Starting Over

I know I haven't blogged in an extremely long time, but I've been out of it, mentally and emotionally since the D&C.

We had the D&C on November 5th. My mom actually came to stay with us that weekend as my husband and I both got the flu at the same time. The worst part of the D&C was my throat hurt, it felt like I was swallowing broken glass, and I wasn't allowed even a sip of water for six and a half hours. It was agonizing. But at the same time, the physical pain helped keep my mind of the emotional pain.

That next weekend I was supposed to go on a work thing, but my uterus started seizing up and cramping so hard we almost had to go to the hospital. Luckily some pain meds got me through the week and a half of excruciating cramps and we didn't have to go back to the hospital to do D&C part II, the redux.

After that I went straight back on birth control to clear my system. I did it for a month, and now I'm on pack number 2. I had my IVF baselines (11 follicles on each side) and on Monday I'm having an HSG and an SIS to see if my uterus is back to its normal shape so we can proceed with another round of IVF.

All I can think is, here we go again ...

It's over again.

We went in today for an ultrasound and bloodwork. We are 9w6d. I have no idea how big the baby was, although the sac looked a lot bigger. There was no heartbeat. We are going in for a D&C on Friday and taking a break on doctor's orders for 6-8 weeks before we try again, if we try again.

What I regret most is telling anyone we were pregnant. We made it so much farther this time. Next time I'll keep it simple and tell our parents with a phone call and no one else until I'm showing and it's impossible to hide. If we try again. If we ever get a real success.

More for me than anyone else, here were all my numbers:
Beta #1 9/23 (44.9)
Beta #2 9/27 (63.7)
Beta #3 9/30 (102)
Beta #4 10/4 (334!)
Beta #5 10/7 (864!)
Ultrasound 10/11 (6w4d) - Heartbeat! Baby measured 6w0d but sac only 5w0d.
Ultrasound 10/18 (7w4d) - Heartbeat. Baby measured 6w4d and sac 5w4d.
Ultrasound 10/21 (8w0d) - Heartbeat. Baby measured 7w0d and sac 6w0d.
Ultrasound 10/27 (8w6d) - Heartbeat. Baby measured 8w2d and sac 6w5d.
Ultrasound 11/3 (9w6d) - No heartbeat. D&C scheduled for 11/5.

Heartbeat! But Small Sac

Monday we went in (we were 6w4d) and saw a heartbeat! The baby was measuring 6w0d, which the nurse said was fine - within a week is all right. The heartbeat was good and strong. However, the sac was only measuring 5w0d.

Of course we'll go in next Monday to see if the sac and baby are growing like they should, but right now I'm worried. The nurse said we shouldn't "get excited" but that we hit a milestone with the heartbeat. Honestly, I wasn't able to get excited about the heartbeat at all because she was being so negative. I feel like everytime we get good news it has a "but" attached to it that prevents me from doing anything but worry. Ugh.

Out of beta hell?

Beta #5 (3 days after Beta #4) was 864 which means the numbers doubled in 2.18 days. We are having an ultrasound on Monday because my beta should be above 1500 and we should be able to see something in there - maybe not a baby yet, but hopefully something. I can't wait to confirm it for real. :-) I hope this is my sticky baby and that we don't have any problems from the slow rising betas that are long-term.

Beta Hell

I haven't been super good about posting here since I got lodged in beta hell.

Beta #1 was 44.9
Beta #2 was 63.7...4 days later. Not looking good.
Beta #3 was 102...3 days later, so rising, but not as fast as they wanted it.

I had to give myself a progesterone shot in the leg while my husband went out of town. I am never doing that again, let me tell you.

Then beta #4 (4 days after beta #3) was 334! According to beta calculator it took 2.33 days to double! My doctor says that betas under 100 tend to do wacky things but since my beta has gotten over the 100 hurdle it's been behaving appropriately (according to our test today). I talk to the doctor tomorrow, but things are at least looking up!

No real confidence yet, but something

My beta was 44.9 and my estradiol was 176 and my progesterone was 127. The nurse said they were all good numbers. However, the beta still seems a bit low (the median for betabase on this far along is 101), so I can't be worry-free just yet.

Last time with the chemical pregnancy my beta on 15dpo was 29.9 and there was spotting going on. This time I have no spotting and a higher number on 14dpo. I hope that means good news, but I cannot be confident in it yet. :-(

I am not crazy!

Digital confirmed with a "yes" this morning. I'm praying for my beta tomorrow and this baby/babies sticks around for a long and snuggly nine months.

Am I Crazy?

Or does the full size picture of my test stick addiction appear to be giving me a slightly darker, although still impossibly light, line over time?

http://i54.tinypic.com/24g2gx5.jpg

Embryo Report

All 5 of my fertilized eggs are dividing. 3 are in the 1/2/3 category of being "better" and 2 are in the 4 category of being not so good. The embryologist wouldn't give me a specific count on how many were in each of the better categories because they are still actively dividing. Grow, babies, grow! I'll see you Tuesday. :-)

Also, PIO shots may not hurt at the time, but the morning after? OUCH!

5 Alive!

Of the 8 eggs that we retrieved, 7 were mature. Of those 7, 5 were fertilized with ICSI. Now I'm on pins and needles until Sunday to see how they are doing. It's so weird knowing that my babies are growing, and it's not inside of me.

Egg Retrieval

Today we had our egg retrieval. Thankfully my husband was in town for this (although not for the trigger shot and I had to give that one to myself in my own thigh - ouch!) and everything went well. We retrieved 8 eggs, which is within the average of 5-12. Tomorrow we will know how many of those eggs were mature and on Sunday we will receive another report on their progress. The transfer is scheduled for Tuesday at noon.

Part of me is scared. Out of however many eggs you retrieve, only about 70% are mature. Of that number, only about 75% fertilize. And of THAT number, only about 40-50% make it to day 5. I think at best we'll still have two to transfer but I'm not holding out hope for any frosties.

Right now I'm doing my best to be zen and keep saying, as the ladies on the message board have been encouraging me to do, "eight is great"! :-)

Monitoring Blues

I had to get up at 5:00 this morning and drive almost two hours to have a thirty minute appointment at the RE and then turn around and drive almost two hours back. Blargh.

My follicles are coming along nicely, even one made it to 1.8 already, but I'm not ready to trigger. I have to go back in tomorrow morning to see. I am going to do everything in my power to push the trigger to Wednesday because of nasty class scheduling business - but of course will bend to the will of the doctor.

I teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Everything else is flexible. If I trigger on a Tuesday and have the retrieval on a Thursday, the transfer will be the next Tuesday and I'll miss two sets of classes. I would really, really prefer not to do this, especially as early as it is in the semester and with the realization that I might have to do the whole thing over again relatively soon. I know it's a bit bratty to complain about timing like this, but I am only in class two days a week! It shouldn't be that hard to work around.

The good news is since I won't be doing the retrieval on Wednesday that my husband will be in town for it, fresh sample and all. :-) He's really been super involved in this whole process, much more so than with IUI, so he's invested in being there at the retreival. For his sake more than anything I hope it works for us this time. I caught him crying at church during a children's service last week and it just about broke my heart in two.

Expect another update tomorrow on my progress! :-)

Stimulation

I started stims last night. Doing stims as an intramuscular shot as opposed to a sub-q shot (in other words, in the butt instead of in the belly) is a bit of a trip. It's a super big shot and menopur makes it burn a little bit. I don't know how I'll make it through all these stim shots and THEN all the progesterone in oil shots. Yikes. Hopefully my husband doesn't leave town during this period. I could handle belly shots all by myself (even a bit of a pro at it after a while) but I'm not sure I could properly stab myself in the thigh. :-(

This part is exciting though! We're on our way to preparing little embryos!

Last Friday I had to see a high-risk obgyn who told me (surprise!) I'm insulin resistant as a result of PCOS. I've lost almost 13 pounds in the last 6 weeks by counting calories and exercising. Now I'm almost completely restricted from exercise - lifting nothing heavier than 20 pounds and doing nothing that will potentially twist my ovaries, and then comes the 2ww. I'm still going to count calories but I fear it will be a bit harder. I want to do everything possible to provide a hospitable environment for a baby - that means going back on the evil metformin and joining a different gym with a pool for water aerobics (with all the old ladies! :-)), then that's what I'll have to do.

Lupron Attacks

The side effects that I hear most girls complain about with Lupron are headaches and being in a "fog." Neither of those things have really happened to me - and with how I'm prone to get headaches and even migranes, I am extremely grateful for this. What I'm getting is uncontrollably weepy and sleepy. I have to blame it on the drugs, because I'm getting plenty of rest and have no real reason to keep crying at especially sad commercials. :-)

Also, it's a teeny tiny amount of Lupron I'm getting. We got a ton of needles and this one vial of medicine that was only partially filled. We're using insulin needles to get just ten units a day at this point, and I hardly even recognize it as medicine (except for the shot part of course, ouch!). Next Friday we go in to the doctor and sign all the paperwork and pay all the money. After that we'll start stims. I'm so scared now that school has started. I can't really afford to skip any classes on Tuesday/Thursday, so I'm hoping to push around those days if at all possible.

IVF!

So worked it out with our doctor - I still have to see the high risk OB but it's not stopping our process now. I started Lupron last night and the target for egg retrival is currenty September 8th, but it will probably be a little later knowing how long it takes me to stim. Here we go on that roller coaster known as IVF!

Scheduling

I can't even schedule my "high-risk" appointment yet because they have to call me to schedule it - I can't call them. So even though I was finally given the number today, it doesn't matter, because they won't schedule it until they call me to do it.

ARGH. Seriously, why does the set-up have to be so hard? And why didn't we know about this when we had lots of time as opposed to right before school starts/school is starting when I am super, duper busy? Are we even going to start IVF this month? I don't know.

And of course, on my facebook, everyone in the world is having babies. Just great. Not that I begrudge them, but every update about "post this if you love your kids" just makes me want to scream and cry.

Oh RE

So we went in about a month ago to the RE to discuss IVF, but we were putting it on hold due to some funding issues. He was like, great, just stay on birth control continuously and give us a call when you are ready.

Fast forward to August. We're ready! I give them a call on Monday. I am told by a nurse to go off birth control, get baselines, then go back ON birth control, and THEN we can start. Ummm, no. What would be the purpose of baselines only to go back on birth control? She can't answer me. Only the IVF nurse has the answer. She won't be back until Wednesday. So just keep taking birth control and someone will call you Wednesday. WTF.

Finally this morning I get another call. My husband and I had talked about semen freezing in case he is out of town for a job interview or something. So we have to get some frozen BEFORE we can start anything according to the doctor. ALSO I have to have a meeting with a high-risk obgyn an hour away ... BEFORE we can start anything. Luckily, they say, it's easy to get in there. Why do I have to have this meeting? Because I have a high BMI. Now I've been doing my best to work on this, but if I had to have this meeting before starting IVF, could you not have told me a month ago? We could have had all this stuff taken care of at that point instead of waiting until now. It's just URGH GAH FRUSTRATING not to be able to just get started like we were promised.

So I called them back and said, can I have the numbers? Can I set this up? And they. still. haven't. called. me. back. It's almost like they just don't want our money.

444

3 4-s just wasn't enough for the long shot miracle for which I was hoping. Sigh.

Big Guns

Well I guess there should be an update of some kind at this point.

We've decided to do IVF. It was a big decision for us and we approached our parents for money (we have the money to pay for it ourselves, but are worried about our liquidity should we want to buy a house in the near future, and all the parent money would be strictly loans) and geared up.

Then my husband started the pre-interview process for this job, and if he gets it, it will provide us a $24k benefit specifically for IVF. While that is awesome and amazing, it requires that we suffer through this process and wait to start IVF. I say pre-interview, because it depends on some other people at the company making decisions before he can officially start the interview process.

In the meantime, my doctor recommends that I prepare myself for IVF and *not* pursue IUI. He (we switched doctors in the practice to one my husband likes better) could see from the surgery photos that my tubes are convoluted, and with 4 failed IUIs and 3 rest cycles in between, he just wants to keep me on perpetual birth control until we're ready to start an IVF cycle.

If only I knew when that would be...

Meanwhile, I went off birth control to have a final period before the long haul because I believe in that cleansing of my body. The weird thing is that I got a bunch of old blood, but no new blood. This is my second period since the surgery and it still isn't quite right, and now I won't have another period for awhile. I can't really decide how I feel about this.

Also we went to look at puppies again (we did this and had the IVF consulting appointment the DAY after the EDD and my best friend in the world had a little girl early - she was due 7/4 and delivered 6/25 and named her daughter the name I want for my daughter - suffice it to say I was SUPER EMOTIONAL). The puppies were super cute, and my husband wants me to have one if he has to move for this job (because I teach, I'm on a 6 month to a year delay to move behind him) so that I won't be alone.

But he had trouble, and I could TELL he was having trouble. He says he'll get over it, but I'd rather not put him in that position, you know? And it makes it harder when I really want a puppy but I have to be the one to say no. It's worse than him saying no somehow, I can't explain it.

Anyway, I can't be Debbie Downer forever. We're starting IVF and we have big hopes for that and are planning on three tries. I just hope the process gets to start sooner rather than later.

June 27th

Just something to commemorate this day. I love you poppyseed and this would have been your day (well probably not, but according to the only math we had). I know there was a reason you couldn't stay, but Mommy is still very sad today without you here.

Cysts

Surprise, I have more cysts. I have now had 4 IUIs and 3 cysts cycles. Something here is adding up to fml. We're blowing available time when my husband is here just resting and taking freaking birth control, which is life's cruelest irony. So I'm out for another month.

Not pregnant, beta was less than 5 and all that jazz. Stopping progesterone tonight and we're on to IUI #5, and #2 post-surgery. I wasn't spotting until AFTER she called today, so that was a false hope. I've sort of lost hope. I'm still not sure if I want to do IVF but it's looking like I have no choice.

Trigger is Out!

After the craziness that ensued last time I decided to test the trigger out, here at 7-8dpo it is officially out (one without FMU and one with), so hopefully anything positive from here on out is a good thing. My beta is on Tuesday the 1st. Waiting, waiting, it's all I ever do.

Plus it's really putting a damper on my summer plans. We'd like to travel some, this may be my husband's last chance for awhile and he loves going out west and camping. (I'm only ok with camping and require a "real" bathroom within walking distance of the tent, but I love him, so you know) And I need to be here for work, but that's more flexible in the summer as a professor. But we also need to take advantage of him being around for baby-making purposes, what if his new job won't let him guarantee to be here when I need him here? And I try not to travel when I need to be monitored, because as you've read, it's a pain and a half. We still haven't been reimbursed from the Las Vegas claims yet.

2WW

This has got to be the worst part every time because I just cannot squash my hope, damn it! Every time I tell myself not to get my hopes up because, as my husband keeps reminding me, it's a 20% shot every time, it doesn't get more or less no matter how many times we do it. And the roll of the dice has not been my friend.

We triggered last Thursday and I opted to go in this week for a progesterone test even though technically I didn't *have* to - but I just want to make sure that part of everything is okay. Last time I actually was pregnant I was having a problem with my progesterone levels, so you know. Plus, blood tests are free in a world where many things are not, so you know, I've got that going for me. :-)

So I'm over here with my supplements and my new chewable prenatal vitamins (yay) watching the clock and the calendar.

Something's Happening!

One little follie at 1.5 with lots of friends right behind (seriously, lots, normally my follicles don't have friends). Going in tomorrow to see how the whole posse is doing.

Surgery

Seriously, do you guys hate me? I would hate me with all the lousy no-postings about anything. I'm a little depressed right now because it seems like everyone I went to college with is announcing that they are pregnant and already in the second trimester. Out of my closer circle of six girl friends - four are pregnant, one is divorced and one is still single. Two out of my three long term debate partners in college are having babies. I'm beginning to feel left out in addition to everything else. Mother's Day was rough, y'all. My pastor called attention in church to those who want to be mothers but it isn't happening right now. And no one recognizes me as a mother, possibly because I was only pregnant for like 4 days. But it still happened, right? I want to cling to that but I feel silly doing so for so many reasons.

Anyway, enough wallowing, want to hear about my surgery?

My mom came down for the surgery fun times. I went in to a hospital about an hour away. They gave me this awesome hospital gown that they connect a hose too and it funnels warm air right to your body. I need one of these at homes. They gave me something to "take the edge off" before they gave me the hard stuff and seriously, the last thing I remember is seeing my husband and mom and then I woke up. Like, I didn't even make it to the infamous count down on the gas. No memory.

They took out a polyp in my uterus (no big deal the doctor says, but why leave it in?) and found my tubes were "circuitous" and "thin-walled" but mostly okay. Then they drilled the ever loving hell out of my ovaries in the hopes that they would respond. (I am now on day 10 of the next cycle and I can tell you my ovaries are stubborn as hell and don't seem to be responding to crapton of swift kicks to their tiny, tiny asses.)

So I wake up and they are immediately shoving giner ale down my throat and crackers. All I have to do is pee and I can go home. The surgery was at 10:00 a.m. and I was out by noon. My husband even promised me a snow cone at home (my absolute favorite in all the world) and the place closed at 6:00. We all thought it was no big deal.

2:00, 4:00, 6:00 (there goes that snow cone), 8:00 ... 9:00. By this time I have had a ton of IV fluids and regular fluids and just can not pee. I would sit on the toilet and sort of feel the need in the abstract sense, but could not make myself go. I find out later they told my mom in the hall way that if I don't pee it could be life threatening. So glad I did not know that at the time.

Then they try to put a catheter in me. They say I can go home with a catheter or stay in the hospital overnight. So I wanted to try the catheter, obvs. I wanted to go home so bad. So they try to put the catheter in. I don't know what it is, but that area has always been SUPER SENSITIVE for me. And I just had surgery down there. So YOU KNOW, extreme pain. I was literally screaming and telling my husband I couldn't do it anymore. They tried putting the pediatric size in and were having trouble telling exactly where to put it. I thought he was going to drop kick one of the nurses. They get it ostensibly "in" but no pee comes out. Me thinks they did it wrong. Anyway, they decide it's so late (10:30 by this time) that I have to stay overnight anyway. And they give me some medicine to "relax" my bladder. When they wheel me up to my room (around 11) I feel like I REALLY HAVE TO GO LIKE RIGHT NOW but the catheter is actually preventing me from going. I get my nurse (Tammy on the floor, and God, do I love Tammy like no other) to take the catheter out (MUCH easier than going in) and finally pee.

Thank goodness! Only, now I have to get up like every half hour to pee (thanks medicine!) and they are measuring how much I pee (how embarassing) to make sure they don't have to put another catheter in (over my seriously dead body). I am also in a ton of pain, yay! So I was up all night. My husband and mom slept better in that hospital room than I did for sure. Also, Tammy rocked my face off with the pain medicine and the helping me pee. I even got a gold star on my door for peeing. I have never been so embarassed.

But we survived and I went home. Of course the pain medicine made it hard to go to the bathroom the other way, if you know what I mean. I ended up missing work a day because I had to go and couldn't go. Finally a suppository laxative got my mo jo going and if I never have this kind of complications with the toilet it will be too soon.

That was y'alls TMI for today. You're welcome. The surgery was April 9th and I had to be on birth control after that, had my follow up on May 6th which was pretend day 3 of this cycle (because I bled for like 2 weeks after the surgery even ON birth control so I never really got a "red flow") and I started drugs day . 225 units of follistim. Now on day 10 I have two follicles barely peeking over 1, and my nurse was kind enough to tell me that lots of girls have follicles over day 1 on their baseline day. So it doesn't look like this cycle will be any shorter. Sigh. Wonder if it will at least work...

Surgery

I haven't fallen off the map, but on the 9th I had surgery - laproscopy and hysterscopy with ovarian drilling. I'm getting better but haven't been in any mood to blog or anything else. I promise to post a full update/story sometime later this week.

Confirmed

Not that I needed it, as my period started today progesterone or no progesterone, along with some of the worst cramps ever - not even currently quelled with Tylenol. Ugh. At least my ring is pretty. :-)

Major Spotting

Just like that, I'm spotting like nobody's business and my dream of having a baby in 2010 or before I'm 29 go up in smoke. And with my husband being laid off, who knows how long before we can even try again? Out of ten cycles, I've only had five ovulations. And I guess that the 20% worked, it just ended in a loss and I'd have to go through another five cycles to have any hope. Part of me just doesn't want to do this anymore because it is so hard, every time, no exceptions. I do not know what I will do if June comes and I am still not pregnant. I can't even think about it right now.

BFN

on 10dpiui, so I suppose yesterday was all trigger or something. Trying to keep hope alive over here.

Nobody get too excited...

...but I got a BFP this morning! I know it is only 9 days past my IUI and 11 past the trigger, which is extremely early and I could conceiveably still be getting trigger, but I did it anyway. My husband is going out of town over the date of our first beta and we agreed I would tell him the results in person. I don't know what possessed me to take one this morning, we had a left over FRER digital from the miscarriage adventure and I took it. I had to pee so badly this morning so I got up super early and could not wait for it to tell me no so I could go back to my warm bed instead of the cold bathroom. Instead it said yes!

I'm trying not to get too excited as I do not want a repeat of last time, but it looks like for good or for ill I'm on the HPT rollercoaster ride.

Group B Strep

From what Dr. Google tells me, women are usually tested for Group B Strep in the 35-37 week of their pregnancy. I will be tested on Tuesday because my husband's semen analysis from the IUI came back positive for Group B Strep. I have gone from fervently praying to be pregnant to wondering if that is what I should be hoping for (though I know the chances of this hurting my hypothetical baby are pretty rare.)

They found "round cells" in his semen which can indicate immature sperm or white blood cells. It turns out these were white blood cells and the count was higher than they would like, so they ran a culture. It was positive for Group B Strep. So now I have to have a culture (and a pap since I'm overdue) next Tuesday in addition to my long-awaited pregnancy test (it's only 12 days after the IUI, does that seem early to anyone else?)

Ring

We have been looking for an opal ring for me to commemerate Poppyseed, since opal is an October birthstone. We decided to go for an October birthstone as opposed to June (the EDD) because that's when we knew Poppyseed and loved him/her and the sum total of his/her existence. We also wanted sidestones that were blue sapphires and not diamonds because diamonds tend to wash out an opal's fire (and I just love blue sapphires). Anyway, this unique combination has been awhile in the making. We were going to get a custom made ring here in town but they wanted to charge us twice what we wanted to spend because it was a "custom" piece, so we decided not to do it (this was back in February). But when we were on vacation last week we found a great little ring and they agreed to change the diamonds for sapphires and charge us the same price. Awesome. And since they had to ship it to us out of state, we wouldn't have to pay sales tax. More awesome. (And yes, I will totally post a picture once we have said ring.)

It was going to take some time to do the custom work so we couldn't have it until Wednesday this week. Fine, no problem, we weren't in any big rush. Well I got a call today that the sapphires just weren't quite right and they would have it fixed by Friday, but because they have a policy to not ship jewelry over weekends (theft hazard) we would get the ring next Tuesday ... just in time for my first beta on this cycle.

I just can't tell whether this is a good sign or a bad sign.

IUI #3

Hi everyone! I know you've been wondering where I am, because it took nineteen days of follistim plus menopur plus three out of town monitoring appointments (oh the nightmares) in order to be FINALLY ready to trigger and then today I had an IUI. My little main follicle was super slow, but finally got there! Now we wait, doing a progesterone test next Tuesday and a pregnancy test the Tuesday after that. I am hoping against hope for a little Easter BFP.

This time my husband has good feelings, and so do my doctor and my mother. I had excellent cervical mucus this time, which isn't something I've had before, so good on that. The only thing was at the IUI, my follicle hadn't dropped quite yet, but the technician said that it looked "fuzzy" and that this was a good thing and meant it was getting ready to drop. I will have sex the next couple of nights because I'm just too wary not to do so.

Back on Plan

So no cysts when I went in, which is a good thing. My period took the full two weeks to start even though I had the shot instead of the pills - stupid body, never doing what it is supposed to be doing.

Now I am on the Follistim train again - hoping that being gone next weekend for work isn't going to put a crimp in my style. I am not looking for a monitoring place while I am gone either - they will have to let me go or suffer the consequences.

Also hoping we will do the IUI before spring break and I can just chill a bit. It's a little scary to me that if this cycle doesn't work out that we are looking at some type of surgery for me.

One of my best friends is due at the beginning of July whereas I was due at the end of June. It's sad but we don't talk much about it - it's hard to talk because she's doing missionary work in Africa but I still miss her and want to talk. I finally got a box and put the few things I had set aside for Poppyseed in there. 

This post is really stream of conscious-y and I apologize.

Hamsters can get KTFU, but not me

My husband can knock up hamsters! In other words although his morphology is still a little wonky, he did really well on this test. 100% of the eggs were penetrated and they look for like 14 sperm/egg but he had over 32 sperm/egg. This is great! We can do another round of injectibles.

On the other hand, surgery time for me. We've pretty much decided if I have no cysts when I go in for baseline testing we will do another round of injectibles/IUI and if that doesn't work then we'll do the surgery. If I still have major cysts, then we will go ahead and do the surgery this time around.

I know it's two posts in one day, but when stuff happens, it happens.

Surgery? IVF? I don't know.

I'm just at a loss right now. I got a progesterone in oil shot on Monday to start my period, but several other things are going on.

If my cysts persist (funny wording, that) and if we want to do another IUI as opposed to IVF then the doctor wants to do a laproscopy/hysteroscopy to take a look at my insides. This is outpatient surgery but involves going all the way under and being out of commission for a few days. She says they usually do it on a Friday and then you can go back to work by next Wednesday. Well that involves me missing some classes and I have to get subs and then teach sitting down when I do come back and BLARGH to all of that. Plus we don't know if that will do us any good.

My husband also went in on Monday to do a sperm penetration assay test, or the hamster test. If that goes well, then we can do some more IUI before IVF but if it's abnormal then the doctor suggests we just skip to IVF and potentially IVF with ICSI (which I'll explain more later if I have to do so). If we are pressed into this route I won't have to have surgery but we will have to do the IVF part.

And you guys? I'm just not ready in my heart for IVF. To me that seems like the "big guns" more so than anything else and I will go there if I must but I'm not ready for it yet. Even if that means I may have to have surgery. I just wish I knew the right answer to all of this.

Rest, but no Relaxation.

We're on rest! According to my nurse, this is the perfect time to get pregnant. Of course, this assumes that you ovulate or will ovulate after you've been kicking your ovaries in the behind for several months.

Unlike mine, which loooove to fake me out on the Clear Blue Monitor with HIGHS for days and days and days and then go, forget it, you are never getting a peak, we tricked you - low! It hasn't gone all the way back to low yet but it's here on Day 21 and so we are not hopeful.

It's putting me in a real bad place, this resting. There's no hope, and every friend I made at the clinic is pregnant and I just feel like I'm getting behind. It's hard not to say it will *never* happen because  I feel like it never will. Part of me is just trying to prepare myself for that and part of me is just say wait, wait, wait - but I don't know for what.

It doesn't help that the first time we had sex after my pelvic rest (thanks cysts!) it hurt so bad that I was crying by the end of it. Which delayed our second start for like another 5 days. But with the monitor not peaking, what did we care? (About that part of it, we very much cared about the activity itself and things were much better for Round 2, thank God, otherwise I would never be having sex again end of story.)

I guess I just feel like resting is more like stalling and I'm not altogether happy about it.

Resting

Well I went in for day 1 baselines and they found a cyst the size of godzilla had taken up residence around my right ovary. There were a few cysts, with a total of about 17 cubic centimeters of volume, but godzilla was about 4 cm wide just on her own. That means I'm out for this month in the hopes that these things will dissolve on their own. If they don't, then I have to do a month of birth control (irony) to make sure they go away.

Meanwhile for the next two weeks I'm supposed to be on pelvic rest. I do not feel that my husband appreciates this. We're on our own for this cycle, though we can still try (assuming I ovulate). The nurse said that after taking medication, people in my situation have a 6% better chance of conceiving, which in our case is a whole whopping 6%. Maybe this is exactly what my body needs, I don't know, but I find it disheartening to be put on hold. I had really strong, nice hopes for the last cycle and this just seems like an extended period of nothing that will potentially get me down.

Negative

Blood test was negative, a less than 5 negative so REALLY negative. I was expecting it since I started spotting last night and a lot more spotting today. I was really sad about it last night but I'm trying to buck up since my husband is having a hard time at work and thus monopolizing all of the pitifulness available to our household.

The nurse told us we could try this next cycle "if we wanted to" but she seemed kind of blah about it. She wants me to talk to the doctor and so scheduled an appoint for February 8th. Ugh, really? I don't exactly want to SKIP A CYCLE waiting for the doctor.

On the other hand, I'm sort of over the IUI thing. When we did it ourselves we got pregnant, but the IUIs, not so much. I think maybe the timing of the IUI is off for me? We can't do it before because he's saving it up, so we blow 36 hours from trigger to insemination and then we usually don't feel like it after that. So it's a one shot deal and I'm not sure it's working for us. I think I'll talk to the nurse at least about doing back to back IUIs or doing it old school this time around. Except for the drugs. We got to have the drugs.

Down and Almost Out

No spotting, but still a no according to the FRER digital test. The blood test tomorrow will confirm this for sure.

Suspense

The last two cycles I have started spotting at day 11 or 12. It is now day 10 (post O obviously) and there is no spotting, and if there is no spotting still on Monday, which will be day 12, then I will use a home pregnancy test. Either way I have a blood test on Tuesday, but the suspense is KILLING ME SERIOUSLY. Or maybe that's all the inlaws. Hmmmm. This is just me, putting the world on notice.