Welcome ICLWers and Second Thoughts???

Greetings ICLWers! This is only my second ICLW and it's all still so exciting to me to have new readers, commenters, and followers. I love the love I feel and love to return it! Please leave me a link to your blog or your ICLW number and I will be sure to return the support.

I am 30 and DH is too. We are TTC baby number 3 and found out after the first of the year that due to antisperm antibodies, IVF is our only realistic option to conceive again.  We conceived DSs 1 and 2 while on BC and while NTNP (not trying/not preventing).  TTC has never been a challenge before and through this all, I am humbled and grateful for the friendships I've made and the closeness I have achieved with my husband. I truly believe what Sara says about effects of IF on a marriage when she says, "I didn't know I could connect to the core of my soul with my husband. Infertility really takes a marriage to depths of understanding that only fellow infertiles I think could really get."  You can read the rest of her amazing post here.

As for me, I am moving right along in my IVF cycle and just finished my BCP last week. I have my suppression check on 3/2 and will start stimming on 3/5.  We are scheduled to be PUPO with twins (we hope!) on 3/19.  I have a ticker above to count down the days. It will be here before I know it.  You can read my medications and timeline over here --------------------->.

Today was a good/bad day.  Good because I went up to Guthrie, Oklahoma and saw 29 of the best friends you could ever have at Horse Feathers Equine Rescue. It's a place I'm learning to go to to clear my head and think about others and not be so caught up in myself and SIF all the time.  Each of the 29 horses there has an amazing story and has overcome a lot of neglect and abuse and are now thriving and happy. They give me peace and focus. The work is hard, but the rewards are many.  It was a great couple of hours.

Admittedly, my day started off pretty badly, though as my Lupron injection hurt so bad I cried and it was only AFTER I took the needle out that I realized the freaking thing was bent. I instinctively started to question everything - why we are doing this, what am I doing to my body, why am I making myself hurt and cry and should we keep doing this. 

After a few moments of free-flowing tears, I reminded myself that there is really no turning back for me. I know I can pull the plug on this at any time, but no shot, no bent needle, no hotflash or night sweat is going to keep us from bringing home the baby we  love so much that's been conceived already...in our hearts.

It's Tough Being a Girl

 So, I've said it before and I'll say it again, outing myself  as struggling with IF on Facebook while risky, scary and impossible to undo, has been an excellent choice. I don't talk a lot about what I'm going through and I certainly don't say as much as I do on here, but I say enough that people know.  Even though my intentions were less than pure as you may remember from this post, the effects have been positive and satisfying.  Here is a private message I received just yesterday with my post title being the subject line:

 Aub,


I just wanted to let you know how much I admire you for being so open and honest about what you're going through right now, trying to get pregnant again.


I just went off the pill last month, and I'm a nervous wreck waiting and wondering. One of my best friends just had a baby last month. She got pregnant a month after going off the pill. Another friend of mine has been trying for a year to have baby #2, and is starting to look into treatment options. So I've seen both points of view.


We wanted to wait until x amount of time before we started trying, and then it was like I woke up one day and wanted a baby NOW! That's made it even more frustrating because I want it to happen so bad, and now I wish we would've started trying sooner. Oh well.


I try to be a big believer in "whatever is meant to be will be", but this is definitely testing me.


I'm usually not on Facebook enough during the day to respond to postings as they happen, but I just wanted you to know that I do see them, and I'm thinking about you and praying for you.


Natalie


For some reason, this message made my heart so happy that I chose to speak.  I speak here, believe me, you all know, but to really talk about it and put it out there in a public forum so it cannot be quietly ignored.  If one in ten couples faces IF, then out of almost 600 Facebook friends, sixty of them are affected. To be able to reach out to them and be someone that they can come to publicly or privately is a tremendous blessing.

More Strange Sleep Antics

Last night was the first night I can ever remember being afraid to go to sleep.  I stayed up late reading and walked around the house aimlessly in an effort NOT go to bed, but at around midnight I succumbed to my drooping eyelids and sluggish posture.  To bed I went.

DH was already asleep and I curled up next to him and drifted off almost immediately (thank you, Tempur-pedic).  Around 3:30, DS2 came in for a drink of water and I carried him back to bed. I am cognizant of this activity.  At around 5, however, I woke up because I was very hot and uncomfortable and lo and behold!! I am wearing a hoodie, zipped to the top with the hood up over my head. WTH? What's worse, there was the chapstick from the night before in one pocket and a wad of toilet paper in the other. Really?! Interesting...

I posted on facebook about it this morning and received a private message from a fellow infertile (of course, I didn't know she was, but since I outed myself as one in that particular forum, they seem to be coming out of the woodwork).  She asked me if I had started on any of my fertility medicines and that she did some strange things in her sleep when she was on injectibles.  My mystery would be all but solved if this were the case.  I'm still just taking bcp and waiting to start the art of injecting on Tuesday.

So what is going on with this sleepwalking crap?

The Dirty Thirty and IVF Class

I went to bed last night twenty nine and woke up this morning.....thirty.  Yes, indeedy. The dirty thirty is here.  I am undecided on how I feel about today. I fully expected to be pregnant by now and I'm not.  That's okay, though. I get to go to a class at four that will teach me how to give myself shots in my belly and my bum so that I can get pregnant. Yay thirty!! Woo hoo infertility!!

Ahh, but anyway, IVF class is today.  We're going to go over all of our paperwork and then learn how all this shot taking is going to go down.  I suppose if I have any questions, they will be answered at that time (?).  I'm not sure how many other couples will be there. I hope I have the courage to ask what I want to without the fear of sounding dumb to others. I'll just remind myself that DH and I are there for us and we need to work out all the kinks in our heads. I don't want us to leave today without knowing that we got everything we could out of the session.

Tomorrow is my u/s for mapping my uterus and seeing where the best placement for my embies will be.  At that time, I'll also get my dates for ET and ER.  How real is that going to make it all?!  I still can't believe we are here, but at least there is progress!  In six weeks, if all goes well, I will be in my TWW and that much closer to my goal of completing my family and being a mommy again. It will be so different than the past, though. There WILL be life inside me.  All they have to do is stick! Wow. How blessed am I to be able to experience this all?  I would never call IF a blessing, but the fact that we have the means to continue on where others have to stop makes me feel extremely fortunate.

I guess I have no special wisdom to show for the almost eight hours that I've been thirty. I do know that it's a hard transition. It's a beginning and an end. A chapter in my life closes. The details are finite; they are down in history in permanent ink.  A new chapter opens. The pages are blank. They are waiting to be filled with all the joy, blessings, trials, sorrows and possibilities that lie ahead.  I know that I don't want to tiptoe quietly in to this decade of my life. I want to bust down the door and shout - -

"HEY, DIRTY THIRTIES!!! I HAVE ARRIVED!!!!!"

Rage Against the Fertility Feed

This post has all the makings of a good old-fashioned rant. If you want no part of it, please opt out here.  I'm telling warning you, it could will get ugly.  If you want no part of it, I understand. Just exit here.  Okay, if you are still here, I assume you are willing and able to understand the hormonal rant that is about to ensue.  I'll keep my anger limited to three subjects.

1.)  Is it too much to ask for just one time to log on to facebook and NOT see the inside of someone's uterus?  It's bad enough that EVERYONE I ran cross country with in high school is pregnant. (Don't read this as me not being happy for them, read this as a person who desperately wants to be pregnant getting slapped in the face daily, repeatedly by what she will now unaffectionately refer to as the "Fertility Feed.")  Is it too much to request that people not put weekly updates of their fetus' development on FACEBOOK?  Who would click on those links (infertile or otherwise)?  Part of me would love to publicly document my IVF cycle on facebook, just to level the playing field. If infertility affects one in ten couples, I think it would be awesome for somebody (think "me") to put a story out there that disproves the popular belief that touching a penis gets you pregnant.  I'm stuck here, peeps. So, so many pregos and on a day like today, I have to physically restrain myself from hiding them from my newsfeed.  Ugh. On a side note, I've gotten awesome at skipping and skimming. If it appears that a girl is standing sideways in a pic to show off a belly, my eyes go right over it and keep on going. "Selective Facebooking" is what I call it.

2.) Where in the hell is my period?  Again, is it too much to ask to NOT have to wait for her when I know she's coming? Dr. Awesome RE told us that we would NEVER conceive another child naturally. It's not like I'm sitting here with false hope thinking that sperm and egg have united and that a little bit of magic is going on inside my womb right now.  I'm not getting tricked into taking a WondFo, Flo. Just get here, ya beeyotch, so I can get on with my life IVF. 

3.)  My husband came home a little while ago from a 10 mile run and proceeded to waft around the house smelling like a wet dog. Bear in mind, odor is my constant enemy. Living with three men and a dog (who used to be a man before we had his you knows cut off) puts me on smell duty all the time. A candle is always burning, dirty dishes don't sit in the dishwasher, dirty laundry doesn't sit in the hampers, and the garbage is always taken out before it start to stink.  So, as you can imagine, walking around smelling like a wet, stinky dog man is UNacceptable.  Part of me knows he did it on purpose just because he subscribes to the eighth grade boy school of thought where if you like a girl, you piss her off just to put out the vibe that you like her.

I know as far as rants go, this could be way worse.  Part of me feels bad about the facebook rant.  It's not like it's those girl's fault for being fertile. It's not our fault for being infertile.  It's just that fertility is everywhere, completely acceptable to be pregnant regardless of the situation surrounding it all. Infertility is taboo and that is unjust and even if no one cares about it, it should be in their faces, too.

I don't feel bad about the husband rant, but I will amend myself where I said he did it on purpose.  He was probably clueless to his smell.  He doesn't think any of his "smells" smell.

As far as AF is concerned, she can go %$*^ herself.

***EDIT**** I just signed out, went to the bathroom and SHE'S HERE. Woo hoo!! CD One! Birth control to start on Tuesday! :)