Nothing Going on but the Rent

I'm so boring.

I have nothing going on as far as ttc is concerned.

Just taking a little birth control pill once a day, every day.

Anxious to start sticking myself with needles.  Can't wait.

Don't even go back to the doctor until March 2nd.

Is it March yet?

I'm gonna have to live vicariously through you girls this cycle since I got a whole lotta nada happening here.

Big snow storm coming.

School's already been canceled and we've got.....zero snow out there.

DH's work got canceled due to the snow that has yet to arrive.

Pharmacy called today and my meds are going to arrive on Thursday.

Because we have insurance, my portion of the $3500 worth of IVF meds is less than $300.  Three cheers for insurance!

Thinking about getting some laser hair removal done "down there" during the month of February just to amuse myself.  Also, I think it would be kind of me to be "fresh" down there for ER and ET.  Thoughts?

*Big Sigh*

Oh, and since we found out that we won't ever conceive another child by BDing, the BDing has been......AMAZING. Is it because I'm thirty? Or because BDing is now strictly for sport and just for fun?

That is all.

Teacher's Pet and IVF Calendar of Events!! Ooh and an Announcement!

Last night, DH and I went to IVF class and let me just say, that place was PACKED! "Helloo fellow Infertiles!!" I wanted to yell as we entered class, but something told me not everyone was in a joking mood. So we copped a squat in the back of the room and the powerpoint presentation quickly got underway. Within five minutes, my hand went up. I questioned. She answered. Five minutes later, up with the hand. Question/answer. And again. And again. And again. Before we took our five minute break, I had as many questions under my belt. Aub = 5, rest of the class = 0. During the break, DH told me to knock it off with the questions. I rolled my eyes and went straight to the nurse with seven more. They also took our picture with our spouses to put in our file. I thought that was nice. She said they keep a pic of people to remember which two go together and because they like to envision a face with the voice on the line. I thought that was cool. Props to them.  Session two of class started with a slide presentation on the ER and ET procedures. I asked eleven more questions. DH looked like he was going to explode. At one point, he tried to put my hand down.  Whatevs.  By the time it was all over, Aub = 23, IVF Class = 0. Afterward, the nurse thanked me SEVERAL times for asking questions. *pats self on back*

This morning, I had my uterus mapped and IVF blood work drawn.  Dr. Awesome RE said my uterus was "gorgeous" (have I mentioned I LOVE HIM?!!!) and he patted me on the back and sent me across the hall to the Fertility Institute to get my blood work and order my meds. I also got my dates!! It just made it all so real! My meds are Lupron, Follistim, Menopur, Ovedril, and Progesterone in Oil.  I start Lupron on 2/12. I have a suppression check on 2/28. Then I start stims. I continue the Lupron, but then add Follistim (for three days) and Menopur (for nine days.) During that time, I'll have u/s every other day to monitor folly growth.  Then sometime on the 12th of March, I'll trigger with the Ovidrel.  ER on 3/14 (Progesterone in Oil injections starting that day) and ET on 3/19.  Pregnant on 3/19!! I am so excited and blessed and ready for this experience!!

By way of an announcement, I "outed" myself on Facebook as being infertile and I had a wonderful response! 13 beautiful expressions of support and one private message from a person I suspected had dealt with IF offering me her number and any support she could give. It was a great decision to make.  If anything, I want others to know that we are out there and that we struggle and we are survivors and we are strong.  I am so happy I spoke up!

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! :)

My First ICLW and a Sad Saturday :(

Yay! My first ICLW! Welcome to my blog. I'm Aub, an almost 30 something and DH will be 31 soon.  We have been TTC #3 since 2010.We were not even considered infertile by our RE (we haven't been trying yet for a year) but I started seeing him because my cycles were irregular and ovulation was not always predictable.  I just completed a perfectly timed Femara cycle this month and during it all, we found out through a s/a that DH tested positive for two antisperm antibodies.  We have been been diagnosed with MF IF and are starting down the path of IVF with ICSI.  Pretty heavy diagnosis to swallow..

Today is a sad Saturday for me. My mom, who has been visiting from West Virginia for the week, is leaving today.  We just moved from the Pittsburgh, PA area to Oklahoma City, OK five months ago and I have been so very homesick for my parents and the mountains of West Virginia.  I went back for a brief visit in November and was planning on going back with my two sons in March for spring break, but I'll be in my TWW from my ET and I think Dr. Awesome RE would heavily discourage me from traveling when I'm supposed to be giving my embies a fair shot at implanting.

Now, I'm not a selfish brat. I know what's important and what is the right thing to do. We are trying to complete our family via some of the most invasive and expensive means possible and it would be silly stupid to risk it all just to go home and visit my family and friends.  I've been debating on putting off the whole IVF cycle until I go home, see everyone that I miss, recharge, reboot, re-Aub.  Honestly, I don't know what to do.  I have my birth control pills, AF is due today.  IVF class is scheduled for Tuesday at 4.  I will need to make my appointment for Monday or Wednesday for my u/s and mapping. I feel bad because the wheels have been set in motion for IVF NOW.  Would it be so bad if I just waited? Could I just wait?

Ugh. Sorry to be such a drama queen.

Here's a song that I like.  It suits my mood today, feeling "Cuckoo":)

Cuckoo by Lissie

The Good Cry - Warning! A Long Read :)

I don't think I told you all, but my mama is visiting me this week from West Virginia. We've been having a great time together. I missed her so much.  Since we moved to Oklahoma, my mom hasn't been in the best of health. She found out the long, hard way (too many doctors, too many tests - we know what that's like) that she has lupus. :(  She's going to start seeing her rheumatologist at the beginning of February and is feeling super hopeful to get on the right track to feeling better. It's been very difficult to be so far away from her during all this. She feels the same way with me being here and dealing with infertility.

Yesterday, we went to the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum.  For those of you who do not know, it is the memorial and museum that was built to honor those that lost their lives in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing on April 19, 1995. Most of us gals were 12, 13, or 14 when this happened, give or take a few years.  It was one of the most profound and telling memorials I have ever been to.  The way the whole museum is set up, the message that it sends, just being there stirred so many emotions within me that were sometimes more than my senses could handle. The outside memorial with the east and west gates, the shallow reflection pool, the field of empty chairs to signify the 168 lives lost, and the "survivor tree" were all that sat outside where the building once stood.

Each section of the museum had a message and was deemed a chapter in the story starting with a history of terrorism, the city on the morning of the bombing, the rescue efforts, the impact, etc. The final chapter was based on hope. Hope that those who visited the memorial would walk away having been affected by what they saw and make it their resolve to never let violence be the answer to anything.

I know this is a blog about infertility, but it is also my blog, my voice and I actually felt that many of the things I saw that day were directly linked to my struggle with IF. Not just mine, but I thought of each and every one of you girls, too. I know we haven't known each other for that long, but infertility is such a binding tie and I feel close to each of you. I know you'll see the connections in the things that I saw that day....

The east gate represents Oklahoma City in the moment before the bomb went off. 9:01 is the minute before the explosion. The minute that there was an innocence and ignorance to the city that was blissful and soon to be gone forever.  I thought about our struggle before we knew it was a struggle. Sure, a fraction of us who face infertility have always had a problem within ourselves, but was it really a struggle until we met the men we love and wanted to make a baby with them?  No, before IF we were just regular gals, jumping into bed with our husbands, showing them how much we loved them and hoping that we'd get a baby out of the deal.  Don't you remember those early days of trying when anything was possible and nothing could hurt us?  It was all so exciting. There was such promise of happiness.

What about after infertility?  The west gate represents what 9:03 meant to Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. It meant that a city, state and nation would be forever changed, its innocence torn away from it, the untouchable status it once enjoyed reduced to rubble. Are we not the same? Have we all not felt one way or another deeply changed having dealt with IF?  Our promise of happiness is not even a promise anymore.  We live in uncertainty from one day to the next.  The only guarantee with infertility is hurt.

The field of empty chairs represents the lives of those lost in the bombing. Most were in the building. Some were outside. Some were rescue workers.  For those that were in the building, their chair corresponds with where they were in the building when the bomb detonated. Nine rows represent the nine floors that housed several different federal offices. The whole second row of smaller chairs represent the nineteen children who were on the second floor in the facility's daycare. This brought to my mind the feelings of loss that accompany our struggle with infertility. We lose a bit of our hope, our optimism, ourselves each failed cycle. Some of us have endured early losses when the odds are just turning in our favor.  Others have had to deal with losses later on and have to bury babies who took years to gain and mere months to lose.  The chairs reminded me of the number of possibilities stripped away from anyone who has struggled for years with infertility.

The Survivor Tree, an American Elm, is named so because it survived the bombing and a dismal sentencing of being cut down.  On the day of the bombing, it was partially burned and loaded with shrapnel from its trunk to its branches. Once the Murrah building was imploded and all of its pieces hauled away and buried, the attention of the demolition team turned to the tree to cut it down. However, it was already beginning to show signs of life again and they brought in a team from the US Department of Forestry to tend to it and nurse it back to health. It still stands today!  In fact, it is even possible to purchase seedlings from this very tree to plant your own American Elm!  This was the last place we visited before we left the museum and memorial grounds.  I sat on the cement wall and thought of how much stronger I am having faced infertility and continuing my battle with it. I thought of you all, too, and what wonderful people you are and how your individual fight makes you all survivors. None of us can be cut down by IF.  We are all destined to live full, happy lives, regardless of the trials we face and the shrapnel that scars us along the way.

And it was then that I let out all that I had been holding in. I cried for the innocent people who perished on April 19, 1995. I cried for the babies who lost parents, the parents who lost babies, the husbands lost, the wives gone.  I cried for myself. I cried for each of you. I cried for the pain we all feel and the hope that we all cling to when we have nothing else to go on. I cried for the past failed cycles and the future happiness that none of us are even sure of anymore. I cried for the hope I still have for myself and for you all to complete our families and bring our babies home.  I cried the good cry.

Sink or Swim: IVF Here We Come!!!

So, I tend to always give away the point of my post in the title. We had our consult with the wonderful RE whom I adore.  He carefully explained the results of DH's s/a with us and then he sat back, drew a deep breath and recommended we try three months of inseminations.  HUH?!

He said that three was a good number. Give it our best effort. Then move on to IVF if they failed. He said he would amend his plan of treatment and move directly to IVF if he felt that my mental stability would be compromised if all three IUIs failed.  Then he asked me to stop biting my lip and tell him my thoughts on it all.

I told him that had he recommended the inseminations three months ago (impossible, we didn't even know each other), I would totally be for "giving it our best effort".  Recently, however, I've been a part of too many dialogues and read too many studies where people who are in similar situations with antisperm antibodies tried in vain with IUIs to get pregnant.  Each and every one achieved success through IVF. DH and I are very results-driven people and three more months of nothing would feel like a lifetime and we are NOT in the business of spinning our wheels and and spending our dollars and getting no where.

Dr. Awesome RE immediately pulled out his tape recorder thingy-ma-bob and started recording his summation of our visit saying, "In the interest of time and sanity, patient has decided to forgo inseminations and move directly to IVF."  So, it was done.

We went across the hall to the hospital's fertility clinic, scheduled our IVF class for Tuesday, January 25th (my birthday!), got our manila envelope of paperwork and a packet of birth control pills to start on CD 3 (sometime this weekend!).

Wow, talk about jumping in the deep end! I hope we swim!! :)