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 :)

good news and bad news?

first the bad news: this morning i felt my slight 'week-before-period' cramps. i get these slight, minor cramps, just for a brief period, every month about a week before my period actually comes. don't ask me why...i can't imagine why my uterus would need to practice a week early--and if it needs to practice that bad, why it only does so one day and then chillaxes again for the next week! but i just know i get it every month before AF. this doesn't NECESSARILY mean AF is coming, but it just sort of reminded me that it totally could be. even though i've been saying to myself this whole time, could be yes, could be no, just like always, apparently i was secretly starting to think it worked, because when i felt the twinges this morning it was like it HIT me that perhaps it didn't work. and OF COURSE it may not have worked! this was only our first try with KD and i literally had no clue what i was doing and we've only been trying 3 months anyway...i wish, though, when i say these logical things to myself, that i could actually believe them. because then when reality sinks in it feels much worse.

i've been able to pinoint a few 'symptoms' lately, i.e. things that are different than they usually are, but i have also been able to explain away each and every one of them, making them not such great clues afterall. for example, i've been really tired lately--could that be because i don't get enough sleep?? also, i was slightly dizzy today. but, that's because i didn't eat dinner last night. and i didn't eat dinner last night because i felt nauseous. WHICH is because when i got home from work yesterday, i proceeded to eat a huge piece of leftover birthday cake. see what i'm saying here?

anywho i am 8dpo and less than a week away from either AF or testing. i've stopped temping which has truly been lovely. i have a chance for it to go either way and i want to be happy with that! and if it didn't work i still have this truly amazing KD and wife who are already ready for next time (maybe they're running low on ice cream?...)

the good news: i've gone to the restroom twice today, and both times the pregnant lady from the office next to ours was in there. so clearly, if i'm peeing on the same schedule as a pregnant lady....just saying :)

i'm almost certain i felt ovulation pains today. it was on the left side.

now i'm off to google image search pictures of sperm-egg fertilization, in an attempt to perform positive visualization. as my book tells me to do.

(fingers crossed for high temp tomorrow to confirm ovulation! if not i'm just going to throw my thermometer away :P)

i probably could have written in here every day since the last post until now, since as you know if you a)are also TTCing or b)know me at all, i obsess about the process all day, every day. and in fact, there has also been a substantial amount of news and details to obsess over. which is better than obsessing in a void. i think.

so anyway. last time i wrote i was pretty much to the point of accepting last month’s BFN, although AF hadn’t shown yet. she did (it did?) eventually, and we moved on. again, praise the Lord, it was NOT as devastating as the first BFN. and i didn’t know it at the time, but things were only about to get better....

we did meet with our KD and his wife for dinner a couple weeks ago (or just one week ago? time’s been flying by!) and we honestly didn’t know what the result would be. you know, it was totally possible that they would want to be co-parents or be called daddy or who knows what–-because everybody is different and there are endless valid variations of parenting and family. we were just hoping that’s not what they wanted because it’s not what we are looking for. and it totally isn’t! they have essentially the same exact expectations as we do–donate sperm (for which we pay them one pint of ben and jerry’s for each insem :), not be any sort of family figure, maybe not even live in the same city or country as the baby, but still be friends, and that’s it. we even realized that since we live way in the north of the city and they live way in the south, but sometimes work in the north, that on insem days we could even give them rides home and thus contribute a little something to them (besides the ice cream). and we decided this over yummy japanese food. it was perfect.

so that was about a week and a half ago, and it just happened to be very close to my ovulation, though of course i never really can tell and my O day jumps around a lot. and this week was an excellent example of me “never really can tell”-ing. my signs were all over the place and confusing and being contradictory amongst themselves. my temps went down then up then down again (i may need a new thermometer??). my cervix seemed to be up and so i thought that because of that, that certain day MUST be fertile-time, but i had no EWCM. now yesterday i had awesome EWCM, but my cervix had long since come back down. i had smileys twice, Wednesday and Sunday. same basic confusion as always...good times!

the upshot is that we ended up doing three inseminations this week. this is actually the ideal plan (3 or 4 days before O, then 1 or 2 days before O, then day of) but we didn’t plan it on purpose. i got that first smiley Wednesday and panicked and asked if we could start that night (because i also had a high cervix, as far as i can tell, though no fertile CM). i had a slight inkling that it could be a ‘false early positive’ because i’ve had those before (apparently my LH goes up and down??) AND i hadn’t tested the day before because i hadn’t slept long enough and thought it was too early to matter. so of course i freaked out because i couldn’t tell if it was a flash in the pan fluke, or the tail end of a regular length surge. and then the next day my temp went up so i thought, yep, that was it, we only got one try in this month but at least it’s something!

but then i kept being not convinced because i just wasn’t seeing any fertile CM and it still seemed kind of early to me (first smiley was CD 14, whereas I usually get it between 15 and 19). so we did it again Friday night just in case. and then i kept testing just for kicks, because i really wanted to figure this cycle out. so Sunday (CD 18, much more normal timing), i got a +OPK with FMU and contemplated asking them again (even though it was the end of a super long week and weekend and i felt bad because on Friday, we had sort of implied that this was it for the month). we went out to lunch with a friend, i came home and got ANOTHER smiley, without even waiting 4 hours between POASing, and i also had very obvious EWCM. so yes, finally i knew, at least i understand this month! i think i need to get used to my cycles having multiple smileys and being long and just never really being OBVIOUS one way or the other...and learn to embrace it :)

and i texted KD and his wife and they told me it was perfectly fine to do another go-round yesterday evening. i tried to profusely apologize but they said it was no big deal, and they get ice cream out of it, so it’s all good. they sound totally laid back, don’t they? which they are, as well as awesome in SO many other ways. i’m serious-–at first we didn’t really consider at all using a KD and their offer came out of the blue for us, but after spending this week with them i literally cannot think of any cooler or more wonderful way of doing this. not only am i becoming better friends with two extremely amazing people, but they’re also giving this whole process a lift from the ‘non-fun-let’s-just-do-it-but-it’s-stressful’ place it was in previously. i mean, it’s still a little stressful, it can’t not be. but they explained to me in great detail last week what a blessing it was for them to be involved in this, and they are really excited and into it. NOT excited in a sketchy way like, are they going to want to steal the baby? :P, excited because they want to be a part of radical and hilarious and queer and fabulous and holy things. that’s a direct quote.

plus i keep finding out more and more things we have in common (other than the first right-off-the-bat-obvious thing that KD has red hair and so do i, though his is much more bright and brilliant! ha:). also, they went to college in ohio. also, some of their family is from pittsburgh. also, they have huge shelves full of books within which are included selections by bill bryson and ursula k leguin and john irving. also there are lots of things we DON’T have in common but that i am learning so much through. i’m pretty sure that even though they’re the heterosexual ‘traditional’ couple on the outside, we're going to learn more than i can express from them about being radical and queer and loving it.

also we’ve decided to use astronomical lingo when talking about our ‘process’, so we talk about the mission and launching satellites and naming each month’s attempt after a different shuttle. and we sit around their room after the insem (when i’m lying with my feet up for half an hour) talking about anything and everything (and sometimes sharing their ice cream). i don’t actually want to keep getting BFNs indefinitely just so we can hang out with them and talk, but they have completely revolutionized the process for me and the prospect of doing so is now a totally different experience :). it's not every KD and his wife that you can say that about!!

and on to KD....?

tested tonight and got a BFN. it was weird cause i had actually started to convince myself that it had worked...like i just KNEW, you know? which clearly means nothing :). still no AF, but she may show in a day or two. i just really thought it was going to work!

i'm NOT as sad as last time, at all, which may be because the first time is harder? i'm definitely sad, not least of all because this would have been a baby that (theoretically) might look like DP! i was really liking that idea.

and now we may (also theoretically? :) move on to using the KD i mentioned a few posts back. i definitely want to keep trying--that is something i realized the other day through prayer. sometimes i really DON'T want to try anymore, i get sort of 'sour apples' as though i say to 'fertility' or to 'conception': fine! if you aren't going to play nice then i'm not going to play anymore! but there are many reasons this is ridiculous, not least of which is the fact that there isn't some great force of the universe against me or us or our family plans. it just statistically is hard to get pregnant so there aren't 800 billion people running around on the planet (as opposed to 7 billion), and that's they way it is, period. nothing personal! although it feels an awful lot like that sometimes.

anyways, my inherent spitefulness, plus the constant stress of waiting for a +OPK, then waiting for a BFP, hoping and symptom spotting and everything, makes it awfully tempting to stop trying. the trying process is NOT fun. but if i stop...i won't get my baby. and i miss my baby. of course she or he is worth it! this just isn't the ball o' joy that i may have thought it would be....but i think i got that now :)

come on AF, let's get this over with! and now to start doing research about KDs....

2dpi....i guess i'm officially accepting that i'm in the 2ww :)

yesterday i posted the lyrics to michael buble's 'haven't met you yet' after i read on another ttc blog that they were really quite apropos to our situation (which i totally agree to! being in your life is gonna change me....). and then on the way to pick esther up after class, i was listening to the radio and started hearing positive ttc messages in EVERY song! seriously! this used to happen to me back when i was in the thick of being an evagelical christian; any song that the author or singer actually meant to be about love for another human being, i could totally apply it to my relationship with God. just take ONE example, garth brooks' 'you move me'--

But you move me
You give me courage I didn't know I had
You move me on
I can't go with you
And stay where I am
So you move me on
Oh 'cause you move me
You get me dancing and you
make me sing
You move me
Now I'm taking delight
In every little thing
How you move me

etc. just sayin....

so anyways, last night i was hearing "keep ttc hope alive" from every melody coming out of 100.3! a few samples:

-"when i see your face, there's not a thing that i would change" (even if 'you' are born after years and tons of procedures and expense and etc...i'm sure i'm going to think 'you're' absolutely perfect and be glad you were born when you were...)
-"i will survive" (this ttc process even when i think i'm down for the count...)
and following that same theme:
-"i get knocked down, but i get up again" (this would be the theme song of every CD1 upon af's arrival....)

happy hummin'! :)

p.s. in terms of actual ttc process updates, my temp did shoot up this morning so i'm thinking that in fact i did O yesterday, but who knows when. i've been trying to google "how many hours after O does temp spike?" but frankly am finding nothing but crap. apparently not many folk have asked this extremely specific question before :) but apparently the ladies at nw forum have convinced me to have hope still for this cycle, so i'm considering it :)