Goodbye 2012!

CD7

Can’t say I am sad to see it go! The promise of a new year is very exciting, but at the same time this marks about 1 year since we started doing testing & medicated cycles and still no baby.

2012 has been a tough year.  Not my worst year, but a close second.  We had our extended family Christmas party on Saturday.  I knew it was going to be a tough one.  With every other married woman there either has a child or is pregnant with one, there were plenty of baby gifts to open and oo and ahh over.  Even my cousin’s baby who is still in utero got gifts!  I heard several people say “soon there will be another baby here too!” I get their excitement, I am excited for my family too, but the feeling of being left behind feels so overwhelming. 

At the party I asked my aunt (who has had breast & ovarian cancer and who adopted her child) to talk with my alone.  I started out by asking her about the genetic testing she had done for the genes, which came out negative, and then I rolled into “We want to get all of the gene stuff in order because we have been trying for a while to have a baby (here is when I start to get choked up and cry) and nothing has worked yet so IVF might not be too far away for us.”  She started crying once she saw me crying and she said she knows how I feel – it was tough for her to watch her sisters get pregnant with no problems, but she said in the end everything turned out fine when they adopted my cousin.  I had a feeling that she would bring up adoption as an option, but honestly DH and I aren’t seriously considering that at the moment.  We have so much going on with current treatments that looking into adoption at this time doesn’t make sense.  DH and I are pretty determined to have a biological child, no matter how long it takes. It feels good to have someone else know what is going on with us.  I am not sure if the news will make its way down to my other aunt and my cousins, but if it does - that is fine. 

Ok so 2013, here goes nothing!  Let’s make this the year of the baby!  

Might as Well

 CD3

I went in for my monitoring b/w and u/s this morning.  I got one of my favorite techs.  She saw me and said “oh I remember you, I have seen you here before” and I just kind of gave her the “yup still here” answer.  I guess it is nice to be remembered, but not in this case!

The good news is that all is well for IUI #4 to get started.  This will be my last time taking Clomid as it is my 6^th cycle taking it.  My expectations of this cycle working are pretty slim to none.  In fact I am sort of annoyed the nurse said the RE had me down for 1 more IUI with clomid because now my friend’s wedding will fall within our 2 ww, so I probably won’t be able to drink much at the wedding booo.  If I get a BFP it would be worth it, but to not have all the fun I could at the wedding just to get a BFN a few days later will stink. 

I need to talk to my aunt about the breast cancer gene test that she had done – she has had both breast and ovarian cancer and she had the gene testing done but it came out negative.  This really surprised me because I assumed she had the gene.  The geneticist I have visited wanted to see if I could get a copy of the report to make sure they tested for all strains or something.  So I am going to ask my aunt more about it and probably explain why I need it (in case we do IVF this would be good information to have).  Also this aunt had IF trouble (not sure what the case was, but they adopted my cousin).  So she is a good gateway to the telling the rest of my family since she knows what IF feels like. I am just nervous about having the rest of my family know.  They are all supportive people, but I just don’t know what kind of comments I might get.  It is so much easier being the one who is waiting to have kids versus the one who can’t have them naturally – and I am just not sure I will like the change in title.

This Year's Christmas...Not my Favorite

CD2

Nothing says no baby this Christmas like the red she devil showing up!  Yup she came on Christmas day!  What joy!  Well I guess technically she showed up Christmas eve but that was just some spotting.  I called my RE just to check if they needed me to do anything, thinking they wouldn't even need to do bw and u/s this time because I figured we wouldn't be doing an IUI this cycle.  Turns out the RE had planned to have us do one more IUI, so we figured, why not!  It will give us something to do to pass the time before our WTF appt on January 3rd.  

DH keeps asking me what I think the RE will tell us to do next at our WTF appt.  I think he will probably give us the option of doing another 1-2 IUI's with injectibles or do IVF, but ultimately he will leave it up to us to make the decision.  DH and I both go back and forth, but honestly I think if this IUI #4 fails, we will probably want to just head to IVF.  

This Christmas was a tough one, I must admit.  Being down with DH's family away from any pregnant people or new babies was helpful, but I still got pangs of sadness when I would check facebook and all I would see is pregnant friends and babies celebrating their first Christmas.  I don't know why I torture myself with Facebook, I really don't.  I just need to keep telling myself "it will happen, be patient." easier said than done!

IUI #3 is a BFN

CD27, 13dpiui

So I just got the call from the RE, negative again this month.  No Christmas miracle baby I am afraid.  With the cramping I have had the last few days I pretty much knew I was out, but I always had a glimmer of home.  Well that glimmer has clearly gone away now and all that is left is me feeling like the shell of the person I used to be sitting in my cubicle tearing up. 

Ok let’s have a little pity party before we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves up, shall we?  I need to figure out how I am going to make it through the holiday party we are hosting tomorrow night for our friends.  Two of my friends are 5 months pregnant so I am sure that will be dominating a lot of the conversation.  I will just have to excuse myself from these conversations saying I have to do stuff for the party.  I also have to make it through my family party next weekend with my cousin’s newborn and my other cousin’s pregnancy.  I always said that if we ever had to move to more serious treatments then I would tell my extended family (these cousins are like my sisters), and part of me just wants to tell them the truth when they ask how my Christmas was.  Not sure if a family Christmas party is the best place to bring up our baby making woes, but oh well.

I made a WTF appointment with the RE the first week in January, so we will see what comes of that. 

Ok enough pity party, now for the good things:

•   I can now drink my face off at our party tomorrow night and over the holidays

•  We will most likely be able to go on our ski trip to Colorado in early February
•    I can do some craft projects I was avoiding due to the chemicals involved with them