Feeling better in the New Year

I bought this book for my husband after he admitted that he has been really feeling down about our continued struggles with infertility. He also was completely lost when he went with me to RE appointments...it was all foreign to him. So, he started reading this last week and LOVES it. It has really helped him understand infertility and it's fun to read which makes it even better.

AF never showed up, so after a BFN confirmed that there was nothing left to hope for this past cycle, I started Provera again. AF should show up sometime next week. From here, we're doing another combo cycle. The nurse told me that we'd be using a different injectable medication and I emailed my RE to see if he'd be willing to change my Clomid as well to Femara which looks like it might possibly work better for me. We'll see what he thinks, though.

It seems like more than ever, I really want this cycle to be the one for us to at least do our first IUI. So far, we've had three cancelled IUIs because my ovaries just haven't been working. I still think that if I ovulated even once and we were able to do an IUI, we'd get pregnant with no problem. No problem...that would be nice.

I have been putting off finding a new OBGYN for months. I don't really need one until I actually get pregnant (though, I'm probably due for a pap smear pretty soon), but it had been weighing on my mind. I had some time to kill at work last week and was able to find what looks like an awesome practice! All of the staff are female...they have a couple of OBGYNs and a couple of nurse practitioners. It is about 45 minutes away, but I refused to see anybody local because when I do get pregnant, I don't want to deliver at any of the hospitals in my area. The practice I found is one I had actually looked at once before, but I never got around to making an appointment. In doing a little research last week, I discovered that the doctors there have privileges at two hospitals...one of which sounds exactly like the kind of hospital I want to go to. That settled it...I'm going there!

Thanks to the New Year, we have a fresh supply of funds to pay for treatment, so we have been working on paying off some other bills. My husband traded in his old truck for one that he is in love with. That's one thing marked off our list for the year. I think we might finally be able to get all of our medical bills paid off completely this year. There are a couple that we've been making payments on forever. It'll be so nice to get rid of them! Im feeling pretty positive so far this year that we'll be in better shape financially which is really helping my stress levels go down.

Another negative

Well, AF hasn't come yet, so I decided to go ahead and take a test. Big surprise...negative. I wasn't expecting anything else really because I didn't "feel" pregnant and the last ultrasound hadn't been promising. Still, I was wishing for a Christmas miracle. At least I'll be able to sip some bubbly on New Year's Eve if I want.

My DH has been talking a lot more with me about all this infertility stuff. It's like he has really come out of his shell in the past few weeks about it. On the one hand, it sucks that we are going through this, but on the other, it is nice to know that we're in it together and going through the same emotions. For a while, I thought I was the one carrying the bulk of the emotional burden, but he has admitted that it has affected him as well. No blame is being thrown, but we are together in our hoping and wishing and we are talking about it more openly now. In fact, I even got him the book, "How To Make Love to a Plastic Cup," which is a book for men about infertility. My DH isn't much of a reader, so I hesitated to get it for him, but he actually said he was looking forward to reading it. I hope it helps him better understand all the jargon that gets thrown out when I talk to my nurse. I have done tons of research to stay informed about everything, but he doesn't really know what is going on, so he just shows up to the appointments and follows along with what is said, then asks questions when we get to the car.

January 1 brings a new year and new hope to us. We are using my FSA this year to pay for at least some of our fertility expenses and hoping that we don't run out before we get pregnant.  We also have a few other goals for 2011 including getting my DH another vehicle before his truck dies, paying off some bills (what else is new?), and losing weight (again).

No IUI this time, but hoping for change in the New Year

I realize I haven't updated in a while, so I thought I'd go ahead and get it over with while I'm thinking about it.  At Thanksgiving, I started my first combination round of treatment. That meant that in addition to the Clomid, Estrace, and Metformin I've been taking, I also did Gonal F injections. Ultrasound day came and I didn't get my hopes up at all. As usual, it was easy to see that the meds still aren't working. My ovaries are still not working.

My nurse was super-nice this time and started telling me about all these success stories of former patients who had been struggling like me to get pregnant and just out of the blue, were calling to report they were pregnant. It lifted my spirits a bit and she told me that next round, we'll try Menopur instead to see if I will react to that. I have been asking around and it sounds like it works for a lot of people, so hopefully it will do the trick for me. I am supposed to test after Christmas just to see if I will fall into that group of random success stories, but I don't feel any different at the moment, so I'm sure I'm not pregnant. The day I get a positive pregnancy test, I'll probably fall on the floor in disbelief.

AF has been pretty regular for me since we jump-started it back in September. Hopefully, it will be more of the same this time. I'm really thinking that we'll probably take this next cycle off because I want to focus on the holidays, rather than worry about the cost of ultrasounds and medications. When the new year starts, my flex money starts over and we'll be able to save more money to pay for all this.

One more time

Okay, we had decided to take a break from TTC over the holidays so we could regroup and rebuild our savings after having spent a ton of money on our fertility efforts this year. However, when I got a surprise visit from AF just before we went out of town and we happened to have a little extra money, we decided to go for our first combination cycle. Although I certainly hope it works, I have not gotten my hopes up this time. It would be really nice to have a BFP at Christmas, but I realize that it is very likely more of a practice run.

Thanksgiving was a bit more difficult than I anticipated. It was the first time I had seen my sister since she got pregnant and she is currently 21 weeks along and hating it most of the time. She says she is't ungrateful, but just uncomfortable. I don't care how uncomfortable I am, I'll love every minute of being pregnant because it has been such a journey and I have been working so hard for so long to experience it for myself.

Friday, we'll find out our fate and the success or failure of this round of medication. In the meantime, I'll be sending Christmas cards to ladies in my support group who are going through the same struggles I have been going through.

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.