So you think you’re so tough…

Uh-huh.
Sure did. Until today when it really hit me (in the stomach. With pointy objects. That I was jabbing. Into myself) that we’re really doing this all over again. I swore up and down I never would.
Funny how we’re so sure of things until we’re so sure of exactly the opposite.
And it’s not that I thought it would be easy this time. I just didn’t realize it would be this hard.
Last time (in case you’re new here, last time we were fortunate enough to be successful on our first IVF and subsequently had the Bub) it felt like we were trying something new and it may or may not work and we’d go from there.
This time feels more like an end than a beginning.
If it works – the end, our family is complete.
If it doesn’t – the end. Our family is complete.
There’s a part of me that is resigned to endings – not beginnings. Defense mechanism? Fatalism? Stabbingyourselfinthegutism?
There’s a melancholy in my heart I can’t seem to shake.
Maybe this whole not-so-many-egg thing is just f.uc.king with me.
2 injections – gonal-f dose 300ui, luveris 75 + a thyroid drug that’d been added to the protocol. There will be another injection added in next week.
Yesterday for day 0 numbers there were a total of 6 resting follices (10 the last round) and an e2 of 92.
Not many resties. not many eggs expected. a whole lot of drugs still to be injected. not a speck of hope detected.
I thought I was tough enough. But now? I feel a million miles away from where I had once hoped this would get me.
And i’m finding that to be a tough pill to swallow.

The other 2WW

Ultrasound has been booked – for 2 weeks from today…yup – another 2WW. This time, not to find out if we’re pregnant. But to find out if, after 7? weeks, we’re still pregnant.

The world is a cruel place. All we can do is believe that the Bubble is A-ok and wait, wait, wait. You think we’d be better at it by now.

In an effort not to sound ungrateful, without faith in the Bubble and a little crazy, I’m trying to embrace being pregnant (even though I’m scared shi.tle.ss that I won’t be for long). So today, in the spirit of being a pregnant lady I embraced what felt like seasicknes at my desk for about 2.5 hours in the afternoon. I embraced wanting my lunch so badly I could hear my stomach saying please, please – then as soon as I got a whiff of it being completely turned off and wanting something different. I ate about half of my second lunch – wasn’t interested in door #1 – then felt so full I was aching. (for about 30 min after which I was stomach-pain hungry all over again). I embraced having more pee breaks than some of the women from two floors down have smoke breaks.  And I embraced the thought of never embracing again as a hug I got at work today had my flaming chest begging for mercy.

I’ve spent so much time trying to get pregnant I’ve never given much thought to what it’s like to be pregnant. And the truth so far, 5 weeks in, is it’s really weird. Like weeeeeeird.

Wonder what’s in store for me next?

Have my Cake and Eat it Too…

I have to say that when I decided the No-Baby Shower was a good idea I was a long way from where I am today. I was strung out on Lupron – had the threat of cancel at every turn and needed something to look forward to that wasn’t going to suddenly go away.

Then in the blink of an eye I found myself post ER with sweet little embies tucked away in the lab and my need to mark the occasion changed. Changed – but didn’t go away.

My camera got lost in the ‘mom’s coming over oh shit we’d better clean up around here scramble’ but I can describe my first official “NBS”.

I bought myself a gift on the interwebs and it arrived Friday afternoon while I was still floating on a sea of valium/morphine. New Rubber boots. Here, let me see if I can find a photo online.

They’re super swell. Then I made chocolate cupcakes with mint icing for party food. I listened to Ingrid Michaelson as I savoured my cupcake and I had an inch (I swear, just an inch) of Cline – Zinfandel. I really miss wine.

And all the while I was supposed to be thinking about me and how it’s ok that we haven’t added to our family yet and  that doesn’t make me any less deserving of some pampering – I couldn’t keep my mind off our little embies.

(Which doesn’t bode well for all the swearing up and down that if I had a baby I would be able to maintain a conversation about something not related to said child)

So here’s the report: Of the 6 we had yesterday – all 6 are still growing strong. All are grade 1 or 2 on a 1-5 scale with 1 being best. 5 are 3-4 cells which is right where they should be and the 6th is a bit ahead.

As my friend Janice said this morning… (she’s my buddy at the clinic who’s ER and ET are the same days as mine and is the exact mirror of my cycle including estrogen levels as we stimmed, number of follicles retrieved and fertilized and number still going strong today) I am more pregnant than I have ever been to my knowledge.

I am the mother of 24 cells – give or take. So I had a second cupcake to celebrate the majesty that will be returned to my care on Wednesday. I know there’s still a very long road. They may not make it through. But I feel so incredibly blessed to feel this joy.

A fab pair of boots. And 6 little fighters. I didn’t get one gift today. I got seven. Eight if you count the hope I thought had abandoned me.

You got here how?

Ok – so a few things to cover today. Before we get to “You got here how?”, let me first clear something up from yesterdays post…went for my mock transfer today – with endometrial biospy. IT WASN’T THAT BAD!!! So if you’re getting ready for one – fear not. Sure, it could be worse for some people than others. But in my experience ? It was alright.

Now back to the regularly scheduled post in which I ask – you got here how?

So I’ll admit that I do look at the blog stats and am curious how people end up here. Today – someone arrived by searching Baby Name Blogs.

BABY NAME BLOGS. I’m afraid I didn’t have much to offer that person. But , whoever you are, how about Follicle Names?

Yes, it’s true. I have named the follicles- every monitored cycle I’ve given a moniker to the main follies in the stable. There was Foll-E (during the cycle in which we saw Wall-E). Oh, and the cycle I had a horrible cold there were 2 big ones – Snuffle and Gus. There was  also ‘Big Guy’ the month that there was an unusually large follicle. Sadly, Foll-E, Snuffle, Gus and Big Guy never made it past that stage.

If we’d had a positive, perhaps we’d have nicknames for the baby-to-be – peanut, bean, Bab-E. But alas. No such luck.

So Baby Name searcher – who ever you are – I really hope that sometime in the future I will have such a post. And if not me, then one of the lovely folks in the blogroll to your right will. It is my hope that every blog I read will have the pleasure of having exactly what you’re looking for.

When should you check back? Well, we start Lupron tomorrow – will have our beta test somewhere around the middle of March. I’d check back around August.

Unless you are indeed looking for advice on Follicle Names. We start our monitoring on the 17th – 3 days after our stims start. So I’m sure you’ll find what you’re looking for somewhere around the 20th of Feb.

Tomorrow is Needle day 1. Only one injection a day until the stims. Then three a day. Maybe I can start naming the bruises. (Tumm-E)

We’re on our way.

People at work think I’m stuck up because I don’t go out for drinks.

Isn’t that nice of them? And since they’re dudes I don’t want to say “Hey dudes, I’d love to go and pound some brewskies but the lining of my uterus could be compromised by excessive drinking and given all the vaginal ultrasounds, suppositories, injections, not to mention sperm samples my husband has had to produce in shady men’s rooms I’d really rather not take the chance and bugger up this in-vitro. So, no thanks.

Instead I say, sorry, can’t. Really gotta work. Lot on my plate. Later.

So I’m a goodie too shoes who works too much, doesn’t want to get to know anyone outside of the office and who is kind of a buzz kill.

I can only imagine how talk of a trans-vag ultrasound would kill the buzz.

I’m not stuck up. I just think my uterus is at the center of the universe right now. So just f$#* off, alright.

Ok, so I may not be stuck up. But maybe I’m kind of a bit.c.h.

Birth Control Freak

One of the counter-productive truths of trying to conceive is that you find yourself on the birth control pill shortly before an IVF cycle. Now it’s been a few months for us – too many if you ask me. But this is the second month on this new (to me) brand. And, it’s taken me a week or so to realize that I’ve pretty much gone off the deep end. And I think it’s all the pill’s fault.

I am freaking out at work, crying over cute doggies, panting at my desk – feeling like I’ve had 5 cans of diet Co.k.e. I’m all fracked up and I am fully and completely blaming the pill.

I am supposed to be cutting down on the stress – and even the thought that my stress is too stressful is stressing me out.

I am a freak.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better

The results are in…

See that dot dot dot up there? That’s because my DH got a call this AM that the clinic has the results back from his SA and they’ve booked an appointment on friday to discuss. DISCUSS? This cycle is supposed to start in 2 weeks. Is there something we need to talk about? I am completely freaked out.

I have been waiting. And waiting. And waiting for this cycle to start. Could they not have given some indication of good news or bad news on the phone? Sheesh.

Sent them an email. Stay tuned.

Sorry to leave you hanging there. Sent an email to the clinic basically telling them I was freaking out. Then got a response asking if it was ok for them to call and for the best number to reach me at?!!!

At that point my head was surprisingly close to spinning off my body.I sent the number and received a call about 10 min later. The first thing the nurse told me was to calm down. From there, the jist of it is that DH has a lower than normal motility on this test, and that they call everyone with results under norm in for an appointment. The take away for me was that because we’re doing IVF it won’t be a problem. Just wanted him to be aware. All in all, I felt really good about the exchange. Glad that I could freak out a bit and that they took the care to calm me down. It was miles better than any interaction I had with the previous clinic we were attending.

So the results are in. I am very glad we left the last clinic and am happy we’ve chosen them to help us in our quest.

Only 2 weeks till the ‘shoot ’em up begins. Time moves very slowly these days.

Speed Bumps

So I’m having a little trouble navigating the tricky world of pregnant friends right now. It seems that yes,  pregnancy is the most important thing in their worlds and my world but, I tell you, nothing brings a conversation which includes a pregnant woman to a screeching halt like the mention of fertility treatments. Infertility. The anti-pregnant.

Now I am a big girl and can admit that pregnant strangers are people I don’t like. And pregnant acquaintances, co-workers, friends of friends and so on, well I’m not really keen on them either. So they have been easy to avoid. But my pregnant friends? I like them. Not even the writhing mass of the green monster I try keep quiet in my handbag can make me turn on them (though when they first tell me that they’ve joined the other side I generally need a moment or a day to cry it out – heck, I’m only human). But I’m having a hard time talking to them.

My days are filled with research on fertility treatments, mourning negative cycles, mustering hope for the cycle to come. Trying to figure where we’re going to find 10 G’s to fund our expansion from couple to family, oh and then the next 10 G’s if we want to try again. Thinking about needles, and needles and needles and that lovely ultrasound wand that has explored more of my nethers than the varsity soccer team that lived on my floor in second year and has yet to buy  me so much as a coffee in return.

Their days are filled with kicks and expanding waistlines and prepping for mat leave and baby names and should they teach sign language? and I’m just not sure what to say.

In a group of pregnants, me, the anti-pregnant, and the neutrals, everyone is uncomfortable. They want to hear how I’m doing but don’t want to talk about the dark side with the glowing in the room. They want to hear about the pregnancy but don’t want to upset the barren. Speed bumps in conversation at every turn.

I made a pact with myself to come out of hiding (these last few negative cycles took their toll on me) and get out there and spend time with my friends. Then I started this blog. Because after a couple of weeks of friend time I realized I had much to say – and it’s all stuff they’d rather not hear.

Now you may be thinking, that’s not true, they’re your friends and want to support you. But nothing makes someone who’s not going through this – especially someone who got pregnant the old fashioned way on month 2 of trying – want to talk about the weather more than the confession that you’re nervous about the egg retrieval because having a needle stuck up your who-ha, through your who-ha, into your what-nots is scary. And more scary is finding there’s nothing in your what-nots to retrieve.

Speed bumps I tell you.