The end feels nigh

Well it has been a terrible few months, but now my computer is (finally) up and running again I can begin to process in blogging form what has happened. After our miscarriage in July (wow, time flies!) I developed a thyroiditis, which first made me hyperthyroid. This went undiagnosed for months and I thought I was going crazy or was clinically depressed as I was not sleeping, not eating, agitated, hot all the time, highly stressed and anxious etc etc. Thankfully it was picked up when we went to a doctor who specialises in recurrent pregnancy loss who ran a whole battery of tests. Interestingly, as we were monitoring my thyroid over a couple of weeks, it went normal one week and then hypothyroid the next, where it has stayed. We met with an endocrinologist who put me on thyroid replacement hormone and I have started to feel "normal" in the past few weeks, which is a welcome change! Evidently my thyroid issues won't effect us doing IVF in the new year, we will just need to monitor my levels and adjust medication if it's required.

However, DH and I do find ourselves at the "pointy end" of our TTC journey. The recurrent miscarriage doctor diagnosed me as compound heterozygous for the MTHFR gene, with elevated homocysteine levels. She put me on high dosages of folate and B vitamins, but we recently discovered that this treatment did not lower my homocysteine levels as would be expected. She said she had another patient in this situation who had to import ?Be.taine from the US, which dropped her levels and she is now pregnant and will give birth in the new year. However our doctor does not feel comfortable (for a reason I do not know) to recommend Be.taine for us so she has referred us to (yet) another doctor who we will see next week. Evidently he is quite the specialist in the area so I look forward to meeting with him.

In all the reading I have done high homocysteine levels are associated with implantation failure, recurrent pregnancy loss, pre-eclampsia, early delivery, and issues in children such as neural tube defects, down syndrome, and even autism spectrum disorders. Until such time as we can (hopefully) lower my homocysteine levels I feel unwilling to undertake IVF again because I don't want to put myself or my child at any increased risk. So that's why we're at the make or break stage now. Hopefully this new doctor will be able to reduce my homocysteine levels and we can restart IVF in 2011. If not, we will start to prepare ourselves for the end of TTC and working out what will be next for our lives.

Sometimes I feel hopeful that this will all work out the way I have wanted it to for the past 3 1/2 years - with me birthing and parenting a healthy child. Other days I feel so close to never being a mother that it takes the breath out of me and I feel like I can't move. Sometimes I enjoy not having kids and the quality time I get to spend with my wonderful DH. Other days my heart, and even (it seems) the walls of my home, cry out for the company of children and I miss my children in heaven so much.

God is showing me through all of this that everything I have, even myself, is His. My life, my husband, my home, the lives of our children, our material blessings, all of it belongs to Him. He gives and He takes away. And He does all things for His glory. I am trying to use those things He has given me to bring Him the glory He deserves. Praise be to God!