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!

Circling, with nowhere to land

Everyone in the house with the PMS weepies raise your hand!

Three weeks after a negative beta, ok, not just a negative beta… an epic FAIL of an IVF cycle (so epic, I am suprised to not see a link back here on failblog), and I find myself flying in circles, with nowhere to land.

None of our available options are appealing to me:

Option #1:  Try on our own. Lucy and Desi tried for 10 years and wound up with two children. Sure, it’s not totally out of the question that this might work for us, but what if waiting even one more year renders my eggs totally useless?  SuperHusband refuses to believe that there is anything wrong with my eggs, that the doctors do not know what they are talking about. But I wonder, how many people try for three years to have a baby, fail 4 medicated IUIs, and 1 IVF and then go on to get spontaniously knocked up?  I am slightly considering flying to New York to see this guy, the first doctor to preform IVF and now no longer does it, but instead tries to help couples overcome any issues to be able to conceive naturally. No one I have seen in my own area thinks that they are able to help me. I am in the process of getting an appointment with one of the ladies who runs the Infertility Cure seminars. Turns out that they are based in my town. Who knew?

Option #2:  Try IVF again. This was my first instinct as to what we would do. But, as we have already established, it was an epic FAIL. Who is to say that the next time wouldn’t be as well? I’d love to meet with my RE to ask him what he would do differently next time to increases the chances of success, but I don’t feel like paying him another $2oo just to talk to me for 10 minutes. And like option #1, it raises the question, If the problem with my eggscan not be fixed, how can I expect to get pregnant? And if it can, why do I need IVF?

Option #3: Adoption. Thinking about this more and more. And with no disrespect to adopted people, or people who adopt, I am not 100% sure that it is right for me. SuperHusband would do it in an instant, he wants to adopt an older child from the foster system, not an infant. If we do adopt, I want an infant. I feel like that is our best chance to really feel as though it is “our” child, and a part of our family. I’m worried that an older child will always feel like someone else’s child, and a stranger in our home. I know that is shallow. I also know that infants come with gigantic price tags, home studies, waiting lists… the possibility of even more heartbreak. I’m not sure that our lower-middle class income (or lack of church attendence) would even qualify us. I’m not sure we would ever be able to afford it without selling our house. And, because it is worth repeating, I am not sure that it is right for me.

Option #4:  Live child-free. This breaks my heart. But I am coming to terms with it being a possibility, especially if we choose option #1 or #2.

So for now I guess we are going with option #1 – we have another 2 months before we have to decide about winter break IVF. Anyone have any assvice to put forth? I welcome it with open arms, I can’t keep flying in circles forever.

Bump-dar

You know how some people have the uncanny ability to know when a person is gay?  Perhaps before they even know themselves?  Well, I believe that I have a version of that super-power that enables me to know when someone is expecting, before the pee even dries on the stick.

We have some lovely neighbors accross the street. A couple about our age, married slightly longer then super-husband and I, with no kids. Now, when a couple has been married for seven years (like hubs and I) or longer without children, people start to speculate about you. And I have long speculated that our neighbor friends have had difficulty conceiving.

They moved in a little over a year ago from the same big metropolis that we came from, so we bonded over that.  Since we were already two years into the baby-not-making extravaganza I took careful note of the fact that she was not looking for work here in this new town. And that they had moved here to be closer to family.

Months went by and we had a few dinners together (I took note of her choice of beverages) and after awhile I started to think that maybe they were just one of those couples who didn’t want kids….

A few days I started the meno.pur for my IVF cycle, they went out of town – basically on our dream vacation to the Pacific Northwest. I was jealous… we did not take a vacation this summer because of IVF (and now I am forgoing our planned winter vacation because of IVF #2 but that is another topic..) and there they were, off on a 3 1/2 week trip while I was stuck at home getting shot up with drugs and swelling to epic proportions.

The day after my negative beta I came home from school and she was standing on their front porch.  “Hi!”  she shouted down at me.

“You’re back!  How was your trip?”

“Fantasic,” she said, “Really, really wonderful.”  Her husband came out and joined her on the porch.

“Yah,” he said, putting his arm around her.  ”Best vacation ever.” And he gave her a look. And at that point I knew that she was pregnant.

The events since then have just reinforced my suspicions. The bedroom shades have been drawn in the afternoon. I’ve barely seen either of them leave the house. When Super-husband and I caught them headed out to visit family over the weekend, we mentioned how they should really plan to come to a local festival with us this May. They looked at each other. Whispered. Told us they couldn’t.

So, it is still a hunch until I receive confirmation via turning down the glass of wine I offer her. But I think my bump-dar is pretty strong.

There is an underlying question though….  did they use fertility treatments?  They were gone for pretty much the entire length of my IVF once I started stims. Do they have a magic fertility doctor in Oregon?  Because if that is the case, I wouldn’t mind combining IVF #2 with my dream vacation.  How do you ask a question like that?

In other news, my hips are still giving me trouble from the PIO injections. The sensation of my clothes touching the area is still quite painful and any impact my feet make on the ground sends shockwaves of pain up my legs. It does seem to be getting better very very slowly. Or I am just getting used to it. I called my RE’s office and they told me not to worry, that it was most likely nerve damage which would eventually heal. Here’s hoping it is sooner then later!