Goes without saying

No news is good news?  Nah, around these parts it’s more like no news is bad news. I celebrated cycle day one over the weekend with the knowledge that I beat all my old records for longest cycle ever. 39 days bitches!  Beat that!

Of course I hate to think what long cycles like this means for my poor old lady ovaries, but I’m trying to push that aside for now.

We celebrated with yet another snow storm… at least this one followed a few days of higher temps and we made it to the store first. So I had bacon and knitting and lots of homework to keep me busy during the two days we holed up in the house. The (very pregnant) neighbors brought us some dinner and we played Settlers of Catan and I was pleasant and hospitable.

My biggest crisis as of late has been trying to figure out what to DO with my LIFE. I’m nearing the end of school, the part where I need to be making some serious decisions, like do I get teaching licensure or not. And as much as I hate that it is so, children are a major part of that decision. Before IVF, I thought that it would be our magic bullet, that if nothing else worked we would do IVF and that would work and then we could move on. But it didn’t work, and now I question everything, beacuse there really isn’t anything left to believe in.

Because I don’t know if I can stomach being a teacher if I can never have children of my own.

Because if our future is in adoption, I’m going to need a job that pays more (and a church it seems…)

Because if we do IVF again, should we do it soon? Or wait until I graduate? Wait until I find a job?

In class tonight we were supposed to jot down a goal for 10 years from now. My first thought was “to have children,” of course. But I couldn’t say that in a room full of 18-20 year olds. I eventually settled on “to be happy and at peace with myself and my decisions.”  Everyone else said stuff like “buy a house,” “get married,” “own my own business,” “reduce my debt.”

I’ve read on so many infertility blogs, from people who have gone on to become parents in some way or another, that they wish they had a time machine so they could go back and tell themselves to hang on, that eventually there would be a light at the end of all this pain. I wish that a nice 40 year old me would show up and tell the 29 year old me that I was happy and at peace with all my decisions, and not to worry about the path I was choosing so much.

Symptomatic

The alarm goes off and I fumble for my thermometer in the darkness and stick it under my tounge. We’ve had a three year relationship and I notice that my front teeth are starting to wear a groove in the plastic. 

After what feels like forever the thermometer beeps and I wander into the bathroom, start the shower, and peek at the resulting temperature. 97.98. Not bad. I’m on day eight of a temperature rise, on day 33 of my cycle. Some accidentially well timed s.ex still has me feeling hopeful even though this cycle has been a bit wonky. I recalled that last night’s dreams were about taking pregnancy tests. I couldn’t do them right, so I couldn’t trust the results.

At 8 days past potential ovulation it’s too early to be having symptoms or taking tests. But my subconscious can’t push aside the fact that it is day 33.  My breasts are sore… (actually my pectoral muscles are sore from working out yesterday) I’ve had a headache the last few days… (this semester of school has been very stressful so far and I am dehydrated) I’ve been nauseous and gassy… (a combination of stress and beans for both lunch and dinner will do that to you) I feel like I have pressure on my bladder and I have to pee a lot… (my pants are too tight and are digging into my bladder)

Right. The pants. I get dressed and pull on the one pair of pants that is fitting right now. I try to ignore the fact that I’ve gained 15 pounds since my late August IVF, just about all in my stomach. Friends glance that way when they see me, wondering to themselves if I am with child.

I wonder too.

Two quick things

Thing #1:  I tend to avoid politics on this site, because even though I feel passionate about many issues I don’t want politics to be something that divides me from someone experiencing IF. Politics comes between people in real life so often, and I want this to be a safe space for everyone, no matter the affiliation.

But… (you knew that was coming…!)  I’ve been listening to the gay marriage debate going on in CA right now. And to hear people arguing against marriage equality saying that the purpose of a marriage is to conceive children and raise a family, well, that should really get all of us fired up, no? I feel as though equating marriage to the ability to produce children is potentially a slippery slope. I don’t think the sancity of my marriage is threatened by people of the same gender wanting to commit to one another, but I sure as hell do feel threatened by people saying that marriage is all about the ability to have kids. </rant>

Thing #2:  What on earth is going on with my body this month?  My BBT dropped a bit but still stayed moderately high during my period, then dropped down and stayed down. Today is CD 24 and my temps are still low. I had a positive OPK on CD 21. EWCM on CD 16… you can see my chart here… WTF?!?  I’m really hoping this isn’t some sort of wacky high FSH menopausal BS rearing it’s ugly head. I’ve written this month off and am just hoping that I get my period sooner rather then later so we can start over…

New Post

I did it! I clicked the “new post” button! Take that wordpress.

So you want to hear about the searing depression do you? No you don’t… trust me. It’s not that thrilling really. It mostly consists of moping, a little crying, one instance of writhing on the floor, and lots of pacing around the house and staring out the windows at the grey sky and the piles of dirty melting and refreezing snow.

The depression has many roots… it’s the perfect storm of depression which can be attributed to the following:

•  I have a tendency to get depressed in the winter from a lack of outdoor activity and sunshine. This depression usually doesn’t kick in until late January, but the snow, bitter cold, and non stop grey skies have kick started the seasonal depression a month early.
• The break from school has left me without something to busy my mind, allowing it to run rampent down paths that are less-then-healthy. 
• This is coupled with the fact that Super-Husband (who is a self-employed web consultant who works from home, I don’t know if I have mentioned that before…?) has been working extra hard lately on finishing up a project that took up most of December. Even though he swore he would take today off so we could go to a movie, he’s been working on fixing a bug for the last few hours. So there’s the added bit of wishing that we were doing something fun together during my break from school, and instead he’s working and I am moping. We managed to get out to a lunch together, and ran into one of his friends, who joined us for lunch. And so it became a lunch where I got to sit and listen to the two of them talk. About cars. Joy.
• Christmas for me is always the time when I am most reminded of my inability to have children. And this year I got my period on Christmas morning.
• I have a lot of regret for not going on vacation this week. Some sunshine, beaching, and live music would have gone a long way towards lifting my funk.

The last one needs some expounding upon. In the fall it became clear that we were going to have the opportunity to recreate the best vacation of our lives – four nights in Miami seeing our favorite band – which we did back in 2003.  Spending the day on peaceful Key Biscayne, Cuban food for dinner, and our favorite band at night. What better way to bring in the new year? The details were being firmed up around the time of our IVF, and we thought it would make for the perfect “babymoon” and opportunity to say goodbye to the non-parents in us, because it would be a long time before we could go do 4 nights of live music again.

But the IVF was an epic fail, and instead we started talking about how we should try again during my winter break, that we shouldn’t travel and spend money we didn’t have.

You know how the rest of the story goes…

But when I started to see the photos today of our friends rockin’ out in Miami, I realized that we couldn’t recreate the awesome vacation of 2003… that those people didn’t exist anymore. And that makes me truly, truly sad. Because we are stuck in between. Ready to move on with our lives, to be in a different place. And we can’t get there. We are no longer care-free youngsters. We decided three and a half years ago to give that life up for a life as parents, and now we just sit in purgatory.

So in 2010, my goal is to figure out how to have fun again, how to be happy again, and most of all how to find a balance. WFI pointed out that in the stages of grief, depression comes before acceptance. I’m looking forward to moving on…

Snowed In

I’ve started dozens of posts in my head lately, but haven’t gotten around to actually writing anything out. The main reason being that I don’t think anyone really wants to hear a reprise of how depressed I have been since our failed IVF… or how my nerve pain is not getting any better despite trips to three different doctors.  And really, once those things get eliminated from the table, what else is there?

A few things I guess… and in my best attempt to focus on the positive I will pretend to have put the cluster fu*k that was this fall aside for now and share all the happy things with you.

I recently ended another 4.0 semester, leaving me to wonder when school is actually going to start getting hard?  I really thought that taking biology and spanish in the same semester would be a deadly combination, but I seem to have come out of the experience ok. Now if biology had actually been taught in the spanish language… there might have been some difficulties…

Acupuncture is going well. I am finally starting to gain some trust with my new fertility specialist lady. I’ve had a really nice BBT chart this month, and a positive OPK to boot, all with nicely timed se.x. But then, I have at least 2 dozen of those charts… so I’m not sure why this one would be any different. My period is due on Christmas day, and we are spending Christmas Eve night at my parents’ house, so I plan to test tomorrow morning in the privacy and comfort of my own home so that I am prepared for the innevitable – unless my temp drops dramatically tomorrow morning. Is the Christmas miracle baby really too much to ask for? It would very likely cure me of my general Grinchlyness forever.

Like most of the eastern US, we were hit with a giant snowstorm on Friday that dropped about 15 inches of snow on my humble little mountain town. Unlike most to the eastern US, 15 inches of snow is nearly unheard of, seeing as how we are in the south. So it pretty thoroughly shut the town down, about 70% of the county lost power for days, and things are only just now starting to reopen. No one here has any idea what to do with the frozen white stuff. The number of people cursing the power company because their groceries spoiled is slightly absurd. I can just see them… “Too bad all this frozen white stuff is preventing us from going to the store to buy some ice so our milk dosn’t spoil!”  I’ve been icing my painful hip every night, and it has been nice to use the snow these last few days. Way better then ice cubes or frozen vegetables!

The snow is causing me to go a little stir-crazy. Our friends are headed to warmer climates like Florida and Brazil and we are tempted to hide in their luggage. We had a tropical vacation planned for this time of year, but decided not to go because we were going to do winter break IVF. Then we couldn’t bring ourselves to do IVF again but didn’t reschedule the vacation because it was too expensive, and we were trying to be responsible with our finances.

It’s a good thing I didn’t know that all this darn snow was going to fall from the sky or I would have said “Screw being responsible! Pass the sunscreen!”

Update 12/26:  My period was right on time, I spent Christmas with a heating pad and a bottle of advil.

Don’t want to be anything, where I don’t know when to stop

Ok, so people tend to have strong feelings about ph.ish, either positive or negative. I’ve alluded several times over the past year to my hardcore fandom to a particular band and really – there’s no point in pretending anymore. I’m officially coming out of the closet.

One thing that I deeply love about them, is their ability to speak to me through their songs to whatever place I am at in the moment I am hearing the music. Different parts of songs will resonate with me at different times in my life. Lyrics I didn’t understand will become clear. I will find myself sobbing in my car, or laughing out loud during a concert. They have been able to do this for me for over half my life. I think that says a lot.

So, I wasn’t too suprised today when this song came on during my drive to school, while I was thinking about a recent post from W4I about how with infertility, it can be difficult to know when to stop. That really, only a pregnancy or menopause will make you stop. She has been trying for three years like me, and has decided that she will give it ago for only another two years.

Five years of trying to have a baby.  Man, if I thought three years seemed like a long time, five seems unbarable. I’m ready to be on the same page as her, to get my life back after a long five years. But unlike her, I won’t be 35 – the magical age of declining fertility – I will be just turning 31. Super-husband will be 39.  At 31, I should have another 4 years of peak fertility, and the idea of quitting so young turns my stomach. But so does the idea of carrying on any longer.

Hence the weepyness. Thanks a lot ph.ish.

In other news, the neighbors? They are now officially confirmed in the baby department. She told me when we went to lunch together last week. I’m changing my guess to natural pregnancy, as they haven’t had a single ultrasound, nor do they plan to have one. Home birth. When I ran into them the day after my negative beta they had just heard the heartbeat.  I’m suprisingly fine with all of this. (Just please please please let me be next…?)

In guilty pleasure news, one of my favorite night time soap operas, One.Tree.Hill had a brief foray into infertility last night. One of the main characters told her boyfriend that she thought she might be pregnant, so she went to the doctor, and not only was she not pregnant but she can never. have. children! (cue dramatic music and tears)  This character has not made her desire for a baby a secret – last season she did some foster care for both a baby and a teenager.

But it left me wondering… What can her doctor have done in that quickie “nope, you aren’t pregnant” visit that made them discover that she can’t have babies?  While I enjoy seeing infertility woven into the plot lines of mainstream shows because it helps to make infertility seem more mainstream, it really irks me when they don’t portray it correctly. But I suppose, having the characters realize that they really want a baby… so they get married and start trying… and trying… and trying… and going to the doctor… and getting referred to an RE… and having an HSG, and bloodwork, and ultrasounds, and taking pills, and crying a lot… well, that dosn’t make for good TV.

Have you seen infertility or foster or adoption depicted on TV in any way?  How do you think they did with depicting a realistic situation?

 

Post #97

I am quickly running out of snappy post titles that reflect the fact that nothing is happening in my neck of the woods. I’ve got another acupuncturing tomorrow with the fertility specialist, and one on Thursday with the pain specialist. (Yes, that nerve is still causing me trouble) I’m basically just trying to live my life as normally as possible, while also taking my BBT and analyzing my saliva every morning, remembering that OPK every afternoon, and eating my special fertility diet all.the.f*ing.time.

I’m also hoping beyond hope that all this might help me to get knocked up on my own, thus sparing me from the awful pain of having to decide what to do next. I’ve always been indecisive, and never a fan of roller coasters. Infertility is really a special kind of hell for me.

I’m also searching for some new blogs to read. I would love suggestions, preferably people with a good sense of humor who aren’t pregnant. While I am tremendously happy for those who I follow who are currently pregnant or parenting, I recently had the revelation that 90% of my blogroll had moved beyond the place where I was. I still enjoy reading those blogs (when I am in the proper headspace… after all it is encouraging to know that treatment works for some people) and I still welcome their comments (Kate, this means you!) but I’ve realized that once someone becomes pregnant, I have a much harder time commenting and offering advice and support in return. Because while I know infertility, but I don’t know pregnancy… and I suddenly feel like the the lactose intolerant person at the dairy convention.

(Edit: I think it’s actually more like a vegan at a lactose intolerance convention?)

Ok, must remove the laptop from my lap now… I’m pretty sure that’s on the list of things I am not supposed to be doing!

ooooommmmm

Nothing like some weekly forced relaxation to make you question everything.

I’ve now been to the in.fertility cure acupuncturist twice, and have appointments scheduled every Wednesday through the rest of the month. Her style is different from my other person, and she is much more expensive, but I am hoping that w/ something as complicated as high FSH and general wonky-ness that you get what you pay for. I have been trying to feel good about trying something new, moving forward, blah blah blah… but last night I hit a bit of a wall and wound up sobbing into my knitting.

The problem at hand:  How do I know that this is the thing to invest hope in? Why should this work when nothing else has? Am I quickly becoming the desperate infertile woman who is willing to attempt (and pay for) anything that offers even a moniker of hope?

All this is compounded by other things… Super Husband’s father called yesterday to ask if I was pregnant yet. In my sexu.ality class yesterday we had a lecture on birth control, and one at a time the little college students told stories of how they got pregnant on birth control, and then the teacher told us she got pregnant while using birth control. My friend IRL who did IVF at the same time as me is pregnant w/ twins. (Seems everyone who did IVF around the same time ast me is pregnant w/ twins – why did the 100% implantation fairy skip my house?) Our friend the man-hoe’s baby mama is due any day now… frankly, I just don’t understand how fertility can come so damn easily for other people. Oh yah, and the Duggers were just in our town. So they are all over every media outlet around here.

I’ve been going at my fertility with as much estudious vigor (maybe more) then I am putting towards school. I am currently eating a special diet to help w/ my TCM fertilty type and high FSH. Acupuncture, herbs, femoral message… fertility awareness, saliva analysis, BBT, OPKs.   The last four all in an attempt to figure out when I am ovulating. And it really does take all four. As super husband likes to say, I am a very complicated flower.

If you have made it this far, I want to let you in on a little secret. We switched to the digital OPKs because I refuse to try to analyze those silly lines ever again. I thought about splurging on a fertility moniter, but figured I would try the smily face digital sticks first. I figured the pocketbook gougers at Clear.blue would surely make refills for those digital OPKs, right?  Wrong. But after a lot of searching, I found several different people on the internets that claim that you can use the fertility moniter sticks in the digital OPKs. So, I bought a pack of 30 and it turns out that they are exactly the same as the sticks that come with the digital OPKs. Take that Clear.blue!

So, that is what is up in my world. Also, I just saw a great movie, “My Neighbor Totoro.”  It’s by the same guy who did “Spirited Away” which I also love. Add them both to your net.flix queue, they are a fantastic distraction.

Happy Friday music

Many friends will be seeing the band we love in California this weekend… there’s a good chance they will cover this song. It always makes me happy.

Biding my time

Nothing much to post about these days. We are just biding our time, waiting for us both to be healed enough physically and emotionally to move on to the next thing, be it another IVF or something else.  Super Husband is still really having a hard time dealing with our failed cycle. He had really invested a lot of hope in this process. I think he is finally starting to understand why I would not let him talk about things like baby names.

My body is definitely in a state of flux. Last week I had a fever and nausea for 24 hours, then my whole body erupted in a rash. Yesterday the rash was almost totally gone and I managed to celebrate feeling better by going ass over teacups down a hill on my college campus. One minute I was walking along, then I tripped, lost my balance due to my extremely heavy backpack, and wound up sliding on my face in the street.  I’m quite a sight now, scraped up face and hands. Black and blue marks everywhere. <sigh>

To add insult to injury, my period is now 4 days late. My cycles had been pretty regular in the year leading up to IVF thanks to acupuncture, but I think IVF has thrown my system out of wack. I never had any fertile signs this month, never got the smiley face on the OPK. I would like my period to arrive soon, however, as a lack of menses is a symptom that my diminished ovarian reserve is moving in to the next phase of impending doom.  Has anyone experienced IVF screwing up their cycles?

I’ve got two days of self-care ahead:  a trip to the doctor this morning to examine the bump on my head (er… face?)  and then acupuncture with my regular guy this afternoon to help with my nerve damage.  Tomorrow I will visit one of the official “Fer.tility Cure” acupuncturists to see if she is willing to offer up any hope that I can get knocked up on my own.

Looks like I am facing a week of healing – in more ways than one!