For Better or for Worse

For better or for worse.  This is the promise we make to each other, to ourselves and most importantly to God on the day we marry.  Jason and I made this promise 5 years ago and just celebrated the anniversary of that day.  But what happens when worse, so much worse, comes before the better.  And you are left wondering if the better is ever coming at all.

Two days ago we finally, FINALLY got what may be the first answers, clues as to what is happening with us.  We have been tested and tested and tested again.  Everything is always normal.  Until Wednesday this week when my doctor called with the results from our most recent tests, the ones where they had to take 10 vials of blood from my arm and I nearly passed out...yeah those...well it turns out it may have been worth all the pain.  Dr. G. told me this, "It looks like you and Jason have a larger than average number of similar chromosomes and you have an increased number of Natural Killer Cells".  So what does that mean?  Kinda what it sounds like,  Jason and I are just a little too similar and when it comes to baby making, different is good.  So when our egg and sperm meet up it doesn't recognize that part of the baby is foreign and therefore it does not send off the protective antibody that is necessary to keep my body from attacking the baby.  And then on top of that I have more Natural Killer Cells (NKC) than average.  We all have NKC.  That is what fights off infections in our bodies.  But I have more than average and they attack the baby.  So I have been sitting with the knowledge that my miscarriages were not just a failure to nurture my baby, but in fact are due to my body seeking out my own child and attacking it.  That's going to take awhile to work through.  And of course the awareness that Jason and I are somehow incompatible with each other for making babies and we are "too similar"??!!  A devastating realization, definitely the worse of  "for better or for worse".

So the problem is really one more of the immune system than the reproductive.  Dr. G. said he knows very little in this area of Reproductive Immunology and he referred me to a doctor who specializes in this.  Dr. Sher and he is out of Las Vegas.  No doctors in Kansas City specialize in this as it is pretty new science.  But as luck (or perhaps divine intervention) would have it, Dr. Sher has an office in St. Louis and he just so happens to be visiting it in December.  On-Top-of-It/ Desperate me already has a phone consult scheduled for next week and an appt for December on the books.  Hope.  It's what makes all the difference and we have been given a tiny shred of it to cling to.

I'm making a playroom for Riley, primarily because I want all her toys off my living room floor.  It is a nature/ owl themed playroom and it is all pink and green.  As I buy new things for it and decorate it the thought creeps in that maybe I shouldn't make it quite so girlie...what if a little boy plays in there one day?  And what if I put all this effort into a playroom that just has be turned into a nursery soon?  And then just as quickly another thought comes.  The thought that another baby seems so far from the realm of possibility right now and this one baby girl is it.  So go all out, go all girlie, jump in head first, have fun with it and don't look back.  For my own sanity I have to simultaneously live my life with one part that assumes we will not have any more children and another part that is pursuing that dream with all that I have, not quitting until we have tried everything.  It's a difficult balancing act.  But maybe, just maybe, the better is coming. Maybe, armed with these tests results and this knowledge, we are on the road to better.  Maybe a day is soon coming when all of this is finally over and behind us and we have another little baby and we are finally finished (I always wanted three but I can now say with certainty we will be DONE after/ if two).  The better side of things is here.  We are happy.  We are complete.  And I have to balance that hope and idea of better with the thought that better is on it's way whether we have another baby or not.  At some point, no matter what the outcome, this will all be behind us and it will be over and things will be better.  I know I have to find a way to better whether we have another child or not, but right now, after all this pain and loss, after the worse, I have been given new information that lets me hope that better will come with a little cuddly bundle of joy.

I love you always and forever and no matter what.