Moving forward slowly

I'm starting to worry about my IF clinic a little bit. They don't seem to have things 100% together, and it's really starting to piss me off.

Granted ... my IVF coordinator left the week before I started, and apparently didn't arrange the hand-off of her patients perfectly. But still! I'm paying thousands of dollars ($17,000!) for a service, and what's more I'm spending my time and putting all kinds of crappy medications into my body and I would NOT be a happy camper if the clinic to which I am entrusting myself and my money made my cycle FUBAR through their own incompetence.

Now that I have that out of the way ...

I showed up yesterday at 3pm for my IVF egg class. First I paid off the balance I still owed. Then they gave me my Fol.lis.tim pen because the pharmacy for whatever reason didn't send me one. Then I told the receptionist that I was there for the class.

Receiptionist, in a cheery voice: "Uh ... what class? There's no class scheduled for today."

Me: "The egg class. It's on my schedule. Look, right here." (Pulling out my doctor-reviewed-and-signed IVF schedule.

Receptionist: "Oh, well that must be a mistake. Look, here in the computer it has you down on the 21st." (Cheerfuly smile)

Me: "But, um, I took like 3 hours off work to be here and I dont' really want to do that again (considering how much time off I'm taking already for IVF!). And I'm not driving back to work in the hurricaine force winds and rain now that I'm already in the town where I live."

Receptionist: "I'm sorry, but it's scheduled for next week."

Me, loudly to husband across waiting room: "Well, they made a mistake and scheduled our class wrong, so I guess we should go." (I'm not normally like that, I swear)

Other couple in waiting room: "What? We're here for the egg class too! It's on our schedule too!"

Receptionist: "Um ..."

My new IVF coordinator passing by: "I'll see if the embryologist is available to do a special class just for you! Sorry, but the coordinator who just left must have screwed up everyone's schedules ..." (LIE! My old coordinator scheduled me for the 21st. The new one rescheduled everything when she moved me up a week - guess she wasn't supposed to reschedule the class. Nice try blaming it on the person who doesn't work there anymore).


So we did the class. It was irritating. It was interesting. It was partly a big waste of time and partly useful. They presented all their data on their success rates and explained away any year or category that was low (there was a poor egg donor; and btw, our PGD outcomes are 100% when you only look at those who are choosing the gender versus those with actual infertility). They explained the entire embryology process in excruciating detail (far more than we needed to know), I suspect to make us feel like the thousands of dollars we spent was paying for something. And to make us feel totally safe that they will not mix up our eggs, sperm, or embryos.

All of this after asking us to change our IVF schedule with less than 24 hours warning, AND the coordinator ordering me a brand of HCG that I specifically requested she NOT order.

It all worked out in the end (except I guess I'm taking some HCG that I didn't want (this brand gives me a welt, none of the others did)). It just makes me a little nervous for the upcoming two or three weeks.

Fol.list.im starts today! CD 1 is here!!!!!!

Fuck

I am having the worst morning. Well, I'm being a bit of a baby, but here goes:

1. My doctor is letting me sleep without my knee brace. The biggest problem with this, though, is my husband. We're both tall, and we have a queen size bed. At 6:15 this morning, my husband moves or rolls and gives me a bony hard knee to the shin. OUCH! I'm wide awake, 30 minutes before my alarm. The bright side? At least I get to work on time.

2. After I get up, I feed the annoying, whiny cat (who spent a good part of the night sleeping in a spot on the bed where I didn't have room for both legs on one side of her, but couldn't seem to get one leg on the other side of her). While I'm leaning down to feed her, balanced precariously on one foot, I fall. Luckly onto my left side, not my injured knee. Thank goodness for that! I feel like a crotchety old lady.

3. I get to work and realize that in my haste to put this shitty morning behind me, I have forgotten my yogurt at home. I'm starving, and it's a long way to buy any breakfast for a person on crutches. I will have to see if a coworker will go get me something.

4. My sister called (just as I was going through my bag looking for my yogurt and realizing I didn't have it). She asked if I had looked on Fac.ebo..ok this morning (I hadn't). The wife of my lame, idiotic brother apparently announced that they are having their THIRD child (the second unplanned one). They haven't even told anyone in my family yet, but they told F.ac.eboo.k. Guess they better put off their plans to declare bankruptcy another year, so they can get the delivery costs wiped out. ARGH!

Sometimes I love how supportive my husband is, but sometimes I can't STAND his pollyanna, zen attitude. Everything is a learning experience and there is always a silver lining and getting upset never helps anything. ARGH! He doesn't understand why I should be upset that my idiot of a brother keeps having kids without even trying and we've spent two years and thousands of dollars and gone through hell and have absolutely nothing to show for it.

He says we're just at the start and there's no reason to be depressed. Just at the start! Because we're now starting IVF! He is so happy and hopeful that we're moving onto IVF, because apparently it's such a wonderful thing! Sometimes I could kick him. I guess it's good that one of us has a good attitude, but OMG seriously. It drives me crazy.

OK, off to bribe a coworker to go get me breakfast.

What to do next?

I had a pretty good weekend in Tahoe, but I can promise you, I will never go to Tahoe on the 4th of July every again! Traffic was terrible - I spent over 7 hours in my car for an overnight camping trip. It was fun hanging out with my friends and meeting new friends, but I really missed my husband and wished I was with him. I also spent a good 20 minutes in the car on the way up, bawling. I was hoping I wouldn't get pulled over and the cop would think I was crying to get out of a ticket.

I haven't had time to catch up on blogs and comments yet, but I will within a day or two.

In the meantime, reality is setting in rather slowly. It's been a good, solid year and a half of ttc, with tons of testing, a diagnosis of "unexplained", 3 IUIs, and one medicated DIY cycle. It's time to admit that we just can't do this on our own, and we need a nice friendly doctor to introduce our sperm and eggs to each other, and perhaps force them to get along.

As with all things in life, though, it's just never that simple. I have a job I don't like, and which I now know I will be at for another year at least. I have a knee that is going to need surgery sooner or later. I'm about to turn 31, which is not terribly old in terms of ttc, but it's older than I hoped to start having children in my vague life plan. I have a vacation to Alaska coming up, a triathlon to do, and a husband to send off to Germany for a conference in September. Most of all, I have a yearning in my heart to have a baby, just get on with this and get to where I want to go, to stop all this delaying and messing around and really get serious about it.

So here I am.

Plan A - go to Alaska in August, send the husband to Germany in September, have my knee surgery in October, and start IVF ASAP after that, probably end of October or first half of November. Earliest possible date of 9 months after IVF would be approximately July 2010 - one year from now. Possibly look for another job, but with surgery, IVF, and a two-week Christmas vacation in the works, who would hire me?

Plan B - still working on it. Go to Alaska in August. Send husband to Germany in September. Try to squeeze in a round of IVF between August 10 and late September (is this possible?). Forget about triathlons after July (no problem), postpone knee surgery until another year, but still plan to go to Italy for Christmas.

There are so many variables that it's impossible to figure out.

Insurance - does not cover anything IF-related, but will cover knee surgery 100% because we've met our deductable this year. If we put it off another year, we might have to pay thousands of dollars for knee surgery.

Timing - I don't know enough about IVF to know if the timing will work out this summer, between our vacation and my husband leaving for the conference. If we have to wait until after his trip, I feel like I might as well wait another month and have knee surgery. If we don't have to wait until after his trip, then I might want to just get started right away.

PIO - I'm terrified of it. Not so much that I won't do IVF, but enough to make me dread it.

My job - I hate it, but I don't think I'm going to have an option to change with all this going on in my life.

I will be reading about IVF in Navigating the Land of IF, but if anyone has any advice, as always, it will be gratefully accepted.

A sorry start

I had my ultrasound this morning, so I slept in a bit and went for a run.

Past the local elementary school.

I saw all the kids riding their bikes to school, many of them with their parents. I saw the cars pulling up to drop off the kids, the parents talking and laughing to each other. I passed through, crossed the pedestrain bridge over the freeway, against the flow of more and more kids heading to school. Finally I arrived at the park, which was mostly empty at 8:30am. Empty except for the stay-at-home moms and dads, out for walks with their babies, taking them to the playground. I thought how maybe these people would have been my friends, in another life. In a life where I could get pregnant.

I can't seem to make friends where I live. It's a beautiful university town, a wonderful place to live. But it's not a great place for young working singles or couples without kids. It's full of young families, and college students, and older couples. I actually have made some friends - but most of them have gotten pregnant and moved on, or have job offers at other universities in other cities and have no kids to tie them down - so they're moving on, too. It seems like it's only me who is stuck here, in limbo.

The clinic was 45 minutes late, as usual. So much for my hopes of not missing TOO much work. Everything looked good. The doctor handed me my prescription ... for 100 mg of Clomid. I mentioned that I thought we were upping the dose, and she seemed to have no idea what I was talking about. She said no, we were just adding estrogen to make implantation more likely.

This is another left ovary month. Last time, I got only one follicle on the left at this dosage (followed by a big cyst). I don't have ovulatory problems, that I know of - I would likely have one egg without all these medications and ultrasounds. Why am I paying a thousand dollars for a great possibility of having one egg? After a year and a half, it's pretty clear that one egg and some sperm give us about a 0% chance of pregnancy.

I left in tears, and cried all the way to work.

But at least I pretty much know how the next year will go. We'll be on vacation in July, so we'll skip that month. At that point, I think I'll schedule my knee surgery for September/October, and we'll start IVF hopefully in October/November. Which means the earliest I can expect to possibly have a baby is summer 2010.

My life is essentially on hold for a year. What can I do in a year to move towards the life I want? Should I go back to school? My sister is starting a certificate program. Should I do that? I just feel I need to be working for something, heading my life in some direction, since the direction I chose isn't working out. I need to feel a greater purpose in my life again, something beyond spending every weekday waiting for the weekend, and every Sunday night dreading Monday morning. Life HAS to be more than that, doesn't it?

Onward and upward

So no break after all. I had a confusing discussion with my husband last night. Here are some of the points he made:

1. How can we, in the year 2009, be diagnosed with unexplained infertility? He can't believe that there is such a thing, with all the advanced technology there is today. Aren't there more tests we can do to discover what the problem is? How can the field of assisted reproduction be so vague and badly understood?

2. Since we have been diagnosed with unexplained fertility, what is the point of continuing to do IUIs? According to him, it's like making up a solution to a problem about which you know nothing, and then crossing your fingers and hoping it works. Are the doctors just trying to make money off of us by having us to one IUI after another?

3. What is the point of taking a break? We already know it won't get us anywhere (even if we don't know why).

4. Why do I think it's worth it to keep trying? He's ok with me saying I want to do another IUI, but he doesn't understand why I think it will work. I had told him when we first got started that typically if a treatment is going to work, it will work in the first three tries. I think since we didn't have an IUI on cycle #2, and we had a poor response (one follicle) on cycle #3, this time we might have a better chance with a higher dose of meds and an IUI.

5. What will we do if this doesn't work again?


All of this is a little ironic because he tends to not like to worry about the future until we have to. I.e., don't worry about being infertile until we know we are, then don't worry about IVF until IUI has failed, etc. No planning ahead whatsoever, but now that we're in this place, there's so much I wish we had discussed. I've taken it upon myself to research and study and read blogs and stories from other people and I feel like I understand our situation, so he relies on me to inform him, but he questions me as if I am somehow responsible for all of these ideas and treatment plans.

Can you tell I'm frustrated?

So anyway, AF arrived last night and I'm calling the RE today for a new cycle. Hopefully at the ultrasound I can ask what she recommends if this fails. Hopefully my husband will come along and ask his own questions, too.

Hopefully this works so that I'm not just postponing the inevitable until next month!

4 dpo, 10 days to go (and a frank discussion of adoption)

I HATE the 2ww.

The husband and I were planning a lovely two-day bike trip to the northern coast this weekend, but it looks like it's going to rain and be kind of cold and miserable. Since we would be carrying all of our stuff in our backpacks, it doesn't sound like the greatest weekend for this trip. Instead - we'll be going to the new Academy of Sciences in San Francisco! I hope! I've been dying to go there since about 6 months before they opened, so I am SO EXCITED. That should take my mind off the 2ww like nothing else.

Today's my last HCG booster. With luck, my last one ever, but I'm not counting on that.

I'm still maintaining my zen pretty well, but I must admit that it's tough, mostly because I don't know what will happen next if this is a BFN cycle. (I'd probably discover this on Mother's Day Sunday, btw - I've already had one on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter this past year - what luck!) My husband doesn't seem to be excited about pursuing ART any further, and he also doesn't like to talk about anything before he absolutely must. In my scenario, if we got a BFN, I would call the clinic the next day, although AF probably wouldn't arrive for a few days because of the progesterone. I would proceed with a new clomid cycle on a higher dose and add the estrogen like my RE suggested.

In my husband's world, we might at that point finally talk about what to do next. Chances are, he won't want to do another back-to-back cycle. Even more likely, he won't want to do another cycle at all. He will probably suggest we look into adoption. Because maybe it is our destiny to give some child a home. I am not at all against giving a home to a child who needs one. Although I don't believe in destiny.

There are a few reasons why this sucks. First, it sucks to not agree on something so major. Second, I've already started looking into adoption a bit, and it sounds complicated, expensive, time-consuming, and not fun. I do know that once I accept it, it will be ok. But still.

Third, in our family, my husband works (way more than full time), and he does a few chores that I ask him to do (but only when I remind him to do them). Everything else is done or planned by me (in addition to working full time) - I open the mail, pay the bills, organize our paperwork, pay our taxes, do the grocery shopping, laundry, most of the cleaning, pay the rent, and just make sure our lives can run smoothly. Car insurance and registration? That's me. His immigration paperwork (he's from Italy)? I did that. Going to the bank to get cash or deposit checks? Me. Planning vacations, buying plane tickets, arranging hotels and rental cars? Me again. Making sure the doors are locked and lights are off at night? Me. Making sure we don't run out of toilet paper/gas/wine/beer/kitty litter? Me. Cutting the grass? Me!

Oh right, he does feed the cat at night (one point for the husband!). And he occasionally takes out the trash (two points!) But he absolutely never cleans the litterbox without my asking him, even though technically it's his job now that we're really into the ttc game.

I didn't mean to turn this into a rant against my husband, who is a really great (but frustrating) guy. The point is that if we go through with adoption, the entire burden will fall to me. And to be honest, as you can tell from my post, I'm just not ready for it yet. I'm not ready to give up on my dream of being pregnant and having a child that is half him and half me. I want HIS child. I think on some level I am very hurt that he doesn't seem to care that much about having MY child, a child that is part me. I think that before I can pursue adoption, in order to be completely fair to any adopted children we could have, I have to come to terms with the idea of NEVER having a biological child, and I don't think I'm ready for that yet. I know that I will eventually get there.

My husband thinks it is terrible that I cry after every BFN, and get so depressed (he NEVER gets upset about anything, so I don't think he understands how theraputic it is for me). He thinks that adoption will solve that - no more BFNs! But I cry not just because I got a BFN on that particular cycle. I also cry because every BFN brings us one step closer to never having our baby. So him trying to move up the drop-dead date after which we no longer try - we admit that we will probably not have a biological child - well, that makes me want to cry even more.

So that is what is on my mind while I'm being positive and hoping my intuition is correct and not swayed by the negative possibilities of the future.

ICLW failure

I suck. I've been having a hard week and have not managed to leave enough comments for ICLW, although I'm hoping to make up for it by the end of the weekend.

Two nights ago I had an argument with my husband and couldn't sleep - I have occasional insomnia and I don't sleep well in general. The lack of sleep upset my stomach (don't ask, I don't know why), so I spent yesterday feeling like a zombie with a stomache-ache. I promised my husband one nice dinner out before the IUI, so I made myself do it, but it was disappointing to not really be able to enjoy it.

Then I slept for 10 hours last night before my second ultra-sound this morning. The ultra-sound for which the clinic was running 40 minutes late and made my husband very cranky. The ultra-sound that showed that my lining is thinner than it has been for the last two cycles and that I only have one follice. One lousy follicle. I have no hope for this cycle anymore.

I know, one is all it takes. But I think it will be easier for me to look ahead to the next cycle and some changes the RE suggested. She wants to up my clomid dosage and maybe put me on estrogen. The husband said he wanted to ask them if it was really worth even doing another cycle. I feel like crying. Again. I hope it's the clomid that is making me this emotional.

So to sum it all up, I've had a fairly crappy week, a crappy uterine lining, only one follice (not sure if it's crappy), and a cranky husband. All I can think to say is TGIF.

2 days to go

12 dpo, 2 days to go.

I'm so tempted to test tomorrow, but I swear I won't. One of the reasons I want to is that tomorrow we're going biking in wine country, and then to a friend's house for dinner, and I want to know if I can drink more than half a glass of wine for the day. Problem is, if it's negative, I know there's a chance it won't be accurate yet because it's early, so I don't think testing tomorrow will help.

(Even though I bought the super-fancy early-testing HPTs, right? I should still not test a day early, right?)

I have been feeling sick and tired from the prometrium, so I left work early yesterday, went home, and took a nap. I feel much better today, much less crampy. I don't know if that's a good thing or not.

This wait is so frustrating. I am trying very hard to not get my hopes up, because I have serious doubts that even with the medications we could get pregnant on our own. I'm trying to remember that a BFN on Sunday means a call to the RE on Monday to set up my baseline ultrasound, and that a new IUI cycle has begun. I know that my rational brain will see it this way, but my heart will still feel broken.

Trying to stay upbeat but not TOO upbeat. It's a gray morning, but the sun is supposed to make an appearance later today. I'm looking forward to an evening out with my husband, a day of biking and a dinner with friends tomorrow, and then an early Sunday morning POAS session. I'm just hoping the time passes quickly (like these next 8 hours at work - they are going to be TOUGH!).

Long, whiny post - sorry

My weekends need to stop being so stressful. Seriously. I just wrote a super-long, whiny post and now I've cut it back.

After a week of beautiful weather, it got cold, rainy, and windy this weekend (of course today is bright and sunny again, go figure). I spent Saturday at home doing chores, and then we threw an impromptu dinner party which made a huge mess of our kitchen but which was a lot of fun.

Sunday though – that was the kicker. It almost killed me. I haven’t talked much about my relationship with my mother, and I don’t want to go into it much because then I start whining and I hate it when I whine. We don’t get along well – she’s a very difficult person, spoiled, demanding, controlling, manipulative, and so on. She hates my sister-in-law and makes my brother’s life miserable because of it. She also thinks that it’s the duty of her children to drive to her house (a 45-minute drive for me) whenever she wants and do anything she demands, and if anyone of use refuses (2 out of 3 isn’t enough) the ones who do come get to hear her complain about the ones who didn’t come the whole time.

I know things aren't the way she wants them - my father died quite a few years ago, and her behavior tends to drive everyone else away. And yes, I do feel bad for her and very guilty that her life has turned out this way. Unfortunately, she also feels bad for herself and wallows in her self-pity, pushing guilt trips as hard as she can to try to get people to pay attention to her. It makes any time spent with her very, very stressful.

So to try to make this long story just a bit shorter, I went over there this weekend to clean, in the hopes that she will try to sell her humongous house and move into something more reasonable. In the midst of cleaning her house while she more or less sat there and watched us, she brought up that she really wishes L and I would have a baby.

Um, SERIOUSLY?

Keep in mind that L and I took her to lunch LAST SUMMER to tell her we’d been trying for about 8 months and we were having some trouble, but we were going to start investigating and we’d tell her when we had news. (And by news I meant a pregnancy announcement – no way is she going to know every step of the process).

I’ll try to remember the gist of the conversation from that point onward:

Me: What?!
Mom: I want to know when you and L are having a baby, you ARE still planning to, right?
Me: Um, yes. We told you that.
Mom: I know, but it’s been a while. I want another grandchild.
Me: You already have two.
Mom: I know, I love A (my nephew – she never says she loves my niece – nice), but he needs someone to give him a rivalry.
Me: He has a sister you know.
Mom: She doesn’t rival him, and anyway she loves him, too. He needs a little cousin.
Me: Well, I can’t really do anything about that. You should be happy you have two grandchildren.
Mom: I want my daughter to have a child.
Me: (almost crying by this point)
Mom: I am going to say something and you’re going to get mad (yes, she really says this, all the time).
Me: Maybe you shouldn’t say it then.
Mom: (I can tell she wants to say it, acting like she didn’t hear me) What?
Me: Fine, what do you want to say?
Mom: I think that sometimes when women are really active they have trouble getting pregnant, you know, like in the Olympics (THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME SHE’S BROUGHT THIS UP)(and I’m not exactly an Olympic athlete).
Me: (Sigh). I don’t think that’s the problem – I am in decent shape but I don’t work out that much. You know what actually DOES cause infertility? STRESS. Like you calling me EVERY DAY to complain about my sister-in-law and all your other problems. (Yikes, shouldnt' have said that, probably).

Yeah, things didn’t go so well. She was upset that I blamed her for my problems (even though she had just finished blaming me), not that I completely blame her, I don’t blame anyone. I just know my life would be a lot easier without all the stress caused by her.


ANYWAY - Today is my LAST DAY of Clomid! Monitoring ultrasound on Friday, IUI early next week if all goes well!

Maybe friends aren't so bad after all

We went to dinner at a friend’s apartment on Monday night, the same friends who I’ve mentioned before in the previous post and this other post. They recently ended their first trimester and have been so excited to tell everyone about their pregnancy. They’ve also been sort of asking every couple they know if they’re considering starting a family yet. I’ve gotten the feeling that they’re hoping at least a few friends might want to have kids on the same timeline as they are.

I feel like I’ve been very understanding of their excitement and I’m honestly very happy for them. We haven’t been very open with our IF struggles, so only a few of our friends know about it, and those who do are not even close to trying to get pregnant at this point in their lives, so I’m not sure they really truly understand what we’re going through. When our newly pregnant friends asked again, with both me and L there, if we’re going to start a family soon, L said to me, “It’s not really a secret, you can tell them.”

Of course they got all excited thinking we were going to tell them we were pregnant (after I had drunk like half a bottle of wine, right), but then they felt really, really bad. I felt bad for making them feel bad, since they started to realize that they’d perhaps said a lot of things that could have been tough for me/us. But they were really nice and supportive and well … I’m nervous about what might happen next. Will they avoid us? Will they have more compassion for me and more thoughtfulness about what other people might be going through? How will it affect our friendship – in the short term, but also in the long term if we don’t get pregnant?

I would have thought the wife would have been completely aware of the impact of IF in other people’s lives, considering that she works in the health industry as an educator (and was actually a sexual health educator, although I think she dealt with college students and tried to prevent pregnancy and STDs). I guess you learn (or realize) something new every day.

So now I have to keep deciding who we tell and who we don’t tell, and eventually (hopefully, cross my fingers) if we get pregnant we’ll have to decide whether to confide that we experienced IF, or just not say anything at all (not that I would deny it if anyone asked, for sure, I just don’t know if it’s relevant for everyone to know).

In other news - only 6-7 days left until IUI cycle #2!

Surely it will happen this month ...

I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about this before, but now I’ve seen it on so many other IF blogs that I want to address it again. The constant feeling that it will happen this month, so going to the OBGYN or doing some infertility tests or looking up an RE is a waste of good time and money.

Cycle is such an appropriate word, because it does feel like an endless cycle and despite the obvious starting and ending point, there never seems to be an obvious STOPPING point, where you stop and say, wait! It’s definitely time, I was sure yesterday wasn’t it, and today I’m sure.

I mean, CD1 means that it’s a new cycle, so maybe this cycle could be the one! It’s less than two weeks until I get to try again! I can hold out two weeks!

And then in two weeks, it’s only two more weeks until I find out for sure if it worked this month (which it surely did), and if I can’t be patient for two whole weeks, then am I really mature enough to have a child?!

What will everyone think if I go to see an infertility specialist and then I turn up pregnant that month? What will the doctor think? EVERYONE will think I am overreacting and making mountains out of molehills. I’ll feel ridiculous. Better just to wait the two weeks and see what happens.

AF.

Damn.

But hey! It’s only two weeks until we get try to again.


P.S. Now that I've actually started treatment, I'm of course thinking that surely, it will happen this month. I mean, no diagnosed problems, 100 mg of Clomid, ultrasound monitoring, HCG, AND IUI. What in the world could go wrong? (<-- sarcasm)

Our first treatment cycle starts - but first, I'm completely crazy

I’m really ashamed to admit how bad things got, and how crazy I’ve been.

I went running yesterday and had some bad cramps afterward, so I knew I was getting my period. Still, the cramps went away after I cooled down, and we went home and I checked and I had a tiny, tiny amount of blood, spotting again. Of course.

Fast forward to 4:30 this morning. And then rewind to 4-5am of the last few days. Me. Wide awake. Ugh. Previously, I was able to go back to sleep after tossing and turning a bit. Not today. I lay there thinking about how I felt ok. Didn’t have cramps.

OMG, I thought. My period hasn’t come! Even though today was really the earliest day possible, so it could still arrive at any time (and 4:30am was probably the earliest TIME possible during the earliest day). And um, HELLO idiot, I’ve been spotting for the last two days and having cramps. But what about the sore boobs?! I lay awake in bed at 4:45 arguing with myself. I wasn’t very rational.

Some of it was about money, and putting my husband through the infectious disease testing he had to do before we can start our IUI, which he was going to do this morning. I mean, what if I was pg? What a waste of money and time that would be, and what a pain for him.

Why, oh why, didn’t I buy a pg test? I mean, besides not wanting to jinx myself, of course. I could have just slipped out of bed, taken it, and known.

5am. Still can’t sleep. I’m making myself CRAZY. I decide it’s best to just get up and check things out. What could that hurt. But I don’t want to waste my FMU just in case. OK, I’ll check to see if AF has arrived, then pee in a cup. It hasn’t!!!! OMG!!!!!

So I pee in a cup, turn on the computer, and look up Rite Aid. WHAT?! It doesn’t open until 8AM? Whose stupid idea is that? But Safeway is open 24 hours. I toss on a sweater, socks, and shoes, and race to Safeway (but end up at Longs since it’s open 24 hours too). Buy a HPT. Race home. Shut myself in the bathroom (keep in mind it is now around 5:30-5:40). Stick the thing in my pee, and wait. This is a fast response test, you’re supposed to know in a minute (although you have to wait for three for final results). The control line shows up immediately. Nothing else does.

I go back to bed at 5:45 and don’t sleep until my alarm goes off at 6:20. L holds me, and I’m so, so happy to feel him against me, his arms around me. I know I’m so lucky.

I get up at 6:30, double check the test (nothing, of course), see that AF is finally showing her face (where was she two hours ago?!?!).

L got his testing done. I made my appointments. First u/s is Friday at 9:30. SHG is Tuesday at 11. We’ll schedule the second u/s at that point.

I’m emotionally and physically exhausted.

Today is an important day, because a new cycle has started. And Friday, treatment starts. So it’s a good thing, a milestone.

Also, I can totally, definitively say that we’re infertile. It’s definitely been over a year. No more fudging with dates, and worrying about whether it was the end of December or beginning of January.

I’m infertile.

Impatience sets in again

Argh! I was so calm and cool and collected and now I’m so impatient and ready to go. Damn!

It’s probably because I’m looking at a long, stressful day ahead of me today, so I turn my mind to more pleasant things.

Still, it’s already Thursday, and I’m looking forward to a nice weekend of skiing and biking and cleaning my house (which desperately needs it). I might get super-serious about cleaning out closets. I can’t stand how cluttered they are, we could use a bit of extra space, and who knows? Maybe we’ll eventually have a baby and need some space for baby stuff.

OK, now I know I need to get a grip.

Anyway, Monday is a holiday for me (yay state jobs), and Tuesday I should at least be spotting, if not already on Monday. So yay! Hooray!!!!! In no more than 5 days I'll get some sign (I hope), and in 6-7 days, we’ll be on our way. Wheee!

Stasis

OK, let’s start over. Dealing with infertility. See the previous post for a clue about what I’m talking about. At my age (30) infertility is defined as being unable to conceive after one year of trying. The point I was trying to get at is that it’s not like there’s some invisible line I am right now crossing. I’ve been aware that we’re ttc, and every month gets a little more worrisome, a little more stressful, a little more sad, but as I reach that one-year point, I realize that really I’ve been dealing with infertility all along. I just didn’t always know it.

Anyway, I’ve given up on POAS this month. I don’t know why I’m getting so blasé about it, but I am. It’s part of me, perhaps, that thinks that the obsessing hasn’t really helped, and so perhaps being blithe and carefree (um right) will change something. Anyway, not obsessing has been rather nice.

Unfortunately, not obsessing is actually a result of my incredibly stressful work and pre-holiday schedule. So I’m still a bit worried about this cycle. And then … the big SHG. I think that when I call the doctor to either verify or reschedule that, I’ll try to talk to her about our options.

So anyway, we're down to a one-week-and-change wait. God, I hate the 2ww.

Dealing with infertility

Am I dealing with infertility? I'm not really sure what that means. I get up every day, I do all the things I normally do (plus sometimes a few extra things like POAS), and I agnonize over things my hubby is totally calm about. Wasn't I dealing with infertility for the last few months, before we reached the final "month 12"?

Eh never mind. I can't form a coherent thought today, I'm way too busy at work and majorly stressed about Christmas gifts. The amount of stress I was feeling yesterday was extremely NOT GOOD for my fertility issues. So then I started stressing about how much I'm stressing. Crap.

Anyway, I think my positive OPK was Thursday/Friday. Which makes me nervous that we didn't really cover our bases this month, since we didn't BD after Thursday. What if I didn't O until Sunday? Argh!!!!

My mantra seems to be "too early is better than too late".

Well, only about a week and a half until I should either know for sure that it's negative, or just keep wondering. Sigh.