I've been debating when I was going to start talking about our journey of baby making on this blog, which is one of the major reasons it's been so quite around here lately. I think that, in all honesty, it's really the only topic that's been on my mind to write about, but also the one that I was having a tough time putting on "paper". However, I think that there must be people out there somewhere who can benefit from our journey, but more importantly I think writing about everything will end-up being some sort of therapy for me.
To start having children isn't going to be very easy for Nicole and I. I am sterile, which totally makes me think of a cow for some reason so I prefer the term infertile although that opens doors for people to make all types of suggestions about surgeries and other "projects" that might "fix" me. Sterile just kinda says, "Step out you don't get it. This infertile thing isn't changing".
On top of that, Nicole has an autoimmune blood-clotting disease that is called Antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) which, among many of the issues attached to the disease, a pregnancy falls into the high-risk category. The basic idea is that because the capillaries are so small between the placenta and the mother that having this blood clotting disease quite drastically raises the chances for miscarriages and stillbirths. Nicole will have to go on shots to help prevent these types of clots. APS also makes it more difficult to get pregnant at least for some.
We are planning on trying to have children about one year from now, but because things aren't going to be so easy and we have to worry so much more about the health and wellbeing of both Nicole and our baby we have already started the process of seeing specialists.
This past Wednesday we met with a doctor who specializes in high-risk pregnancies. It was just a consult to help get us ready for all the steps ahead. We found out that 75% of women who that APS either see no changes in their symptoms or their symptoms are better when they are pregnant. There is no way of telling who will fall into that 75% though. The time during the pregnancy as well as the two weeks after raises the chances of Nicole having blood clots anywhere in her body including her brain, which are stokes. She has had these before, but lucky has no long-term effects.
It kinda took my breath away to hear the doctor say that there was a substantial risk of stillbirths 2nd tri-semester all the way through birth. He literately said the word stillbirth a good eight time during a short part of the session. The good news, besides the percentage mentioned above, is that Nicole already knows she has this disease (many women find out after several miscarriages) which means that doctors have a plan. There will be 80mg of aspirin for the first tri-semester and then we'll add daily shots off anti-clogging meds.
Nicole recently had an appointment with her OBGYN and found out that because she as APS she can kiss any epidural goodbye as well as going into birth naturally. She will have to be induced because she'll have to be off the shots for at least two days before going into labor so she doesn't bleed to death. The doctors will have to walk the fine line between bleeding too much and losing Nicole and clotting too much and losing the baby.
Maybe this all seems a little dramatic, but I think the first appointment always makes things feel a little more real. My real is just currently a little more medical than some others.
In a week or so, we have an appointment with the infertility center. Good times.
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