Moving On...

So Thursday morning (and Friday morning) came and went and both mornings resulted in a big fat negative. Have stopped the progesterone supplements that the doc had me taking since that could suppress AF from showing up. Now just waiting for AF to make her grand appearance. Its disappointing that's for sure, especially when it truely seems like everybody around us is getting pregnant. Thankfully I've got this long weekend to feel sad and process all my feelings. Monday morning I'll pick myself back up again, get back to life, and we'll move forward and try again.

Wait for Thursday, no problem! - Yeah right...

So I'm going a little bonkers, and it seems I don't have enough to keep me fully occupied here at work. I tested again this morning *shame*, I thought I could wait, but I couldn't resist when I read on the box that 90% of pregnancies test positive with this test at this point. Then it came back BFN. What the ****! So been spending my morning trying to find some information out on the web that would make me feel better about not testing postive -2 days to Thursday. Alot of what I found made me feel more anxious. There seems to be tons of women out there who test at 10dpo and get positives! I'm at 13 dpo and still getting negative, somethings gotta be wrong right? Well if you search the internet hard enough you'll find something that suits what you're looking for, right, wrong or indifferent. What I found sounds actually pretty feasible and isn't some random person's website.

http://www.fertilityfriend.com/Faqs/When-can-I-expect-a-positive-HPT-if-I-am-pregnant.html

This is perfect! So really I was just being silly testing early and everybody who gets positives early seem to just talk about it more than the rest of the general population who HAS to wait until the day of or after AF is supposed to show up. Whew... this should sustain me until... probably later this afternoon when I find something else to obsess about... gah...

Need some reassurance

So I'm feeling a little freaked out/anxious. On Saturday I started getting some light cramps. Kindof like AF was in town. Not too worried about the cramps initially. Actually a little kind of excited since they could be due to implantation (the timing is right!). I don't ever get cramps before I get AF, I always get the during the first day she's here, I actually have very few PMS symptoms other than mild bloating.

Here's where I'm feeling a little anxious about the whole thing. Last time I had the cramps and the bloating around the same timeframe (probably a day or two later in the cycle). Found out we were pregnant on cd31 and then had the worst cramps ever that afternoon and had subsequent miscarriage begin. So I'm understandably a little concerned that the same thing is going to happen. Not sure if this is something I should call and bug the nurses about. I'm thinking to minimize the risk of sounding completely paranoid I should at least wait until I actually get a positive preg test. But once I do and if I still have cramps - you bet your bottom dollar I'm calling them to find out what these cramps are all about and if I need to be having some concern (esp. after last time).

So keep your fingers crossed, we're into the home stretch! I have a package of 3! hpt's waiting at home. As long as I keep getting crappy sleeps at night and sleep too long in the morning I should have no problem with not testing until Thursday.

Its come to This

So unfortunately for me I just realized that its been 10 days since I got my HCG shot. For those of you familiar with hcg shots and infertility, you know that this means that technically the surge of hcg has probably cleared my system and any remaining hcg (if its there!) is due to being pregnant.

Here's the problem:

1)been told to test in another week which if we were doing this normally would be about the time when I would get AF and would normally poas (pee-on-a-stick).

2)have realized hcg shot has cleared system so technically we could probably test this weekend

3)early testing has issues: if its negative it could be too early to detect natural hcg in my system or if its positive I couldn't trust it b/c there could be residual hcg in my system and give me a false positive.

So you see the issue here? I would just like to say that I am NOT going to test until my dr approved test date. The temptation is there though. So what its come to is I need a refill on my prenatal vitamins - I can't go into a Walgreens because of the temptation to buy a hpt (home pregnancy test). So I have to send dh to go get my prescription. This is sad right? Its like I'm a recovering alcoholic and can't be around anybody drinking b/c I might relapse. I'm have poas withdrawals!

I'll be fine - just have nothing much to do at work right now and this is what I've chosen to think about today. Ugh - why did I count the days on the calendar - I might just have to take it down so I can't count the days anymore!

Because I have nothing else to really focus on right now....

So as I've mentioned previously my dh has gotten this idea in his head that if we do get pregnant we must wait until after we've heard a heartbeat before we tell anybody that we're pregnant (I may have contributed to this line of thinking).

This is something that I was onboard with but lately more and more I really don't know how that's going to work. I mean if we were going to keep this a secret, the last time round would have been the time to do it since we essentially got pregnant unexpectedly (22 months of ttc and no luck is unexpected when it does happen). At that point nobody knew all the gory details except for a few and nobody at all knew what my cycle was.

**just as a backstory on this - last time we found out we were pregnant and then i started bleeding the very next day, so we didn't have a chance to tell ppl happy news with out the bad news at all**

The game has changed since then. People know what's going on... people know my cycle... and they know when we'll know if things worked or not. I mean we can choose not to make a confirmation of anything, but the lack of denial will pretty much confirm things. I"m not about to lie to my friends and say no it was negative when it was really positive just to keep a secret a little bit longer. Additionally I've been thinking, say we do actually have success but (god forbid) we have another miscarriage early on... I'm gonna end up telling people (close friends and family) anyways since I'm going to be a huge soppy depressed mess again - and you can't really hide that kind of behavior that well anyways. I feel like I would have wanted to tell them the good happy news rather than "yeah I'm a sad soppy mess because we did get pregnant but we msicarried again" We did that the last time round with half of our friends and family and the poor things didn't know whether to be happy for us that we actually got pregnant finally or sad for us (ultimately they were sad, but they wanted to say it was good we finally had success, like I said, very conflicting directions).

So to round out this random babbling mess, as much as I dream of having the big reveal to our families on Christmas Day when I'm 8 weeks along, I don't think its a reality due to our situation. Like I said - people know and its not exactly like I'm going to avoid talking to them for the next 5 weeks if we do have success. Oh and one more point - there's no guarantees that things will be ok after any point in a pregnancy so I don't think we should use various stages as a firm marker of when we tell people. I'm thinking we don't necessarily have to wait until the heartbeat, but we should just do it when it feels right and if that's earlier than a heartbeat then that's the case.

What would you do?

Just a question

So you would think that the sex you have when you're trying to conceive your child would be at the very least good sex if not some of the best sex you've had with your dh. Without getting too personal, the first night of mandatory sex was good, however the second night was downright miserable and was the last thing either of us wanted to do. Just doesn't seem right ya know?

So on another note, if you have any experience in ttc you've figured out we're in the infamous 2ww (two week wait) window. Surprisingly so far I have not been anxious, nervous, or obsessive. I think the key to that is keeping busy. And to be honest, I think I'm at a point where right now I'm feeling that what will be will be (I'll let you know how that attitude pans out towards the middle of next week). Its hard to believe that its already Thanksgiving time and we'll be testing then. Dh and I have decided not to tell anybody (family included) if we get a positive until at least after we get a heartbeat. I'm starting to feel like if we do have success we'll just wait until Christmas so we can have a great announcement at our family gathering. Obviously there are going to be a few people who have been following this journey who in the lack of any negative news will guess what's up. To be honest I don't care if we tell those ppl (there's just a handful) before we tell our families, but that's just me. Dh has some pretty strong feelings about telling his fam before we tell friends. But I think it will all work itself out as we go (and he sucks at keeping secrets).

Somebody should have mentioned something...

So still in happy/excited mode, just a little sleep deprived, but anyways...

As I mentioned in previous post, got trigger shot on Tuesday with ovulation happening Wednesday afternoon. So early Wed afternoon started getting a little not comfortable feeling in the general vicinity of my left ovary. Ok - no worries, probably ovulating... well over the course of a few hours it got worse and it was not anywhere close to what I normally feel when I ovulate. Plus on top of that I'm bloated and gained 3lbs since that morning. Adding these all together I of course am starting to have a minor panic that omg my ovaries have hyperstimulated or something got blown out. Called the nurses after hours and they said that if it gets worse to go to the er. Not overly helpful in my opinion so I turned to my experts who have blazed this trail ahead of me already.

APPARENTLY the pain is normal. The drugs make ovaries more sensitive and so ovulating is potentially more painful than usual. Umm... shouldn't the docs maybe have mentioned that? I wouldn't have been sitting in bed running through a million scenarios (well actually I could only come up with two) and worried that I had really gotten my body screwed up and our chances of doing anything this month were gone.

So - normal. Normal is good. And by the time we finally went to bed last night at 1am (that's another story) the pain had reduced to an irritation. Its still there today but it just feels like I hurt myself running and strained my hip flexor.

*Sigh* again... wish I had been told to expect this.... I'm sure this is not the last of this type of surprise - we're going into uncharted waters here folks!

Trying on happy and excited again

I'm going to go out on a limb today and be happy and excited. We went to the doctor's yesterday (cd14) for a mid-cycle us. Found one contender at 23mm and two potentials at 13mm each. They gave me my trigger shot there in the office too (so very happy that I didn't have to do it myself!). I've decided that I'm going to allow myself to be excited about the possibilities of this cycle. The timing of this is just so perfect (in my mind). We will be able to test on Thanksgiving Day to find out of it worked. If it does work we will be around 6 weeks right at my husband's birthday so maybe we could hear a heartbeat then (that's the biggie for us, esp. after the miscarriage at 5w4d) and then we would be 8 weeks at Christmas time and we could make the big announcement to our family then!

Oh and the best part of this is that today is our 3rd wedding anniversary. So we could very well conceive our baby on our wedding anniversary. How perfect is that?

So you see why I'm happy and excited and I am just praying that all of this perfect timeline means that it is meant to be this time around. I have realized that I am not going to perish from disappointment and my life isn't going to end, so why not enjoy this and hope for good things to come!

What do you want for Christmas?

So on Sunday we were over at my in-laws celebrating birthdays. Talk turned to plans for Christmas and in turn, what did we want for Christmas. Dh had been talking to his parents about the potential costs of treatments if this round or the next don't work. They offered to give us money for the treatments and the costs. It was very sweet of them. We told them let's wait and see and we should know if this worked before Christmas. On the way home dh and I were talking and realized they essentially offered to give us a baby for Christmas. Its cute I think - mom, dad, we want a baby for Christmas, if you could pay for that - that would be fantastic. :)

Tired

I'm tired. I'm tired of thinking about trying to get pregnant. I'm tired of worrying about what might happen if we do get pregnant and if I will carry to term this time. I'm tired of worrying about how I'm going to feel if this cycle doesn't work. I'm tired of trying to figure out when we're going to have sex this weekend and next while we have family in town. I'm tired of reading the posts in the chat groups and the blogs of the struggles of infertility. I need a happy thing to focus on. I just found out that a friend miscarried her baby at 17weeks. She was two weeks ahead of me when I was pregnant momentarily. Its not fair. You think that once you get a heartbeat then you're good to go, but I had a friend lose her baby at 11 weeks. Then you think well once you get out of the 1st trimester then you're golden, but thats not the case. You never know whats going to happen. I guess I'm truely starting to understand why they call this such a miracle. It seems like its a miracle that somebody can actually get pregnant, and then its a whole other miracle if you can make it through an entire pregnancy. I am tired of how impossible this all seems.

Why can't it be easy for everybody - its not fair. In reading another post I realized that there is more to my life than this, and up until May of this year there was more to my life. I am done worrying about this. I want to be able to talk to my friends about things other than getting pregnant.

Maybe I can't get pregnat because I can spell....

So during the course of me perusing some message boards about ttc I came across a bevy of horribly written posts. Not just gramatically but spelling too. It truly amazes me how bad some people are at spelling sometimes. I mean - seriously - you spelt that word wrong???
My case:

I was on bearth controle and got pregnat, I was trying for 2 yeas befor I ever did get pregnat. If your spost to have ababy you will. My sister in-law has tryed for 5 years and she found out she has to have invetroe.

I don't even know what to say to this... only there are people that can't spell who get to raise children. I know there's more to parenting than spelling but c'mon!?!? (I know, I just lost some heaven credits for this post)

Side Effects

So far have been on Clomid for two days, going to be taking third dosage this evening. Yesterday I was blessed enough to experience just of the wonderful side effects that are possible. My day started out with a headache - I didn't immediately attribute this to the clomid since I do get headaches on occasion, but I've decided in light of the other side effects I'll give clomid the credit. Then while my headache progressed to get worse regardless of the tylenol that I had taken, I started to feel slightly nauseous. Initially chalked that up to the fact taht I had eaten yet but since it persisted after eating and then reappeared later in the evening - clomid gets the credit. Then to top it off, last night dh and I were watching tv, having a nice relaxing evening, and WHAM! out of nowhere it felt like it was 100 degrees in our living room. Dh thought I was losing my mind when I frantically started asking him why it was so hot in here and didn't he feel the blast of heat... yup I got some hot flashes. Not fun in the least. (as a side note: I had to make an apologetic phone call to my mom today to say I was sorry for not taking hot flashes seriously when she had them).

Thankfully I haven't had the moodiness that other women I know have experienced, but hey its only three days in! We've got two more dosages to go Monday & Tuesday night! We'll see how the stress of a work day interacts with being on this wonder-drug.