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?

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

First, thanks to everyone for your words of support these last few days. I appreciate it more then you could imagine. We are slowly coming around out of our daze. I think the hardest part is having so much hope invested, along with all of the time and energy that it takes to do all the injections, go to all the appointments, etc…. Coming down from that can be so overwhelming.

My period arrived Saturday after a day of spotting and fanfare. I’ve had nonstop cramps since Friday afternoon. My skin is broken out and I’ve been intensely moody. I think my body is really suffering from some major hormone withdrawel symptoms.  Honestly, with all the fear I had about side effects from the medications, I felt really good the whole time I did IVF, especially on the stims. I was actually less anxious, less moody, less depressed… I lost weight, gained energy, went for a short jog nearly every morning… Yah, I found it a little difficult to focus, and my abdomen got a little sore once my ovaries swelled up… but I would take meno.pur all the time if I could!  It has me wondering… if I have some sort of deficiency somewhere that is causing the elevated FSH. It’s something to ponder.

My last remaining side effects from the whole experience is a gigantic green bruise in the crook of my elbow from my Beta blood draw (I look like a junkie!) and extreme pain in my hips from the PIO injections. My right hip still is very tender to the touch and hurts when I walk. My last injection on that side was last Wednesday, almost a week ago.  My left side is extremely sore and hurts all the time… the last injection on that side was on Thursday. Is it normal to still be hurting from PIO injections? I’m worried that I am having an allergic reaction (a la the HSG from hell.) or an infection…?

Lastly, I wanted to share an adventure from my RE’s office. I was inspired by Kate’s tale of weird-o’s in her RE’s office, and I was going to leave this story in a comment but it got way too long.

I went in for an early morning ultrasound and blood draw… It was the last one of my cycle, I knew that they were most likely going to be giving me the trigger and my retreival instructions so I was a little excited. My office is like other RE offices that I have heard about… there is an unspoken code that no one speaks in the waiting room, and there is minimal eye contact. No sooner had I sat down then a woman breaks both of those rules.

“It sure was cold this morning!” she announced. “It’s a good thing I wore a sweater!”

I looked up at her. “Yah. It’s nice though.”

“We had to leave at 6am to get here!  My daughter slept all the way here. She’s not used to getting up that early.” She said gesturing at the surly and extremely overweight teenager sulking on the opposite side of the waiting room.

It was at this point that I pondered their presence at the RE’s office. Secondary infertility? She had a teenager… Why did the teenager come?  Was the teen infertile?  Now I was curious. But my name was called.

They quickly took my blood and ushered me into the exam room for my ultrasound. When it was over they brought me into a small waiting room so I could wait for the nurse who would explain the retreival and the trigger injection.

And I waited, and waited, and waited. And could hear everything happening next door in the room where they draw blood.

“Don’t stick me with that needle!  No! I don’t want my blood taken!” 

The teenager was putting up quite a fight. The nurses explained that they needed a baseline reading before she drank the glucose beverage. She was suspected to have gestational diabetes.

“I don’t care!  I don’t care about this baby!  I don’t want this baby!  I want to go home!”

And on, and on… for about 1/2 an hour, when the nurse finally took a break and came in to talk to me about HSG.

I guess it hadn’t occured to me that RE’s do things other then infertility, like glucose tests. But the irony of a very overweight and very fertile pregnant teen who did not want her baby shouting within earshot of a dozen infertile women?  It was a little much.

I’ve had strange waiting room experiences at the RE before… the time around Christmas where everyone seemed to have brought their extended family comes to mind. But mostly it’s just quiet lesbian couples and women of advanced maternal age. I’m sure I look like the freak to most of them, with my giant backpack filled with school books, wild hair, and general messy appearance.

I guess we are all a little weird. I kind of miss those freaks.

I keep having to remind myself that we didn’t really lose anything here. (Except for most of my grandmother’s inheritence.)

And when we really think about it, we gained quite a bit. This process taught me how strong I am. How I can tolerate things I didn’t think I could. That progesterone in oil isn’t that bad. I learned how much I really want to be pregnant. Before, I wanted to have a baby, but would have bypassed the whole pregnancy part if I could.

Super Husband learned that squemish as he may be, he is awesome at giving me shots. He can have his blood drawn without passing out. He can sit with me and hold my hand when I am in pain on a doctor’s table. Before this experience he never thought that he could be with me in the delivery room when I gave birth, and now he knows that he can. That he wants to be there.

We both learned just how badly that we want this. I never though that we would be those people. Willing to do anything for a child. We learned that the IVF process really isn’t that bad, that it is worth it to have a child. (Which we learned not actually having had a child, which says a lot!)

We learned that what we suspected about my eggs is true.

So, we are trying to move forward in a new light. I’ve been looking for ways to increase my estrogen production naturally. We’re thinking about trying again in December with the rest of the inheritance and a little bit of debt.  That will be the last time.

(Also considering a move to a country that offers IVF as part of a national health plan like the UK. Only mostly joking about that one.  That is more desireable to me then working for Wal.greens for 5 years.)

Negative.

HCG= Zero.

I’m gonna get drunk and cry a lot.