I struggled the last couple of days with going back and forth on rather I should write this post or just sort of fall off the face of the blogging world. Obviously I've decided to write.
I woke both Sunday & Monday from a stupid dream that had me in tears so bad that I couldn't fall back to sleep. My boobs were getting more tender and my nipples were a bit sensitive, but nothing alarming. By Monday I figured I was up at 4 am and bored anyway so I may as well take a test. I was crampy and gassy and cried as I sat on the toilet waiting for those stupid 3 minutes to pass. I sat for more like 5 however because I was too paralyzed by the fear of seeing another negative that I had to remain sitting and say a prayer for God to comfort me. I stood, and there it was-- a very faint 2nd pink line! Tears filled my eyes and as my heart raced I thanked God for finally giving us this miracle we have prayed and tried so hard for. I tried to wake my husband (who is not a morning person) and he mumbled grumpily about me waking him up and fell back to sleep. When he finally woke for work I showed him the test. Let me just say this was not the reaction I was hoping for or expecting. He said "You can barely see anything, it needs to be darker." Talk about raining on my parade. Being emotional, I starting sobbing uncontrollably and it ended in a big fight because I was so hurt and we both left for work without a kiss.
When I got to work I asked the first OB I saw to write me a script for my HCG levels. After about an hour he came back with my printed test results. My HCG was 20.6 which is within range for someone 3-4 weeks. He congratulated me and left. I was so excited I told every poor soul that walked through that nursery door that I am pregnant! (Who can blame me....we've been trying for about 3 years now.) I called my husband to tell him my blood work was positive as well, and got a little bit better reaction that time. I'd say I'm a little more than ecstatic! After work we surprised my parents and the rest of my family. My mom was so happy she cried. My dad grinned, but I think it was a little awkward for both of us. My best friend ran into my husband getting groceries yesterday and text me to tell me how much he gloated about our excitement. This was so reassuring for me. I know that he is so excited, I was just anticipating a very different reaction when I told him and when it wasn't what I expected it really pissed me off!
Yesterday I was extremely crampy and my back hurt even worse. JUST like AF coming! I fought back tears of fear all day yesterday. I slept with the heating pad on my back. I am still very crampy this morning, and my ovaries hurt a bit oddly enough, but I was so relieved to wake and not see any evidence of AF when I wiped. Thank you God! My nipples are still sensitive, but not painful or "on fire" as I've heard many women describe it. My mind is still thinking of the worst scenarios like tubal pregnancies or misscarriages and I am struggling to keep from stressing. When you want something so bad and you finally get it, it is not easy to relax. Especially if you are a bit of a control-freak in some ways like me.
Now we wait, and keep praying that I have a healthy pregnancy. A few women in my family have had miscarriages with their first few pregnancies so I am very nervous. I decided yesterday that it is out of my hands though and I just have to put my trust in God that he will see me through this and keep our little miracle healthy.
The reason I struggled with deciding whether to write or not was because I know for many of you this will be a source of pain and for that I apologize. I can say I have been there before. However, I hope that you will share my joy just as you would hope others would yours if this was your post. After all, we are all working so hard for the same thing, right? I feel that I will always consider myself an infertile, and I don't feel that I could ever forget the painful process we have been through to get there. It is not a guarantee that this pregnancy will be without trouble, although that is certainly what I am praying for. I hope that this gives you hope, and that you know I still pray for you all, just as much as I pray for myself through this process. I still feel the sting of people's stupid comments. I've already heard "see I told you it would happen when it was time" (duh), "I told you that you just needed to relax." If these idiots only knew..... For us, babies aren't "luck" or a drunken night of sex with our husbands. Actually, it was technically the nurse that knocked me up, on a table with my feet in the stirrups. There was nothing fun about it, but I don't care how I got here, I'm just so blessed that I did.
I have not yet decided whether or not I will blog about the pregnancy. If I decide to, I will probably start a new blog just for my pregnancy so that I am not flooding people's reading list with baby news if they don't want to hear about it (I know I didn't, so I don't blame you a bit.) If I do start a new blog I will post the info on here so that anyone who chooses may follow me. I have been so grateful for all the support throughout our whole journey, and please know that I am still reading your blogs and rooting for all of you!
It's CD 14, and the day we will go for our first IUI because I got my positive ovulation test at 3 am this morning. I woke up to go pee and realized it was only 3am, however I knew I couldn't hold it for another 2 hours so I figured I may as well test! Now I'm up like a 6 year old on Christmas morning because I'm to excited to sleep. I will be calling the clinic as soon as they open to get an appointment with them today and we will make the trip to be in the office for probably an hour or so and then drive back home tonight so my husband can be at work tomorrow. After today starts the big 2ww and I am so nervous but so excited! Because of unforeseen circumstances we had to pull some money from our savings last week so we will be tight on money until next pay day but I don't care. If this is what will get me my baby I will be happy to eat Ramen noodles and baked potatoes like a poor broke college student again! Did I mention I am so excited? Here we go!
I'm praying this is it friends! I hope this is our big day where I will finally get my eggo preggo! I plan on resting the next couple of days but will post again as soon as I can.
First test day, which was a negative. I am relieved about that though as I'm hoping I'll be ovulating CD 14 or 15, only because it would make things a lot easier with our schedules, plus it would allow me more time to rest after the IUI. I will be off and although my husband will be at work, today and tomorrow were going to be hectic days and he was nervous about having to call in. I am so anxious for this. My ovaries feel so big and distended that it's hard for me to sleep any other way besides flat on my back at night and my pants are all so tight on my stomach that I have just wanted to live in yoga pants the last week.
My husband briefly spoke to his boss yesterday about our situation and said his boss seemed very understanding and willing to work with these unpredictable "sick" days which is a relief to both of us (Thank God for kind understanding people.) My family still knows nothing about all this. Occasionally I get an itch to tell them, but based off of previous experience with our journey so far leading up to this, we decided it was better to just stop talking about it. In some ways I just hope they don't ask because then I won't have to lie-- I am a crappy liar.
Once I get my + test it will more than likely take me a day or two to blog as our clinic is almost on the other side of the state, so it will be an all-day event for us. We will leave as soon as we can after the IUI in order to get my husband home so he can be back at work the next day.
Yeah, you heard me, woo freaking hoo. I had somehow managed to forget in the last year--since my last clomid cycle-- how much I utterly hate it. HATE IT, I say!!!
Monday was CD 5 for me, meaning day 1 of that damn little pill. About 1:00 or so in the afternoon I felt as if someone had just smacked me in the back of the head with an encyclopedia! I hadn't had a headache like that in a long time. Usually when I get a headache I know it's 1 of 2 things: either 1) I should eat and pee (in a 12-13 hour shift at work sometimes I get so busy I forget about eating and drinking and peeing) or 2) I need coffee. I generally drink 1 cup of coffee in the morning and no more, however when I have a headache sometimes that seems to be the cure. In nursing school I got so used to drinking between 4-6 cups of coffee a day that it took me about a year and a half just to wean myself back to 1 cup a day. Anyhow, the eating and peeing theory hadn't worked and the coffee didn't even scratch the surface of my headache. It was so bad by the time I got off shift my eyes were watering and I was wondering if I was going to be able to drive home. On the way home my husband called to tell me he had dinner in the oven and asked how my day was. When I told him about my headache his reply was "yeah, don't you remember the last two times you took that pill?" DUH! Here I am the nurse and my husband is pointing out to me my side effects from being on Clomid. Sort of ironic.
Yesterday was CD 6 and I'm not certain yet that I even want to bring up how awful it was, but I will because you ladies that have been there before will laugh, as all my coworkers did (after the fact and all in good fun of course.) For one, I was quite certain my ovaries were going to rupture yesterday. They hurt! Which scares me a little, but it could also simply mean that it is working and I am just being paranoid after what happened last time. I'd sit down a little hard and that jarring feeling made me jump right back up like something had just bit me. This is where it gets crappy.... At start of shift we had a scheduled C-Section that I went to with another nurse. Baby came out and we did our thing but I noticed the baby was working a little to hard to breathe so we put some blow by oxygen on the baby, took the baby very shortly to see mom so she could kiss her newborn's cheek, assigned apgar scores and took the baby to the nursery with dad to see if it was just a temporary thing that would resolve on it's own. It wasn't so we moved the baby to a bed to put the oxyhood on and such, finished the assessment and called the Doctor. A few minutes passed and the Doctor was finally in the nursery assessing baby and speaking to the dad. All of a sudden tears were rolling down my cheeks that I never even felt coming and I realized I was standing in the middle of the nursery in front of several people crying for no damn reason. Coworkers were looking at me with that "should I ask?" look on their faces (they knew I'd be starting Clomid and had been warned). I gathered myself and carried on. Later in the shift, someone was asking me questions about something and I realized it was as if my brain had suddenly evaporated and came out my ears. Pregnancy brain?.....Anyone else suffered from Clomid brain? I felt confused and forgetful almost all day long, which then upset me more and so on and so forth-- you get the picture. The annoying thing is that I know that it is the Clomid making me feel so crappy, I can recognize it and admit to being ridiculous-- So why, then, do I continue to sob like a small child who just had her lollipop stolen from her hand? To put the icing on the cake, I got home and honestly just wanted to soak in a bath (maybe drown myself too) and go to bed. My husband wanted to be chatty. Amongst all his chattiness he asked when we would be going for our IUI. Very annoyed and bitchy I answered that it would most likely be sometime next week that we would be making the trip to the Dr. after I have a positive ovulation test. Then he had a melt-down. He now has a new boss which he hasn't yet informed of all this, and he was worried about having to call in sick after only about a week of his new boss being there. Being as irritated as I already was with how my day had went and now, after his stupid reply, feeling on the verge of being locked up in a mental institution I decided for both of our safety it would be best if I did not acknowledge his reply and simply nag to myself in the shower and immediately go to bed.
Today is CD 7. We talked about it this morning and he has decided to let his new boss know what is going on and hope that he will be understanding. I've taken my 3rd pill and am thanking God that I am off for the remaining days of having to take that bastard pill. Hopefully in the safe confines of my home nothing will make me sob uncontrollably today, and if I happen to forget where the vacuum is and how to fold clothes then so be it! :)
We've finally managed to get enough money scrounged up for our procedure--assuming something doesn't happen leaving us short money prior to next pay day! Fingers are crossed we will be able to do our first IUI in April (and hopefully meanwhile scrounge up the money to do it again in May if it's unsuccessful.)
I'll be calling our clinic tomorrow (the day before I'm due to start my period again) to report a negative pregnancy test. They should then call in my prescription for Clomid which I will be taking days 5-9, then test starting day 12 of my cycle for ovulation. Once we have a positive test we will have a 24 hour window to make the trip and get the procedure done. Not only for the sake of getting pregnant but for the sake of our jobs as well, I am religiously praying that this doesn't take many IUI's. Neither my husband or I are the type to call-in "sick" even if we really do feel a little poopy. My boss however already sort-of knows what is going on and as I said previously, I have awesome coworkers who have agreed to help me by covering my shifts if needed. My husband on the other hand may have a more difficult time taking off work. He does not get "sick time" per se, like I do. He has an allotted amount of paid time off each year which includes any call-ins. With our appointments he has already taken quite a few days off this year, so hopefully we will get lucky for once and have success with one of the first few IUI's. So here's to having our fingers crossed! I will keep you updated as we go!
