Miscommunication

I was feeling pretty good about everything yesterday after the IUI.  I had some mild cramping but it was really no big deal.  I was really hoping that I would get a good night sleep and not wake up feeling pukey.  Wrong!  At least I got an extra half hour of sleep before the nausea woke me up.  Please let this pass, and soon would be nice!  I'm not even knocked up yet, there is no reason I should be having nausea every freaking morning this week!  I have consumed so much gingerale it's ridiculous.  Deep breath.

I went to the clinic this morning - I have been in every business day since Friday, I am looking forward to a break, a day without a needle sounds wonderful!  I wasn't really sure what they wanted me for this morning, I was guessing to confirm O or check my levels.  I get there at my usual time (half hour later than we went yesterday) and I say hi to the girls at the front desk, joke about how they've seen more of me this week than probably anyone else!  Then the conversation with one of the receptionists goes like this:

Receptionist: "Where's your husband?"
Me: "On his way to work...?"
Receptionist: "Do you have his sample?"
Me: "No, we did the IUI yesterday"
Receptionist: "Hang on a minute.  Don't panic yet"
Wait for a few minutes while obviously starting to panic!  Nurse comes over.
Nurse: "We do back to back days of IUI, so he should have come this morning to do it again"
Me: "What??  Nobody told me that!  They just told me to come back tomorrow"
Nurse: "Well that's why there's two sperm washes"
Me: "I didn't know that meant we did the whole things twice, I just thought that was part of the process of getting the sample ready.  Nobody told us it was two days in a row"
Nurse: "Don't worry, let me get Dr. C"

So Dr. C comes over and explains that they typically do two days of IUI.  She assured me not to panic, everything is fine.  She sent me for my u/s to see if I had ovulated yet.  It looks like I have, so they told me to do TI tonight and that should be fine.  Thankfully H has a great sperm count and no issues, so she said TI should be totally fine.  Then I'm supposed to start progesterone suppositories tomorrow night.

Ok, there's nothing we can do about it now, but did no one think that was a pretty important thing to get across to us?  I asked Dr. R on Monday how the IUI goes, since it is new for us, he gave me the run down of what happened yesterday, but there was never a mention of doing it twice, not on Monday, and not yesterday.  I texted H after to see if he got any sense that we were supposed to do it again today, he said definitely not.  They even looked at me yesterday and said "we'll see you back tomorrow", we both assumed they meant just me.  We hit O-2, O (IUI), then TI tonight would give us O+1, so not bad, but still a little annoyed about the miscommunication.

Now, we wait.  And start suppositories (after some hot sexing tonight, since I hear they're pretty messy, which doesn't not sound sexy in the least!)  And pray that all of this will be worth it.

Sperminated!

I had an appt again yesterday morning, I should really be earning frequent flyer miles or something, I have been in there every day since last Friday.  Anyways, everything was looking good, Dr. R was really happy with my 3 follies: 19,17,17 and my estrogen levels and my lining looked great.  (The keener in me is happy I feel like I've aced this cycle so far!  lol)  They gave me the Ovidrel shot while I was there yesterday morning and told me to come back this morning for IUI.

I won't lie, after 4 days of feeling nauseous and with the anxiety and uncertainty of what to expect from the IUI, I was pretty apprehensive last night.  H was amazingly supportive as always, he is such a good man.  I started to get really nauseous around 9pm and was worried I would feel sick all night - at least the last few days I felt sick early in the day but it had subsided by evening.  I was still feeling iffy by the time I went to bed, I took a couple anti-nausea pills which fortunately make me drowsy as well and managed to fall asleep.  By 5:30am I was awake and feeling a little queasy again but thankfully not as bad as yesterday.  H and I got up and went to the clinic.  While H was giving his sample, they took me for b/w and u/s.  I had 3 follies that were all 20mm!  I have to say, I found it amusing I was lying there with a dildo cam poking around while H was in another room, doing his thing.  Here we are, trying to make a baby and we're not even in the same room!  When we were both done, we left the clinic and went to Timmy's to grab a coffee and some breakfast (ok, H got some coffee and breakfast, I had a little gingerale and a tea biscuit), we didn't want to sit in the waiting room for almost an hour.  We tried to chat about random stuff, but I was feeling nervous and anxious and had trouble being distracted.  My anxiety seems to be getting worse as I get older.

We headed back to the clinic and settled up our bill (ouch!  This cycle will cost us about $2100) before they took us back to an exam room.  Dr. R, the awesome nurse I like and a medical student came in (the student was at my appt yesterday so I knew she would be there - and who cares, what's one more person looking at my vag anyways!)  It honestly was no where near what I thought it would be.  It was just like getting a pap.  The speculum isn't fun but it's not that bad, and my uterus wasn't quite as retroverted as Dr. R expected, so that sounded like a plus.  Anyways, it was over before I knew it!  I literally said, "That's it, it's over?"  He joked that at least I didn't ask if it was in yet!  He is hilarious!  We had a good laugh about it all.  I asked about H's post wash count - Dr. R said it was excellent, more than 100 million and more than 90% motility.  H and is super sperm!  Then they left and H and I hung out for 15 minutes or so.  The nurse came in to bring me progesterone suppositories - awesome.  This is a new one for me.  I was told to do one in the morning, two at night starting tomorrow night or Friday morning.  Clearly I'm willing to do whatever I have to do, but I am not excited about that part.  I was hoping my "work" was done and I could just cruise through the 2ww!  Anyways, hopefully it will all be worth it.

Bleh!

I remember hearing about people taking their meds and having all these side effects, and I kept thanking my lucky stars that Femara really didn't cause me much discomfort.  Now?  Now I'm getting it.  I did CD6-9 of 150 units of Puregon and 10 units of Lupron, that's 4 days of injects.  I will temper all of this by saying I got a bit of a cold this weekend, so it's a little tough to tell which symptoms might be from which cause.  This cycle I have got to experience night sweats, hot flashes, chills, muscle aches (made worse by all the coughing - every muscle in my back and stomach hurt to cough, I could also feel it in my ovaries), tender tummy (obviously, it's been a pin cushion lately!) and the worst for me has been the nausea and queasy feeling.  Bleh.  I can handle of lots of stuff with a certain amount of grace, but nausea is just a killer.  I have been consuming large quantities of ginger ale and tea biscuits.  I don't know why, but tea biscuits are kind of my thing when dealing with this.  I started it on a vacation at some point, I was feeling super awful but I know that when I don't eat, that can also make me feel nauseous, it's a tricky game to play.  Tea biscuits are a simple and bland kind of thing and is usually easily found in any grocery store, in many countries, I can attest to this!  Anyways, it was an uneventful weekend of jabbings, Netflix and feeling crappy over here.

I had monitoring this morning.  I have been really excited to see how things are progressing.  Anyways, I got there, had my b/w and u/s.  I was really anxious to say the least.  Dr. R came in and looked over my chart and was really pleased by my progress - hooray!  I have 3 follies he's watching - 18,15,14.  I was really hoping to be done with the injects, but alas, not quite.  He lowered my dose in half, of both - so I did 75 units of Puregon and 5 of Lupron.  *Side note: this made me ecstatic!  The Puregon was the most expensive drug (~$700) and the vile says 600 units, which I took over the past 4 days, but fortunately, they actually put 700 units in, and since Dr. R lowered my dose to 75 units, there was enough in there and I didn't have to buy more!  I did these at the office with the nurse, she set the correct dosage on the Puregon pen and then I motioned to take it and she's like, "You want to do it?"  I said, "Yeah, I'm getting pretty good at this!"  She agreed :)  They want to see me back tomorrow morning, then we're looking at IUI on Wed or Thurs morning.

I am excited and nervous, happy and scared.  I keep telling myself to keep my eye on the prize, that hopefully this will all be worth it this cycle.  The shots, the side effects, the cost - I'm worried it's making me too invested, like I'm getting my hopes up too high.  I need to stay hopeful to get through the crap, but dealing with IF makes me want to stay guarded, to never get my hopes too high, for fear the fall from there will be too hard.  I reference it often, but IF is seriously a roller coaster of emotions, a mind game I play with myself between realistic vs optimistic.  I keep telling myself what my awesome friends have already told me - it's really not that bad, the IUI itself, that is.  My mind keeps going back to my SHG which was awful, so I need to try and keep my mind away from that.  I know that this isn't the same thing, and I know that this won't be as bad.  And you know what?  Even if it was, if I miraculously get KU this cycle, it will be so worth it.  That's what I need to focus on.  Now if only this pesky nausea would back the fuck off, I would greatly appreciate it.  Feeling like this makes everything else seem worse.  So please, cut me some slack, and simmer down already!  And please, please let all that we're going through this cycle be worth it, please let this be the cycle that brings us our miracle.

A New Year, A New Cycle

This was supposed to be posted yesterday, January 2 - technical difficulties.

I can't bring myself to blog about the holidays, it was pretty awful.  The family drama hit an all time high, my emotions were running rampant in the midst of our cancelled cycle, it was just crappy and I am thankful it's over and we're back to the usual routine.

Here we are starting our 4th medicated cycle.  I was actually really excited to go to the clinic this morning, all this waiting around being a bench warmer was not doing it for me.  I expected the office to be busy, they were closed for a week over the holidays, but fortunately it was actually pretty quiet.  I went in for blood work and the dildo cam - there was a new tech today -> we'll just add her to the increasingly long list of people that get up close and personal with my vag in my pursuit to be a mother.  (Cici, I know it ain't the Vagina Tours and I shouldn't complain!)  Then off to the other exam room to wait for an RE.  In walks Dr. R - yay!  He spent a good 3-4 minutes just reviewing my previous few cycles.  I was slightly apprehensive that he might suggest a different plan - the info and plan often seems to change based on which RE I get to see, and Dr. C had said (during the appt they cancelled last cycle) that we'd look to injects + IUI this cycle.  Dr. R is sometimes more conservative in his approach with me, which I appreciate to an extent.  But once he was done, he said let's get started with the injects.  Then he also suggested we do the sperm wash/IUI since the stats are 3 times higher for injects + IUI than with injects + TI.  With the cost and everything we're doing, he seemed to have no reservation about doing this protocol.  He also wanted me to start 600mg/day of CoQ10, some studies have shown promising results on egg quality while taking this, so add that to the mix.  (If you're a good stalker, you may remember my post Swallowing is Hard - these pills fall into the category of things I have to choke down.  The 200mg is fine, but the 400mg is borderline horse pill!)  Then the nurse came in to give me the low down on shooting up.

Fortunately the shots are no bigger/worse than the trigger (Ovidrel) shot and I already know that's not so bad.  They have me on Puregon, similar to Gonal-F and others I have heard about it.  That's the stimulating one.  I am doing 150mg a day.  I am also doing Lupron (.1mg), which essentially should help to ensure I don't O before we're ready.  That's two shots a day in the tummy!  I did the first two with the nurse this morning so I am confident about what I need to do.  She gave me a serious little party pack of drugs!  If you're wondering what $1100 worth of fertility drugs gets you, it's this!

I am trying to stay level headed about this cycle, but the new protocol that's a little more aggressive really does give me some hope.  Please let this be our cycle.

Merry Christmas!

The week's about to get pretty busy, so I figured I'd post before heading off for the holidays.

Icepocalypse 2013: We got one hell of an ice storm this weekend, it was kind of crazy, yet incredibly beautiful in some ways.  We are very fortunate to have not lost power, which can't be said for over 200,000 people in the city right now.  Hydro can't guarantee it will be restored to everyone by Christmas.  I hope everyone is staying warm!

 

   

My uncle was hosting his annual Christmas party yesterday - he had no power.  But he had already hired the servers, prepared the food, purchased the booze - the show must go on!  It was actually quite awesome!  It was a little dark, but they had candles going everywhere, the servers prepared some apps on the BBQ, the booze was obviously nicely chilled.  We stood around the piano singing carols by flashlight and candle light - good thing I know most of the words!  It was the most Christmassy I have felt this year, I'm really glad we went.  

I am finishing up my last morning of work before our Christmas luncheon, then I'm on holidays until the new year, woo hoo!!  We have a lot of parties/dinners/family events this week, it's going to be a little crazy, but hopefully it will help distract me from the shitty stuff going on and I can try to enjoy the holidays a little. 

To all of my internet friends and stalkers,

Highs and Lows

I'll start with today's low so that I can end on a high note.  Today marks exactly 18 months of TTC.  18 long months of hope, disappointment, sadness, excitement, realization and every other possible emotion.  That's enough months for two pregnancies, two!  And I still have not seen those two beautiful lines.  Well, except testing out my trigger, but that doesn't count.  I have an 18 month old nephew - we started TTC just after he was born, and now my SIL is already expecting #2, all of that has happened in the time H & I have been trying to have a baby.  And as we approach the end of 2013, I have to admit I am deeply saddened that a whole calendar year has gone by that has been dedicated to TTC and I still have nothing to show for it.  A whole year and a half of peeing on sticks, temping (almost) every morning, scheduling sex (don't worry, not all sex was scheduled!) and now we can add blood work and vag cams and meds - and still nothing.  Seriously, I'm ready to skip right over the holidays, at least with the new year will come a new cycle.  I hate being in limbo, knowing we're out but still having to wait for the cycle to finish so we can do this all over again, but hopefully with a better result.

Ok, that's enough dwelling on that.  My high for today is that H is coming home!!!  He has been traveling for...well lots of hours already!  His flight lands just after dinner and I am so excited to see him.  It's funny, this is by no means the longest he's been gone, but I have really, really missed him.  China is across the world, we've been on opposite schedules exchanging emails when we can.  With this cycle being canceled, I think I missed him even more.  He is my rock, my support and my best friend, and I cannot wait to see him tonight.  7 hours and counting!      

Pretty sure I O'd...

Just look at that chart:

I am resolving myself to the fact that I have already O'd and we're out for this cycle.  Now if it would just hurry up and end, I really want to get on with things!  In summary for today:

On the bright side, H comes home tomorrow!  It's only been a week, actually less than, but I miss him!!  I can't wait for him to get back home <3