Well that ship has sailed

It’s all over. Let cycle day 1 commence. Serves me right really for caving in and testing so early.

I just don’t know where to go from here. I can’t take any more of the heartache that comes from failed cycles. I’m thinking about blowing the rest of our treatment money on a hysterectomy and a vacation. I think I can come to terms with the fact that I will never be anyone’s mother, but it kills me to think that super husband will never be anyone’s father.

The fat lady is in the corner warming up her voice

She’s got quite the vocal performance coming up you know.

They say it’s not over til the fat lady sings, but today’s spotting and cramping is surely indicative of the end of the road this cycle.

I was still hopeful this morning, and smiled every time I fought the urge to puke. I was battling some frequent and urgent trips to the bathroom all morning and into the afternoon. A quick search of the great goog of “diarr.hea in early pregnancy” left me feeling hopeful and excited. Turns out some women have morning sickness out the other end!

And then I saw the pink CM and the whole universe came crashing down.

Just to further torture myself, I took another HPT this afternoon with some very dilute urine, and got another faint positive nearly identical to yesterday’s. So hope is attempting to prevail, but there’s no way I can trust it.

Wait, wait, wait…

Trouble with a capital “T” that rhymes with “Pee”

Right here in River City.

So it is 11 dpo. And I’m going crazy insane. The last two mornings I have woken up around 3am needing to pee and feeling nausous. And then I can’t fall back asleep. This is very unusual for me, normally I sleep right through the night.

I’ve not been wanting to test because of the HCG booster I took last Tuesday. I figured if it was positive it could be because of the booster. If it was negative it could be because it was too early. So I swore I would put off testing until my period was a full day late. Saturday morning.

Well, I cracked. I tested this morning (not FMU) and got a faint positive….  So of course I am assuming that it is the HCG from the booster still in my system. But there is some cautious optimism in there. Because I’ve never seen a positive before in my life.

So where to go from here? I guess I will test again on Thursday and see if the line is darker… or gone. Would that be a definitive answer?

Arrgh. We got trouble all right.

one way or another

It’s another day. I’m feeling better and am trying to remain optimistic. Big thanks to everyone for your support and kind words. Oh I how loathe the two week wait in treatment cycles, and knowing that there are folks out there who understand and are rooting for me is a huge help. Knowing that people have gotten pregnant via IUI after failing IVF is a huge help.

Sometimes I feel symptoms and get excited. Then I have to remind myself that I had an HCG booster on Tuesday and that 6 dpo is too soon to feel anything. Sometimes I don’t feel symptoms and get depressed. Then I have to remind myself that 6 dpo is too soon to feel anything. Never before have I wanted so badly to throw up.

This too shall pass, and nothing that I do now (save for some sort of drinking / smoking / cocaine binge) will change the outcome in any way. It’s out of my hands. I’m not a religious person by any means, but I certainly have found myself saying prayers more then once in the past few days.

I bit the bullet and met baby Charlie. I casually mentioned that it was my dad’s name and it turns out that it is the father’s dad’s name too. So I guess they have a right to it… He was a real sweetie, born 4 weeks early and only weighed 4 lbs.  The neighbors know about our attempts to conceive, and they were very sweet about the whole thing, saying that when we have our baby we can have some of their stuff and being very insistant on the “when.” They don’t know that we’re doing a treatment cycle this month, but I rubbed his belly for good luck.

The song linked above was playing in my car when I went to school this morning. It seemed appropriate.

“One way or another, this darkness got to give. “

Reemergence

I think it is safe to say that it is officially spring here in the southeast US. We went from piles of dirty snow to 80 degree weather in the blink of an eye, and now our dirty clothes hamper is filled with sweaters that we probably won’t get around to washing until July.

Everyone and everything seems to be reemerging from a long hard winter. A dog walker goes by my window about every 10 minutes. My early and mid spring bulbs are all blooming, confused by the quick transition from cold to hot. And tonight, the neighbors accross the street emerged from their house with their new baby for the first time since it was born two weeks ago.

Their front porch perfectly aligns with my kitchen window, which is right in front of the laptop where I currently sit. I couldn’t help but notice that they chose the moment that I sat down to read IF blogs to show off the new baby. They’re up there right now, eating dinner and canoodling the baby. I want to go and sit on my front porch and do my reading for school, but then I would be face to face with them and I’m not ready for that.

For the past two weeks they have had a sign on their mailbox with a big photo of the baby, “Introducing Charlie,” and a request to be left alone. Charlie. Also known as my dad’s name. Also known as what we planned to name our baby, if we had a boy, to pay tribute to my dad who is the one who chose to use his inheritance on our fertility treatments.

<sigh>

I try to tell myself that there can be two Charlies on the block, that someday they will move, or we will move, that there are two Aidens and no one cares. (of course one is 8 and one is 5 and they moved onto the street with that name already. )

I’m trying really hard to walk the fine line between optimism and detachment from this cycle.  On one hand, there is the power of positive thinking. On the other, there’s steeling myself against the inevitable pain. And the odds are in the pain’s favor.

(they’re still up on their porch. eating sandwiches and fizzy water. they look happy. I’m jealous.)

So, to answer your question W4I, what are the odds of having just one?  Well, the odds of pregnancy are 20%.  If I am pregnant, the odds of twins are 20% and more than that is 7%. I’m not advanced enough in my math skills to then be able to say that the chance of 1 is x%.

I had my 3rd HCG booster today, marking the last injection for this cycle. I’m reminded of how cruel progesterone is. Why does estrogen make you feel so wonderful and hopeful and full of life, only to have it followed by progesterone and it’s depths of despair?

Two days ago I was optimistic. Today I feel like all the needles and hope and 20 extra pounds have all been for nothing.

And now we wait

I’m bloated and uncomfortable, cranky and hormonal, and can’t help but feel optimistic which terrifies me.

Today was the day of the IUI of love. AKA, the IUI that will work.  Because it must.  I’m battling some mild OHSS symptoms but am chugging water and electrolyte and staying on the couch to try and fight it off. I had 5 juicy follicles, but one looks like it was overripe, so 4. He gave me the talk about the chances of more then twins (7% ) and twins (20%) and I said “ok.”

Everything looked good and for the first time in my two year relationship with my doctor and nurses, they look optimistic.

Let the two week wait commence!

The stars must be aligned

And I’m not yet sure if it’s in a good way…

My numbers from my scan and blood on Friday all looked great – A+ the doctor told me. I had a voicemail from the receptionist letting me know that I could do 3 vials of meno.pur through the weekend and to come in on Monday.

So, I did the happy dance of being reduced to three vials, because five just seemed like a few too many, and followed my instructions.

Today I went in for another scan and blood draw. The doctor seemed happy with everything he saw on the ultrasound, and then told me that I would probably “keep taking 5 amps a night.”

“5? I was told to take 3 on Friday.”

The room fell silent. The nurse looked panicked. My chart said 5. Someone made a mistake.

I guess time will tell weather or not that mistake was a critical one.

In other news, super husband lost his wedding ring on Saturday. We thought it was in the garden, even rented a metal detector to search for it, but no dice.  The dog woke up puking in the middle of the night. I forgot to do my Spanish homework. A banking error on my part coincided with a banking error on the part of the company that handles our car loan, resulting in us carrying a negative bank balance for the last week. Casa de Love is feeling a bit strained these days. It’s hard to be positive about this IUI when everything seems to be going to sh*t.

Maybe things will start to turn around, in just over two weeks. It’s about time.

Playing with fire

The show, it is on the road. My test results were about as good as I could hope for…

FSH – 9  Estrogen – 38  BOTH in the normal range. They had both been high last time, and my Estrogen has been in the 60s for every day 3 I’ve ever had (they like to see below 50) My FSH is still a little high for someone who is so young but I will take it! 

So we are moving forward with IUI with injectables. Aka, playing with fire. I couldn’t help but notice that my Menopur dosage is the same as it was for IVF. I’m doing 5 vials a night. Yah. It’s ok, we always wanted enough kids for a family band.

As for starting injections on Friday? I started today. Family band, here we come!

The end of a perfect weekend

Well, it had to come to an end at some point, right? 

It was 70 and sunny on Saturday. A beautiful spring day in the mountains. I was celebrating my BBT dip that had occured the day before, because it had shot back up even higher that morning. We had a day packed full of activity, I was surely pregnant, and it was officially spring.

Then yesterday my waking body temperature plummetted, as did the outdoor temperature. It poured rain all day, and I sat on the couch with a heating pad. Aunt Flo had arrived, and she seemed kinda pissed off.

Now today it is snowing. I have an appointment for a wanding and bloodwork tomorrow morning and barring any FSH disasters I will be injecting drugs by Friday. Things change quickly around these parts.

I’m a little apprehensive to be moving back into IUI. Mostly of the whole multiples thing. Twins don’t scare me much, triplets make me queasy, but then there is the idea of four, five, or six and I think I may pass out. After all, isn’t IUI with injectibles how TLC gets most of it’s giant family reality shows?

My RE has said that if it looks like I am going to release 4 or more eggs we will convert to an IVF. I reassure myself that up to this point, my problem hasn’t been abundance. I have had an actual embryo in my body (maybe more then one over the years) that didn’t stick around. I only made 2 good eggs from 10 follicles during IVF. Really, why should this be the moment that I get pregnant with higher order multiples?

Because I believe my body does know how to make a baby, but it is stubborn and insists on screwing things up whenever possible. I guess I believe that it will say “Oh… you want a BABY. I thought you said DAISY. Well then, here’s six!”

But, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it… For now I just need to get through tomorrow.

Peeking out from under my rock

It is nice under here. Dark. Damp. Mossy. But even I have to admit that enough is enough, it’s time to rejoin the universe. It’s time to catch up with what I have been missing.

Not a lot has changed since I left…  Some of you are back after breaks of your own… Some of you are pregnant (!) … but mostly the world of IF blogging seems to be humming right a long at the same pace I left it. Which is comforting.

Not a lot has changed with me either… We received some news in February that we would get our first tax return ever, and a sizeable amount at that… We used it to pay for two more IUIs, one of which was a miserable failure, the second of which I am in the midst of right now. I’ve got every appendage in my body crossed that this will be the one…  One more week to wait.

This one was especially difficult, the doctor took about 20 minutes trying to thread the catheter through my disagreeable cervix, and I have been cramping ever since. I am trying to take that as a good sign, that something is going on down there. But I will admit that I gave up a long time ago. This will be the last IUI we do, regardless of the outcome.

School is going well, my lack of pregnancy thus far ensures that I will be able to attend summer school and get through the Fall semester even if this IUI takes. Haven’t had a chance to meet the new niece yet, her parents are both already back at work and have no time for company. I’ve sent her a few knitted items.

I found out a few weeks ago that one of my guy friends got a girl pregnant. Not even his girl friend, just a random girl. They are attempting to make the best of it and are moving in together. I bit my tounge and didn’t ask if he wanted to just give the baby to me and super-husband.  It’s hard for me to feel good about their situation, but I am doing my best.

Ok, that’s all for now. I promise to be better about posting and commenting again. This isn’t the last of me