Cycle 17, CD 23 (9? DPO)

Just finding the time to write a post has been a challenge lately. We have some pretty big deadlines coming up with work and I feel like I'm the only one that cares. My overall fuck-you-world frame of mind probably doesn't help much either. Whatever, it's where I am at.

The bad: My blood work came back after the cancelled IUI and it showed that I had indeed ovulated a day or two prior. I'm glad my RE suggested that we sit this one out and bank the money because it would have been a futile attempt, but it sucks balls I had to go through all that just to have my body play games on me.

The good: No ovulation bleeding! Wow, right? So maybe Follistim is my drug. That said, it did a pretty crappy job on making my follicles grow. But I'm not so down the rabbit hole that I can't see that this is a move in the right direction.

The bad: My TSH has skyrocketed and no one knows why. I thought it was from the estrogen my doctor put me on, but my Endo just told me that it wouldn't act that fast (apparently it takes several weeks to have any impact). No one can give me a good answer because no one knows why this is happening. So they upped me on my thyroid meds yet again. Not that my theories are ever right, but I feel like my TSH is going to go way in the other direction. I'm feeling 50% lab rat and 50% yo-yo. 

The good: I think I miiiiiight be able to squeeze one more cycle in before I have to go travel. That said, my TSH needs to cooperate which I'm not hopeful of, but at least it's a maybe vs a no-way. 

The bad: Mother's Day sucked the big one. 

The good: I got my hair cut! I know this isn't anything fertility related, but it's been almost 7 months since my last cut (hello-treatments-sucking-up-every-extra-penny) and I was feeling pretty ragged. The new do feels really good. 

As you can see, I'm actively trying to see the good in things and not focus so much on the bad. It's hard though, because the bad is really, really bad: I'm not a mom, I have no baby. The good is nice and all- but how do you compare a good haircut to a child? Regardless, I'm trying. Some days are better than others. 

Cycle 17, CD 16 (? DPO)

We were too late. I already ovulated. Talk about a kick in the gut.

Not sure what happened. My last appointment was on Saturday and I had at least one follicle that was almost ripe at 17mm. At that point, my RE wanted me to do one more day of the Follistim at a higher dose but to also keep a close eye on my OPKs just to make sure my body didn't ovulate on its own. And I was a good girl and peed on those damn sticks every night for the last week. No way I could miss it, right? I mean, I'm no stranger to OPKs. But I swear to you that stupid pink line never got very dark. It was only kinda there.

Screw the cost, I'm switching to the smiley face OPKs from now on. I also might start temping again (fuck me sideways). Because the cheapies failed me. Miserably.

There was a chance I ovulated within a few hours of the appontment this morning, but really it could have been anytime in the last 2 days. As my RE said, "In my heart of hearts, I feel like it's a risk to do the IUI today. $800 is nothing to sneeze at". My head agreed with her. My heart said otherwise.

So instead of going through with the IUI, Mike and I headed home to do it the old fashioned way. It turns out, sad sex is not very good sex.

I know I'm not out but lets face it- I am. 12 injections. 6 doctor appointments. 4 blood draws. 1 trigger. And god knows how much money and angst... and hope. All out the window.

I was so excited to wear my new lucky socks that Tracy from A Journey to Somewhere sent me too. Sitting on the table waiting for my u/s, all I could do was admire how cute they were. Indeed, both Dr. D and nurse S commented on the fun stripes as I thew my legs up into the stirrups (I liked not having my vag be the only star in the room for once). Maybe it was some kind of divine intervention, because Tracy actually bought me THREE pairs of uber cool socks. Here's hoping that the sock monkeys or long-necked giraffes have better luck.

Thank you Tracy!

Cycle 17, CD 15

I haven't updated on my progress much this cycle. After 13 days of Follistim and a trigger last night, I'm headed in for an IUI tomorrow at 8:30AM.

And I'm scared shitless.

It's not been a good cycle. I've not reacted well to the Follistim (not many follicles, and the ones I do have are growing very slowly or actually shrinking), my TSH skyrocketed because of the estrogen they have me on (to counteract the ovulation bleeding), and despite taking too many OPK tests to count- I'm still not sure if that line is a positive or not.

I have a bad habit of damning my chances at success before I'm out of the gate, but this has been the worst cycle to date. Maybe it's the hormones. Maybe I'm just scared it will never work. But with everything I have going against me right now, do we really go ahead and drop an additional $800 on an IUI? The answer is yes, of course. But I can't help but feel like we're throwing money out the window because I'm too stubborn to say when to call it off.

...And I keep getting baby announcements despite cancelling my facebook account.

...And mothers day is coming up and, that hurts. I actually had to leave the store while buying cards for my mom and my mother in law today because the tears just started streaming down my face.

...And my husband is mad at me because I don't want to have sex every day. Givemeafuckingbreakplease.

...And I've had two different people tell me this week, "Oh, only a year an a half? That's not long at all." And maybe it isn't. God knows there are women in this community that could lap me 10 times over. But thinking and hoping and wanting the exact same thing every single one of those 547 days certainly *feels* like a long time.

Pity party table for one please.

Cycle 17, CD 10

I didn't do well when I was on clomid. For those three (back to back) cycles I was a mess: agitated, hyper-emotional, angry, frustrated, weepy. It wasn't pretty. At the time, I thought it was me. I thought that for some reason, I just couldn't handle the stress of trying to get pregnant.

At the end of my 3rd (failed) clomid cycle, I vividly remember sitting on the edge of the table, paper sheet over me, and giving myself a peptalk while waiting for the doctor to come in. In my head, it went something like this: "Tutti. You can do this girlfriend. There is no reason to cry. People feel uncomfortable when you cry so keep it together. You can treat yourself to a large Frappuccino after this if no tears are shed". Within .3 seconds of the doctor walking into the room I was a bawling, sniveling disaster, flapping my hands in front of myself saying "I don't know what is wrong with me". Dr. D gave me a big hug, told me that what I was going through were classic clomid symptoms, and that I'd feel better after 27 days when all the drugs were out of my system. I stopped crying for a second and sputtered, "You mean... I'm not going crazy?"

This was one of the reasons I was so willing to move over to injectables (despite my fear of needles). Dr. D said the side effects were a lot less than clomid. But I think when I heard her, in my head that meant "no side effects" (because who are we kidding, anything was better than my clomid-induced-psychosis). So here I have been assuming for many more cycles that there were virtually no side effects and that my crazy was 100% my own.

It wasn't until I started feeling it creep in over the last week. That horrible feeling of anxiety, the wiggling chin ready to burst into tears when I thought my coworker was being rude to me (in all likelihood, she probably wasn't), the snapping at my husband for no real reason. And that's when the light bulb went off. Could how I'm feeling be drug induced? Could all of this stuff I've been feeling be made worse because of the hormones I'm on? I made logical sense, but I never put two and two together. It wasn't until my forced hiatus where I started feeling better that I realized there was a link: crazy on clomid, slightly crazy on injetables, and relatively normal when not on meds.

Dr. D confirmed this at my u/s the other day. She looked at me as if to say, "come on now, you didn't think the meds had no effect on you, did you?"

I totally did.

I'm not saying that if you aren't on meds you don't feel pretty damn horrible while walking the seemingly endless road of infertility. But it's this weird hard to describe hyper-emotional-turning-on-a-dime-psychosis-of-drastic-proportions that is just so not normal *me*, that just made me wonder who I was turning into.

I'm still a crazy bitch at times and I'll always be a crier, but at least I'm not as bad as I thought it was.