IUI # 1 Sucked!

DH and I went in for our first IUI today and it didn’t go too well. We had 1 maybe 2 million sperm post wash. Our RE said she could still do it because we were already there and it wouldn’t hurt anything, but not to get too optimistic. So the next step is for DH to go up to Dartmouth (big hospital in NH)  and get a more in depth SA. Our RE is pretty sure IVF will be our next stop. So that’s where we are.

IUI tomorrow!

I managed to wake up and give myself the HCG shot this morning, in all actuallity I didn't really get to sleep because I was too worried about waking up and not missing the alarm. So I got done and noticed it was red and swollen so I panicked because I am nerotic. I was sitting on my computer till 3:30 AM googling symptoms and what not. I am a crazy person. How am I going to raise a child when I am constantly nervious, espeically when I had read the directions, and than did everything step by step even though I know what to do. I suppose I'd rather be causious than sorry in the long run. Soooo now we wait till  2PM tomorrow, bring J's sample over and than go back at 3PM for the actual treatment. I am a little nervous but so ready! I am starting to get a little more opptimistic about the whole thing, and really hope this is our turn.

My Date with The Dildo Cam.

If you don't know what the dildo cam is than you are lucky. Basically it is just the camera used for internal ultrasounds, don't get me wrong it didn't hurt, it's just a little uncomfortable. Anyways I had my monitoring appointment today to see where my eggs were, if I had any, and how big they were. I had a lot of really small ones and 2 really good sized ones, one of them being REALLY good looking. So I have to get up at 3:00 AM!!! on Wednsday to trigger and than Thurdays at 3:00 PM we do our treatment. Thursday sucks because we will be doing our treatment in between my classes that day, but I am not going to complain because hey atleast we have a chance at finally getting pregnant. And no I am not opptomistic yet that this will work, I probably won't be until J's sample is up and near the target. The doctor mistakingly told me his numbers may not wash well soo I have been freaking out about that for months now. I just want to be pregnant and done with this.

Started My Medication. sucks.

I started Clomid on Monday and I hate the side affects. The first day I was a little crampy, had a headache and hot flashes. Now if you live in New England you know how hot it has been the past couple of days, so here I am running on the treadmill ( I don't run outside, who wants people staring at them?) and all of the sudden my chest felt like it was onfire and was radiating up to my face. It has taken everything I have to finish my running this week, and that is so not like me. Tuesday it was much of the same thing, but an added level of blahness( yes I made up my own word). Today much of the same thing, but more cramping and headaches. I know on The Bump ladies have mentioned symptoms going on past the 5 days of taking the pills, holy hell I hope that is not the case for me. Oh and the bloating can go away too. I work out 5 days a week and eat healthy all the time. I have put on a pound in a half and CANNOT take it off for the life of me. This shit sucks.

Another thing I want to share is reading material if you are going through infertility you might be like me and want to read as much as you can and get some inspiration from other women who have gone through the same thing. I do this by reading other women's blogs and have bought a couple of books. One I am reading right now is " Every Drunken Cheerleader, Why Not Me?" I really like it, I love her writing style and I have come to terms with some of the feelings I've had towards other women with children and who talk about their children ALL the time. I am in no way over it and it is still hard and I love that I have my blog to vent even if no one reads it, everyone going through Infertility is going to need to vent and have encouragement every once in awhile. So if anyone reads this and is looking for a great book for inspirartion and just to read about someone else going through this I highly suggest it.

Oh and a stupid infertile comment I recieved recently involved a conversation with a former co-worker. She knows what I have been going through and she asked me how everything was going. I told her I am sick of it I don't like the medication, the waiting and the 2 years I have wasted. She looked at me and said " but you just started the process." this annoyed me because yes I just started treatment, but there is a lot of things that lead up to this including the 3 years I have been off birth control, all the testing the ups and downs of being ready to do treatment and than not being ready. I don't like feeling like my feelings aren't valid because I am not on my 6th IUI or 3rd IVF.  Now that I have vented, time to pop another pill.

Memorial Day weekend!

J and I just got back from a great weekend of camping. We slept on the other side of the camper from my parents and my little sister slept in her tent. My niece was sick and ended up getting a double ear infection so that part sucked, but the rest was pretty fun. It was a defenitley needed.

Also, today I started my first round of Clomid. I have to take this till Friday and than next week the ultrasounds start and than the actually treatment. Oh and classes start up again so it is going to be a crazy couple of weeks. I am excited to actually be getting a chance at getting pregnant, but I don't really feel it will happen on the first try.

Oh hi AF, I was looking for you.

No need to jump over the deep end and get a pregnanct test while I'm out today, I got my period this morning. I knew it was coming and I am excited to be moving on and having a fighting chance to get pregnant, however I was holding out some kind of hope we would have gotten pregnant on the last cycle before treatment. So from the way things look right now I start Clomid on Monday to Friday, than have a monitoring appointment the following Monday to see where our egg(s) are and if their mature enough to trigger, hopefully trigger will be close to monday and THAN IUI 36 hours after that. It's going to be a busy 2 weeks. School starts on the 31st which is smack dab in the middle of it all,but I have confidence we will be ok and get through everything. I am causious about how excited we get though because reading up on IUI's I'm not opptimistic it will happen in the first cycle or really at all. I have seen a lot of women who had like 5 IUI's and they didn't work. I hope to not have to move on to IVF although insurence will pay for it. Oh and we are covered for 3 IUI's so that is a realife.
Ok off here, I have to head to work this morning and than get things ready to go camping!

Where the hell is CD1?

I am waiting for my next cycle to start and it doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon. The one month when we are already to go just waiting and my cycle decides to have the longest LP of all time. ( for me anyways not of all time all time). Usually when I take a pregnancy test my period starts so I am thinking of wasting the money to buy one so the next cycle will start. Plus I can save the second one for next cycle when I actually have a fighting chance at being pregnant.
This weekend is Memorial Day Weekend and I cannot wait. J and I are going camping with my mom dad and little sister, oh and my 2 year old niece. we will be gone from Friday to Monday and I only have to work for a couple hours on Sunday so I really will be able to relax most of the weekend. I plan on napping, and reading a lot!  I have about 5 books waiting for me in my Kindle. Oh and I am definetley NOT going to the BBQ at my BIL and SIL's this weekend.

Family and Infertility....suck.

I know I complain about my SIL a lot and it may be because I am bitter and jealous of her children and the fact it took her a total 2 months for the first and 1 month for the second. Or it could also be that she is a little insensitive to what J and I are going through. I tend to think it is a little bit of both. My SIL tagged me in her daughter's dance photos and she is constanly calling me saying her girls miss me and want to see me, she seems to expect me to come over more than once a week to play with the girls. She is constantly asking me to "help" her with the girls becuase she can't take care of both of them at the same time. J thinks I am oversensitive, but honestly NO ONE understands what I am going through not having a body that works properly, I mean really this is what women are made for right? to bare children.
Today is definetely a low day for me in this infertility journey. I am in limbo waiting for my period to start so I can begin taking crappy meds and give myself shots with needles I'm terrifyed of, and possibly after doing all this to my body, find out that my husbands numbers suck and didn't wash well and waste another whole cycle.
Infertility sucks and sometimes so does my family. I feel so alone sometimes.

updates.

I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted last. Not much is going on, I should be getting AF soon so finally we will be starting our IUI in the next 2 weeks! My husband's Cystic Fibrosis screening came back and he was negative! That was a huge relief. I had an HSG done, this basically checks my tubes to make sure they were clear, all was well, the doctor said she has never used such little dye and had it go through tubes so quickly. So on the baby front things are FINALLY moving along.

In other news I am a little annoyed. My BIL and SIL are having a BBQ next weekend and only people with kids are apparently invited, and as you can probably guess that means J and I weren't invited. This isn't the first time this has happened either. Last year when the whole family went to Maine, J and I weren't invited to the zoo with everyone else and when they had a truck show in town last summer we weren't invited then, oh and when they went to a local farm we weren't invited than either. Plus when we have family get togethers it revolves around when BIL, SIL and they're kids are able to come or depends on when the kids naps are. It's annoying and quite inconsiderate. I hope they realize that when J and I  have children it will no longer be all about them and their schedule.

When it Rains, it Pours....Some More.

Not only did my Nanny die this weekend I also got a call from my doctor to let me know I am a positive carrier for Cystic Fibrosis. I was freaking out about it because I had no idea where I inherited from, my great aunt apparently died from Cystic Fibrosis at 15 so that explained how I became a carrier. Fast forward to Monday, my DR called and cancelled my cycle so we were pushed off for another month and won’t be doing treatments this month. She wants DH to get tested first to make sure he isn’t also a carrier. In retrospect this makes sense and I really don’t think good things would have happened if I was on hormonal medication the week of my Nanny’s funeral, but it is so damn depressing to have to keep waiting.  And my bad luck doesn’t stop there oh no my car also broke down yesterday, almost $400 to fix it and this is the week rent is due so we won’t be able to get it fixed and have money to live off of. Thank goodness for my husband’s truck otherwise I wouldn’t be getting to work.

                So all and all things haven’t started looking back up again, I really hope they do soon cause I’m not sure how much more I can take.

Getting through....

The time I spent with my Nanny before she passed yesterday, I will always charish. I was in her hospital room with her and my Aunt Steph, and she was up in her chair, lively, and talking up a storm. she looked amazing, the best I have seen her in awhile. she was supposed to have a heart scan today to see what was going on and was scheduled to go home tomorrow. She asked how work was going and said how proud she was of me and my education endevers to become a nurse. She told Steph how proud she was of her for going back to work after her baby. There are somethings I wont share that was talked about because thoose are special private memories just for Steph and I, however I will say that she resited the poem "For whom the bell tolls" by John Donne.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

Long Very Hard Day...

My Nanny passed away today and I am utterly devastated. I know she was 98 and she lived a long great life but that doesn’t change anything.  She had a heart attack yesterday and was in the hospital. I went to visit her this morning and she was up in her chair talking and joking. She looked the best that I have seen her in weeks and I really didn’t think this would be it. An hour after my family and my uncle’s family left she passed. Words cannot describe how awesome of a person she was and I will miss her dearly.

                It was a hard week overall. I got a call from my doctor telling me that I am a positive carrier for Cystic Fibrosis. My great Aunt (Nanny’s Daughter) passed from it at 15. It makes more sense why I am a carrier, but it means extra testing for my husband and extra worry. We are going through with our first IUI in the next two weeks. I start Clomid on Tuesday and have an ultra sound the following Tuesday and possibly an IUI on my Birthday May 4^th! I am excited, but it is a little nerve wracking. I really hope the Clomid doesn’t affect my mood because I will already be on a rollercoaster with my feelings this week with my Nanny passing.

That is all for now because honestly I don’t feel like talking about anything else.

Updates

 I know I haven't written in a while and a lot really has gone on since the last time. First things first, J and I went to the fertility specialist in the next town over to discuss our options. We both came to the conclusion that we did not want to go to the Urologist and wait around and see if  varicocele surgery would work, we decided to just move on with the next step to get pregnant. I loved my specialist and she was really knowledgeable. She explained that J didn’t need to do the surgery we still qualify for and IUI. So this is where we are starting Clomid + Trigger + IUI = Baby?  I had a ton of blood work to do before we began; as a matter of fact they took 7 vials just today.  We should be starting our first treatment in about 2 weeks!

                We really hope one cycle will work however that is not always the case; the IUI will bring our chances of conceiving up to 20-25%, this is about the same chance a normal healthy couple has every month. I did read though if an IUI is going to work it will in the first 3 treatments 90 % of the time. This sounds all great and dandy right? We will finally get a chance right? Well maybe not. The DR did say that J’s count changed so much from one SA to the next that actually his guys might not respond to the IUI wash well and we might not even get an IUI. The only good thing about that is we won’t be waiting around we would go right into IVF cycle planning. I hope it does not come to this because it is a lot more medication, more invasive and much more uncomfortable feeling for me.

                If we do end up doing IUI however this is what it would look like:

1)      On Cycle day 5 (CD5) I will start Clomid, this little pill causes bloat, hot flashes, uncomfortable abdomen pain and sometimes SEVER mood swings,( I know I’m looking forward to all this too). I will take these wonder pills till about CD9 when I should have 1 to 2 good quality eggs.

2)      Next I will head on in to the doctors where she will do an ultrasound to see how my eggs are doing and to better time when I need to trigger.

3)      The trigger shot is a shot of HCG (yes the pregnancy hormone, and no It does not make me pregnant) I will be administering this myself or if I am feeling really daring J will do it for me. We will have this timed to happen at precisely the right time because it causes me to drop my now ripe and pretty eggs.

4)      At about 12 hours after trigger I will come in for the IUI this is kind of personal so if you think it will make you uncomfortable, stop reading now. I will be bringing a sample that J luckily gets to do at home. She will wash them (takes about an hour to 2 hours) and then will get a long catheter and insert the sample into my uterus.

And then I am all done for about 2 weeks when I will go back in to have my beta (blood) drawn to see if anything happened, most women would be put on progesterone in the 2WW, but my DR doesn’t think it will be necessary so we will see how it goes.

More on Infertility

I don’t know if I have mentioned, but I belong to an online community called The Bump, more specifically the Trouble Trying to Conceive board. I have found on there a thing called the common thread bracelet, basically this is a common piece of thread that women who are experiencing or have experienced infertility. Here is the information about the bracelets and the idea behind it. http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/2006/09/history-of-infertilitys-common-thread.html.

            I plan to add a turtle to mine; it is the mascot for TTC board also there is a patron Saint named Sarah. She is the ST. for infertility and I have found a charm that I like to go with it, not cheap, but definitely worth it!

            It is snowing now and I am actually able to spend the day inside watching it. I’m also planning a movie night with the husband tonight, I bought movie theater popcorn and some candy. I think that with all the stress that goes along with infertility you really need to stop and spend time with your husband/partner. You need to keep the romance alive. Sometimes I become so consumed with our baby troubles that I forget Jon is hurting too and we need this time to be romantic.

A little something for me :)

I just scheduled a massage for myself and I must say I am pretty damn excited, I have never had one and for a full hour it is only 15 bucks! (I have $25 off) anyways I think this will help with the muscle problem I have been having. I am also going to schedule a couple’s massage for Jon and I for our anniversary!

            Anyways I have been a little out of sorts the past couple of days because it is the end of yet again another cycle. My sister in law has been calling and wants me to hang out, but really I don’t want to hang out with other people and their kids when I myself am going on to yet another cycle. She can be mad but honestly I just don’t care I want to be by myself and not around kids. I love my nieces and my sister in law, but it’s just how I feel. I know I could never tell her this because she just wouldn’t understand because she didn’t have problems getting pregnant like Jon and I are having.  Once I move on from this cycle to another one I will probably get out of this funk.     

            I was just thinking the other day I really hope when I am put on hormones I won’t say the things that I vent about in here, out loud.

what are you going through? Books that should be written

My mother and I were talking last week on the ride home from Zumba about the upcoming treatments Jon and I will hopefully be going through. No one wants to go through this or have trouble having kids so I say hopefully thinking that we will finally have a baby. Anyways she said that she heard that women who go through treatment and have to take all these hormones go through a lot of mood swings and she would like to read a book about it to see what I will be going through and how she can help. I have not found any books offering this kind of help so she might have to learn through this with me or I will write up a paper talking about it.

            So this got me thinking, why are there books telling you how you should act around an infertile friend but nothing that talks about what they are actually going through and what the different medications and surgeries might do to your loved ones. Maybe when I get through this I will write a book for families who want to go through this with their loved ones.

            Not much different on the baby front I am starting to spot at only 8 dpo and yes this is a problem when you need to get to at least 10dpo without a period to maintain or even get pregnant. When we start treatment this will be addressed and fixed by having progesterone supplements shoved up my hoo-ha…oh joy.  I also have been having really bad hip pain, at first I thought it was because I am fat and need to lose weight, well I have started losing weight and I work out and the pain is worse so I think it might be a little more than that. I have to physically pick up and move people sometimes for work and I think I threw out my lower back. This is causing lower back pain that is spreading out to my hips. This crap hurts so I hope to be going to a chiropractor who can crack and bend me back into proper alignment.  

Losing weight and other trials and tribulations

I just checked my BMI and saw I was out of the obese section and am now in over weight instead yay!! No I am not that excited, I need to get into a more healthy range before J and I start treatments in April when our insurance starts so I am going back on Weight Watchers and have added 2 miles on the treadmill in the morning where I’m running/ walking, and then about an hour of Zumba a night, at this rate I will hopefully lose the weight and be close to my goal weight for pregnancy.

J and I attended his company Christmas party last night it was a lot of fun! His father, brother and my father all work for the same Dry walling company so it was nice to all go together. There was a lot of drinking and dancing oh and the food was to die for! So that was nice to have a little fun time because our (well at least mine) minds are so full of infertility worries and thinking about getting the land ready for house building this summer.

My sister in law did leave early because of her girls and said two things that really struck a nerve 1) kids come first so we couldn’t stay, this bothers me because yes I am sensitive, but she knows our struggles and I think it feels like she is rubbing it in my face sometimes that she has the happy complete family and we do not. And 2) she knows when we are starting treatments in April and that it would make a due date around the holiday party, she kept telling everyone we should get a hotel room down there next year with no kids. I probably won’t be able to go and she didn’t even consider that yea if things go according to plan we would be pregnant and not able to stay. It may not make sense to anyone reading this, but she knows our troubles and honestly I don’t think she can relate so she doesn’t realize when insensitive things come out of her mouth.

Anyway enough with the negativity, I’m just hoping this is our year!

               

Small Victorys

I called the insurence company that my husband and I will be transfering to in April to see if everything was a go for Infertility insurence and she eased my mind and told me yes they would still cover me. Mass is one of the oly states that carries Infertility insurence and we live in New Hampshire so it was a big deal to see if we are covered. A lot of what we plan to do next depends on coverage. So like I said small victorys!