When you reach your blogging anniversary it seems that everyone takes a moment to reflect on the previous year. I’ve thought about doing the same. I’ve thought that:
- I could ramble off my blog stats – how many followers I have, how many posts I wrote, what my most viewed posts are, etc. As someone who loves data, this would be a fun post for me to analyze and write.
- I could write an entire post telling you about how I have grown as a person in the last year. Something about how sharing my heart and my soul, the good and the bad, has lifted a weight from my shoulders.
- I could tell you about the friendships I’ve made across the world. The friends that have changed my life and I suspect many will last for years to come.
- I could write about how much I have learned from my fellow bloggers. Technical things like early signs of an ectopic pregnancy or details about reproductive immunology. And not so technical things like how to handle painful pregnancy announcements and how to shield ourselves form insensitive remarks from those we love.
- I could also tell you how much I’ve learned about compassion and love from my time in the blogging world. The love and support I’ve received from perfect strangers, who have encouraged me along the way and helped me see the happiness after a bad day.
While all of this is true, instead today I would like to reflect on how much my life has changed in the last year and therefor how my blog has also changed. When I started I focused almost solely on miscarriages and recurrent pregnancy loss. I wrote about our amazing friends, and our not so amazing friends and family. Almost every word I shared in the first few months was about our losses and trying to deal with future attempts. When I started writing we were in the midst of our 4th miscarriage, a very long and drawn out miscarriage that took 29 painful days to remove all the products of conception from my body. Since then, we have:
- Gone through a 5th biochemical pregnancy.
- Sought out specialized medical expertise out of country.
- Chose not to try again for another biological child after learning that the challenges before us are too great for us to overcome at the current time.
- Researched alternative options for having a family (i.e. gestational carrier / surrogate, adoption, childfree).
- Ultimately after months of debate and internal struggle decided upon open international adoption as our path forward.
- Started my 100 happy day photography challenge.
- Chose to continue my 100 happy day photography challenge.
- Endured a complete upheaval in my professional life that saw me leave the professional world to focus on my heath and recovery, and I am just now starting to look at returning to work in a regular capacity of some sort.
- I asked for help for one of the first times in my life.
- Learning to accept a more messy life then I may like and I am learning to accept the relationships in our lives for what they are.
So today, my life and therefore my blog is about so much more then I could ever imagined. And I cannot help but wonder what will happen in the next year?
Maybe we’ll manage to go to Iceland and I’ll have an awesome adventure and lots of pictures to share? Maybe we’ll find it within ourselves to forgive the hurt we still feel due to Mr. MPB’s brother insensitivity? Hopefully I’ll go back to work in some capacity? Maybe I’ll learn to accept the relationship I have with my parents for what it is, not what I want it to be? Maybe we will become first time parents? Who knows, maybe we’ll even have twins?
As I look forward to the future, the only thing I can promise is that I will simply hope.
I hope the next year will be filled with more happiness then the last few.
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The last 2 weeks I have felt my anxiety notching back up. I’m not sleeping well. I toss and turn and lay awake thinking about everything under the sun – my old job, Mr. MPB building lego, my dream trip to Iceland, the bathroom I want to paint, my blogging friends, Mr. MPB’s office that I need to paint, my dog’s snoring, our cute nephews, the purpose of day light savings time, my constantly cold toes, spring, what movie we should go see next, etc. Seriously, this list keeps going and going and going. I’m constantly feeling like I’m on a caffeine high that I cannot come down from. In fact, I feel like I’ve drank 15 shots of espresso in the last hour and I’m wired and jittery.
The other day I actually said to Mr. MPB I feel like I can feel the blood running through my veins, to which he responded with that’s impossible. While, I realize this is impossible, it’s the best way to explain how much energy I have stored inside my body right now. I simply feel like I cannot sit still and my mind cannot stop racing. I feel tension running from my jaw straight down to the tips of my fingers. I feel like I could burst right out of my skin.
But, the thing is that I’m really not stressed about anything! Yes, adoption is slow and a pain in the ass, but I’m not stressed about it because we are just stuck in another waiting period. Yes, looking for a new job is a big change for me, but I’m pretty confident that I’ll find something in the next few months. I’m just not stressed – really, compared to the last few years, my current life isn’t too stressful as to my knowledge no-one is dying, and no-one is dead. So right now things are pretty good.
So, after a bit of research and consultation with Dr. Google, I think I can blame this sudden change on a recent change to my synthroid dose.
My family doctor upped my synthroid dose about 2 weeks ago – right around the same time that I started to feel anxious, jittery and unable to sleep. Routine blood work had my TSH at 4.5mIU/L, which is very high for me. So, he upped my dose to bring my TSH lower. I went from 25MCG to 50MCG.
My family doctor gave me the requisition for the blood test the same day I had my IUD inserted, and it took me nearly 6 weeks to build up the nerve to walk back into a lab to get the test done – I mistakenly assumed the test wasn’t urgent as I thought it would not have changed and clearly I didn’t want to go to the same place where I had about 50 beta tests completed (PTSD?). Anyways, so much for being done with blood work! I’m still stuck in the world of medical testing! Arg!
Anyways, my doctor asked me to stay on the new dose for 6 weeks and repeat the blood work. It seems odd to me that I’d have such a quick response to a change in the synthroid dose. After consulting Dr. Google, I’m convinced that this is the culprit of my anxiety, irritability and sleepless nights. So, I’m debating waiting another 4 weeks, or checking in with my doctor later this week and maybe have the blood test repeated sooner. I’m not really sure I want to potentially go another 4 weeks feeling this way. And part of me suspects that Mr. MPB may not want me to go another 4 weeks being this sleep deprived and therefore grouchy and snappy. Any thoughts?
I am also wondering why my thyroid is fluctuating now? Routine blood work 7 or 8 years ago determined that my thyroid was slightly elevated. I never had any symptoms, but I started synthroid right away as the numbers don’t lie. I’ve been on the same dose since then, with my number staying virtually identical. As thyroid problems are closely linked with miscarriages, and we’ve had more then our fair share of high risk pregnancies and subsequent miscarriages in the last few years, my thyroid has been monitored constantly. In fact, blood tests were done with almost every beta. Through 5 pregnancies/miscarriages, my number only fluctuated once, and not enough to require a change in synthroid dose. So, this leaves me wondering.
Why is this happening now?! Is it post pregnancy fluctuations? Is post pregnancy thyroid fluctuations even a thing? Is my return to exercising? Is it my increased intake of forbidden pregnancy foods like sushi? Or is it just random chance?
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P.S. After writing this, I realized many of my current symptoms could be the sign of pregnancy. After having a small heart attack and peed on a stick and I am happy to report that I am not pregnant. In fact, I am ecstatic to report that I am not pregnant – I really have no interest in another doomed high risk pregnancy with the extra complication of an IUD.
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My Perfect Breakdown 