The Moments I Realize I Am Not Okay

This has been a long journey.

There is no infertility story that does not involve a long journey.

But man does it feel long.

There have been times of extreme stress and worry, times of resolution, times of jealousy and introversion, and times of just being. 

The "being" is where I have been for some time now.

I have all of those feelings of stress and worry and jealousy and fatigue...but for the most part they do not dominate my life as they once did. I am living (as best I can within the constraints of my cycles). I am okay.

Today I had one of the moments. One where I realized that even though this journey is not conquering me each and every moment of my day, I am not in fact okay.

I have been attending yoga classes as much as I can in the recent months and cannot believe how much it has helped me mentally and physically. I have not been a yoga lover in the past, but I think it is filling some void in me right now and is just what the doctor ordered!

Today was my last class for a bit since FET is tomorrow (!!!) so after class I checked in with the teacher to see if she had any poses that are easy on the body and good for uterine blood flow or fertility. She's pregnant, she should know, right?

She offered me lots of suggestions and gave me some foods that are supposed to increase fertility. As I was laying on the ground next to her, hips in the air, receiving her well-wishes...I started crying. For no apparent reason except for that I am not 100% okay. I am excited, but more than that I am so freaking nervous that this might not work that I can hardly stand it. Because then what? This is not a question I have had to ask myself yet. There has always been a logical next step, but this is kind of the end of the road. Granted we have a good store of maybe babies in the deep freeze, but it's just a lot, that's all.

So here I am. Feeling so many mixed emotions. I just had my "last supper" of a delicious margarita and too much sushi; hopefully I had enough of both to satisfy me for the next nine months.
Tomorrow is it. One little embryo goes into the uterus.

If any of you have some extra good thoughts, prayers, good karma, etc. please send them my way.
FET in T-16 hours.

PIO

Since The Hubby is out of town, I had a grand plan to have one of my co-workers give me my first progesterone injection tonight before I left work. Luckily since I am a nurse, there is no shortage of qualified injectors floating around. Good plan, bad execution.

Lupron brain over her left work in a rush and forgot to have my designated shot-giver shoot me up first! Balls! 

Finally I worked up the courage and after probably 10 minutes of staring at my ass cheek with the syringe ready to plunge...I did it. And it wasn't that bad. The worst part was the darting; after the needle was in it was smooth sailing. I walked and lunged around and massage the heck out of my butt trying my best to contract my gluts and hopefully disperse the oil. Now I'm sitting on my heating pad hoping it helps. I already feel my muscle is a bit sore and judging from how I felt after my IM HCG injections, some degree of soreness is just going to happen.

I'm considering this a successful first day. Hoping for many more weeks of this!

FET is on!

Deep breaths are in order. FET is on!!! 

I had my first appointment in quite a while and was more nervous than I let myself believe I was. That cancelled cycle really messed with me. I was preparing myself for another cancelled cycle and another couple months of waiting. But all is well in the world and the transfer is scheduled for Monday afternoon.

My uterine lining was measured at 8.4mm, which he said was good. I have yet to obsessively google how good it is, but I'm sure that will come later...

Now all that is between me and our embryo is 5 days and some progesterone injections starting tomorrow (kind of nervous about those!)

 And here's the schedule!

I'm arming myself with a heating pad and will be walking, walking, walking after the shots to hopefully help disperse the medication and avoid the painful, lumpy ass that so many of you have warned me about! Any other suggestions?

The Case of the Incredible, Expanding Woman

So I've gained a little lot of weight.

I don't know what the difference between the IVF cycle and this FET cycle is, but holy moly, the pounds are packing on. At least I feel like they are. I am NOT stepping on the scale for fear of depressing myself too much. Since I have no stims going on, I can exercise normally, but I still feel like no matter what I do I am getting jigglier and jigglier by the day. I know some of it is related to my diet. For some reason I have not been able to reign it in despite my best intentions. I'm blaming it on the lupron. Lupron is quite the scapegoat around these parts. 

I thought about doing a short stunt with weight watchers or something, but I'm not sure if uterine lining is at all effected by decreased caloric intake, so I'm just resigning myself to some weight gain (or at least not weight loss) until the cycle is done or I have a baby in this uterus. 

The upside is that I can't wear a bikini anyway because I have vivelle patches all over my abdomen, so I guess bring on the rolls :(

Patching It Up

Not much new around these parts aside from a vivelle patch on my belly. This is a new addition this time around and so far the easiest infertility treatment I've experienced! A clear, non-painful patch on the tummy I can handle. I swap it out every three days, gradually increasing until I have four on at one time. I am slightly curious how I'm going to squeeze them all in and still have room to rotate my Lupron injections :) The next step is a lining check and meeting with my in-cycle nurse coordinator to go over the schedule, but that's not until June 18th. I feel like I have the longest IVF course in history. I'll have to peek back at my timeline, but I'm pretty sure our IVF consult was like 2 years ago. Argh. BUT! Keeping my eye on the prize...

 The Hubby is gone on a work trip for almost three weeks, which I think is making time move a little quicker. I do NOT know how single Moms function. I'm so, so busy! And I'm just a Puppy Mom currently! Thankfully he'll be back just in time for planned FET. I'm so excited, but trying my hardest to not wish my weeks away. It's so easy to do in this infertility cycle of cycles!

Even Fertiles Are Obsessed With Fertility

Let me preface this post by saying that I attended a baby shower yesterday. And I was the only one who wasn't a.) pregnant b.) already 2 kids down or c.) less than two years old.

So now that you know my state of mind...

Everyone is obsessed with fertility. 

I was kind of not that into the whole baby shower thing yesterday, but I wasn't dreading it that much. My friend did not have an easy first pregnancy as she delivered at 30 weeks and had her baby in the NICU for over 2 months. I'm not sure why this gives her a hall pass in my book, but it does. Whatevs. 

The shower was filled with mostly people I didn't know that well and started out well; lots of small talk and niceties. Then the pregnant chick showed up. (The other pregnant chick...not the one being showered) I didn't strike up conversation with her right away, but couldn't help overhearing other people's conversations with her. How her shower is next week and how she was just in Europe not too long ago, and how she's having a girl, etc. But then the conversation turned to conception, as I realized it often does around the fertile crowd. 

Apparently they are newlyweds. They got pregnant like RIGHT away. They were trying, but "didn't think it would happen so gosh darn fast!" Me: "Wow. That's awesome". 

No joke, a direct quote from someone else at the party: "Oh my gosh! Me too! We were using those ovulation test thingys...do you guys know what those are?" Me: If you only knew...

"And anyways...they kept saying negative! I was so confused and though maybe I was broken or I was using them wrong. Nope! I was already pregnant! I guess you don't ovulate if you're already pregnant! hahaha"

Oh boy. At this point I was trying to exit stage right. 

But then a husband chimed in- "Yeah, we weren't even trying, but I guess my little guys are pretty determined! And the Mrs gets pregnant just by looking at me!"

Ugh. That's when I gagged.

So ladies, while we thought we were the only ones obsessed with our fertility...wrong! Those pesky fertiles like nothing more than to talk about how easy it was to get pregnant! 

There were several times in the flurry of conversations about how crazy fertile everyone was that I wanted to pipe in with a snarky remark like, "Weird...you got pregnant by having sex? That doesn't make you a overly fertile person...that makes you normal. Awesome, your wife is knocked up! That does not mean that your wiener works wonders or that your sperm have super powers. It makes you just an average Joe."

Obviously I'm a little sensitive about this, but I find it incredibly annoying how often people tout their fertility. I do not expect people to tiptoe around my fertility. Most people don't even know we are having issues. I just find it odd that pregnancy causes so much gloating.

Sorry, rant done.

This Bubble Has Burst

I have been quiet on the blogging front mostly because I have almost nothing to say fertility-related after my cancelled FET. We are literally just waiting.

All of this waiting has given me time to think, which I'm not sure is a good thing. 

My IVF retrieval and most of what followed was very benign. Eggs retrieved, eggs fertilized, eggs grew, eggs frozen. Besides the OHSS leading to no fresh transfer, I was feeling pretty stoked about how everything went down. It seemed my body was pretty darn cooperative for once in its reproductive life. Then the natural FET cycle happened and my optimism faded. 

For one, I was reminded that hopes can be shattered in an instant. I was also reminded that even after all of this, even after 13 eggs, there are no guarantees that this is going to bring us a baby. 

The natural cycle gave me one thing (besides a lot of extra "wasted time"). It gave use new information that potentially explains why we have not been successful making babies the normal way. While I feel like this information is great to have for the future, I am just so pissed off that there is another little bit of something that is not quite right. And I'm scared that once an embryo is transferred, we might find out that something else is wrong. I just want something to go right. And I want a baby.

My BFF has a baby that she calls my Goddaughter despite how horribly distant I became in her pregnancy. I cannot say that I am completely over that, but I am so happy that she is a bigger person that I and has persevered and made us an integral part of her daughter's life.

I have a long blog post about how hard it was for me when she announced that she was pregnant. We had discussed just a month or so before that she was officially "trying" and I had shared that we were also trying, but with no luck for 9 months. Obviously, she did not have trouble and was pregnant in about two cycles. Cue jealous Empty Uterus. 

This baby of hers is now having her first birthday party in two weeks and is walking. Wowzers. I still can't help but be a little bit envious, and it always tugs at my heart strings when we are around her and I see how much The Hubby adores her and has become such a natural Daddy. 

So many of you posted on Mother's Day and I thought about posting many times but was traveling and busy so never got around to it.  Mother's Day has really always been about my own Mom. I don't think the last few years I even really thought about it in relation to my infertility...not sure why. This year was for some reason very different for me. We celebrated with my Mom,  The Hubby's Step Mom, and my Sister-In-Law. It hit me harder than I thought it would seeing everyone with their flowers and wishing each other a happy day. I held it together, but I was pretty emotional. 

 A work colleague who struggled with infertility posted this: "...until three year's ago, Mother's day was special day to honor my mother and the other wonderful ladies around me, but it was also such a sad day for myself. To all the ladies out there praying to be a mom, I hope these pictures give you some inspiration to have a family. If I can be a mom, you can too. I will keep all of you in my prayers that one day your wishes, desires and dreams do come true. xoxo!!" Flood gates open for the first time.

I knew my Mom was having a rough time for me, because she's like that- always thinking of others first. I think she wasn't sure if she should say something or not, but finally did in a very subtle way. Something along the lines of "Next year we'll be celebrating you because it is going to happen for you". Ugh. Flood gates again. For some reason it did make me feel better for someone to acknowledge that this was a hard day because we should have been celebrating my motherhood too. Moms are the best. 

Anyhoo...

I am one week in on birth control pills and will start Lupron a week from Monday and Vivelle patches a little over a week after that to prep for what will hopefully be a smooth FET in late June. I am going into this one a little less green and a little more jaded, but am hopeful that I can reign myself in and get myself in a nice, positive state before then.

I probably won't be posting a lot until the action starts :) but I have and will be reading along with all of you!