Tuesday, March 31, 2009

They really are out to get us...

Well I'm super glad I didn't get a positive OPK yesterday...we went out to dinner with my parents (they left early this morning and his parents got in last night, woo). My husband is super, super allergic to peanuts, as in, a small handful of peanuts would kill him instantly. We always ask about this when we go places and I always get peanut-free stuff too, just in case. Well he had this asian sauce and was told no peanuts. He starts eating it, and it takes just one or two bites for him to tell something is up. He tries to be discreet and go to the manager about it, and the manager comes to our table and SWEARS up and down there are no peanuts in what he is eating.

My husband is not fooled by this, as if he is having a reaction, there's a peanut something in there. He looks up the recipe for this sauce online (on his blackberry) and sure enough, there is some peanut oil in there too. PEANUT OIL COUNTS, people! (I swear, something about the south is that they don't take peanut allergies seriously down here - maybe because they grow so many peanuts that all the really allergic genes got weeded out of the population or something, who knows). Anyway, so the manager checks it out (duh, that should have been his first instinct) and says well there's a a trace amount of peanut oil. Again, still counts. Won't kill him, but will swell his tongue and cause him to throw up just to be careful. So THAT was lovely.

Day 15 today? No positive OPK yet, but plenty of sex. I promise to remain calm until day 21 when I'm supposed to go in for progesterone testing but still haven't ovulated.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Parents, Parents, and more Parents.

I love my parents, I really do. And they are both coming to town this weekend, which is a surprise. It's hard for my dad to get away, and my mom and I are super close so she visits me more frequently. So they are going to be here over "potential O time," if I were a regular gal, which, I'm not, but maybe the Clomid will induce some normalcy into my world. (CDs 12, 13, and 14) But for some bizarre reason, even though we politely asked his parents to refrain from visiting us under after April 15th (because of my parents coming and also DH is taking an exam on the 11th), they decided they must come and see us on March 31st. It makes no sense. They must come and see us IMMEDIATELY after my parents leave, on CD 15, and stay with us and hound us for however long they want to.

When DH and I were dating, he was running the family business. And his parents had "retired" and lived many, many states away, and came up to stay AT HIS HOUSE from Thanksgiving until St. Patrick's day that year. We had a long distance thing, and every time I came to see him it was all family, all the time. I'm amazed we got married at that rate. Anyway, I would prefer for his parents to respect boundaries and to, you know, have boundaries about when and for how long they visit. I love them too, and spending time with them is not bad, it's just....sometimes frustrating.

Now we all know I won't O until will after then anyway, if ever, so that's not really the issue - although parents don't really encourage the sexy times usually. It's more of an urgh thing. Urgh. There, I'm done with it. I have complained openly on the internet so maybe now I will feel more free.

Also, if we ever do get pregnant I would like to tell our parents (especially my parents, because this will be their first grandchild, but DH's sister already has two) in person. That will be a trip to arrange and then cordon off from rampant visitation.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Waaaaiting.

So CD 10 should be nothing for an old pro at long cycles like me, but....even after taking the Clomid I have this suspicious, nagging, terrifying fear that I just won't ovulate. And if I won't ovulate on Clomid, what next? (Yes, I know, probably more and higher strength Clomid and then other stuff medically related) But it's sort of a thing in my brain that if this doesn't work, I really AM infertile and will have to spend thousands and wait years, if ever, to have a baby.

Ultimately his parents and grandparents are very big on "continuing the legacy" and I think if nothing is wrong with him, as a last resort we will probably do surrogacy with an egg donor if we can't get any out of me. This kind of makes me sad to think about, as I don't want to be the only one excluded from the baby making process because I am defective and broken.

You may be thinking to yourself, chill girl, don't go there, hang on, wait out this cycle and the next and the next but take it one day at a time. And you're right. But my brain....is being mean to me, what can I say?

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Clomid

My last day of Clomid was yesterday. It hasn't been terrible, but I've been getting really hot at night (my husband sweetly put a cold washcloth on my head last night) and all around meh, though I don't know how much of that to really attribute to the drugs. I also reaffirmed (since I've started taking real PNV and DHA and not just my chewables) that I hate, hate, hate, hate swallowing pills. I don't know why, but I'd rather chew chalk than feel the pill in my throat threatening to come back up. Lovely, I know.

I didn't temp the first 28 days of my last cycle so I can't really say how average my temps are to me at this time. All I'm hoping for is some ovulation, baby! Come on ovaries, you can do it. Just please don't explode with cyst-harboring goodness or that will defeat the purpose.

Other than that, it's just keep swimming mode around here. My parents are coming to visit this weekend and crazy things are happening at work so everyone is in full speed mode.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Period Watch, Day 1!

After having an 84 day cycle, I was never quite so happy to have my first day of real period, and be on day 1 again. I already know this period will be a rough one, but just to have it happening is more than I can say.

My period really tricked me too! I have never, never spotted before but you can't call what's been going on the last two days a period. It's been weak and not red enough and not enough. Now it is coming on with a vengeance, after being denied for so long.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

On Doctors & Medication

It has been an unfortunate while since I posted, so here goes.

On 1/27 I went to the doctor. He, nicely, did not say anything about my weight and was sweet and gentle with my pelvic. All around good time. He looked at my chart and my history and decided that I could keep trying on my own, but it would be difficult for me to ovulate. If I wanted to start clomid right away, I could. At the very least, I got an rx for progesterone and directions for bloodwork and an ultrasound to see if I had any cysts. The bloodwork proved, among other things, that I was not pregnant and I could start the progesterone last Tuesday. The ultrasound showed some cysts on my left ovary (the original evil ovary was righty, so maybe its more cyclical than I thought) but not enough to cause problems. So now my husband and I faced a choice, to start clomid right away or to wait?

Also, while my doctor is great, his nurse was a little disconnected. She said I could be taking the progesterone and the clomid at the same time, which, is kind of impossible since you don't get your "period" until after you are off of progesterone and you don't take clomid till after you start the next cycle. ANYWAY. She called my husband yesterday with the lab results and said everything was normal, and we could start clomid or go straight to an infertility specialist, because they didn't deal with these kinds of things very well. I called into her today and hope I get to actually speak with her, because I'm not sure how well my husband translated what she said, but HOLY WHAT? ONE appointment with me and a one off bloodwork and an ultrasound and you have decided I am far too broken for your practice? Even though I've only been trying to conceive for this one cycle? Are you NUTS? But I digress....

Whether I stay with these people medically or not, the decision to go on clomid or not still looms. Even though we officially are not telling anyone, including family, about ttc just now, I got permission to talk to my mom about this. My grandmother took DES and gave my mom some troubles and she was going to go on clomid the cycle after she got pregnant with me, so I wanted her advice on the whole thing. I know you shouldn't just "go on clomid" but it seems to me that my main problem right now is not ovulating, and this medication ostensibly solves that problem. We could try forever to get pregnant but I don't see why we should wait a year or more of not ovulating to address the not ovulating problem. I see girls on the message boards struggle with getting their period each cycle, but they GET THEIR PERIODS after a while and START new cycles. I'm still hanging out on day 78 and the ONLY reason I have an end in sight is the progesterone. Sigh. Part of my brain is like problem, meet solution.

My mother thinks it is okay, she was scared when she was younger because of the DES problems and thought she would have like four babies on clomid. We know more about it now, and I know more about it than she did. That helps. My husband wants to try clomid now for one cycle and just see if it works (success defined by ovulation, not pregnancy), and then go off of it for a bit and try to time things out better or try some alternative methods or something. I may be interviewing for jobs in the next fall/winter area, and that complicates things a bit. This next "cycle" we'd be on track for having a baby in December and that seems like a fine time. (Although I was a Christmas Eve baby and I urgh inside about potentially doing that to my kid).

So, what do I think? I think I would like to feel less broken and this feels like an ideal way - get started on the healing process. At best, we will know that this either works or it doesn't work, and either way we can go another route. It's just five days of pills, half of what I'm taking to get my period going. But now that I'm on the progesterone I'm all hormoney and weird anyway, and I don't know how much that is influencing my decision. I feel like I'm going to do it, just to see, and I told my husband that the next step was for him to get checked out, because it's far easier for him to do that than for me to do anything else. I may get some flack for this decision, but for now it's the one I feel I have to make.