Am I...? No way

I know what you're thinking and no, I'm not pregnant. We're all out of spermsicles, we used them all for our last IUI. But this past month has felt a little strange for me. I had the sneaking suspicion that I ovulated this month. On my own. For the first time in God knows how many years. I got a random period while I was doing acupuncture back in March but it didn't feel like this. And today I woke up with sore boobs. I wonder if this means that a period is on the way. If I did ovulate this month, I'm not sure whether to be happy that I did it naturally or be a little pissed because I couldn't take advantage of the opportunity. Brandon doesn't come home for another few weeks, I can only hope that our romantic vacation to Cancun will coax another little follicle to mature so we can do some real baby-making this time. And if that doesn't happen, oh well. I'm still getting hot sex in Cancun!

My trip to North Carolina

I had a wonderful weekend visiting my friends and family in North Carolina. My first stop was to see my sister and her new baby. Blake is still in the NICU but is now up to 4 pounds and staying in an open crib. That just happened yesterday though, so when I saw him he was still in the little incubator. He's starting to fill out and doesn't look so much like an old, wrinkly man anymore. My sister is hoping that he gets to come home by Halloween. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

After a day with my sister I drove down to Jacksonville to hang out with my best friend. We had some wild and crazy times like we always do. We even had a chance to go fishing. I didn't get to see all my friends that weekend but I have plans to go visit more people in December when I go back out to NC for a few days. This is mostly business though. I have to meet the doctor at Womack, take the injection class and pick up my medication. Seeing my friends will just be icing on the cake.

Learning to breathe

This morning I worked out a budget for our upcoming IVF cycle. I calculated that the IVF would cost about $8K and the travel expenses would be an additional $3K. It was about $1,000 more than I had previously thought. It's much less than going to a civilian clinic but the whole idea still makes my head spin. I actually have a headache right now from thinking about all of it. I suppose it didn't seem real to me up until now. It's a difficult thought to process. How did I get to this point? I never ever thought that my desires to be a mother would force me to go this far. I thought a few cycles of IUI would do the trick. I can't believe that I'm now having to embark on this journey through IVF. So many women have done it before me, but yet I still feel alone in the process. Perhaps as the months go by I will get used to this way of life and won't think twice about the money or the injections or the pain of all this. I can only hope.

Let's get this show on the road

I should be thoroughly bummed that I got a BFN last month but I'm not really. I'm chugging right along, getting my tests done for the January IVF. Yesterday I went in to have some blood drawn for a variety of tests. They ended up taking TWELVE tubes!! I felt like my arm had been sucked dry. This Thursday I have to go to Madigan for a saline sonogram. I hear it's not as bad as an HSG so I'm not too worried about it. Then Thursday night I board a red-eye flight for NC. I'm going to visit my sister and her new baby and also visit a bunch of friends. I'm really looking forward to it, even though 4 days isn't nearly long enough of a vacation. But Cancun is right around the corner and I'll be spending 7 days alone with my husband. I can't wait until he comes home, deployments never get any easier. Oh, and it's our two-year anniversary today.

14dpiui

And I got a BFN. On top of that, AF came last night, lucky me. She decided to show up at the gym while I was doing a serious power workout. I don't know what happened last night but somehow my jaw felt so sore and tight like I had been clenching my teeth for an hour. That in turn made my ears hurt which made my head hurt. I almost felt like throwing up but I kept pushing through the workout. Then my back started killing me. I thought it was because I had been working out longer than I usually do so I just ignored it. Turns out it was AF just paying a visit. I will never ever work out again when my period is about to show up. As for the IF part of this, I'm getting all my tests ready for a January IVF cycle but things still aren't finalized. So we'll see how this all plays out over the next couple months.

In the 2ww

Well I never made it to my ultrasound appointment on Friday. I had been taking OPK's this week and I took two on Thursday, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The afternoon OPK turned up positive (I use the digital ones) so I called up the nurse. She scheduled me for my IUI at 1:30 on Friday. I was a bit nervous about the procedure because the last time was so incredibly painful for me. This time, however, I didn't feel a thing! It was just like getting a regular exam. I did start to get some cramps a few hours later though, so I've just been lying on the couch this weekend and taking it easy. I'm going to try and not think about it for the next two weeks. I have so many things to look forward to. I'm getting my hair done in a week (going from blond to brunette again), I'm going whale watching in two weeks and I'm going to NC in three weeks to visit my friends and my new nephew. That's more than enough to keep a girl busy!

How Fickle is Woman

Over the weekend I had come to accept my decision to pass on this cycle and collect my wits. However Monday afternoon changed all of that. I had gone to the bathroom to discover the egg-white cervical mucus (EWCM) that precedes ovulation. I hardly ever get it but when I saw it I started crying. I knew that I didn't want to waste a perfectly good cycle so I immediately called up the nurse at Madigan. She was kind enough to squeeze me in for a follicle scan the next day. And there it was....one follicle on my left ovary at 16mm. I knew it would be there, I even knew it would be on the left ovary. The doctor was unsure whether I had already ovulated or not so they completed some bloodwork. My progesterone and estrogen levels indicated that I had not yet ovulated, so we could still salvage this cycle. I was relieved. I have an ultrasound tomorrow and I will be taking an OPK today just to make sure I don't ovulate early. So if all goes well then I may be having an IUI over the weekend. Brandon is excited as well but they deployment is still taking its toll on us. It's hard to have such little communication. If this cycle does not work though, I will NOT start a new cycle until he returns. Clomid and deployments just don't mix!

Taking a big step backward

I know I haven't posted anything on the fertility front in a while but I have decided to cancel this upcoming IUI treatment. I've been pretty depressed and lonely since Brandon left on his deployment and also angry at him for leaving me here. I thought the fertility treatments would give me something to look forward to but the Clomid was particularly brutal to me this month. My mood swings were off the charts and I really started to doubt my desires for a family and even for my marriage. Obviously I told Brandon how I felt and that has caused some tension, especially since there's nothing he can do when he is halfway across the world. So we are going to take a break from fertility treatments for a while and see where things go in our marriage. It was a hard decision but I'm starting to feel a little better now that the pressure is off my shoulders to get pregnant.

What do I think God meant when he gave me infertility?

**I found this article/excerpt/story/whatever-you-want-to-call-it on more than one infertility website. I decided to post it here on my blog so that I may read it whenever I'm feeling hopeless or depressed.

Couples experiencing infertility often receive well-meaning but extremely insensitive "advice." We can all list the most popular ones: "Just relax and you'll get pregnant," or "adopt and you'll get pregnant," or "things happen for a reason", of the most painful from those who think they've got the goods on God's plan, "Maybe God never meant for you to have children." The sheer audacity of making a statement like that never fails to amaze me.

These same people would never walk up to someone seeking treatment for cancer and say, "Maybe God never meant for you to live." However, because I am infertile, I'm supposed to get on with my life. It's hard to understand that people can not see infertility for what it is, a disease for which I have to seek treatment. What if Jonas Salk had said to the parents of polio victims, "Maybe God meant for thousands of our children to be cripples, live in an iron lung or die." What if he'd never tried to find a cure? Who could think for one minute that that was God's plan?

What do I think God meant when he gave me infertility?

I think he meant for my husband and I to grow closer, become stronger, love deeper. I think God meant for us to find the fortitude within ourselves to get up every time infertility knocks us down. I think God meant for our medical community to discover medicines, invent medical equipment, create procedures and protocols. I think God meant for us to find a cure for infertility.

No, God never meant for me not to have children. That's not my destiny; that's just a fork in the road I'm on. I've been placed on the road less traveled, and, like it or not, I'm a better person for it. Clearly, God meant for me to develop more compassion, deeper courage, and greater inner strength on this journey to resolution, and I haven't let him down.

Frankly, if the truth be known, I think God has singled me out for a special treatment. I think God meant for me to build a thirst for a child so strong and so deep that when that baby is finally placed in my arms, it will be the longest, coolest, most refreshing drink I've ever known.

While I would never choose infertility, I can not deny that a fertile woman could never know the joy that awaits me. Yes, one way or another, I will have a baby of my own. And the next time someone wants to offer me unsolicited advice I'll say, "Don't tell me what God meant when he handed me infertility. I already know."

-author unknown

All Systems Go!

My doctor appointment went well yesterday. He checked my lining which was thin, although I was still bleeding. So he wanted to check my E2 (estrogen) levels before deciding whether to proceed with a Clomid cycle. The RE wanted to see a number that was 50 or below; he got 54. He decided that was good enough and I picked up my prescription for 150mg of Clomid which I started yesterday. My next ultrasound will be on the 10th to see if anything grows. I'm not sure how this cycle will go but I'm always hopeful.