To pee or not to pee

We're in the home stretch of this cycle already. Today is 9dpt & iui and 8dpo. I don't normally get many, if any, symptoms during my 2ww; I assume that's because my progesterone is normally on the low side. Well this time it's not. I've been fatigued since 3dpo, nauseous since 5dpo & my boobers have been hurting since 7dpo. All of which are too early to actually be associated with pregnancy.

Having finally experienced this, I can almost understand why we get so many "OMG AM I PREGGO???" posts from women that are only around a week from ovulation. If I didn't know any better I would have already peed on things.

But I do know better. So now the question is, when to start testing. My beta is scheduled for Friday, which is 12dpo (Isn't that early for betas?). I think I can hold off testing that long. I know, for sure, that I want to have tested before they call with my results. Do I test before? If I get a negative, it's gonna be really hard for me not to get back in bed & skip the appointment. If it's positive, obviously there's no problem. I could try to test after, but since I have to go straight to work from there how will I test with fmu? I seriously doubt that I can wake up, shower, get ready, & get there without my bladder bursting.

I am still temping, though I only have from 5dpo moving forward. Maybe if my temp hasn't taken a dive that morning, I'll feel confident to test at home. Who knows. Maybe I need to ask the Magic 8 ball. It seems to know all.

Either way, I'm still trying to convince myself that this won't work. I don't feel like it's safe for me to hope. Why should I be so lucky? I feel like surely all my good luck for this cycle has been used up, just by things going right. EFFFF! This stinks. I want to be naive & hopeful dammit!


Side note: On Friday, when I was going over the appointment with S, I told him that I ovulated both eggs. The look on his face was fantastic.

"So wait, that means...omg what if...holy shit. I knew twins were a possibility, but I just connected that it actually might happen." LOLz! He's so cute when he's stupid.

180 days

That's it. Out of the 365 days I paid for, a handful of free days, & the 2 months my Fertility Friend account was paused, 180 remain. So 6 months. That's what I have left to get KU & stay that way before I run out of my paid time. Not sure why it matters, but when I logged in this morning, that number jumped out at me as a milestone.

I had my monitoring appointment this morning. It was showing 2 corpus luteum, indicating that both follicles ovulated. The NP said that my lining had doubled in thickness (yay!) & that every thing looked right on track. She asked if & when we had sex, I told her Sunday afternoon. She asked if I had an idea of when I ovulated. I said, based on the almost crippling pain, I was pretty confident that those eggies burst free late Sunday. So she said that she felt like we had a really good shot this cycle.

I should be happy about that, right? But my head won't let me. I've been preparing myself for a BFN, odds of that are greater. I've always been an "expect the worst" kinda gal. IF & loss have just made that mindset even worse. Now I'm constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Good news is almost always followed by bad. That's what we've experienced up to this point, why should things change now.

Now I'm just sitting here waiting for my phone to hopefully not ring. If my progesterone was at least a 15 this morning, then I won't get a call. Since I have a history of it being low, I expect my phone to ring in an hour or 2 telling me that a script for P suppositories has been faxed to CVS. I'm a little nervous about those. I was on Prometrium for the pregnancy, but I took it orally that time.

Oh well, FX for a quiet phone.



Edit: 4pm rolled around & I hadn't heard from them. I had to call, I can't deal with "if you don't hear from us, everything is fine." Well for now, everything IS fine. My progesterone came back at 15! At 7dpo on a medicated cycle they are looking for 15, today is only 5-6dpo. My body decided not to be a jerkface! WOOT!

This is me right now:

Gotta revel in the small victories :)

Completely unrelated, My BFF from home is up in the area right now. Once I get off work we're heading to the train to go see her in NYC for a little bit! Yippee!

Merry Holid....is it over yet?

First of all, MERRY CHRISTMAS! I'm a day late on that, but I wanted to wish anyone that may stumble across this a very happy holiday season.

This has been rough, much more so than I imagined. I spent the last 2 days before Christmas, trying to get myself in the spirit of things. I watched movie after movie, shopped, wrapped gifts, baked, & went to a small holiday party on Christmas Eve. On the way home from that, I was just starting to feel Christmassy. Then we walked into our apartment. There it was, Christmas Eve, undecorated & cold. There was a small pile of gifts in the corner of the living room, but other than that there were no signs of Christmas at our house.

We crawled into bed super early & watched the Harold & Kumar Christmas movie. Surely mindless pot humor with dick & fart jokes mixed in would cheer me up. It did too, until we got to the end of the movie  when Harold & Maria got a BFP on Christmas morning. All I could do was look over at S and say, "Well that's not happening tomorrow morning!" I don't know why I felt the need to tell him that, but I blurted it our before I could stop myself. I hate myself for saying that, I should have kept it in. The flash of pain in his eyes was horrible. He hugged me & said that he already knew that, but hopefully we'd have some good news in a little over a week. I honestly don't know where he finds the strength to keep as positive as he does.

Christmas morning, we were sitting down to open our gifts & I snapped at him for something so stupid I can't even remember it. I went to get a cup of coffee & came back to see him fighting back tears. He lost it. "This is not how this Christmas was supposed to be. We were supposed to be pregnant, just a few months away from baby being here. This was supposed to be our last childless Christmas." I honestly didn't know how to console him. All I could do was hug him & let him cry it out until one of our pets decided to do something to break the tension. Dori took care of that, she freaks out anytime he cries & has to come try to fix it. She squeezed between us, got on his lap, flopped onto her back, & started pawing at him til she got belly rubs. His puppy was there for him to love, all was right with the world again.

So, we opened presents, crammed some breakfast in our faces, packed up the car & headed to his great aunt's house. The great thing about holidays with his family is that they're usually child-free & booze-filled. We made it through the day with no mention of children or questions about the occupancy of my uterus. The only slight reminder was when his great aunt asked me if I was already looking for a job for once we moved. The real answer to that is, "We're hoping that I'm pregnant by that time. So, No, not looking for a job." The answer I have to give, "Ehhhh, we'll see what's going on. I have a few friends looking out for openings for me." But other than that, it was a nice enough day.

I have been temping since my IUI, though I'm pretty sure my BBT esta muerto. I've gotten 97.58 for 4 of my last 5 temps. So I decided to delete all of them & toss the thermometer. Those numbers just can't be right. Tomorrow is only 5dpo, so I'll temp orally the rest of the cycle just to see what it looks like. I decided to test this morning to see if my trigger was still there:

It's super faint (much easier to see IRL), but there still. I'll test again on Saturday, that's 7dpt. If it's still there at that point, I'll test daily I guess. Not using another FRER until I want to confirm a negative wondfo.

Tomorrow I go in for an ultrasound & some blood work. I expect progesterone in some form to follow that appointment. WOOOO! Bring on the headaches & sore tatties!

IUI #1

is in the books! Yesterday, we got up early as hell for S to go make his deposit. I sent him off & stayed home to get ready because we both over slept. He was scheduled to get there at 7. At 7:10, he called me to let me know that no one was at the lab. What the hell? I called the answering service & they tried to reach someone. They couldn't. Apparently they were just running late & didn't know they had anyone scheduled for this morning. He did his thing & came home to pick me up. We went to breakfast while they processed his sample.

We headed back to the clinic for my 9am spermination. The nurse was the only one there when we got there. She grabbed my Ovidrel from their cooler & started talking to me about administering it. She told me that they had to charge $10 for them to administer. I said nbd, I can do it. We headed to the exam room (they let S come back) & she kept trying to tell me how to do the shot, then she closed the door & said "Screw it, I'm the only one here. They won't know I did it for you." The shot was fine, just a tiny pinch.

I asked why we switched my trigger from the night before to day of the IUI. She said there must have been something in my b/w to indicate that I was about to ovulate on my own. She said it's pretty common for my office to do it on the same day, if they want to try to make sure that the patient doesn't ovulate before the IUI. Once the doc got there, I confirmed that with him.

The IUI itself was fine. I has some cramping when they injected his sample, they said that was normal. Just had to lay there for 20 minutes before we could get up & leave. I swear everything leaked out of me while I was laying there, but I suppose that's highly unlikely. Before heading out, I asked for S's post wash numbers: 48.5 mil per ml & 88% motile. I think they only put in a half ml sample though, so 24.25 mil. Still good numbers from what I'm reading. I go back Friday for a confirmation ultrasound & bloodwork, then January 3rd is my beta.

From there, we headed to S's family Christmas party. We hung out there for a few hours & then headed home & went to bed super early.

I decided to temp this morning, for s&g I guess. I haven't temped at all this cycle. My temp was in my normal post-O range. I guess I'll temp for my 2WW just to see what it does, I should at least be able to see my temp dropping if I'm out.

Today has been spent watching Christmas movies & trying like hell to get into the holiday spirit. It's not working, but I'll keep trying. Home Alone 2 is on right now. Up next, Christmas Vacation.

Cycle 14

I'm behind on my updates. Last week we fairly uneventful, for the most part. By Monday, I was pretty confident that last cycle was a bust. I called our insurance company to register for our infertility benefits. First the woman tried to tell me we had basically zero coverage for treatments. I had to point out to her that she was looking at an expired policy. She looked at our current policy & said that we did have coverage(I already knew that, thanks for the mini heart attack lady!). Then I had to answer a bunch of questions about my diagnosis, the pregnancy & miscarriage, & the adventures with my tubes. It would have been a lot easier to just redirect her here. She tells me that I'm all qualified & registered, I have a lifetime benefit of $5K. ::::Screeching brakes::::: Our policy lists 6 IUIs & then 3 IVF cycles. How the frick is 5 grand supposed to cover that? Once I got off the phone with her, I send S a message. Before I completely flipped out, I wanted him to look into things. He looked into it & we're good. WHEW!

Wednesday morning, my temp plummeted & confirmed what I already knew about this cycle. Just after midnight, AF was here. Thursday, I called Dr. T's office to report CD1. They seemed as confused as I was about what his plan for me was, but they set me up for a baseline appointment on Friday morning.

Friday I got to the office & got called back for my blood work. The nurse told me that she was pretty sure Dr T wanted to just do a monitored cycle & start meds in January. I was a little upset, I was under the impression that he was ready to move right into medicated cycles. She said that the NP would review everything & get the doctor's decision. From there I went for my visit with Dr. Vag-Cam. Everything looked good. The NP said that as long as my blood work was ok, she thought that Dr. T wanted to start me on Clomid or Tamoxifen, then we'd do a trigger shot & IUI. She agreed that IUI was the smart choice because of Sean's lower volume. Around 2:30, I got the call that I would be starting Clomid on Saturday, take that for 5 days & then go back in a week for another ultrasound & blood work.

Saturday, I got up & took my first dose. Then we packed up a few gifts we had & headed up state to visit some friends. We spent the afternoon with one of S's college buddies & his family. Got to run around with their toddler in the snow & play with playdoh (which I freakin love). Then we headed to dinner with @doodmama & her husband. It was good to catch up with her. Last time I saw her was over the summer, now she's 8 weeks pregnant! Since we'd gotten up there, about 6 inches of snow had come down & it was still falling heavily. The drive home that normally takes 2 hours, took 4 & included a craptastic ice storm. Whatever. It was worth it to spend some times with friends we rarely get to see :)

I took dose 2 this morning. Until tonight I really hadn't felt anything as far as side effects. But after dinner I started feeling some twinges on my right side & had a hot flash, I guess that's the Clomid. Hopefully it's working its magic in there. We'll find out soon enough.

How do you know when it's time?

Today started off as really nice day. We took S's parents out to brunch (thanks Amazon local!). While we were there it started snowing, hard! By the time we left, there was almost 4 inches of snow on the ground! WHAT??? There was nothing an hour before! It was nice tough. For a little while, I forgot about all the reasons I did't give a damn about the holidays. I just enjoyed the winter wonderland around me. It felt good to forget. We ended up getting about 9 inches of snow on a day we were supposed t get a "light dusting." Ice & freezing rain to come over night.

A few pics from earlier:

                                 

 

As the day moved on, my mind started to wonder to the decision I needed to make this week. Today is 8DPO. If this cycle is a failure, I should see CD1 around mid week. If we're going to proceed with a medicated cycle, I need to have that decision made so I can call the office to set up CD3 ultrasound & blood work. 

I keep going back & forth on this decision. One day, I'm absolutely sure I want to try one more natural cycle. The next, I'm convinced that it's time for some help from Dr. T. How the hell does anyone make this decision? We got pregnant one, can we do it again? How long would it take? Should we start using our covered cycles? We have coverage for 6 medicated cycles, lifetime. After that, we have coverage for 3 IVF cycles. If we use all 6 now to conceive #1, they won't be there for #2. If we need all 6 cycles for #1, that would be an EDD in like January of 2015! 2015! I know I'm getting way the hell ahead of things, but it's just how my brain works. If it takes until then, will we even want to try for another? I've always been adamant (for no good reason at all) about not having kids after 35. Will I still care about that arbitrary deadline? Why do we do this (these deadlines) to ourselves? Nothing good or productive ever comes from it.

Then again, maybe all my body needs is a little boost. Maybe getting progesterone earlier will help my next bean stick & grow better/faster/stronger. Maybe I'll be one of those lucky girls that gets pregnant with just one cycle. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Maybe not.

S & I were reviewing insurance (joy of all joys) while dinner was cooking. We got the bill for my lap yesterday. Thank goodness for insurance. The pre-coverage cost was $20K!!! Holy balls! That turned into really examining our current IF coverage. It looks like we have the 6 cycles, but to have the meds covered those will be pills. It looks like injectable meds aren't covered. I guess if we get to a point that Dr. T thinks those are best, we'll have to see what the OOP cost is.

I told S that I needed his input. "I'm ready for whatever you're ready for," just isn't good enough anymore. This is about both of us & he needs to weigh in here. He said he really didn't understand enough to know what he thought. So we talked through my knowledge of how things go, the risks, & TI vs IUI. As of now, he's ok to try another cycle. But, if we decided to start meds now, he thinks it makes more sense to go straight to IUI because he's worried about his slightly low volume. I can understand that concern, both of his SA's were right at the low end for normal on that. 

His other concern is my mental health. We're both concerned about how I'll handle things if I'm not pregnant when 3/30/14 rolls around. Honestly I'm worried about what it'll do to S also. I think we are both faking it right now. Just doing what we need to keep pushing forward. But the truth is, we're both struggling to make sense of the shit we've been through. 

We ended our conversation with a hesitant decision to move to medicated cycles. Right now we both need me to get pregnant. But I was still not confident in that decision. Then I came across these pictures:

 

These were my tests from July. I need to see this again. I don't care about what it takes to get there. Maybe it's a little premature to move to medicated cycles, maybe it isn't. There's just no way to know with absolute certainty. All I know for sure, is that we need to maximize our chances for each cycle. That means it's time for Dr. T to do his thing.

Side note: My blog posts are long as hell! I need to work on my editing like woah!

Hai

Oh man, It's been 2 weeks since I posted. I'm a neglectful blogger. This may or may not end up a rambly mess of a post. Sorry, my head's all over the place right now.

I'm still hanging out in cycle 13, but it's month 14 now. I'm 4DPO, possibly. We were visiting my family in Louisiana last week & OPK testing just didn't happen. The fine folks over at Fertility Friend seem to think that I ovulated on Saturday though.

Fingers crossed that they got this one right. S & I both got horrible colds the day after we arrived in New Orleans. We tried a few times, but the chest congestion got the better of us & we only managed O-1. All we can do is wait it out I guess. I think I'm settled on moving to medicated cycles if this one is a bust. S just agrees with whatever I want to do, thought I'd really like some actual input from him on this decision. Blindly agreeing with me is ok & encouraged in most areas of life, but this shit matters & I don't know the right answer.

Aside from getting sick as shit, our trip to New Orleans was great. We spent the first 2 nights in a swanky hotel downtown called The Saint, highly recommend it! We went out to a couple of nice dinners, including GW Fins where we went on S's first trip there 10 years ago. We went to the Po'boy Festival on Sunday, things like that are always a good time. You get to escape the touristy parts of the city & see the real soul of New Orleans.

We both woke up Monday, with sore throats(yippee). We checked out of that hotel & switched to the other one out in the 'burbs. From there we made the 3 hour drive to my grandmother's house for Thanksgiving with my dad's side of the family. We got to see my sister's daughter for only the 3rd time ever(she's 15 months old). It was awesome to play with her & even more awesome to watch S play with her & hold her for an hour trying to get her to nap in the middle of the craziness. She absolutely wouldn't sleep of course, but it was so great to watch the man that NEVER wanted children hold her & sneak little kisses when he thought I wasn't looking. 

We spent Tuesday & Wednesday looking at apartments for our move next spring. At the end of the day on Wednesday, we decided that we really liked one of them so we went back, filled out the application, & put down the deposit on a unit there. EEEP! This is really happening! I'M GOING HOME!!!!!

Thursday we got moving super slow. That was the day our cold decided to seriously kick our asses. It was late by the time we finally drug ourselves out the door & started the 1.5 hour drive to my aunt's house for Thanksgiving with my mom's side. I had been dreading this for, well pretty much since the D&E in August. My family isn't shy & says exactly what's on their mind. If they want to know why we don't have a kid in tow, they're asking bluntly. We dealt with a lot of that the year before, but we were only 2 months into trying. "We're working on it" was a lot easier to say at that time. 11 months & a loss later, not so much. I was pretty sure that having my 8 month pregnant cousin around was only going to amplify things. But, either my mom told them all to shut up before we go there or they were totally distracted by our moving news. I don't care which it was, no one mentioned babies to me. It was glorious.

Friday, we slept. We slept until 1 & it was the 3rd greatest thing to happen on the trip(the apartment & S with my niece being 1 & 2). Then we packed up most of our crap & headed out to happy hour with a few of my closest friends. Headed back to the hotel, packed the rest of our stuff & passed out. Saturday was pretty boring. We flew home & I decided to torture Tim with some festive attire. It's pretty much the cutest thing ever, so he's gonna have to suffer through wearing it more than once.

It's back to life as usual now. Work, sleep, work, gym, sleep, work....lather, rinse, repeat. I'm trying not to focus too much on this cycle. It's probably the last shot we'll take at getting knocked up the good 'ol fashioned way. But that doesn't matter anymore. We need our baby. I've always needed our baby, but S is finally at a point that it's no longer a want, it's a need.