situation, so this was really great, to start testing right away and possibly get some answers and at least begin the process. I'm fairly up on the various testing that they can do, so she didn't need to explain it all, but we discussed what she could test today (a lot of things) and what I would need to ask for at my next Ob/Gyn or RE appointment (FSH and estrodiol, which have to be done on CD3 and HSG, as well as repeat Lupus antibodies and maybe something else). She is going to call me with the results of everything soon (or she said that I could call at any point this week and ask for someone to give me the results).

We also discussed my feelings about when I want to try to get pregnant again. She said that she was of the opinion that my body would get pregnant again whenever it was ready to do so, so in her opinion I didn't need to wait to try for any medical reason. However, the HSG test, which could show a physical defect in my uterus that could be causing the miscarriages and could be corrected by surgery, would be something that they could not test (or correct) while I was pregnant. So, basically, Jonathan and I need to make the decision as to whether we should just try again right away or do we want to wait for all of the testing to come through first. More than 50% of people who have repeat miscarriages never find a reason, so if we wait for three months, it may very likely end up that they will find no cause and we would have waited for no reason. On the other hand, they could find a reason and know how to correct it for the next pregnancy, so that I wouldn't have a third miscarriage. On the other other hand, these two miscarriages may have just been rotten (genetic) luck, and there may be nothing wrong with me at all, and I could put off a third pregnancy for months just to have a perfectly normal one after that. However, since I did carry longer than nine weeks this time, she felt strongly that there may be something outside of genetics going on, which really reaffirmed what I have been feeling. All that to say, we have a lot of thinking to do and a big decision to make.

After the appointment, I went downstairs to have the blood work done. My favorite, favorite girl from the lab picked up my sheet and *whoosh* a list about a mile long of blood work fell down - yikes! Thank the Lord that it was this girl (I don't know her name!) who was taking my blood, and not the woman from last Tuesday because this was eight vials worth - I cannot imagine the pain that would have come from blondie scraping my nerves and pulling the needle in and out of the vein every two seconds for as long as this took. Afterwards, my arm bleed straight through and soaked the gauze they gave me - I've never done that before!

It was a really good appointment, and I was pleased with the outcome. Now to just wait for the call!