IUI #1 = Apparent Failure

DAMN IT!!!!! DAMN IT!!!!! DAMN IT!!!!!

Tomorrow morning I'm supposed to go for bloodwork to see if IUI #1 worked. Early in the morning. By early, I mean between 6:30 a.m. and 8:00 a.m., to a town fifteen miles away. Which means me (NOT a morning person) needs to be up and moving at like 5:30 a.m. to get everyone else where they need to be. And, thanks to the surprise awaiting me in the ladies' room just now, it’s a futile trip. AF has arrived. My boobs weren’t tender because of pregnancy, they were sore because that’s what happens just before AF arrives. And the cramps are starting. So now I’m pissed that I have to get up and go in anyway. I may just call them and see if they can just run the bloodwork today.

Okay, that’s a big “NO”. Just got off the phone with one of the Center’s nurses, and I still have to go in tomorrow AND keep up the progesterone suppositories until they say I can stop. I had actually raised the question about taking July off and then cycling in August with one of the nurses when we first started the Follistim last month. Her response was “well, slow down, let’s hope this one takes and then you won’t need to worry about taking a month off”. She obviously hadn’t seen the black cloud hanging over my head when I walked into the Center for all those ultrasounds and bloodwork.

I’m pissed that it didn’t work. I’m pissed that I’m not pregnant. I’m scared that it did work, and I’m bleeding anyway, just like the very troubled pregnancy last year with our Little One started out. I’m scared that I am pregnant and that something is very wrong. I’m scared that I’m not pregnant and I won’t ever be again. I'm scared that I'll have the same problems with my lining being too thick and having to put off our next IUI; I mean, we had to wait three frigging cycles to get this IUI in. And if I’m not, somewhere there is a sense of slight relief that next month, while we’re camping two hundred miles away with a bunch of friends, I won’t be constantly wondering if the pregnancy is going well, if everything’s okay, or if my bad luck is holding, and it will be another lost child in our lives. This sucks!

We’re taking next month off, much to DH's dismay. Well, it's not that he's upset that we're taking a month off, it's that he was a little taken aback when I explained that I wanted to take July off, and then try two more times (if possible) in August and September. He thought it would just be two months in a row and then we were done with this whole chapter. And it might have been, if my frigging lining had cooperated!

As I said before, I’m not doing all this while I’m trying to enjoy one of the few weeks I get off to spend with my family. I just can’t do it, mentally or physically. Shooting up with hormones every night and the scheduling of everything just won’t work. On the bright side, I can now have a few margaritas or cosmos sitting on the beach, instead of trying to explain why I’m not drinking without giving away too much info; so far, this past month I’ve just said that we’re trying and I can’t drink with the medication I’m on, and that’s been said to only a few of the girls. And I won’t have to listen to the vast array of responses, ranging from “good for you, sweetie, we’re pulling for you” (thank you, thank you, thank you to those friends) to “what are you, nuts, you want a baby now at your age?!?” (for the record, I’ll be 40 in December, and yes, I want another child at my age. P.S. for those people: until you’ve walked in my shoes, shut the hell up! If I didn’t want another baby, I sure as hell wouldn’t be trying so hard, huh?!?).

So now, I wait until August to start the process for IUI #2...

I'm Not Infertile, I'm Birth-Challenged

This has been bugging me for a while. As I read everyone else's blogs (wishing I had half the writing skills of most of you, and the sense of humor too!), I realize, that for many of us, we're not infertile. We are fertile. We get pregnant. We just can't seem to stay pregnant, for whatever reason, known or unknown.

I’ve been pregnant four times, for crying out loud. I’m more fertile than most of my family or friends. I think there needs to be a different word for women and couples like me and DH. Well, not DH, because apparently he’s just fine in that department, according to the embryologist who handled two days of his samples (Thanks, me and my old eggs really needed to know that it’s me, not him. Maybe a little more stress will help, huh?!?)

On that note, I realize that I’m not suffering secondary infertility. I’ve had four pregnancies, so that means I’m experiencing quinary infertility. Don’t laugh. I actually Googled it (I Google everything). On www.askoxford.com, it poses the question “What comes after primary, secondary, tertiary?” The answer is: “The sequence continues with quaternary, quinary, senary, septenary, octonary, nonary, denary. Words also exist for `twelfth order' (duodenary) and `twentieth order' (vigenary).”

So my situation would be better described by saying that I am a quinary birth-challenged woman. Hey, if we can go from “garbage man” and “housewife” to “sanitation engineer” and “domestic engineer”, then I can be a quinary birth-challenged woman.

Moon Face

I've got moon face already. Ugh! Both Monday and Tuesday, I left work at midday to drive to the Center, confirm that yes, that is my husband’s name and date of birth on the side of the syringe you’re inserting into my hooha, and then sit with my legs up reading a really good book (Sara Paretsky’s “Fire Sale” – I LOVE V.I. Warshawski books!) for 10 minutes. Last night (Tuesday) started the progesterone suppositories, 1 in the AM, 1 in the PM. I know the reasoning behind prescribing them, and I will stick to the directions, but can I just say: THEY ARE SO MESSY!!!!

DH stayed yesterday for the procedure, after a very long pointed conversation Monday night. Doing the infertility dance was part of it, but other issues came up as well. Trust me, the hormones don't help! But he was in the parking lot yesterday, waiting for me, and told me he would come in if I wanted him there. I have a better sense of humor (my family can find humor in anything), and told him I thought it might be nice if he were in the room when I'm impregnated with his child. Of course I want him there! So in he came, acting like "a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs".

I really want to try to combat the weight gain these things bring on, but can’t do Curves until tomorrow. The end of the school year is next Wednesday, and between meetings, projects, and appointments, I’m going to have a hard time fitting even Curves in. Really going to have to watch the food intake too. When I went on the progesterone before (last year, as a last ditch effort for the Little One that we knew wasn’t going to make it), I socked on about 7 pounds and had such a puffed face!

Have the bloodwork to see if the IUIs worked on June 27th. Two weeks of waiting and mess and pads. If it doesn’t work, I’m taking July off. We’re going camping with a bunch of friends, and I cannot do this in the wilds of Maine. The week also falls midcycle, and I cannot be driving two hours each way to do this whole thing. So, if we’re not pregnant this time, we’ll wait until August to try again.

On the Road

Okay, we’ve had four days of 75 units of Follistim, followed by bloodwork. Then, a call from the Center: increase from 75 to 100 units for two nights, then come in for bloodwork and an ultrasound. Did that this morning. Ultrasound tech Wednesday and today was the same woman, and she’s awesome! Answers questions, turns the screen to show you everything.

Wednesday and today, they had students on externships drawing blood. Wednesday, they asked if I would be okay with a student drawing. I said “no problem, okay with me”. A female student from one of the local colleges drew on me, and was pretty good, but then again, I’ve always been told I’m an easy stick. This morning, no asking for permission, they just assigned a guy to me who looked like the last place he wanted to do his externship was in a fertility center. He did okay, but I had to remind him to take the rubber tourniquet-thingy off after he withdrew the needle and applied the gauze/tape combo.

Now I’m waiting for another follow-up call to tell me what to do next. I am very proud of myself as DH won’t go near the needles, so I’ve been handling the injections. Did the first one in the thigh, which was okay but not great. The rest I’ve done in my stomach, being a big brave girl each time I have to watch that needle go in. Did mention to DH that, if he can't take the needles, he'd better drop some weight (as his MD had mentioned) before his blood sugar rises anymore and he becomes a full-fledged insulin-dependent diabetic...

I just want to send out big hugs to Zarqa and Thalia; I thought of both of you this a.m. There was a couple there this morning who were coming out of an exam room as I was going in for the u/s. They had been in the waiting room when I got there. She was clutching a crumpled ball of tissue, and he was walking behind her with his head hung down. My heart goes out to them, and to Thalia, and to Zarqa, and all of us who’ve lost someone before we could even say “hello”.

Waiting to Start

We’ve finally getting to delve into the world of infertility treatments, because for the last three months, we’ve been on standby. Actually, we’ve been on hold since November. First off, as you folks on the same road as me know, you can do nothing after your consult until the great hand of the insurance company deems that you can. Then you need to have the initial tests, and then more insurance approvals. Then you must, at least at our RE, attend an IUI informational session, along with all the other couples in the same boat. And I’m sorry, but going to a session two days before Christmas wasn’t going to happen in my house without serious psychological harm being done to my mind (in that everything-must-be-perfect-for-the-holidays-now-trim-that-tree-and-wrap-those-presents-and-who-cares-as-long-as-the-cards-are-postmarked-by-Christmas mode).

So we finally get to a session in January. Then DH travels in February. Then in March and April, I’ve got too thick of a lining at the start of my cycle, and they want nothing to do with me. Actually, my RE wants to do a hysteroscopy and endometrial biopsy in April, so we schedule it for a Monday I happen to have off (but so do the kids and DH). The Monday happens to be the day after Easter Sunday, and on Easter Sunday, the Center calls my house and leaves a message, changing my 2:00 p.m. procedure to 11:30 a.m. We, of course, are at Easter dinner at my folks with my brother and his family, and we don’t get the message until that night. Now comes the fun part: how can you physically get a 10-year-old to his orthodontist appointment twenty miles away from where you need to be dropped off thirty minutes later for your procedure? The answer: you can’t, unless you call your aunt, who was going to watch your kids that afternoon while DH took you to the original appointment, and she graciously offers to drop you off. So I get dropped off at my reassigned time, and get all the way through the gates of scrutiny. Just before they come to give me the La-La-Land I.V., the nurse hands me a prescription for an antibiotic, which I quickly realize is harmful to fetuses. I mention this to her, and her eyes glaze over. She asks why I would be concerned, and I tell her that I am ovulating (according to those sticks I keep peeing on every month), and since we had five minutes to ourselves while we were hiding the Easter eggs, DH and I had “unprotected relations”. She goes in search of my RE, who kindly explains that, while he truly doubts that I would be getting pregnant on my own with the lining issue, my procedure is now OFF; he doesn’t want to risk flushing an embryo into my tube. So another month is down the drain.

I should explain one thing here. My mother’s mother’s mother died of endometrial cancer, which was finally diagnosed one Easter when she and my great-grandfather were visiting my grandparents. She starts to hemorrhage, and her son-in-law, my grandfather, who was an OB/GYN, took her to the hospital and ending up consulting on her diagnosis. So my concern isn’t so much that I can’t get pregnant because my lining is continuously too thick, but that there’s something more ominous going on down there. At this point, I mentally decide that if, in the great scheme of things, my losing Jimmy and the Little One were so that I would be followed this closely and that something bad would be caught and treated early so that I would live to see my grandchildren, then I would be somehow find resolution in all of this.

We plan to do the procedure early in May, and it’s done by one of the other REs on a Friday. He mentions inflammation, and I’m put on that antibiotic that stopped everything in its tracks last time. Then I’m told to wait for the results, that I’ll get a call in 7 to 10 days.

You know what happens already. No call. I wait two weeks, and then I call. The first nurse says that the results aren’t even in my file (electronic or paper). Then she calls back, says everything is fine, and we can go ahead with our scheduled April/May IUI. Please note from above, it’s now mid-May. I call the Center in a very agitated state, requesting that my RE call me regarding this budding FUBAR chain of events. He calls me back within thirty minutes (very impressive!), and tells me that all the test results read “normal”, that the other RE shouldn’t have said “inflammation” and that I’m to call CD#1 of my next cycle so we can start the IUI process. He adds that, if I have any other concerns or problems, call him directly (wow, a doctor that will speak directly with his patients!). So, now, after four Follistim shots, I wait for the call regarding this morning’s bloodwork, and for my head to stop hurting where I've been banging it against the wall of bad customer service...

Jumping In

No way to start this blogging thing like jumping in feet first. Welcome to my blog about life, love, and the emotional trials of pregnancy loss and secondary infertility. I have started this blog because I have no time or money to get to a therapist, so I thought maybe my venting could be put to use elsewhere. It may do no one else any good, but I hope someone can find consolation, wisdom, or a good old-fashioned belly laugh from something I write...

Today is Cycle Day #4 of what I hope will finally be our first IUI cycle. Two shots with the Follistim pen down, two more to go... oh, then the trigger shot, then the suppositories, daily early morning drives (all before work!) to the Center for bloodwork, and more bloodwork, and more bloodwork, and an occasional ultrasound (internal, of course; nothing like that to wake you up, huh, ladies?!?). Did I mention NO drinking of alcohol, caffeine, soda, no dying of hair, no eating of soft cheeses, cold cuts, peanuts or tree nuts, or most seafood? All in search of a rising HcG and a healthy pregnancy and an OB/GYN practice that can actually handle dealing with the care and concerns of an “older gravida” (because I’ll be 40 in December) who’s had multiple losses for the forty weeks of nail-biting 24/7 worry. It is worth it? In my opinion, in a word: YES!

All this while dealing with DH, who’s looking like I just stole his soul or something; he’d have been perfectly happy stopping after we lost Jimmy, and when the topic comes up, often acts much like a bull being led into the ring by the nose. I also have to continue the day-to-day mom thing with the lights of my life, the 10-year-old and 6-year-old sons that we do have living safely under our roof, both of whom were conceived, carried, and delivered the old-fashioned way, who allowed the shield of innocence regarding fertility to remain over my eyes for all that time. God, do I miss those days!