Moving Forward

I feel a little like I've attempted to run an emotional marathon and hit the wall before the finish line.

I'm tired.  I hurt.  The course to the finish line has blurred as tears fill my eyes far more than anybody sees.

Sometimes as I look at my 3 year old daughter the emotions overwhelm me and it'll happen without warning.  I can be sitting across from her at dinner and realize tears are welling up.

My three year old isn't my only child; I have a 7 year old daughter as well.  However, my three year old is my rainbow baby.  She is the baby that came to me after my first loss, after 3 years of trying to conceive, and at a time when our future was in limbo.  By the time the day of her birth arrived, life was so different than it had been 9 months before.

I glance at her and realize just how truly blessed I am to have her in my life.  She talks in paragraphs, colors detailed pictures of events she's witnessed or wants to be apart of, asks intelligent and thoughtful questions, and cries when she sees me crying.

My lmp before she was conceived arrived on September 23rd, 2009.  Her sister was also conceived 4 years prior in early October.

I remember thinking shortly after she was born that I never wanted a gap that big between my children again but now there is no helping it: the next gap, if another baby ever joins our family, will be bigger than the first.

In all honesty, I know I shouldn't worry about this.  I'm not old by any stretch and should have a good 10 years of child-bearing ahead of me.  But with the women in my family having such short lifespans, I feel horribly pressured to hurry things along.

Last month I had 4 mature follicles during my ultrasound.  They ranged in size from 19mm up to 26mm.  I almost laughed when the doctor had to ask me if I'd be willing to do a reduction in the unlikely event that all 4 implanted.

None of them did.  I have one more round of meds to try before we move to something more high tech.

So now I am in a new kind of tww: the tww before my RE and I make a plan for the New Year, new insurance, and I begin kissing my money goodbye in the hopes of saying hello to a son or daughter.

Ruining Relationships

My life over the last 10 years have taken some unexpected turns.  Once I realized that infertility was a part of my life, I knew that it could easily dominate my daily thought.  I could also have predicted my willingness to sink thousands of dollars into testing and procedures as well as my husbands more hesitant approach.

One thing I could not have predicted was how many relationships I would let infertility ruin.  I acknowledge that many of the relationships have fallen by the wayside because of my feelings and unwillingness or inability to be happy for people without riders attached.

As part of a variety of infertility support groups, one thing remains constant and clear: We have all allowed infertility to ruin relationships.

The concept that families consist of a parent(s) and children is something we are taught from a very early age. The Standards of Learning for Family Life in my awesome Commonwealth of Virginia for the kindergarten level states:

The student will recognize that everyone is a member of a family and that families come in many forms. 

Descriptive Statement: This includes a variety of family forms: traditional or two-parent families-mother, father, and children; extended families-relatives other than the immediate family living in the home; single-parent families; adoptive families; foster families; families with stepparents; and other blended families.

Even in school at the tender age of 5 children are taught that families include children so it's no wonder that as adults, if we want children and can't have them, we feel like a complete failure.

I feel daily that my body is broken, so when I see women around me who appear to have perfectly functioning reproductive systems, I'm envious of them and there's no way around that for me.  The exception are women who I know have been struggled with infertility as well.

For them I can cheer loud and proud.

For everyone else, it hurts to hear about pregnancy after pregnancy.  In some cases, the recipient of my relationship-ruining isn't even a woman of child-bearing years or even a woman at all.

The story I'm about to share, though true and personal, is only a sample of what women fighting infertility become a part of.

Someone I grew up with always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and have 6-8 children.  She "struggled" to conceive her first, according to her, because it took 9 months.  Six years later, when her fourth child has turned 2, she whines in tears about how she's had three miscarriages (all before 8 weeks gestation) in the past year to me--a woman who has fought true infertility for a decade and had just lost a baby at 12 weeks.

A few weeks later this same woman announced she is 12 weeks pregnant.  Doing a touch of math leads to the obvious conclusion that she was pregnant during her whine fest and knew about it.

Logically I know I should be happy that this woman I've known and loved for most of my life, and who knows what it's like to lose a baby (although I can attest to the fact that losing at 12 weeks is *much* harder than losing at 6-7 weeks), is getting her dream, even if it's not quite as fast or efficient as she'd hoped.

But I can't.  I just can't.  I feel like she lied to me and it hurts that she got pregnant four times in 8 months and still had her take home baby while it takes me anywhere from 13-18 months just to get pregnant and even then I have a confirmed 67% rate of loss.

Our first children were three months apart.  I have 2, she has 5.  I can't even read emails about her and deleted the birth pics without even looking at them because it's too painful.

I remember when she announced her first pregnancy.  I'd already been actively trying for over a year and had been moderately trying for 18 months before that.  I sat in a dressing room at Kohl's and sobbed.  My soul was wracked with torment.  I felt shattered and betrayed.  And with each of her subsequent pregnancy announcements, I've had to relive the shattered feeling.

Have I ruined relationships?  Yes.  But I've done it because when it comes to infertility, ruining the relationship is safer than exposing myself to unnecessary pain.

The Waiting Game

Most women in the ttc community that I've come across have a persistent and almost uncontrollable poas addiction.

Starting anywhere from 7-10 days after our periods start, we begin using ovulation predictor strips.  While some will only test once a day, many of us will test 2-4 (or more!) times a day, watching anxiously to catch our LH surge and make sure we have sex at the optimal time to catch the egg.

Starting anywhere from 5-7dpo, most of us resume our testing with hpts. I have never tested earlier than 8dpo, but that doesn't mean I haven't been tempted.

As I mentioned yesterday, my urge to find out if I'm pregnant or not by taking a home pregnancy test has been almost non-existent.  It has felt really odd to walk into the bathroom and not reach for the dixie cup and a test strip of one kind or another.

My fertilityfriend.com basal body temperature chart for this month looks like this: 

The first half of my cycle was pretty wonky.  I don't usually have temps above 97.1 and this month I had three of them that were that high.  The temps were so Rocky Mountain-esk that even though I used an hcg trigger shot and know exactly when I ovulated, my crosshairs are dotted instead of dashed.

The nice part?  Take a look at how steady my temps have been since I started the prometrium.  This chart shows the steadiest post-ovulation temps I've ever had and that is quite a bit of relief.

So for this whole week, where normally I would have been taking home pregnancy tests every morning, I have waited.  Tomorrow my wait will be up; I will know the exact amount hcg in my blood. 

The big question: Will I find out I'm pregnant or will I find out we're one step closer to IVF? 

To Test or Not to Test

Today I am 12dpo.  My blood draw for my beta is Friday morning, less than 48 hours away.

In all the years we've been ttc, I have always tested on or before 12dpo.  Always.

This cycle has been different.  I did test to see how much of my trigger was left for days after triggering and the answer was, "not much" based on how faint the hcg test strip was.

A few days later, when I would normally have been agonizing over when to test, I began to realize that I didn't want to know.

At all.

This is the first week of school and my oldest started second grade yesterday.  Last year on the first day of school I was 8 weeks pregnant.  The year before, on her first day of kindergarten, I found out I was pregnant at 16dpo.

Both of those pregnancies ended in miscarriage, which is why I preferred not to know if I was pregnant yesterday or not.  Had the test come out a bfn, I would have spent half the day crying and the other half just hoping it was too early for a bfp.  On the other hand, had the test been positive I would have been wracked with fear that I would eventually be three-for-three on first-day-of-school-pregnancy-losses.

Neither option sounded at all appetizing, so I chose to abstain from testing.  Once I made that decision, I realized how much of a burden had been lifted. At this point I am either pregnant or I'm not and knowing won't change that.  By not knowing, I can sit here in ignorance and with some actual hope that the blood draw will show some serious hcg running through my veins.

I had FOUR mature follicles this cycle.  Yes, FOUR.  If none of them fertilized, then it's going to be crushing.  I'm having some problems with some unfortunate symptom spotting and knowing that I *could* test is a little bothersome, but not enough to go poas.

Would I welcome twins with a bfp?  Absolutely.  If anyone can handle a multiple birth, it's me.  I'm not trying to brag, but I run a daycare and taking care of multiple children comes easily for me.  It's something I really enjoy.

But first I have to get pregnant and that's the hard part.  After that I have to stay pregnant and that's almost as hard.  I have a 67% pregnancy loss rate.  That's rather high.

Friday afternoon I will get the news.  With it will come either shrieks of joys or tears of frustration as yet another cycle passes me by.

Only time will tell.

Ashley's Story

My story:
I am 30 years old and grew up in a big family. I have 6 siblings, 2 nephews (on my side, from my siblings) and 8 nieces (again my side) I have been ttc for over 6 years and I can't afford fertility treatments. 

I would love to have a baby of my own and I am tired of people telling me if I stop thinking about it and to stay positive that it would happen. Others just tell me to adopt. My mother in law likes to make fun of me about it. For example, her daughter is getting rids of baby clothes and she said to me "why keep them? It's not like you can have kids."  

Hopefully soon I will have the money saved for iui's. I get mad at people who say they are ttc number 2-10 and they get depressed that it has not happened yet. Hello?!?! Still trying for number one here. I am trying not to be bitter anymore. By: Ashley Alexander

Meds Magnify My Emotions

Tonight I completed my 7th dose of prometrium, 200 mg, taken vaginally.  I actually like the forced 30 minutes on my back every twelve hours because it gives me time to think and to shut out as much of the outside world as I can.

Sometimes I just sit and play Candy Crush, but tonight my mind wandered to things I've been trying hard to avoid thinking about.  It was during this wandering that I realized today was a bit of an anniversary.  Eighteen months ago today my mother passed away.

As I lay in my bed with a pill shoved up my wahoo I was overcome with anger.  I let it roll over me and felt the change from anger to a much preferred pain.  After a few minutes, I began to wonder just how much of my loss of emotional control was related to continuing grief over the death of my mother, my baby, and what little relationship I had with my dad, and how much of the outburst was related to the prometrium.

I believe, in this case, the prometrium magnified my pain. I wish I could say it was simple, but it certainly doesn't feel that way when I'm experiencing it.

Have you have side-effects from your fertility meds?

I Should Have Walked Out

One of the very real side effects of infertility is dealing with people who have large numbers of children.  I am a life-long member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormon church.

Within many religious cultures, large families are quite normal and the LDS church is no exception.  My own brother has 5 children and my sister has 5 and intends to have several more.

Today during Sacrament meeting (this would be the main meeting within the 3 hours of church we attend each week) a mother was asked to talk about families.

You see, within the LDS church, we don't have paid clergy.  All positions are filled by the members of the church.  The sermons are given by members of the congregation, frequently one or two speakers are between the ages of 12-18 years and the remaining 2-3 speakers are adults.

Normally, those who speak spend hours preparing their talk (sermon) and will have a couple of weeks' notice as well as a topic to address.  It was clear that today's first adult speaker was talking about families, which in and of itself shouldn't have been a problem for me.

Today that wasn't the case.  She started off with mentioning the names and ages of her 5 children and the entire rest of the talk was about her role as a mother and how hard, yet rewarding, motherhood is.

I am a mother, so why did this bother me?  I've asked myself this over and over and I can't come up with a solid answer.  All I can think is that I have some pent up jealousy.  I would love to have 5 children and I know I am strong enough emotionally and financially to support them.

The other part I think is that this mother clearly couldn't think about family dynamics that were different from hers.  Sitting in that congregation were families that had very different backgrounds.  Divorce, death of a father then subsequent remarriage of the mother, half-siblings, step-siblings, and a childless couple.  There may have been families there dealing with abuse, death of a child, or other situations that didn't model this speaker's Ideal.

I sat there listening and then as the pain set in as she gushed about how wonderful motherhood to five was, I tried my hardest to tune out her words.  I was unsuccessful.  I should have stood up and left the chapel rather than continuing to subject myself to what was tantamount to emotional torture.  Instead, I sat there trying to beat level 350 on Candy Crush and then trying to hold my three year old without crying.

My pain was obvious enough to my little girl that she started to cry.  Great heaping sobs wracked her little body while the rest of the congregation sang a hymn about families.  It took all my effort to comfort her and try to hush her when all I wanted to do was join in.

I should have left, but didn't.

That's a mistake I won't be making again.  I'd rather cry in a deserted classroom or on the front steps than try to keep the tears at bay while I sit there to be polite and subject my child to my pain.