Superstition

I have no idea why this was so hard... but I took a big and scary step for me today.  I had to call our RE's office and say that we would no longer be needing the appointment we have scheduled next week. 

I had put it off as long as I could.  I wouldn't even cancel when they called last week to move it up a week.  I couldn't bring myself to trust that I could cancel because we wouldn't need their appointment.  I am 3 months pregnant and yet, still, hanging over me is the terror that today could be my last day. 

I'm not normally superstitious, but i feel like one of those baseball players that when they are on a winning streak they won't change their socks, or their route to drive to the baseball field.  This total paranoia that even the slightest change in the routine will upset the delicate balance of the universe that has led to them being 12 for 12. 

That is how I feel about Shmily.  I feel like this pregnancy is a streak that is just waiting to be broken.  Like those signs in factories that say 114 days without a workplace accident.  They always seem to be tempting fate.  I have been pregnant for 93 days.  And even now I wonder if I am going to make it to day 94.

I know this is my pregnancy after loss brain that is completely not trusting my own body, or trusting this pregnancy.

But, I called (because my tomorrow we would have had to pay) and I cancelled.  They called back.  They congratulated me.  Told me it was wonderful news and how happy they are for us. 

But I just feel unsettled.  Like I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

My ICLW introduction post 4 days late (just like i wish my period was)

This week I am participating in International Comment Leaving Week for the first time.  I am new to blogging and this week has been amazing to get to read so many other peoples journeys.  Each of us is at different places and have different struggles.  I have found some incredible new blogs to read and have read parts of each and everyone one on the list so far.

This has, however, made me realize that I FAILED EPICALLY because it seems that it would have been nice to take the time to actually introduce myself to anyone stopping by for the first time.

We are at the start of our journey.  We have been TTC for 13 heartbreaking months.  For my 39th birthday we got the gift we were waiting for. 

You know that really irritating home pregnancy test commercial that starts "Don't you wish you could know you are pregnant as soon as it happens?"  Well I did.  On my 39th birthday I had the most vicious awful cramps.  I had some light bleeding.  It was all exactly 7 days post ovulation.  Then the bleeding stopped.  I felt every single symptom I should.  I just KNEW I was pregnant.

When I finally took a home pregnancy test 6 days later, 1 day before my period my husband actually NODDED AT ME AND WENT BACK TO READING HIS BOOK.  Because as far as he was concerned, we had known for a week already, he couldn't understand why I was telling him again. 

That was my momentous reveal.  

We are no longer pregnant.  But he has learned that if we ever get pregnant again that nodding is not an acceptable response.

My husband and I are older, I am still 39 for a few months, my husband is 44.  We are aware of the constantly ticking clock.  Our time is passing.  We found each other late in life and have been married less than a year.  We both want children.  We hope that we will be one of the lucky ones.

We have consulted with an RE but because i did get pregnant within 6 months of trying she wants so to try for a minimum of another 7 cycles after the miscarriage before we start anything more  intensive.  We are in the middle of cycle 5.  Our next appointment with the RE is at the end of July. 

Our fertility struggles are complicated by my diagnosis and treatment for adrenal Cushing's and now it looks like hypothyroidism. 

Currently we share our home with a small black cat who begrudgingly allows us to use the bedroom between 11pm and 7am... but going to bed early or waking up late results in caterwauling like you wouldn't believe.    

So, that is my introduction, my story in a nutshell.    Thank you to everyone for sharing your stories with me.

Money, Money, Money... it's a rich man's world

My husband and I never fight.... truly... never...  but tonight was a different story.  Money is of course foremost in our minds these days.  We have some debts of course... and they all stem to a single event. Our wedding.

Our wedding was beautiful.. complete with horse drawn carriage and a wedding by a pond.  But was this because I was a demanding diva from hell insisting on everything being perfect?  Uh.. not a chance.  I was pushing to elope but my husband needed a wedding.  See, he comes from a broken home, but not just a simple parents divorced kind of broken home... his mother left the communist country that they lived in and he didn't see or hear from her for a decade.

Finally, she sent for him.  He moved in.  She left again two weeks later leaving him with relatives in a country where he didn't speak the language.  A year later she sent for him again... this time to Canada.  His third country and third language in a year he moved to CAnada at the age of 13.  He didn't see or speak to his father for a decade.

My husband needed a white wedding, he needed his Norman Rockwell moment that was picture perfect and I needed to make that dream come true.  And we did.

We have different approaches to money.  Mine is a save now buy when we can afford it sort of approach while he believes very much that we can just put things on credit and pay them off one day.  So tonight it comes to a head.  I am insisting on living quite abstemiously and paying of our debt and starting to put money away for our fertility treatments in the months until we start.  My husband wants to go and buy things that aren't necessities.  Please, tell me we aren't the only ones who fight about money!

Sucked Dry.

So here I was thinking that by waiting for my second set of blood work and having that and my STD panel done at the same time I would be saving myself a prick. 

Nope.

14 vials of blood and 5 bruises later i look like a hit and run victim.  My veins kept collapsing under the repeated requests for blood, and doing blood work with a migraine always gives me more bruises. 

Today's wardrobe is a long sleeves!

A little grossness for your day

May I begin this post with:  EWWWWWWW

It's amazing the things you will read sometimes.  Believe me, when I clicked on this article I actually thought it was going to be cocktails I could give my husband to improve his semen for conception.  I expected it to have things like wheat grass and zinc and not... well... what it has.

I am home sick again today.  The weather here is giving me horrible migraines off and on.  I am trying not to take any drugs, but I will be happy when the storm system clears our area.  My husband has also taken today off sick.  For me being sick still means I have to get work done.  I'm currently on a contract and so I don't actually have things like sick days and vacation time.  But I do have a really fabulous boss and a very flexible work environment.  I am doing some research that I can do at home just as easily as in the office and it allows me to control the light better and lay down when my head gets especially bad.

My second set of blood work came yesterday so my darling husband and I may go out and get that done this afternoon.  I would rather get my TSH done right away just in case there is a problem.  I think that with having had an adrenal gland removed already I am more susceptible to things like Hashimoto's disease and hypothyroidism because my hormones are unbalanced and my poor right adrenal gland has to work all the time and never gets to take weekends off the way your adrenal gland does.  For me there is always the threat of adrenal insufficiency and death if i get run down.

We also have to have our communicable disease blood work done.  I am not concerned about this, i know we will both pass with flying colours, but does anyone know what happens to couples who have something like syphillis or hepC?  Are they not allowed to use assisted reproductive technologies (ART) or does the staff just use special precautions when dealing with  samples from that couple?  My understanding is that it has much more to do with the handling of biohazards than anything else.

When I did research my last project that I worked on was on the bacteria that caused syphillis.  So hypothetically contracting syphillis was a workplace hazard... just me and the streetwalkers can say that!  We actually had one of the lab techs stab herself in the finger with a needle filled with syphillis once.  Imagine having to go home to your husband and explain that one.  Fortunately I never suffered and injuries of this sort.  So we should be good to go for IUI when our time comes.

Too Stinking High (TSH)

Have I mentioned that I love my RE?  If not it bears repeating.  I think I might have a little girl crush on her.

I should probably preface this next blog with a little medical background on myself.  See.... I'm what is known as a medical freak.  I'm a zebra... for those of you who don't immediately understand this reference there is a quote they tell young doctors:  When you hear hoof beats think horses, not zebras.  Well the problem with that is that some people actually are zebras and I am one of them.  The quote is meant to remind young doctors that there is a reason that diseases are classified as rare... that's because no body has them.  It is meant to remind young doctors that they are not the future Dr. House finding weird and wonderful, obscure diseases that are given only a paragraph in most medical text books.  Most people are coming to you because they have a cold.  The common cold.

The problem with this is that many doctor's will disregard all of the symptoms of a disease that is staring them in the face because they have had it beaten into their heads that it is just too rare... that they will never in their practice see a patient with such a rare disease.

About 3 years ago I was diagnosed with Cushing's.  This is a disease in which a tumor causes your body to produce a ridiculous amount of extra cortisol - the stress hormone.  It causes many delightful symptoms like weight gain, facial hair, high blood pressure, type II diabetes, infertility, etc, etc etc.  The problem is that a doctor will look at an overweight woman with high blood pressure and type II diabetes and tell her to just lose weight.  Wanna hear the craziest thing about cushings?  You can't.  You actually can't.  They have done studies where they have shown that looking at a picture of a doughnut will actually change your metabolism as though you have eaten it.  Now that's a messed up disease.

Cushing's is found in 1:1,000,000 of the population... but wait... there's more... there's an even rarer form called adrenal cushings which is found in only 1:5,000,000 of the population and this is the form i have.  As a result I have had my left adrenal gland removed, which can cause a lot of stresses on a body.  I wear a medical alert bracelet just in case i suddenly topple over.

Because of this diagnosis I want you to believe me when i tell you i have seen a LOT of doctors.  In fact I have seen a LOT of endocrinologists.  When I had my surgery the chief of surgery dropped by my room to see, in his words, the "famous patient".  No joke.  I'm a freaking medical marvel.

Despite all of this I am in awe with my RE because she did something that blew my mind.  She checked my test results the second they came in.  She called me because my TSH was too stinking high and wants a retest.  I find so many doctors will wait until their next consult before they look at your test results.  My father drove a car for 6 months after tests showed he was legally blind because his optometrist didn't look at the results.  So my RE looked at my results and took action.

You see why I'm a little bit in love?

How can you not know you are pregnant?

This would be the TV show "I didn't know that i was Pregnant" that is on TLC, not unfortunately a miraculous revelation about myself.  Today's show is a 57 year old woman who undergoes IVF with a donor egg.  I'm intrigued to see how this is going to be a surprise pregnancy for this particular woman.  I mean honestly, if you pay someone to put fertilized eggs into your uterus then how on earth  is it supposed to be a surprise? 

I am home sick today.  I left work at noon with a horrible migraine and am still feeling the effects.  I spent most of the afternoon yesterday completely unconscious because the light was too much for me to bear. 

I have always been the victim of migraines, but ibuprofen always used to save me... now i no longer take ibuprofen on the off chance that I get pregnant, or because it might interfere with ovulation or any of the other things that we've heard.  I mean if ibuprofen was really working as a birth control method then I am sure lots of teen girls would be popping that when they couldn't get the real pill.  But, when you are trying to have a baby then apparently you will listen to just about any rumor that can have an impact on your ability to have a child... at least i will.

Back to the 57 year old she started to hemorrhage and was diagnosed with a miscarriage... and apparently no one bothered to check via ultrasound or pregnancy test??  Honestly... and she hemorrhages for months and no one looks to see if she's had any retained tissue?  Who are these doctors?

This show both intrigues and depresses me.  As a woman who is trying to get pregnant the idea that you could be pregnant for months and not notice that it was going on is a strange fantasy... and of course it leads me to play mind games every single month.  Even once my period has started i ask myself... am i actually having my period?  is it breakthrough bleeding?  Is this period lighter than usual?  It is crazy the number of ways i can pretend that even despite all of the evidence to the contrary I will take any possible opportunity to pretend that maybe, just maybe i will one day be a candidate for this show.  That despite the plethora of pregnancy tests within arms reach that i can take at any point in time i might somehow be pregnant without knowing it. 

Teeny Tiny Ovaries

Am I wrong?  I spent all day yesterday looking for the size my ovaries should be and my conclusion is that mine are tiny.  Teeny tiny.  They are not pleasingly plump.  This does not bode well for my future fertility does it.  Ovaries start off around 10 cm each from what i can tell and as you get older they get smaller, and smaller and smaller until they shrivel up like prunes... or something like that.

As I said to my husband through tears yesterday it is not just about this pregnancy, but about the next one too.  We would like two children, are we dreaming?  Are we just too older for that to be possible?  And now we have to wait three months before we see our doctor again and find out for sure what this all means for our chances. 

Then, of course, because life likes to mock me, we are going to be on vacation in Europe for most of August.  This is a combination of trips to visit my husbands family who I have never met and a week with my family in Spain.  My father has terminal cancer and wants to spend time with us all before he gets too sick.  But right now, in my head, it's just another month we will have to wait before we can get some treatment.

And another delay before our baby comes.

Rise and Shine little Antral Follicles

That's it... Day 3.  And my husband and I are requested to attend the opening of the fertility clinic.  7:30 am appointment for day 3 blood work and ovarian reserve monitoring.

Right ovary has 7 follicles with a volume of 2.7
Left ovary has 8 follicles with a volume of 3.6
No fibroids (yay - that much I know is good)
A XXXX cyst.  The doctor says this fast and i can't catch the word, so i'm not sure of what it means

Now, comes my date with Google as I try to figure out if any of this is good news.
I think my numbers are at the very lowest range of normal possible... is it enough?

Our visit to the clinic. Part the First.

First, I want to say that I think I love, love, love our RE.  She is funny and nice and when she took my medical history and heard I'd had a miscarriage she said "that sucks" which to me is exactly the right thing to say, because it does and it did.  And there are no right words to make it better.

I am a little annoyed that she seems to be pregnant herself, but about 4 or 5 months along... I will try not to hold this against her as she pushes her 8 month belly into my face at our next appointment.

She wants us to try, with miliatary precision for the next 3 months again.  I don't know what it is about the 3 month waiting period but all the doctors seem to want to prescribe that first.  It is mostly because we did get pregnant within 6 months even if it didn't stay.  She was less enthusiastic about my AMH numbers than my doctor was, she thinks my doctor might have checked the wrong units, so she's ordering that again.  My husband is quite relieved that his sperm is very normal and he can go back to his Y fronts.... I think the ones I bought him are much sexier... maybe i can make an argument for boxer briefs.

Right now we have blood work ordered and I have to do a follicle test on day three.  So, i'm sitting here hoping my period makes an appearance early enough today that I can have the test done on Sunday morning rather than Monday.  I don't want to fight through traffic to get to the clinic on a weekday if i can help it and my husband would come with me on Sunday which would be nice.  I like when he's there.  He makes me smile. 

I don't think i've ever wanted my period to come so badly.  I mean I shouldn't be hoping right, until it does there is still a chance that I could be pregnant.  But I've pretty much given up that hope this month because my temperature has been a little bit lower the last couple of days.  I"m pretty sure it was 36.26 this morning... but i took it in the middle of the night and i sometimes dream that I do that.  And when I took it when i woke up this morning it was 36.5 but I had been awake for about 5 minutes and snuggling with my hot blooded husband.   He's nice to snuggle.

We decided to go out for dinner last night to celebrate the fact that we won't have to pay for any fertility treaments for at least 3 months and we went to the Keg.  The Keg is a Canadian chain that is sort of an upscale steak house.  My husband ordered prime rib but instead got brought a sirloin.  We only just politely asked what we had and they tried to replace his meal.  I pointed out that my husband didn't really care what kind of meat he had as long as it wasn't made of soy.  They sent over the manager to make sure we were ok and she comped us his meal and a dessert each for the mix up.  I want to say that The Keg has the BEST customer service of any restaurant that I have ever been to.  They bend over backwards to make sure you enjoy your dinner and that is one of the reasons my husband and I go so often.

Plus if you say "How are you?" they respond "I am well, Thank you for asking", which is so cute it makes me giggle. 

What goes well with stirrups?

Yep... .i'm nervous as hell right now.
Our appointment is today, at 1:30pm.
Gulp

Getting dressed this morning was weird. I decided on a tank top to make taking blood easy, under a jacket to keep warm and decided to go with blue jeans.  I don't really work in a blue jeans kind of place.  But I can go days without seeing any of my colleagues just because of what I do, and since i intentionally didn't schedule any meetings today I am sort of hanging out in my office.

I wanted to feel comfortable as I walked into the office today, or at least look like I felt comfortable, and blue jeans will do that for me i hope.  My husband is leaving work today at noon and we are meeting at home to travel there together.  It's a bit of a backtrack for him....  He works North of the city and we live East, but i didn't want to try to deal with two cars there, and i need him to hold my hand through today.

And I want to be able to analyze and discuss everything that is said to us in the appointment on the drive back home, not being trying to fight through both traffic and tears at the same time.  Anyone been through this already?  Help!!

Baby on Credit

If there is one thing that I knew about IVF before we started on this journey it was that this wasn't going to come cheap.  We still don't know exactly what this will cost us of course, we don't know what treatments we will need.  We don't know how many it will take before they are successful.  So, even though we can look up and see that our fertility clinic will cost us about $1,500 for an IUI that basically tells us nothing.

My husband and I decided to go to the bank yesterday to see how much money we could arrange before our appointment at the fertility clinic tomorrow (Gulp!).  I know the clinic offers financing, and no doubt they will pretty give you anything since they are filling a space in your soul and you know you will pay anything to have that baby you want so badly, but we also wanted to know, financially what our other options were.  Who knows if the clinic will give you the lowest rate?  Maybe it's like a credit card at 20% where you will be required to send all of your frozen embryos out to work just to pay it off.

The woman at the bank was ridiculously happy for us.  "Fertility treatments!  How exciting!"  My guess is she is baby crazy, but still confident that her nubile body will produce the children she is going to have one day... she doesn't understand that fertility treatments are filling me with dread and fear not excitement.  

She notices the title "Dr." attached to my file.  I hold a PhD and it has been put on my file as such.  But she mistakes it for an MD.  "I think we can get you a business loan.  It has a much lower interest rate."

There is nothing more ridiculous to me than the idea that our baby making be financed by a business loan.  This is not an investment that is going to be paid off any time soon. This is a long term investment that is going to require repeated infusions of cash as our child struggles to define themselves throughout childhood and adolescence.  Unless our child is the next Justin Bieber (and i really hope not after watching his latest string of petulant tweets) there is little hope that this baby is going to post a profit margin in the first quarter of his or her life.

Procreation versus Recreation

I told my husband over breakfast today that we never need to have sex again.  He made me explain myself.  I pointed out that any further actions my husband and I take in procreating will be facilitated by doctors and speculums and needles... oh my!  Therefore we didn't NEED to have sex ever again.

My husband looked at me with an arched brow "Really?" 

Well, of course not.  My husband knows me well enough to know better than that.  But as I point out, after nearly a year of focusing on the procreation from here on out we can just consider everything to be recreation.  

"It's good right?  You'll know that I'm not using you for sperm anymore... I'm just using you for sex." 

The idea of having a baby has definitely had an impact on how we view sex.  For a few days every month there isn't the option of if.  Or which position.  Or what time of day.  Everything has to be planned.  And there needs to be enough time afterwards for me to practice my hanging upside down yoga.  (I actually have no idea if there actually is any improvement in pregnancy rates for women who contort their bodies after sex.  But it sure decreases cuddling.)

Now, we can go back to the way things were before right?  I mean just because we don't have to be in the same place when we conceive our child... but we can sure make sure that we are together when we practice. 

We celebrated by being a bit late for work this morning.

I guess the chicken comes first...

Basal Body Temperature:  36.27

In the old riddle "which comes first the chicken or the egg" you know if your BBT doesn't rise there is no egg.  Therefore, the chicken comes first.

I had harboured these secret unrealistic hopes and wishes that somehow we would squeak one in.  That I would go meet our reproductive endocrinologist and she would order blood work that would reveal their services were not necessary because we were already pregnant.  That will not happen.

So, in a bid for silver linings I am happy that we will not have a baby born too close to Christmas, because that always sucks.. plus we were sort of thinking of doing Christmas in Florida this year and waking up to sunshine instead of snow.
 

A two week wait I never expected!

OMG!  I have a sneaking suspicion that we are the luckiest couple ever to have to go to a fertility clinic.  I had expected that it was going to take us months to get in.  I had even anticipated that it would be at least June because I try not to set myself up for disappointment. I have already calculated exactly when we would have a monitoring cycle, and when we would have our first treatment and when we could either get our first BFN or the BFP that we want to bad.  It was like August.

 But no we have an appointment in only two weeks!  Crazy. 

I am overwhelmed and shocked.  That's so soon!

You would think that any woman who has tried to get pregnant would find the two week wait to be a breeze.  I find after a year of trying I have a routine for the tww.  I know which days to start feeling my boobs to see if they are swelling, i know which days to expect the cramps... i know exactly which days I can stop feeling hopeful...

This is a two week wait i have no idea how to handle.