The rabbit died

6.14.08

The rabbit died yesterday. It wasn’t like the last time the rabbit died, when I was secretly happy. Echo, our beloved part-boston-terrier-part-devil, caught a little bunny rabbit in our back yard yesterday and despite our best efforts to save the little bunny, it passed away after about an hour. Echo was escorted into the house while I sprinkled shredded lettuce around the barely moving rabbit and placed a shallow dish of water near the bunny in hopes that it might be thirsty. Maybe the food and water could bring it back to health. I hoped that it would, anyway, but it didn’t. The rabbit died yesterday.

Being new to this blog stuff, I am not sure where to begin. Starting with the here and now, Dennis and I are happily married with a sweet (and energetic) little dog, Echo, who runs our household. We’ve been married for about 4 years now, which is still hard to believe. I am very lucky to have found such a wonderful partner and best friend. Oh yeah, and Dennis is great, too. Ha

Dennis and I have been trying to have a baby for quite some time. Forever, actually. I guess it was last February, early 2007, when I stopped taking birth control pills. I knew that it would take some time for my body to get back to “normal” (whatever that is), so I figured within a few months we’d be able to start trying to have a child. Well, the summer months came but my period never did. Yes, I’m talking about my period (or lack there-of) in my first blogging experience. Get over it. ANYWAY, I went to the OBGYN who told me that I probably have PCOS, which can basically cause a female to have very few – if any – ovulations in a year. Not knowing nearly enough about female anatomy, I did know that for B to happen, we had to have A occur first. A, then, was very important for this whole baby making thing. Yes, I am one of those normal looking females that is secretly obsessed with getting pregnant and starting a family.

After trying a myriad of medications, I was then referred to an infertility specialist. I think that title is horrible – the physicians should be called FERTILITY specialists. Being an expert in being INfertile is not really what I’m looking for when I am choosing someone to help Dennis and me start our family. We need to focus on this whole ovulation thing.

So, I didn’t know much about ARP (Assisted Reproduction Technology) but I had a crash course in it these last few months. We started out planning to do an IUI but then ended up changing over to IVF. I don’t want to belittle this long process, but I don’t want to bore anyone, either. It forced me to grow up a lot because I had to administer shots to myself, take tons of medication, Dennis learned how to administer progesterone shots that he had to give to me in my back, and I ended up in the hospital for several days because of ovarian hyperstimulation. Basically, my body has been to hell and back. Well, mostly back.

So, the last time that the rabbit died, I was happy. I was happy because I was several weeks pregnant. We transferred 2 embryo’s through IVF and one little sucker had survived. We were elated. I wasn’t aware at the time, but in the “olden days”, a physician would tell his or her patient she was pregnant if the rabbit died. Apparently, a doctor would take a sample of the woman’s urine, inject it into a rabbit, and if the rabbit died, the woman was pregnant. If the rabbit lived, the woman was not pregnant. So, when Echo killed the first rabbit, I was happy because it meant more to us since we were pregnant.

This time, though, we were not pregnant so it was really sad when the bunny rabbit died. As you might have guessed, we miscarried at about 8 weeks and have yet to try again. It was a really hard loss to deal with, and very sad, but we are focusing on having a healthy baby on the next round. I am absolutely not pregnant right now, so there is no symbolism in the rabbit’s passing yesterday. So, there you have it: the rabbit died yesterday and I was not happy about it. I can only hope that Echo will catch another rabbit in our back yard in several months and bring us the good news that we’ll be eagerly awaiting.