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• Crazy clomidians

  I try not to judge other people's family-building choices, as long as they love their kids and can take care of them. Gay, straight, married, divorced, big families, small families, IVF or IUI, bio-children or adopted....  These choices belong to the competent adults making them. I also believe that the decision as to whether, when and how many children a woman has should belong to her, not to me, or to you. Reproductive freedom is among the most fundamental of human rights.   So why am I struggling so hard to wrap my head around the apparently large number - judging from discussion on the interwebs - of perfectly fertile women who are taking fertility drugs - often unprescribed -  for the sole purpose of increasing their chances of achieving twins, triplets or even quads?   Read More... Posted Jan 08 2009, 02:04 PM by kgranju with | with 26 comment(s) Filed under: Katie Allison Granju, Pregnancy, inertility, clomid, multiples

• Hope springs eternal...or maybe I'm just delusional

  We've decided to keep trying to have a baby - or at least give it one more go. That's what feels right, mostly. There is certainly a part of me that says we should just call it a day, given that I have already given birth to four healthy children. But considering how much older H (17), J (13) and E (10) are, and the fact that they spend half their time with their father, giving up would mean that 16 month old C would mostly grow up in an only-child-like household. And while I have no issue with other parents who decide a singleton kid is the right choice for their own family, I don't want that for her. She already misses her big brothers and her sister when they are away every other week, and I know that will only become more pronounced as they get older.    Even before this last pregnancy ended in miscarriage, I'd been carefully charting my fertility for the past several years, using the great info in this book, and I've also been doing a lot of research into the causes of recurrent pregnancy loss. Many healthy women experience one or two miscarriages in their lives, and the reasons are random and generally unknown. But when someone miscarries over and over and over, as I have in recent years, there is generally a specific cause - or several specific causes -  behind the problem. Read More... Posted Dec 06 2008, 08:52 PM by kgranju with | with 26 comment(s) Filed under: Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Luteal Phase Defect

• Can you be a little bit pregnant?

  This is a highly personal topic, and I'm not entirely comfortable blogging about it.. I did already touch on the issue, recently opening up about the fact that I've had trouble carrying a pregnancy past the first trimester. And after blogging about my own health problem - and that is what it is -   I received so many e-mails from women who thanked me for being honest about this sensitive topic that I've decided to stick my neck out even further and share this next part of my journey. I hope that telling my story helps other women going through the same thing. Because this is tough, and those of us who have experienced it can maybe support each other and demystify it, and make it easier for others who are also living through this desperate, Googling-madness phase of an early, tentative pregnancy-following-loss.   With my first three pregnancies, more than a decade ago. I never even saw the doctor until I was about 10 weeks along. And between the day of the positive home test and the first doctor visit, it never occurred to me to wonder whether the pregnancy was real, or whether it would "stick." I was pregnant. Plain and simple. Now, however, the positive home test is followed almost immediately by trips every two to three days to the high risk OB, where I have blood drawn so the doctor can follow my (hopefullly) rising HCG and progesterone levels. Read More... Posted Nov 16 2008, 07:10 PM by kgranju with | with 29 comment(s) Filed under: Katie Allison Granju, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, HCG, progesterine

• My eyeglasses, myself

  I first started wearing glasses when I was 8 years old. My mother says she finally realized I needed glasses when I told her our horses had escaped, but when the family went outside to check, everyone but me could clearly see that the horses were inside not outside of the fence. I was promptly marched off to the optometrist, and I came home wearing these humdingers.     By the time I was 10 years old, I had downsized ever-so-slightly to this pair, in a lovely shade of frosty blue plastic. Read More... Posted Oct 17 2008, 03:49 PM by kgranju with | with 10 comment(s) Filed under: Katie Allison Granju, Pregnancy, Health, Glasses, Vision, Age

• So, I'm kind of getting sick of miscarrying

  As it turns out, getting pregnant is no problem for me at this point. Staying pregnant? Well, not so much.   Now see, here's where it gets tricky talking about this stuff. Because we DO have a baby. She's gorgeous and healthy and beautiful. My gratitude for her knows no bounds. And along with the other three children I am lucky enough to have, that means I have given birth to FOUR healthy children.  What 41 year old woman with FOUR children has a right to even dare hope for another? And certainly, a woman with FOUR children has no right to complain about multiple miscarriages when there are so many women who have no children at all. Which is one reason why I've kind of kept my mouth shut about this. It sounds really sort of tacky, someone who has four kids complaining that she isn't able to have a fifth. It's sort of like if John McCain complained that he doesn't have enough houses, or if Tiger Woods whined that his golf swing just isn't what it used to be. Read More... Posted Oct 11 2008, 03:37 PM by kgranju with | with 23 comment(s) Filed under: Katie Allison Granju, Miscarriage, MTHFR, Thrombophilia, Pregnancy