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.
Today is my last day of Clomid this cycle and I am so very happy about that! My ovaries could not possibly grow any bigger without rupturing, I'm sure of it. My abdomen hurts--Tender to touch too hard and I can't bend over to even a 90 degree angle because the pressure on my abdomen sends me jumping up in pain. I'm praying that these are big follicles in my ovaries and not a cyst again because although my right side is tender, my left side is the one that really hurts-- which is the one that had the cyst last time. To all you ladies out there with PCOS, I don't know how you stand this on a constant basis, you ladies are tough! Other than waking up today (CD 9) with the pain of my ovaries, I am very nauseated. I'm eating some saltines hoping it will pass. I'm just relieved that I'm done with the Clomid this cycle and in a few days I'll be ovulating and this pain will be gone.
I called our clinic yesterday and they have all my necessary labs and are expecting us next week. One thing I've always loved about this clinic is how personable the staff are. The nurse who has been working with us sounded so excited for us on the phone yesterday which made me even more excited. My husband seems excited as well, but I think we are both a little nervous. They went over the basics with us so we would know what to expect but our appointments are always so emotional for me I didn't retain much of the information.
For now I am trying to be positive and I am hopeful that this will work. I may be setting myself up if I get that BFN but I tend to be a high anxiety type person so I am trying not to stress and to just be positive right now. My plan is to take the day after the procedure off work as well if I am scheduled to allow myself a day to just rest. I figure my 2ww will be filled with me being a little overly-cautious with my body but I'm not willing to risk my chances by pushing myself or doing anything to stress myself. Now that I'm thinking about it...that will carry on long past the 2ww if I am blessed enough to get a BFP. If I do, I'll also take back all of my complaining about Clomid and vow to never call it a bastard pill again.
I believe that's it for now... May you all have an amazing Friday!
A welcomed change from CD 6, was CD 7. I felt emotionally stable yesterday, which I cannot say for day 6 you know if you read my previous post. I've also had the most unusual dreams this cycle of Clomid. I don't recall now what they were about but I remember waking up the last 2 nights thinking how bizarre the dream I just had was. Today has just begun and is CD 8 for me. When I woke up this morning I felt like my ovaries were growing dinosaur eggs (I can't wait to see the size of these follicles on ultrasound.) I noticed at this point it's even a bit hard for me to pee because my abdomen feels so "full" I guess you could say. I'm a little bloated and feel gassy (could have nothing to do with the Clomid, and everything to do with the spaghetti we ate last night), but after today I only have one more little stupid pill this cycle so it's probable that I will live. I am getting so excited for our first IUI and even the thought that I have a small chance at becoming pregnant that I would jump up and down if I didn't think my ovaries would fall over on themselves from all the weight. I only have 4 more days until I start testing for ovulation. My instructions were not to test until day 12 because doing so before then can give you a false positive result.
I watched a vlog on YouTube yesterday that a fellow blogger recommended. It was a girl that also worked in the healthcare field and her husband was being deployed in a few months so after trying for over a year they were going in for their first IUI. She ended up getting pregnant with her first IUI and having an adorable little girl. As I watched her videos I kept praying for that kind of luck and as I watched her reaction with her positive pregnancy test I cried and wondered how my husband and I would react (happy obviously.) I've already been dreaming of ways to announce my pregnancy to family members. Thank you Eve @ The Countess of Clomid for recommending the vlog to me, it was a little glimmer of hope for me getting ready to have our first IUI.
I will keep you all posted on our IUI in the days and weeks to follow. Prayers and thoughts appreciated and sent right back to the rest of you ladies. Lots of love!
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! :)
It is a rare occasion that my cycle is not 28 days exactly but this time I have started a day early. My cramps are in full force, but my emotions pretty stable for once (I'm just so excited to start our first IUI nothing can bring me down right now.)
I called the clinic yesterday and picked up my Clomid this morning. With our biggest bills going out this week things are starting to look a bit tight in our account but I am keeping my head up and hoping we can squeak by until next pay day. I am anticipating a couple of our next bills to be a bit late --which is hard for me because I'm sort of OCD about our credit and I hate owing money period. At this point if it means having our baby in our arms sooner than later I will deal with the bills after our procedure. Right now I am conserving every single penny I can...
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!
I have a friend that is, well, obsessed with the TV show "16 and Pregnant." She is always talking about these teenage couples and all the drama and how she saw on the front page cover of the magazines that so-and-so from the show is pregnant again. Maybe it's my infertile bitchy subconscious but I think these shows are ridiculous! As if America doesn't already have a big enough problem with teen pregnancy, lets glamorize the issue! How about "18 and graduated?" Sounds like a better topic to me than a bunch of immature party kids that get knocked up in high school. I'm not saying that some teen parents aren't capable of being good parents and maturing when they are expecting but it's not exactly the norm. What the hell is wrong with our social media for glorifying teen pregnancy? Show these kids a video of a woman giving birth and screaming her head off.... babies are not an accessory, they are a responsibility. They are not a puppy!
While I'm on the subject of TV shows, why is there no "reality" show about infertility? There's shows about people with 19 kids and even shows about 80 yr old women in other countries mysteriously getting pregnant, so why not a show about infertility?
Why is everyone so silent about the issue? It's okay for people to talk about horror movies involving torture or how cool it is to finally be of age to get into a strip club or even how what's-her-name had an abortion for the 5th time, but nobody dares bring up the aspects of infertility in public. If you want to get some nasty looks just talk about IVF, those horrid transvaginal ultrasounds, or even utter the word "infertility" in more than a whisper. It's estimated that 1 out of every 6 couples suffer from infertility. Why act like it doesn't exist?
Does anyone know of any good movies about infertility? I have seen a couple but most of them almost make a mockery out of the issue and it irritates me. One that I did watch recently and thought was a cute movie was "The Odd Life of Timothy Green." There was also one I had watched a couple of years ago called "Facing The Giants" that I liked a lot. If you haven't already watched them, check them out, and leave any suggestions in comments below. I wish you all a wonderful Saturday!
We've all had those moments where you think you are finally finding some emotional stability in your infertility journey--After so many stupid and hurtful comments, so many friends getting pregnant right and left and so many days where you just feel like you are alone in your emotions you start to get somewhat numb to certain things. (Or I've found that I have anyways, I certainly cannot speak for everyone.) We've probably all cried walking past the diaper isle or burst into tears the first second you're alone when a good friend announces her pregnancy. I feel that after so much emotion taking you by surprise so many times you find your own way of coping with it--either avoiding the diaper isle and finding an excuse for your absence at your friend's baby shower (which I have never done for the record), or just learning to expect to cry and deal with it when it happens. I have opted for a happy medium of the two. I'm a pretty emotional person anyway so expecting myself not to have breakdowns just isn't realistic for me.
I've had those days at work when I look at the precious babies going home to such messed up family lives and my eyes fill with tears that I can't fight back. I always hope that when this happens I am lucky enough to be alone in a corner of the nursery where nobody can see. If I'm not though, I promptly ask the nurse next to me to watch the baby and excuse myself for a trip to the break room to "get some Benadryl for my allergies."-- I'm sure the nurses I work with know exactly what is going on but are kind enough to not make me feel like an idiot.I work with such amazing ladies and I've been lucky enough to find support in them throughout the journey. I know that they are rooting for us and after every appointment are anxious to hear what we found out. To my surprise even those who haven't went through infertility themselves seem to understand my pain and disappointment pretty well--better than most of my friends that aren't in the healthcare field.-- Anyways, I've come up with a way of anticipating and dealing with this situation at work. What I didn't expect was to look at a baby going home to amazing parents (so in love with their new baby and ready to give her the world) and have my eyes well up with tears.....in the room....in front of the parents. How the hell do I get myself out of this one?
I realized I was crying because I was imagining how it would feel to get that chance. I remembered the look on the dad's face at delivery when he saw his daughter for the first time, and the mom's face in holding her baby for the first time--it all hit me, just like a train. When will it be my turn? What an amazing and emotional journey to share as a couple.... And how happy I was to know that that angel baby was going home with such great parents! I guess you could call it jealousy, but not in the mean I-hate-you-for-getting-what-I've-wanted sort of way, but in the way that my heart yearns so bad for that feeling that they are feeling in these moments right now. It's days like that that I LOVE my job. Yes, even though it makes me look like an idiot for having "happy tears" that catch me off guard, and even though sometimes it feels like I'm throwing myself to the wolves in an emotional sort of way. It's a bit of a love-hate relationship I suppose. I love what I do, but hate what it does to me emotionally sometimes in my infertility journey.
Sorry for the absence lately, it's been a hectic and emotional last couple of months, but here I am again! After my last post from my January appointment with the RE the plan was to try for invitro. After a week of making calls to figure out if we could afford to finance even just one cycle of IVF we came to the realization that it is just not a possibility at this time for us. It was such a hard thing to admit to, because how can I say that I can't afford to have our own baby? Being realistic though, we just can't. Our medical bills just keep piling up for every damn lab we have drawn and every appointment we have and to spend up to $20,000 for IFV when there is no guarantee of it resulting in a pregnancy is just too much at this point.
It couldn't have been any more perfect timing that the RE called us the very next morning to tell us that after his analysis the movement was above average and he felt we could try doing a few IUI's first. So, that's where we are now--saving up for our first IUI. We are hoping to be able to have the money saved up to do our first one by April. I will be back on Clomid, so I am a bit nervous about that after the pain I had from the big cyst it caused last time but I am willing to do anything to increase our chances, even if just by a tiny amount.
We would appreciate thoughts and prayers as we try to save up for the IUI's and go through these cycles. We were told that IUI only has about a 10% chance resulting in pregnancy so it is a bit disheartening to save up hundreds of dollars for only a 10% chance of getting pregnant. On top of the money, it's stressful because they gave us 10 thousand papers with all these instructions and when to call and when to do this and that and I am so overwhelmed!
I have always been taught that nothing worth having comes easy so here's our start down a confusing and emotional path!
We had our appointment a couple of days ago, sorry to keep you waiting but I've been trying to get our house cleaned up for family coming into town. Anyhow, we really liked the Dr. we saw, as well as all his staff. It was such a different experience from any of the other referrals and appointments we had had--it was very productive. Not only did we get our consult and run through our history, the Dr. had labs done on my husband as well as another SA, and he scheduled an appointment for us with a different urologist who he works frequently with that deals primarily with male fertility issues. He did an ultrasound on me and also ordered a whole set of labs to be drawn cycle day 2-3. It was sort of an emotional appointment for me because the reality of our options sank in and I'm PMSing to make matters worse. But...we got some wonderful news--my husband's SA that was done this time showed sperm! The Dr. said it was still not considered "normal", and would be able to tell us better after the analysis finished but he walked to the lab himself and they said they did see approx 1-1.5 million sperm in the sample. That is a huge difference from ZERO, it also means my husband probably won't be needing any surgery!!! However he did say that we would still not be candidates for IUI and that at this point IVF is our only option. I cried as the reality of that sank in because of course I want to jump at it with no question about it but the fact is that we are looking at potentially a $20,000 (depending on meds and other factors) procedure that may or may not end up in me being pregnant. The sweet nurse handed me a brochure for a company that does financing specifically for infertility procedures. At least it's an option to look into. This being said I'm going to get on my soap box for a minute....
Did you know that some states have health insurance (private or employer provided) that cover infertility costs, IVF included? Our state unfortunately is not one of them. Currently in our state, the state-funded or "welfare" insurance pays for over 75% of the pregnant population. This includes prenatal visits, birth costs, any and all pregnancy related trips to the hospital in between, and if they choose-- abortion. Can I just say that I think it is BULLSHIT that my tax money can help fund someone's abortion or pay for someone to have their 15th kid that they don't have custody of anyways but yet I get no help to have the baby I would give anything to have? Isn't this all backwards?
I've been looking online the last couple of days for programs or grants that help pay for the costs of IVF. They are few and far between from what I can find. I know that I could never, ever put a price on having a baby of our own, but it's a lot to take in and how are we going to come up with that money in a few months? It has to be paid in full before the procedure. We have decided to start down the path of all the necessary labs and requirements to prepare for IVF and I am just praying that we figure out the financial part of it. From here, my husband visits the urologist in a few weeks and then from there it's my understanding that we schedule an appointment with this RE Doctor again. I cannot contain my excitement to know that we are at least finally getting somewhere and I just hope that within the next few months we will be able to do our IVF. I dreamt the last two nights of being pregnant and seeing our baby for the first time. In my dream she had my husband's eyes and nose and she was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. I know without a doubt I want this more than anything else in this world. Please friends, pray that the rest of this journey goes well for us and that we will find a way to deal with the financial side of the path we have chosen to take. I am praying that this will be the best year of our lives and that by the end of this year we will get to hold our little miracle in our arms and kiss his or her head for the first time.
