11 DPO

I’m so TIRED. I’m so HUNGRY. My bb’s are killing me, my temps are nice and high. I even had a dream that my test was positive. I woke up feeling so encouraged, since my evap line from yesterday *could* end up being a faint +… so I tested again this morning and ……. BFN. These next three days are going to be the worst. This cycle everything has gone right, I just have so much hope. My symptoms have been so exaggerated too. The tiredness, the hunger, the moodiness, the off-and-on nausea, the headaches, the sore bb’s, the gas, all like PMS but times it by 10 this month.

So here we go… the end of the 2ww: please come fast. I just want to get on with it. This is T.O.R.T.U.R.E.

3 DPO

This is where L. spend the weekend – up at the lake with my parents. A. and I stayed home, he worked Saturday and I cleaned the house. Today I visited with my baby nephew Benjamin, the cutest ten week old baby in the world (next to my own of course). I also visited with my good friend G. who had her 9 lb, 4 oz baby on Wednesday night, Aidan is his name. He’s also a little sweetie, ahhh……….. the babies are everywhere!!!!! It seems everywhere I turn, I see pregnancy, childbirth and babies. It actually soothes my heart when I can spend time with babies, it is where I am at my best, my most at peace. I can’t explain it. There is something so pure, so innocent, so lovely about newborns. I kind of feel their aura rub off on me a bit.

So I am officially three days post ovulation today. My temp has risen enough to confirm it, and I am feeling so PMS’y already. Crampy, lower backache, the whole works. I normally don’t start feeling like this until about 7 DPO so who knows.

Anyways, I’m half watching Desp.erat.e Hous.e.wiv.es and half writing this, and its getting good, so off I go!

Did It Actually Do The Trick?

The HSG I had this month has changed something inside of me. Seriously. First of all, my temps are totally wacky – up and down every day – rather than the usual follicular pattern of low stable temps. And I normally have a fade in pattern of OPK strips, sometimes it takes 3 days to get positive and sometimes it takes a week of up and down up and down until finally it goes positive. Well this month is so different! Yesterday was the usual barely-there-line, and today it’s POSITIVE! Just like my fertility monitor said it would be, but I didn’t believe it because I wasn’t getting the fade-in pattern. My monitor predicted three days ago that tomorrow I would ovulate, and wala! +OPK today. I think all this weirdness must be the result of the HSG. Nothing else is different this month except that. I believe that my body normally tries to ovulate over several days, but this month it revved up properly and is going to release that eggy like it should. At least I hope so… I guess we’ll see in a few days. I hope the HSG made enough of a difference to get me pregnant this cycle, wouldn’t that be nice? I really don’t want to fill that clomid prescription if I don’t have to, you know? Well, wish me luck… here goes a whole lotta BD action!

The Money Week

I’m finally in the fertile phase of my cycle, it’s been a long time coming… my temps are so wacky this cycle though – it must be from the HSG, I’ve been asking around and it seems to be pretty normal that HSG’s can dramatically affect your temps for the rest of the cycle so I’m not too worried. I’m also using OPK’s and my fertility monitor — both are showing I’m getting close to ovulation. I didn’t sleep at all last night – anxiety plagued me all night, I guess I do tend to get a little stressed during this time. Not to mention the stress it puts on our relationship, all the pressure of BD during the fertile time, not fun. A. doesn’t really have performance issues but he is feeling like a sperm bank and doesn’t hesitate to tell me so. Saturday night we went to a party and I warned him twice on the way, not to drink too much so that he would be able to *ahem* finish the job (if you KWIM) when we got home, and of course… he drank too much… and an hour into the session, I’m like… OK… is there a problem? I was sooooo upset with him. Why can’t we just do it like normal couples for the fun of it anymore, I just want to be pregnant so we can go back to loving eachother like we used to, not with this giant elephant in the room all the time. It really sucks. I never thought it would affect us the way it has — and I’m to blame for it too, there’s no question about that. I just don’t quite know how to fix it.

The party we went to on Saturday was for my uncle’s 50th birthday. A giant crew of friends and family (about seventy of us) gathered at another one of my Uncle’s house for a huge surprise party. My SIL and brother brought my little nine week old nephew along and I loved him up as much as I could between sharing him with Grandma… the strange part was when we were leaving more than a few people congratulated me on my new baby… yikes, I wanted to say thank you, isn’t he adorable? But alas, I had to admit that no, he’s my brother’s child. My own little 2 year old spent the evening acquiring as much cake on his face as he could manage and being the lovely child that I am so very proud of.

L. is cabin-bound this coming weekend with my parents, so A. and I will have a lovely weekend to ourselves, and I’ll enjoy about the first two hours of it and then I’ll miss L. so much that A. will have to stop me from driving up there to fetch him home.

Clomid

I talked to my OB today about my HSG results, he said everything looked clear and fine. He prescribed Clomid (50 mg) starting next cycle, and has instructed me to take it days 5-9. I’ve done some research seeing that more success seems to be seen from taking it days 3-7. From what I’ve read, the 3-7 regime produces more follicles and the 5-9 regime produces less follicles but bigger ones. I wonder if anyone reading my blog can give me some insight into what has worked for you, or what you know about the differences in strategy?

Belly Envy

We stopped by our best “couple” friends’ tonight to see their new place, drop off an orchid plant and card (congrats on the house), and to see her one last time before she delivers her baby. She’s due on Friday. She’s one of those annoying pregnant women who feels great, looks great and is about to deliver and NEVER complains. I hate it, I want to kill her. Plus she got pregnant right away and we started trying at the same time. *big sigh*

So she shows me around her house and we come apon the nursery. All painted green with the cute bedding and white net over the crib, diapers in a row, baby clothes hung up by size in the closet. It about did me in. The ache in my heart was so deep I about lost it. I am so happy for her, she’s going to be a great mom. I just know what she’s about to embark on, and I know she’s in for the ride of her life, for the love of her life, for the most incredible moments she’ll never forget. I have been there… well sort of, in a hellish, unstable, hazy sort of way. I don’t remember much of the first few days from all the drugs, and the first few months were full of overwhelming panic but through all of that, rose a love of a lifetime and those moonlight feedings when the rest of the world sleeps are so sacred, it can’t be described.

One day that will be me, well – in a big, swollen, high risk kind of way — it will be me. And worth every second of every ache and pain. If I know only one thing, I know that.

Thankful

My parents have a summer property on a small lake in the mountains of British Columbia, where we spent our fair weather months. These pics are from this past August when A. and I took the ATV’s into the mountains and took pictures looking down on our lake. It is breathtaking in person, not sure if these pics to it justice. I’m thankful for our piece of heaven in the wilderness!

(this one is A. catching some rays)


(this one is A. at the top of the clear cut)

1. Above all, the miracle of my son.
2. My amazing husband who takes care of us and loves us unconditionally always.
3. My health, regardless of the ups and downs, overall I’m thankful to be healthy and alive.
4. My new baby nephew Benjamin.
5. Great friends.

What more could someone ask for?

I’m pretty darn blessed in this life.

Migraines S.U.C.K.

I have spent the last fourty eight hours with the migraine from he.ll. Weird timing because I normally only get them mid-luteal phase or right before ovulation and I’m a good ten days from ovulation so I don’t know what’s going on. I have had a cold this past week too, so maybe that had something to do with it. Regardless, I’ve spent the last two days wishing I was dead, none of my painkillers were working, I tried everything under the sun. The crappy thing was – when I don’t choose the “right” painkiller I have to wait four, six, sometimes eight hours before I can try a different one so in the meantime I’m stuck with the pain unable to move my head or even speak. Sometimes I think it might be easier to not take anything and just ride out the pain. It’s just so friggin debilitating, I can’t do a thing except turn off the lights and ly still in a quiet room. Fridays my mother-in-law comes over to take care of L. but I couldn’t go to work so I explained to her when she came that I was going to stay in bed and thanks so much, please take my screaming toddler and keep him busy downstairs! He wouldn’t go downstairs without me, he just wanted to be with his mama, there was nothing I could do, and I didn’t want to have him lay in bed with me all day. I ended up driving over to my parent’s house (they were out of town) and tucked myself into their bed for the day. I told L. I was going to work, not sure if he quite believed me but it seemed to suffice. Anyways, I hate days like that. Just good for nothing.

I’m better tonight but feeling the effects of all the pain medication in my system, yuck.

Lucky to be Canadian?

I read a lot of blogs and a lot of forum threads. Mostly to do with pregnancy and fertility, but lots of health issues are discussed, especially because I have my fair share. Most contributors to what I read online are American women. I can’t help but notice the massive differences in health care between the US and Canada. All of this HMO business, insurance companies dictating which doctors you can see and which drugs you can buy, co-pays, consults and procedures not being covered by extended health. I never fully realized how lucky I am to live in Canada until I started really utilizing the health care system myself. I mean, there are a lot of problems here, the Canadian health care system is definitely flawed, but I never have to worry about paying out of pocket for anything. Between myself and my husband, we have all prescriptions covered 100%, no deductions, no limits on providers or services. I don’t ever have to worry about seeing a specialist (of my choice), diagnostic procedures or hospital visits. I spent four weeks in the hospital before delivering my son and the room was $2,000 per day, not to mention the drugs, specialty doctor consults, surgery and testing I received. I didn’t have to worry about paying for any of this. I can’t imagine the stress that would have put on our family. I got four months of paid sick leave before delivery on top of an entire year of paid maternity leave once Luka was born – as well as my job was guarranteed once I was ready to return to work. These benefits are paid through the government (not the employer). Now we are going through fertility testing and I do not have to worry about paying for any of the drugs or procedures. However, I do know IVF costs are out of pocket to a point – but my friend just went through it in another province and it cost her $6,000 total for her IVF treatment, the rest was covered by extended benefits through her health insurance. We are all middle-income families with average health benefits, basic through the province and extended through our employers. And I am trying to wrap my head around how a mom can be expected to go back to work six weeks after having a baby. That just blows my mind. Quebec, one of our eastern provinces, has even established a two year paid maternity leave to encourage moms to have babies and stay at home with them. Granted we do pay a hell of a lot in taxes so we should be getting something for it. But the average middle-income family (or even low income) is not left out in the cold, everyone is taken care of. I’d love to hear what my American readers think about all of this. Does it ring as ridiculous to you as it does to me, or am I missing something here?

Open for Business

Arrived at hospital. Tick.
Went inside. Tick.
Got dressed in ridiculous smock. Tick.
Allowed 100 year old doctor man thread catheter into my uterus. Tick.
Quite a bit of blood afterwards. Tick.
Tubes Clear. Tick!

And it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had worried it might be. Damn Type A personality got in the way again, learnt way too much about HSG procedures and freaked myself right the fuck out. I didn’t feel much at all actually. Well I did feel the tube going in and it was like a steady high pitched pain if I could use those words to describe it. Not extremely bad, just high pitched. I don’t really think that descriptor makes sense either but it just suits how it felt. No cramping during, just afterwards. Quick and easy. Tubes clear. OK, well the 2 tylenol #3, 1 over the counter tylenol #1 and 3 advils might have helped curb the pain… just a little.