Two More To Go

Well, my first month back on Clomid was a failure. I most definitely did ovulate, but pregnancy tests were stark white. My Progesterone level was 17.4. That's not the best level I've ever had, but it was sufficient for my doctor. I did have a very clear temp shift, much more clear than some I've had lately. The plan right now is to finish this second round of Clomid and then do one more. If I still don't get pregnant, then I go back to the doctor to decide what to do next. My guess would be he'll suggest and injectable IUI course or just a Clomid IUI. I will try one IUI and possibly two. I haven't decided yet. What I really want to do is save up the money to go to CNY Fertility in New York and have an IVF cycle done. That will be the last thing I will try. If I still don't get pregnant after doing IVF I will wait until I'm 35 and then I will have a hysterectomy done. Hopefully my predisposition to pre-cancer cells won't force me to have it done earlier. I have spent so much of the last eight years obsessing over tracking everything and trying to get pregnant. I really just want to relax and enjoy life without thinking about it. I just can't until I know I have tried everything.

Okay, let's talk a little about the Ovulation Double Check tests. I used the tests with my last cycle and I know that I ovulated. The tests had two dark lines when I first started them. After a couple of days they did get very faint, but they didn't completely disappear. After speaking with Amy from MFB Fertility we think we may have figured out why. In about 5-7% of women, the progesterone is metabolized so fast that it may not register a true positive on the test. I know that I metabolize most things more quickly than other people and I feel this is probably what happened. The important thing is that the tests did get very faint, so I can make sure to look for that change and know that if I had a clear temp shift I more than likely did ovulate. Of course every cycle is different and I may get a true positive next time. Amy herself struggled with infertility and was blessed with two children. She says these tests are her way of giving back and helping those of us still struggling. She has been very helpful with any questions and feedback I have for her. I also wanted to add that the price they are on Amazon will not be going up. That was a misunderstanding on my part. After all is said and done, I highly recommend these tests for anyone that is trying to conceive and wants to make sure that they are ovulating. A lot of money can be saved on pregnancy tests if we know if we even ovulated or not. The customer service is amazing and the product itself is of very good quality. Give them a try!

On another note, who is ready for warmer weather? This cold weather is absolutely killing me. It's so pretty outside, but it's so cold. One day will be warm enough for tank tops and then it snows that night. I'm ready for fires and fishing and boating and everything summer. I know my daughter is getting tired of being cooped up inside. She's started being a little bit of a brat. She needs to be able to go outside and run off some energy. We have gotten out a few times, but hopefully warmer weather is coming soon.

Suggestions! - If there are any topics that you would like to see me cover or a product you would like to see a review on...PLEASE just let me know. This isn't a blog just about me and my journey, it's also to provide information to those of you looking for answers.

Round 1 (Again)

I haven't forgotten about you and I'm sorry I've been MIA. The only internet I have right now is running hotspot from my phone. I barely have enough service to work the phone itself, much less run the computer. It took 20 minutes of waiting to get this page to load so I could write this post. You would think someone would have come up with a better way for people that travel to have Wifi since our data slows to nonexistent speeds after so many GB. If someone could please do that I would really appreciate it!

Anyway, I had my appointment with my RE a few weeks ago. We are going to try Clomid for a while first and see what happens. I started on 100mg this time instead of the 50mg. Last time I was on it I ended up on 150mg before I called it quits. I'm currently on cd 6 (ugh). He mentioned possibly doing IUI if we don't have results with Clomid. I don't know if I would do IUI again or not. We tried it twice before and had zero results with it. He did test my AMH and I am patiently waiting for the results. To be honest, I'm pretty nervous about that test. As most of you probably know, AMH will tell us if I have enough eggs left to even bother ttc. I have often wondered if I have a low egg count and now I get to find out. Fair warning, if it comes back bad I will probably cry and curse a little bit. My main goal right now is get our credit cards paid off so that we can go to CNY in New York and do IVF. They are very cheap compared to many other centers and they have a great success rate. I have talked to many people that have gone there and I am determined that we will get there in the next year or two. I am currently in phlebotomy class so that I can get a job and help financially. Hopefully that will speed up the process and we can get there sooner rather than later.

I'm definitely having a hard time lately. Every day someone on FB posts that they are pregnant. This has been going on every day for the last few weeks. I'm seriously not exaggerating, not even a little bit. I know you won't believe that, but it's the truth. Every. Single. Day. I know there are a lot of people that get mad because that bothers me, but I really can't help it. It's not that I'm not happy for them, because I really am (mostly). It's just that every single new announcement is yet another reminder of my body's failure to do the one thing it was naturally designed to do. Just another reminder that all of the firsts I am experiencing with my daughter will more than likely also be my lasts. It's so frustrating that I am trying to so hard and doing all of the right things to make it happen and yet it's so easy for other people. I had really hoped that having my daughter would make the pain of infertility easier to deal with. I always thought that if I could just experience motherhood that it would be enough for me. In many ways it is and in many ways I'm totally okay if I never have another baby. The problem is that you never stop feeling broken. My body doesn't work the way it is supposed to. Period. Having my daughter hasn't changed that and hasn't changed what it feels like to know that. And it's not just having a baby. If we weren't ttc I would still be having problems because my cycles are so irregular. I have cysts on my ovaries that cause me excruciating pain that people think I exaggerate. My cramps are so painful that many people wouldn't be able to deal with it. It hurts. It hurts emotionally and physically. It's a lot to cope with and it's totally draining. Then, on top of all that, I feel like a failure to my husband. After many years and two losses I was finally able to give him a child, but he wants another one. Nothing can make that feeling of letting him down go away. I'm 30 and I've had fertility problems since my early 20's. My chances of getting pregnant now are pretty slim and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. I think the thing that irritates me the most is that nobody that hasn't experienced problems can even begin to understand or empathize with what I'm going through. So it's basically like I have to deal with it all on my own and that's really hard. Sometimes I just need to breakdown and cry. I need to let it all out because holding it in just gets harder and harder, but when I do that people make me feel like I have no right to. It's a vicious cycle and it never ends.

*Baby Dust*

And The Cycle Continues...

Well, here we are a little over a year since my last post and not much has changed. My cycles are still even more irregular now than they were before I had our little girl. You would think I would have come up with some type of coping mechanism for dealing with the uncertainty every month, but I still haven't. I still allow myself to go buy pregnancy tests and be disappointed several times a month. I started back on the Pregnitude. It did such an amazing job of regulating my cycles before I got pregnant that I decided to give it another shot. I really hope it wasn't just some fluke and that it makes things even out again. I still get those really weird muscle twitches that feels like a baby kicking. After some research it seems that many people that have been pregnant still feel what I call phantom kicks, even years after giving birth. We still haven't had any luck getting pregnant. Our baby just turned two in December and I haven't been pregnant once. I am thankful that there haven't been anymore miscarriages, but disheartened that it seems my baby journey may have ended. When we were trying to get pregnant before I got pregnant at least every other year.

Every time I look at our little girl my heart breaks for her. Not knowing the joy of growing up with siblings. Not knowing what it's like to have someone that always has your back at the times when your parents can't. I hate the thought of her being alone if something happened to me and my husband. Sure, she has other family and I'm sure that they would keep in touch. It's just an entirely different kind of bond you have with a sibling and I feel like a failure for not being able to give that to her. Before we had her I felt like I was failing my husband and now that she is here, I feel like I am failing her. Don't get me wrong, I know it's not my fault. However, it is MY body that can't preform a basic natural function.

I suppose at some point we will go back to our reproductive endocrinologist. The time just doesn't feel right yet. I don't look forward to the feeling of being a lab rat. The poking, prodding, procedures and medication...I just don't think that I am emotionally ready for all of that again. A big piece of me wants to just throw in the towel, wave the white flag and get a hysterectomy. Just be done with all of it and all the emotional and physical trauma that goes along with it, but I can't. I'm not a quitter. I know I would regret it if I did that. As long as I have all the essential parts, there is hope. I just can't find it in myself to dash that little bit of hope away.

As for our little girl, she just celebrated her second birthday. She has my blue eyes and unruly curly blonde hair. She has her daddy's temper and because we are both stubborn, she can be hard to handle. I wouldn't have expected anything less coming from the two of us. She will be a fighter and she will be strong. I have no worries about the life that she will make for herself. She is laying in the floor at my feet sleeping as I type this, wore herself out throwing a temper tantrum.

At this point, my blog will become more of a journey through my everyday life and not only about my infertility. My life is so much more than that and I refuse to let infertility define me anymore.

For any of you reading this that are currently ttc, lots of Baby Dust!

Failure

Thursday officially marked day one of my next cycle. That makes the last one only 24 days long and I ovulated around day 12. My luteal phase is always 12 days, never varies. So one thing I can say for sure is that the OvaCue Monitor was right on when it came to what day I ovulated. Although, it wasn't the day that it told me I ovulated. I had to interpret the data, but once you know what you are looking for it's pretty simple to do. The only problem with interpretation is that you can't know in advance really what day you will ovulate. To compensate for this I went ahead and ordered test sticks for my Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitor. My temps were also right on as to when AF would show up. I don't know if I should be worried or bothered that my cycle was so short. I think it would be considered a normal cycle, but mine are always so long that I guess I just feel strange having one so short. The really good thing is that my cycles are finally in what's considered a normal range and I am ovulating.

It's still another five days before my hubby will be home. The first week always seems to fly by, but the second week feels like it drags on forever and a day. The day after he comes home is the appointment with the reproductive endocrinologist. I am so nervous and anxious about it that it really makes me feel nauseous. On one hand, I am really happy that I might finally find out what is wrong with me and get the right treatment or get a treatment that works. On the other hand, I am absolutely terrified that he is going to tell me that I will never have kids or that there is something more serious wrong with me. The more I think about it, the more all these different scenarios run through my head and I don't really know what to expect. I have pretty much convinced myself that in-vitro is our only option and I am even more convinced of that after talking to my regular ob. So, just in case that is what it comes down to, we are trying to get financially prepared for that. I hope that I can get pregnant without doing that, but I'm not holding my breath. After five years, if they use other treatment and it's not working in a few months, then I will probably request to go ahead and do it. I can feel myself running out of time since I will be 27 this June. I know once I hit 30 that my chances go down and then once I hit 35 they go down even more.

On another note, I'm a little on edge because of my last pap results. The letter I got in the mail says that there were mild changes, but since those changes weren't caused by HPV or anything else that they could find, they aren't worried about it and are going to call it normal. I know usually this is the protocol and I know usually it is nothing to worry about because the immune system typically will take care of it, but I've had this before. In 2003 I had a pap come back abnormal and they did a biopsy. At that time I had high risk pre-cancerous cells and they monitored me every six months for two years. It's just scary to have that and now ten years later I have one come back low risk for absolutely no reason that they can find. I'm a little nervous about it. Maybe I'm over reacting, but after the scare ten years ago, I just can't help it.

I also recently found out that two people that are very close to my family both lost a parent. I am completely heartbroken for them both. I wish there was something I could do or say that would make them feel better and take the hurt away, but I'm really at a loss. I know there is nothing I can do to help them except just be there if they need me, but that just doesn't seem like enough. This situation also drives home that we never know how long we have or how long our loved ones have. That's one of the reasons I hate it when someone says that I have my whole life ahead of me and I have plenty of time to have kids. We don't know that. We don't know how long I have or how long my husband has. We don't know how long our parents and grandparents have. I want to have kids while my husband and I and the rest of our family are still here to enjoy them, watch them grow and be a part of their lives. That's really important to me. Yes, I feel like a failure because I can't do the one thing that a woman is supposed to be able to do. Yes, I feel like a failure because I can't give my husband a child of his own. There is so much more to it than that though. Most of all I feel like a failure because I remember my brother when I was pregnant. I remember him talking about all of the things he was going to do with my child, all the things he was going to buy and all the things he was going to teach my child. I remember talking to my sister in law and her telling me all the reasons why she was going to be my child's favorite. I remember what my parents were like when I was pregnant and how much certain people in my family looked at my baby as a whole new reason to be a better person. I remember how excited my mother in law was when I was pregnant. My mother in law passed away before my last miscarriage. She will never know her grandchildren or be a part of their lives. So yes, I feel like I am letting myself, my husband and my marriage down, but more than that I feel like I am letting my entire family down. My brother has no other siblings. The wonderful girl that he is engaged to has siblings that could make him an uncle some day, but that will be a different bond. I think my heart breaks for him most of all.