IUI#4 Complete and now we wait...

As many of you know I had to drive back from pittsburgh this morning for my IUI and so we had to leave at 4am, we were EXHAUSTED (only slept 2 hours). I probably drank a little more than I should have last night and just looked like a TOTAL mess I am sure when we got to the RE's office. When he came in with the vial of sperm to verify we had the right stuff he said Justin's name as he holds it out and makes me look too. Then he proceedes to start reading a social security number quickly and show it to me and ask if this is right..... well I just stared at it in dumbfounded stupor. In my head I was thinking "Thats not my social security number" and then I was thinking "wait, thats Justin's.... do they want his on my stuff?" Needless to say my brain wasnt functioning yet but before I could say anything my RE jumped back and looked at Justin and almost had a heart attack. He said I was the last patient of the day and that I just took 5 minutes off his life because he was thinking "IF THIS ISNT HERS THEN SOMEONE GOT THE WRONG STUFF AND OMG". Hahahahahahha, he was really funny. And I tried to explain that I was just lost in translation somewhere but OH WAS IT FUNNY!

The IUI went well. Motility was at 54% and I think post wash we had 21 million??? (cant remember exactly because like you already read... i was out of it). lots of cramping with this one and RE said he had to have a talk with my cervix again because it gives up trouble EVERY time. When he left the room he again said "Lindsey! You took 5 minutes off my life!!!!" Haha, feeling fine now that I took a nap =)

ALMOST FORGOT: RE said "YOUR MUCUS LOOKS GREAT" and I said "oh fabulous" (how awkward haha) and he said ALERT THE POSTS!.... then he went on to say one of his patients that he told that said she had to blog that and I laughed while thinking in my head "i probably will too" haha. Oh what infertility has done to my modesty.

Trigger Time

This is it, I am triggering for IUI #4. PLLLLLEASE let this be it!

All systems go...

I went for my CD16 ultrasound today and it didnt look terribly promising. On the left I now have 3 follies at 9mm, on the right I had a 15.5, 13.3, and a 9. This means that the lead follie is 15.5 so we are trying to get it mature enough to trigger ovulation. Overall my RE was hoping for better growth by now but we will take it. At that time he told me that we would have to wait for the blood work but that he thought I would do 2 more days of 225IU Gonal-f and then trigger on sunday night and have the IUI on tuesday morning. So I left and I waited.....

This afternoon they called to tell me that my e2 was 428!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS SO GOOD FOR ME! It was 66 on tuesday so this means that this new dose is helping me, finally. So they said that they wanted to do one more night of 225IU Gonal-f and then trigger tomorrow (saturday) night around 9:30 and IUI on monday morning. Sound simple, right?! Well, its not. We are leaving for Pittsburgh sunday morning to go to a wedding of one of my best friends from college. Due to the fact that monday is memorial day the office is only open for a small time to do the inseminations. So we have to be there to give them our "sample" between 7:30 and 8 and then the IUI will be at 9am. Basically we have to leave pittsburgh at like 3:30am. WOW. I promised Justin that I would drive, so I guess I wont be drinking too much at the wedding, darn!!!

I was thinking this totally sucked till a few of the girls on the board pointed out to me what a story that would be for my child someday if this IUI was it for us. PLEASE let this be it.

Breathe In, Breathe Out.....

repeat.


225IU seems to make my migraines much worse but on an up-side I finally got a call back from my family Dr saying that she called in the vicodin I requested for my headaches. I am not allowed to take my super-strong migraine medication while I am even trying to conceive. My RE told me that he would like me to stick to meds that are generally safe during pregnancy and vicodin falls on that list so I hope it helps.

I must have hit a blood vessel tonight when I was doing my stim injection. Normally when I do them they dont bleed much at all afterwards but today it GUSHED! It takes a long time for the pen click enough times to give me the full 225IU that my stubborn body needs and then I wait the 10 seconds with the needle in to make sure the meds stay in my stomach. After the gushing stopped I noticed a large blue area forming under my skin that will be a GORGEOUS bruise by morning. Oopsie Daisies :/

Here I am again

with more bad news. I went this morning for my CD13 ultrasound and blood work. My follie scan showed follies at 9.5, 10.8, and 12.9mm. This means that the follies are growing VERY slow and have only grown about 2mm or less each since last friday even with the higher dose (150IU). So I waited to get the plan form here on out until they called with my blood work. E2 was only 66, so we are upping the gonal-f to 225IU daily and I am going back on friday to see where we have gotten.

I am beside myself with disappointment. I am hoping for a miracle here.

Nothing is stronger than strength of spirit. The body may falter. But inside, unchanging, a spirit brilliant with strength and resilience shines on.

And on. And on.

My stomach now looks like a battlefield. To me it looks like I have chicken pox. Justin told me that I look like a junkie, thanks hunnie. Since we upped the dose to 150IU the injections leave much bigger red spots around the injection site and get more sore afterwards. Its ok, just one more thing I have to endure in the name of infertility. I cannot wait until tuesday when I can see how my body is reacting to the higher dose of gonal-f. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me get good news, I need some!

Nurture your hopes. Hold them close and understand that they are seeds of good things to come.

I often find it hard to understand why this is the hand I was dealt. I ask myself why and every once in a while I tell myself that I am learning. I am learning new lessons all the time. I am learning patience, hope, faith, pain, anger and yearning. I tell myself that things happen for a reason. I think one of the reasons that I am going through all of this is to learn more about friendship and support. I have met some of the most amazing women through this journey and a couple of them have become my friends away from the message board.

Today I received a care package from a very special friend of mine, Annie. I have been having a rough patch with the cancelled IUI and then having less than stellar response to the injectables. This care package made me smile and cry. The book that she sent me is so thoughtful and so profound. The title of this post was a quote from the book and there are many more to come =) Thank you so much, Annie, you really brightened my day and made me realize that if nothing else I have made a wonderful friend.

Bring on the rain....

Why do I never leave the RE's office with good news?! So I went to the lab this morning and had my blood drawn. Then I went over to the RE's office for my ultrasound. My ultrasound was so disappointing that he didnt even tell me what was going on while he did it. On the left i had one follie at 9mm and on the right I had a 7mm follie and an 8mm follie. This was CD8 so he was disappointed. He said that we would wait to see what my blood work said but he thought we would probably increase my Gonal-F dose to 112.5IU. I nervously waited all day to hear the results because he hinted to me that if the blood came back really good them we would be able to keep the same dose and the follies would follow soon! Well at about 2pm they called and told me that my e2 came back at only 38 (im pretty sure they wanted it to be around 300 or over). Sooooo its 150IU daily for me until tuesday morning when I go back for another ultrasound and bloodwork.

Why couldnt I have has a good scan? Why cant my ovaries cooperate?! I AM SO MAD AT THESE OVARIES I WANNA PUNCH THEM but I think that might be counterproductive. I am just so tired of bad news. I need some good news so I can stop crying all the time!!! I am putting so much into this... heck im giving myself shots every day so that I can ovulate when most women do that and take pills because they dont want to. I just want what everyone else has, is that too much to ask?

Welcome ICLWers! and Update =)

Welcome everyone, thank you so much for visiting my blog. I hope that you can either relate or learn something that you didnt know from everything I have written on here. I learn something new from every blog I read, with each new blog I follow I get a better understanding of how everyones IF journey differs.

Update: I am on cycle day 7 of IUI#4. This is my first fully injectable cycle and I am taking 75IU of Gonal-F subQ daily. I go in tomorrow morning for bloodwork to check my E2 level among other things and I am also going to have a follie scan to check and see how my ovaries are responding to the new medications. They will then call me sometime tomorrow with my lab results and tell me if we are going to have to increase my dosage, decrease my dosage, or keep it the same. I am just hoping that I am not overstimulated and have to coast and hope some follies drop off.

Anyways, WELCOME! =)

Dreams are shattered

I am doing better than yesterday but I still wish that I was as optimistic and hopeful as I was 2 days ago. The hope is creeping back up though. Justin talks about a baby more now so he must be more hopeful than he usually is. After my work issues and phone issues yesterday Justin and I had a complete meltdown (ok, i had a meltdown) but we got in a huge fight and then in turn got a better understanding of where each of us are coming from. Infertility is SO rough on a marriage. Here is something I read about IF today:

Infertilty is not simply a medical problem. It is a devastating psychological problem, one involving strong feelings of guilt, anger, shame, powerlessness, anxiety, isolation and alienation.

Dreams are shattered. The expectation of being productive and creating a family is very powerful for most couples and few are able to face the growing awareness of a problem without becoming angry at self or other. But that is only the beginning. Once the couple enters the medical system, they typically experience themselves treated like objects of study, not humans in pain. Their sex life becomes a scientific experiment, no longer an expression of love. It also becomes an act that is always going to be judged as a success or a failure, not as an intimate act. It is anything but intimate, since it must be done by a set of rules established by physicians and, like children, they must report in to get their grade. Only the stakes are so much higher.

It may involve husbands giving painful injections to their wives or racing to a hospital with semen. It means women being plied with hormones that make them feel like someone else. It consumes all aspects of their lives. Each month centers on one question - are you pregnant? The wife's body becomes a laboratory. Semen and eggs are studied, stored, and experimented with in the hopes of generating a conception. Even conceiving doesn't stop the trauma. Now comes the fear of not carrying to term, since miscarriage is often an outcome. Of the 80% of couples with an infertility problem who seek medical assistance, only 55% ultimately bear a child. Another 35% will adopt. Oh yes! Let's dispel one myth right here. Only 4% of couples who adopt go on to become pregnant. Somehow we have come to believe this is a common occurrence, which it is not. By the way, of that 55% who do conceive, only 60% of those couples can directly attribute the conception to the medical intervention. So, in effect, only about one in three couples with infertility problems who seek medical help actually get pregnant as a result of that help.

Lost

If I believed in God or had a relationship with a "god" I would be asking for strength right now. The past few days I have been feeling so hopeful and today I feel defeated.
-I feel like I have been silly to get excited because it will never happen.
-I feel silly for thinking that my boss will ever value me.
-I feel silly for crying over work when have more important things to cry about.
-I feel silly for thinking that things have to work out because in reality they dont have to.
I feel lost.

I have reached my breaking point.

My job is very stressful and I try to be as least stressed as possible due to Drs orders. My boss it very blunt. He only tells you when he is mad about something and never when you do a good job. He micromanages me and he doesnt really understand what I do and go through on a day to day basis. This being said, I really love my job. He upsets me at least every other week with some email that isnt worded nicely and makes me feel like junk but I usually get over it. Well today it went too far and I called my Nursing Director (the only other case manager) to try and get her input and stress to her how I constantly feel like I am on thin-ice and that our boss thinks I do a bad job. She said she is going to talk to him because she doesnt see where he is coming from and thinks that we have a therapist saying things to him that arent true. I wish I knew which therapist this was because the claim that he made to my boss is so incredibly false it is ridiculous. The other nurse agreed that she knows this is false. I am just beyond angry and my boss says he doesnt have time to call me today because he is busy.... you cannot email someone a complaint saying that someone accused me of not doing a blood pressure and not hear a response. I have just had it. I need a new job when I am respected.

I think that this job is contributing to my fertility issues because the stress is so overwhelming. I came home from work today and just cried and cried and cried. Not because I can get pregnant no matter what I do but because I take my job very seriously, always do my best, and really go out of my way for my patients and its not recognized or appreciated.... instead I just miss some little piece of paperwork or something every now and then and "need to do a better job". I wish I wasnt buried under bills and debt and I could just stand up for myself and tell my boss that if thats what he thinks of me then I am quitting but financially I cant. The worst part is that he kinda knows what going on with me and he obviously doesnt care.

What!?

I threw up this morning. I have NO idea why. I woke up when my alarm went off and I was SUPER nauseous and then when I got up I threw up. Good start to the morning, haha. Off to shower and go to work.

Baseline Appt and Day 2 of Stims

I had my baseline ultrasound this morning and there were no cysts!!!!! So this means that all systems are a go and we are on track for a great cycle (hopefully). The only thing that I noticed today in relation to the new med was that I was REALLY tired but that could be the vicodin that I am still taking for the wisdom tooth that I had pulled. Overall, I am just so excited about this cycle and I really hope that things go well. Next appointment is friday. I have to go get blood drawn then go to see Dr.W for an ultrasound.

Days 2 of stims went well..... I didnt take more than 2 minutes to get ready, do the shot and be done =)

First stims done!!!

Well its official, Project pincushion is in gear and moving forward! I gave myself my first Gonal-F injection tonight and it went great. I thought I would sit there and have to really talk myself into sticking the needle in my own stomach but I didnt, I just stuck it right in. I think I even scared Justin a little bit because he was expecting me to hesitate, haha! I am so proud of myself and I cant wait to see what this cycle holds for us.

I go in tomorrow morning (CD4) for a baseline ultrasound to check for cysts. I was really supposed to go on either CD1, 2 or 3 but CD1 was friday and I didnt know AF was in town till about 4pm. CD2 was saturday and they wanted me to come in but they only do the ultrasounds between 8 and 8:45 and I did Race for the Cure on saturday morning and I wasnt about to miss that!!! So here we are sunday night and I will be going in the morning.

75IU in on CD3!!!!! =)

Meds have arrived!!!

Well, my wallet is empty but my fridge is full! hahaha! My meds came this morning which is a good thing because I start stims tomorrow night.

SHOTS, SHOTS, SHOTS!

Well its official. IUI#4 is underway. AF arrived today and I am going to be starting stims (Gonal-F) on sunday night!!!!!! I have my monitoring appointment to check for cysts on monday (because I cant go tomorrow due to the fact that I am doing a 5k for Race for the Cure!). I am so ready for this cycle. YAY!

Announcing: Project Pincushion

WE HAVE A PLAN! Project pincushion is underway (or will be once AF gets here).

We are taking a big step forward in aggressiveness and invasiveness. I am going to be doing injectables with IUI. Gonal-F and Ovidrel are going to by my "drugs of choice".

Here is a timeline:
- When AF arrives I need to go in to RE for a baseline ultrasound to check for cysts and get baseline bloodwork done.
- CD3 I will start taking Gonal-F 75IU daily
- CD7 I will go in for another ultrasound and more bloodwork then depending on my results I will either stay with 75IU or be bumped up to a higher dose.
- Probably 2 more sets of ultrasounds and blood work before CD14(ish)
- I will trigger with Ovidrel either 250IU or 500IU (I cant remember)
- IUI
- 7dpO I will get blood work and take another Ovidrel shot to boost my progesterone.

HERE WE GO!!!!! I know that this sounds silly but I am SO excited. I had completely lost faith in the Clomid and I am so excited to have hope again.... I forgot what it felt like to think that it might happen for us. I know that each time I start a new med or new procedure I get my hopes up only to come crashing down but I cant help it. I am just so happy. Who is happy to give themselves shots? AN INFERTILE! The nice thing is that these are subQ shots so I am going to be giving them to myself and I am not going to have to have someone help me!

The only drawback of the new protocol is that they cannot control multiples. There is a 1 in 5 chance of getting pregnant with twins, a 1 in 30 triplets, 1 in 60 quadruplets and so on and so on. The RE made us have a "selective reduction" talk with him and we really dont know how we feel about it. At first thought I would say that I am totally against it, I dont know if I could ever do it but knowing that if you dont it severely risks the life of all the babies really makes you think. So we made no decisions on that front. We are going to cross each bridge as we pass it.

<3 hope, faith, love <3

Consult tomorrow!

We have our consult tomorrow morning about moving forward to injectables and IUI vs. IVF. I am worried but very excited to know what is next because its hard not knowing. I like to always have a plan and tomorrow I will get my plan!!! The idea of taking shot after shot after shot is kind of scary but I know that I will do whatever I have to do to get our miracle. I will update tomorrow with what I find out. Thanks everyone =)

What IF?

What IF? A Portrait of Infertility from Keiko Zoll on Vimeo.

Ugh

Mother's Day sucks when you want to be a mother and cant be. Its probably the saddest day of the year.

why not me?

I found out that the only other case manager at work is pregnant today. She didnt tell me but someone in the office did and I tried to smile and act excited but really I was crushed. I am happy to know that she was trying and it wasnt a "ooops" (those really make my head spin with jealousy). I cant even imagine now how people can get pregnant by having sex?! That is so 1950, right? Must be nice. Every once in a while I will see someone post on one of the boards saying they accidentally got pregnant and that they are trying to be excited..... TRYING. UGH! Enough of that.

I have been sick this week. My head feels totally full and ready to explode. I got my consultation appointment switched to next wednesday so I am excited/nervous for that. I know that Dr.W wants to talk to me about doing the exploratory lap surgery but I REALLY dont want to do it =( We will see what he says. Time to go lay down!

Its been a while....

I am finally ready to sit down and try to put in to words what has been happening since last wednesday. As you already know my IUI#3 cycle was cancelled due to poor response to meds. Initially I was devastated and just didnt even know what to think. How can it not work?! Why? Why? WHY?!?!? I knew there was a chance that my body would adjust to that dose because it had happened once before on a lower dose. I kept telling myself not to get excited or hopeful and somehow hope creeped up again only to be smashed and go MIA.

Dr. W told me that he wanted me to trigger and do TI "just in case". So I went in to the office on friday and had the nurse give me the HCG injection and as far as I am concerned this cycle is over. I am just waiting for the next. As of today I have 14 days till AF is supposed to show up. I have to go in for blood work on the 10th to check my progesterone also. I just wish AF would show up tomorrow so that I can get past this SHITTY cycle.

When I went in and got my shot I talked to the nurse and she said that I needed to schedule a consultation to come in and talk to Dr.W because he wants to talk to me about IUI w/Injectables vs. IVF and also discuss a lap surgery. I am not able to move straight to IVF because financially we are totally tapped out. Being 100% out of pocket really sucks!!!! I am DEFINITELY ready to move to a full injectable IUI cycle though! I am SOOOOOO ready to never see Clomid again. I have been on Clomid every cycle since october of last year and I need a break. The hot flashes that last the entire cycle are AWFUL! I have a constant headache from CD3 until ovulation that makes me want to chop my head off. It also makes me moody, tired, and a borderline insomniac. Needless to say I am almost willing to throw it a going away party!

I have a consultation on the 19th (i think?) to discuss our next moves and I wish it was sooner.... I really dont want to wait that long being that I am a "planner" by nature. We will see what this journey hold next.