Day 2

So here's the excitement for the day:

Went to RE today. Got Baseline ultrasound done. I know this isn't an indicator of the number of mature follicles that we'll get with the clomid, but they counted 17 follicles in the right and 14 follicles in the left. The nurse said that was good, they usually look for anything over 10 (total). They took some blood as well, and then I got my drug instructions. I tell you - when the nurse started showing me what I needed to do to mix the medication and then how to give myself the trigger shot, that needle started looking bigger and bigger. I definitely will not be doing that to myself! My mother-in-law used to be a nurse so if the timing permits then I'll be heading over to her house for a shot... otherwise dh will be doing it for me!
Start the clomid tomorrow. Crazy times here we come! They have me taking 100mg/day (2 pills). I wonder is that the normal starting dosage? I'm trying to find out cause three of my friends did clomid and all they got was one egg. To be honest I would be pretty happy if I got two cause then maybe twins... and I am totally ok with that!

The only concerning moment of the day is that I do have cyst on my left ovary. She said that it only measures 10mm x 16mm so its not within the range that they start to get concerned. But it kind of concerns me.... but the show is still going forward so I'm happy about that.

Ok I had to post again

So just in case anybody out there is actually reading this :)

I'm starting Clomid on Friday. So I'm back on Google looking up stuff on Clomid and trigger shots and monitoring it with ultrasounds. I found this most kick ass website. I think its the first website that I've found that isn't some random person's website, is a question and answer, or makes no sense at all.

http://www.dukehealth.org/HealthLibrary/CareGuides/fertility

This is friggin awesome! I guess what I'm really excited about is that they talk about using Clomid along with monitoring ultrasounds, which is what I'm doing. Alot of the stuff on the website is women who have been given Clomid, a pat on the head by their doc, and instructions to come back in three months if not pregnant yet. That's not what I'm doing. But this website has raised some questions for me to ask. One very important question is that it says that there are two regimes that are followed for Clomid - taking it days three through seven or five through nine. If you do days three through seven you get your next ultrasound on day 10.... and the other regime is on day 12... uh... the nurse scheduled me for CD14... so I have made a note on my list of questions to ask to make sure that's right. To be honest I was a little surprised when she scheduled that today anyways and that was just based on second hand TTC knowledge that I've gleaned from my friends who have blazed the Clomid path ahead of me. And to be honest CD11 would be perfect - its a Saturday so I wouldn't to worry about missing work or anything! (You must think that I love work or something, no - I just have a guilt complex about constantly sneaking away from work for 1 1/2 hours (driving time, etc) on a frequent basis)...

So just wanted to share super website of info.. wish me luck tomorrow!

Buckle In Folks!

Here we go! AF made her grand appearance this afternoon (which was completely out of character, but she was also 4 1/2 days late so I guess that's to be expected). Got setup for my baseline ultrasound and my teaching appointment. Apparently it takes about 20 minutes to teach me how to take drugs...
I'm just so damn excited that AF has showed up and we can FINALLY do something productive again.

AF Watch Update

Well Day Four of AF is missing watch is coming to a close... its now 5:40pm. No sign of anything all day. But WAIT! As I was driving home I started getting crampy like feelings in my lower back. Could it be? Could it mean that I might be getting a sign that things are about to change and I won't lose my mind with frustration this week? Or... maybe its just the fact that my trainer had me do a hardcore abs workout yesterday and maybe my muscles are just a teensy bit sore from it?

So feeling pretty damn pessimistic all day about this kind of stuff, crampy feeling started in the late afternoon. Early afternoon felt like I was ovulating - you know that wierd, pull-y type feeling in your lower ab area. Was thinking, of course! I'm all screwed up, but nothing like my normal signs that AF is coming to visit.

(Just pausing to think that I am actually writing about this... god - I need to get a life... but here we go!)

So I think this is fantastic news... I have spotting! yes ladies and gentlemen (in case any men are reading this) Spotting! Not brown but red spotting! Hallelujah!

So the question is... what is CD1? is it today? or is it when AF actually gets in gear and lady products are necessary? I'm leaning towards the latter of the two... 1) b/c my calendar is a little more open on Friday so that will be CD3 to go get an ultrasound done... 2) its the evening and this is just now showing up after absolutely nothing all day. To be honest I'm at the point where I hope that it holds off for one more day so that way CD3 is Saturday and I don't have to worry about missing work. I know - work isn't going anywhere, its just the lame ass excuses that I have to make and the fact that I know that my co-workers are probably wondering what the heck is going on with me (I've been to the doctor alot in the last three months). Thankfully my boss knows about the miscarriage (had to fess up since I was out of work for four days) and even though he has not said anything to me about it (it was all discussed through emails) I think he understands (thankfully he has like four sisters, and three daughters so is surrounded by the female persuasion) and knows better than to push things as long as I get my work done and nobody complains...

Anyways, enough rambling for this evening. I've got to get something done around here!

I'm going to Whine...

I hate waiting... hate it, hate it, hate it! My patience with my cycle is wearing very very thin... going into this weekend all excited and happy that AF was going to show on Saturday and then nothing... nothing yesterday, nothing today. Now before you go getting all excited let me tell you that this cycle was the one where I was in Seattle and there was no way that we could have timed anything. So probability that this is anything but my body being,well, dumb is extremely low. (just in case i did take a hpt this morning and it was negative, just on the wee off chance that maybe, just maybe)

So I know that having a miscarriage or being pregnant has the possibility of changing your cycle. Obviously it seems that it has changed my cycle for the longer... Grr... I had this all planned out in my head already. Saturday: Get period; Monday: Baseline Ultrasound; Then start Clomid. Now just waiting... again... still...

I hate waiting.

A Year (or Two) in Review

My dh and I married November 2005 and our three year wedding anniversary is soon approaching. But October 2008 marks another anniversary that we won't be celebrating, its our second anniversary of TTC. We tossed the birth control at the beginning of October 2006, completely expecting to get pregnant right away. So much so that I had actually started scoping out OB/GYN's, looking for reviews on Maternity wards at hospitals, and had been taking prenatals for three months prior (cause primary care doc said that there's possibility that could get pregnant right away).

I hadn't really thought about how much time had passed until this past week. I was purusing the various blogs that I stalk and one of the bloggers talked about how she thought when she was first TTC that she couldn't even imagine being one of those women who had been doing this for years or going through the procedures that they were doing. But there she is right in the thick of it. http://murgdan.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-i-know-now.html.

I never thought it was going to take us this long. Initially I wasn't overly worried, and too be honest not even sure if I was ready to have a baby so there were a few months at the beginning that I was kindof relieved that nothing had happened, and also thought that it was probably not working cause the years of taking birth control pills took some time to clear my system. But as the months rolled on I didn't get more concerned but passed it off on our work schedules (dh works M-Th 1pm-midnight so we dont' see each other during the week). We figured that our timing just sucked, and I'm sure there were many months that it sucked completely. But after the first year we started to get "serious". I started using the ovulation pee-on-a-stick tests to figure out when I was ovulating. I'm lucky enough that I have a like clock-work cycle - every 30 days and I ovulate right in the middle of it. Ok... so that didn't seem the problem.... I started pushing for dh to go get tested. He resisted and I didn't feel like pressuring him. We passed the months using our excuses and telling ourselves that it would happen when it was meant to happen. But after awhile you start to wonder why isn't this meant to happen to me yet?

Well at about the year & 1/2 mark my best friend, Nicole, who I started this blog with and her hubby started getting tested and finding out not so great results. That started to get my dh and I thinking that maybe we should get things checked at this point. This was really the tipping point for me, because this was when I had two months in a row where I was truly upset (crying) when I got my period.

That was back in June/July of this year. That is when this blog started. That's when I started to get very sensitive to assinine well meaning comments by other people. That's when I acknowledged that maybe we might have a problem at hand. So far things have come back positive. We did get pregnant the month that I had the HSG test. So that tells us and the doc agrees that something obviously changed that month, even though they didn't show that I had any blockages (I only wished that maybe we had done it sooner). Dh's counts came out pretty decent, he's considered marginal on morphology (9%) but based on my research on the internet that is pretty common, and the doc was not very concerned and told me what the internet had already told me. So at this point I'm grateful that the tests have turned out essentially normal.

What I'm worried about now: We were able to get pregnant on our own back in August but miscarried at six weeks. When we start to try again (within the next two weeks or so once Aunt Flo shows up) I'm very scared that it won't work and I don't know how I'll handle that disappointment.

Its one thing to have never had it work yet when you're just trying on your own and you can make up excuses as to why you didn't time it right, blah, blah blah. But once you get doctors involved or you have had a pregnancy (full term or not) I think its harder to accept each failed cycle. (This is just my opinion on how I'm comparing my experiences so Im sure others may feel differently). Right now just thinking about how I might feel after we do clomid this month and have the docs help us with monitoring ultrasounds to have us time our "relations" exactly right and it doesn't work - scares me to the point where I don't want to try it. I keep telling myself just because we're going to do these things doesn't mean that its guaranteed to work...

Just trying to keep my expectations low... very low... so that when it doesn't work I don't have to fall as far.

What would you do?

So I received an invite for a baby shower of one of my friends today. She's not a super close friend (actually is the one that I blogged about previously that likes the taste of her foot - see previous post), but I was planning on going.

However I'm thinking not so much anymore... the invite calls for guests to wear a big baggy shirt 'cause they are going to have fake pregnant bellies for everybody to enjoy!!!! Say what??? I can say maybe at some point its a cute idea but I am definitely not into this.

So I've declined attending. I'm not sure if she even knows what her fertile mertle sisters are planning so I am hesitating to call her and let her know why I won't be there. I feel like I owe her something other than a fake answer of "I'm busy" when I'm really not.What to do? Would you tell her the truth that I just can't fathom having to try and handle a couple of hours wearing a fake pregnant belly after experincing infertility and then miscarrying not even two months ago? Or just "I'm busy"?

Can YOU talk with your foot in your mouth too?

So it still amazes me how easily some people's feet fit into their mouths and they have no idea that they've even done it. Last night I was having dinner at a friend's house who I hadn't seen in awhile. Her and her 6 sisters have an uncanny level of fertility. Essentially they decide - I'm going to be pregnant - and it happens.(BTW - she's currently 7 months prego)

So it came up that my dh and I have been trying for two years now. At the point of the miscarriage it had been 22 months and I said something to that effect. Her and her husband look at each other and he laughs and says 22 months - gosh it takes us like 22 seconds, I wish it would take us 22 months. While I wasn't about to go infertility balistic on them, in my head I was thinking "Really? Did you Really just say that to somebody who hasn't been able to get pregnant for 22 months and then when she finally does she miscarries at 6 weeks?? REALLY???" Then she proceeds to ask me if I know when I'm ovulating (which I look at her, like really are you asking me this?) and proceeds to tell me about how she knows and that b/c of that they know when to do it and then she gets pregnant! Well goody for you!

Then I got the standard pep talk about don't get stressed out cause maybe that can have an effect, and "I believe that everything happens when its supposed to happen and there's a greater plan out there". Ok thank you for the life philosophy, I tend to believe that too, but that's not going to stop me from feeling sucky that my lady business is obviously a little broken or at least doesn't fire on all cylinders and that when I finally did get pregnant it didn't stick!

Like I said - I haven't seen them in awhile, her family is wierdly fertile so they obviously have never had to hear about any of this stuff, and its amazing how people can put their foot in their mouth and then just keep talking like they have no clue.