Here We Go Again!

This HAS to be a record two posts with in a week?? What?!?!?! I told you I was going to get better at this. Since Saturday I have been really trying to focus on things that make me happy instead of things that bring me down. We will have our IUI #3 on Friday at 10:15. Lucky number 3??? I hope so! We will "trigger" tomorrow morning. Here is a picture of the needle and the vials....

Lame

I know I have to be the worst blogger in the history of the world. To catch up, our second IUI was a fail, again. Everything looked great on paper. Great lining, fast response, hub's numbers were much better than last time. But in the end, it just didn't work out I guess. To make matters worse, two of my best friends have informed me that they are pregnant. God dammit. I am happy for them, really I am, but when is it ever going to be my turn???
So we are now on Cycle 17.Ughh. I am on Clomid again, a higher dose than last time. I really hate Clomid. It makes me crazy. I am bi-polar while on this medication. If this cycle doesn't work, then we are going to have to take a break from medicated cycles and go back to the old fashioned way. We are complete out of pocket with any treatments. Boo.

Fail

Yep, that is the only word I can use to describe my ability to blog. My goal for October will be to update this damn thing once a week! Promise........ To get y'all up to date. IUI 1 was a fail. Started Femara last weekend, finished it up on Thursday. Will go in on Tuesday for a follie scan. Feeling kind of good about this cycle for some reason or it could be the couple of beers that I have consumed because tomorrow is my BIRTHDAY..... I usually am a birthday whore, I love my birthday, but this year I am not excited because I orignally planned to be a mom by now. :::Sigh::: On a side note, I got a fabulous purse from my mother today! I love it! Pictures hopefully tomorrow!

My God!

I can't seem to keep up with this thing! So much has happened in the past 3 weeks and I keep forgetting I have this blog. It is going to take sometime to remember that I have one. This past week we completed our first IUI. It was a rollercoaster! To recap the past week:
Went in Tuesday (August 24) for a midcycle ultrasound, doc was please with stimulation but displeased with the size! Went back on the following Friday, still not big enough! This broke my heart because I was really counting on getting the IUI done on the weekend! She asks me if I can come in Monday morning, I grimace but agree. She promised that she wouldn't charge me for this 3rd ultrasound. I really didn't want to go in a third time, not because of costs, but SUB PLANS! I hate being gone from my classroom, especially so early in the year, but I HATE doing sub plans, I would rather eat a flaming ball of shit than write those things. Fast forward to Monday morning: go in for a u/s check, follies look great,but lining is not where she wants it to be. She wants us to "trigger" at 9:00 that night. When I say "trigger" I mean a shot in the ass! The hubs and I debated if he could stick me, or if we should have our bestie R. come over and do it because he is a nurse and has some experience in this. Well Hubs was not going to lose points on his mancard so he said he would do it. The injection was Pregnyl, which is a recombinate of hCG---> human chorionic gonadotropin or the pregnancy hormone. It mimics LH-lutenizing hormone that is release to tell you ovaries to release an egg. So to make a hillarious long story short, when we got back from playing sand volleyball he had me lay on the bed. Now to clue you in, I am TERRIFIED of needles, always have been and no matter how many I am going to encounter during this journey, I don't think I will ever get over it. It took him 15 minutes to convince me that is going to be okay. I was bawling and saying " Just give me a minute". In the end after screaming during the injection it was done.
We went in on Wednesday . We started at the RE's office so Hubs could give a sample of his man juice. We were pumped and excited. After a lovely breakfast at VI we returned to get the sample. We head out to the Women's Center, get checked in, naked from the waist down and wait for the doctor. She comes in takes out the sample which came with a semen analysis report. She reads it to herself. I am noticed the concern on her face. She explains the report. Hubs count is way down from last time. The whole sample gave 56 million sperm. Sounds great right... WRONG. After he gave the sample they seperated the sperm from the semen. Then they get rid of all the dead sperm and useless sperm. After all of that we were left with 4 million good sperm. But it gets even worse than that. They look at forward motility or the ability to "swim" forward, they want 80-90% of them to be moving. We had 53%. Which means we only had 2.1 million effective sperm. Hubs was heartbroken, as was I. So now we wait. I can't even feel positive about this one. I just hope that one found its way. I hate this. I really hate this.

Oh...

I forgot I had a blog! It has been awhile since my last post. Quick update cycle 14 was a bust I got the bitch last Friday. I started Clomid on Sunday and took my last pill on Thursday night. I usually don't get the typical side effects from meds, however I got hit hard with s/e with Clomid. Some of them were : Intense hot flashes, mood swings ( was was a raging bitch one minute and an angel the next minute), and night sweats. I am a sweaty sleeper (I know its gross, but get over it ;) but this was unreal! Each week I go to a tanning salon and get spray tanned, well I basically sweated off my spray tan this week while sleeping! I woke up to what once was a white t shirt when I went to bed ended up being brown when I woke up! I also get hot flashes when I have a mood change or they just sneak up and bite me in the ass!
This also was the first week of school! Not a great week to start meds that mess with hormones! We picked up our Pregnyl from Kohll's today. I stared crying in the parking lot when I saw the inject needle. I keep telling myself " All for a baby". We have our first ultrasound appointment Tuesday so check the growth of the follies (follicles) and schedule or get an idea of when the insemination for IUI will take place. It is starting to get surreal.

I am getting a hot flash just sitting here typing.........

It's on like Donkey Kong!

We met with our RE today. She explained our next steps. We are going to be heading to IUI next cycle. After talking to her I am getting very hopeful that this is it! On cycle day 3 I will start taking Clomid-50mg. until day 7. On day 12 I will go in for a trans vag ultrasound to check the follicle growth. Once she sees they are about 2 cm I will trigger or get a shot of Pregnyl ( funny side note about Pregnyl, it is infused with pee from pregnant women). 12 hours after the trigger hubs will have to give a fresh semen sample which will be process and all the good spermies will be separated and prepared for insemination. About an hour later I will go into the clinic and they will "inseminate me". If you think about this, it is really not fair. I mean hubs gets to have "pleasure by way of masturbation" and I get a thin catheter shoved up there:) Dr. L believes we have an excellent chance of conceiving with IUI. FINGERS crossed.

P.S.-Wouldn't it be a kicker if I ended up pregnant with this month's Hail Mary????

I would like to thank the.....

On this blog with my total of 7 posts it seems to me I do a lot of complaining. So I decided to have a change of tide. This post is going to be dedicated to those who have made my journey a little easier.
First off....
My bestie, my first follower of my so called blog. Mrs. F has made my journey bearable. I love this girl so much. Sweetie, you will never know how much you have helped me. I love how we can have 2 30 minutes convos a day and talk about so many different things. And, yes, WE (the three of us) are in this together! Love you to pieces

Next...
A, L, W, J thanks for listening to me bitch all the time about not having a baby!( and for the wonderful drinks and dinner we had tonight)

And most of all...
HUBS! I love you so much and you have made this journey a memorable one. No matter how much this tries to take us down we always prevail. Thanks for everything! You are stronger than you think! LOVE YOU!

Grrrr!

Okay, I have been working REALLY hard on being a good person today! It has been so hard! I had a friend who had a baby yesterday. I had to block her in my FB feed for awhile now. Every post had to do with something about her being pregnant. Every.Single.Post. I got sick of it real fast. So to save my sanity I hid her. She is a good person but I have a hard time believing that she is ready for motherhood. Anywho, she had her baby 2 weeks early yesterday and I am really having a hard time being happy for her. There are a couple reasons. Number 1 being that her and her husband didn't have the best relationship considering they had only been married 6 months when she got pg. It was almost like they got pregnant to save their marriage. I mean they had fights about having a baby. Weird stuff. Babies don't fix things. Reason numeral dos that I am having a hard time with this is because of IF. If you struggled getting pg it is really hard to see people get what you want even though you feel like you've work harder and deserve some payment on this hardwork. This hits me hard because we have been start TTC months before they did and now they have a baby. I am trying to be happy for them but my give a shit meter must be broken because it is still at zero. Hubs says I need to get over myself. He got a wonderful flip of a very distinguished finger to the face. Grr!

Well Crap...

Well on Tuesday we finally got some results from our doctor. Looks like the Hubs has some sperm issues:) We are working with low count and borderline low motility. She told us that our best shot is IUI. No matter how much I researched this topic of IF, I still felt as if I was punched in the stomach and the air was knocked out of me. Hubs took it very well. He initial response was "Shit, sorry bout that!" Always the optimist he is! Now that we have had a couple days to accept this we have accepted the fate that has been handed to us. We will meet with the doctor on Tuesday and she wants to start next cycle already. How awesome would be if we got pg on our own ( pretty sure I am ovulating as we speak-lol)this month and not have to worry about this. We will be OOP (out of pocket) on any fertility treatments/monitoring/medications. But since luck has not been on our side for the last 13 months I am not going to get my hopes up. IF sucks!

Waiting Game

That's my life. A giant waiting game. I sometimes feel that I am in a perpetual waiting room just waiting to be called by a nurse. Hubs had a SA (semen analysis) on July 13th at 10:30. Today on July 26th we are STILL awaiting the results from the RE's office where he took the test. I mean, really?!?! These offices work constantly with couples trying to get pregnant and have been playing in the waiting game for some time. I consider myself a very patient person ( have to be when working with small children) but my patience is being eaten up by this whole process. I want to be done with the waiting game, I want some answers! Get your act together!

Kellie Coffey
My new favorite video!

Emotional Rollercoster

That is what IF feels like on a daily basis. There will be some people that will tell you "Relax and it will happen". I am waving my BS flag. No, it won't happen if I just relax. If you are reading this and someone you know is experiencing trouble getting pregnant, DO NOT SAY THAT LINE! The next thing that is very detrimental is "everything happens for a reason". Really? Care to explain the reasoning of me feeling barren? No? Didn't think so.
I have experienced so many emotions through this "trip". At the beginning there was hopefulness and excitement. That wore off very quickly after the first 5 months. There was confusion and disappointment which took the place of the aforementioned emotions. These lasted until the 9th month of trying. In my opinion the 9th month is the hardest, you realize that you really should have a baby right now. I had a horrible emotion during the 9th month and I am ashamed of it but I couldn't help myself. Jealousy. This is a dirty word and a heavy emotion. There was a colleague of mine who had a baby at that time. This person is one of my greatest friends and if she ever reads this I want you to know that I never felt any animosity towards you, G, and baby T. I was so happy for the T family, but it was a battle within myself, I couldn't fight off that horrible jealous feeling I had. I was so envious! I wanted that! I found myself having a total breakdown the night I visited them in the hospital. The breakdown was really good for me. I love seeing baby T and the jealousy has dissolved but only to be replaced with dread and fear of the unknown. Why is this happening to us? What did we do? When should we contact someone?
I am working on finding peace with my emotions, it is hard, but I also feel that it is totally normal to have different emotions during this craptastic time in your life.

An intro of sorts

I have never blogged before. I have never held the interest of it andplus what would I blog about? We are very normal and boring people. But recently the hubs and myself have found ourselves struggling with something we never saw coming 13 months ago. Infertility. Infertility is defined as " the inability to achieve pregnancy through timed unprotected intercourse within one year". I don't feel infertility is an appropriate word to describe this, I would call it Hell. Living Hell would be more suitable.
We started the quest for a baby Mack all the way back in March of 2009 ( you can read about this on the right hand side of the page, I will not bore you with all the mundane details again.) But my want for a child started some 23 years ago. I loved dolls. I had more dolls that a girl EVER needed but my family kept supplying dolls to me through the years. I had every accessory for my dolls: a crib, a cradle, a REAL Graco doll stroller, diaper bag,etc. I would beg my mother to buy me the real doll diapers on our monthly trip to Wal-mart. I loved being a mother to my dolls. I also loved kittens. I would dress up the baby kitties and bottle feed them. I once tried to put them in the Graco Stroller and that was the death of the Graco stroller, it never looked the same again. But the one toy that really started my baby fever was my Baby Alive. I don't even remember her name. This is the doll with creepy big eyes and actually poops and pees everything you would put in its mouth which was motorized and would move when you touched it. I loved this doll! I feed and "watered" it all the time so I could change her diaper. After the first month, my mother said no more diapers! They were too expensive, so she gave me all the cloth diapers she used for my younger brother. I would rinse them in the bathroom sink and hang them out to dry. I loved the feeling of taking care of the doll. There was even an instance where I "pretended" to breastfeed the doll. This is where I believe where my perpetual BOTB began.
Before hubs and I were married, we agreed that we wouldn't have children right away, we would wait a couple of years before we started. Which we did, we waited 2 years and now I regret that decision we made. I wish we would have started right away, we may still have had the problems that we are facing right now, but we may already have figured out the issue and possibly have a spawn at this time. But I have made a resolution not to let the decisions that we made in the past cause regrets now. We can only go forward which is what we are going to do. We are just starting the IF testing journey. Hopefully we will get some answers soon. Okay, I am tired of writing and I am sure you are tired of reading my extremely long intro. I look forward to documenting my journey for myself and for my one follower (shout out to my bestie)at the time.