8 weeks 5 days

After a mess of referrals and phone calls and confusion and frustration, I actually made it into the OB a week after my last ultrasound... you know, the one where we found out we were pregnant with TWINS.

I had to drive to the base and take a urine test before they would even put in a referral for me... I was told they needed a positive test at their facility before even beginning to process a referral to an OB for an ultrasound, even though I already knew I was having twins which carries a higher risk, and was warned by my RE that they could be the very dangerous "mono-mono twins," and even though PCOS already makes me a high risk pregnancy, there was no rush to get me in to see a Dr.

When I arrived at the hospital and spoke with a receptionist about getting an order in for a urine pregnancy test she seemed confused.. "when was the first day of your last menstrual cycle" (Nov. 30) "and have you taken a pregnancy test" (yes) "how many?" (I've taken four at home test, gotten blood work done 4 times, and had two ultrasounds) "oh, then why do you need me to put in a request for a urine test?" (That's a really good question.)

So anyway, after a bunch of that bs, I got in to see a midwife a week later (pretty good turnaround.. but it did take a lot of calls and transfers to higher ups). We saw two growing, moving, little blobs with strong heartbeats (of course we got the one ultrasound machine that they "can't figure out how to get the sound to work on" so we couldn't actually hear the heartbeats, but we saw them on the screen). And after a little more bs at the appointment desk, I got scheduled for a "new pregnancy orientation" this Friday as a walk in and after all the testing they require (more blood, probably) I have another appointment with an actual doctor! (I know, pregnancy orientation? WTF, right? There's like a million pregnant military wives on base at any given moment so I guess it makes sense to wrangle them all up and make sure they're not too incompetent to carry a baby to term). I hope that it will be of value to me and isn't just a remedial high school health class where they tell you not to eat sushi and shit.

B actually told his brother about the pregnancy yesterday. I'm really glad he did because we aren't telling anyone, except for my sister who was visiting when we found out, and I feel like he needed to talk about it with someone besides me. His brother was really supportive and excited, but he also asked why we would be trying if we knew he was deploying for six months. Two days ago his sister, who actually knows a little about our infertility struggles, but nothing of the pregnancy, told him, "well, just make sure you don't try now, you wouldn't want to miss a pregnancy, that would just be too hard." I feel like that will be the general consensus when we share our news.. why would you want to have a baby when your husband is deploying? I guess the short answer, and the one most likely to be shared by B, is that there is always going to be a deployment looming. We aren't going to put our lives on hold just because it might happen.

The more honest answer is that we've been trying now for 19 months to get pregnant. We've done 9 rounds of fertility drugs. We didn't know if we would ever get pregnant, and we were just starting to make some progress with our RE, so we weren't going to stop now, especially when the deployment wasn't "for sure" until very recently. So we decided that we might as well keep trying, hoping, if nothing else, to learn more about what it would take to get me to ovulate so that when he got back, maybe we'd be able to say "we were doing this and this and this and it was getting us somewhere, lets please start where we left off." I honestly didn't think it would happen for us before he left. But now that it has, we're just really happy. It will be hard, undoubtedly, but it's nothing we can't handle. We're just so blessed to be pregnant, and we've overcome so many hardships to get to this point, I know we will be okay.

I feel like sharing our infertility struggles makes it more understandable why we'd keep trying up until he left, but then on the flip side, sharing our infertility struggles brings up a whole different set of judgements about infertility drugs and multiples. I'm torn. I guess either way people will form their own judgements, and I can try to validate our decisions or I can let people think what they will. There is a 7% chance of twins on clomid. We accepted those odds. I didn't ovulate for over a year, even with low doses of clomid, so increasing it was really our only option if we wanted to get pregnant. I still don't know if my clomid use had anything to do with our twin pregnancy, but I do know that I don't want people judging my unborn children as some sort of medical side effect.