Try 23, IUI 2

This day is getting away from me, but I wanted to post a quick report on our IUI this morning.  It was actually very touching and lovely despite the sterile exam room crowded with too many people.  After we fetched our sample from the office, we took it down to the basement where my new favorite person, J the lab tech, cheerfully defrosted our vial.  We read from Fertility Wisdom while we waited.  Have any of you read this book?  We’re finding it helpful and I think we’re both in a place to soak up the advice right now.

On the elevator ride back up, we held our precious sample tight to keep it warm.  And we continued to keep it close in the waiting room.

Dr. Giggles performed the insem and he brought with him a very nice nurse we hadn’t met yet and a resident.  The three of them politely stood at Fern’s feet and I stayed beside her, holding her hand.  The actual insemination was over before we knew it had started.  We were all discussing the dearth of trick or treaters this year and then without a topic change he was pulling the speculum out.  I would have liked to know he was inseminating and not have been discussing candy volume at the moment, but at least it was fast and painless.

Giggles and his entourage left us alone after that and Fern and I held each other tight and instructed the sperm where to swim.  I felt warm and happy.  We both have so much hope for this try – scary hope, Fern called it.

I reluctantly headed to work and Fern went off to Cactus and her needles.  And now we wait.

Triggered Up

Fern’s bloodwork yesterday showed no surge, so we triggered last night for an early morning insem Monday.  Even though I was incredibly nervous all evening (during our Buffy marathon), I felt confident and ready when the alarm went off.  Giving Fern the shot actually wasn’t so bad.  I think it’s easier to shoot her in the butt than in the stomach because I can’t see her face.  I made her mix it so I didn’t have to worry about that and giving the shot and I was happy to see how easily the needle pierced the skin and was very relieved that I didn’t hit a blood vessel (I might have passed out had that happened).

Buffy was much more enjoyable after the shot!

We don’t get many trick or treaters in our neighborhood, but we turned off the porch light during the shot just in case.  It would have been pretty scary to see Fern mixing up the shot in a nice, long needle behind me at the dining room table.  Hey kids, enjoy the candy!

Tomorrow’s the big day.  We have to get there at 7:30 – ugh – to wait for the sperm to defrost.  I think insem will be around 8:15 or so.  We are ready to welcome our baby with open arms and open hearts.

The Other Kind of Tears

Happy tears!

The ultrasound seemed to go well this morning.  There isn’t a way to definitively say whether we saw follicles or the old cysts, but the RE seemed to think the follicles looked new, meaning they wouldn’t be cysts.  He was cautious with what he told us though, stressing that there’s really no way to tell for certain.  The definitely good news is that all of the follicles are on the right side – nothing but a tiny follicle on the left – and a week ago there was a large cyst on the left.  So at least we know that one of the cysts shrank or disappeared.  Hopefully the others did as well.  There were two good-looking follicles on the right, around 20 and 22 and a smaller one and Fern’s lining was picture perfect.

We did a blood draw today that showed good estrogen but not surging levels and have another tomorrow (at 7am!).  If there’s a surge tomorrow, we’ll inseminate on Sunday morning and if there’s no surge, we’ll trigger and insem on Monday morning.  We scheduled acupuncture for Saturday and Monday morning to hopefully help our chances.  We’re hoping that Fern’s bloodwork shows she’s ovulating on her own so we can avoid the trigger shot.  We did 0vidrel twice at the old RE, but this place uses the one you have to mix yourself (scary) and shoot into your butt instead of stomach (scary).  Fern has a big sharpied X on her butt where I’m supposed to stick her…eek.

We’re both feeling increible relief.  Even after we were cleared to try this cycle, I still felt on edge like something could go wrong at any minute.  But now it’s looking pretty definite that we’ll inseminate and that is a very good thing indeed.

In addition to the good news on the scan, Fern has been feeling like her body is finally getting back to normal this cycle – better period, good cervical fluid, temps that make sense.  These things have been absent the last two cycles.  I’m so proud of her for all the hard work she’s put into getting her body back on track.  She’s been avoiding sugar, caffeine, soy (a big deal for vegans), has been getting regular exercise, taking her vitamins and herbs, doing castor oil compresses, mixing essential oils for fertility, doing lots of acupuncture and reflexology and perhaps the hardest one, trying to relax through yoga and journaling.  She’s an amazing woman and I’m so grateful for everything she’s doing to make our baby.

(Oh, and the other exciting thing about today’s appointment is that there were other lesbians in the waiting room!  It’s the first time we’ve seen another same sex couple at either RE!  Woo!)

Snowed In

That’s right, I am happily snowed in today.  In general, I’m not impressed with October snow, but I can’t argue with leaving work at noon yesterday and not going in all today.  I had a fair bit of work to do today, but I have most certainly not been spending all my hours on work and I also quite definitely have not showered or dressed today – yay sweats!

It’s been coming down since Tuesday and we have somewhere around two feet.  Check it out:

That was just this morning, we’ve gotten more since.

Our snow day became even brighter when we received a very sweet care package from two wonderful ladies.  Poppy and Cat sent us some Seattle vegan doughnuts because they are such fabulous people and wanted to spread a little cheer.

You know, we have been lucky enough to receive vegan treats from other bloggers too.  I don’t think I ever mentioned it here and I feel bad about that because it was such a wonderful surprise; but back in August, Justine and Boo sent us cupcakes from Babycakes in New York.  They were delicious and featured 3 kinds of frosting!  We never tire of sampling the local vegan baked goods of our blog friends!   And we are always amazed and warmed by your generosity and support.

As we lounged in bed watching DVDs and eating popcorn yesterday evening, Fern and I suddenly had a PANIC that we never had the bank mail our sperm to the RE and our little vial was in San Fran instead of nestled somewhere on the 10th floor of the Kaiser building.  We confirmed this morning that the vial was safely at Kaiser, but, man oh man, did I feel irresponsible and hopeless for a while last night.  We mailed it on CD1 of the first cyst cycle back in August.  It was just so long ago, we couldn’t remember the details.

I think I’m extra on edge about the possibility of a canceled cycle and the vial panic fed right into that.  Tomorrow morning is our CD9 ultrasound and I’m anxious.  Disappointing ultrasounds have become our MO lately, and I’ve become a little wand-phobic, I think.  Please think good thoughts for us tonight and tomorrow.

Shortly after the panic episode, we did have a moment of excitement when we realized that Pacific now has videos available for some of their donors.  We shelled out $45 bucks (I mean, seriously, what a racket!) and got to watch a 6 minute interview with our donor, Phlox.*  This was the first time we’d seen him as an adult so we were relieved to find him cute and articulate.  He had such sweet things to say – he sounded nervous, but very genuine and kind.  We are pleased and quite ready to make a baby with his sperm in the next few days.

*Thanks to Keely for helping sort out our frozen donor’s blog name.  She ingeniously produced a link for frost tolerant plants so our frozen donor can have a plant name too!

103 and About Me

We are still very excited about the low-enough estrogen level.  Since Fern was out without her cell phone on Saturday when I got the call, I put this up on our door so she could find out the results at the earliest moment possible.

Before she focused on what it said, she thought I had put up some halloween decorations.  We moved the numbers inside later so we don’t confuse the neighbors.

We know we’re not necessarily in the clear for this cycle, but it feels good to have some hope.  We spent the rest of Saturday feeling happy – we went out for a celebratory lunch and then did some errands.  One errand we couldn’t complete was buying a hula hoop (they didn’t have any at target).  Get this, according to one of the other acupuncturists at our acu center, some practitioners in China prescribe hula hooping to help with fertility!  Apparently shaking your abdomen like that helps increase blood flow to reproductive organs and gets your qi moving.  We thought we had to try something so hilarious and awesome, but Fern’s treatment will have to wait since I guess hulu hoops aren’t as easy to find as we thought.

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In blog maintenance news, I’ve been updating my “About Me” section for the last week or so.  What do you think?  Does it come off as too depressing?  Would you want to read my blog based on this?

We’re In, Baby!

I just hung up with the RE’s office and Fern’s estrogen is 103, elevated for sure, but low enough to go ahead with this cycle!  They like to see it under 100 so we’re definitely just barely squeaking in, but I don’t care, we get to try!  Since Fern is at a reflexology appointment this morning, you are finding out before she does (sorry, sweetie!).

Thank you for all your incredibly helpful comments on the cl0mid question.  It’s still confusing trying to figure out what to do, but we’ve decided to do cl0mid this cycle.  Inspired by halfadozen and others of you, we’re going to do the next cycle unmedicated as a rest cycle and see what data we can draw.

Cl0mid will start today and we have a monitoring appointment on Friday.  I’m excited but definitely still apprehensive.  I’m anxious to know what they find at the US on Friday.  But for now our weekend isn’t ruined and for that I am grateful.

Cysts are the Devil!

Fern got her period yesterday.  I just got back from our baseline ultrasound appointment and, fuck it all, those fucking cysts are still there.  Bigger, in fact.  Well, one of the three is gone but one remains on each side.  Same as last month, today’s blood draw will determine our fate.  If Fern’s estrogen is too high again then we’re out for a THIRD cycle in a row.  I honestly don’t know if I have a reserve of patience deep enough to sit out another cycle without pulling my hair out.  We’ll know the bloodwork results sometime tomorrow.

The appointment also brought up another quandary and made it apparent that Fern and I are sitting in the middle of a quiet, methodological war between the two REs at the clinic.  Our regular RE, The Emperor, doesn’t work Fridays at this location, so we saw Dr. Giggles again (he gave us the ultrasound last time and we really liked him).  However, after the scan, Dr. Giggles started questioning why we were on Cl0mid instead of Fem@ra (The Emperor argued very persuasively for us to take Cl0mid and thought Fem@ra, which we were on with Dr. GUB, was a horrible idea) and then questioned whether it was necessary Fern be on any fertility medication at all.  He said Fern had normal cycles and didn’t have any problems before she started taking the fertility meds, so why not take her off the drugs altogether and try unmedicated IUIs?  He said we have no reason to think she has any fertility problems, so maybe the drugs are what’s messing us up.

I don’t know what to think of this.  I’ll bullet it out.

• On one hand, it’s nice to have an RE actually have faith in Fern’s body.  Most REs operate from the perspective that medication is the only way to a baby.
• However, I don’t know if I believe that what’s happening now in Fern’s body is really a reaction to any drugs and, therefore, we shouldn’t avoid them this next cycle.  We like the increased odds cl0mid gives.
• Back to the first hand, though, we didn’t have these weird cycles before starting with the drugs – with the cysts Fern has had really light bleeding and short cycles, definitely not her normal and not something she’s experienced through our many months of ICIs.  So maybe the drugs have messed things up in there.
• Switching hands again, we weren’t doing ultrasound monitoring when we were doing ICIs, so we don’t technically know what was going in in there – there might have been problems we didn’t know about.

Here’s the condensed timeline from when we started the fertility drugs:

• April: cl0mid and ICI
• May: cl0mid and ICI
• June: cl0mid and ICI
• July 1: off because of travel
• July 2: cl0mid and canceled IUI bc CD10 Ultrasound found Fern had already ovulated
• August: fem@ra and IUI
• September 1: canceled for cyst
• September 2: canceled for cyst
• October: ???

So if we even get the go-ahead tomorrow, we have to be ready to decide if this will be a cl0mid cycle or a natural IUI cycle.  I’m leaning towards cl0mid but I think Fern is leaning the other way, or is at least on the fence.  What would you do?

Re-reading this post, I’m not sure I’m being clear.  But I’m too worn out to edit much, so just let me know if you can’t understand what I’m talking about.

Flutters

The trip east was almost entirely wonderful and just what we needed.  We got a solid dose of family and friends and I got to spend some time with my beloved ocean.  Fern’s childhood town is right on the ocean and my favorite thing to do when we’re visiting her parents is jog along the shore especially when the waves are fierce like they often are in the fall.  It’s most thrilling when the weather is a little gray, drizzly and chilly and the ocean splashes onto the tidy promenade under my feet.  I love the energy from the water – it just fills me up.  Humbling, beautiful, powerful, all of that.  I love how it can barely be contained by the sea wall.

I’ve been meditating almost every day (I missed a couple while we were in Mass) and it’s been challenging but good.  I upped my time to about 2-3 minutes per session because 1 minute felt too short.  It doesn’t feel like I’m quite *meditating* exactly – I still need to chase a lot of thoughts from my brain, – but it does feel good to try to clear my mind and spend a few minutes in a nice, quiet spot.  Based on the comments, I think about 12 of you were going to try meditating this week too – how did it go?

Fern finished up the active BCPs and now we’re waiting, waiting for her period.  The trouble is, she never stopped spotting so we’re not sure how to identify CD1.  The doctor said we should do an ultrasound in 4 days if we can’t decipher spotting from period.  I’m holding my breath that we’ll be cleared to try this cycle – we’ll know by early next week.

Since we’ve waited so long for this cycle, IUI #2, to even start, there’s now a lot riding on it.  All of my stored up hopes and fears and dreams are pushing a little at my insides, ready to apply themselves.  I’m trying for calm and I will continue to try.  But no matter how this cycle shapes up, it’s bound to be a hard one because I’m just anticipating so much.  For the last week or so my stomach has been doing turns and flips for hours at a time like I’m nervous or in love but it’s completely out of the blue.  I don’t know what to make of that – I assume it’s just the flutter of anticipation.  Add that to the impatient tap of my foot and the distracted thought fragments circling my head and you’ll get a sense of the eager, antsy chorus on loop in my brain.  It is time.

What Is This Strange Feeling?

I’m almost afraid to say it for fear of jinxing myself, but last evening and today I experienced several hours of what can only be described as cheerfulness.  It feels very weird and what’s most striking about it is how different it feels compared to how I have been feeling.  I mean, I know I’ve been down, but the contrast is really remarkable.

Last night I stopped by a new, gourmet market after work just to check it out.  I love me some fancy, over-priced food.  I browsed and bought a bag of espresso.  As I was walking back to my car I noticed that the air was the most perfect temperature imaginable, like a warm bath.  So I decided to take advantage and went for a run around a nearby lake.  I ran so much faster than usual (probably because I usually run in the morning) and afterward was filled with extra energy so I cleaned up the house and did laundry.

I tried my first 1 minute meditation and it went so well that I added a second minute.  I definitely didn’t have a totally clear mind, but I did my best and I really enjoyed it.  When Fern got home around 9:30 I was sitting on the couch sipping my herbs and reading the enneagram book my therapist loaned me (have any of you done the enneagram test?  It’s kind of like Myers Briggs and I’m fascinated by it right now).

I felt so upbeat and productive that I was worried I’d have trouble sleeping.  But, no!  For the first night in ages I fell right asleep.  Fern had set the room up with lavender essential oil before we got into bed and it was heavenly.

This morning I had many moments of grumpiness, but that was somewhat temporary.  I’m now doing my work (amazing) practically cheerfully (amazing).  When my boss came by to tell me about her international trip with her partner and baby, I didn’t even need to fake enthusiasm.

I’m sure it helps my mood that we’re leaving for a long weekend tonight.  I’ll take whatever reason I can get.

The other thing that has me so excited is that so many of you are going to try the meditation challenge with me.  It’s going to help me stay disciplined to know that you’re with me.  Please let me know how you did if you tried it yesterday or today!

This post probably isn’t too interesting, but I just wanted to put this mood on the record!  I just went back and added some pictures to try to make it more enticing.

Meditating

I am not a blissed-out, relaxed, yoga-posing kind of Olive.  Did you know this about me?  It’s safe to say I’m wound a little tight.  I’m a sometimes anxious, worrying, over-thinking, planner kind of Olive.  When I lie in bed at night or go for a walk or run, my gears are usually spinning as I recount a conversation from the day (or from 10 years ago), make a list, think about Y or worry about Z.  Acupuncture is one of the only times I’m able to turn off my head a little, and even there I struggle sometimes with just relaxing and turning my brain down.

So on Monday when my therapist suggested trying meditation as a way to center myself I was a little skeptical (and I still am).  Truthfully, I’ve always admired people who could meditate and wished I had that discipline.  But it overwhelms me to think about learning and I worry that I would just fail.  But she told me that she’s similarly anxious and has not only learned how to meditate but has found that it really helps her.  Also, (and this is what won me over) she said I only need to start with one minute at a time.  We practiced in the session.  It wasn’t so bad.

So I’m putting myself up to a meditation challenge starting tonight.  I’m going to try doing one minute of meditation a few times a week.  My technique is to just sit up straight with my feet touching the ground and focus on my breathing while trying to keep my mind as clear as possible.  When thoughts come into my mind I’ll just try to acknowledge and release them.  I’m going to even set a timer for now – that makes it feel more doable.  If I like it and keep it up for 3 weeks, there’s a free, monthly group meditation session at the center where my therapist is that I’m going to try.

Would any of you other meditation novices out there like to join me in my challenge?  It will only take a few minutes of your week!  Also, I know some of you are very practiced meditators – do you have any advice for me?