Taking a break

I discovered on Tuesday night that I had started bleeding, so when it continued on Wednesday, I called the doctor's office to ask what they thought I should do. By Wednesday afternoon, the bleeding had completedly stopped, but they insisted that we were going to treat this like a new cycle. I wasn't ready for this, so I began to panic and ultimately insisted that we do one more round of Clomid before switching to a combination cycle with daily injections.

I'm still under a lot of stress from this, but am finally starting to calm down a little. It has helped that my husband and I agree that it might be good to take a short break after this cycle to regroup. Plus, it will allow us to build up our savings again so that we can afford the medical bills we'll be racking up with the injections and office visits. The more I think about this, the better I feel. It is just a lot of stress to deal with for me and with the holidays approaching, I don't want to have to think about it as much.

I'm confident that this round of Clomid won't work, but I'm doing it anyway "just in case." I am starting to feel better and better about the decision to take a break and I'm focusing on taking care of the rest of me. I'm working on some projects and relaxing more. This is my favorite time of year and I want to enjoy it, so I am.

Tired of malfunctioning

Originally, I had an ultrasound scheduled for Sunday morning. The office called late last week though and requested that I come in on Saturday morning instead. The purpose of this ultrasound was to look at my uterus and my ovaries to make sure that it all looked good and to determine when we would schedule our IUI. I had been looking foward to this appointment for days and had been counting down, trying to calculate the date of our IUI and subsequent due date if we were successful in getting pregnant this cycle.

The day of the ultrasound finally arrived and we met the nurse who was going to do the ultrasound. She was very nice and laid-back and we had the whole office to ourselves since it wasn't a normal work day. I was feeling really good about it and was anxious to see the results of our efforts with the medications I had been taking over the past few weeks. My husband had never seen an ultrasound before, so this was all new to him. The nurse was very good about explaining everything on the monitor, though I think it will be a few more ultrasounds before he really understands what he is seeing.

We started with my uterus. Everything looked really good. No fibroids (which I knew) and my lining had a good measurement. Then, she moved on to my left ovary. It looked like a typical polycystic ovary and after looking around, she found that the biggest follicle on that ovary was only half the size it needed to be at this stage of the game, measuring at 8mm. That was a disappointment, but we still had one more ovary to look at. However, as she moved over to the right ovary, it was clear that things weren't any better on the other side. She found another 8mm follicle on the right side with nothing else promising.

The rest was a bit of a blur to me. She calmly told us that we wouldn't be scheduling an IUI this time, but that we also wouldn't waste the cycle. My husband and I are trying on our own this month and if by day 35, I haven't had a period, I'll take a pregnancy test. If it is negative, we'll go to the next step in this whole infertility process. The next step is adding injections to the mix. We had already planned an HCG injection to trigger ovulation, but it looks like my pituitary gland is not doing its job, so before we trigger ovulation, we need to have FSH injections to trigger my follicles to develop at the correct rate, so that they are big enough when it is ovulation time. The plan is still to have an IUI because I want to make sure the odds are in our favor that we'll have a positive pregnancy as soon as possible and an IUI would guarantee that some good swimmers will at least make it to where they need to be to get things started.

My emotions have been up and down. I'm really trying to stay positive about all of this. I'm frustrated with myself that we didn't just go ahead and start with the injections, but I wanted to be a little less aggressive the first month "just to see" if we could pull it off. I am equally irritated that my body is malfunctioning and that I am not one of those women who can just say I want to get pregnant and it will happen. No, it will not happen if I just stop thinking about it, or if I just stop trying. I'm so tired of hearing that! Believe it or not, some people really have to work at it for it to happen. 

So far, so good!

Yesterday I took my final dose of Clomid. That means that in less than a week, we might actually be able to successfully set the scene in my uterus that we need to make a baby! My RE has me on an estrogen supplement until CD12 which happens to be this coming Sunday. I have become a big fan of estrogen because this is probably the 3rd or 4th time in my reproductive life when I actually feel like I have had a "normal" cycle. Estrogen is awesome!

My brain is sort of being crazy right now. Last week, when I was experiencing one of the worst periods ever, my brain tried to tell me that it wasn't worth all this to have kids. What?! My brain also said I was stupid to want to get pregnant and put up with 9 months of problems, then 18 years of raising the end result of my strife. Again...what?! I am back to my old self now, excited about the possibility of being pregnant soon and of all the future holds for our family. However, just as I let my guard down, my silly brain started to make me think, "what if our efforts are fruitless?" I am terrified that this will not work and that we'll have to sink thousands of dollars into treatments for infertility that won't be successful. I even started to research a little and when things were looking bleak, I grounded myself from doing any further research because it caused needless worry.

Our u/s is scheduled for this coming Sunday (CD12) and we will get to see for ourselves just how my ovaries are doing with getting an egg or two ready for shipping. I keep telling people that I am nervous and excited about this all at the same time. This will be the first time that my husband has gotten to see my insides on a u/s. All my previous diagnostic ones were done without him present for the appointment. I am so hoping that for once, my ovaries look good and are doing their job, rather than wreaking havoc for my reporductive system. If things look good, my husband gets to give me a shot of HCG to get the eggs shipped out, then we should have an IUI next week, so we can put my husband's olympic swimmers a little closer to the action (just in case my CM is more of a fighter than a lover). Then, we'll wait. I'll stay as relaxed as I can, while trying to channel my energy into making a swimmer connect with an egg and hopefully decide to stick around for 9 months in a luxurious hotel called my uterus. I am making it as luxurious as possible with progesterone supplements, so hopefully it will be appealing enough for an extended stay.

On a side note, I have decided not to continue with acupuncture treatments. My last one was a week and a half ago and I have one scheduled for this Friday, which I think I will cancel. I just feel that it isn't as beneficial for me as I originally hoped and rather than looking forward to my treatments, I am now dreading them. I'm not sure that is healthy, so we'll see how it goes without acupuncture for now.