hello all! just had my VERY first IUI ever this morning and feeling good vibes :). we did it at the chicago women's health center and i was completely blown away by their gentleness, the way she explained everything, the way she reassured us at every turn, the seeing of the swimmers under the microscope (**), and the options she gave us (do i want to see my cervix in a mirror? does DW want to push the plunger? etc). i cannot recommend them more!
which brings me to my one question. i was supposed to get an IUI, but apparently, because of my cervix being not quite cooperative, the cannula (is that how you spell that?) could only get about 75% of the way through it into the entrance to the uterus. i'm probably not using the right words for the parts, but you know what i mean? sarah (our health worker) tried with a few different speculums, with lubricant and without, a million different angles, and even without a speculum at the end, but she said she just couldn't get it all the way in there. she said quite clearly "this is NOT a failed insemination" and i wasn't really thinking that anyway, as there are still a whole lot of little guys up in there (like, millions!) but clearly it didn't get exactly where it was supposed to. sarah said this part you just can't really control--that you can visualize the cervix, you can get it in the entrance, but then threading it through, like, the 'bottleneck' all the way into the actual uterus, you can't control. you just have to keep trying and get it as far as you can.
has anyone else had an experience like this? i'm starting to think now maybe it was because i was still at the very first part of my fertile period and my cervix wasn't quite all the way open, and we're doing another one tomorrow so we'll see then if it's any easier, but i wouldn't mind being reassured now also, in case anyone has any good related stories :)
can i officially say i'm in the 2ww now? :)
**seeing the little spermies was kind of crazy for many reasons. first, this really is a WEIRD thing, that there are millions of those little guys INSIDE me right now?? not exactly a common experience for me :). but the coolest thing was just that they looked exactly the way you expect them to from seeing them on t.v. from seeing them in the beginning montages of "look who's talking" and "for keeps". that's so weird! in general i don't trust anything i see on t.v. or movies :), and in this case it's even cooler because it's so very, very personal to me. hi you guys!!
Saturday, July 30, 2011
this is from yesterday*
*which i specify to distinguish it from the other ramblings i'm about to post, about today :)
hey y'all, again :) i'm the one that posted last week freaking out about a (possibly) early ovulation when my swimmers hadn't yet made it to my hometown. well that actually happened to me AGAIN a few days later (another positive OPK at what seemed like too early a CDday). i think now that both of those were flukes (or caused by my body stressing out) but not actual ovulation because they weren't accompanied by fertile CM or followed by a rise in temperature.
the upshot being is that my swimmers arrived on wednesday and now we are waiting to use them, which was projected to happen this weekend. and even though all my stress and confusion and worry, my body appears to be coming through brilliantly--today i FINALLY got egg white CM and am so happy :). and when i say "FINALLY" i mean it seems like i was waiting forever, but in actual fact this is about exactly the same day i get egg white every month, so even though my brain is flipping out, my ovaries are not :). i'm so proud of it!, and actually did a happy 'egg-white' dance here in the office bathroom, and walked out with a grin beaming off my face. i should have just trusted my body to begin with!
anyways just wanted to share my contentment. now let's see if this works....
hey y'all, again :) i'm the one that posted last week freaking out about a (possibly) early ovulation when my swimmers hadn't yet made it to my hometown. well that actually happened to me AGAIN a few days later (another positive OPK at what seemed like too early a CDday). i think now that both of those were flukes (or caused by my body stressing out) but not actual ovulation because they weren't accompanied by fertile CM or followed by a rise in temperature.
the upshot being is that my swimmers arrived on wednesday and now we are waiting to use them, which was projected to happen this weekend. and even though all my stress and confusion and worry, my body appears to be coming through brilliantly--today i FINALLY got egg white CM and am so happy :). and when i say "FINALLY" i mean it seems like i was waiting forever, but in actual fact this is about exactly the same day i get egg white every month, so even though my brain is flipping out, my ovaries are not :). i'm so proud of it!, and actually did a happy 'egg-white' dance here in the office bathroom, and walked out with a grin beaming off my face. i should have just trusted my body to begin with!
anyways just wanted to share my contentment. now let's see if this works....
Thursday, July 28, 2011
waiting before waiting.
yeah...pretty much in limbo here. the little guys have arrived at the clinic, which is an exciting thing :), but i'm a bit up in the air about my O day this month. as i mentioned in my last post...i usually O around CD15 or 16. this month i've already had TWO positive OPKs, on CD9 and CD12. neither one was accompanied by egg-white CM or followed by a spike in temperature the next day. so i wonder...is this batch of OPKs defective? i hope not and think probably not....rather, is my body going absolutely crazy because a)it's the first month we're really trying and b)unrelated stresses affecting me? i have a hunch it's both.
we have had a ridiculous amount of unexpected stress this week. well, i guess first of all the crazy and oppressive heat and humidity of the past few weeks doesn't count as stress, but some other TTC-ing ladies have told me it could have an effect. then, starting out what should have been Fun-Anticipating-IUI-week, on monday we had a stressful day because our downstairs neighbor came upstairs at like 8:30 in the morning, pounded on the door, and then yelled at esther and demanded she go remove something from the shared compost container (we had thrown in chicken bones and apparently she doesn't like that). we've moved past that issue now, but only really because the rest of the week got even MORE stressful in comparison. esther started a new job (at the same place where i work on the weekends) and the first day was so dangerous (doing surveys with ex-prisoners in exceedingly sketchy neighborhoods) that we spent a whole day concerned for her safety, and then decided that we would both resign from the project. so stress upon stress upon stress.
i think we're moving through these situations to feel better, but i've still got a few remaining stresses to dwell on: like if this will affect my employment with them at all, and the fact that we were going to use esther's income to TTC. so if she doesn't find another job we won't be able to try again (at least not in the forseeable future). talk about getting all worked up and then not really being able to give it the old college try! this month is our only shot, for now....and so of course it becomes the month in which i have the craziest, most un-predictable cycle.
everyone on the TTC boards said this would happen in try #1...they were SO right :).
we have had a ridiculous amount of unexpected stress this week. well, i guess first of all the crazy and oppressive heat and humidity of the past few weeks doesn't count as stress, but some other TTC-ing ladies have told me it could have an effect. then, starting out what should have been Fun-Anticipating-IUI-week, on monday we had a stressful day because our downstairs neighbor came upstairs at like 8:30 in the morning, pounded on the door, and then yelled at esther and demanded she go remove something from the shared compost container (we had thrown in chicken bones and apparently she doesn't like that). we've moved past that issue now, but only really because the rest of the week got even MORE stressful in comparison. esther started a new job (at the same place where i work on the weekends) and the first day was so dangerous (doing surveys with ex-prisoners in exceedingly sketchy neighborhoods) that we spent a whole day concerned for her safety, and then decided that we would both resign from the project. so stress upon stress upon stress.
i think we're moving through these situations to feel better, but i've still got a few remaining stresses to dwell on: like if this will affect my employment with them at all, and the fact that we were going to use esther's income to TTC. so if she doesn't find another job we won't be able to try again (at least not in the forseeable future). talk about getting all worked up and then not really being able to give it the old college try! this month is our only shot, for now....and so of course it becomes the month in which i have the craziest, most un-predictable cycle.
everyone on the TTC boards said this would happen in try #1...they were SO right :).
Saturday, July 23, 2011
um. what???
this month i was so excited because i placed my very first order ever for swimmers...to arrive around CD13, as my clinic recommended, because i always O around CD16 (and never earlier than CD15). what this means in practical terms is that the little guys haven't even LEFT spokane yet on their journey to me in chicago, and aren't supposed to even arrive until weds. which means of course, today, saturday, i get a positive OPK. (they're smileys, so it's not even possible that i'm interpreting it wrong).
ok. so how is this possible? we're on CD NINE here! like i said, i have never O'd before CD15 and it usually happens CD16 or 17. so what's the deal?
this happened once before, many moons ago, i think the first month i was starting to learn how to chart. at the time i had no idea about my cycle, so when i got a positive at CD11, i figured that was it and stopped testing. but then, like a week later (maybe CD16 or 17?) i suddenly had VERY fertile CM, so when i got home from work that day i tested again and boom, another positive.
somebody tell me this is normal, and that it's possible to have 2 LH surges in a month (or malfunctioning OPKs??)...and while you're at it, tell me that i still have a chance to IUI this month???
ok. so how is this possible? we're on CD NINE here! like i said, i have never O'd before CD15 and it usually happens CD16 or 17. so what's the deal?
this happened once before, many moons ago, i think the first month i was starting to learn how to chart. at the time i had no idea about my cycle, so when i got a positive at CD11, i figured that was it and stopped testing. but then, like a week later (maybe CD16 or 17?) i suddenly had VERY fertile CM, so when i got home from work that day i tested again and boom, another positive.
somebody tell me this is normal, and that it's possible to have 2 LH surges in a month (or malfunctioning OPKs??)...and while you're at it, tell me that i still have a chance to IUI this month???
Friday, July 15, 2011
here we go!!!
crazyness!
today i am running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to order sperm. yes, that’s right people, we're taking that final step over and actually starting TTC!!! last time i wrote the big news was that we had our appt for our consult at the CWHC. we went wednesday night, totally loved the groove of the place (hippy feminists....yum...), and got the OK to go ahead at my next ovulation. there were some things i wasn’t excited about–number one, they charge a $100 fee if you "take a month off" so my plan for doing it every other month suddenly was going to cost us. and secondly, they had this rule in place when they started out that since both the inseminating community (is that a phrase??) in chicago and the donor pool from midwest sperm bank (the one most of their clients use) is so small, they did not allow more than one pregnancy from any particular donor. they don’t have this rule anymore since both groups of people have grown exponentially and geographically, but it’s still in place for the people who conceived during that time–and one of them used my argentine :( (apparently he DID come back!).
so these were slightly annoying issues, but i think we’ve gotten past both of them. i ran the numbers last night and discovered we can afford to do three months in a row if we take a couple months off after that to recover, save for taxes, etc., so we won’t need to skip every other month. this is a good thing so as to not throw away $100 on the "not-this-time" fee, but also coincides with their general practice to change things up (i.e. rethink things, pick another donor, whatever) if no pregnancy after 3 tries. so we’re going to go july, august, september, and then stop for the rest of the year (and october, november and december ought to be enough of a break to save up for taxes AND to pay for the new mac computer we got a couple of weeks ago :), plus there is no fee if you take off 3 months or more. actually we were going to go august, skip september (because I was going to be o’ing RIGHT during our labor day trip to pittsburgh), then try again october and november, but...just this morning i got my period! about 3 days early!! so that means everything moves up a bit and it’s completely likely that i’ll O in late august before we leave for labor day weekend. whoo!
and regarding donors. we love Mr. 290 over at northwest, but we really didn’t love anyone else quite as much (and of course, he’s limited supply...why am I not surprised!!!). But, emily (the health worker we consulted with at CWHC) said we really should have at least 3 choices, and of course she’s right. i was really resistent to this mostly based on racial and ethnic characteristics–i don’t have any desire to bring another lilly white baby into the world, and that seems like all there is in the Donor Universe. no offense, i love many white babies (jack and charlotte, holla!) and i’m sure that i’m going to be passionately in love with whatever baby comes out of me, but that’s just my gut feeling right now. i want to have a baby who maybe sort of could look related to esther too, and while she isn’t particularly dark-skinned, she is certainly more so than i am.
so to this end, we were looking for south american donors, or in the absense of that, native american (the country where esther is from in south america is completely and totally mixed as to european background with the indigenous peoples from the area, so she feels a great connection to native american ethnicities as well). in all the banks we looked at (and i looked at ALL of them out of morbid curiosity, even though i knew the only ones we could afford were midwest or northwest) we found only ONE south american--the argentine i can’t use :(-- and one fully native american person (Mr. 290!!). northwest has other donors who are PARTIALLY native american, but they’re also partially irish, dutch, german, polish and croatian, and have blond hair and blue eyes. no gracias! (man, i am going to regret this post if i have a blond kid and they read this someday. honey, i totally love you the way you are! mommies just have weird thought patterns sometimes :)).
so anyway, that’s why we’re fixated on 290. but since we have to have at least 3 in our list, we were going to go through nw’s list again and try to squeeze someone out of it. i think we were planning on doing that this weekend...so of course my period comes today! and as we were instructed to call and place our order on CD1, we need to have our donors picked out NOW. so this morning while i ate breakfast and got dressed, esther scoured the webpage again. we FINALLY found someone listed as "hispanic", which is less than ideal because that is awfully vague, but he at least is darker-skinned and had black hair, so he went on the list. but then we were at an impasse. it seemed like literally every other single donor on there was either german or norwegian! as i rushed around so as to not miss my bus, we fretted and stewed... i remembered one other one i had seen, who had some native american (along with like, german, polish, estonian, irish, who knows what else) but also had medium complexion and dark hair, so maybe him....until esther looked at his details and saw that he has allergies to pollen, grass, etc. i mean, obviously that is not the end of the world and totally possibly would not even get passed down to the bubbala, but it has the potential to be awfully annoying for the entire life-span of this new little person. so maybe not. and finally as i was about to leave, esther called out "here’s one that’s german, polish and korean" and i honestly thought she was joking. we’d already decided to try and avoid german, and i think i just assumed asian backgrounds were not being considered because of the starkly obvious way the baby would not look like either one of us, but she was serious! i came over to the bed to see her face as she confirmed this. Mr. 599 had medium complexion and dark hair, which would be more like her (and green eyes, which is like neither of us but still awesome :), studied music history in school (again, not like us, but cool :), and if you consider the korean to be only a third of his background (whatever that means) and mix it with me, in the end he’ll just maybe look ‘slightly exotic’ (my words :) which is absolutely totally fine. and then on the way to work i read his answers to the essays questions and actually liked them A LOT. those things are more often than not disappointing–either the person can’t spell worth crap, or they say things that just kind of make you cringe inwardly ("your baby will be beautiful because my genes are awesome") (come to think of it, i think the argentine actually said that!). but this one, while, yes, pointing out the good things about himself, was also well-written, thoughtful, and reminded me a bit of my writing style. so now i actually really like him a lot :)
this morning i’ve been super nervous about these phone calls i had to sneak to make while my boss drifts around the office (to CWHC to let them know AF is here and see if we’re good to go, to NW to give them credit card info, etc). i talked to CWHC and all is ok (yay!!!); cheryl told me that with NW i actually have to place the order myself but can have it sent to their office, and that i should have it sent to them by CD13 (which is july 27). but then when i called NW they said everything looked fine, but they needed to send me a final confirmation email that will explain how to order and he would send it right over...and of course it’s 2 hours later now and nothing! i’m so nervous....i told him what date i needed it by and he said that was absolutely no problem, so if for some reason i can’t order until tomorrow (or monday?) there likely would be no problem. but i want to do it now! i want to be able to text esther (as she sits at home working on the final draft of a 20-page paper due today :) and say "i just bought spermies!!!!" or something along those lines. checking my email again....nothing! i think i'm going to give them another call.
*****
score! i called them and they shot the email over right away. so now i'm good to go, i started to place the order...and my first question is, how many vials are there exactly of 290? turns out there are FOUR. FOUR!!! not even enough to try for 3 months, much less to save some for a future sibling. i knew he was limited supply, but i was hoping he'd be like 8 or 10. four is almost non-existent. and speaking of limited supply, i either forgot or didn't notice this on their princing info*, but when they are limited supply, they are more expensive! i can't remember if there is a reason behind that, but the bottom line is that he costs $350 per vial rather than $275 (well, $249, but all their prices go up to $275 on august 1). so is he worth it? i think so, it's only $150 per month to get our absolute first choice...but here's hoping his little guys can do it in the next two months. and where are all the native american donors, people?? step up!
anyway i sent an email to esther with these details to see what she thinks before i call them back to finalize the order....just got her reply, she agrees with me! so here we go, at least the first try will be with Mr. 290, keeping my fingers crossed that no one else will buy him before the end of august just in case i need him again....
JUST ORDERED MY FIRST IUI EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! now nothing at all is going to happen until i O in about 2 weeks.....que locura!!!!!
*by the way, i can't check the NW website while i'm here at work because-get read for this-it's BLOCKED by some program they have installed on the computers because it's "Forbidden Topic-Sex Education." that is maybe the weirdest thing i ever heard. never mind that i can look at the websites of lots of other sperm banks. never mind that i also can't see xkcd because it's "Forbidden Topic-Adult/Mature Themes" (what???). weird bosses, weird job, weird internet :)
today i am running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to order sperm. yes, that’s right people, we're taking that final step over and actually starting TTC!!! last time i wrote the big news was that we had our appt for our consult at the CWHC. we went wednesday night, totally loved the groove of the place (hippy feminists....yum...), and got the OK to go ahead at my next ovulation. there were some things i wasn’t excited about–number one, they charge a $100 fee if you "take a month off" so my plan for doing it every other month suddenly was going to cost us. and secondly, they had this rule in place when they started out that since both the inseminating community (is that a phrase??) in chicago and the donor pool from midwest sperm bank (the one most of their clients use) is so small, they did not allow more than one pregnancy from any particular donor. they don’t have this rule anymore since both groups of people have grown exponentially and geographically, but it’s still in place for the people who conceived during that time–and one of them used my argentine :( (apparently he DID come back!).
so these were slightly annoying issues, but i think we’ve gotten past both of them. i ran the numbers last night and discovered we can afford to do three months in a row if we take a couple months off after that to recover, save for taxes, etc., so we won’t need to skip every other month. this is a good thing so as to not throw away $100 on the "not-this-time" fee, but also coincides with their general practice to change things up (i.e. rethink things, pick another donor, whatever) if no pregnancy after 3 tries. so we’re going to go july, august, september, and then stop for the rest of the year (and october, november and december ought to be enough of a break to save up for taxes AND to pay for the new mac computer we got a couple of weeks ago :), plus there is no fee if you take off 3 months or more. actually we were going to go august, skip september (because I was going to be o’ing RIGHT during our labor day trip to pittsburgh), then try again october and november, but...just this morning i got my period! about 3 days early!! so that means everything moves up a bit and it’s completely likely that i’ll O in late august before we leave for labor day weekend. whoo!
and regarding donors. we love Mr. 290 over at northwest, but we really didn’t love anyone else quite as much (and of course, he’s limited supply...why am I not surprised!!!). But, emily (the health worker we consulted with at CWHC) said we really should have at least 3 choices, and of course she’s right. i was really resistent to this mostly based on racial and ethnic characteristics–i don’t have any desire to bring another lilly white baby into the world, and that seems like all there is in the Donor Universe. no offense, i love many white babies (jack and charlotte, holla!) and i’m sure that i’m going to be passionately in love with whatever baby comes out of me, but that’s just my gut feeling right now. i want to have a baby who maybe sort of could look related to esther too, and while she isn’t particularly dark-skinned, she is certainly more so than i am.
so to this end, we were looking for south american donors, or in the absense of that, native american (the country where esther is from in south america is completely and totally mixed as to european background with the indigenous peoples from the area, so she feels a great connection to native american ethnicities as well). in all the banks we looked at (and i looked at ALL of them out of morbid curiosity, even though i knew the only ones we could afford were midwest or northwest) we found only ONE south american--the argentine i can’t use :(-- and one fully native american person (Mr. 290!!). northwest has other donors who are PARTIALLY native american, but they’re also partially irish, dutch, german, polish and croatian, and have blond hair and blue eyes. no gracias! (man, i am going to regret this post if i have a blond kid and they read this someday. honey, i totally love you the way you are! mommies just have weird thought patterns sometimes :)).
so anyway, that’s why we’re fixated on 290. but since we have to have at least 3 in our list, we were going to go through nw’s list again and try to squeeze someone out of it. i think we were planning on doing that this weekend...so of course my period comes today! and as we were instructed to call and place our order on CD1, we need to have our donors picked out NOW. so this morning while i ate breakfast and got dressed, esther scoured the webpage again. we FINALLY found someone listed as "hispanic", which is less than ideal because that is awfully vague, but he at least is darker-skinned and had black hair, so he went on the list. but then we were at an impasse. it seemed like literally every other single donor on there was either german or norwegian! as i rushed around so as to not miss my bus, we fretted and stewed... i remembered one other one i had seen, who had some native american (along with like, german, polish, estonian, irish, who knows what else) but also had medium complexion and dark hair, so maybe him....until esther looked at his details and saw that he has allergies to pollen, grass, etc. i mean, obviously that is not the end of the world and totally possibly would not even get passed down to the bubbala, but it has the potential to be awfully annoying for the entire life-span of this new little person. so maybe not. and finally as i was about to leave, esther called out "here’s one that’s german, polish and korean" and i honestly thought she was joking. we’d already decided to try and avoid german, and i think i just assumed asian backgrounds were not being considered because of the starkly obvious way the baby would not look like either one of us, but she was serious! i came over to the bed to see her face as she confirmed this. Mr. 599 had medium complexion and dark hair, which would be more like her (and green eyes, which is like neither of us but still awesome :), studied music history in school (again, not like us, but cool :), and if you consider the korean to be only a third of his background (whatever that means) and mix it with me, in the end he’ll just maybe look ‘slightly exotic’ (my words :) which is absolutely totally fine. and then on the way to work i read his answers to the essays questions and actually liked them A LOT. those things are more often than not disappointing–either the person can’t spell worth crap, or they say things that just kind of make you cringe inwardly ("your baby will be beautiful because my genes are awesome") (come to think of it, i think the argentine actually said that!). but this one, while, yes, pointing out the good things about himself, was also well-written, thoughtful, and reminded me a bit of my writing style. so now i actually really like him a lot :)
this morning i’ve been super nervous about these phone calls i had to sneak to make while my boss drifts around the office (to CWHC to let them know AF is here and see if we’re good to go, to NW to give them credit card info, etc). i talked to CWHC and all is ok (yay!!!); cheryl told me that with NW i actually have to place the order myself but can have it sent to their office, and that i should have it sent to them by CD13 (which is july 27). but then when i called NW they said everything looked fine, but they needed to send me a final confirmation email that will explain how to order and he would send it right over...and of course it’s 2 hours later now and nothing! i’m so nervous....i told him what date i needed it by and he said that was absolutely no problem, so if for some reason i can’t order until tomorrow (or monday?) there likely would be no problem. but i want to do it now! i want to be able to text esther (as she sits at home working on the final draft of a 20-page paper due today :) and say "i just bought spermies!!!!" or something along those lines. checking my email again....nothing! i think i'm going to give them another call.
*****
score! i called them and they shot the email over right away. so now i'm good to go, i started to place the order...and my first question is, how many vials are there exactly of 290? turns out there are FOUR. FOUR!!! not even enough to try for 3 months, much less to save some for a future sibling. i knew he was limited supply, but i was hoping he'd be like 8 or 10. four is almost non-existent. and speaking of limited supply, i either forgot or didn't notice this on their princing info*, but when they are limited supply, they are more expensive! i can't remember if there is a reason behind that, but the bottom line is that he costs $350 per vial rather than $275 (well, $249, but all their prices go up to $275 on august 1). so is he worth it? i think so, it's only $150 per month to get our absolute first choice...but here's hoping his little guys can do it in the next two months. and where are all the native american donors, people?? step up!
anyway i sent an email to esther with these details to see what she thinks before i call them back to finalize the order....just got her reply, she agrees with me! so here we go, at least the first try will be with Mr. 290, keeping my fingers crossed that no one else will buy him before the end of august just in case i need him again....
JUST ORDERED MY FIRST IUI EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! now nothing at all is going to happen until i O in about 2 weeks.....que locura!!!!!
*by the way, i can't check the NW website while i'm here at work because-get read for this-it's BLOCKED by some program they have installed on the computers because it's "Forbidden Topic-Sex Education." that is maybe the weirdest thing i ever heard. never mind that i can look at the websites of lots of other sperm banks. never mind that i also can't see xkcd because it's "Forbidden Topic-Adult/Mature Themes" (what???). weird bosses, weird job, weird internet :)
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