Hope (or why I love my doctor even though I'm having a miscarriage)

These stories are probably not going to come across as funny in the translation as they did in the moment, but here goes:

It was clear to me from the ultrasound that the pregnancy was not viable; I didn't need the doctor to confirm it. So when we went into his office for the post-ultrasound consult, he said, "If you weren't academics, I'd talk to you about hope. But since you are, I'll be realistic."

His (or maybe the hospital's?) policy is not to do a d&c until the fetal heartbeat stops naturally. This is probably a good thing, even though I was ready to march on over to surgery then and there. So we return in a week for a follow-up ultrasound to be sure. He said that normally he wouldn't plan the d&c until then, but since it was us, we should stop by the nurse's desk on the way out and get on the surgery calendar for after next week's appointment. Her jaw hit the floor and her eyes bugged out when we told her this; even though he's still not going to do the d&c until after the heart stops, I guess he doesn't usually concede that there's virtually no hope and that the patients should go ahead and plan for the d&c. I was like, yeah, but he's never had us as patients before.

And finally he said, "I suspect I'm preaching to the choir, but we should definitely do this again." And normally he'd say, wait two months and then we'll figure out where to go from there. But since it's us, he told us to go across the hall to the clinic and get on the IVF calendar for our next cycle (late June/early July start date). The nurse over there was also not prepared for us to show up before the miscarriage, but she took it in stride.

All in all, the doctor hit all the right notes with us. He was frank, realistic, practical and gave us a plan. But he was not insensitive: I got a pat on the cheek when he came into the exam room and a big hug on the way out of the appointment. I know CCRM in Denver is the best, but I can't imagine a better doctor for us. It helps that he thinks Brent's scholarship is fascinating. Plus, we get to see his benevolent face smiling down at us from a billboard each time we drive south on I-35, and that amuses us.

As for next time, the tentative plan is to switch me to the 35-and-over protocol. I've always been something of an old soul, so that makes sense. You may recall that we had roadblocks at each step of the way this time: I didn't suppress, then I over-suppressed, and then I under-stimmed (two weeks to get 7 eggs instead of the >10 he expected). Frankly, it's amazing that we got pregnant at all. The over-35 protocol basically works with the natural cycle and the natural hormones. Among other benefits, it's about two weeks shorter than the normal 7-week cycle, and there's a lot less loopyron involved. I'm excited to try it.

As Dr. R said yesterday, we swung the bat and made contact, we just didn't hit it out of the park. (See, he can read me like a book: a baseball analogy!) Brent and I are feeling really optimistic about cycling this summer.