36 weeks!

yet again i've let several months go by without updating. and yet again there is big news to report! we have had a long and healthy pregnancy* and the baby is due in less than a month! i didn't mention in my last post (the one where i shared the fact that we got pregnant!!) that it was due to IVF. working with UIC fertility docs, we tried 3 medicated cycles with ol' donor 7836, our first choice, but they didn't work and he ran out. when we were finally approved for IVF months later, we chose a new donor and had success with our first try on both (the donor and IVF). such an amazing time!!! we had some bleeding so stayed with the fertility team for a few months but then moved to swedish covenant midwives by thanksgiving. pregnancy was NOT difficult at all until only recently. i never had morning sickness (SO crazy!) or really any other symptoms, except headaches that mostly went away when i stopped taking the progesterone shots around 13 weeks. in the last month or so my main symptom has been ridiculously swollen feet and hands. this honestly doesn't affect me THAT much other than looking just ridiculous (and once making me cry when i looked down at them!) so yet again, i don't want to complain. the rest of our lives have moved forward swimmingly. i left work in january to start my internship(s) for my final semester of school. i finished classes this past week and only have one paper left to write, which i'm pretty confident i can do before giving birth! then i'll actually be done with grad school before having a baby! this timing worked out so bizarrely and wonderfully. then we have enough savings to stay in this apartment and this city for about 4 or 5 more months, staring at our baby in awe. in the meantime both DW and i are looking for work here or elsewhere, but it's nice to be able to throw our net wide and actually look for work that will make us happy. our second shower was this past weekend and it was a total love fest. the baby is so set, we felt so supported and celebrated, and people came all the way from miami and dc! now we just have to see how to a) get this baby out of me and b) raise a child. no biggie, right? *i do want to memorialize here that we started with implanting 2 embryos. our beta numbers were pretty high and it was suspected that we had implanted two, but we only saw one sac on the ultrasounds at first. at around 6 weeks or so i started bleeding, and at the frequent ultrasounds to follow that issue, we saw the second sac, though it was shaped differently and not as big. it eventually disappeared about a month later. so we had two little ones for over two months in there. we're so thankful that they both graced us with their presence and will never forget that second perfect 8-cell blast. love you.

and completely without warning.....

BFP at first beta on 9/26/14!! beta-272, progesterone-159. next beta test will be next tuesday, crossing my fingers for doubling, tripling, whatever!!! (at some point i will fill in all the details between the last blog post and this one :) just had to get the numbers down for posterity!!

almost two full cycles around the sun later....

whoah--have i seriously forgotten about this blog, or what? well, not entirely forgotten, but avoided it, perhaps. for a long time there hasn't been absolutely anything of substance or good news to report. we "finished" our agreed-upon 12 tries with our KD and wife. i think they would have been happy to re-up for more, but we're not going that route (for reasons explained below). but we did try with them for quite a while longer, especially considering we took breaks in between every so often. the last couple times we tried (i think in late fall?) it was already started to feel weird, like we hadn't done it in a while, and obviously it wasn't going to work, so?....but as always i am thankful beyond words for their participation in this whole gig for so long. we're going out to dinner with them this saturday for a formal, ritualistic end to that period. meanwhile i thought i should at least give it a shot to try and get infertility procedures approved through my insurance. this was after my endo played around with my thyroid levels for well over a year and declared she didn't think that was the problem. so i went back to my GP to ask for a referral to an RE (reproductive endocrinologist). she was kind of hesitant about doing it because she knows the hetero bias in insurance coverage and was worried they might approve things and then 'find out' later on that i haven't been having baby-making sex and force me to pay them back. a valid question, sure, but i needed her to just say then, that NO she won't write the referral or YES she will. what actually happened was her dragging it out for MONTHS. this appointment, where she reluctantly said she would do it, was in august of last year. it finally got approved in.....december! (christmas miracle!) i won't go into all the ridiculously monotonous and boring details, but suffice it to say i had to DRAG it out of her. and the insurance. and the other doctors i had to get to send in reports. the guy at my insurance got super used to my phone calls to check in on status. for a while i was pretty convinced it wasn't going to happen because they requested proof that i'd tried medical assistance before, and from my perspective i really hadn't (guess it turns out the IUIs in the clinic and the endo treatment counted there!), so for a while i was just persisting so i wouldn't regret not having done so--but had no hope. when i was making one of my bi-weekly calls in mid-december and the insurance guy told me it had been approved, i couldn't believe it!!! i texted and told all the in-the-know-people freaking out all afternoon. that of course started off another round of "preparatory" pieces. i had to get my referral, get registered at the doctor they choose, make a first appointment, go through a cycle's worth of testing (CD3 blood, HSG), and on and on. i will say that the place they assigned me to, UIC (University of Illinois at Chicago) fertility center is AMAZING. i love my doctors, i love the staff, i even love the random people at the hospital when i went to radiology for my HSG. everyone is nice, kind, upbeat, hopeful and helpful. they are blowing every other doctor i've worked with out of the water! and finally we are at an actual attempted medical cycle. after all my tests coming out fine last month, the doctor decided we are at go to try this month with clomid and a trigger shot. i've got all the meds sitting at home and just waiting to use them. my period had it's own last laugh by showing up like 4 days late, just because it knew i was waiting for it with bated breath (it NEVER shows up late!), but who cares! here we are now, at CD2, meds start tomorrow, ultrasound next week, then the following week IUI! we're going to order from NW again and yet again i LOVE our donor, so i hope they still have some in stock by the time the dr's office calls me back with the shipping address. i don't expect it to work automatically the first try and i'm not looking forward to the heartbreak when it doesn't. BUT i have hope again. things fell into place with the referral and the awesome doctor/office and the fact that we happened to have student loans with which to purchase swimmies :) the upcoming years don't make a ton of sense since i have to do an internship next spring, so by the time this baby comes i won't have income or health insurance (ha! life, you're hilarious!) but we're forging ahead anyway. my insurance will cover 3 IUIs and 3 IVFs. if it doesn't work after that i'm pretty sure i'll be able to accept it by that point, since i was almost there anyway without even trying medicated cycles. in the meantime we're still trying to diet and we joined the Y, so our lives are already different not of our own volition :P

started pre-natals again today....

i couldn't resist writing today....the one year anniversary of our very first IUI we ever tried. after months and months of planning, temping, taking pre-natals, POASing, etc, of course , so i guess you could theoretically say we started TTC in like january 2011, but still. feels like a landmark day. perhaps obviously, that first try didn't work. neither did the next 5 we did over a span of about 8 months. (first with swimmers from NW and then later with a KD, who appeared miraculously just as we were realizing we couldn't afford to purchase anymore!). we did those first couple of tries as IUIs at our crunchy womens' clinic, then the remaining tries at KD's or our home. it was great fun , but never worked. after the 6th try KD and his wife were still happy to keep trying, but i wanted to nip this thing in the bud and started trying to hit up the doctors. [LONG PARAGRAPH ABOUT MEDICAL STUFF, SKIP IF YOU WANT TO!] my midwives did the minimal tests that they were equipped for, and discovered everything looked good except for my estradiol being very low, but unfortunately they didn't know enough about what that might mean, so they sent me to my GP. my GP sent me to an OB-GYN (after first annoyingly expressing surprise that i would even attempt this without medical help. i felt like saying, and did YOU talk to a doctor before you slept with your husband??). the OB was great, but wanted to send me to a fertility clinic, which i wasn't (and still am not) sure my insurance will cover, since i can't prove i've been having heterosexual sex for one year (or ever, really). so i appreciated his help but wasn't sure where that would lead....luckily, he decided to do some basic bloodwork while i was there, and it turned out my thyroid was very high (or was it low?). this sent me back to my GP so i could get a referral to an endo (gotta love HMOs!), who turned out to be awesome. my first visit with her was in, i believe, april, and she has been playing with thyroid medicine ever since then, trying to get my levels in check. (before each visit with her i have to go to my GP to get bloodwork drawn a few days in advance, and once i even had a thyroid ultrasound...that was kind of interesting. not exactly the type of ultrasound i was hoping for, but you do what you gotta do....). she also basically diagnosed PCOS just by looking at me (apparently my chubby tummy is a dead giveaway . at the last visit she also put me on metformin. so far i haven't had any of the side effects the pharmacist warned me about, and i begin to suspect it might actually be working! (i had what i think are ovulation pains the last two cycles i've been on it, which i never had before!). she treats diabetes in her practice, and was able to prescribe it as a 'pre-diabetes-so-you-don't-get-it' kind of a drug, but she and i both know it's a fertility drug (at least a low level intro one). i think she 'gets it' and understands the troubles i might have getting fertility clinic stuff covered by insurance, so is trying to do whatever she can to help me avoid that. she also has me on prescription strength vitamin D, but don't ask me how that's related. my next appointment with the helpful endo is 9/6, and i'm really hoping that on that day, she will say my thyroid levels are back to normal and i can start trying again!! of course there is always the chance there's something ELSE wrong with me, but for now i'm going to pretend that was it, i'm magically cured, and will be able to get pregnant within a couple of tries. hmm...gotta start working accupuncture back into the budget, too. speaking of budgets, i was seriously considering putting off TTC because i applied for an internship which i would have absolutely LOVED to take, and i have gotten to the final rounds of the selection process....but i think i've realized that we really won't be able to afford life on that salary. it's an OK salary, but not great, and it's more work than i do here so would probably have to quit my part time job or jobs...which just isn't financially feasible quite yet. i'm bummed because i LOVE this job possibility (community organizing inter-faith residency) but the one amazing awesome thing i realized by not taking it--i can concentrate on BABYING immediately!! instead of trying to plan it around the residency calendar and health insurance and what have you. so counting down to 9/6 appt and hope it's good news....

and the passing of time goes on....

we haven't given up TTC! just kind of forgot about this blog :) and we've been on a kind of hiatus...not from the process itself, but from active insemming. after february, that was 6 tries for us and i wanted medical advice. our donor and wife would have been happy to keep trying a few more times, but for me it would have felt like wasting time (and sperm!) (and ben and jerry's!). so i headed off to start a string of doctor visits. to summarize: to my midwives for bloodwork, who found my estradiol was low. sent me to my GP, who didn't know what to do and sent me to an ob-gyn. missed that first appt because of traffic but got there eventually. he was nice, but wanted to send me to a fertility clinic and i still don't know if my HMO would cover that. in the meantime he did basic bloodwork for the heck of it and discovered my thyroid numbers were way off. back to GP, who referred me to an endocrinologist with a diagnosis of, and i quote "hypothyroidism and infertility." yay! that means i have it officially in case i ever want to try a fertility clinic :) the endo is an awesome lady who i've seen twice now. she's been trying different dosage levels of synthroid to regulate my thyroid, and i think we're getting close. to figure that out i have to have my blood taken every time we try a new dose, and a few weeks ago i even had a thyroid ultrasound (interesting). at this last visit she also prescribed metformin, which is for diabetes but also used as fertility drugs. holy cow! she essentially is givin me (low-level, introductory, but still) fertility treatment without sending me to a fertility clinic! so freaking awesome. so now i take three pills a day, some with food, some without, and a prescription-strength vitamin D once a week. she suggested still not trying actual insemination until we get the thyroid worked out, and i totally agree. after the next time we draw blood (late august?), i'll start charting again and if the numbers are right, maybe try again a month or two after that. i'm pretty sure our donor and his wife are still up for it. this could actually work! i really truly believe that. also we now have a dog and lord knows i don't know where we're going to put a baby, but we'll manage :)

yes, no, maybe so.

yesterday (and over the weekend) i was pretty optimistic that hey...it's POSSIBLE that this time worked. today, not so much. i woke up last night from some brief, but annoying cramps--the ones i ALWAYS get one week before i get my period. so though i still don't know why this happens (as i wrote in an earlier post, why would my uterus need to practice every month one week before showtime?), it seems to imply that this is a normal (i.e. not pregnant) cycle and AF will be showing next week. yeesh.

i discovered that there were some comments to an earlier post on here :), and they're right--going to see my doctor will feel like an important step. my appointment is set for next tuesday!

and next month....

well, clearly last month didn't take. that's ok, i was bummed as usual but not completely depressed. my CD21 test said everything was fine so at least (we think) i ovulated. it was a tough month because our sweet wonderful cat Merry passed away, and we miss her terribly still. we briefly considered that maybe she went away because the time was right and to make room for the baby coming, but then...bfn. so that did suck. we actually have two new adopted kitties from the pound but they will absolutely never take her place. we still cry when we talk about her with friends. she was my roommate for eight years in three different countries and i know she will be with us forever. whoops...i'm going to start crying now.

oy. back to ttc stuff!

so we started a new month. maybe it will be good luck because i also was conceived in february? (my parents actually told me the only time they had sex that month was on valentine's day....yech.). but right off the bat we hit a snag--i had CD3 testing done and found out my estradiol is WAY low. like off the charts low. but since i have normal periods the midwife was really confused--it doesn't seem to be affecting me. and i really couldn't find much info about low estradiol online as the bigger (or more common) issue seems to be HIGH estradiol. so yeah.

moving on to the next step, i made an appointment to see my general practitioner. i have never actually met her, but i had to choose one since i have an HMO, and the midwives recommended her. i made the appt for near the time when AF should show just IN CASE we actually got pregnant this cycle. but i essentially have no hope because i feel like getting those test results were the midwife handing me The Reason that it hasn't been working. (p.s. it took FOREVER to get the test results--i didn't get them until freaking CD14!!--because the lab took too long, then they tested for the wrong thing, then the midwife was out at births two days in a row and no one else is allowed to discuss test results....oy!!!!)

this also means we'll probably take a few months off, because if i see my doctor on, say, CD5, she's going to want to run the CD3 tests again surely, so we'll have to wait a month to do that; then depending on the results she may or may not have to refer me out to an RE, who will seemingly want to run his/her own tests, and on and on.

this break could be a very good thing, though. i'm definitely going to do a little south beach diet again in the interim :), and i wouldn't be surprised if a break from ttc lightened our spirits a bit.

now here's the thing. last friday, i saw a tiny little drop of blood when i went to the restroom here at work. literally one drop, and then nothing else before or since. it looks suspiciously like implantation bleeding, or at least what i've heard IB is supposed to be like. i do NOT, CAPITAL NOT, want to get my hopes up, though :(. every month i get a twinge of hope and then AF comes traipsing in, it's like a frigging 18-wheeler rumbling across my chest. i don't want to feel that again. so i keep telling myself it's probably nothing and doesn't mean anything. i'm not tracking any other signs so i don't know what's going on with my temperature and i don't even know what day i ovulated. i of course went back through the forums and found people who had mentioned IB, to which lots of folks said "that's almost always a good sign!" but then they got bfns. so....

but here's the thing. if that was IB, and it is supposed to happen 7-10 days after fertilization...if you take the lower number of 7, conception would have been the previous friday, the day after our second insemination and the first day of good EWCM, so makes sense...my due date (40 weeks after conception) would be my birthday. that would be pretty much amazing.

(and last night in the shower i got *convinced* for about 7 minutes that i really was pregnant and was giddily chattering away to my belly the whole time. i think those moments of positivity are probably sending very good vibes to any life form that may exist in there! but i just can't entertain them for too long, because i just don't want to fall too far when AF shows up next week.)

this is the LONGEST TWW ever!!

apparently i got more positive since the last post...

because that one said i couldn't take the idea of trying again, but here we are on CD19 and post-3 insems! what really happened was that i went home that same night, talked it over with DP, felt very supported and got some great ideas about how to feel like we're doing something different. because it was that feeling of 'why try the exact same thing again if it's clearly not working?' that was getting to me.

hence:
things we have done different this month

-started accupuncture. thanks to the folks on the NW forum, i was able to find a CHEAP accupuncture place and really love it. the dude who does it is very kind and personable, and appears to know a lot about TTC. last week when i went in for my second time, he said "this is CD14 for you right?" which i had to stop and think about because i was tracking it less than he was!

-speaking of....that's another thing we did different. didn't track anything! i took no BBTs, peed on no sticks, and touched not a finger tip to cervix opening this month. the only thing i noticed is the one day i had EWCM because...well because it was impossible to miss :). but the active non-tracking of all other signs has really improved things for me this month. i feel totally non-stressed at all!

-had a wider range of dates for our insems. this was not by design but happened because of all of our schedules, but i'm interested to see the results. usually we insem between days 14 or 15 and 19. this time we are doing 13-20. you never know...

-did at least one insem at home, which meant i could lie down for absolutely HOURS afterward. seriously. KD produced quite a respectable amount, plus i used preseed both directly inside and some in the syringe, and not a DROP dripped out because of how long i lie flat! we lounged on the couch and ate ice cream and watched movies and it was probably the most awesome sunday in recent memory. and we're planning to do another one at our house tomorrow night should all go according to plan.

i haven't a clue when my TWW would start/started and i don't have any pregnancy tests anyway, so this is probably going to be like last month and just waiting for AF to show. UNLESS. thursday i have my CD21 test and i may very well find out that i didn't even ovulate. making all of these previous steps pointless!!!, but at least it will cut the TWW short. i hope if that is the result of the test that i can learn something about what may or may not be wrong and find out what the next steps might be (and i'm thinking the next step may be finding a Dr who will swear i've been having sex for a year with a man, since that's what BCBS requires).

still don't know how long it will take to get results after thursday's test; i should check in after that and thinking about next steps....

2012?

wait, that's the year the earth is going to self-destruct, right? according to either the ancient mayans or hollywood; i can't remember which.

AF showed today on this, cycle #2 with KD, #4 of actively trying, month #12 since starting to plan, chart, and insistently hope. yeah, hope. that's what's bugging me today.

i'm not depressed, i still didn't cry as much as i did with that first BFN back in august (but i did get a trip to amish acres out of that, though :). i have been weepy today and because of that my boss thinks i'm coming down with something, which caused him to tell me i could go home early if i felt bad. might just take him up on that...

but beyond how actually concretely weepy i have or have not been, i'm really not feeling another try right now. i feel like it's pointless. i feel like it COULD work but if it doesn't that i can't take another 'hopes up-hopes down' cycle. i feel like it's awfully likely i have fertility issues what with my weird cycle lengths and CM variations and low temps. i want to get checked out and told what's wrong, but i also have a fairly strong feeling that i'm not going to feel any better after finding that out.

i just don't know if i can start another entire year of this. i know it's still not that much, i know there are women who have been trying MANY years and still keep hope alive and in fact, it's 100% true that it could be just the next cycle, just around the corner. 'i guess it's half timing, the other half luck' and all that. but just the idea of it. remembering how excited and plan-y i was at this time last year, making appts, meeting the midwives, buying my BBT thermometer and starting prenatals (a year of prenatals! good heavens!) and picking a donor. i feel a wrenching in my gut that it was all for naught. i feel like my body doesn't or didn't work and i'm not feeling great about that. i also feel like DP has been an amazing support for me this whole time but worry she hasn't been able to cry/be frustrated/express her negative emotions like i have.

should we start thinking about fostering? adopting older children? i know i'm not exactly retirement age yet, but we've just lost An Entire Year. i don't have the sunshine-y bouncey ball hope to start an entire new one. is that wrong?

i haven't told dp yet although i saw AF this morning, because early-morning-darkness-still-basically-asleep-goodbye-kiss time is not exactly my idea of the best time to break bad news. but i want to go home and snuggle and tell her and cry together. and then i want a new plan. i don't know if i can keep doing this same one much longer.

no big news for the moment but i thought i should update for posterity's sake : ).

no BFP last month, bummer, but i have to say that everytime does get easier. i still cry, but only for about 3 minutes or so : ), whereas the first time it was this horried experience. as time goes on i'm learning more and more about my body and cycles and fertility in general, and frankly 3 times trying is really not THAT much.

we're on our fourth time right now. i'm CD18 right now, and we're doing our 3rd AI of the week tonight with KD. i got +OPK last night and this morning, so i think this is the real thing (as opposed to the other +OPK i got monday evening, not repeated or preceeded by any other +, so i think that was my standard early/false). i had some EWCM earlier in the week but haven't had any today, which is annoying me after two +OPKs in a row. i may have just stated in the previous paragraph that i'm learning more about my body and cycle, but i still get frustrated that the signs don't line up! :P i'm still seriously thinking about getting some testing done next cycle if this doesn't take, just in case. (even though KD, KD's wife, and DP all think we should just keep trying). it's MY body that isn't 'working', though, and i just don't want to waste time if it turns out i'm not ovulating or something. just saying. we'll see how frustrated i get if we see a BFN in a couple of weeks....

still on the lookout for EWCM today and a temp rise tomorrow or sat! whoo :)