Thud

That’s the sound of the other shoe dropping.

It had been hanging there, suspended for awhile, but I knew it was only a matter of time until it hit the ground.

Despite my soggyness, and my chat with the husband about how he needs to be more sensitive to me regarding our inability to conceive, he still dropped quite a bomb on me this morning. Via email. While I was at work.

His brother and his brother’s wife are knocked up.

I need to be happy for these two… they had started trying when we did, got pregnant right away, and she had an early miscarriage. They stopped trying after that until recently, and now, voila, she’s pregnant again. They announced it to the family on Father’s Day.

And that’s part of why the sting was so harsh. Because I had wanted to tell the husband on father’s day that he was going to be a dad. And instead, I got my period.  This makes the third father’s day that I had fantasized about spilling the news, and the third one where I was let down.

It doesn’t help much that these two are idolized by husband’s family, that this will be the first grandchild, that these two always seem to get whatever they want. They always manage to get it a few steps ahead of us, do it a little better, a little grander. They’re celebrating by buying a million dollar home on an island a few hours away from us. I don’t plan on visiting much.

Husband always joked that the only way our kid would ever stand a change in his family is if we had it first. Looks like that plan is out.

So, as I frantically tried to keep my tears from spilling over my eyelids, I deleted husband’s email and tried surfing some links a friend had sent to change the subject in my brain. (Lookit here, “terrorist fist jab” hahahahahaha) It didn’t work. Eventually I found my way over to Io’s site, saw this, and finally, had a good laugh.

coming down

Well, the swelling has gone down, as has my mood. I spent the weekend running from activity to activity, and when I finally had a moment alone with my husband to breathe, I spent most of it a soggy mess, leaking tears and snot. (And sweat, as it was about 93 degrees in our “cool” mountains.)

Basically, I am sick of the roller coaster ride. I am tired of not knowing where our life will be in a year. Will we still be trying to conceive? Will we have a floppy newborn? Will I be pregnant and big as a house, unable to do any activities? This has hindered our vacation planning ability, our financial planning ability, and clearly, my sanity.

We have no trips planned this summer, because we would have had to do that 6 months ago, and 6 months ago we were hoping to be knocked up and saving all of our pennies this summer. Husband doesn’t really understand. He tries to soothe me with reassurances of “it will all work out in the end,” and “let’s not rush things, it will happen when it’s time,” and other such nonsense.

It’s also time for me to decide what my boundaries are with IF treatments. When I took my puffed up self in to the doc, she said it was time to have a serious thought about clo.mid and IUI’s. I am hesitant to try this (and certainly not with her!) but I am well aware of the fact that trying for two years without a single pregnancy… well… starting with the IF treatments probably would have happened a long time ago with a more aggressive doctor. Not to mention that I’ve been off b/c since… 2002, just not actively “trying.”

I don’t know what to do, and husband says it’s all up to me. Humph. I am at least waiting until September to do anything, to give the magical HSG power a few months to do it’s thing.

In other news, we saw the “Sex in the City” movie… I was a big fan of the show way back, and I did enjoy parts of it, but parts kinda ticked me off. The part that most ticked me off?  (SPOILER ALERT!)

wait for it…

Charlotte (the infertile one, who adopted from China) got knocked up. And what did she have to say about it?  “The doctor says he knows a lot of couples who get pregnant after adopting!” and “It must be because I finally relaxed about it!”

So, she got knocked up because she relaxed and adopted.

I’ll have to tell that one to my doc.

improvement

Well, I spoke to the doc and they rushed me in a few hours ago. My doc was aloof and told me “in the future, if you are asked if you are allergic to radiologic dye the answer is yes,” gave me a steroid prescription and walked out.

I am feeling a little better today, still too puffy for regular shoes and my ring, and I am wearing a flowy skirt for max comfort. My symptoms seem to be subsiding but I am still uncomfortable. Ugh.

All in all, if I am ever asked about my HSG experience? I won’t have nice things to say.

mild freak out

A mild freak out is commencing in First Comes Love Land, relating to my general health post HSG. And since my doc is closed on Sundays, I am appealing to the land of the Internet for some guidance.

Here’s a brief timeline:

• Thursday: The day of the HSG
• Friday: I feel totally fine
• Saturday: I start to have some pain in my knees after walking
• Sunday: I break out in a rash all over my legs. It itches, but isn’t too bad.
• Monday: The rash on my legs spreads to my arms. Still itchy
• Tuesday and Wednesday: The pain in my knees is worse, and now my calves and thighs hurt as well. Still rashy and itchy
• Thursday: I wake up early, get in the shower, and pass out. Still sore and itchy.
• Friday: The rash finally subsides, but now I have extreme pain in my elbows, knees, legs, and finger joints. The pain is worse in the morning and give me a bit of relief at night.
• Saturday: Rash seems to be gone, but the pain is still in all of my joints. My feet and hands start to swell. I can’t fit in my regular jeans. I can’t put on my wedding band. My neck has stiffened up and I can’t turn my head
• Sunday: Still no rash, but still in a lot of pain. I can barely walk up and down steps. My hands and feet are still swollen, I can’t wear anything except stretchy yoga pants. My neck is better. A visit to the scale reports that I am 5 lbs heavier then I was three days ago.

SO, I probably should have called the doc during the week, but work happened and I genuinely thought that I would get better on my own. I really thought everything was coincidental – I had used a new sunscreen the day I broke out in the rash, and I do A LOT of walking in bad shoes, which is where I thought the knee pain was coming from. It wasn’t until the swelling started yesterday that I started to get really concerned. I have done some research on Iodine contrast dye allergies, and it says that there are rare occurances of rashes after HSG procedures, but not to worry about it.  I am worrying about it.