Review: Angels Fall

Angels Fall by Nora Roberts
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I really enjoy Nora Roberts' romance - the key element for me is not necessarily the romance, but rather the growth and success of the female main character. Although I read this book quickly, it's quite a page-turner!, it was hard to read.
*SPOILERS*



This book focuses on a woman who has been traumatized by a violent crime and then is psychologically tortured throughout the book. It was pretty horrible to read about what she went through - and with very little support except from a hunky love interest. Something I usually love about Roberts' books are the relationships between the female characters - there was very little here to work with. She has some support from coworkers and a grandmother she contacts by email (but we never hear from the grandmother herself). The other key woman in the book is a murdered sex worker who is drawn in a way that is disturbingly close to blaming the woman for her own murder. I'm so disappointed.

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My Miscarriage (Part Two)

On September 11th, after an early Monday morning blood test, the nurse called me and said my hCG levels were going back up. 

She asked me come back to the clinic the next day to take another blood test and do an ultrasound. We came in on the morning of September 12 and the doctors noticed a cyst in my ovary that was so large that the doctor thought it was my bladder, full to brimming. They told us to sit in the waiting room while they consulted. When a nurse came out and asked me if I’d had anything to eat that day, I began worrying. She explained that I might need emergency surgery for an ectopic pregnancy.

This is what I had feared most when the nurse first mentioned a biochemical pregnancy back what felt like eons before.  An ectopic pregnancy - where the egg and sperm meet and create a fetus that implants somewhere outside of the warm, nurturing home of the uterus.  An ectopic pregnancy that can cause fallopian tube rupture, internal bleeding, death.

They took me to another specialist for an ultrasound - the specialist worked within the pre-natal ward so I walked past women with beautiful round bellies proud and happy and not facing the fear and grief that I was. 

I was actually pretty cheerful about it - joking about looking forward to coming back to this floor when it was my turn. 

Although they were pretty certain that the large cyst was not the fetus, simply because it existed, it was a contraindication to administer methotrexate. They also still couldn’t locate where the pregnancy had implanted, despite multiple ultrasounds. So the lead doctor suggested a dilation and curettage procedure to empty my uterus in the hope that it would flush out the remaining HCG and any fetal cells that had been produced as part of the inviable pregnancy. At this point, it was certain that I did not have a viable pregnancy but uncertain whether I had an ectopic pregnancy. 

I felt so well taken care of, K at my side, three different doctors consulting me and doing procedures. I woke up from the short procedure feeling fine and hopeful and looking forward to the next try.

We came back in the next morning for blood test.  By noon, the results had come in - my hCG levels were just as high as the day before. The fetal cells were definitely still growing and they weren’t in my newly emptied uterus.

I hadn’t had a miscarriage, I had an ectopic pregnancy.

They scheduled an emergency laparoscopic surgery to find and remove the ectopic pregnancy the next day.  Rather than the small clinic, K and I headed over to the large hospital down the street and a brand new set of nurses. As I stripped down and put on the surprisingly soft multiple hospital gowns (one tied in the front, one tied in the back), the hospital nurse asked me to take a pregnancy test to assure them that I was not pregnant.  I looked at her surprised and said, “But I am pregnant - that’s why I need this surgery. That test will come up positive. It’s an ectopic pregnancy.”

I was surprised and frustrated to have to explain it. How could I be the one explaining the purpose of the surgery? Tears sprung to my eyes but I took the test.

When I had the chance to meet my surgeon, I felt much better. She was calm and intelligent and took a lot of time making sure that I knew what the procedure was - a laparoscopy with possible salpingostomy. Basically, sending a tiny camera into the uterus and fallopian tubes to look around, identify, and remove the ectopic pregnancy, possibly through an incision in the fallopian tube.

It was scary, but so were the stories I had found online about women who had bizarre shoulder pain that turned out to be due to a burst fallopian tube. 

I hoped that doing the surgery would allow my body to recover quickly so we could try again quickly.

I woke up dizzy, in pain, nauseated, and alone. I was miserable. My happy wake up from two days earlier was a distant memory. 

The recovery nurse came over to me and said that they weren’t able to locate the ectopic pregnancy so she was to give me a shot of the methotrexate. She asked me to roll on my side so she could put the injection in my hip.

I burst out crying. Surgery and still they didn’t find the ectopic? I complied with the nurse but inside I crumbled. I knew that the methotrexate shot meant that we couldn’t try another IUI for three months while the chemicals made their way through my system.

I was devastated and felt terribly sick. K finally arrived in my room after what felt like days and I burst into tears immediately upon seeing her. They wouldn’t let her stay very long as I drifted in and out of sleep so I woke alone again and tried sipping some ginger ale. (As a final humiliation on the way out, I vomited that ginger ale into a drain in the parking lot.)

Review: The Impatient Woman's Guide to Getting Pregnant

The Impatient Woman's Guide to Getting Pregnant by Jean M. Twenge
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After six months of trying to get pregnant using IUI, I decided to do some more reading and learning about fertility. This book is short and easy to read and I would happily recommend it. My spouse and I are both female so a lot of the recommendations in this book aren't directly relevant because they are about how to time sex for best fertility. That said, I did appreciate Twenge's aggregation of the various studies and books on fertility and their very varied usefulness/relevance to modern women. I'm 35, so I'm on "the edge" of fertility - except that apparently that statistic was based on rural French women in the 1700s!!! (Who probably already had multiple children and therefore were probably not trying to get pregnant.) As someone who also experienced a miscarriage, I particularly liked her chapter on her own experience of miscarriage and exploration of how a miscarriage changes the whole game - a positive pregnancy test no longer elicits jumps of joy, just a wary "okay" in her book. As a result of the book, I've gotten serious about limiting my caffeine and started charting my temperature in order to keep myself more informed, even though our fertility clinic also does regular monitoring. It's at least been a method to keep myself distracted and feeling like I'm doing something positive to help us along on this TTC journey.

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My miscarriage (Part One)

We got pregnant on our very first try. It was statistically improbable, if not impossible.  Our very first IUI or “squirt”, as I called it, was two days before our wedding and all through the week-long honeymoon driving up the Pacific Coast Highway from southern to northern California, my wife and I would be seized by the possibility and catch each others’ eyes. “Do you think we’re pregnant?”

Every sign of tiredness, crankiness, cravings for food - everything we’d normally be annoyed by - transformed into a sign of possibility. 

We couldn’t wait to pick up a pregnancy test and give it a shot. I've never been so excited to pee. Even with all of the distraction of our wedding and honeymoon that #twoweekwait felt so long that I eventually gave in and tested a day before my period was supposed to start. It came up negative but we still had hope.

Then I got my period. So we cried a little, let our anxiously excited parents know the disappointment, and set up our next fertility clinic visit on August 15. No big deal - we didn’t really think we’d be so lucky to get pregnant on the first try.

At the clinic, I did the blood test and ultrasound to get my “baseline” and waited for a call from the nurse about when to come back in. When I did get the call, the nurse asked if I could talk for a few minutes.  

She explained that my blood work had come back showing that I had HCG levels - (HCG or human chorionic gonadotropin is a hormone produced by the placenta after implantation)  - it meant that I was pregnant.  She explained that since I had had my period, it was probably just what they call a “biochemical pregnancy” which meant that although sperm and egg met, it was not a viable pregnancy so my body would release it. She asked me to come back two days later.

Two days (August 17) and another needle prick later, I got a call from the nurse again - “You are definitely pregnant - your HCG levels doubled, which is what we expect over two days at the beginning of a pregnancy. Congratulations!”

I was elated - I texted K, unsure if she could get away for a call right then.  We spent the day sending hearts and rainbow flags and baby icons to one another. That weekend, we took a “5 week bump” picture and sent it around to our immediate family.

so hopeful

On Monday, August 21, we went back in for another round of bloodwork and an ultrasound to check on implantation. I got a call around noon, as expected.  But when I heard the voice of the doctor instead of the nurse my stomach sunk. I quickly got out of my little cube and went outside so our conversation wouldn’t be overheard.

“Your HCG levels have gone down, your pregnancy has miscarried.”

“I figured that since it was you calling, it was probably bad news.  What happens next?”

“Well, we’d like you to come in next week and we will follow the HCG levels as they go down. Once they get to zero, we can start the process of monitoring and IUI again.”

I couldn’t help crying. The rollercoaster of emotions - getting my period, being told I was kindofmaybenotreally pregnant, then hooray yay pregnant, then not. I sat outside work, looking at the trees, the Russian embassy, the Kennedy Center, and I cried.

I called K and we cried.

We went back in - August 28 levels stayed the same

September 4 levels stayed the same

My veins were tired of pricks and people at work were starting to ask me about my bruised inner elbows.

I started getting worried if we would ever be able to try again so I turned to the internet - I looked up topics on babycenter, mayo clinic, all the websites I could think of.  Many women said they’d experienced the same after a miscarriage. Waiting around many weeks for levels to bottom back out. Waiting to be able to try again.

On September 11 my HCG levels were up.

 (to be continued)