Ovulating on my own?

CD17

Well the answer to the question above is: most likely not, but there is a chance.  Yesterday was CD16 and I actually noticed egg white CM in the morning plus had some twinging down in my right ovary area.  I know it is a bit naïve to think that I might actually ovulate on my own this cycle, but I suppose having down 2 months of consecutive Clomid 150 mg that there may be some residual meds in my system that are growing follicles (in addition to some nice cysts of course).  So I will keep temping and we will wait and see but I am not being very optimistic for this cycle – just praying next cycle starts promptly!

So this weekend we celebrated by grandfather’s 90^th birthday!  My grandfather is awesome and so with it for a 90 year old man.  I can’t believe it when he tells me a story and says that it happened 60 years ago – hard to imagine being alive for that long!

 To be honest with you I was dreading the party a little bit.  My cousin gave birth about 3 weeks ago and my other cousin is about 5 ½ months pregnant.  It was nice to see and hold the baby and that wasn’t really a problem for me.  The thing that made me sad was when my cousins were talking about being pregnant.  I was sad to not be able to join in the conversation – I sort of felt like a sad infertile person who had to sit in the corner while fertile people got to talk about how terrible their hormones were and how they were craving this and that.  I know they don’t know that this conversation hurt me – they don’t even know we are dealing with IF –but it just made me want to crawl into a hole and cry. 

I am still debating whether I should let my extended family know what we are dealing with.  We are so close that it just feels weird when they ask “how are you doing” and I just answer “good, good” when that is far from the truth.  Honestly my main reason for not saying anything is that I don’t want people to act differently around me.  I don’t want pity, I don’t want people not to talk about their own babies or pregnancies and I definitely don’t want any “just relax” type comments.  But sometimes I think that a few more prayers or some more support might help.  Also – if we do have to do IVF and I do tell the family – then they would know the timing most likely and if we did end up with a BFP people would probably know before we are ready to tell people.  So all in all I think keeping it to ourselves seems like the best decision – for now at least. 

Also - side note - i am so loving the 'secret' pinterest boards!  These are boards that people don't see what you pin - so of course i promptly set up my secret IF board and a secret baby board!

 

It is easy to lose track

CD13

I had to look up on fertility friend to see what cycle day this is for me.  It is so funny how things change when you aren't cycling!  This time last month I would be triggering tonight.   

I can't say the break has been the worst thing.  I had a work trip to California that would have been stressful if I had to worry about meds and timing.  I have very low expectations of ovulating on my own this month (or getting the red she devil timely for that matter).  Just please no 50 day cycle!  

I was talking with my coworker who went to California with me (she is 39 and has a 3 year old) on the drive to work in the morning.  We were talking about her kid and she asked if I want to have kids.  I said yes and she mentioned something about it took her a while to conceive her first and had trouble with miscarriages.  I told her that we are having trouble in that area too (IF not miscarriages) and we talked about it a little.  She said I could always come to her if I ever needed to talk about it, which was very sweet of her considering we don't have a super close relationship.  So I guess at least 1 person at work knows, but I really don't see her telling others about this. 

Might not be posting as much this month

CD6

As my title says - i probably won't be posting nearly as often this month due to being on a break.  There really just won't be much IF related things to talk about since i won't be monitored all the time! 

 At first when I got the news we were benched it hit me hard. Now I am sort of ok with it - it is nice not to have to worry about how my follicles are doing, whether I ovulated, whether we had good timing, etc.  Don't get me wrong, I don't like how we don't really have a shot at getting pregnant this month, but I am not as disappointed as I thought I would be. 

Benched.

CD3

Well the good news is that I don’t have to worry about drinking or RE appointments conflicting with the timing of my friend’s bachelorette party at the end of the month.

The bad news is that is because I have to sit this cycle out due to 2 cysts on both sides of my ovaries.  I think the nurse said one was 28 mm and one was 32 mm.  Bonus is that they will burst at some point and it may hurt a lot. 

I really don’t want to do another sob fest at work so I am really trying to hold it in this time, but this really fucking sucks.  I don’t usually swear but this time it is warranted.  The thought of taking this month off kills me because I already feel so behind.  Plus I don’t even know how long my cycle will be – so I may have to wait another 50 days to start again!  ARGH I HATE INFERTILITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just got back from a meeting with my department head which makes things slightly better.  He said a bunch of people are going to California next week because we just acquired a company out there and he wants me to go.  This would have been right in the middle of my mid cycle ultrasound if I had been able to cycle this month – so that would have been tricky.  Would I rather cycle this month than go to California? Yes.  But this news makes me slightly less pissed off. 

Let's try this again

CD2

Two days after my blood test for IUI#2 the red she devil showed up.  So that makes last cycle 30 days long which is the shortest in YEARS.  So we are all set up with CD3 ultrasound tomorrow and the meds (150mg clomid + Ovidrel shot) are ordered and will arrive on Monday so I can start preparing for IUI#3.  

I don't really have high expectations for this cycle...seeing as the other 2 didn't work, but it feels like a stepping stone towards IVF.  I am going to try really hard not to do the "if we get pregnant this cycle the due date with be xxx"  it is so hard to reset after thinking that way each cycle.  I am better off not even looking it up. 

I have still been looking at baby stuff on pinterest, but not as much as I used to.  It used to make me excited and now it just makes me sad. Like the sad infertile girl pinning for babies while everyone else on there is pinning because they are actually expecting a baby.

Figuring out Insurance

CD30

So after yesterday’s negative test I have been doing a lot of research on insurance coverage.  I feel extremely fortunate that we do have coverage.  After speaking with the folks at BCBS I have found that:

• We have 6 IUI or IVF cycles covered

•   The 6 cycles is per child (not a lifetime max)

•   If I were to do an IUI and have them charge me the cost of the actual IUI procedure then the meds and b/w & u/s would still be covered by insurance and not count towards the IUI 6 count. 

So knowing all of this I think it makes sense to do another IUI with Clomid and not run the actual IUI procedure through insurance.  That way we have the meds, b/w, u/s covered and will only have to pay for the IUI procedure, which I am assuming is a couple hundred dollars.  But this would save 1 of our 6 tries. 

Ugh this is no fun. 

The call is never easy

CD29, 14dpiui

So even though I had tested yesterday and have been having pretty regular cramps, when that call comes in from the RE and the results are negative it still stings pretty bad.  I was surprised that they called around noon time – maybe they want to hand out the bad news quickly and not string us along.

I asked the nurse about moving to injectibles next cycle and she said that they usually like to do 3 cycles of something before moving on.  She also said that if I wanted to do injectibles next I would need to take a break this cycle and have a consult with the doctor before moving to anything else.  She also mentioned that most likely the next step would be surgery or IVF and that they wouldn’t keep doing IUI’s because “at this point you have been through enough.”  Part of me was excited about the idea of moving to IVF and part of me was shocked that it is so close.  I told the nurse that I would do another round of clomid then probably do a consult with the RE for next steps if that doesn’t work.  The timing would actually work out well – if I do IUI#3 in November and it is unsuccessful then the break would be over the holidays, which makes sense. 

On my way back from the accounting file storage room (where I often find myself taking RE phone calls) I felt the tears starting to well up and didn’t make it back to my cube before two of my coworkers saw me starting to cry.  These are the coworkers that I am closest to at work – 1 girl who is about 5 years younger than me and 1 guy with 2 year old twins.  The girl came up to me and she took me to the bathroom.  She didn’t pry into why I was upset, and I was about to tell her the story when another coworker came in – so I didn’t say anything.  Nobody at work knows about our IF.  I kind of wanted to tell her, but maybe it is better this way. 

I emailed DH to give him the news, he knows the poas test yesterday was negative and that I was feeling crampy so he won’t be surprised either.

I also emailed my mom to let her know and ask her if my aunt who had both breast and ovarian cancer had gotten the BRAC gene testing done.  If I am close to IVF I want to make sure I know what our odds are that my family (and I) have this gene.  Because if there is a chance I can get rid of it for my kids you better believe I am doing it.  Almost all of my female relatives (on both sides) have had breast cancer – luckily we haven’t lost one from it yet.