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? ;)