Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a great Thanskgiving. Ours was really nice. The boys did great and we had a small gathering with my side of the family.

I was feeling pretty good all weekend until I got the letter from my insurance company saying that my abdominal surgery would not be covered. Evidently it doesn't matter to them that my muscle separation is the size of a entire hand rather than the normal 1 or 2 finger gap that you usually see in abdominoplasty patients. Nor does the fact that you can see my intestines moving just under the skin whenever I'm laying down. Because I don't have a "true hernia" (at least not yet), the surgery is considered cosmetic. Yeah, because having your intestines bulge out is just about looks...

Oh God.

I have three doctors willing to write letters to my insurance about the medical neccesity of having my muscles sewn back together, but somehow I don't think it will matter. So I now have to save up about 8 grand to pay for the procedure, which will be done in an outpatient surgical facility. This scares me to death. As much as I don't want to be back in the hospital, I'm really scared about having such a serious surgery done and going home the same day. But that's how cosmetic surgery is handled. If insurance would cover it, they could insist on a hospital stay.

I just feel so torn about what to do. Clearly I can't spend the rest of my life with my intestines putting on a show for me every evening after dinner. I need the surgery. But I'm so afraid of the complications. Some pretty bad stuff could happen to me as a result of the surgery, including death. Even though the odds of complications are low, I've managed to be one of the "lucky" few twice now (Only .08%of women experience HELLP and only a very low percentage of people require IVF with ICSI to conceive, while 16% of abdominoplasty patients experience complications.) Do I push my luck a third time? I've met two surgeons who seem cautious to operate on me, and one who is ready to do it tomorrow. (It seems to come down to experience--two of the docs just weren't qualified.) I'm going to seek a few more opinions yet seeing as I have to wait now to save the money anyway.

This sucks.

I feel like my life is finally moving on, but the stomach issue is holding me back and can't be ignored. I just wish there was a simple answer.

Hooray for Jamie!

One of my best blogger buds is in labor right this very moment. Please wish her luck and good wishes!

One thing I love about this community is celebrating with everyone when their dreams are finally realized.

Farewell Fertility

After staring at the paperwork from the initial consultation for almost 3 months, H called this week to schedule his vasectomy. It really sucks that he has to do this; that essentially we have to slam one final nail into the coffin that contains our fertility. I mean, our one “up side” to this whole infertility thing was that we’d never worry about birth control again and that we could hold on to a little spark of hope that maybe we’d spontaneously get pregnant one day. Well, my docs have all agreed that another pregnancy would be very dangerous for me, so we can’t take that risk. Now we’re going to be infertiles with no hope of future treatment. I’m so grateful we have two kids, because I know if we only had one child the vasectomy would be a lot harder on us. It’s still hard though. Having twins is like having an only child in some ways…you only get to go through these precious baby stages once and when they’re over, they’re over for good. The hard part with twins is that in addition to only going through this once, you’re going through it at warp speed. You can only focus so much on one baby until the other baby needs you. There’s little time to just sit back and enjoy them. Of course, I know if we had only one baby I’d be busy obsessing about when/if I could have or adopt another. So all in all, it just sucks to be an infertile no matter how you look at it, no matter how successful a treatment was for you. I’ll never be over our infertility. It has changed our lives in too dramatic of a way. I still cringe at pregnancy announcements and big bellies. It doesn’t hurt as much, but it does hurt. I imagine it will be pretty hard for me when my sister gets pregnant with her second.

The good news is that I’m finding more things to be happy about every day. The babies interact with us so much more now, and when they laugh I feel a joy like no other. The one likes to babble at me a lot. He’ll take my face with both of his hands and stare intently into my eyes, babbling away. Then he’ll open his mouth wide and plunge at my face, trying to eat my hair, my nose, my cheeks. This make me laugh like nothing else in the world. I like to think he’s trying to give me a kiss, but he’s at that phase where he just wants to out everything into his mouth. Both of them are rolling around and pushing up like champs. I expect the one to start crawling any day now. I really like this phase—they do a lot more but they’re not yet mobile. Wish we could stay here for awhile. I’ve stopped feeling so incredibly overwhelmed, as the boys both nap in their cribs now and do a decent job sleeping through the night. Their crying has decreased a great deal, which also helps a lot.

So, that’s how things are right now. I’m waiting to see if my insurance will cover the surgery to repair my abdomen. If it does, I’ll likely schedule the surgery for sometime this winter. I’m scared about it but I also want to get it over with so that I can finally heal completely and move on. Therapy is going okay. It’s not all that exciting most of the time. I hope it’s helping but I don’t really know. I know I feel better than I did a few weeks ago when I placed the initial call, but I feel like that also has a lot to do with the babies getting easier to handle. And the fact that they look at me when I call their name, laugh when I tickle them, and prefer me over everyone else, except sometimes their daddy.