How in the world is it already November 21st?? I can’t believe that Thanksgiving is just a few days from now. As a teacher, this time of the year goes VERY fast due to all the time off that we get. (I really don’t think many teachers would exist if we did not get these perks.)  With this is mind I realize that it will be New Years Eve like anytime and therefore, I am becoming a little anxious over trying this month. It seems like so much is going on and it is hard to focus on all the madness that comes with TTC. At the same time, I am wondering if trying in November and December will be a good thing since we will be consumed by the whirlwind of the holiday season. We might wait, I am just not sure. There is not the strong urgency that existed a few months back since we are out of the ideal summer due date window.

I am thinking that we may go ahead and try this cycle since we have the sper.m paid for and waiting  at the sper.m ba.nk. We might as well use it up. If it does not work this month I think we will definitely take a month or two off and maybe do something productive like pay someone to refinish our hardwood floors. Which reminds me that we found out yesterday that our vinyl flooring in the kitchen, that we were getting ready to tear up, probably contains asbestos. We have to take a sample to a testing lab to see for sure.  Awesome. This of course puts a huge kink in our kitchen remodel. We already have the new cabinets and countertop bought;  it just came down to the floor. Which up until now, the hardest part was with the floor simply because we could not decide on one…..Oh, how I wish that was still the biggest problem.

We are back in the game ladies…..today is CD 1. We are so happy,  excited and very positive about this cycle.  Over the past month we have celebrated a lot of good news in blog world;  with babies being born and positive pregnancy tests,  I am hopeful that in a few weeks we can jump on the bandwagon of good news.

Let me say that AF could not have come at a better time. Over the weekend I was feeling negatively effected by our TTC journey. I am fully aware this is our journey and we have to take what is given to us, as ultimately we have minimal control over it all, but there are still bad days and good days…and lets be honest, even worse days. So I needed this to pick me back up , have hope and look towards our future.

 

……I have to tell this to myself daily as I watch my colleague’s 7 month pregnant belly stare at me from across our shared classroom.  V’s due date and hers was a week apart, it is a torturous reminder of what occurred. WE are still waiting for AF. V has never had a cycle this long. I feel like cursing, screaming and crying out of frustration. In seven months we have only gotten to do two  inseminations. Seriously?!?!?   Exhale….. Breath deep……………it will happen……………

 

I have been a lazy blogger, but have been keeping up with you all. Huge congrats  to the ladies over at The Bao on their new pregnancy!  I couldn’t be happier for them.

 We have been doing well and have been basking in the fall days. Not too much has been happening on the baby front.  V is on CD 32, which would be awesome if we tried last month. However this long cycle is most likely to the damn cyst that knocked us out of last cycle. So we are patiently waiting and feeling  increasingly excited about trying again. Even though we tried a cycle ago, I think we are actually emotionally ready now. I love that the excitement is back! Now it is time to wait until we can  get this cycle rolling!

Here are some pictures of our most recent visit to the arboretum in our town……We are some serious tree lovers!

Today I am off work for fall break and thought this the perfect time to get answer a few of the questions that you all have asked.

Strawberry asked the following questions:

1. I’m curious, since you’ve started off with Clomid, monitoring and a trigger shot, why you began at that point versus just OPKing and trying a couple times before intervention?

When we started researching all the ins and outs of trying to conceive, we thought we were going to go the route of ICI at home with no medication. Our vision of the insemination was one that was intimate, memorable and personal as possible. As we started looking at the success rates of  inseminations by IUI compared to ICI and then factored in the cost of IUI prepared vials to IUI prepared vials we thought it was better to  go ahead with an IUI.  Plus, the bank we had chosen did not ship to homes and would not give out information on how to correctly defrost the vials. (We have of course now learned how to do this since then, but that is besides the point.  Not very intersting, but that is how we ended up going the IUI route off the bat. Now to the medications and ultrasounds…….which really boils down to money

During our “research time”, Clomid seemed to come up in the literature many times. So we started to throw around the idea of trying medicated cycles in hopes that we reduce the number of tries. It is really not much more complicated than that. We took V’s age in consideration and cost of trying each month and decided the Clomid was safe enough to try a few tries to reduce the number of insemination that V went through.

Now to the ultrasounds….that just kinda happened. I actually do not remember if our midwife suggested it or if we asked for it. KNowing me and my worrying ways, I suggested we get an u/s to make sure a follicle was developing. Now it is procedure for V to get one or two u/s before the IUI.

Also, karaoke…love it or hate it?

V and I both agree that karaoke if loads of fun to watch. V would like to get up on the stage and belt one out, while P would just prefer to sit in the audience and adoringly watch V.

Today is cd 12 and V went and had an u/s today to check on follicle size before we bought the vial. Turns out that she is going to ovulate early, as there is already a 30 mm follicle. The technician thought it was a cyst, but the midwife said that was unlikely since she has had so many u/s over the past few moths and there has not been any evidence of a cyst or a prior cyst. The midwife  (not our regular one) said if the vial was at the clinic she would perform the IUI tonight; considering we had not even purchased it yet, this will not be happening. I am not sure that this is really a follicle at 30 mm and think that it could be a follicular cyst. We were going to have V start testing with OPK’s tomorrow, since this would be about the time that her body typically has a positive OPK. When she took one today it was negative. So maybe we completely missed it. Either way, it is not going to happen this cycle.

I am devastated as this cycle was incredibly important to us, since it was the last cycle to try and have a summer baby. As I have moaned and groaned about this before, a summer baby would mean I would have time off to be with V and the baby.  A  baby born during my work months, means no time off for me. Of course, there is a great chance that V would have not  gotten pregnant this cycle, but the failure would have been less awful if we would have even got the chance to try.

It is sad to think back 6 months and how optimistic, eager and light and happy hearted we were about trying to create a baby.  We are not in that place anymore.

As of this morning it became official, this cycle was unsuccessful. Since V had gotten some negative pregnancy tests over the past week we started discussing the next cycle, money and over all the direction that we want our TTC journey to look like. These conversations have been very helpful and healing in some ways because I was able to step away from the emotion and take a more analytical approach to trying to get pregnant.

I think the most important conversations centered around money and finances. We took a long thoughtful look at what we are spending each cycle and discussed what this mean in regards of our financial health. Before we actually started trying to conceive, the number of attempts would be  indefinent. We would try until a baby was created and delivered! But, as we all know all too well, things change once you actually in the middle of trying to expand your family. We have not set a number in stone yet, as these things need careful consideration. We are not taking out loans to finance our monthly baby making adventures, therefore each month we are paying everything out-of-pocket, with a little help with insurance on u/s and IUI procedures. It is costing us over a $1,000.00 a month on TTC. I shudder at the thought that if we do 5 consecutive IUI’s then we would have spent $6,000.00 in just five months! I am realistic and realize that many, and I mean many, of you have spent much more money than this, but, we are trying to find a good balance where we feel good about how much we put into TTC. How do you put a “price” on the chance to have a child though? That is where we are struggling.

We tested today, on CD 25. It was negative. To be more precise, all four tests that V took today came out negative. I would not recommend Ta.rget brand pregnancy tests, as they give off the faintest line/shadow EV-ER! I think it is just how they are designed and most women would not  even see the pitiful line, unless they are crazily examining every tiny portion of the display window. This morning, I had a slight bit if hope  that this VERY, and I mean VEEERRRY faint line was start of a something more promising. However, when V tested this evening with two different tests and one crappy T.arget one, it was obvious that the T.arget ones are just shitty little pieces of plastic.

We were never optimistic about this cycle, so this is not a huge surprise. But even with the low expectations  that we had, I am still feeling angry and sad.I am so afraid that this is just the start of a long road. I think we will try again next month. But, if V does not get pregnant that cycle then we will take off for a month or two to save back a little more money.

I am very excited that I and V have so many fun questions to answer. You ladies had some really non traditional questions and I love that! I am looking forward to writing the answers to those over the next week. What a fantastic way to mend our sad hearts after a unsuccessful cycle.

Some of the brilliant women in the blog world have asked readers to post any questions they might want to know about the writers of the blog. Since we are in the last week of the two week wait I thought we would do the same. So ladies, feel free to ask away because I am actually looking forward to this being a distraction during the 1ww wait.

This weekend we bought pregnancy tests and tampons. I hope that V does not need the latter of the two. I actually wanted to hold off  buying  these  pregnancy tests because I have a slight problem with waiting. I am the type  of person that will relentlessly attempt to give someone their birthday or Christmas present as soon as I buy it. Having the  reliable tests in the house makes me want to convince V that we should test tomorrow morning.  However, I can’t come up with a good case on why we should test so ridiculously early. It is ONLY cd 23 and 7 days past IUI.   I guess we will wait until Friday, on cd 28, to test…..that is if I can wait that long!

Tuesday afternoon, V sent me a text saying that we were going to babysit our friends little four month little girl because of one her mommies is in the emergency room for her appendix. I was worried and sad for our friend, but thrilled about being able to stay with Kenley. Oh how that changed so very quickly. Okay ladies, I suggest that you do not stay with a baby while you ae in the baby making stage.  At one point I actually turned to V and said “I don’t think I want to do this”. Meaning, lets not have kids.  Which is an awesome thing to say when someone who is 2 days past an IUI.

There was way too much crying. I think she probably wailed for four out of the five hours we were there with her. Nothing we did could console her for any length of time. I felt so bad for her and the stress she must have been going through. It was also slightly nerve wracking for us, which is what prompted me say that awful thing to Violet. Of course, I do not feel that way anymore, but it did open my eyes to what many of our nights could possibly be like. I had never dealt with a crying baby for hours on end, even though I was aware that it happened.

As I have mentioned before in previous posts,  that my job is something that I do not see myself doing for years on end. I know that I am going to need to come up with a back up plan and for the past two years I have been exploring various career changes. School Media Specialist is one of my top 3. Thursday evening I drove down to the University where I got my two previous degrees and spoke to one of the professors in the program. The meeting was filled with lots of positive information and I left fairly hopeful. Since I have already taken the MAT and the PRAXIS, I could use those as my entrance exams and would not have to agonize over any other exams. On the downside-the program is not ALA accredited, which means I could have issues getting into a Ph.D. program done the line and I would not be able to work outside of the school systems.  With that in mind, I have  been in contact with FSU about their program, which is third in the nation, but also more expensive and much more involved in the acceptance process. Decisions, Decisions. I am a bit envious of the ones who picked a career and stuck with it.

Today is CD 22. I am not feeling very optimistic about this cycle. Ever since we lost Poppy, I have had this nagging feeling that we would have two failed cycles before V got pregnant again. I am not one to go by “vibes” or innate feelings when it comes to things like this, but I can’t seem to shake this deep down feeling that this is the course our attempt to make a baby will take. Since we are afraid of getting a false positive, Violet did take a cheap pregnancy test this morning to make sure the Ovid.rel was out of her system.  Even though I wanted the test to be negative this morning, it was still a sad sight.

Today is 6 days past the IUI and about marks the end of the first week wait.  Let me tell you, this time around has been so much more chill. I am not constantly asking her how she is feeling or making sure she doesn’t not eat anything that could be slightly unhealthy or harmful to any potential ball of cells growing in her uterus. Pretty much, I am not being a dictator of her body. The IUI is not also a though on my mind for the majority of the day, as it was last time. I am enjoying the wait much more this time. Lets hope that the second week is just as easy as the first.