Day 2

so, Aunt Flo decided to arrive all on her own yesterday! i had a scheduled blood pregnancy test on Friday (what a joke!) so they could give me Provera to force her out of hiding.  I'm so glad I didn't have to do all that.  

so, here we go...onto birth control pills beginning tomorrow.  we meet with the RE on monday to go over all our protocol and sign a million consent forms and all that.  afterwards we meet with the nurse to learn all about how to mix and inject the meds.  fun stuff :)

it's official

we finally heard back from the insurance coordinator!  we have been approved for 2 IVF cycles. HOORAY!  we set up our 2 hour pre op appointment for May 4th.  We will meet with the RE for a hour or so to go over our protocol and all that and then we will meet with the nurse for an hour to learn how to mix and inject all the medications.  i am relieved that we are covered and excited to start a new cycle that has a better chance of being successful. even though, at the same time i am terrified. of the shots, of the side effects, of the retrieval, of the heartache if it doesn't work.  but i am not focusing on that right now. i am thankful for this chance and hopeful it will work and i can spend some months being a regular ol' pregnant lady and forget about being an infertile for a while.

 i have to say, i read many of your blogs about the sacrifices and time you must take to save up to pay for a shot at IVF.  i can't imagine having to do that.  i hope all of your states follow in the footsteps of massachusetts and start requiring fertility benefits from your health insurance. 

i did a bad, bad thing..maybe...

in my house, we have a "little room".  i'm sure many of you have a similar room in your home.  maybe it is an office, or a guest room, or a junk room.  maybe you keep the door closed so you don't have to be reminded of what this room is supposed to be.  in our home, this room is currently occupied by bags of clothes to be donated, boxes of things that need to organized and other random things that are in need of a home.  the room needs to be repainted and a gallon of earth friendly, no voc paint in a soft yellow even sits on the floor.  i occasionally wander in to the little room to look for something, or to start to organize what is in there, only to give up and wander back out.  i do not want to clean and organize and paint the "little room" until there is an exciting reason to do so.  if it looks all ready, like it is just missing an occupant, it will be even more depressing to walk by.

gone are the days that mr.m and i excitedly talk about our future child.  we are no longer making plans and debating names and contemplating baby furniture and the like.  we do not want to get our hopes up or make any plans, knowing that the reality of us holding our child in our arms could be a long way off.  

but with our hope dwindling away and our optimism broken, i decided we needed a change.  i made the decision that we needed to think positively once again and get excited a little bit about a little being that we will hopefully someday bring into this world. so, i ordered something...that is specifically for a B-A-B-Y. and we can't use it until there IS actually a B-A-B-Y.

i have always known i would cloth diaper my kids.  mr.m is environmentally like-minded, so i was able to convince him that this was a good choice for us.  since i began dreaming of getting pregnant, i have been researching cloth diapers online. and finally, i ordered a sample of the 3 brands we were debating between.  we both agreed on which ones we liked the best. they are so cute! and i can't wait to have a little bum to put them on.  it was fun to get excited about baby things again.  and i think we can handle it. we are not disillusioned anymore and we know that it may take some time.  but we also know that we WILL have a family someday, whether through IVF or adoption, but we cannot even entertain the idea of having a child-free life.

for now, i will stick the diapers back in the closet in the little room. but it felt good to think good thoughts again and dream about our someday baby.  i think surrounding ourselves with positive energy is the best thing we can do moving forward.

good news and bad news...

i had another follicle check this morning.  nothing.  we are officially cancelled and preparing for IVF.  i'm over it, it's fine.  i was mentally prepared for the IVF cycle anyway, so i'm not even sad, especially since with 0% morphology the IUI wouldn't have worked anyway and i just would have been tormented with an inkling of hope for 2 weeks only to have it all come crashing down again.

on a better note, yesterday the weather here was beautiful.  mr.m called me after his lunch break in a great mood after having been outside.  he asked me to come into the city to meet him for dinner. (we live in the suburbs, he works in the city) i used to go in all the time and meet him after work and we haven't done it for a while.  so i got all cute and loaded up my new jcrew whale purse and headed in for our spontaneous date.  we walked around the city and went to a yummy seafood place that is a little higher end, but we had a gift certificate. we had some king crab legs and i had the yummiest halibut ever!  i even had a glass of wine with dinner:)  then we walked over to an ethnic area of the city for a cannoli, some decaf and some people watching out the open air windows.  it was a great night.  the city was bustling and happy, as everyone was enjoying the first really nice day.  we laughed and talked and for a night were just a happy couple out on the town and not sad infertile people.  we didn't even once talk about getting pregnant or babies or anything.  we were just us for the night, just happy and in love and enjoying life together with no worries.

why aren't my follicles cooperating?!

i had another follicle check today, Day 13 and still none of them are over 10mm. bummer. last month i had one that was 15mm on day 13. it looks like my body is just not cooperating this month at all.  i have one more check on friday, but if none have grown, this cycle will be cancelled. shit.

while talking to the nurse this afternoon, i asked about mr.m's SA from last week and to find out when we hear if the insurance approves our IVF for next cycle.  last week they had told me his count was 53 million with 77% motility, which is the HIGHEST it's ever been! of course, this was the one SA we needed to be really bad so the insurance would approve us.  anyway, the morphology wasn't in yet because they send it out to a different lab. today i got the results.  

0%.  yes, that's right, none, zero, zilch, nada.  none of those guys were normal.  damn.  well, at least that pretty much guarantees insurance coverage for IVF/ICSI. but if 0% are normal, can they find any to fertilize my eggs?  i'll have to check with dr. google.

so that is 2 bad things that have happened today and yes, i do really believe everything comes in three's.  i'm afraid to leave the house.

first follicle check

i had my day 10 follicle check on sunday.  there were all under 10mm.  i am a little concerned about that.  last month, on day 10 i had one that was 11mm.  hmmm.... i don't have enough experience with this to know if this is problematic or not.  i guess i will know more on wednesday at the next check.  grow follies, grow!!

i've started telling my family and close friends that we are moving on to IVF next cycle if this cycle doesn't work.  some of them don't know that we've already done an IUI once, so they are a little surprised.  mr.m absolutely does NOT want me to tell anyone about his sperm problems, so it's hard to explain to people why we need it.  i've just been saying, "well, based on all of our testing, the doctor's think it's our best chance".  i need people to know what i'm going through so i can talk about it and get some emotional support, but it's hard to dance around the reasons for it.  most of them are pretty clueless about infertility stuff, so it doesn't matter and i'm sure the 1 or 2 people who are familiar can guess that we have more than PCOS as an issue.  we were visiting mr. m's brother and his wife (and 3 kids) yesterday and we were getting some comments about when we were going to have kids, so we told them we were having some trouble and doing an IUI.  the reaction was, "oh that's weird, you're getting pregnant from a turkey baster."  needless to say we did not tell them what our next steps are.  people are so insensitive!

you know you're infertile when....

you wake up in the morning and are actually disappointed that you are not going in for a wanding.  true story.  i was all ready to check out how big the follicle(s) are, legs shaved and everything when i realized that my check is tomorrow. oh well.  i hope there is more than one!

GRRRRRR!!!!!

i am a grouchy tired cranky whiney bitch today. grrrr.  i can not shake this negative grumpy pissed off mood at all.  i f*cking hate being infertile. and i am pissed off. and i think i will scream if any (more) of my fertile friends get knocked up before i do. grrrrr.....