insomnia

woke up after horrifying dream where my RE's nurse killed me.  (I'm not going crazy from ivf, I swear!) In the dream, she came up from behind me and hugged me as I was on the phone with my RE, then she threw some brown powder in my face that made me hunch over, paralyzed and then everything around me started to die and it looked like i did it.

Awesome.  I woke up upset.  It was so windy out... like eerily windy that I just layed there freaked out for a while.  I wound up awake for most of the night.  Somewhere in the middle of that, I remembered another side effect of the Dexamethasome I'm on is insomnia.  I really, really hope that isn't something I'll be dealing with this time around!

And we're off!

I just took my first Lupron shot and Dexamethasone pill.  I feel excited.  So dumb, but I do.  I've been working out w/trainer/eating right since i got back from Portland and I already feel so much better... so going to try and keep it up while cycling.  Without over do-ing it/hurting myself/getting in the way of my f-ing eggs thriving.

I decided to track my weight during the cycle.  I was going to keep a separate log of it, then thought "what if I do that on my blog?"  Then I thought I didn't want people to see it.  But whoever finds their way here is seeing way more personal stuff than that...

So, today before my shot I weighed 149.2.  That's still up 3 lbs from before last cycle.  BTW, I was around 135 when I started IVF a year ago which I thought was a high weight for me then (I'm just under 5'1).

So I haven't gotten that weight off and I'm already going back at it.  I figure by keeping track of my weight honestly here... I will be more accountable so I don't eat my way through this cycle.  Especially with the Dex which on the side of the bottle tells you it may result in insomnia and increased appetite.  Plus that pesky side effect of weight gain.  If I sound weight obsessed... I always am.  But the past 4 months it has shot up so quickly, I feel like focusing on it and actually DOING something about it is a good thing.

So for the next month... the goal is to MAINTAIN.  Depressing?  Yes.  But less depressing than if I wound up gaining again.  It's also something I'd want to do even if I weren't cycling.  I'm learning (over and over again) it's important to try and hold on to the part of yourself that exists outside of ivf because it's easy to let who you were pre-IF slip away and become bogged down with the shit storm.

record scratch -- I'm in a good mood

My house is clean, my husband's home, my work situation is good, the weather is amazing today...  I'm feeling excited to get my next cycle going... but nervous that any good spirits could get thrown back in my face at any point in this process... trying to ignore that.

Right now my possible ER/ET will line up with my first week of work and an overnight trip my boss is planning for my coworkers.  BFF advised me (and I'm taking it) to not tell boss man I maybe-might-sorta-never-really-know need to take time off/mot go on the trip.  I was thinking it was courteous to give advanced warning that I might flake... but it's so annoying to bother him with it and then not even take the time off... cause he just remembers that it was an issue, not whether it happens or not.

So I'm just going to keep it to myself and hope it DOES interfere ( that means I got to do my cycle) or that it interferes in the mildest of ways.  A girl can dream...

weekend of kids

It was pretty good considering.

The positives:
I had a lot of fun with the kids (my nephew, fam friends)
I visited a friend with a 4 wk old and it was 96% nice

The negatives:
the friend with a 4 week old didn't gain any pregnancy weight... realizing I gained it for her but have no baby

not being able to avoid babies anytime I stepped outside... literally had a zombie movie moment where to avoid one kid coming at me I turned down a different street and ran head on with a mom and her baby

a little girl came up to me from behind thinking I was her mom (we have similar hair) and I felt flattered that I'd passed for "a mom."  It made me incredibly angry that I felt that way.

There were a lot more moments... positive and negative... but those are the ones that popped into my head first.

we did something sorta dumb :)

We bought a rug for the sad, empty yellow room where we store boxes... or the "nursery."  This rug will stay rolled up until that room actually becomes a nursery (no sad quotes).  We saw it - I really liked it, C had a huge reaction.. or as a huge as a man can have to a kids' rug.  We decided to get it and just leave it alone. At some point there will be a kid and at some point we will lay this rug out.  There's a cute little giraffe that got cropped off on the left.

Usually kids stuff just makes me/us depressed, but for some reason this rug inspired us to get it.

since I always complain on this blog...

I'll say something positive for a change.  I had a good day.  No particular reason.  Nothing much happened and it felt pretty good.  It was day one of working out hard and eating right.  Maybe it's that feeling of control I'm digging.  My cats were particularly cute tonight.  One of them flops down next to me on the couch by the edge and if I don't "save" him he'll fall off.  I don't know why he doesn't catch himself, but it's insanely cute.

C and I have been thinking of getting a dog.  We are very aware of it being a kid replacement.  I am nervous about the commitment, but open to anything right now.  We're doing a little research now.  It might just be a distraction to think about right now... or we might actually do it.  Who knows...

wish I had just worn this around my neck this weekend

Having just spent the weekend with people who (though I love) just had no idea what we were going through with our ivf.... even when we tried to explain it, it just didn't resonate with them (based on the stuff they did and said the whole time)


Bff sent me this and I think it really captures how hard this shit is... it's from the Pregnant in Heels blog.. someone who now has a tv show where she had to rewatch herself go through ivf and ho hard it is looking back, even after she had kids...  anyway, here is her remembering:



Watching those scenes took me right back to the despair and complete lack of control I felt for many of the weeks during filming.  IVF is not something you dabble in for a few injections everyday; it is something that consumed my entire life.  Every morning I’d wake up and go to the clinic to have my blood tested and eggs watched to see if they were near maturity and ready to be fertilized.  Every day I would undergo numerous injections.  And every night I would wonder how much closer we were to having another little one.  When this process that normally happens so unbeknownst to us is studied with such intricate detail it is hard to stop obsessing about it.

Each day is filled with so many unnecessary triumphs and failures all pegged to a few words I might hear in the morning from the doctor that happened to be on the early shift.  Sometimes I’d get a doc with a brilliant bedside manner who’d report “Oh yes, lovely, these eggs are looking great, good job, see you tomorrow,” as if I actually had something to do with their wondrous progress that day.  And off I’d skip as if my eggs had just won some award and things were looking up that day.

Other days I’d get “Oh, not growing as fast we’d hope.  See you tomorrow.”  This would send me into a spiral of despair and out I’d go, dragging my feet, convinced all of my eggs had given up and decided to pack up shop, shrivel up and retire on the Costa del Sol with the other aging Brits.

I don’t think these doctors realized that statements were the key to my entire day and of course I was too much of a masochist to actually ask them to explain their comments so as not to make or break my entire day.  Alas, this pretty much sums up each of the approximately 14 days during my cycle that I was required to go to these morning torture sessions.

Even better were the days that they’d call my name and someone would recognize it.  Favorite comment from the darling sitting next to me: “Oh, that must be like being a chef but not being able to eat your own food.” Yep, just because we were all in the clinic together didn’t necessarily mean we were all hugging each other and signing Kumbaya.

So for me the IVF process continued like this with daily monitoring, each day leading hopefully closer to the day they actually take the eggs out and fertilize them to be transferred back as embryos.  Looking back there were only a few weeks every cycle of injections, but at the time it felt like eternity.

Let me just take a moment here before signing off.  I realize that, as usual, I am hiding behind humor to avoid really discussing the agony of this experience.  In a perfect world nobody should be denied the ability to have a child and to experience the unparalleled joy that being a parent brings.  Yet infertility slapped me in the face and left me sitting for so many hours in our bathroom crying on the edge of the toilet seat or in the shower hoping the sound of the water would muffle my sobbing.

It is amazing to me even now that I pretend I could handle the whole thing with a few laughs and some jokes, but really I think I am still scared by the experience both literally and figuratively.  Every time I look down at my belly the scars of infertility literally stare back up at me as I look at the ones I received as a result of an emergency pregnancy-related operation.  But nothing runs as deep as the moments I shared with my husband following a negative pregnancy test result.

I am brought back to reality when I stare at my sons but to think I came so close to not having them, to think of all the other stories people have shared with me, I am humbled by the women and men, the warriors that they are in their determination and strength on the road to parenthood and in parenthood.  I am 31 but in the face of this I am older than I ever imagined I would be.  And so the journey continues.

back from the consolation prize

Because the cycle got cancelled we got to go on one of our mini-trips.  It was fun -- we met up with old friends.  One mentioned they were going through IF when C called to make plans with them and told them about us.  I was looking forward to having someone else to talk to who is in that world... turns out, they're already pregnant.  They checked in with an RE and got pregnant before they started treatments.  I didn't ask what they're problem was... all they said was they had no idea how it possibly happened.  I didn't ask because #1 - I don't know them that well and #2 - I almost didn't want to know.  It would probably just make me feel bad.

On this trip I had two different adoption dreams.  I think I had that stuff on my brain all trip (besides the regular amount) because one of our friends kept pointing out cute kids to us... he's about to be married and is in that phase... I remember that from a long, long time ago. Even after we told him about our ivf, he kept doing it... he just doesn't know how hard we are trying to ignore them...

Anyway, my adoption dreams were so odd... one we were in a cattle call of people "receiving" their kids... it was sprung on us and i felt very strong feelings of joy that we were about to get our kid... as soon as she was put in my arms, I realized the baby we got was older than the others because no one wanted her because she was deformed and sick.   Then a doctor told me he was relieved to not have to deal with her anymore -- she as that hard to manage.  I felt instant regret about her but felt too guilty to give her back.  Then she started throwing up and it turned into me throwing up for her.  I kept spitting to get it out of my mouth... then I woke up.  Happy vacation slumber!

I guess that's the fear of adoption -- if your own kids are jacked up, they're yours, you made them.  If you "choose" one like that... it's almost like you had a part in your fate.  Of course, real life adoption is so hard you don't really choose anyway...  we're not ready to move on to adoption... but how peculiar that it's started to pop up in my dreams.

what now?

Well, my whole "try and write every day of my fresh cycle" feels dumb now.  I guess i was looking at it as an archive of what really goes into it -- for anyone who's curious... but mostly to have a record of all the emotions/efforts if it worked... which it did not.

So... back to "regular" life now.  I am doing okay.  The weekend was hard.  All that time to let the week sink in.  I was bratty.  C managed me well.  I saw my new trainer, Donna, today. She is really sweet.  I'm learning that I have trouble getting through explaining to people who don't know as much about ivf - something about putting what happened into simple terms makes it sound even worse.  I say something like "even for ivf, this was unusual and bad."  And then the tears come.  I tried to workout through my crying - but being out of breath and trying to keep snot in your nostrils doesn't go well together.

One thing I learned from this last cycle: nothing I do outside of ivf can help me get pregnant.  Of course I'm not saying I can do drugs, not sleep and only eat gas station hot dogs and that won't effect my mind/body. I'm just saying, no amount of yoga, acupuncture, certain foods, etc will change the outcome of my cycle.  I knew this, but now I REALLY GET IT.  I feel zero guilt about not doing ALL of those things now.  I don't have to be perfect.  I don't have to look into anything about my cycles except my protocol and am I generally taking care of myself.  Next cycle, I will eat healthy but not fixate on it, I'll do acupuncture if I feel like it... I'll do whatever makes me feel good -- but nothing hoping it will help me get pregnant.  It puts too much pressure on everything and takes up too much energy.  Sad take on this: I've already had this discovery -- I've just gone through enough cycles that this past one I returned to grasping for anything I can do to maybe-sorta help.  Happy take on this: next cycle I will have more free time/energy to do other things.

Over.

And now we drink.  All the follicles that were around 11-14 back on Monday are all gone.  Mysteriously vanished.  It is "very unusual."  My RE had a young patient who this happened to back when he worked in NY and she had low egg reserve.  However, we think for me it was a protocol issue.  No more Ganirelix or Follistem.  Next time - BCPs overlapping with Lupron and then higher dose of Menapur.  Next time starts in about 3 weeks.  My RE asked if I felt up to it physically/emotionally.  For me, then answer is yes -- must keep going until it ends.  I am scared that we'll have similar problems next time, but hopeful that one of these fresh cycles leads to a kid (and hopefully enough frozens to NOT have to go through this more than I have to.)  I don't know what our quitting point is but we're not there yet.

We were okay-ish tonight until I had to do a progesterone shot to start my body to have a period... something about being back there, the pain of that shot for nothing but a period after a failed cycle got to me.  At least we have closure for now.

good luck?

Bff gave me this good luck pig.  I gave it to her for her first ivf cycle (did not go so well).  Her 2nd did... So, this little guy has his work cut out for him with me.

I have my u/s in a few hours.  Who knows what is coming my way.

--

RE upped my meds to see what happens with the leftover follicles.  All hope and excitement for this cycle is gone right now.  Which is easier in some ways.  I'm not anxious.  Not holding my breath til the next appointment.  

Went to acupuncture angry today.  Why the fuck live everyday for a cycle is it gets you nowhere.  All the leafy greens/yoga/acupuncture/taking care of myself doesn't translate to a good cycle.  Acu-lady actually calmed me.  She follows my meds/dosage and though she's no doc, she said she's never seen a client on such low dosage of meds as I was.  She thinks it was just not my protocol.  I came out of it feeling more relaxed, and if that's all acupuncture can really do, I think it's worth it.

really bad day

went to u/s to find out whether we trigger wed or thurs... instead we learned that all about 15 of our large follicles are gone.  All of them.  They just didn't have the energy to keep growing and collapsed in on themselves.  It's very weird.  Once again we had a doc scratching his head about me.  Something complicated and odd is going on.  Either I didn't react well to the meds or have poor egg quality.  Both C and I heard this and thought separately "Holy shit.  We're not going to have our own kids."  After a particularly shitty morning... we started to feel a little better.  This is a giant set back, but doesn't feel like the end.  We still have about 10 smaller follicles growing and opted to up our meds over the next 3 days to see if they are salvageable instead of canceling the cycle all together.  But our hopes are down.  Not expecting anything good to come of this. After all -- all those other follicles that disappeared looked great until the very end... 

and the shittiest part of our life continues...

retrieval pushed

...until Wed. or Thurs.  My follies are growing slowly.  If I avoid ohss, this is all worth it... but I'm in such limbo right now, that this delay feels like a bad thing. I'm just tired of feeling anxious, tired of my life revolving around this. Tired of planning for dates that don't happen.  

Today I feel extremely sad.  And it's not all about this cycle.  This cycle is going okay.  The whole thing is overwhelming and today is one of those days where it's hitting me.