Looks Like This is Really Happening

I'll admit it...I have a POAS addiction.  I never had one before, but I definitely have one now.  Since Thursday morning I have used 7 HPT's including 4 different brands.  And I am happy to report that they have all been positive. 

The most recent test is the one on the left. (sorry I don't know how to turn the picture very well) I was very nervous last post that the second FRER that I took was lighter than the first, but thanks to the helpful advice of Lisa, I took another one in the afternoon and it was indeed darker than using FMU.  




I also seem to have an addiction to taking pictures of my sticks.  Below is the one from this afternoon and this evening. 

I can't tell you how much of a relief it is to see the second line starting to get darker.  Each and every time I POAS I fully expect no second line to appear, it must be the IF in me.  I have my first beta tomorrow morning and I just pray that I get a good number.  

Easter went well today.  There was a cute baby  in front of us at church and I got to play with my nieces at dinner.  It takes on a whole new meaning knowing there is one growing inside of me. 

I know this pregnancy isn't a slam dunk by any means at this point, but I just wanted to say how much I appreciate all the thoughts and prayers you guys sent our way.  I love following your blogs and I hope and pray that those of you who are still struggling will get a BFP very soon.  

Sharing is Caring

CD34


It is about 3 am here and I can't sleep.  Peeing on things and comparing them is driving me batty so I have decided that today I won't pee on anything!  I just need a day off.  

So in this post I decided I will share a little bit about my (regular) life with you.  I am not big into sharing pictures of people on my blog and this probably won't change until I start doing bump shots (FX), but here are some nice bulleted "sharings" about my life.  

My Family

• DH and I met freshman year of college.  He actually came to my room during the first week or two looking for my roommate that he met during orientation, but ended up seeing me instead!  We hung out a lot the first semester but didn't start dating until midway through the year. 
• DH is from PA and I have always lived in Massachusetts.  
• About 2 years ago we moved back to my hometown where my grandfather lives with my mother and my older brother, SIL and niece live. 
• My father passed away almost 5 years ago from kidney cancer.  I miss him especially now that we own an old house because he was so good at fixing things, DH and I often talk about him 'watching over us' during home repairs.
• I can walk to my brother's house and it is awesome!  We often walk winnie and they walk with my niece in the stroller.  
• My mom has red hair, I do, my SIL does and so does my niece.  My SIL and I are often confused as sisters.  
• I am very close with my mom's side of the family, I have always spent pretty much every holiday with them since I was born, they mostly live in MA, but also NJ, NH, and TX.

My Pets

• I have always been a pet lover since I was little.  I have a little theory that we will end up having a boy first because of the gender pattern of my pets in the order that I got them (I don't have all of these now):

Daisy, Rabbit = Girl
Skittles, Bird = Boy
Michelle, Guinea Pig = Girl
Baxter, Guinea Pig = Boy
Sadie, Rabbit = Girl
Stewie, Rabbit = Boy
Winnie, dog = girl
 so a boy is up next and as long as we don't get another pet, I think it is pretty clear :)

•  I used to have another blog about socializing my current rabbit and dog.  I stopped the blog because the "integration" wasn't going so well.  My dog doesn't try to really harm the rabbit, but chases him around so they don't get to spend much time together.  Although recently I put their crate/cage in the same room so i hope during the day they are hanging out together and start to become friends. 
• I have wanted a dog forever, but my parents never let me have one growing up. Winnie is so much fun, she is a huge cuddler and will paw at you while sitting on the couch if you are not constantly touching her.  I hope one day she will calm down enough to be a therapy dog, I think she would be really good at it because she LOVES people. 
• Winnie pees when she meets someone and is excited.  When we bring her somewhere we have to tell people to ignore her at first so she doesn't pee all over the place, I hope she grows out of this. 

My Job

• I went to business school and went back to get my masters in accounting.  I am a CPA, but don't ask me about taxes!  I do financial accounting for a large company.  I wouldn't say it is my 'dream job' but most days I do actually enjoy what I do.  Would I quit my job if I won the lottery?  Hell yeah. 

Sorry my job really only warrants 1 bullet

My Interests/Hobbies

•  I have always loved athletics.  Growing up I played soccer all through high school.  I also ran track and played rugby in college. 
• One of my favorite stress relievers is running.  I currently don't go for very long runs (3-4 miles) but over the past few years I have completed 3 half marathons and I have a dream of one day running a full marathon.
• I am addicted to Pinterest lately and have started to become quite crafty!  Maybe I will post some pictures of my crafts sometime!  My favorite one is my chalkboard, where i painted over a large framed picture that I got at a yard sale and now I use the chalkboard to write dinner party menus and other announcements. 
• DH and I love looking at real estate.  We are constantly checking what houses come on the market in our area and love to go to open houses even though we are not moving anywhere hopefully forever. Our house was built in 1892 and is victorian in style.  I love our house.  It isn't perfect, but it has some great character and we can walk into town for coffee, restaurants, etc. 
• DH and I love to travel.  DH used to travel for work (mostly unfun places) but he collected a lot of hotel/air points which have allowed us to visit some fun places like: Italy (Rome, Venice, Florence, Tuscany, Lake Como), London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Munich, Innsbruck, Los Cabos, Bahamas.  We hope to go to Ireland in August and hope it is a babymoon. 
• We currently have one of those self serve soft serve places in town and a real ice cream place is coming in during the spring. This all equals bad news for me because I LOVE ice cream!

Ok so it is now about 4 am and congratulations to you if you have made it this far!  I am going to go back to bed and hopefully get a few more hours of sleep.  

Thank you all for your heartfelt words and congrats yesterday!

What a Rollercoaster

CD33

So yesterday and this morning have been pretty emotional. 

Yesterday I was CD32, 13dpo according to FF and hadn't really had any indication that the red she devil was on her way.  So yesterday morning I woke up at 5:30 am peed, went back to bed.  Then got up at 6 am and figured I would test with a wondfo.  I peed, dipped, looked at it after about a minute and left for a run with my dog.  I didn’t put too much stock in seeing a positive because this month we were benched.  I got back from the run and checked out the test, and to my surprise there were 2 lines.  I didn’t even have to squint to see the second line.  I blinked a few times looking at the test, said “no freakin way.” DH had already gone to work so I couldn’t have him check.

I knew that I was reading the test after the allotted time limit (it had been at least 40 min) so I didn’t put much stock into the test.  I took a picture of it and got ready for work.  Then all through the day at work I would look at the picture and say to myself “that is a real positive.” 

When I got home from work I raced upstairs and took a FRER test, after the 3 minutes there were 2 distinct lines.  Then I took a blue dye test, the line was very light, but it was there.  Now I am like “wow I am actually pregnant, this is crazy.” 

So I get out the tiny baby sneakers I had been hiding away in preparation for telling DH.  When he comes home I play it cool, “oh how was your day blah blah blah.”  I tell him that I ended up taking a pregnancy test today, actually I took 3 and they were all positive and then I showed him the shoes.  He screamed and hugged me.  It was great. 

We were both pretty guarded at first about talking about it because it is tough to get excited when you know it can be taken away so easily.  As we were eating dinner we chatted about painting our spare bedroom and when the baby would be here, etc.  I told him I would test again tomorrow and call the RE office to go in for a blood test.

Now is when things start to get a little rocky…

I couldn’t sleep last night, tossing and turning, nervous, excited, etc.  I wake up at 2am and pee because I can’t hold it in.  When I wake up at 6 am I pee again and use this to take another FRER test.  I stare at it during the 3 min wait, thinking “shouldn’t the second line be there by now?” eventually a second line showed up, but wait, it seems a little lighter than yesterday’s FRER, and I took yesterday’s FRER at like 6pm so shouldn’t todays with FMU be darker?  Cue freak out sadness moment, tears start to fall.  My thoughts  go between getting mad at myself for thinking this would be a viable pregnancy and thoughts of “hey maybe it is still ok.” 

I left a voicemail for my RE’s nurse about my news and said that I wanted to come in for bloodwork today if possible.  She called me back at work and I missed the call.  She said she wanted me to come in on Monday for the blood test.  Monday? Are you kidding me?  So I call her back and leave a message that is basically like “are you sure you don’t want me to test today?  Don’t I need to know if I should take progesterone, etc?’  She calls me back and I get the call, she is like “ok why don’t you take progesterone tonight and tomorrow, etc” I know I kinda missed the deadline to get the blood work results today (they need to be done by 9:30 am for the lab, but I don’t understand why I couldn’t come in tomorrow for it.  I wish I had pushed the nurse more, but I was happy that I at least won the progesterone battle.  I know she didn’t want me to come in tomorrow because it is a holiday weekend and would mean more work for them. 

I called DH and told him – he was pissed they didn’t have me come in today or even tomorrow.  I told him that if I get tested today or Monday, as long as I am taking the progesterone there really isn’t much more we can do to help this pregnancy.  I am sitting at work, pretty upset because I am starting to feel a bit crampy.  In my heart I don’t believe this is going to work out and to go from the high of last night with planning things to thinking we are back to the drawing board just plain sucks.  Last night I thought this weekend and Easter with my family would be easy to get through and now I am thinking it will be harder than ever.

The one thing I am thankful for is that for the first time ever I had an egg that was fertilized by DH’s sperm and actually implanted (or started to) in my uterus.  We have never gotten that far before.  I am definitely going to push my RE to do injects only for IUI #6 because now I am pretty positive that the clomid thinning my lining is part of the reason why we haven’t had success yet. 

I will keep on testing over the weekend on my own and hope I continue to at least see lines.  I can’t believe I have to wait until Monday for a beta. 

The Talk

CD32

So last night I met up with my two cousins for dinner.  I knew I was going to spill the beans on our IF, but I wasn’t sure how to work it into the conversation.  We caught up with each other first and talked about Easter coming up and other things.  After our dinners had come and there was a lull in the conversation I said “well since April is coming up and National Infertility Awareness week is in April, I wanted to let you guys know about what DH and I have been going through.”  At this point I, of course, started to tear up and cry, but I muscled through and just kind of blurted the rest out.

They told me that had a feeling something was up with us, but didn’t want to pry.  They asked me questions about treatment and really didn’t say anything bad, so I was very happy about that.  One said that she wished she had known, because she was nervous she had said stupid stuff during her pregnancy, etc. but I told her I didn’t want our issues to affect how they talked about their pregnancies and their babies (and I hope them knowing now won’t change things either). 

The only thing that was said that rubbed me the wrong way was when my cousin told me to “enjoy this time now”  I get what she means, she has a 5 month old and life is pretty crazy, but it is hard for me to “enjoy this time” when I don’t know when we will get pregnant.   Although she also told me that I was “brave” so it sort of made up for that comment.

After I got home I thought of a good analogy for how I feel.  It is as if DH and I are standing on a train platform, our bags are packed, we have our tickets, but the trains just keep passing us by.  The trains have our friends and family members on them, they are chatting and laughing and we are just there waiting.  There are other couples on the platform too, but they are far away from us and in the shadows. 

I do feel somewhat of a sense of relief having told them what’s up…now we just have to see how it goes from here!

A Bit Nervous

CD31

So over a week ago my cousin who just had her first baby about 20 days ago texted me to see if I could do dinner with her and my other cousin for tonight.  I figured maybe this would get bumped out to a different date or cancelled because they both have small babies and who knows what will come up. Well this morning she texted me to see what restaurant we should go to.  Honestly I am a bit nervous about this encounter.  I told myself that it would be a good opportunity to clue them in on our IF.  I am really close to them both, but didn’t tell them because they were both pregnant during most of our IF trouble.

It’s just now that the day is here I don’t know how I am going to bring it up.  When they say “how are you” should I just blurt it out?  Or should I say something like “well since April is almost here and it is infertility awareness week (or is it month?) I wanted to make you aware of our infertility.”  I am just scared I am going to start weeping in front of them.  I am also nervous that their responses won’t be “right” you know sayings “oh it will happen, just relax” or “God’s plan, blah blah blah”  What I really want them to say is “wow that really sucks, I can’t believe you had to watch our whole pregnancies and having our babies be born while dealing with all of this.” 

I will update with a post tomorrow on how it goes.  Wish me luck ladies!

So Sick

CD30

When the in-laws were up this weekend we cooked steaks on Saturday night. Later that night DH got up in the middle of the night and threw up, then got up a couple of hours later and had to throw up again.  The next day he was pretty miserable and he is still feeling pretty terrible today.  

Yesterday, not thinking, I put some of the leftover steak in my sandwich at lunch.  A couple hours later I was nauseous and threw up a bit at work, then I went home and had to pull over to throw up and then threw up again when I got home.  I was in pretty rough shape.  Last night I threw up ever 1/2 hour for like 3-4 hours, I couldn't even keep down water!  I was in the fetal position in our bathroom for half the night. 

So today I am home from work and will hopefully start feeling better soon.  DH is out at the doctors and I gave him a list of things to pick up:
Popsicles
Ginger ale
Gatorade

I am hoping to sooth my throat a bit with those popsicles and get some calories in me since I haven't eaten since lunch yesterday.  Gosh I sure hope this isn't what morning sickness is like!

CD28

So fertility friend says I am 9dpo, still don't believe that one.  I am usually pretty crampy by CD28, so I am a bit nervous that the red she devil is going to show up late this month which is no fun because:

1) it gives me hope that I am pregnant (when I am most likely not)
and
2) it delays me from starting my next cycle.  

The in-laws were up this weekend and things went pretty well.  They did not bring up IF at all which was nice, because who wants to discuss reproduction with their in-laws?  I got a little nervous at dinner one night when MIL kept telling us stories that "were secrets so don't tell anyone" umm ok if that is how she is with other people's secrets then what makes us think she won't talk about our IF.  It is not that we don't want other people to know about it, but we would rather it come from us so we get the correct story across.  I hate the idea of her telling neighbors about it behind our back.  

Other than that the visit went well.  We had some nice dinners and took them into Boston for lunch and to show them DH's office.  They brought their dog which is the same age as Winnie (although maybe 1/4 her size) and by the time they left this morning Winnie was exhausted:

 

The next 2 weeks will be pretty busy for me at work, and I am thankful for that.  I hope they go by quickly so by the time I blink it will be time to get medicated for IUI #6!  I will be glad when that is in the books and we can start to think of starting IVF.  It is pretty sad I have NO confidence in this last IUI round, but heck if I don't get my hopes up and we get a BFP it will be an exciting surprise.  

There have been a lot of BFP's and surprise BFP's on the Bump boards lately, and it is really nice to see, I sure hope this trend continues! 

This picture is random, but so true:

Rolling Along

CD25

So according to fertility friend I ovulated on CD19, but I don't actually put much stock into that mostly because the temp shift hasn't been too great and my temp hasn't been elevated for too long.  Not sure how good our timing was if I actually did ovulate - looks like we hit 0-2 that that isn't too terrible. 

Other than that, not much to report.  My cousin who just had the baby wants to go out to dinner with me and my other cousin (who has a 4 month old).  They aren't bringing the babies and I figured this would be a good time to tell them both about our IF struggles.  I sort of hinted to my cousin that I "had some stuff I could talk to them about" but she probably thinks I am pregnant and want to ask them pregnancy/baby questions.  I am wondering how to ease this into the conversation.  I might just blurt it out when they ask "how have you been" or "what's new with you."  I just hope I can hold it together.  Telling two new moms about our IF struggle may not be as smooth a conversation as I hope, but as long as they are supportive and don't brush off our struggle then I will be happy. 

In other news the in-laws are coming up for a visit this weekend.  This is the first time we will see them since DH told them about our IF a couple of weeks ago.  I don't think it will be a main topic of conversation unless we bring it up, but it is sort of like a white elephant in the room.  

Ugh another snow storm

CD23

Just this weekend we some some flowers starting to pop up in the backyard then today BAM snowstorm.  We probably have about 7 inches and it is still snowing a bit.  We were just down to some small patches of snow and now the place is covered again.  Hopefully it will warm up the rest of the week and get it out of here quick!

So in IF news we are on cycle day 23.  No sign of ovulation, but I wasn't really expecting anything.






I am just starting to feel some slight cramps so maybe that means I won't have to wait too long for the red she devil to show up.  Last cycle I was benched with cysts I got the she devil after only 22 days.  I sure would like to start a new cycle soon - this waiting thing sucks.

In other news we celebrated St. Patricks day over at my aunt and uncles house on Sunday.  We had boiled dinner: corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots and it was tasty!  This was the first time that we got together with my cousin's new baby.  I was sort of dreading the idea of being the only married couple there without kids, but it wasn't that bad.  I mostly played with my niece and the other babies and tried to walk away when the moms started talking mom talk.

I think that if I were on meds this month it would have been harder to deal with, but luckily I feel so much more "me" this month.  I didn't realize how crazy the drugs had been making me until I had a month without them.  I am sure DH likes the change, I don't think I have freaked out on him once!

Can’t Escape Them

CD17

Babies...i just can't escape them. Got home last night to find a birth announcement card.  Then I opened the rest of the mail to find a thank you note from my cousin with pictures of her baby born in October.  Then I started watching House Hunters and sure enough the couple was knocked up by the time they moved into their new house (they weren't even trying yet when they were looking at houses).  I figured, ugh, I should watch TMZ because that show won't have any babies/pregnant people on it.  WRONG.  They had a segment on Reggie Bush's pregnant girlfriend which segued into a segment on Kim Kardashian's pregnancy.  I won’t even go on facebook anymore.  I am probably oversensitive, but seriously, babies are everywhere.  I am already dreading the St. Patrick's day dinner at my uncle house since there will be 3 babies there.  

So no sign of ovulation yet.  I am assuming I won’t ovulate this month since I am not on any meds, but DH we will do our thing just to make sure.  

Posting Machine

I usually don’t do more than 1 post a day, but this has been a very full day which has warranted another post.

Because there is such a strong family history of breast cancer in my family, my doctors want me to do a baseline mammogram before we start IVF.  I went to see the Nurse Practitioner today so they could clear me for insurance, etc.  While doing the consult the NP tells me that her son and his wife have been dealing with IF for a while and she just found out today that their IVF #1 was successful.  She told me it was a sign that it will work for me too, and I sure hope she is right!  She also told me to pray to St. Gerard because he is the patron saint of motherhood, has anybody else heard this? 

On my way back to work from my appointment I stopped by the hospital where my cousin was with her newborn baby.  It was kind of funny driving from one hospital to another.  The baby is adorable.  He had his eyes open almost the whole time I was there and he was looking around and squirming like crazy.  Holding him was wonderful.  I didn’t feel sad, or envious, I just felt love.  I am so glad that I went to the hospital.  

Posting Machine

I usually don’t do more than 1 post a day, but this has been a very full day which has warranted another post.

Because there is such a strong family history of breast cancer in my family, my doctors want me to do a baseline mammogram before we start IVF.  I went to see the Nurse Practitioner today so they could clear me for insurance, etc.  While doing the consult the NP tells me that her son and his wife have been dealing with IF for a while and she just found out today that their IVF #1 was successful.  She told me it was a sign that it will work for me too, and I sure hope she is right!  She also told me to pray to St. Gerard because he is the patron saint of motherhood, has anybody else heard this? 

On my way back to work from my appointment I stopped by the hospital where my cousin was with her newborn baby.  It was kind of funny driving from one hospital to another.  The baby is adorable.  He had his eyes open almost the whole time I was there and he was looking around and squirming like crazy.  Holding him was wonderful.  I didn’t feel sad, or envious, I just felt love.  I am so glad that I went to the hospital.  

Whirlwind

 CD15

The weekend started out pretty chill.  I was working from home on Friday because we got like 1.5 ft of snow (much more than the forecasted 3-6 inches) but I love a good snow storm so that didn’t bother me one bit.

On Saturday we painted our family room.  I find painting very satisfying – it is a cheap and relatively easy way to make a room look a lot better.  DH and I had a staydate on Saturday night.  We got some nice steak to grill, opened a bottle of wine and reminisced about some of our vacation adventures.  We decided that whether IVF works or not we are going to plan a trip to Ireland for September.  If IVF (or IUI #6) works then it will be a babymoon.  If these don’t then it will be a welcomed consolation vacation and something to look forward to.

On Sunday I went to my friend from high school’s baby shower.  I was fine throughout the baby shower, I sat with 3 of my friends who don’t have kids and that was nice, but we sat at a table with a pregnant lady, a lady with 2 kids and a lady with 3 kids so the table talk was very kid focused.  Overall the shower was nice and I held up quite well.

While I was at the shower DH went to my mom’s house and helped her get her house ready to put it on the market, then took her to some open houses.  The fact that he does these things without me asking and likes to spend time with my mom makes me so happy.  He is truly a great partner and I consider myself extremely lucky that I get to go through life with him by my side. 

Last night DH called his parents and told them about our IF struggle.  We hadn’t told them anything about it previously, but we wanted to tell them because they are visiting in 2 weeks and things are so far along now that it has felt weird not telling them.  They promised not to tell anyone and I am sure they will keep it to themselves.  I don’t know whether the visit will be weird with them knowing, but I don’t think they will bring it up unless we do. 

I woke up to a text from my cousin with a picture of her son who was born last night via emergency c-section.  She wasn’t due for another 10 days but she went to the hospital last night with concerns and they had to take him out.  He is beautiful and wish I could say that the news made me feel overjoyed, but that would be a lie.  It breaks my heart that I feel this way.  How can I feel happy for someone and so sad at the same time? It is such a weird mix.  But I am determined that my outward expressions will only be ones of happiness, only those of you in blog world will know my true feelings (lucky you). I am going to try to go and visit them at the hospital today. 

Sono-hystogram...done!

CD9

DH is training for an Ironman triathlon (yeah I know it is kind of crazy, but he loves it) in July this year so we are trying to include a lot more vegetables and overall healthy food into our diets.  I saw on pinterest a recipe for kale chips and I figured I would give it a shot.  I picked up a kale bunch at the supermarket last night and took it home to prepare.  I cut up the leaves off of the stem and looking at these leaves I thought to myself “there is no way this is going to be good.”  I laid the kale out on a baking sheet, sprayed them with some cooking spray, drizzled a little olive oil, garlic salt and red pepper flakes and put them in the oven on 350 degrees for 12 minutes.

When they came out I was happy to see that they had crisped up.  I took one crunchy bite and they were actually really good!  Salty and crunchy like chips that sort of dissolve in your mouth.  DH tried them and he thought they were awesome too!  I highly recommend them and will be making them again, but with perhaps less red pepper since they were pretty hot. (sorry the picture is upside down)

I just got back from my sonohystogram.  It wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible.  It was better than the HSG because it was done at my RE’s office instead of a hospital.  I got my favorite ultrasound tech, Annie, and she did an ultrasound to check things out before the big event.  She checked on my cyst and I was happy to see that it is shrinking down!  It was like 42mm on CD3 and today on CD9 it is down to low 30something.  With this shrinking rate I am hoping it will be gone by the time my next cycle starts, fingers crossed.

The procedure was done by the ultrasound tech and a nurse practitioner.  First thing they did was put in a speculum just like they do for an IUI or a pap.  They cleaned my cervix with some iodine and then inserted the catheter.  This was all pretty easy, similar to IUI and no big deal.  The nurse told me that they were then going to inflate a balloon that would expand my uterus a bit so that they could see in there and push in some saline.  They warned me that I would cramp up and I certainly did.  Kind of felt like the HSG a bit, but not quite as bad.  Felt like the most intense period cramp ever.  Then she sent in some saline which also made me cramp up, but then they were able to shrink down the balloon a bit.  Once they shrunk the balloon I felt a lot better and I could watch up on the screen as they took a look at my uterus.   It was kind of gross how the saline drips out of you as they do this procedure. 

The nurse said that my uterus looked good – no red flags such as polyps or masses, so that was awesome news to get.  Once they took all the tools out of my whoohaa I felt a lot better.  I was back at work within almost an hour.  I did see a bit of blood once I went to the bathroom back at work, which surprised me because I didn’t bleed from the HSG. 

So now that that is over with I can continue on my break cycle.  I think I deserve a drink tonight! 

(just replace vodka with wine)

Sonohystogram?

CD8

I had a nice weekend, pretty chill.  On Saturday I went to my friend’s house for brunch with a few other gal pals.  She was dog sitting her parent’s dog, who is a goldendoodle just like Winnie!  In fact they are from the same breeder in Alabama so maybe they are distant cousins or something!  So I brought Winnie with me and the two of them did not stop playing the whole time we were there.  They are both about 1.5 years old so they have A LOT of energy! (sorry i dont know how to turn the picture!)

On Saturday night we had friends over including our friends who were visiting from NY and the wife is about 7.5 months pregnant.  Sometimes the conversation was a little tough with all the pregnancy/baby stuff, but overall it was fine because nobody else there had kids so it wasn’t the main topic of conversation all night. 

So tomorrow I am going in for a sonohystogram, anybody have one of these?  I don’t really know what to expect but it is at my RE’s office and they said it will only take 10 minutes, so how bad can it be?  The only thing that makes me nervous is that they told me to take a lot of advil the morning of.  If anyone has any experience with this please let me know!  I am glad we are doing it on a forced break cycle, because heaven forbid a month goes by when something isn’t being shoved up my whoohaa!

And after the procedure I go back to waiting for this cycle to end.  Part of the reason why being on a break this cycle is so tough is because it means that we won’t have a chance to be pregnant before my cousin gives birth (I figured if I got pregnant before this then it would make it a lot easier).  Also I had visions of being able to tell people we were pregnant on mother’s day if this cycle had worked, and now that is not going to happen either.  I don’t know why I set myself up for disappointment by imagining these things like “we would be able to announce on xx date if this cycle works!”  well a girl can dream I guess!

Book Review

CD5

So  a couple months back somebody on 3TC recommended the book “What he can expect when she’s not expecting” as a good book for husbands to read when the couple is dealing with IF. I asked DH if I should get it for him and he said “yes” and so I ordered the book from Amazon.com and it was pretty cheap if I remember correctly.

The book came and I showed DH and put it next to his night stand.  Maybe 3-4 weeks went by and he didn’t read it so I picked it up and started to read it.  He asked me why I was reading it and I kind of said “well somebody should” (as you can see I was kind of annoyed he wasn’t reading it).  Every night I would read a couple of pages.  The book was really good – written by the husband of a woman who went through 10 (yes 10!) IVF cycles and they finally had twins through a gestational surrogate.  The husband co-authors the book with a doctor. 

The book doesn’t get too technical but explains the testing, procedures, etc in terms that a non-doctor can understand.  The book has some humor in it – one section is called “The Room” and talks about the sperm sample collection room at the RE.  I thought it was an easy read and could help out DH’s who may not fully understand what us women have to go through in this process.

I finished the book a couple of nights ago and asked DH when he would read it.  He said he “wasn’t really into reading books” and I told him it was important to me.  He kind of hemmed and hawed and then I pulled out the “if I have to take drugs, give myself shots, go get bloodwork done, get ultrasounds and be artificially inseminated almost every month, then you can read this damn book” card and he started reading the book the next night :)  I had to push him a bit, but honestly I think he will enjoy it once he gets into it.