pushing in back?

So we want to take a cruise. March 7, 2011is when we want to leave. Carnival doesn’t let you sail if you are 24+ weeks pregnant. If I get pregnant on September 24, I’ll be 24 weeks on the last day of the cruise.

So it all boils down to this, which is really about much more than this situation: do you plan for the worst-case scenario or the best-case scenario? And asking yourself that question makes you really wonder what you’re wishing for, anyway.

For instance, is having twins a factor of a worst-case or a best-case scenario?

Best case scenario: we get pregnant in late September/early October with one baby, it’s a healthy pregnancy, no risks involved, and I sail away free as a bird, albeit with a big belly.

Worst case scenario: It’s tempting to say this: I’m pregnant with twins and too miserable to travel, and there are complications with my pregnancy so my doctor won’t let me travel. But really, I think the worst case scenario is that it’s next March and I’m still not pregnant at all, cruise or no cruise.

I can tell I’m extremely excited about a trip and a vacation, because I am actually willing to push back the clomid a few weeks to make this trip happen. One benefit of being infertile is you can plan your “trying” around science and medicine, while regular women, whose bodies work like they should, are at the mercy of their cycle. So if I can get pregnant this fall and take a trip in the spring, I’ll be one happy camper.

Boo

And less than 8 hours after the exciting stuff starts happening, it all comes crashing down again. Even though I told the nurse I just started Provera last on July 30, and she still prescribed it anyway, she just now decided that I can’t take it again until September 5.

So the excitement I felt about moving everything up two weeks got nixed just a few hours later. Early September it is again. It’s hard to get A to understand why this is all so frustrating and depressing.

This whole journey is a lot of second-guessing myself and trying to make sure other people are doing their jobs right.

Nurse Useless has earned her name again.

Terrified in a good way, of course

A voicemail from Nurse Useless. It’s hard not to take it seriously, considering how difficult it is to get a hold of that woman in the first place, also considering this is the first time she’s called me back when she said she would.

September 2 has been in my mind since I started Metformin on June 10. In September, we can start clomid. Over Labor Day, we’ll be on the path to “trying” – really trying for the first time, even though we thought we were trying last Christmas.

So today I put in a friendly phone call to Nurse Useless. I was worried that on September 2 something unforeseen would cause a hitch in the plans. Oh,actually you can’t start clomid until you’ve been on metformin for three months and had these six blood tests. Something like that, you know? …So today I put in a friendly call to the nurse.

“So I just want to make sure I understand the timeline. I’ll take Provera, start a period, and take clomid on days 5-9 of the cycle. I’ll come in on day 12 or 13 (day 14 if it’s a weekend) for an ultrasound. We’ll verify that I’m about to ovulate and skip merrily on home to ‘time intercourse’. Right?” (Okay I left out the sarcasm)

Not only did I have it all pieced together correctly but – much to my surprise – Nurse Useless offered to consult with the doctor and get me started early. But but but but it’s only been 10 weeks! Can you hear my sputtering? Well I’ll check with the doctor, since you’re up to 2000 mg 10 weeks might be enough time.

Enter the voicemail from the nurse. I have another lovely prescription for Provera – my fourth – waiting for me at Meijer as we speak. The journey is really about to begin. And now I’m terrified.

A long overdue update

I realized recently that there is really only one weekend left of summer, and then it will be Labor day, which means one thing: Fall. I remembered this poor neglected blog which was originally started to document operation: make a baby, which sadly has not really had a chance to commence. I decided it was time for an update.

I have a feeling when I look back on the early part of 2010 I will remember it as the months of the pregnancies. That is, everyone’s pregnancy but mine. They were the months where I had pregnancy smack dab in my face daily, even hourly during my working hours. The complaints, the whining, the excited planning…while meanwhile in my world January, February, March, and April were spent wondering “where did my reproductive cycle go? Did my uterus and ovaries pack up and head off to Rome until fall?”

Sure there was the false positive ovulation test in April (which I didn’t know was false at the time) and those fleeting days in January when I assumed (oh-so-naively) that everything in my body was working as planned…I blogged about some of those days here. But mainly, the first four months of 2010 I played the waiting game while babies grew in utero all around me.

Then came May, the month I learned that I had PCOS. This was the month I stayed up til 3 am at a bachelorette party while fasting for a blood glucose test, and dragged my ass out of bed while everyone was still sleeping to go have blood drawn. This was the first time I thought “this baby that doesn’t exist had better appreciate all that I have done for her already, and I’m not even pregnant”.

June came around and BAM there are my polycystic ovaries in all their glory, on the screen for us to see. Now we enter The Dark Time (hopefully part one of one). Four weeks on the Metformin that I was just dying to take, which made me feel like hot bag of garbage every morning…and evening. Trying to deal with suspiciously pregnancy-like symptoms: nausea, dizziness, diarrhea, fatigue, with none of the cute little baby cells growing in me yet to make it worth my while.

June and July are best characterized by the day that I went into a conference room at work to call A and cry about how hopeless I felt. Also the afternoon when I frantically text messaged four friends from my desk at work, on the pretense of checking in with their lives, hoping beyond hope that they would ask me how I was doing. I just wanted to tell someone who cared how completely awful I was feeling at that moment, to lessen the burden a bit. Nada. One text went unanswered till 10pm at night when the reciprocal question finally arrived. I didn’t need it then.  

Speaking of friends, when you are Going Through Something, it makes you reflect. People who don’t know about the situation get a free pass (although that doesn’t mean I want to hear about your pregnancy thankyouverymuch). People who know about the situation are submitted to rigorous testing. For better or for worse, they fall into these categories:

1)      The friends who know. They are currently Going Through the same thing or have in the past. They are hard to find and in my situation aren’t even real-life friends, just people I know who became friends under the circumstances.

2)      The good friends. They ask how everything is going with the correct frequency and are sensitive enough not to talk about pregnant people or new babies around you. They care.

3)      The in-tune but informationally deprived friends.  They know something is wrong but they don’t know what it is. You are so touched by their concern that you clue them in on your situation, and then they get a chance to prove themselves. Usually if they’re that in-tune with your emotions already, they quickly become “good friends”.

4)      The quiet friends. They know what’s going on but it’s hard to imagine they care. They probably feel like they’re respecting your privacy but really they’re making you feel more isolated than you already do. They are either light years away from wanting children or else had their own with such little difficulty that they just shrug off your situation and tell you to do things like “be patient” or “just relax”.

5)      The immature friends. A close relative to the quiet friends. They know what you are Going Through but are either too young, too old, or too naive to realize how hard it can be. They are vaguely aware of the circumstances in your life at the moment, but still do things like pointing out cute babies in public and saying “awww”.

6)      The clueless friends. Not only do they not ask, care, or have anything to do what you are Going Through, but they do things that make you bang your head on the wall with the stupidity of it all. For instance: talking about their pregnant friends’ future babies, offering to send you the link to a blog where mothers share birth stories, telling you that you might be infertile but “at least you get to sleep in on the weekends”, feeling rejected when you don’t want to hold their babies. You have to get pretty firm with these folks.

And of course, some friends can run the gamut. Even good friends have quiet, immature, and clueless moments. But as I tackle this getting pregnant project with the determination of two horny teenagers who have the house to themselves and the emotional fortitude of an apologetic bunny rabbit, I’m learning to value the good friends I have.

So that has been the story of the first 8 months of my infertility journey. Some frustrating wondering, a diagnosis, a Dark Time, and a whole lot of insight into the people in my life. Now we embark on The Plan, since September and the fall hold our first round of legit fertility drugs. Yee-haw.