Familiar space in my head

There's a few specific things that have to happen to prepare my body for transfer.  It started with a baseline ultrasound to make sure I don't have any cysts.  That was Thursday, first hurdle down.  I start the shots again Saturday.  After a couple weeks I have a lining check to make sure I'm making a cozy home for our embryos.  Then we wait for transfer, then pregnancy test, then pray the baby grows.
Before I knew how bad things could go I loved being pregnant.  I'm fascinated by the fact that I can grow a human being.  I wasn't super excited about the vomiting or stretch marks but I truly enjoyed the experience.  Now I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to feel joy until we have our baby in our arms.
I'm trying to take his step by step and not think too far ahead but after everything we've been thru its not that easy.

Terrified joy

We're all familiar with the expression 'nervous excitement' but what I got going on these days can't be minimized that way.  The thought of having a baby in my arms by this time next year fills me with joy but the thought of setting myself up for the same heartbreak we're still crawling out of right now is where the fear sets in.  We've been thru so much and have wanted this for so long that sometimes the doubt that we'll ever have our take home baby crawls out from the dark places in my head.  It fills me with a near paralyzing fear.  I try to stay focused on the goal and let myself fantasize about the delivery room, the nursery I'll decorate, that first time our sweet baby gets put in my arms and it pushes down that fear but it's only temporary.  Over a decade ago my sister delivered prematurity with devastating results.  When i got pregnant with my son the following year I thought 'our family has had our tragedy I'll be fine' only to suffer the same fate.  When hubby and I first started to ttc we got the news that his son from his first marriage died while serving our country.  Then we struggle for over 4  years to finally get pregnant only to lose the baby at 13 weeks.  As much as I want to believe that life can't be that cruel and this has to be our time I could have said that at any point in this journey and been justified.  All we know is loss.
So yes, I'm so excited that this could be our chance I'm simultaneously terrified I'm setting my sweet husband and I up for more heartbreak.

Here we go again

If we're being honest I was hoping that at the end of the month when matches are usually sent out by our clinic we'd receive a new match.  I know there's no guarantee and sometimes it can take a couple months but a match this month means meds next month and transfer in July.  This means we could be pregnant again by the time our due date from the last pregnancy rolls around at the end of August.  Emotionally I think this might cushion the blow of that day a little.  I know we can't replace our baby, nothing's going to do that but maybe new hope will take the edge off the sadness.  So, I was expecting to be stalking my email next week waiting for that magic email from the program coordinator,  what I wasn't expecting was to get that amazing email while sitting in 5 Guys with some coworkers at lunch today.
The profiles are wonderful and hubbies on board so come tomorrow I'll be sending in our acceptance form and start googling potential due dates for all the possible transfer dates in our calendar.
With hope we are moving forward.

May 12th is just another day, right?

I do quite a lot of shopping online.  I have a mild addiction to shoes, purses and sunglasses.  I get a lot of emails for sales, new items, etc.  My inbox is FULL of  mothers day stuff right now and every one of them stings.  I get a 5 minute mental reprieve from not focusing on this painful turn life has taken and glance at my email and it all comes flooding back.  Shopping used to be my oasis, a reprieve from our painful reality and now it's yet another place haunted by thoughts of what could have been, what should have been.
I'm really trying to tell myself that it's just another day but my heart is hurting right now.  I miss our baby.

Five possibilities

Depending on how you look at it there are a handful of reasons that could explain why our baby died.

You could say there is something physically wrong with me that testing to date hasn't identified.  This is my second 'late loss'. I was 22 weeks pregnant when my son was born in 1997.  He was born alive but passed away about an hour later due to his prematurity.

You could say the MTHFR mutations caused this.  My inability to process folic acid well could have caused a neural tube defect that caused the baby to die.

You could say that I wasn't producing enough progesterone naturally, the baby died within days of stopping the progesterone injections.

You could say there was a genetic issue with the baby

You could say we just had really really bad luck.

We can correct all but the first and the last reason.  They all sound like perfectly logical reasons but none of them are the obvious reason we were looking for.  Because of this we've decided to put our faith in our doctors and God and give this another try.  We've told our clinic we are ready to try again and are officially waiting for a match.  Please keep us in your prayers.

I don't do vague well

I was really hoping my RE would results from my bloodwork that showed some definite reason why we lost our baby and it would have a medicinal fix so we could go into another transfer with a little piece of mind.  We are still waiting the results from one test but the only thing we've found so far is two mutations of the MTHFR gene (that's a real thing, not me trying to curse in lolspeak).  Apparently about a third of the population has one or two of these mutations and they cause you to absorb folic acid badly.  Low folic acid can cause neural tube defects and if bad enough can end a pregnancy.  The fix is massive amounts of folic acid supplements when pregnant but my RE doesn't think this caused our loss.  He does suggest the supplements if we try again but it's not the smoking gun we were looking for.
He's also curious about the coincidental timing of me stopping PIO and the baby dying.  Everything I've seen has said by twelve weeks you body should be making so much progesterone that the amount you'd get thru shots is basically adding a quarter cup of water to a two gallon jug.  However, because the shots go in your muscle and are absorbed thru your bloodstream there's really no way of getting accurate lab results on what you are producing and what you are injecting.  He suggests doing shots for the first 12 weeks again and then switching to a vaginal suppository.  These allow the uterus to absorb the medicine directly, bypassing the bloodstream so they can monitor my progesterone levels thru bloodwork and see what I'm actually producing.  Again, not a smoking gun but a curious possibility.
So, unless this lab comes back with something significant we are left with vague lab results and a difficult decision.   I really want to know by the end of the week what we are doing. Its really hard to put something behind you when you don't yet know what's ahead.

You don't get it any I pray you never do

If you haven't been thru a loss here are some phrases that aren't helpful (some of these are actually offensive):

This is all part of gods plan
I know how you feel
Maybe this is a blessing and you just don't know why yet
You can have more kids
Why don't you just adopt
It just wasn't meant to be

When someone you care about loses a baby tell them you don't know what to say, tell them you are sorry for their loss, validate the existence of the little life that was lost and recognize that they are grieving that loss, not just the loss of a (seemingly replaceable) baby.