Give Me All Your Money (on a full bladder)

Today was mock transfer day.

And give me all your money day.

Instructions for the mock transfer (it is what it sounds like – a fake transfer to make sure they won’t have any issues with the real one) include coming to the clinic with a full bladder.

Full bladders and I? We don’t really get along very well. The paper stated I  needed to drink 32 oz of water prior to the appointment.

I laughed.

As someone who actually avoids drinking water during the day  because I pee so much (and, well because I don’t like water. What? It doesn’t taste like anything!) I had to put much more thought into my liquid consumption than the average person. The office is about 20 minutes from my work and the one thing I hate worse than a full bladder? Is a full bladder in the car. So I cheated a bit and drank as I drove (WATER!).

Pleased with myself that I didn’t have to go to the bathroom already upon arrival at the office, I was pleasantly surprised to be called back for my noon appointment at 11:50. For half a second I began to worry I didn’t finish the water soon enough.

Wrong.

11:50 – Enter room, undress (by the way I’m totally wearing dresses for appointments from now on – so much easier).

11:53 – knock on door. But its only the nurse again, filling out something and checking the equipment

12:00 – internet stops working on phone. Annoyed. Have to pee a little. Stare at ceiling tiles.

12:10 – finish reading all 20 pages of the consent forms. Chuckle at all the suggestions that say things like “more research is needed” Have to pee a little more

12:15 – Crap. I have to pee.

12:17 – Ok, I’m giving this guy 3 minutes and I’m going to pee anyway

12:20- ok, 5 more minutes. *begin uncomfortable shifting*. Considered pee pee dance but somehow doing the pee pee dance commando just didn’t work in my head

12:23 – OMFG I have to pee

12:25 – doc comes in. He shakes my hand and says “hi”

Me: hiihavetopee!

He begins to explain what he’s going to do. I was glad I already knew what procedures were for because the entire time he is explaining them to me I’m thinking that he could tell me that they are going to insert egg eating aliens into my lady parts who will come running back out and spit eggs into a petri dish when we do this for real and I would have kept nodding because I HAD TO PEE!

He gets my feet into the stirrups and asks me how work is going.

For real? I find myself actually muttering “nothing more awkward than half naked small talk”. No one laughs. I mean come on. You all spend all day sticking random objects into women, and no one gives me a chuckle. Sigh.

I am relieved when this is over quickly and am guessing this means that transfer should go pretty smoothly, but at this point I don’t care. He asks if I’d like to use the bathroom.

Me: for the love of God yes!

I can see this relationship is going to go really well.

The mock transfer went well. The saline sonogram (basically checking for polyups or cysts) was all clear.

Afterwards I met with the nurse (with a painlessly empty bladder I might add) signed my consent forms, reviewed the calendar, and was released to hand over all of my money.

I’m not sure why, but I kinda felt like I was doing something sneaky. I had the nervous giggles. If I didn’t have payment in my hand and hadn’t uttered “I’m here to pay for my cycle”, someone probably would have thought I was about to take off with the plant by the front door or the magazine rack.

But it’s paid, and I didn’t have a heart attack or lose any limbs (literally – figuratively I think I’m down to one arm). And while, admittedly I have thought to myself several times before about how unfair it seems that we have to have the money to pay for this AT ALL (don’t gasp, you would have thought it too), I was actually relieved that it was covered and that we won’t have to make payments for the next 2-5 years.

This better work, dammit.

And because it just seems like the thing to do, the obligatory meds picture:

Hi, I’m ready to cause you possible headaches, nausea, bumps, bruises, sore breasts etc. Enjoy!

And We’re Off….

I should have expected it, I suppose, but didn’t really think about how quickly things move once a cycle begins. I dutifully called the RE’s office on CD 1, had an appointment for the next day and was forking over a credit card number to order medication. And just like that, our first IUI cycle starts. Maybe I expected fireworks or something(though there will be fireworks today, I’m pretty sure they aren’t for me), but its just another day in the life of everyone else.

Many people ask me if I’m excited, and honestly I have mixed feelings. I like to say that I feel “cautiously optimistic”, as this is probably going to be the best chance we’ve had so far, but still only about 20% as far as statistics show. I would never gamble money on 20% in any other situation.

Before “Bob” and I met for our third date, I had to take a pregnancy test. I get this, I mean they don’t want to start filling you up with drugs if you are pregnant, however, the cost of said pregnancy test was $48. Seriously? I could have told you I wasn’t pregnant for FREE. Actually, I would have happily brought in one of my own negative tests to save myself that ridiculous expense. Sheesh.

As it turns out, I’m not pregnant. (Oh my Gosh, shock!) While I waited for the ultrasound lady, I talked with Bob about the importance of calling for third dates and a discussion about his absenteeism. He agreed to be better and we were back in business. This ultrasound was done basically to make sure I didn’t have any foreign bodies anywhere in my reproductive system (i.e. cysts) and to count my antral follicles, which basically is the number of follicles that could potentially grow an egg. I can’t remember how many were on my right ovary, but my left had 23. Incidentally, that does NOT mean I am going to end up with 23 eggs or 23 babies. I can’t even imagine that scenario. I would have…..well, a 23 sided shape is called a icosikaitrigon (no I did NOT know this off of the top of my head, my best guess would have been to go off of 12 sides which is a dodecahedron I think, so I would have said  doubledodecaheminusoneuplets), so that would mean I would have icosikaitriuplets? I don’t even know how to pronounce that.

Anyway, things are good to go. I sat with the nurse afterwards, who went over my med calendar and showed me how to give myself shots. I’ll be taking 2.5 mg of Femara (it induces ovulation) today through Sunday and will give myself two injections of Follistim (also stimulates ovulation) Sunday and Monday. I go back for another ultrasound (Bob actually scheduled the date this time…he is learning) next Tuesday (CD 9) to check the growth status. It looks as though the actual IUI will happen sometime between July 12-14th, if all goes well.

Here goes nothing.

A Post About Nothing In Particular

Making the decision to ignore infertility and simply live for awhile is great for the soul, but bad for the blogging. Without that constant reminder, I’m left with not much to write about.

We (by we I mean Bryan) are planning our next home improvement attempt: refinishing the floors. When we bought this house we knew we’d have to fix the floors. The renters who lived here prior to us clearly had no respect for stuff that isn’t theirs. It appears as though their dog ran rampant through the house with his or her claws digging into the wood. You probably think I’m exaggerating, but you’d be wrong. I agreed to the idea of attempting to refinish as long as it didn’t cost too much. I may be more lax about spending, but we still may need that IVF money one day. Building the fence was a fabulous idea though, as Bryan stepped outside the back door this morning to wish me off, declaring (though really only loud enough for me to hear) that he was standing outside in his underwear and no one could see him.

It’s the little things, right?

The Barbados clinic called me a few days ago to ask if we were still interesting in pursing the IVF Vacation. At this point I told them to contact me again late summer/early fall. If our bodies can’t manage it on their own by then I figure it will be time to commence….

Are you ready for this?

Operation Insemination Vacation

I should be a comedian, right?

Yeah I get it, don’t quit my day job. Regardless, that’s what we’re calling it. In the meantime, I’m hoping this relaxed attitude sticks around for awhile. I paid a visit to the Doctor’s Care yesterday, was greeted by a very pregnant doctor while reading an article about pregnant celebrities and didn’t even bat an eye.

Weird.

Contact Paper and Adventures in Graduation

I have this vague memory when I was smaller of adults cooing over how old I was getting, how tiny I used to be, and how they just remember me as a certain age.

I always found that annoying. Like, how? Do you not see me standing here now, clearly older? I was especially weirded out by people who exclaimed  how big I’d grown from when they used to babysit me, because I had no memory of any of that. Then they’d all wonder aloud where the time went and everyone else would nod in unison and agreement. I’d run away and play the first chance I had, wondering why all adults were so strange.

Then I watched my sister walk across the stage at her college graduation, the proud new owner of a Bachelor’s degree holder (they send it in the mail later which I’ve always thought was strange. Congratulations on your brand new degree….holder!) , and wondered to myself where the time went.

Confession: that’s not the first time that thought had crossed my mind.

And I already know I’m strange, so don’t bother telling me.

To backtrack a bit, I boarded a plane on Thursday headed for the mediocre  great and boring exciting state of Ohio. After a small freak out on Wednesday night about the fact that I wouldn’t be able to carry on my hairspray or mousse (see fear: pouf hair) and a perhaps-a-bit-too-frantic text to my mom and sister about the existence of said items at the house, I boarded the plane confident that I’d be able to keep my hair under control for the weekend.

If you had my hair, you’d understand.

Natalie had three main goals for the weekend:

1. Graduate

2. Move from apartment A to apartment B

3. Hang out with cool sister

Ok, I may have made that last one up.

Day One of “Operation Move Apartment” went fairly smoothly. No one broke any bones or threw any items across the room, which to me counts as a victory. I almost threw a do-it-yourself bench across the room when I couldn’t get the pieces to fit into the pre- measured holes, and found myself repeatedly sitting on them in my attempts to get the legs all the way into the seat. I was especially annoyed (albeit appreciative) after one of her guy friends managed to get them to fit in about 2 minutes.(Apparently all 128 pounds of my body just wasn’t good enough.) What was supposed to be a half day task naturally ended up taking all day, because the apartment hadn’t been cleaned very well after the previous person had moved out. Seriously, the dirt on the shelves? Gross. And in desperate need of a good scrub and some contact paper.

Contact paper and I have a love-hate relationship after spending several hours in a tiny kitchen (standing on the previously mentioned stool) covering shelves. Measure, cut, peel, unstick paper that stuck to itself or myself, press. Unpeel, repress. Flatten out bubbles. Unpeel, fix corner, repress. Flatten out bubbles. Cut excess with razor blade. Flatten. Rinse, repeat. I did it so many times that each time I peeled the paper from the backing I sang a two word song to myself titled simply “Contact Paper”,  which naturally became the joke of the weekend and was something I started singing at random times to amuse myself. I declared to anyone who would listen that I was 29 going on 18. Until that evening anyway when Natalie and her friend decided they wanted to go out to the bars….at midnight. It was already, like, 2 hours past my bedtime.

Is it bedtime yet?

At 2am, I pulled the “old” card and declared it was time to head back  because I wanted to go to bed.

I am so lame.

Also, on a totally unrelated note, double fudge cookie dough blizzards with peanut butter cups? Fabulous.

Saturday I got my happy butt out of bed and dragged it and Natalie’s butt running. We showered, ran a couple errands, grabbed breakfast and then I attacked contact paper: part 2. (Measure, cut, peel, unstick paper that stuck to itself or myself, press. Unpeel, repress. Flatten out bubbles. Unpeel, fix corner, repress. Flatten out bubbles. Cut excess with razor blade. Flatten. Rinse, repeat.)

After that, it was off to graduation:

Hi, we are with the graduate

I look nice now….

but I’ll totally steal your dollar when you aren’t looking

21 and 29 respectively, going on 5. We ranged many ages this weekend

Congratulations, Natalie.

FINALLY after all of that it was time for operation contact paper: part 3. (Measure, cut, peel, unstick paper that stuck to itself or myself, press. Unpeel, repress. Flatten out bubbles. Unpeel, fix corner, repress. Flatten out bubbles. Cut excess with razor blade. Flatten. Rinse, repeat.)

And you thought I was going to say dinner.

After another late night the whole family went to church the next morning. My aunt, who suffers from arthritis, asked me if I wouldn’t mind rubbing a couple of knots out of her shoulders. Afterwards, she told me she caught herself starting to ask me if, and I quote “did han.d jobs”. (i.e. would I massage her hands?)

For the record, the answer is yes, I do massage hands. Get your mind out of the gutter.

We took a trip in my mom’s convertible, where my mom and sister shared their incredible “cool-ness”

Suddenly, I had blinked and the weekend was over. And I found myself asking the question that I found so strange before: where did the time go? In fact, even with this incredibly long drawn out fertility journey, I ask myself that. It was nice to spend a weekend not worried, focused or even caring about fertility.

It’s time for more weekends like that. Ones that involve living and enjoying life.

Thanks for the awesome weekend, family.

One Hundred

(Sorry for my absence recently – life has been BUSY…..more on that in another post, which will hopefully make an appearance in less than a week)

I started this blog a little over 7 months ago. Of course I’d hoped the infertility journey would be over by post 100.

It isn’t.

But it’s been a crazy journey so far.

We started out with zero sperm. Today we have 36 million.

I finished my second marathon.

I cleaned snow off of my car with a spatula.

We made plans, changed them , and then changed them AGAIN.

I wrote an Ode to several different silly things.

I learned a great deal, was reminded that I am stronger than I think, and have started to truely understand that infertility is a marathon – as much as I wanted it to (and still wish it would) be more like a 5k.

I’ve had nearly 10,000 page views which takes me by surprise, even though I think many of them were thanks to strange searches such as c.um shoot a.nus ( I guess even those interested in the stranger side of life may want to read what I have to say….). I’ve always liked to think I’m a decent writer, but it means something totally different to have someone say they enjoy what I write.

All in all, the last 7 months and 100 posts have had many ups and downs. Just today I had a conversation with my friends dad about hard times, and how when you are going through it, it is so difficult to see the positives. But nine times out of ten, when it’s over, you find yourself thinking “that wasn’t so bad after all”.

I’m still ready for this infertility journey to be over, but don’t regret any of what has happened so far.

Here’s to another 100 posts, which will hopefully soon start me towards another finish line: motherhood.

In the meantime, I still have plenty of sarcasm to share.

Tidbits and February ICLW

It’s been interesting around here the last few days.

Bryan was making dinner on Sunday while I played Super Paper Mario on the Wii. We had nothing planned but a nice relaxing evening.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t in the cards.

Suddenly, I hear a “WHOOSH”, and flames are shooting out of the pan in the kitchen. I, not realizing its a grease fire, don’t honestly think much of it, figuring he’ll throw some water on it and it’ll be done. He, knowing it IS a grease fire, picks the pan up in attempt to avoid burning the house down and directs it towards the sink. Grease is shooting out of the pan. He throws the pan into the sink and I, still not knowing its a grease fire, turns the water on.

Oops.

It re-lit, but luckily there was a wet washcloth in the sink so I covered it with that and it went out no problem.

Bryan on the other hand, was not so lucky. The shooting grease had made a few direct hits to his face and arm, meaning a trip to the ER was in order.

I’m speeding to the VA hospital with my emergency blinkers on. I just KNOW I’m going to get pulled over, but Bryan assures me it is fine, the cop will just escort us to the hospital. We are ALMOST there and I get pulled over. The cop takes my license and offers to escort us. We get to the hospital and Bryan runs in. I meet up with the cop and he hands me back my license…..and a speeding ticket.

@$$hole.

Bryan is ok. Hurting, but ok. He has second degree burns on his cheek, lips and upper arm. He’s been hanging out at home on painkillers. So I apologize if I haven’t been commenting much recently…..which leads me to:

February ICLW

An update for those of you are are new stopping by: In January we had decided to move forward with an IVF next cycle with a hopeful transfer mid-April. Then, Bryan’s VA endocrinologist  decides to add another hormone shot, swearing this will help us get pregnant naturally (we have mild “female factor” and more severe “male factor” – only enough sperm at last count for IVF). After much thought and now with this recent incident, we are probably going to put the IVF off until late spring/early summer. His next SA is April 1.

Finally, though it’s been posted on numerous other blogs, I wanted to add my support to Mo, who, after suffering 3 miscarriages, made it to 23 weeks and her water broke. At last update they were inducing her, and things aren’t looking good. I was really only a lurker of her blog and not nearly as close to her as some others, but my heart absolutely aches for her. Please send her, her husband, and her baby thoughts and prayers.

I can’t even begin to imagine.

To anyone who has suffered a loss or situation like this……I wish there were something I could do or say.

January ICLW

January has been a busy month for us.

When Christmas came around with a “special” present from AF in 2011, hubby and I  had a long talk and decided it was time to press forward with IVF.  With the theme in mind that 2012 is the year for babies,we met with our RE on Friday the 13th(ha), which you can read about here.

The very next day, I ran my second full marathon, which, even though I’ve done one before, felt like a huge accomplishment. I will keep running until I’m told not to, but won’t be training for big races anytime soon, as we have decided to go through with the IVF in April. I just got some bloodwork taken, will be on Metformin for about 5 weeks, and we’ll start the process in late February, hopefully transferring our child in mid to late April. It was both an easy and a difficult decision, which I’m sure you all understand. Infertility is expensive, but the alternative to not trying is turning out to be more costly than I would have originally guessed. 

So here we are, two AF visits away from staring what will hopefully be the first and only IVF cycle, and allow us to finally become parents.

Thanks for stopping by, and hope you’ll stick around!

When Your Friend is Infertile….

Not too terribly long ago, I attempted to touch on one of the somewhat sensitive subjects of infertility – sharing a pregnancy announcement to someone who has been struggling for awhile in my post A letter to the editor.

Unfortunately, since I still only have a one sided view right now, I don’t feel like I expressed myself very well.

Another blogger friend, Daydreaming In Progress recently linked her blog to a post.

This third blogger, Elphaba, has seen both sides and tackled the question of how to deal with the topic of your own pregnancy and children to an infertile friend.

While I like to think that I’m a decent writer…….at times…… there is no way I could have said it better. I’d rather you read it than my incessant blabber so click below:

So What’s a Fertile To Do?

Ho Ho Humbug

I love holidays usually. And birthdays. My birthday typically involves my running around reminding everyone that my birthday is coming up and asking people to do things for me because its my “birthday week”.  I love buying Christmas presents (though I’m horrible at wrapping them) and the big dinners and parties and cookies.

Not this year. I am not into the holidays at all.

                                                                 (Thanks Pinterest)

I’m looking forward to seeing my family and visiting with friends I haven’t seen in awhile, but I don’t feel like decorating, I don’t care to make cookies, and parties? No thanks.

My Christmas spirit seems to have run away. Probably with my patience.

I feel like a Scrooge.

I guess it’s because, no matter how good I’ve been this year, Santa is probably not carrying a baby in his sleigh.

Bryan gets his results from his 4th SA on Wednesday. Hopefully Santa can at least bring me some good news.

 

 

Thanks and Thorns

Something happened. A few days ago it was Halloween. Then I blinked and it was Thanksgiving.

Scary because they say time only goes faster as you get older.

So it’s a day of Thanks, and my visit from Aunt Flo came. And, like other annoying relatives, showed up early and unannounced. The perpetual thorn of infertility is particularly stabby today. So while I’m certainly NOT saying I that I’m not blessed or don’t have things to be thankful for, I’m not feeling particularly thankful right now, (except for Ibproufen) but I’m gonna try.

I did get a pleasant surprise last night, though. An understanding hubby took me out for chocolate cake.  We also went to Target for a book….and walked out with like 10 things (see, I told you), and I was apparently nominated for a blog award. Cool!

I recall seeing this little guy on other blogs I’d visited and thought ” I wonder how I get a blog award”

The idea behind this particular one is the word Leibster, the German word for beloved or favorite. It’s designed particularly for blogs with 200 followers or less (when I read this I thought – people seriously have 200 followers? Mine just doubled to 13 and I was really excited!) to encourage further attention and followers. It is a bit chain-letter-y, which I’m usually not into, but frankly I was excited to think there was someone out there who liked my blog enough to nominate me, and I figured it would be a cool thing to do for someone else. Plus now I get that cool pic up there to put on my sidebar

My nominator, Daydreaming in Progress, totally made my day yesterday.

The rules:

1. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
2. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.
3. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
4. Hope that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.

My top 5: (and my apologies if I pick you and you already have 200 followers, I couldn’t find anything that indicated the number)

1. Relaxed No More- an infertility blog. We seem to have a similar sense of humor

2. The Elusive Second Line – a blog about infertility. She’s been very supportive of my own blog and I’m happy to pass the support along!

3. Running in Mommyland – a blog about a mom training for her first marathon! You go girl! And if I remember correctly, conceived her twins through IVF.

4. Living Our Life in Cycles – I actually found this one (or she found me), through ICLW. A runner taking a break from running to peruse the journey of infertility. Stupid infertility.

5. Running is Magical - fellow runner who recently finished her 2nd ( I think ) half marathon and is currently training for a 3rd.  Way to go!

And even though I’m not in a great mood today, I’m going to share 5 things I’m thankful for:

1. My husband. He’d sell his soul if he knew it would make me happy. He is absolutely one of the most caring men I know and I don’t tell him enough how much I appreciate that (I guess I should email him a link to my blog

2. My ability to run. It seriously keeps my stress and sanity in check.

3. This blog. It’s helped immensely. And I love making people laugh

4. All of the support I have gotten from my friends, even though I’ve had a tendency to be crabby more often than usual in the last few months

5. Pinterest. Because how else would I find funny and ridiculous relevent pictures to share?

Happy Turkey Day Everyone!