Spotting

I’m actually happy. Who would have thought?

Well, I knew the chances for this cycle were next to zilch with the zero follicles debacle. So AF day 1 should be tomorrow and Monday will be the baseline scan and bloodwork and we’re on to bigger and better things! Either suppression with BCP for the cyst (if it’s active) or my very first injectibles cycle with IUI.

Sweetlove is going to the cabin with Grandma & Grandpa this weekend. I said goodbye to him this morning and I won’t see him again until Monday after work. I will enjoy the time to myself until tomorrow morning at around noon. Then I’ll be aching for his little laugh, and he sweet smile. I always look forward to some me time until I’m in it and then without him! It’s that always the way! But I have a nice weekend planned. Today after work I’m going to….wait for it….Jen.ny Cr.aig. I don’t talk about my weight on this blog much, it’s so depressing, but while I’m waiting to get pregnant, might as well use my time wisely and lose a few pounds. If I’m really not ovulating like I thought I was, if I lose some weight maybe that will kick it into gear? I don’t know, I just know I need to do something and it would be good for me in all sorts of ways. So yeah, I drank my (1/2 shot decaf) latte this morning slowly and savoured every sip, knowing it would be my last for a while. And tomorrow I’m getting my hair done – I haven’t been to the hair salon since my best friend’s wedding two and half years ago. How sad is that? Well I’ve got quite long hair and its all one length and my mom trims it for me across the bottom, so its not like I need a fancy do or anything. I’m actually getting highlights ~ the roots are oh, eight inches long now? I couldn’t justify the cost of it after I had Sweetlove, because I’ve got literally four times the amount of hair follicles as the average person, and it’s so long, streaking it costs about 300 bucks, plus tip. Not cheap. So with my award money from work, I’m buying myself highlights! Plus spending four hours in a salon when you’ve got a little guy isn’t exactly convenient, unless I leave him with A, which I could do I suppose, but he works a lot of weekends. So with Sweetlove away, it works out perfectly. Then Saturday night we’re getting together with friends, probably play some poker. A is working on a side-job this weekend, he’s going to make about 1000 bucks to cover this cycle’s treatment costs. Gotta love a strong workhorse husband!

So yeah… that’s my weekend. Now one thing that could really put a wrench in my plans is if my cyst acts up during this period and it becomes mega painful like it was the last time I was on clomid. But maybe I’ll be spared!

Progesterone

My 7dpo p4 level came back at 13 ng/ml.

So according to Dr. Google, any number over 5 is evidence that ovulation occurred.

WTF!!!

december 27

Just minutes ago, I was lying in bed reading blogs on my laptop, my son busy drinking his baba next to me, when I heard knocking on my bedroom door.  I ignored it, thinking, why is A knocking on an open door? Why is A knocking period?  Then she came in.  My good friend J, with something in her hand.  She said this is for you.  And she opened my hand and gave me a small gold pin.  It was in the shape of a baby carriage.  It has been passed from Australia, to England, to Canada.  She said, now it’s your turn. 

Immediately I knew.  She was pregnant.  Her 2nd IVF worked.  She got the results today and they were positively positive!  My eyes welled up and I hugged her.  Just happy, just thankful, just wonderfully grateful to the universe for bringing her this now.  

It hasn’t hit her yet.  She’s spinning with the news, she was ready for a negative.  She had prepared herself and her husband was on standby for their world to come crumbling down once again.  I was nervous for her, not sure how to help her cope again.  Thank God it wasn’t to be.  Thank God it was her turn.

We calculated her due date on my handy dandy pregnancy wheel.  December 27.  A lovely day for a baby… or two!

Various Ramblings

Monday morning. I’m so tired my eyes are burning, you know that feeling? I’ve got a chest cold and my head is stuffed up too, I guess I was snoring last night and A woke me up every fifteen minutes to tell me that. Hence not a lot of sleep went on in our bed last night. Sweetlove is passing his germs around again, gotta love the gummy preschooler fingers.

I had my 7dpo progesterone b/w taken today – its 8dpo today but yesterday was Sunday and the labs were closed. I’ve asked for the results to be mailed to me, I always do that now so that I don’t have to wait until my next doctor appt to find out – and the doctors are always so vagued when you asked for the results, I hate that. I want exact numbers!

So we made the painful decision to cancel our holiday south in May The problem was that my next cycle starts on Apr 29 which means the day we are supposed to leave for Phoenix is only CD13 – probably not enough time to get through the injections and have the IUI. And we really considered taking a cycle off…but when it comes down to it, I’m not quite ready to take a break again. I just had a six week break cycle before this one and it sucked. And now we’re finally at the point of doing an injectibles/IUI cycle that I’ve been waiting for for soooo long, I just need it to happen sooner than later. So we’re going to take the week after off, or whenever the IUI is done, and go up to my parent’s cabin on the lake for some relaxation. So we’ll do something. I just don’t want to be tied down with flights to miss and stress about. And A just wants me to be happy so he’s good with both ways. I’m really very lucky he’s not thrown me out by now. Now it will really be a kicker if I go in for my CD3 baseline b/w and they find my estrogen level is up, then we’ll have to suppress and I won’t cycle at all. But it’s a chance we decided to take and it’s the lesser of two evils I guess.

Ah… the life of living by the menstrual calendar.

A Better than Average Friday

So in my little world of Infertile-Working-Momhood, the perks come few and far between (with the exception of everything my truly-wonderous-sweet-as-can-be-son does of course). Well, this morning at work I got a phone call from the President of our company. He was calling, he said, to congratulate me on winning the employee award of the quarter (nation wide, I might add.) For my exceptional contribution to my company, I was nominated by management and was chosen to be the honored one for 1st quarter. I was given a little bonus cheque and I am entered into a draw at the end of the year for a trip for two to a caribean resort destination… hello! My odds are good, there are only a few people in the draw for goodness sake! That will be amazing if I win that.

So my boss is on holidays this week and she wandered into the office with her 80 year old mother this morning, which was kind of… strange. They sat in her office for a while and then immediately after I got off the phone with the president, she came over to me with the envelope and said I’m here to give this to you and say thanks for everything you do! It was a nice touch. She came in just for me! I feel special today.

So I don’t suck completely after all. I can’t make my husband happy with a baby, but I can make a difference at my day job!  That’s something right?

RE Meeting

We met with the RE this morning.

He is confident that there were no follicles on my ultrasound check and he said my ovaries were easy to see and they were empty except for my cyst. He can’t explain why I’m having regular cycles with biphasic charts without producing mature eggs, he’s never seen anything like it. Well… if there’s an exception to the rule, it’s always me. I swear.

So going forward, we are going to do a low dose Pure.gon (FSH) injectibles cycle with IUI next. He thinks I just might need a small boost of FSH to get the follicles out of the gate so to speak, and he doesn’t want me to over-respond and because I’m “so young” and I have regular cycles (?) it’s a good possibility. So we’ll start out low dose and then he’ll monitor me closely and if we need to bump up the dose, so be it. The only variable here is that he needs to check my estrogen level on day 3 and if my cyst is producing estrogen, he’ll need to suppress me with BCP for a month before we start the injects. So I’m really hoping this isn’t the case. Or maybe I am, maybe the pill will get rid of this damn cyst. Either way, we’re finally moving forward and NO MORE CLOMID!

my chart

here’s a link to my chart if anyone comes by here who can tell me what’s going on!

http://forums.ovusoft.com/chart.asp?id=motherhoodrox

Now tell me that’s annovulatory!

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to listen, did it make any noise?

So just like I thought, I ovulated an “invisible” egg on Saturday night (or early Sunday morning according to my estimations) and by this morning, my temp has shot right up .6º F – even a bigger jump than I normally have on 1 DPO.And I’ve figured out by researching all the data available on the internet that you can not have a progesterone surge (which is reflected in a biphasic BBT chart) without a follicle’s corpus luteum releasing the progesterone hormone. So a follicle had to release an egg in order for the corpus luteum to even exist. Hence I must have ovulated. Hence my RE is either blind or I have some seriously screwed up ovary positioning. Now I’m just mad at myself for not listening to my gut and having the IUI done. When I was on the phone with the RE, he said that he’d do the insemination, it wouldn’t be harmful but what would be the point since there was no follicle? Well I didn’t want to sound like a crazy infertile and say um, I know you are a doctor but I’ve been trained at the college of Google in WWW, and I know better. I now regret that decision. Of course, my 7dpo bloodwork will prove it for once and for all, if in fact my progesterone is high enough to confirm what I already know, to the doctor.

I have an appt with him on Thursday morning, and I’m dragging A with me for moral support. We need to discuss next cycle treatment and how we can even do treatment when I have invisible follicles. Because this is the 2nd cycle in a row that he’s been unable to find anything and sure enough, I ovulated both times.

I have been doubled over in pain for the past four days, my ovaries have been screaming bloody murder, and my back is feeling awful too. I’ve been nauseated and headache plagued, so to summarize – my poor husband had quite a miserable weekend dealing with ME and the three year old. He’s a dear soul, I am so lucky to have him. So on Saturday night, when we were planning to go to my close friend’s 29th birthday party – at their house with 20 of our closest friends – some of whom came in from out of town, I was bummed that I was feeling like such utter crap. It was to be a night of drinking, charades and karaoke. And I really wanted to go because it was a chance to ESCAPE my mind, my thoughts for a night, escape the pain if I could, and just have FUN. And laugh. And be the only sober one there of course (which I don’t mind cuz I’m not a drinker, just watching everyone else act a fool is entertaining enough).

So I sucked it up and made myself as pretty as I could (because when you look better you feel better right?) and just had a wonderful time. There were periods where I had to hold my breath and step away because I was feeling like I was going to puke, but by about 10:30 I was feeling well enough to forget, and we partied until 1:30 am. It was so nice. Sometimes you just need that. Sweetlove was staying at G&G’s house overnight and they dropped him off at DeDu.tch in the morning where we were having a nice breakfast. Another thing we never make time to do, go out for breakfast on Sunday morning.

So all in all – this weekend was good and bad, but the good overshadows the bad. I ovulated and in turn, we had lots of sex (hehe) and we enjoyed an evening of just being young and in love again. Screw the pain, I’m using my mind filter and I am going to remember the good parts!

Grrrr…. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING ???

 Just like I thought – my body is gearing up to ovulate – I got a +OPK this morning. Ummm… how’s that possible since the doctor didn’t see any follicles yesterday? So I phoned him and told him about the +OPK and he said, well the only explanation I can come up with this that your body is triggering an LH surge because your estrogen is up (and he knows that my estrogen is up because my endometrial lining is thickening for implantation — which he could see yesterday on the u/s) …but WHY is my estrogen up is if there is no egg there? That’s the mystery.

So what am I supposed to do now? He said it was our choice, but an insemination wouldn’t be recommended since there is no follicle to fertilize… so I said OK we’ll just do what we always do at home each month (BD) and I want bloodwork in seven days then which will confirm 100% whether or not I did release an egg. And if my temp goes up in a few days, then I will also know that I released an egg. An imaginary egg of course. WTH?????!!!!

Grrrrr…. I’m so frustrated. This is not supposed to go this way!!!   I’ve never heard of this and I’ve done my reading on these situations! Even the doc is stumped. 

Anyone know what could be happening?

OK I’m crazy then.

Had another scan this morning – he looked far and wide, pushed on my stomach to move things around, said unless I have a third ovary that he can’t see, there is no follicle there even close to ovulation.  Just antral follicles.  Grrrrr….. I’m so friggin frustrated.  And does the stress of all this make it a self-fulfilling prophecy?  And you know what sucks even more? Starting my day out like this.  Starting the day with the dildo-cam and Dr.No-Good-News.

He basically told me to just stop testing and wait for my period because I’m obviously not going to respond.  I was like, hi? have you met me?  I can’t stop testing!  I’m a crazed woman obsessed with figuring out my own reproductive system and whatever the hell is wrong with it.  Giving up is not an option. 

 So I’m just going to wait for my + OPK and then I’m going to call him and have a scan and see what exactly that all means.  And then we’re going to do the IUI no matter what day it is because for $200 I’m not going to let this cycle go to waste.  I WILL ovulate, I always do, it’s just a matter of time.  These doctors, what do they know?