9 dpiui - a very slow weekend

My poor hubby. He's probably thanking his lucky stars that I go to work tomorrow. He is well past the "justifiable homicide" threshold.

I have been so hormonal that I have been alternately crying and yelling at the drop of a hat. On Saturday I suffered bone-crushing fatigue that turned me into a pathetic whiny-ass.

I would love to be optimistic and think that I'm lucky enough for these to be pregnancy hormones. Unfortunately, my gut feeling that I am not pregnant is sticking around. I think I'm just depressed.

The bright side is, I have started planning on horseback riding in the Bahamas in March.

Today A went to a birthday party for his cousin's baby (remember, this is the cousin who was going to start trying the same time we did? they now have a one year old. we are still not pregnant) I bowed out to spend the day with my mom, as her birthday was this past week.

A got home and told me it was a good thing I didn't go. He said there were babies everywhere. His friends were talking about their kids and then would look at him awkwardly, not sure how to include him in the conversation.

Yeah, I'm glad I didn't go.

Plan is still to test Wednesday, although I won't lie, the urge to test tomorrow is very strong. I'm fighting it. The worst thing about using first morning urine is that then...I have to go to work afterwards. Blech.

8dpiui and getting introspective

This morning A and I went to a pancake breakfast. We live in a small, sleepy bedroom community where almost everyone, including us, commutes to the Big City (haha). However, the town is big enough to have schools of its own, so that's where we found ourselves, eating pancakes, this morning.

It was weird being back in a school. And instead of seeing it through the lens of a student, I saw it through the lens of a parent. "Someday we'll probably come watch our kids sing in a Christmas program on that stage," I said to A. We walked past the library and I pictured our future children reading and working on homework (probably crying over math like we both did). We saw the row of lockers and I imagined the boyfriend/girlfriend drama that will inevitably play out for years to come.

What year will it be when we have a child in high school? What will we look like then? Will we have the same house? Our dogs will probably be gone. How healthy will our parents be? Will the year(s) of infertility still hurt with the same sharp pain or will they have faded to a dull ache? Will I be sitting in the same gym years from now and tenderly remember the woman I am now? What would future me, mother of high schoolers, say to current me?

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I have decided to test on Wednesday morning (12dpiui). I asked A if he thought that was a good plan and he said "If you actually make it till Wednesday I'll be very proud of you." I think I can make it.

Negative Nelly

Today is 7dpiui. That means I have survived the first half of the 2ww, and I really don’t even think I went that crazy. I have been busy at work and I’ve been shopping for stuff for our upcoming cruise, plus I’ve been reading like a madwoman. So I haven’t had too much time to sit around and think about whether or not it worked.

However, mid-morning yesterday, it hit me: a nagging feeling that this cycle didn’t work. I think this is based more in worry and self-protection and less in common sense. If it’s going to work, I haven’t even gotten to implantation yet, so of course I’m not expecting symptoms or anything. I just can’t explain it. I hoped it was a fleeting thing but this morning I woke up with the same feeling. It didn’t work.

I hate that I am so irrational. I wish I could just relax and stop thinking about it. It’s just that with a co-worker who’s approximately 10 weeks pregnant and an office full of fertile myrtles, I know that pregnancy is going to be the #1 topic of conversation around here for most of the year. And it would just be so much more pleasant if I could be involved.

I need to keep telling myself that my dad’s twin sister had similar problems to mine and got pregnant on her first IUI. I am going to try not to spend too much time dwelling on what it means that I’m having these feelings. I know they are ridiculous. Right?

5dpiui - 2ww ramblings

The weird thing about the two week wait is that you, the owner of the uterus in question, are entirely powerless.

If the egg is going to be fertilized, it has already happened. Nothing I did or didn’t do affected the outcome (so my last-minute panicked “I should have shaved my legs!” before the IUI was completely irrational, I know).

If the embryo is going to implant, it won’t be for a few more days. Again, I have no control over whether it implants or not. Of course I choose not to drink myself into a stupor or pick up a heroine habit during these two weeks, but empirically we know that it doesn’t really matter anyway. Drunks and druggies get pregnant all the time.

It takes an enormous amount of patience and faith to trust my body to do this. My body, which doesn’t ovulate on its own, is supposed to figure out how to get the egg fertilized and get it to stick in the right spot? It seems nearly impossible that it could happen. And the fact that when it does happen, it will be without any knowledge or participation on my part, just floors me. It makes more and more sense every day why people call babies “miracles”.

I just wish I had a part to play in the actual fertilization and implantation, the way I have a part to play in growing the follicles, ovulating, and inseminating. I wish I could offer some words of encouragement to my reproductive system (“You can do this, I believe in you, don’t let me down”). Or, if I can’t actively play a role, I wish there were some sort of window in my abdomen so I could peek in and see what’s going on in there.  

I know these are silly, unproductive thoughts. The two week wait makes me feel, at best, curious and at worst, helpless. I wish I was a person who believed “It’s all in God’s hands now,” but I don’t. I believe it’s all just random chance, and that’s hard for a control freak like me!

Poster child

Last night was the first meeting of the Resolve Peer-Led Support Group I’m trying to start. No one showed up, but I wasn’t really surprised by that. My fliers have only been up for two weeks and I figure it’ll take a few months to get the group off the ground.

I got to the location about 15 minutes early, got myself a drink, and tried to find a table near the door but not right next to anyone. I had made a tent card with the resolve logo, which just says “resolve” really big and underneath in tiny letters “The National Infertility Association”. My plan was to set the tent card up on my table, because people who had seen the flier would recognize the logo, but people who didn’t know what resolve was probably wouldn’t notice the words underneath. (My original plan was a giant poster board that said “INFERTILE PEOPLE OVER HERE”, but I nixed that one)

It was a lot scarier than I thought it would be. Even though realistically, no one was paying attention to me and wouldn’t be able to read the word “infertility” on the tent card, I just couldn’t bring myself to stand the tent card up like I had planned. Basically declaring myself to everyone there as infertile. To make matters worse, one of my husband’s friends was there and I was terrified he’d see me and come talk to me and ask what resolve was and I’d have to tell him the whole thing.

I settled for laying the tent card flat on the table in front of me. I figured people would still see it if they were looking for it.

I am pretty “out” about my infertility. The girls at work know what’s going on, my family knows, my closest friends know. So I didn’t expect it to be so hard to make myself the area poster child for infertility. I was almost relieved when no one showed up.

Maybe it will get a bit easier every time, and by the time people start attending the group, I’ll be more comfortable.

Eff you, PCOS.

(I know, I know, this post is all poor me. But I’m sure those of you with PCOS can relate)

Today I want to write about my acne. I’m having a hard time on the acne front. I had mild acne off and on through middle school and high school but was able to successfully treat it with antibiotics. My acne is 100% hormonal, so topical and drug store products such as Proactiv have never been effective. Pills are the way to go.

Throughout college, I was on my parent’s insurance so I took Yasmin, the mother of all BCP, and my face was impeccably clear. All the time. Shortly after graduation, I got a job that didn’t offer benefits so I needed private insurance. I paid $50 a month for a generic BCP, which sent my acne spiraling out of control.

A few months before we started TTC, I broke down and paid out of pocket to go to the dermatologist. She put me on medicine that actually started helping. I had clear skin. It was miraculous.

Then (dun dun duhhhhh) we started TTC so I couldn’t take those pills anymore. Since then I have alternated between different antibiotic creams and gels that are pregnancy-safe, and while they might help a bit, my acne is deplorable.  

My horrible complexion, coupled with a few pounds I gained in 2010 and the fact that my PCOS symptoms are out of control since I’ve been off BCP for over a year now, is really ruining my self-esteem. I hate photos of myself. I hate sitting under a lamp at a restaurant, or sitting to close to someone, or (horror of horrors) sitting outside in the sunlight with friends. I find myself drifting off when talking to friends and envying their clear skin. It’s pathetic.

Yesterday, I was home alone and we had no groceries, but I was so disgusted by my face that I didn’t even want to go out in public. I ate a plate of frozen tater tots for lunch instead of going to the store. Saturday, we wanted to “do the deed” in the morning to make the most of my ovulation. I woke up and snuck into the shower and downstairs to put on makeup because I couldn’t stand the thought of A looking at my gross face as it was. I am dreading the photos from my upcoming cruise, knowing that they will all need to be retouched before they’re facebook ready, and even then, I will look bad.

And I know there’s no chance of this improving soon, because it may be months longer till I get pregnant, and then 9 months of pregnancy plus hopefully some months of breastfeeding before I can go back on the drugs.

It’s enough that PCOS makes having a baby feel next-to-impossible sometimes. Why does it have to make me so ugly too?

2dpiui - some randomness to report

Either my body is depleted by the efforts it took to fertilize an egg (positivity!), or I'm getting a cold. I have been exhausted this weekend.

After the IUI I came home and had dinner, then settled in with my book, thinking fertilizing-ish thoughs. I was asleep on the couch by 8:30 PM. Yesterday I woke up feeling hungover (even though I clearly didn't drink). Same thing today. I feel so tired, worn out, exhausted. Maybe I'm just crashing from the emotional jitteriness I was experiencing all week.

You know what I didn't mention in my post on Friday was that the nurses thoroughly confused me right before the procedure. They started talking about the "pellet" and other words I'd never heard of, which surprised me because I'd read so much about insemination that I thought I knew the procedure. I don't even remember what they said about the pellet because I was too busy thinking "what the hell are you talking about?"

I have to say that I hate progesterone suppositories. Of all the components of this cycle (constant monitoring with the dildocam, clomid, metformin, the trigger shot, the insemination itself), by FAR the worst part is going to be two long weeks of stupid progesterone and waiting. Whiny, I know, and nothing compared to IUI w/injectables or IVF, but seriously. I hate those things.

You guys should have seen the look on A's face five minutes after the IUI when I looked at him and asked "When do you think I should start testing?" LOL. Forgive me, but I really want to know if I'll be going on historical walking tours or horseback riding excursions on our cruise in two months : )

Thanks for playing along at home, ladies.