What I hate about this

Whenever I was doing a medicated cycle with trigger shot and timed intercourse, I would go into the fertility clinic, have the doctor wand me, find out my eggs were ready, and then go into the nurse's office.  She would give me my trigger shot, my instruction sheet, and my progesterone draw order, then say, "Now go home and get pregnant, we can't do any more for you this cycle.  You guys have to do the rest on your own."  I know she didn't mean to be rude.  I know she must do the same thing all day every day and she just needs some casual comment to say to everyone because the whole thing is awkward.  But still.

I GET IT.  We suck at reproducing.  We can't just have sex in the privacy of our own bed and magically end up with a baby like the majority of people on earth.  I have to have a doctor stick tools in my private parts.  I have to get injected with medications.  I have to increase hormones that already drive normal people crazy.  We have to have an instruction sheet to tell us what to do, even though we have been doing this for 2 years and we already know what to do.  Believe me, every day, every single day, I get it.  We suck at making babies.  We obviously can't do the rest on our own.  Maybe we can't do it at all.  I get it.

So now we have moved up a level.  After I get the trigger shot, we don't have to do the rest on our own.  In fact, when we want to have sex, we aren't even allowed to do it.  Instead we get to wake up at 5:30 on a Saturday morning and drive an hour to the fertility clinic.  I get to wait in the car (because there is no waiting room) while my husband goes into a room and masturbates into a cup.  We get to go sit at McDonald's staring at each other for an hour and a half while some lab techs try to improve his sperm.  Then I get to lay on a table, have a tube inserted into my uterus, and have the few remaining sperm squirted into my uterus.  Then I get to lie on the table for 10 minutes, cramping, thinking that this is never going to work because there weren't enough sperm, thinking that we'll be back here next month doing the exact same thing, thinking that I know I'll never be able to stop putting us through this crap even if we never get a baby out of it.

So, there it is.  That's what I hate.  I hate that it is painfully obvious that we can't do this.  I hate that we have to invest so much time, so much emotional energy, and so much money and we don't even know if this will work.  I just hate it.

Here We Go...

I went in on Thursday for my follie monitoring ultrasound.  My lining looked good at 9 mm, and I had one 24 mm follie on my right ovary.  I triggered that night, and we went in yesterday for our first IUI.

We ended up with 5 million swimmers for the IUI.  My RE said it looked good, but from what I've read, 5 million really isn't too good of a number.  I'm sure you'll hear more about this from me, since I've started obsessively reading about sperm counts and thinking about what it means ;)

The IUI itself was a little more painful than I expected, and I had some cramping afterward.  I had an acupuncture session right after to help me relax, and by the time I left, the cramps were gone.

Something about the whole morning just left me feeling really down, and I feel like I can almost put my finger on it, but not quite.  I think I might devote a whole post to it in a few days.

For now, I'm adding in progesterone and baby aspirin, and hoping that I get a BFP in a couple weeks so I don't have to think about IUIs and sperm counts anymore.

How Fun!

Thank you so much to Hope at Invisible Mother for giving me The Stylish Blogger Award!

The rules for accepting this award are:

1.  Thank and link back to the person who awarded you the award.

2.  Share 7 things about yourself.

3.  Award 15 other bloggers.

4.  Contact the bloggers and tell them about the award.

7 Things About Me:

1.  I love being outdoors... camping, hiking, canoeing, I love it all :)

2.  I am an obsessive TV watcher on Netflix.  If left to my own devices, I will sit down and watch all the episodes of a series (Season 1 to the end) without watching a single other thing.

3.  I have two dogs that I love to pieces.  One is a 6 year old border collie mix.  The other is a 2 year old mutt of some sort.  They look like sisters, and they love cuddling!

4.  I am working on a Master's degree in Me.dical Mic.robiol.ogy and Immu.nolo.gy right now.

5.  When I was little, I fell through the ceiling into the living room.  It made me famous for a while.

6.  I have lived in 3 different states.

7.  Most days, you can find me wearing a fleece or a sweatshirt.

I am giving this award to (I can only make it to 10):

1.  Jen at Discovering Joy in the Storm

2.  Keya at Stolen fertility... and my quest to find it

3.  Jay at Stork Stalking

4.  msshamisdavis at The crazy ramblings of a confused soul

5.  b at The Journey to Our Three Little Kilos

6.  Shortcake4813 at My Journey to Motherhood

7.  HopeBPatient at Eggs Out of Time

8.  Stephanie at All Things Conceivable

9.  LifeLine at The Baby Chase Project

10.  Paula at Wyatt's Ways

Another Cycle...

AF arrived yesterday for me, but I am surprisingly not too down about it.  I'm feeling more numb than anything.  And anxious.  I feel like there are so many decisions to be made right now about treatments that it is kind of overwhelming.

I think as of now we are on track for a Femara cycle with IUI... our first IUI.  I'm feeling kind of ambivalent about it.  We will do that for 2 or 3 cycles, take a month or two off if I feel like I need it, and then dive into injectables with IUI.  Come on, something, WORK!!!

I also decided to start acupuncture.  I'd been thinking about it for a while, and took the plunge last week.  The session was kind of relaxing, but afterwards I felt tired and out of it for a while.  Nothing too bad, though.  My period arrived with less cramps than usual and with more of a normal red flow (which I think is better than my usual super light, spotty flow).  I was telling my husband that in the 2 years I've been off the pill, I have never gotten through CD1 with this few ibuprofen.  Maybe the acupuncture is already doing its job!

2011 is finally here!

I'm so happy to be able to say goodbye to 2010.  It was an awful year for us, and now we can look forward to a better year in 2011!

Starting with (I hope) being able to get pregnant.  I ovulated yesterday, which I think is pretty fun timing.  Maybe we can conceive our little one during the transition from the worst year to the best year!  I went for my u/s on Wednesday, and I had one 24 mm follie on my left ovary and 2 15 mm follies on my right ovary.  They gave me my trigger shot there.  My lining was 10 mm so that looked good, too.  I had some pretty strong ovary pain and pressure, and my temperature really shot up this morning, so I hope that means it was a nice strong ovulation with at least one of those follies releasing a lucky egg.

I have been doing a whole TTC regimen this cycle.... Geritol, extra folic acid, warm lemon water once a day, spearmint tea twice a day, lots of PreSeed around ovulation time, and now I will add in a baby aspirin daily during the TWW (and of course 5 mg Femara CD3-7 and an HCG trigger on CD14).  Phew!  That's a lot of work.  But I am phasing out temping... only doing about 5 days before ovulation and 5 days after.  

I was REALLY down for a couple weeks there... I don't know if it was the BFN combined with the holidays or because I had so much hope last cycle, but I was in a funk for sure.  And right on ovulation day it was like a switch got flipped and now I am SO hopeful for this cycle.  Come on bean, get yourself snuggled in!

Merry Christmas?

I am so down lately, it is ridiculous.  I am just sitting on the couch half of the time staring at the wall or looking at the same website that hasn't changed for hours.  I guess I really thought that I might be growing a baby right now, and instead I'm thinking about how I should have a 9 month old baby and instead I have nothing.  Can it possibly have been 15 months since my loss already??? It just doesn't seem real.  

I don't really care about Christmas this year.  I didn't get my husband any gifts, mostly because I just don't feel like going to the store.  It seems like every time I go, I get in line right in front of a newborn or have to wait outside my car for a mother to get her baby out of the carseat, or any one of a million other variations of being slapped in the face with what I don't have.  And we have to go out of town to visit my husband's family, where my SIL is 33 weeks pregnant.  Guess what the main topic of conversation for 3 days will be?  I guess it would be rude to say, "I'm so happy that you guys decided you wanted a baby over a year after us, and you will get to hold yours in your arms before we're even pregnant.  If we ever will be."  Bah humbug!

Hyperventilating

I have spent the last 2 days building a nice safe bubble around myself, deciding that I will slowly tiptoe through fertility treatments, dragging my feet as much as possible, to avoid the potential sting of total and complete failure.  In my imaginary fantasy, I do not start injectibles until next fall, so as to keep 2011 IVF free.  That way, in 2 weeks, I am not in danger of entering 'The Year I Find Out I Most Likely Will Never Have Biological Children.'  Melodramatic, I know, but this is how I protect myself.

And then I talked to the RE's office today to schedule my consult to decide 'What's Next' after this final Clomid cycle.  And the nurse said she will send me some info on INJECTIBLES because that's what comes after Clomid!!!!!  So I stammer something about Femara, grasping at straws, and she decides that I should do Femara THIS cycle instead of Clomid and says that I can try 1 or 2 Femara cycles before injectibles.  No no no no no.  Pure and utter terror.  I'm hoping if I make it through today, I will feel calmer about it.  Crap.

Last Chance

So this cycle is another huge fail.  

And even moreso because my body was a true B****, tricking me into thinking I was pregnant.  I am normally not a symptom watcher in the TWW.  Really, I'm not.  I figured out pretty early on in my cycle tracking that most of my symptoms mean absolutely nothing.  Sore boobs, nothing.  Moody, nothing.  Peeing a lot, nothing.  Cramping, nothing.  Spotting, nothing.  But in the almost 2 years that I've been tracking my cycle, the only time I had sharp ovary pains when standing up was my pregnancy cycle.  Until now.  Just an extra pinch of cruelty for Christmas.  Hooray.

So we start our final cycle of Clo.mid with HCG trigger and timed intercourse.  If that fails (as history would predict), we will have a consult with the RE to figure out what the next step is.  Clo.mid with IUI? Femara with timed intercourse? Femara with IUI?  Who knows what our wonderful prize will be.   

I so don't want to be starting a new year with this crap.  And I have come to the conclusion that I am terrified of getting aggressive with the fertility treatments.  Because of the expense? No.  Because of the shots? No.  Because of the invasion of privacy? No.  Because IT MIGHT NOT WORK.  And if we use up our infertility coverage and don't end up with a baby, well that might be our final answer.  But if I stretch 6 cycles of treatment out over 2 years.... then I can avoid reality and pretend that it might still happen.  Ahhh, denial.

Update

I am being a really bad blogger.  I'm just feeling pretty numb about this cycle.  I'm sure that subconsciously I am trying to distance myself from TTC so I don't feel the crash as hard if I get another BFN.  Funny how there's really no way to protect yourself from the horrible emotional flood that you get when you realize that this cycle is a BFN, though.  But I'm letting myself cope however I have to.  This routine is just getting too old to invest so much energy into it.

I remember along my TTC journey I would happen upon an infertility blog where they were doing fertility treatments and had stopped charting their temperatures or using OPKs or peeing on HPTs like there was no tomorrow.  And I always thought "How can they do that?  I can't imagine letting go of those things, no matter how long I'm TTC."  But here I am, deciding that I don't care about OPKs anymore, and thinking about charting only right around ovulation time, and cutting out my internet cheapie HPT's.  

After so many negative cycles it just seems pointless.  Who cares?  It doesn't matter if we time our BD'ing right... how many cycles have we timed things perfectly and ended up with a BFN?  It doesn't do anyone any good for me to pee on all those HPT's and drive myself crazy over shadow lines when deep down I just know that it's a BFN.  So, I'm feeling BLAH, and I don't know how else to describe it.

I'm CD17, I ovulated sometime yesterday or today, and I just don't care.  Nothing will come of it anyway.

Mid Cycle Already

Well, I had a bit of a breakdown around the time of AF's arrival.  And none of the depressing thoughts that I had during that breakdown are gone, but the crazy sadness and hopelessness is much better now.  So I'm onto Clo.mid cycle #3.  I'm CD10 already, and have an ultrasound to check my follies on Friday.  I can't wait, and I am so hoping everything looks good.

In a serious funk...

The last couple months I have just been slowly sinking into a sad, sorry state, and I'm not sure what to do about it.  It seems like more often than not, I am hating my life, hating the things I have to do each day, hating how busy I am, hating that what I want out of my life, I don't seem to ever get, hating that I feel like there are a million things to be done and no one else is carrying their fair share of the load, hating that none of the million things to be done is something that makes me smile, hating that I feel like a victim, hating that I can't think of a way to change things right now, hating that I'm so bitter and unhappy, and on and on and on.

A typical week for me, in a nutshell:  Babysit on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.  On those days, I'm out of the house from 6:30 am to 6:30 pm if I drive straight to work and back.  On these days I am also supposed to be doing all kinds of errand-y things like, making a grocery list, going grocery shopping, paying the bills, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, etc, etc.  Thursdays I drive 5 hours to pick up my sister, then I do rehabilitation and care for her Thursday through Sunday, when I drive 5 hours to take her back home.  On those days, I am  busy with exercises/daily care/cooking/etc from at least 9 am until 10 pm.  So if you add up all those hours, I am working approximately 88 hours a week.  

And on top of that, in my *free* time, I am supposed to be finishing up writing my paper and thesis for graduate school and helping a friend edit her thesis.  Guess what?  None of that writing/editing is getting done because I am *exhausted*, and that adds some guilt and bad feelings on top of the pile.

Bottom line, I just feel like everything sucks.  And that's before I even think about the whole, 'my baby died and now I am infertile and worried I will never get pregnant again' thing.

I know I'm in a bad spot, and what I really need to do is be grateful for the good things I have in my life: my husband, my furbabies, my sister, a job that's giving us enough money to pay for the fertility treatments that we need.  But at the moment, every thing that I should be grateful for just feels like another responsibility.

Wow, this was long, guess I needed to vent, huh? ;)

Did Someone Freeze Time?

Ugh, this TWW is dragging by sooooo slowly.  I can't even believe that I am only 5 dpo.  How is that even possible????? It feels like decades since I ovulated.  On Monday, I was thinking, 'Oh wow, sometime next week I will know how this cycle turns out.'  Now I am thinking, 'I will be 79 years old by the time next week rolls around.'  The TWW hasn't been this bad for me in a long time.

On the exciting front, I get to test out my HCG trigger shot.  That means I get to take a HPT every day, with no guilt or crazy feelings.  And can you believe that I forgot to take it this morning????  I must have been possessed or sleepwalking.

We Have Follies!

So I went in today for my CD14 ultrasound to monitor the growth of my follicles.  I have a 23 mm follie on my right ovary, and a 14 mm follie on my left ovary (but my RE doesn't think that little guy will really be in the running ;) ).  My lining looked good, 3 layers and 9.8 mm thick.  They gave me my Nov.arel trigger shot this afternoon and told us to get the job done (wink, wink) tomorrow night and/or Friday morning.  So we are totally on for this cycle!

Of course, this meant that I had to spend the entire evening searching Google and FertilityFriend for info on the appropriate size of mature follies, the appropriate endometrial thickness, and the right way to time intercourse after a trigger shot.  To be honest, I feel less obsessive this cycle, if that gives you any indication of the level of complete and utter insanity at which I am normally functioning.

Come on sperm!  Come on egg!  Get it right this time!

The Results Are In!

My thyroid is back to normal!!!!  My TSH level came back at 1.22, which is right where my doctor wants it.  So the Synthroid is working!  One hurdle down, now tomorrow's look at my follies is staring me in the face.  Hoping that we see something positive!

Ugh, I am being a bad blogger in October!  Maybe because in September I had tons of doctor's appointments and tests to talk about.  Well, next week will be a little busier because I have my 6 week check of my thyroid levels since starting my meds.  And I also have my ultrasound to monitor my follicle growth.  And it's Halloween!  

So stay tuned, I have an exciting week ahead :D

Still on the Merry Go Round

So today is CD2.  My dreaded period showed up yesterday.  On to Clo.mid Cycle 2, I guess.  I will be taking the same dose as I did last month because my 7 dpo progesterone levels looked good (30).  I have an ultrasound to check follicle growth scheduled for CD14.

I am definitely hoping that this is the month.  I never really expected the pressure that comes with starting fertility treatments.  I always thought it would just be great to have a plan in place.  That it would be so relaxing to know that if this strategy doesn't work, in a few months we will move on to something else, and then to something else, and eventually to IUI and IVF.  But now that I'm actually taking the first steps down this path, it just feels like when something doesn't work, I'm freaking out because I'm one step closer to Clo.mid not working at all, and one step closer to IUI, and one step closer to IVF.  It's totally crazy.

But all I've been thinking lately is, "Only 2 Clo.mid cycles left. Only 2 Clo.mid cycles left.  If Clo.mid doesn't work we won't be pregnant in 2010.  Only 2 Clo.mid cycles left!!!!"  And then my brain explodes and smokes puffs out of my ears.  I really was not expecting all this added pressure, but I guess that's kind of silly of me.

Why haven't they invented this?

Nothing to interesting to report on the TTC front... I'm 10 days post ovulation, so I've started my crazy pee on a stick fest already.  Nothing but BFNs so far, but I'm still early so it isn't getting me down yet.

Last night I did have a pretty awesome dream, though.  In my dream I peed on a holographic home pregnancy test.  And when you got a BFP, there was a huge smiley face that showed up, followed by a bunch of smiley sperm swimming to an egg, and then a lot of smiley faces clapping their hands.  Wouldn't it be awesome if there really was such a thing???

At least my dreams don't give away my obsession with getting pregnant, right? ;)

We're On!

So I actually did ovulate!!!!!!  I am 3 dpo today, only 5 more days until I start my crazy peeing on pregnancy tests :)  Whatever gets me through the evil TWW, I guess ;)

Today on Facebook, I saw that an acquaintance who recently had a baby had posted:

If God has blessed you with a baby and you are forever thankful, like this!

I usually don't get too upset about pregnancy/baby-related Facebook posts, but this one was just like a kick in the guts.  It's actually awesome that she is so thankful to be able to be a mom, and it's such a great sentiment, but it's really like a slap in the face to think that I should have been able to click like to that, but instead my baby was taken away.  I have not been blessed with a baby, and I don't know if I ever will be.  And that really hurts.

The only thing that would be true about where I am right now, would be:

If God has ripped your baby from your uterus and you are forever bitter, like this!

So much hurt, so much sadness, and so much bitterness.  This whole loss and infertility thing really sucks.  I would give anything to have my baby.  I guess I can only try to hope that someday I will be the new mom posting happy things like that on Facebook.

I don't believe my eyes!

I got a positive OPK! On CD15!  Am I in an alternate universe where my body acts normal?  Am I dreaming?  Did I give myself my HCG trigger in my sleep and now I'm getting false positives?

I was convinced that I wasn't going to respond to this dose of Clo.mid, and here I am, ovulating 10 days early!  I guess I was wrong!  

I don't know if we're going to really have a chance at a BFP this cycle because we didn't time things too well.  But if I can ovulate before CD20 again next cycle, I'll be ok!

I can't believe how much less stress there is in a cycle where I'm not waiting and BDing for 25 days!!!!!!!!!!! Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!

So Pretty...

Yes, the title of this post is referring to my uterus.  And yes, I am in love with it because it is so. darn. cute.  I can totally imagine our little fertilized eggs floating out of my tube and thinking that my uterus ROCKS as a place to nestle in and grow!

So the HSG went well.... if you couldn't guess by my new crush on my own reproductive system.  I have to admit it was love at first sight.  *Sigh*

Everything looked clear, everything looked normal, and my RE was impressed by the small amount of dye it took to get spilling from both tubes.  It did hurt like a b**** for about 30 seconds there, but other than that, I am pain free.

Now come on ovaries, get with the program and get ready to spit out some beautiful eggs!! I get to check in on your follie growing abilities on Monday, and you really don't want to end up as the ugly duckling of my reproductive organs, do you?