miscellaneous

Dentist appointment yesterday. Funny how EVERYTHING reminds me of infertility somehow. I remember going to the dentist in July 2008 (I had to look that up) and deciding to get my x-rays done then because in 6 months I'd be pregnant. I even TOLD the hygeinist that. Sheesh, what an idiot I was.

The somewhat close friends I have, who are pregnant, are at the hospital right now, becoming parents. I have such mixed feelings about it. I'm happy that at least some of my friends are having kids (most of my closer friends aren't even considering yet, and I want to shake them and tell them how foolish it is to wait when they don't know if they're even fertile). I'm happy for them, especially because they seem so excited. I'm curious to find out whether they're having a boy or a girl (they didn't find out), and what names they've picked out (they won't share).

I'm also so sad for me. They started trying almost a YEAR after we did, and their baby will probably be born today. We're still months away from even getting started. Their journey from ttc to baby was less than a year. Ours will be, at the very least, almost three years. If we're lucky. Their journey was practically free. Ours will cost tens of thousands of dollars.

I'm so sad about all of that.

On the other hand - I'm also realizing that time is sort of flying. I'm supposed to call the IF clinic in September when AF arrives so I can start birth control, but I'm expecting it around August 30 (and then again around September 27 - does anyone know if I should wait until then?). I'm supposed to start Lupron around October 14, stims around October 21. So only two months to go until I'm in the thick of it.

And only two weeks to go until knee surgery. Which will probably take my mind off things for a while anyway.

And only forty minutes until I get to leave work for the day. Thank goodness for small miracles.

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!

Friends

Serious pity party today. Poor me. Some married friends came over last night, ostensibly to see us before we left for Italy. In reality, it turned out, they wanted to tell us in person about their pregnancy because they would be announcing it at a party they are throwing next weekend, when we won’t be here.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m so, so happy for them. They are good friends, nice people, and definitely deserve every little bit of happiness. They have no idea that we’ve been trying, or how long we’ve been trying, or that we’ve been through months of testing, or that we’re being treated for infertility.

They’ve asked us when we’re going to have kids, in a gentle, joking sort of way that is usually easy to brush off, but with the news from them last night is much harder. They’ll have a baby in 6 months. Where will we be in 6 months? I just don’t know.

I already had one friend confide in me, around the time we started trying, that she and her husband lost their first pregnancy due to the discovery of a polyp on her ovary. Since then, she’s had surgery, gotten pregnant, and just delivered her son. I was sure at first that we would share the pregnancy experience, and it would bring us closer together, because God knows I need some good friends in my little town. Then after a while I thought, well, at least I won’t be too far behind, and we can still share the experience of being new mothers. Now she has gone far ahead of me, and I don’t know if I can catch up. I told her at the beginning that we were trying, too. After a while, she stopped asking for news. I’m sure she’s busy with her newborn, but I wish she would, once in a while, think of me.

It’s true, actually, that even amongst the pregnancy announcements flying around, one friend has apparently been ttc since sometime last summer (I heard this second- or third-hand). I wonder if I should break down my wall of silence and reach out to her. If sharing this experience could help us both. But then I fear that for them it will just be a fluke (after all, they’re well under a year of ttc, and for all I know could be pregnant now), and I will have shown some serious vulnerability, and they’ll be pregnant.

I think maybe I’m just feeling sorry for myself in order to try to prevent myself from being too hopeful, as a way of self-protection, self-preservation. Despite everything, I still can’t help hoping that this month is it. We’ve got EVERYTHING going for us, after all. But as I’m quickly learning in this incredibly unfair experience, that probably doesn’t matter at all.

Big day - IUI #1

Today's the big day. I'm so ready. I'm MORE than ready.

As a special gift, I logged on to Facebook this morning (b/c I'm "working" from home before the appointment) and saw that my friend from college, who already has beautiful identical twin 3-year-olds, is expecting his third baby with his beautiful wife.

I never thought I would be the crazy jealous infertile type, but I felt, seriously, like I had been kicked in the stomach. Normally I can muster up some happiness for my newly pregnant friends, and recognize that my bitterness is not aimed at the person but rather at the universe, but not today. Today I am bitter not only at the universe but at every. single. person. in it. Except other infertile people, of course.

I'm getting over it, and trying to get excited for my IUI, which is only 2.5 hours away. I'll update later on how that goes.


Update: The IUI went really well!

We went there around 11, but apparently they weren’t done washing L’s sperm yet, so we had to wait almost a half hour. Then they called us back and let me get ready. They brought in a little test-tube with some pink liquid in it and showed us that it was labeled with our names and then went over a few of the results of the SA that they had done. It was great – 120 million before wash, 35 million after, which is I guess fantastic.

After that, they showed me how they drew up the spermies into the catheter and talked us through it while they injected it. Other than the usual discomfort of the speculum, I didn’t feel anything.

Then they spoke with us briefly about our chances (15-20%) and told me to take the extra HCG shots tomorrow and Sunday to trigger my body to keep producing progesterone. Since I usually have spotting before AF, both the Clomid and the HCG should help with that.

And that’s it. I’m officially in the 2ww. I’ll be doing an HPT in Italy around February 18, give or take a few days, and I won’t have much to do infertility-wise until then.