"I would counsel you both to continue, in good conscience, on the path that you are on. The choice that you need to make has been made with an openness to the teaching of the church and the best advice that you can secure. Yes you will be scared and yes you will be cautious. That is a good thing but do not let the fear and especially the fear of the unknown paralyze you. You make the best decisions that you can make with what is known, you cannot be any more responsible than that."
Our karyotypes both came back normal. That's of course somewhat disappointing, since it's yet another thing that's not contributing to our infertility. It's bad when you're to the point that you're actually hoping that something will come back wrong. We literally could have gotten news that we were incapable of having children if one of our genetic results were bad enough, and in a weird way, I would have accepted that better. It would be telling us to just move on. But instead, we're normal, and here we are, continuing to fight a blind battle.
I went in for a follicle check this afternoon, since we were finally cleared. At CD15, I have a nice 22.8mm follicle and 8mm lining all ready to go. Of course, not even a whisper of my own LH surge, so we will be triggering tonight, in about an hour when Chris gets home. It's such a mind-fuck that this follicle, on a non-medicated cycle, is our best shot of the past 4 months when all the medicated cycles went so horribly wrong. So frustrating. "Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.
As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive. In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life. Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out. Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks." Source Today is CD1, and I called to schedule my usual ultrasound and blood test to get ready for a new cycle. What I didn't expect is that we would be benched even before getting to that point.
We opted to do karyotyping, and apparently for some reason, my clinic has a policy that they will not do any assisted treatment between the point of having the blood drawn and receiving the results. Seriously. I'm not sure how suddenly getting my blood drawn changes anything at all, but this is clearly a move to cover their asses. Something about finding out about a potential issue after getting pregnant, they can't run that risk. I feel like this is a result of someone suing them or something. I did convince them to still let me have the trigger shot, so if we don't get the results before I ovulate, I can at least still give myself the trigger shot and reduce my risk of creating a cyst (like I always do). It's one thing to be benched one cycle - it's a whole other issue to then be benched next cycle too because of a cyst. I did have to agree that we would "abstain" if they didn't get the results back by the time I surged and then triggered in order to get them to agree to let me have the shot. I'm not sure if we will, but then again ovulation is a moving target for me anyway, so it's certainly possible we'll have sex the night before a surge and would be in the running for pregnancy regardless. Which is comical, because let's face it, we're never in the running for pregnancy. It's been over two years. That's it, we're officially out this cycle.
I tested yesterday at 4am with an FRER, and it was stark white. No question whatsoever. I cried, I couldn't get back to sleep, and I spent the day in a bit of a fog. I had some wine, and cried myself to sleep. I didn't take that night's dose of progesterone, and now I just wait for the inevitable period. Of course I tested again this morning (14DPO) to be certain, and yet again, nothing. We're both getting so tired. This last cycle was particularly awful - SO many ultrasounds, SO many more rounds of drugs, the whole cycle lasting so much longer than usual, and me surging the second just one measly follicle reached maturity. My progesterone was so high then from all the follicles that the past two weeks have been, and continue to be, rough - nausea, issues sleeping, etc. I cried on the phone to Chris yesterday morning, how tired I was, and how I am just so ready for a real plan. I can't keep spinning my wheels, and I definitely don't want to go backward to just trying naturally. I want to progress, however we decide to do it. If not IVF, then embryo adoption. But I'm tired of just putting off the conversation as if we won't be ready to decide on this for another year or two. It's been too long already. We do have an appointment later this month with the NaPro doctor, so we will see what his recommendations would be. And I plan to still do another IUI this coming cycle if I'm not cyst-benched. But I just want to know we're working toward an actual next step. If Chris needs to do research and have conversations with people to determine where he stands on IVF, now's the time. We flew to San Diego on Thursday morning, July 2nd. Overall it was a great trip. It was a little annoying having to drink minimally and always be the DD on my own vacation, but it wasn't that terrible. Luckily for the most part everyone else stayed pretty calm with the drinking so I didn't feel that excluded. I did have a glass of wine each day, spread out in half-glass increments throughout the evening, so at no point did I even feel remotely buzzed. Pairing that with plenty of liquids throughout the whole trip, I definitely felt that I did a good job.
I also stayed up with protein and salt, and overall making sure I was eating a decent amount, so my body had plenty of calories and nutrition. I definitely had some days where I was having a bit of uterus and/or ovary pain, and even one day with sharp cervix pains. I also really do feel like I had some slightly pink/brown discharge yesterday, on 11DPO, but it's hard to know since I also am on estrace suppositories which turn my discharge bright blue. But that's the thing... it wasn't bright blue. It had sort of a murky color, which to me would indicate presence of another color in there. By the evening it was back to bright blue, and I definitely could tell a difference. Who knows, maybe it's all in my head. But I can't shake the fact that I got some brown discharge on 12DPO the cycle I got pregnant. Sure, I wasn't on progesterone then, but it's hard to know if that was implantation bleeding or if it was progesterone-drop bleeding. So here I am, 12DPO. Not testing. I was really on the fence anyway about testing, since I am so weirdly hopeful this cycle with the latest "symptom"-type developments, and it's nice to live in hope for a bit. But last night I decided I might as well just get it over with, so I got out a pregnancy test to put in the bathroom for the morning. My husband saw me, and immediate was all over it. Isn't it too early? Is it time to test already? Seems like it's fast. That's the thing about going on vacation for 5 days - makes the TWW go a lot faster because you get to live in a world where infertility isn't top of mind for a while. I reminded him that it was going to be 12DPO in the morning, and that's when I usually test. He immediately was like "But didn't the doctor say wait 2 weeks?? 14 days?" Again, I told him I never had done that, we always tested at 12DPO. This time I could tell he just wasn't ready. He wasn't ready to be let down, to be stressed out, etc. He asked if we could wait at least until Wednesday, 13DPO. I agreed, since I wasn't that hopped up about testing yet anyway. By some miracle, I am overall doing pretty ok today. Not getting too hopped up about testing tomorrow. I would say maybe I'll just wait until 14DPO anyway, and not test tomorrow, but I really should get off this progesterone sooner rather than later if I'm not pregnant so I don't push out my period too far. That's when we start having issues with timing and with follicles growing prematurely before the period even begins. Granted I'm on estrace right now, so hopefully that will help, but we still don't want to hinder next cycle. So tomorrow it is. For better or worse. My progesterone as of 6DPO was 37.
37!! I realize this is merely a result of all those follicles rupturing, and not actually any sort of sign of anything good happening, but holy moly that explains all the nausea, breast pain, both fatigue and sleeplessness (great combo!) and overall crappy feeling! After I ovulated Thursday night, I had awful pains in my abdomen from releasing all of those follicles. Even though only one follicle was likely mature, I still released around 5 or more follicles, so oh man was there pain. And now, I assume those 5 follicles have turned into corpus luteums and are releasing progesterone, and I'm guessing my progesterone levels are rapidly climbing. I'm still taking one supplement a day, but I am so nauseated right now. This is going to be a long TWW if I remain this nauseated the whole time.
On Friday, we met with the RE. I was a little discouraged, because she was ready to give up on the IUIs and go straight to IVF. She went through the whole IVF process and clearly was trying to convey that it was our best shot, especially with how erratically I've responded to meds for IUI. We talked to her about getting at least 2 more good IUIs in, and so we're going to try Clomid next cycle. I know that seems like a step down since success rates are higher with Femara, but right now we need 2-3 good mature follicles, which we're clearly not getting with Femara. We also have an appointment set up to talk to a natural women's health doctor who specializes in NaPro. We see him at the end of July - I'm not sure what to expect, but the idea is getting to the bottom of "unexplained" infertility and really finding a cause. After so many shitty cycles of throwing more drugs at things, it sounds pretty appealing to actually search for a reason. I made a baby quilt for our soon-to-be niece this weekend. I'm pretty excited about it and really proud of my first attempt at a quilt. I also included a little label that says "Made for you with love by Aunt Katie" and sewed it onto a swatch cut from my quilt that my grandma made me as a little girl. I hope my mom cries a lot and Laura understands the significance. I also found the best card ever for the gift. I'm not going to the baby shower by personal choice, but I am pretty excited to send the box and hope she loves it. All went well with the IUI. We had 41M post-wash, which was good considering that we had sex the morning before (without knowing that we were within range of an IUI). The actual insemination was not nearly as smooth and simple as the last one, as this nurse seemed less confident and more pokey than the last. But in the end, the sperm got where they needed to go.
And now we wait. It's 9:15am, and I'm sitting in an Einstein's Bagels awaiting my IUI.
Yesterday was a crazy whirlwind. At first, the nurse FINALLY called back over two hours after I initially called to let them know about the surge, and she told me to trigger and asked if I could come in for an IUI the next day - 1:30 sperm collection, 3:30 IUI. I said yes, absolutely. I ran to the bathroom, while shaking (adrenaline both from the course of events of the afternoon and also the fact that I was about to voluntarily stab myself), gave myself my shot. Honestly, it wasn't too bad. But it was one of those things where I got the needle, thought to myself "Well that wasn't so bad" then realized I actually had to push the plunger down. Muscle control wasn't great at that point, and the plunger was harder to push than I had anticipated, so I was pretty all over the place. But in the end, I did it! And then of course the nurse called back again, and asked if I could instead come in for an 8:30/10:30 IUI. Uh, sure! Why not! I mean I already emailed people to rearrange my afternoon schedule and they rescheduled everything for the morning, so why not ask them to move everything back? So here I am. We went in at 8:30 for the sperm collection, and I think we did a good job? It's always hard to tell with that stuff, but it appeared to be a pretty good volume I guess. I jetted across the street to Einstein's to grab some breakfast and take my 9:30 call, and then back to the RE for spermination! |