2dpIUI

The rest of the Follistim cycle has been surprisingly easy and going right on track. I ended up with seven mature Follicles. EEEK! Blew my first two Follistim cycles out of the water. Dr. Chang said normally she would be VERY nervous about continuing on with a cycle producing that many mature Follies, but my first cycle I had six and I still didn't get pregnant. She ended up upping my dosage the last three days to 250IU. Which is a big injection every night. I gave myself my trigger shot of Ovidrel at 10:00pm on Thanksgiving night.

The holiday was awesome. My sensitivity to our infertility (or my infertility) is getting easier. I'm not crying all the time or even unhappy. I still make snide comments and jokes about "Empty womb syndrome". Although I did go see Breaking Dawn with my husband and my sister in law. The scenes with Bella and Edward cuddled up talking to their baby inside her, effected me in a way I didn't expect. I had a little bit of a melt down in the car after we left and Dan and I just hugged each other and talked it out like we always do.

Dan's mom thinks we are going to get pregnant now that we are moving forward with the adoption process and I have my appointment set up for my pre-op for my back surgery. I'm pretty conflicted actually. I would love to be pregnant and have our throw away/give up month be THE month. But I am hurting so much lately and I am really excited about getting my back fixed. It would be just our luck to get pregnant right after we have given up hope. I'm neutral. I don't want to go through the devastation the last couple months of trying has brought into my life if it's negative. I'm just going to assume that it won't work and be thrilled if I get surprised.

Saturday was our IUI. It went well. Just like normal. Dan's sperm count was 20 million post wash. They only need 10million to be happy with the number, so he is impressive as usual! lol. As he likes to say "The bullets, match the gun." I have never had more bloating/cramping before this month. It was so painful to wear pants and to even move. I was miserable and sick to my stomach for the aching. I bought Midol for the first time and it was a life saver!

I am having a bit of a quarter life crisis. I am gaining weight like crazy. The injections all these months sure help to pack on the pounds. I won't even weigh myself. All I know is I'm really bloated and none of my clothes fit. I have probably put on at least 30 pounds since we started trying. I guess almost a full year straight of fertility meds will really kick your ass, plus the whole issue of low self esteem. It really doesn't help my perception of how much I like myself right now. I am eating like total crap and I hate it all. Since my back has gotten increasingly worse, I’ve totally stopped working out too. I am just looking to the bright side of things, getting my back fixed, dropping this depressing weight gain and working on myself while we wait and go through the long adoption process. I sure am good at putting these goals off though.

Starting the progesterone tonight and play the waiting game for ten more days. December 8th we will have the results and take the next step in our baby journey. Either with a positive test (not likely) or working towards adopting and getting my ass looking like it used to.

Overdue update

My last post ended just after our second IUI. We left a few days after for our Honeymoon to the Caribbean. That was such a wonderful trip. It was so relaxing and gave us lots of time to spend together and talk about our future and what we are hoping for ourselves. I brought some home pregnancy tests with me and took them the last couple days of us being on the ship. All negative. My heart sank, although I was saying it might be too early I knew deep down that this month was another failure.

We docked on November 10th, 12dpIUI and also my CD28. I found a local hospital. I don't want to spend a lot of time on this part of the story. But that hospital was a nightmare. 30$ cab fare, 2 hours of incompetence later I had my blood drawn. I waited all day preparing for the bad news. Luckily I called to make sure they faxed the results. After another 45 minutes on the phone they tracked down my blood work, my order from my doctor, and the correct fax number.

My doctor called about an hour or two later. Dan and I went into the bathroom and let her talk. She basically had a heart to heart with us. She said that everything was working like it should be, and I should have been pregnant by now but I wasn't. She said she couldn't figure out anything else that she could do and it worried her that it may be something she couldn't tell just by surface tests. That she wasn't confident I would ever get pregnant without IVF. Our hearts broke. We held each other and I cried for a half hour or so. No words, just tears and support. The next five days were really hard. Especially on me, I cried a lot.

I also used my emotion to drive me into finding some positivity for us and a new plan. Since the one we have had for so long was coming to an end. I always had a feeling that it would happen, but I always prayed that I was just jaded. We decided to spend one last cycle doing injections and IUI. Not to get our hopes up, or because any of us thought it would work (our doctor included) but just as a last ditch effort. Because we felt like we have been trying so long, it would be too hard to quit before we sought it out to the very last try.

I also decided to go forward with my back surgery. I have had a bad spine injury for almost three years. I am in constant pain. By the time they figured out what was wrong, we found a specialist, and decided I needed surgery, Dan and I were already trying for a baby. We thought that I would get pregnant right away. Knowing what I know now, I should have just had it then. It's been a long time coming.  After a while we just felt like we had been trying too long to give up and now that we really are at the end of line, it's time I get it taken care of. I'm really excited at the prospect of being pain free but really scared. I will most likely have metal put into my back and it's such a dangerous area to alter. I just want to be able to run and play and carry my kids. I want us to go on family hiking trips and bike rides and right now it hurts for me to ride in a car or even walk around the mall for too long.

I am currently CD9 on my cycle. I started my Follistim injections on CD2 also my first ultrasound. No cysts, good baseline numbers. I did 3 shots of 175IU. Then had an ultrasound. There were quite a few getting bigger. Mostly 7-10's. Her and I also had a long talk that this was my last cycle, and she urged us to consider doing IVF next month while we have some form of infertility coverage. We just can't come up with the 5 grand minimum right now. The sad thing is that after next month it will cost us 13grand a cycle. Which is more than impossible. I told her it just wasn't an option due to the success rate being 50%. We just can't risk the money right now. If we knew it would work, we would spend it in a heart beat. I think after that conversation she started to concentrate on my current cycle more. She upped my dosage to 200IU. Then called the next day and upped it again to 225IU wanting to be as aggressive as she could without putting me in danger. I have another Ultrasound today to see how things are going. She suspects our Insemination will be on Friday or Saturday.

Last but certainly not least. We decided to start the adoption process. We sought out our options and decided to go through DHS through the state of Oregon. We realize we won't probably be getting a newborn and that our future child will probably have been removed forcefully from their biological parents and will have been in the foster system. Also there will be a lot of challenges that come with that history. We are really excited and after lots of prayer and long talks. We hope that maybe there is a child out there now, or in the future that needs us more than we need to have our own biological child. I will start a new post on our progress with our adoption and all the feelings that come with it soon.