Up until now

May 27th was my annual gyn appointment and also my “fertility” conference to set up a plan for getting pregnant. I was very disappointed when my Dr. said that he wanted to do 3 more natural cycles because natural is best and my greatest window of fertility will be during the first 6 months after my period starts after the lupron. I thought maybe he would suggest clomid or at the least to monitor my cycles for hormones, ovulation, and such. However all he said was to “Relax” ugh that is not was I wanted to hear…actually he said that he sees obese women who smoke, drink, and don’t take care of their bodies getting pregnant all the time and this is because they do not think about their bodies at all. I have to wonder if the stress I put on my body by thinking about getting pregnant is worse than the stress they put on their bodies by being unhealthy. Also how I’m I suppose to not think about it when every morning at 5am I have to take my temperature and record it. I start my day with thinking about it.

He did mention the expense of out of pocket fertility treatments and I know that they money really isn’t there for such an expense but I guess I wanted something more than “Relax”.

Nathan and I did get to spend the weekend together for his birthday. We went to Savage River Forest and went camping. It was very nice, just sitting by the fire, reading and taking walks. Nathan turned 29 with a Happy Birthday Smore. His last year in his 20’s. Mom and dad came out on Friday nite for hotdogs and marshmallows and we managed to dodge the rain and storms that we could hear but did not make it to the valley. We hope to go camping a few other times this summer and even talked about a cross country camping trip next summer to Colorado. We realized this would take a lot of planning especially with 2 dogs and perhaps and baby (you never know…I am trying really hard to be relaxed)

School ended on June 8th . I was very ready for the end of the school year and so were my students. We had 2 weeks between testing and the last day so that wasn’t so bad but it seemed to drag on.

We plan on spending our summer working on the house, working at Mickey D’s (Natedogg), and visiting with family and of course relaxing trying to make babies.


June 10, 2010
14 DPO – so I am not exactly late but I have never gone this long without a temperature drop and spotting. I am trying very hard not to get my hopes up since I took a cheapie hpt yesterday and of course it was negative. I decided to give my cousin Sherrie and call and send her a picture of my chart to see what she thinks. Sherrie said my chart looked really good, of course this does nothing for not getting my hopes up. She told me to get First Response hpt with the two pink lines and take it with first morning urine. So I would have to wait until tomorrow morning. I am not good with waiting. I picked up the test at the grocery store and a bottle of water. I know that this isn’t the best way to do the test in the middle of the day and just after drinking water, but oh well. There was three test in the box and I can take another one tomorrow if my temp is still up and my period hasn’t shown up yet.

So I get home, let the dogs out, and go straight to the bathroom. Nathan was asleep because he had worked the night before, so I could do this without him noticing and suffer in silence with the negative that was surely to appear.

I took the test and after about 20 seconds the indicator line began to show…disappointment…but the test does say wait 3 minutes, so I leave it on the window sill and go down stairs to let the dogs in and try to avoid looking at the stick until the 3 minutes are up.

I go back up stairs pick up the stick and…wait is that another pink line, NO WAY I must be seeing things…I begin to shake and cry….”NATHAN!!” He jumps out of bed probably because of my blood curdling scream… “Do you see it? I think I see it is there 2 lines?” “Yes it is there”…. lots of hugging and crying and can’t believe its… WOW I didn’t think I would ever have the opportunity to see those 2 pink lines. Words can not express my feelings. I am beyond excited, thrilled.

Had to call Sherrie and of course send her a pic of the stick. I could not believe it. I called my Dr because he told me to call as soon as I am late or get a +hpt because of me being high-risk. The nurse asked if I could come in for bloodwork that afternoon…of course.

June 11, 2010

Bloodwork came back Beta 79, Progestrone 31. Any beta over 10 is considered pregnant and the dr said he likes to see progesterone over 11 to show that the uterus is responding the way it should. No sex, Stay out of the sun, Stay off your feet, Relax. (no more ripping up flooring) I have to go in for blood work next Thursday to see if my beta is doubling and my progesterone is increasing. But yes I am pregnant.

We have decided to tell my parents on Saturday night when my mom gets home. I am going to make 2 scrapbook pages that say Mom-Mom & Me and Pap-Pap & Me, plus pick up 2 grandma/grandpa bibs. We are thinking about waiting until Mom and Dad Gough come out in July to tell them so we can see their reactions, but we may not be able to wait that long. We are probably going to tell our brothers and sisters…we aren’t good at keeping secrets. I know that it is way early, however if something does happed these people are our support so we want them to know what is going on.

Symptoms: very sore and tender breast, tired, and a little queasy

June 12, 2010

Nathan took his Praxis test this morning for Social Studies. He has been studying so hard and working so hard in school. I am crossing my fingers that he only has to take this one time and be done with it. The test was in Hagerstown so I decided to go to my brothers and see the babies and perhaps spill the beans.

“So I have a secret.” “You are preggers?” says Chris… “We knew it.” says Amy… “How did you know?” “Mom and dad can’t really keep a secret.” “They don’t know…we just found out. Why would you think they know?” “Well mom picked up maternity clothes and baby outfits at a yard sale.” “Nope they don’t know.”

Got the cutest bibs and onesie at Carter’s while I was waiting for Nate to finish his testing. Weird to be buying baby things for me and not for other people.

When we got home from Hagerstown we headed to mom and dad’s for grilling out and of course letting them know the big news. We were sitting out on the patio and I said… “Oh mom I have something I want to show you…let me go get it. I have been working on some scrapbooking. (nothing unusual) I opened to pages in front of mom and dad they looked at it. Took a few seconds…than mom jumped up.. “You are having a baby!” more tears and hugging. Dad was a little taken back. I know he worries about our current situation, with Nathan in school and working on the house. But I know he is happy to have another grandbaby on the way.

Symptoms: sore and tender breast, tired, a bit more hungry (I think), soreness in my hips, trouble sleeping (probably just too much thinking)


June 17

More bloodwork. Repeat Beta and P4 levels to measure progress.

June 18

I called the Dr’s office to get the results of the bloodwork. Labcorp said that the office has the results in their system in the morning. I called at 1pm and was told that the Dr was in surgery but she told me that my Beta was 320 and P4 was 9.8. Automatically my chest got tight. I knew that my beta levels did not increase the way they should and my progesterone level had decreased by 2/3rds. My mind started racing. I called the nurse back to ask if the p4 drop was a concern and she said no that it should go back up. I just felt that something wasn’t right. I could feel all the “symptoms” of pregnancy starting to slip away and of course my stress level going up.

June 23

Things still feeling off. Nathan and I headed to bed at around 10pm, I had some cramping and just did not feel good at all. At around midnight I woke up and had to go to the bathroom and that is when I saw the blood. I heart stopped. I started to yell to get Nathan up and I started to cry. We didn’t know what to do. I started to throw up. I have never been this upset. We have been wanting to be pregnant for so long and I could not believe this was happening to us. I started to yell about all the rotten parents out there and the women who don’t take care of their selves and have babies. Of course living in an area of low socioeconomic communities I see young, poor girls everyday that get pregnant and have babies and here we were unable to keep ours. I called my mom to ask what we should do and she said that we should head to the ER. So that is what we did…

It was a terrible night. The ER dr was awesome. He was very straight forward and stated the facts of the situation while being very sensitive to the situation. He spoke to us as educated adults which doesn’t always happen in this area when you go to the doctors. He said that we were threatening a miscarriage. The hospital took my betas again and it had dropped to 312. I also had a sonogram and it only showed a small sack. I should have been 6 weeks and if it was a healthy baby we would have seen a heartbeat.

June 24

Saw my gyn today and more bloodwork and another sonogram. He never said miscarriage and still seemed to hold on hope that the sac would grow. I knew in my heart that it was over. I was not happy with the way things were handled by my dr. I spent the next 2 days at my mom and dad’s house hanging out on the couch and working on a baby quilt for some friends. The quilt was actually very therapeutic. The friends that were having the baby were going to be excellent parents and this was comforting that a couple that would love and take care of their child was having a baby.

I am glad that I had such a wonderful and supportive family and that I had told those close to us that I was pregnant, because when we had to tell them about the miscarriage we had their support which was so comforting. I am very thankful for my faith and knowledge that everything happens for a reason. The scientist in me knows that when there are things wrong with cells they will die and that your body takes care of itself as best it can. The Christian in me held very tight to the belief that God has a plan even though he doesn’t make the plan known to us. I did struggle with jealousy and just plain meanness to those who had babies and we not taking care of them or taking care of themshelves.

I was able to miscarry naturally which I am thankful for. I did not want to go in for a D&C.

June 26

Another dr’s appt for a sonogram and bloodwork to confirm that there was nothing left and my beta levels were going down. The dr told us to wait for 3 cycles however we decided to just take it easy on the baby making and see what God’s plan is.

Summer 2010

Not a good start to the summer and my emotions about our situation was all over the place. I am an emotional eater and I gave myself free range on eating, which was not good for health or my stress. I also stopped running and managed to gain back the weight I had lost before I got pregnant. We didn’t get as much done on our house like we would have liked. It was just a weird kind of summer.

Fall 2010

Back to school and being completely overwhelmed with school and work. Nathan was still at McDonald’s and completed his first semester of student teaching. Nathan has also been working on his capstone paper for social studies. I was immersing myself in my practicum for administration and supervision in order to complete my Administration and supervision endorsement in December. We know that we will be very tired and stressed over the next school year, however the light at the tunnel is starting to show and Nathan and I are very much looking forward to the end of this journey we have been on.

NOW February 19, 2011

It has been a while since I have sat down to write an entry into my blog aka communication with Mom Gough and the few others that want to read. Nathan and I have been very busy with school and work so this has been keeping up hopping.

Where are we on our fertility journey? December 2010 was our first medicated cycle with clomid. This cycle was to create a base line for the medication. I was kind of hoping for a miracle that the first medicated cycle would work. Eventhough I had a good response 8 follicles in the left ovary and unknown in the right. I did not get pregnant. January 2011 cycle was unmedicated but monitored which meant lots of bloodwork and sonograms. The blood people know me by name and they are also hoping for a pregnancy soon. Without medication my cycles are very long which may be affecting my chances of getting pregnant. Today is the first day of our second round of clomid (fertility medication) and this cycle we will be doing our first IUI (intrauterine insemination). Clomid is a 5 days cycle. I will be having bloodwork on Monday February 28 and if everything working the way the dr thinks it will be we will be doing insemination on Tuesday March 1st. I am very excited about this. I am glad that we are doing something to get this going. I know that this may just lead to more disappointment however I am praying that our time is soon. I know I shouldn’t count my chickens, however if this cycle would work we would be due on Thanksgiving Day…what a blessing and anyone that knows me knows that Thanksgiving is the start of my favorite time of year. I don’t want to set myself up for disappointment but I just can’t help but to think ahead, that is just the way that I am. The success of clomid and IUI will be seen within 3 cycles.

Everything else

The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter, however we are on a bumpy track right now. Nathan is still working on his paper that we are getting done this weekend and turning in on Monday. He has been very stressed lately about school work, student teaching, and testing. On a great note Nathan has passed the Social Studies content knowledge test, the special education content test, and just has one more test the pedagogy test that he will be taking March 12. We have started to get prepared for this test. I was able to finish my administration and supervision endorsement in the fall. I am just waiting for Maryland State Board of Education to issue my new certification. I am currently taking 3 courses…School Finance at Frostburg State and 2 teaching technology classes online through Marshall. After these classes I will be at Masters + 45 status which is the next pay level up and the last one until doctorate. After this semester will be concentrating on the School Leadership test which I will take in the fall. This test is required to be a principal, but I am able to be an assistant principal which is my goal for the fall.

I have started to submit applications for a new job in several counties and Nathan and I plan to attend at least 2 teacher job fairs.

We had a touch of spring for the past couple of days but expecting the cold weather back and perhaps some snow/wintery mix on Tuesday. I cant wait until spring and especially can’t wait for this summer, whatever this summer will bring.