Left Behind ***UPDATE***

I've officially dubbed this year The Year of Being Left Behind. I've experienced many fertiles announcing their pregnancies and having babies this year, but it's different when you have friends who have also struggled with infertility and then gotten pregnant. It's bittersweet to see them achieve their goals while you're still trying to achieve yours. And this year seemed to be nothing but that. All the blog friends and real-life friends I've made have gotten pregnant and are moving on. And here I am, trying to pump myself with optimism for my upcoming FET but it's hard. And I know it's bad, but it kinda makes me not want to make friends with fellow infertiles, or to start reading a new blogger who's going through fertility treatments. Because what if they get pregnant next month and I don't? How hard will it be to maintain that friendship or continue reading that blog? It's almost like infertility was designed to be dealt with alone, as sort of a self-preservation mechanism. It sucks because sometimes it bothers me when others get pregnant and sometimes it doesn't. I guess I'm moody like that. I just hope this FET works so I don't have to deal with another year of being left behind.

On a happier note, my WW weigh-in today showed a loss of one pound! I'm happy with it, especially considering we had an office Christmas party and a big Christmas dinner last night. On Monday I'm signed up for a free one-hour session with a personal trainer at my gym. I'm sure he'll kick my ass and I'm not really looking forward to it, especially when he tries to sell me a training package of some sort at the end, but I'm doing it to try and learn new exercises to work all my muscles. Wish me luck!

***UPDATE*** I might end up crapping out on the trainer tomorrow. Apparently we're supposed to get 10-15 inches of snow between now and then! We've already got about 2 inches so we'll see what happens.

Third Time's the Charm?

I sincerely hope that saying rings true, in more ways than one. First, I am now delving into my third expensive fertility treatment. After two IVF attempts we are now doing FET's. I just started my Provera yesterday because AF never showed up. I also started taking my Metformin and prenatal vitamins again. I think that's all I will take this round. No vitamin B-complex, no wheatgrass, none of that junk. I gave some serious consideration to doing acupuncture again. After all, I did acupuncture during my first IVF and I did get pregnant. But it's much more expensive here and we need to save our money so I'll give it a pass.

And secondly, I hope that saying rings true for my third attempt at losing weight this year. The other two times failed miserably. I would lose 5-10 pounds and then quit. But last week I weighed more than I have ever weighed before in my life, and it was a serious wake-up call. Every other time I tried dieting I would count calories. It worked like a charm but I was restricting all the things I loved to eat, so my diet would never last long before I would binge. This time I decided to try something different. Something I swore I would never do because I thought it was a hokey money-pit.

I signed up for Weight Watchers.

Brandon wasn't too enthusiastic. He had the same mentality I always did: Weight Watchers only works because you're paying for it so you want to make sure it does work so you try harder at losing weight! But I've de-bunked that myth because last May I signed up for a gym membership at $30 per month and I've gone about 5 times. So obviously paying money to lose weight is not an incentive to lose weight.

So last Monday I started my Weight Watchers Online diet. I started out at 204.7 lbs (YIKES!) and set my weekly weigh-ins for Sunday morning. My daily points value is currently set at 32 points, which is a reasonable amount. I only went over twice this week, and only used about 10 of my 49 weekly points allowed. Yesterday I was extremely happy to see the scale at 202.3 lbs, even though I didn't even make it to the gym last week. Of course, after my weigh-in I felt extremely motivated and dragged my fat ass to the gym where I realized within 5 minutes of my work-out that I was seriously out of shape. I couldn't do half of my old routine without feeling like I was going to die. So I think I'm stuck doing walking and weigh lifting for a couple weeks, until I build up some endurance.

But still, I have to admit that WW might be the thing that gets me to lose my weight for good. I've decided to post my weekly weigh-ins and keep a ticker on my sidebar of my weight loss. My ultimate goal is 175 lbs (though my immediate goal is 200 lbs by the time I have my FET). That's a total loss of 29.7 pounds. A very difficult goal, but attainable. I hate to admit that I was 180 lbs just last November so I know I can be that skinny. And hopefully skinnier but for now I'm just reaching for 175 lbs.

If any has any Weight Watchers suggestions or advice, please let me know! I hope to start trying some of their recipes this week.

Am I Weird or What?

I absolutely can't stand going to the dentist. All those weird sounds and sensations and tastes just creep me out.

Yet it doesn't bother me one bit to get daily vaginal ultrasounds and bloodwork for an IVF cycle.

Something is clearly wrong with this picture.

Christmas Came Early!

Since Brandon and I don't have any kids and our Christmas shopping was done, we decided to wrap our presents, put them under the tree and then promptly unwrap them. Hey, I've never pretended to be blessed with patience. So I thought I'd share what Santa brought me this year!

I got the usual: bath stuff, fuzzy socks, warm slippers (because I didn't realize how cold it really gets in CT), some jewelry (pearls and a pretty sapphire necklace), some flavored coffee and truffles, and a digital photo frame.

But everyone knows that when you're opening Christmas or birthday presents, there's a "favorite" present. My favorite present this year was my Harry Potter coffee mug.



It's a black mug with the words "I SOLEMNLY SWEAR THAT I AM UP TO NO GOOD". When you pour a hot liquid into the mug, it changes...to this.



It's quite possibly the bestest Christmas present I've ever gotten. When I first saw the mug on www.wbshop.com, I just thought it was a mug with a really cool saying from Harry Potter. I didn't realize that it changed colors too!! Not till Brandon (I mean Santa) had ordered it and told me what it really does. So for the past two weeks I've been dancing around with anticipation. My only wish is that the original letters would disappear as is shown in the pictures on the WB Shop website. Unfortunately the mug only changes to a dull gray and doesn't hide the original words very well. But it's still my favorite present. I really really wanted Santa to get me the chenille Gryffindor scarf but he was out of stock so it might have to wait till after Christmas.

Brandon's Christmas presents included some new XBOX games, tickets to go see his favorite comedian Bo Burnham (video is an explicit satire of hip hop music. Do not view at work!), an external hard drive, and other manly gifts. I also got him a whistle key finder because he's always losing stuff. It was a funny yet practical gift. Too bad we tossed it in the trash! Apparently this whistle key finder goes off when you whistle, yell, talk in a high pitched voice to the dog, sneeze, cough, watch tv or do anything else that makes noise. The damn thing went off every 5 minutes. It's not a gift I would recommend.

Oso got a bunch of crap from Santa too, though he took off with his first toy and didn't stick around to see what other presents he got. Perhaps over the next few days he'll realize he got more than one toy.

So all in all we had a great Christmas!!

**I forgot to mention in my last post that my upcoming FET is scheduled for January 31st. I have my baseline ultrasound on January 5th and start Lupron on the 7th.

Random Updates (Because I'm too Boring to Have Anything Meaningful to Talk About)

I know I haven't posted in over a week but my life has just been that boring. I'm waiting for school to start, waiting for my cycle to start, just waiting in general. It's colder than ever here in CT and it needs to hurry up and snow so I can at least enjoy the scenery while I'll freezing my ass off. Of course, as soon as it snows I'll start bitching about how I have to drive in it. Cause I'm like that.

I finally got a call from Nurse D at Womack with my FET schedule. I thought it would be this simple thing compared to a fresh IVF cycle. Take some blue vajayjay pills, get the lining buffed up and then throw some totsicles in there. I was definitely wrong about that. Apparently I have to take doxycycline and baby aspirin for about two weeks before the transfer AND Lupron AND I still have to take that damn trigger shot! It's almost like tricking my body into having a regular cycle, only tricking it into not producing any eggs at the same time. I feel so deceitful. But hey, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get me a baby.

I finally decided to sign up for Mel's Creme de la Creme for 2010. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Creme de la Creme, all you do is pick your favorite blog post and submit it. Mel reads them all, writes a little summary of your post and lists all the submissions on her Creme de la Creme list. This year I chose my post about my miscarriage, not to remind me of the sadness that it caused or to remind me that for a few short weeks I was pregnant this year, but to remind me of what I still have even though I didn't get the chance to give birth. I have an awesome husband who loves me very much and means the world to me. And not having babies doesn't mean missing out on life. Our upcoming trip to Ireland will prove that. So that's why I picked my miscarriage post.

Other than that, there's not much to write about. Like I said, my life is boring at this moment. I promise I'll write more when it becomes un-boring...maybe next year? Just kidding! But seriously....it might be next year. Lets just hope it isn't.