impressively complicated.

wow...has this cycle ever thrown me for a loop!

the only main issue for the last several weeks has been money; do we have enough to buy swimmies this month?/looks like we do, order!/ups, some unexpected expenses come out so we didn't really, but now it's too late so that's what credit cards are for/(repeat this same experience of random expenses appearing about 3 or 4 more times over the course of one day)/juggle the numbers and dates around enough to make it actually totally financially fine for this month--this just as of this morning, and how impressed am i!!

but in the midst of this, my +OPKs are eluding me. and this taking into account that i've been testing like 4 times a day (which also implies holding it in for many hours a day and night! yeesh :) for several days now. it's starting to feel so late that i started assuming that the financial stress was delaying ovulation...which was my theory until i started feeling that financial stress (or any other undetected cause) has completely CANCELLED ovulation and that we just won't have a go at it this month. there's still a part of me that doesn't think this and says "of COURSE it'll come! just wait!" but we are already halfway into CD18 (read: 2 of today's 4 POASs come and gone!) and i'm not buying it so much anymore. and of course we're going out of town friday night for labor day so there is no "wait forever" option--it's either happening in the next two days or it's not happening this month.

which brings me to the OTHER fun (slash horribly stressful) thing that happened this month. last night i got an automated email from UPS saying that the dewar had been picked up and was on its way back to spokane. and i'm like, (and here i quote): WHAT. it was like 9 at night and way too late to call my health clinic and i was SO confused and worried that since they never heard from me (that would be me not calling them because i still hadn't gotten my surge) they decided i didn't really care or had skipped town or what have you, and just sent it back! i left a message for them last night (which in my opinion sounded totally normal considering the height of confusion that i was actually at) and they called me back today to say, essentially, 'no, silly.' they told me that as soon as they get the shipment (i.e. last thursday morning) they transfer the vials to their own deep freeze and this is just them sending the dewar back as normally scheduled, but they still have my guys. and can keep them there til next month if there is no O in august. so there.

so there, really! no loss of swimmers. all money issues basically resolved. a fun trip this weekend to pittsburgh. and if it doesn't happen in the next two days and we have to wait to inseminate until next round, the gift (??) of being able to obsess about TTC for one extra month this year :). (cause this is definitely the last try this year).

but talk about your montañas rusas!!!!!!!!!!! ('roller coaster' in spanish.....cliched term but more true than i can possibly explain.)

really? not yet?

Today is CD 17 and so far...nothing. I mean, it’s not a HUGE deal, because I’ve had ovulation in previous months as late as CD 19 (although that seemed like a fluke, but still), as well as CD 15, 16, and 17. So clearly I’m not overly predictable. But this is still annoying. The tank with my swimmies arrived last Thursday so if I don’t get my smiley by tomorrow morning, I’m going to call CWHC and ask their advice about what to do. Keeping the tank and paying a late fee (I think $15 per day?) is NOT a big deal at all and totally worth it, but the question is, how many days longer will the deep freeze hold? And also, what if I don’t O at ALL this cycle–how do they deal with that? (Like, does the clinic have a way of keeping it there for one month til next cycle? Or do they not have their own freezing method, but we could refill the tank and keep that? Or do we send it back and pay for shipping again next month for the same exact vials? Yecchh.). Also, let’s say I DO ovulate this cycle, but for kicks it happens on CD 20 (which isn’t completely out of the realm of possibility since it’s happened before on CD19. Well guess what. Starting CD20 we’re going out of town for the long labor day weekend....great! In that case I would also want to contemplate insemming anyway , maybe as late as possible before we leave town, just to give it a shot, because you never know. BUT maybe that's a horrible idea and a total waste of swimmies if this is an anovulatory cycle. so...these are the things I’ll ask them tomorrow and see what their sage advice is. I guess I could also call NW and ask them.

I’m pretty convinced that my Oing is delayed this month because of stress over finances. Awesome. How much does it suck that this process is one that needs you to be essentially worry-free for all internal processes to go normally, yet it organically creates its own worries (money, health, conception, you name it). You’re hilarious, universe!!!

:P

just posted over at lj's 2mommies' monday update.

i'm waiting (very impatiently i might add) to ovulate so i can use my swimmers that already arrived at my clinic LAST THURSDAY! sheesh. of course i feel like it's taking forever when it's only about one half day later than my average +OPK (and i've had some much later in the cycle too, so i need to get over it).

in the meantime i'm pouring (poring? poreing?) over my fertility friend charts to try and figure out if i should insem earlier than last time (14 and 37 hours past +OPK). that schedule was based on what my health worker suggested but since that second one was done on the day my temp shot up, i'd rather get both in before that if at all possible...

always something to obsess about :)

swimmers.

according to UPS, my little guys just got to the clinic! i’m taking it as a good sign that it got there so early (supposedly by 10:36 this morning) when last time it took ALL DAY to get there on the projected day of delivery. i’m still not probably going to need them for several more days so it doesn’t matter a great deal; it’s just nice to have them just in case. feels like the next step, like the process is still going, you know? also dp, when she was packing early this morning to go on her orientation retreat for her seminary, found some extra OPKs in her toiletries bag so i’m good to go to start testing a couple times a day (i have another box waiting for me to pick it up at the post office, but no time to go get it yet....).

it’s interesting ruminating on my feelings this time. first of all, it’s strange that it could change SO much for one month to the next, but it really did. i’m not obsessively, excitedly checking UPS every 4 seconds or passionately examining my OPK lines with eagerness and devotion. i know some people, after TTC for years and it being an incredibly difficult experience, say they’re not going to get excited–so why did i get here to that same place (of non-excitement) so quickly, after just ONE bfn cycle? maybe it’s because i know this is our last go for a while (for economic reasons). at first this was very depressing to me, that if this doesn’t work we can’t try again for at least a year (which frankly is a LONG time when we were so ready....). now i think i really feel ok about it, just because...you kinda have to. like, there isn’t any other way i can twist the numbers to make it work for another month...i just can’t. so there. and maybe my emotions got the hint and decided it wasn’t worth it to be stressed out and despondent and angsty about it since it wasn’t going to accomplish anything doing so. i guess that’s a good thing! i don’t particularly mind not being jittery and ridiculously excited like i was this time last month, and i LOVE not being depressed and in the depths of disappointment. so i’ll take it, I guess :)

one other TTC note–we did attend our first alternative insemination support group earlier this week at chicago women’s health clinic (where we’re doing our IUIs). there were 2 couples, a SMBC, and the group leader, and i actually really liked it (i apparently like all things granola, hippy and feministy–who knew? :) dp won’t be able to attend further meetings because it meets one tuesday a month and she has a night class tuesdays (intro to pastoral care, i believe :)) but i’ll probably keep going and thoroughly enjoying myself. i love communities, whatever size, shape or color.

p.s. i just did the math (not because i’m that obsessed, but rather because i’m SO BORED at work) and it looks like we’d have everything else paid off and some extra cash ready to start again in around may of next year. so not an ENTIRE year of waiting, just nine months or so. oh! nine months! how ironic :)

TTC #2, CD3.

I feel like I should update before I forget all my feelings about this cycle...

Probably obvious by now that we did NOT get pregnant this month. It was QUITE the whirlwind of emotions, thank you very much, and I am actually feeling much better now, but this weekend was hell on wheels.

I was planning to test on Friday morning, but as a good little trooper, I was still taking my temperature every day before getting up. Meaning that I took it Thursday night/Friday morning at about 3 am, because that’s what time I woke up to pee. Meaning that starting at 3 a.m., when I realized I wasn’t pregnant thanks to the colossal dip in temp, I was lying in bed quietly weeping. Esther woke up about 5 and I told her and we hugged, and I really did know it was all going to be alright (you just a mourning period, you know?). But I still couldn’t fall back asleep until about 7 am, which meant a nice half hour nap before getting up for work. Which is why esther convinced me to stay home from work Friday :)

it ended up being a fine day–we went out to our favorite restaurant for dinner (what up, amish country!!) and spent some time being peaceful at a park after dusk in elkhart. I much enjoyed it. But then on Saturday things went completely down the tubes again after I got an email from one of my bosses (I have various jobs) that made me feel completely deflated. Also, it guaranteed a cut in my hours at work, which also caused severe emotional distress as it made it seemingly impossible to try again this month. And we’ve only tried once! How can I get all geared up and chart for months and make plans and place orders and join forums and then only try ONCE??

The upshot (3 days later) is that things are settling down at work to a place where it looks like I’ll get my hours back (though I’m not sure if I want them yet, after the disagreeableness of the incident), esther’s spanish business is really taking off, and we know there are other options out there. Plus I ran the numbers assuming my hours would be cut and we can still afford to do this one more time :)

after that we really should stop or else I’m not going to have any time to save up for paying my taxes come the end of the year. Sad but true. I also think I won’t be quite as shattered this time if we get another BFN because a)it won’t be the first time and 2)it’s not the Absolute Last Vial of our favorite donor. Which last month’s was. But, as I said...I think we’re getting over it. Feeling better. WANTING to press ahead and NOT GIVE UP!!!

Because this really is something I want with my whole heart.

p.s. northwest is taking a few days to photo match esther to donors and i can't wait to see what they come up with!! either way i'm still leaning towards 599 because i truly love his essay :), but we shall see...

today.

12 dpi...
all my ‘symptoms’ that I was already questioning have completely disappeared (felt them from 3dpi through about 7 dpi, they were definitely there, but wasn’t sure if they were relevant at all)...
af could show up any day now (technically the earliest she’s ever shown up is CD29, which would be tomorrow, but I’m already on my guard)...
tested way earlier this week just because it was our anniversary and it was negative, though it would have been fairly early to get a positive, and I haven’t tested again yet....
and I’m actually getting to that place where I’m like, “just show up already!”

I read other ladies saying that on the boards over the past week and I didn’t believe it; I thought to myself, ‘you’re just saying that so you won’t keep having false hopes after a couple of BFNs, because while it is still POSSIBLE, time is ticking away and since it’s more likely that af will come, want it to just happen already.’ But now I’m starting to get it....you’re almost (ALmost) over the mourning period for this month already. That seems weird, because you don’t even know for sure that it didn’t work, but since you (slash I :) have been obsessing about it ALL DAY LONG for at least 12 days now (if not more), you’ve run through the gamut of emotions and truly feel like you’re ready to accept this month’s result and get to trying for next time. Plus you really do wish that if it’s not going to happen, that you can confirm that, because it’s this flimsy hope that really kills ya....

My plan is to test again Sunday morning (15dpi) if af doesn’t show up before then, and one last time weds morning if af doesn’t show up before then. The window of opportunity for af to normally show up in would be between tomorrow (Friday) and Tuesday. That’s a freaking annoyingly large window. But I kind of feel like I have some af symptoms already....drat. I guess the first sign I would (normally) see is a temp drop at one to two days before af....so that’s even more cheery–I’ll know it didn’t work at 5 in the morning while staring bleary-eyed at a thermometer with the light from my cell phone while dp sleeps beside me. I already know I won’t wake her up to tell her.

I got a box of FRERs Friday night when we were at the grocery store...just because. They say on the front that they can detect BFPs at six days before you were to get your period. That’s impressive, but not useful to me for 2 reasons: one, I have no idea when my period is going to come (I mean, I have SOME idea, but it’s not a small enough window to be useful for this–could be anytime between Friday 8/12 and Tuesday 8/16) and two: the more detailed directions inside the box specify that the test worked 6 days before their period for ...68% of women. It then goes on to say that it worked for 100% of pregnant women by FOUR days before. So waiting those extra 2 days seems a much safer bet.

I was SO tempted to use it today just because it is our anniversary (5 years since the religious ceremony in buenos aires :) and that would basically be the coolest anniversary present ever! And it is 9DPO, so theoretically, it is POSSIBLE to get a BFP at this stage. But, it’s also way more likely to get it at 11 or 13 or even 15DPO, so even without killing all hope, it’s likely that I would get a BFN today. And if I got one I wouldn’t especially feel like telling esther ("wake up, I have to tell you I’m not pregnant yet as far as we know!") and then when the actual day rolls around that we decide together to test, she’ll wonder why there is one test missing from the box.
So that’s my convoluted reasoning as to why I didn’t test today. SORELY tempted, though :)

6dpiui

well, in my last post i said i had no symptoms. like right now, 3 days later, i still have no 'real' symptoms, but as time goes on and this is all i can obsess about :), i start to wonder if some things might count...

i've had a SLIGHT bloated feeling, kind of like feeling "full" in the uterine/ovarial region (i just made up the phrase, i'm pretty sure :) for a few days now. they aren't cramps, it isn't nausea, it isn't even really pains. it just feels kindof like you're full after thanksgiving, but all the time (not just after i eat).

also (TMI) i've been burping more than usual. gross, right? however, the other logical explanation for this is that we've essentially gone off the diet since IUI, meaning i'm eating way more carbs than normal. this could totally be the cause of extra burps :)

another weird thing--i've been having (except for one single day) essentially the same exact BBT ever day since IUI. i have no idea what this means; likely nothing. i googled it a little bit and didn't really find anything. it just stood out to me because my temps are ALWAYS up and down noticeably, and having 97.08, 97.05, 97.06, 97.06 is really odd for me. so something is different, whether it's a sticky bean or not that's causing it is the question.

and final dubitable symptom for today's list: today esther was downtown and we met up for lunch. when we walked past daley plaza, there was a group of ecuadorian dancers performing and we stopped a while to watch. when they were done, they sent up a little group of tiny children to try the same dance...there were about 10 of them, all like 3 feet tall and under :), dressed in traditional outfits and wandering around the stage semi-rhythmically:), and for some reason...both esther and i started crying! weirdest thing. i admit i'm an easy crier, but even this was unusual for me. and clearly esther isn't pregnant, but borrowing a page from the Book of Really Grasping at Straws, if i was pregnant maybe my hormones could be affecting her too? the thing is, she's REALLY not a crier. and we weren't even standing together (she had gone closer to get pictures) so it's not like we saw each other crying and influenced each other.

so anyway. i'm pretty sure none of these really count as symptoms still :), but i wanted to jot them down for posterity's sake just in case.

p.s. have i mentioned i want this sticky bean already?!?!?!

Everyone ALWAYS says to not read the TTC forums while you’re in the 2ww. I’m sure they’re right, it totally makes sense that it would only make me crazier to read about possible symptoms, people getting BFPs, people having m/cs at 14 weeks, etc...but of course that’s all I’m doing all day long! I’m obsessed! It’s just that, when this is all I want to think about, I love reading about other people doing the same.

I’ve also been doing some perusing, though less, of sperm bank websites in case we need to try again next month*, to pick the next donor. When I ordered last month for this, our first try ever, I knew our preferred donor had an extremely limited supply...but I didn’t bank on him being completely gone within 2.5 weeks of my first order! And he’s not on nw’s site anymore. I’m toying with the idea of emailing them just to confirm he’s really gone, but how batty will they think I am? I just honestly didn’t think anyone else was interested in him since I’ve been prowling donor catalogs for many moons now and saw him on there, listed as “limited supply” every single time. Y bueno....

So my first desire is to go with someone else who has a similar ethnic background to him, but I haven’t had much luck with that. The only other ones I’ve found have been 1)on other banks, meaning they’re crazy more expensive, and 2)not completely of that ethnicity–like, only 1/3 or 1/4 or something. (Yes, really 1/3. I don’t know how that works exactly, but maybe it’s a least common denominator or something...). One I saw today was even “1/64" of the ethnicity we’re looking for. Seriously? What IS that, even? Why even bother putting that? (Seriously–what is 1/64? It’s six generations back, if I’m doing my math correctly, right? So dude’s great-great-great-great-grandmother or -father was of this race. We’re talking someone who was born in approximately 18-oh-something. Literally over two centuries ago. Wow....yeah, not impressed.)

(As I was just trying to figure that out I did the calculations using estimates based on birth years for my mom and grammaw [my grammaw’s birth year I only ever remember because she was born in the year of the titanic disaster :)] and realized my grammaw was 37 years old when she had my mom. In 1949! I could be wrong, but I’m thinking that was a quite advanced age for that time period. It’s getting up there even now. Heck, I’m 32 and already staring straight into the face of statistics like “after 30, your chance of getting pregnant with normal hetero BD goes down to 10-15%” or something horrible like that. So anyway, my point is that I will now take this as a good sign–apparently the women of my family are fertile. Now, I have no idea what other reproductive endeavors my grammaw attempted (mom is an only child), and I know my own mom had at least a couple m/cs. But I’m going to not dwell on those things, and instead will just visualize grammaw esther’s 37-year-old ovum barging out of her ovary one cold pittsburgh day in late November, 1948, with a baby on its mind and its arms wide open for the swimmers. So to speak. Actually, it was likely around thanksgiving (mom’s b-day is 8/27) so maybe it also had cranberry sauce on its mind. But I digress.)

*regarding thinking ahead to next month. I’m not doing it out of negativity about this month, I swear! It’s actually a positive thing for me, because this month didn’t go exactly as planned (when does it ever?) and to avoid feeling stressed out because this is our ONLY CHANCE EVAR, I like to think about next month just to remind myself that we’re still in the game. Also because of a recent financial shakeup, I actually did think this past cycle was going to be the only shot, but I ran the numbers again yesterday and it turns out we can try once more this year. So there, capitalism! :P

and in regards to this month’s feelings...I mean heck, I’m only at 3dpi! Literally anything could happen still. Well, not really...that is one of the main frustrations, I guess, the fact that ‘anything’ already DID happen, or failed to happen, and that’s it. It’s not like I can send any positive vibes or eat something fertile-y or follow some other piece of TTC advice at this point and it would make any difference....this past weekend was D-day and the attack on the beach is long over with, the allied forces come and gone (let’s see if I can let go of the military metaphor already, geez!)...I just won’t know who WON for another 10 days or so! That’s the annoying part. Clearly this is not an original thought; I’m sure gajillions of women have had this same frustration that we can’t find out if the deed is done or not until two weeks afterwards...I guess it’s kind of like how the star betelgeuse is 643 light years away (give or take 146 light years), so if it were to blow up, we wouldn’t know until 643 years later. Meaning, it could have ALREADY blown up, in 1492 or 1776 or yesterday, and we just don’t know about it yet, or it could happen tomorrow and earth wouldn’t find out until someone who is 1/67,108,864th me was staring up into the night sky. Same basic principle here. Whatever happened at my not-quite IUIs...happened. Y ya esta. I just am waiting for my pony express telegram to get here to fill me in.

So in the meantime, I’m interestingly going back and forth. I’m not crazy excited or completely depressed (yet...check with me at 11dpi!), so I wouldn’t say I’m awash in emotions yet, but I’ve been fairly regularly going back and forth between expecting positive and negative outcomes. Like, half the time I think about it and I’m like, this could really happen! There is absolutely every chance in the universe that it did! And then the other half of the time I’m thinking it’s totally normal for it not to work, there’s not a huge chance of it, I would be quite flabbergasted if it works. And with each extreme my thoughts swing to, I totally believe it. I am completely convinced that I’m not pregnant. And then I’m completely convinced that I totally could be.

It’s not even worth saying that I don’t have any symptoms at 3dpi. But in case you were wondering, I don’t. Also, some women get preggers without ever having any. See what I mean? Back and forth.....