What are you on and where can I get some: mommy hormones and me

Okay, so that last post was not the happiest I have ever written, but I am compelled to be honest about my transition into motherhood.  I feel as though one of the primary problems setting moms up to for discouragement and frustration during early motherhood is very few people talk about what it is really like to be a mom.
Think about it: no commercial uses the slogan, "Used by ambivalent mothers everywhere".  (Although I really feel that is a missed opportunity; I would totally buy whatever it was they were selling.)
Also, TV moms have this comical, zany birth, which the most ridiculous element of which is how short it is (labor the first time often takes DAYS), and at the end of which they are smiley and out of breath and gently moist with sweat, but beaming and over joyed at their new baby.  Jackasses.  I mean, who gives birth like that?
Also...why do I trust TV so much?
But it's not just TV.  Naomi Wolf, a prominent feminist who wrote a book that was intended to reveal the darker side of motherhood, actually described her child as "queenly", even as "glowing", upon the child's expulsion from the womb.  I can promise you, I did not see my child as queenly, or glowing, nor did my heart sing with our loving bond when they placed her on my chest.  Mostly I was relieved to be done with the labor, and honestly only vaguely aware of what else was happening.
I know there are moms who are attached to their babies right away and just float on clouds immediately after their babies are born, but I feel like those of us who don't experience that face a double whammy: first having a new baby but no hormonal high, and then the second blow of feeling guilty because the mom does not instantly bond with the small bodily fluid production unit that has taken over their home, time, and mind space.
There are a few moms out there that describe more of an experience I can relate to. Anne Lamont wrote a great book about dealing with being a single mom. I also liked this article from a mom honestly describing the time it took to really feel a bond with her twins.
The truth is though, most of the time it's really hard to express anything other than bliss when talking about your baby without fear that someone will call social services.  That's I left in my bummer of a post. To hell with June Cleaver!  She is over represented.  Someone needs to speak up from the disenchanted mommies group, so the negative-nelly blog post stays.

When it is your blog, you can exclude any and all references to my uterus...or just make them shorter

I have decided that I am going to write a little more specifically about my miscarriage.  I am a little self-conscious about it because, well, as it turns out there are not many people who hold an intense interest in my reproductive discharge.  Go figure.  Oh well. anyone who is grossed out by this kind of stuff can skip this entry.
Here's the thing though: I didn't really know what to expect when it came to my miscarriage.  Obviously every case is different so my doctors kept describing it in very vague "you-will-experience some-discomfort" terms, so outside of what I had seen in movies, I had no idea what was going to happen.  From what I could gather, a miscarriage involved blood-soaked sheets, quiet and quick gasps of air, followed by a montage of me and my husband talking to doctors and embracing gingerly.   That whole event would last about two minutes.  If it was a particularly dramatic miscarriage, I expected that I would become delusional and never really recover.
Once again, life failed to live us to my Hollywood expectations.  As far as I can tell, my miscarriage started the moment I conceived; spotting upon conception.  I had spotting- daily bleeding but not enough to fill a pad- for two weeks.  It was when I started filling a pad that I started to get nervous.
Wait, no, that's not true.  I was nervous immediately upon learning I was pregnant, because, as previously mentioned, that whole area is generally regarded as an unfit environment.  Once I started filling a pad, I knew something was wrong.  This was no longer a "well, I am always anxious about everything" scenario, but a "we have to do something NOW" scenario.
We got the first appointment at my doctor's office that morning, and test confirmed that I was pregnant: I had an HcG level (the pregnancy hormone) of 120.  However, my progesterone levels (levels that sustain pregnancy) were at 3: during first trimester there should be a minimum of 10.  Such a low progesterone level indicated that I would probably miscarry.  The deciding factor would be the rate and direction that my HcG levels changed.  They were suppose to double every week.  If they decreased, I was miscarrying.  If not, there was an option to treat with pregnancy injections.  I would need to wait a week to see how my hormones shifted.  Doctors told me that I should go home and try to relax because stress could increase the likelihood of miscarriage.  Nothing like knowing your unborn child's life is on the line to help a girl decompress.

But then, the next day she was fine, right?

I got the news that I would miscarry at work.  Thank God because it left me no choice but to keep it together. Still, I had no idea what to expect, and again as previously mentioned, I had no idea what I was looking for.  There were times when I would feel really bad cramping, think to my self "this is it", and then just pass a really big fart and be all better.  I bled for a month, sleeping on towels because I was afraid I would ruin our bran-new sheets.  I was massively depressed.  It wasn't the broken hearted, "I am an empty shell without my beloved child" unhappiness that I had seen on movies.  I was only pregnant a few weeks.  No, this was the despondent, lonely, disassociated, broken-hormone stuff that comes with clinical depression.  It sucked.   Finally, I woke up one night with bad cramps: not like, labor cramps, but just period style bad cramps.  By morning I had heavy black, mucus-y discharge.  It was like a bad heavy period, but was mostly over within a day, followed by a few days of light bleeding afterwords.  Shortly thereafter my mood improved, and my poor sweet husband stopped asking "is there anything I can do?" every hour or so.
Now, we are just about ready to try again, which is scary, but you know, kind of the way it works.  Hopefully things will work out better this time.

Progesterone and You

      So as I mentioned in my last post, I have low progesterone: kind of, I guess.  I mean, I took this hormone test one time and my doctor said I did have low progesterone, as well as whacked cortisol, testosterone, capital letters, and vampirism.  Okay, she didn't literally say the vampirism thing but I assume that's what she meant as her voice started to trail as she various other hormonal inadequacies.
     It was alright though, it was not as though I was surprised, my depression is supposedly a hormone disorder after all, and now I had this chart conveniently detailing explanations for just about everything that ever went wrong with me.  Weird periods?  Low progesterone.  Hard time sleeping?  Out-of-sync cortisol.  Pimples?  Warts?  Often feeling cold?  Sugar craving?  Hormones were the explanation for everything!  Hooray!  I was saved!  All I would have to do is take a pill and everything would be fixed, right?  Yeah, maybe not so much.
     First of all, I had to drive like an hour and a half to this tiny maybe  not so legit pharmacy that was the only one in the area that would give me the special blend of stuff I needed.  That was a little sketch.  Then the fact that it came in a brown prescription bottled wherein the only thing written the label  was "hormones" gave me pause.  Finally, after taking the pills for a week and raging into two unreal screaming fits, I decided maybe this is not quite the right cocktail for me.
"Oh did I not mention that super natural bitch fests are a side-effect of the medication?" my doctor sweetly intoned.
So clearly "better" has several levels of meaning.
The real problem with the low progesterone is the problems it causes for pregnancy.  Low progesterone is the leading cause of miscarriage, can be treated with clomid, but that of course has side effects in and of itself.  While I was having my hormones checked to verify my miscarriage, I registered a 3 on my progesterone level.  Pregnant women will need at least a 9 to sustain a pregnancy.  Studies have shown that women with depression are more likely to miscarry than other mom's.  Fortunately, low progesterone is pretty easy to treat, and while the treatment can reduce the easiness of getting pregnant, it is definitely worth a try.

People hate my lady-parts

So here is the skinny:
My husband and I have been trying to conceive for about 4 months.  We've been using the fertility awareness method, and we finally got pregnant about amonth ago, really the first time we could really time it right.  (Woot!  Let's hear it for cervical mucus!)  Unfortunately, I am now in the process of miscarrying, which obviously sucks; on a lot of levels.
The thing is, I kind of knew I would miscarry.  Yes, I am a super-neurotic, so generally speaking I would not correct anyone who dismissed this idea as me crazy-ing it up again, but I think in this case, anyone with my reproductive history would probably suffer from feelings of uterine inadequacy.

The first time I went to a gyno, she pretty much verbally abused me.  Here I am, sixteen, who has in the past suffered from severe back aches and cramping.  This doctor stomps in as if she has been massively inconvenienced by my reproductive organs.  She was all frowny and jabby, sighing and clicking her tongue.  Finally she lets me sits up and says to me, "You have a very tilted uterus and probably have endometriosis..  You will probably never have kids."  Then she pretty much just got up and walked out, probably off to go kick some puppies somewhere.
Later, a doctor who was much sweeter, consoles me, "No, no,no, you don't have endometriosis.  There is no way to know that without sugery.  No, you have low progesterone, that's while you'll never have kids."  Oh, phew!  I feel much better.
So, abnormal pap, after abnormal pap I had prettty much grown accustomed to doctors hating my uterus.  However, despite all these questionable results, doctors would always kinda shrug and say, "Well, when you are ready to have kids, we'll see what happens."  Easy for them to say; they would not be the one having a miscarriage.
So at this point I pretty much regard the entire region as a hazardous area, especially after the last miscarriage.  I have a doctor's appointment in two weeks, and while I am eager for it, I am terrified.  I am envisioning myself in the stirrups, a green glow eminating from between my legs and reflecting off the doctor's horrified face as she shields her eyes screaming, "Look away!  Look away!".  There will be yellow incident tape and hazmat suits: it's not gonna be pretty.