The power of food

I had an appointment today. Ponyo's heart rate was 142 beats per minute. My weight gain and belly size are spot on for 30 weeks, 4 days. And my iron (hemoglobin level) was up to 11.3! When it was measured last month, it was borderline low (like 10.8 or something). I guess they like to see it above 11 and I got it there by changing my diet for the last month. Nothing major, just lots more spinach (I eat a spinach salad or green smoothie almost everyday), lots of broccoli with dinners, tons of nuts and seeds (especially almonds and sunflower nuts, yum!), and a healthy amount of legumes (mainly garbanzo beans...Ponyo has a dance party every time I eat anything with chickpeas!).

I also cut back on dairy a little, especially when I am eating iron rich foods. Did you know that calcium inhibits the body's ability to absorb iron? I learned that from the little cheat sheet they gave me at the clinic.  So, no more cheese on chili, burritos, or my baked potatoes with broccoli on top. Instead I've been sprinkling nutritional yeast on my food. Growing up, we used to sprinkle nutritional yeast on our chili all the time. Thankfully my Mom gave me a jar a few months ago, so I had it on hand, and now I am using it instead of just having it take up space in the fridge. It has a cheesy flavor but is much more awesome than cheese when it comes to vitamins:

Eating a heaping tablespoon of nutritional yeast is like taking a high-potency B-vitamin complex. A serving will generally stock you up with a couple of days’ worth of thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, B6, and B12, and a substantial amount of folic acid. Nutritional yeast also packs a decent amount of fiber and protein into a pretty small, low-calorie package.  All in all, as cheesy-flavored toppings for popcorn and pizza go, it’s pretty impressive. (source)

It is win, win, win! I get to absorb my iron more efficiently, I get the satisfying taste of cheese (which I LOVE), and I get all those vitamins plus extra protein! Woo hoo! And nutritional yeast has no calcium in it whatsoever. Oh, and it is gluten free.

For anyone else struggling with low iron, eating foods rich in vitamin C helps your body absorb iron. So, I try to make sure that if I have a green smoothie, I include vitamin C rich fruits like mangoes or oranges in it. When I eat chili or a dish with garbanzo beans, I make sure there are tomatoes involved in the meal.

It seems that my body is very sensitive to what I put in it. Food and nutrition are such powerful things!

What I did differently

I know there was a lot of luck involved in us getting pregnant in April. There was also a lot of prayer (I truly believe my Grandma had something to do with it! When we told her we were pregnant she said, "There's only one baby in there? With how hard I've been praying I was expecting at least two!").

In addition to luck and prayers, I made some pretty big changes to my diet and daily habits in the 3-4 months prior to Ponyo. I made the changes because I wanted to feel like I was doing something to increase our chances of success even though my husband and I had both resigned ourselves to the fact that nothing would be possible until after my laparoscopy. I am by no means a medical expert, and I don't claim to be, but here are the changes I made based on what a friend dealing with infertility told me, lots of research online, and reading these books:

The Infertility Cure: The Ancient Chinese Wellness Program for Getting Pregnant and Having Healthy Babies by Randine Lewis  

Recipes for the Endometriosis Diet by Carolyn Levett 

Endometriosis: A Key to Healing and Fertility Through Nutrition by Dian Shepperson Mills & Michael Vernon

The 9-Day Liver Detox Diet by Patrick Holford and Fiona McDonald Joyce

First, what my friend told me: She and her husband were seeing a specialist who was trained in NFP. Their doctor told them that over 30% of couples struggling with infertility conceive after 3 months of taking this combination of vitamins:

Vitamin C (1000 mg)
Calcium made with D3 (500mg)
D3 (2000 I.U.)
Magnesium (250 mg)
Stress B-Complex
Zinc (30 mg)
(My friend also took Flaxseed oil, which I skipped due to the warning about blood clotting and surgery risks)

I did some research and found that endometriosis and low progesterone can be linked to deficiencies in some of these vitamins (especially Magnesium). PCOS is also affected by these vitamins! I picked up the vitamins and the nice pharmacist at the grocery store even gave me a pill case to use so I wouldn't have to open 6 bottles every night when I took my many pills with dinner. I also gave my husband the same Vitamin C and D3 that I was taking as well as a normal multivitamin. Maybe it was a coincidence, but both my friend and I are now pregnant (due about 3 weeks apart) after both of us trying for about 2 years, which seems too weird.

I did some simple liver detox. In The Infertility Cure, I read that endometriosis can be caused by "stagnation of the liver." Sounds awesome, right? So I decided to read The 9-Day Liver Detox Diet. The detox book listed 5 habits to break:
1. Wheat
2. Milk
3. Caffeine
4. Alcohol
5. Bad fats

Interestingly, ALL FIVE of these things are to be avoided by women dealing with endometriosis (as mentioned in Recipes for the Endometriosis Diet and Endometriosis: A Key to Healing and Fertility Through Nutrition). So, I got super serious about going gluten free. No more cookies. No more sandwiches, or Triscuits (my fave snack!), or pita bread, or traditional pasta. I cut back on dairy. No more Kefir, limited cheese, limited yogurt, limited ice cream. I stopped drinking coffee, tea and alcohol. Once you cut out all of that, you pretty much cut out all bad fats, too, so that was taken care of!

I started drinking lemon water every morning. I started eating at least one serving of broccoli, spinach, or kale every day (these green veggies are good for you and also are known to help your body get rid of excess estrogens). 

To help rid my body of even more excess estrogen (excess estrogen is what causes endometriosis) I started using natural body products. I gave up scented soaps and used Kirk's Castile which is a coconut and vegetable glycerin soap. I started making my own deodorant out of coconut oil, baking soda, and arrowroot powder (I do still use normal deodorant for working out or very hot days even though the coconut deodorant works really well). I am still using my normal make-up and shampoo/conditioner although I am thinking of moving to healthier brands after I use everything I already have.

Because this post is getting so long, I'll do another where I'll write about the results I noticed after the changes.

Summertime summertime sum sum summertime

I've been done teaching for about a week and a half and finished closing my classroom for the summer last Thursday! I still have some curriculum mapping (ugh, gag me!) to complete for work by the end of this month, but otherwise I am done with school until August! I haven't made much progress on my summer plans (reading, painting, major cleaning, embroidering, cooking, yoga) due to some family situations (a death and some relatives who have needed some unexpected child care coverage) but things are probably going to start calming down now.

We had our blood work done last Wednesday and everything came back fine. One strange thing, which the nurse repeatedly told me was NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, is that my Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccination has worn off. So, I no longer have the antibodies to protect me against those illnesses and they can't give me the vaccination until after delivery. Apparently the vaccination wears off for some people over the course of time. So, I am just trying not to worry and in August I'll check in with the school nurse to make sure all of my students are current on their vaccinations. We were surprised that they did a second ultrasound at the blood work appointment so we were lucky to see that Ponyo has been growing right on track. My doctor was a little concerned about my protein intake since I am vegetarian and gluten free. If I don't gain weight on track or there is any concern with Ponyo's growth I will need to talk to a nutritionist at some point. For now, everything looks fine, though. Tonight we are attending a mandatory early pregnancy class at the clinic. It should be interesting. I think it is just a Q&A session type of thing.

We are still holding off telling friends and extended family our news for a few more weeks. We have told our parents, siblings, and grandparents, now, though, which is nice. Still hoping and praying that everything goes well and still hoping and praying for every one of you. I think about all of you often (is that creepy or weird? oh well).

Ponyo

Today we had our first pregnancy ultrasound (definitely not my first ultrasound, though, given the 2 pelvic ultrasounds and several follicle ultrasounds I've had along this journey). When I arrived I had to give a urine sample (not sure what they are testing with that) and I was told blood labs would be drawn after the ultrasound.

The ultrasound tech was very nice. She asked some routine questions: When was the first day of your last menstrual period? April 7. Did you conceive using fertility drugs? No. Have you had any spotting or bleeding? No. Do you have any concerns? Well, I was supposed to be having surgery for endometriosis tomorrow so we hope everything is where it should be. Then she smiled and said, Oh so we just need to threaten surgery and then you get pregnant, huh? I guess so...

She found the baby right away and we saw the heartbeat immediately. Thankfully everything is inside of my uterus - no concerns about this being an ectopic pregnancy anymore. Then she said they had to measure my cervix, which she didn't tell me anything about. Hopefully it is how it is supposed to be! Then she went back to the baby and measured the heartbeat. It came in on the fast end of normal at 198bpm and then later at 189bpm. I started crying, partially out of happiness and relief and partially out of concern over the fast heartbeat. She said it wasn't anything to worry about; a fast heartbeat is generally better than a slow one and it could just mean that the baby had been moving around. We got to see arm buds and leg buds as well as the yolk sack, the beginning of the umbilical cord and placenta. The baby was upside down and wiggled a few times. That made me laugh. She measured the baby and on first measurement said 8w6d but then measured again at 8w4d (which is right on track).

She also checked my ovaries. My right ovary was easy to find. I asked about the cysts (my chocolate cysts or endometrioma) and she pointed to a dark circle on my right ovary and said that was likely one of them. She had trouble finding my left ovary so I mentioned that at my last follicle ultrasound in January the ultrasound tech said my ovaries were very close together and then she found it, right next to my right ovary. I will be asking if my ovaries being so close together 1. is anything to worry about and 2. could be caused endometrial tissue binding my organs together. I'll have to wait to ask that, though, because my doctor was out delivering a baby during our appointment so we are going back next Wednesday to meet with her and do the blood work that we were supposed to do today. 

Thank you all for your hope, support, and prayers; they mean so much to us! We hope that things continue to go well and that little Ponyo (that is what we named them for now so we don't have to call our little one "the baby, " "it" or "baby") grows healthy and strong. For anyone wondering where Ponyo came from, yes, it is from the movie of that title. Ponyo was a magical goldfish-girl and we know this baby is quite a miracle. Translated to English, Ponyo loosely means soft, squishy, and chubby.

The hurt doesn't end

Yesterday The Bee and I attended a birthday party for a friend's 2-year-old twins. We love the family and my BFF and her husband are close to them, too. The three of us girls have known each other since 6th grade and our now husbands have become friends through our close relationships. Part way through the party our friend (with the twins and also a 3-year-old) approached the four of us and said,


"I wanted to share something with you. There is this place that is NFP based and they can help you, you know, since you can't do In Vitro or anything. I can't remember what it is called, though. Hold on, let me ask K."


K is her father-in-law. So she drags him over to where we are sitting and he starts talking about NaPro Technology and how they find out "what is wrong with you" and help you "without unnatural intervention." So here are the four of us getting fertility advice from our friend's father-in-law in the middle of a birthday party. We told this friend about some of our struggle IN CONFIDENCE. All she knows is that we have been trying to conceive since August 2010 and that things haven't gone as planned. She doesn't know anything about us seeing specialists, or my MRI, blood tests, ultrasounds, endometriosis diagnosis, the surgery I was supposed to be having at the end of this week...


It felt like a huge breach of trust. After he finished talking to us (and to his credit, I believe he was trying to be considerate and helpful...he doesn't know that our friend shouldn't have shared info about what we are going through) my friend started up again talking about how bad most fertility treatments are and how Catholic people can't do IVF. I sat there with my lips mostly zipped. This friend knows that our niece and nephew were IVF encouraged. Also, she has no idea what it is like to struggle with infertility. She got pregnant with her 3-year-old within 4 months of starting to try and then got pregnant with twin girls BY SURPRISE less than a year after their first daughter was born. To say I was steamed by her comments is an understatement. All I really added to the conversation was that, yes, I already know about NaPro Technology because one of my cousins worked with Thomas W. Hilgers (the doctor who is kind of the head of NaPro Technology) in Nebraska when she was finishing her residency while becoming a doctor.


I am still hoping and praying for good news on Wednesday. And you can bet your bottom dollar that I won't be sharing our (hopefully) good news with this friend until the beginning of our second trimester.

Ugh

7.5 teaching days left to go. The kids are crazy. I am tired. I am so grateful to have the summer off this year!

This morning was rough. I woke up feeling off. I tried to eat but I ended up throwing up 3 times before I left for school. I wasn't sure if I should call in sick or not. I decided to tough it out. I am surprised at how much I seem to suck at pregnancy. I am not complaining about any of my symptoms; I know I am extremely lucky. I kept my cool the first 2 times I threw up this morning. But when I was sick for the third time and had tears streaming down my face I realized that getting pregnant wasn't easy for us and it seems that being pregnant isn't going to be the smoothest, either. I hope that our appointment (a week from tomorrow) will make me feel more confident about everything. Throwing up won't seem as bad after I get to see a healthy, growing baby.

I always thought I'd eat such a healthy diet while pregnant. I am not eating horribly but I am sure I am not getting enough protein or fat right now. I can't stand beans, avocados, or my gluten free bread. I have mostly been living off of apples, oranges, frozen blueberries, ginger ale, vegetable soup, and potatoes (of the mashed and baked varieties). I feel guilty about this. I try to eat the way I was 4 weeks ago but now I find myself gagging on most of my favorite foods. And here's something that my husband finds hilarious...I want steak and hamburgers. I don't think I have ever eaten steak in my life and I probably haven't had a hamburger since I was 4 but I can't stop thinking about them! I don't know that I'd actually be able to eat meat if I had it in front of me, but it smells amazing (so many people in the neighborhood were grilling last weekend, oh my goodness!) and when I try to think of something to eat those are the first things that pop in my head. We never even have that kind of food around. The only meat my husband ever makes at home is chicken.

Thank you for letting me vent. I am still thankful. I still know that I am blessed and lucky. Tomorrow will be better.

Just a quick update

Most of the time I am still in disbelief about getting a positive pregnancy test earlier this month. I am extremely thankful and feel very, very blessed to have been given this gift! I am about six weeks pregnant. All day morning sickness/nausea has started setting in. I am not sure if it is the progesterone supplements that I am using or just being pregnant. I am hoping and praying that it is a good sign that my hormones are doing what they are supposed to! If all continues to go alright, we shouldn't find anything out until our first ultrasound on June 6.

We have still only told my older sister and best friend our news. We plan to tell our parents after the ultrasound. It has been very challenging not to tell my Mom, Grandmother, sister who is 2 years younger than me, and another girlfriend who we have been open with about our struggle with infertility. I feel like we are in a bit of a pickle because our families and a few of my friends know that I was going to be scheduling my laparoscopy for early June and some have (very sweetly) started asking about it. We've been saying that we won't be able to schedule it until after we get results from some tests we have scheduled for June 6, which is totally true! I am hoping like I've never hoped before that we'll get positive news at that appointment and I won't need to have my surgery before we take home our first child. Lots of prayers are being said and lots of thanks being given around here! I am praying for all of you everyday, too! My St. Gerard prayer card remains on my nightstand and I say that prayer every night:)

I have 10.5 teaching days left of the school year! Hurrah! I am probably a little too excited but this is my first summer off since I started working at age 16! I already have a nice stack of books ready for summer reading (including The Hunger Games, A Game of Thrones, the last 3 Harry Potter books, and several books on artist and author Edward Gorey). I also have a dozen or so canvases waiting to be painted, lots of flour sack towels waiting for embroidery, an office that is waiting to be cleaned, a new bread pan waiting for gluten free bread to be baked in, and a few swim suits that are waiting to be worn!

9 days

I have been absent because I wasn't sure if I should share this with all of you. Or when I should. Out of fear of hurting people I have come to care about even though I have yet to meet any of you in person. Out of concern that I would lose the support and sense of belonging I have come to cherish so much. Out of an overwhelming worry that it might not matter at all in the long run. But I feel like I need to get it out there so I don't feel dishonest or like a phony bologna anymore. You have all been so honest about your journeys and I owe you the same. Infertility sure makes you view what should be happy news in a different way, though.

Nine days ago I expected my period to start. I expected that 7 days ago I would talk to the surgery scheduler and get that important date on the calendar. The day of the surgery that was supposed to make my body work again and give us our first real chance at having a baby.

But nine days ago, my period hadn't started by the afternoon. This is not normal for me. And my cramps felt different. I was doing dishes and thinking about my best friend who announced her pregnancy to me on May 2 and I laughed thinking, "Wouldn't that be something if we had babies around the same time? After all we've been through in this struggle?" It was just a funny thought but I couldn't shake it. So I sneakily took a pregnancy test knowing that my husband would have a hard time not rolling his eyes when I came to him crying, negative test in hand.

But then it said "Pregnant." I began shaking all over. I was thinking, "How is this possible?!" After almost 5 years of unprotected sex, almost 2 years of well timed BD and actively ttc, after 9 months of medical tests and diagnoses...I didn't believe it. I carried it out to my husband who was studying for his next exam and asked, "What do you see on this?" He looked at it and his eyes just got huge. We were utterly confused. The rest of the day was spent getting excited, then terrified and then excited and terrified again.

Eight days ago I bought more pregnancy tests at Target. Just in case the one I took on Saturday was faulty. I got another positive.

Seven days ago I called my doctor. The nurse laughed when I explained the situation, "I am supposed to be scheduling a laparoscopy for next month, but we got a surprise positive pregnancy test on Saturday? What am I supposed to do now?" She told me that because I was not high risk, I didn't need to come in until my first OB appointment in June.

Six days ago I got a call from my doctor saying that I should come in for a blood test to measure my hCG and progesterone, due to my borderline low progesterone in January. I went in that afternoon.

Five days ago I got a message saying that my hCG was good (4115) and my progesterone was adequate (15.6). They said they like to see progesterone between 15 and 20. I called back, worried that my progesterone would not be okay and asked if I should think about supplementing since I was on the low end of normal.

Four days ago they called back and told me my doctor said I could supplement with progesterone if I wanted to, given my "long history of infertility and history of low progesterone." I decided it would be best to do all I can to keep this pregnancy viable. I took another home pregnancy test because I feel so unsure that my body can actually do this.

Three days ago I picked up the progesterone supplements.

Yesterday I cried at Mass when the priest said his blessing for mothers. I cried for myself, and my friend, and my sister-in-law, and all of you. Infertility is a terrible, terrible thing and although I got a positive test, I am still in the thick of it all.

And now I am just hoping and praying that everything will be alright. We are trying to remain cautiously optimistic. Women with endometriosis are at higher risk for miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy so I am very worried. If we aren't lucky enough to have a baby in 9 months, at least my body seems to be working some of its issues out so our chances of having a baby after surgery don't seem so far fetched anymore. We are waiting to tell family until sometime in June after our first appointment. We don't want people to get excited and then find out bad news at the first ultrasound.

So that is where we are! Infertility wins a point again by striking fear into our hearts when we finally got the positive test we have been dreaming about.