Starfish Envy

A Good Pregnancy

Okay.  The story of the Three Pee Sticks... which will inevitably be disappointing.

But it goes a little something like this:

It's last Tuesday.  I'm all proud of myself for NOT peeing on any sticks in advance of my test date.  No premature testing for me!  Not this time!  No, I have self-control!  Yay, me!!!

So I proudly drive across town to my doctor's office for a blood test.

Only when I get there, they don't have me on the bloodwork list.  But a nurse checks my chart and gives me an order sheet and tells me to go on in, and I march in and hold out my arm, and the nice lady sticks a needle in there and takes some blood, and I'm so flustered I totally forget to pay and march right back out to my car.  (It's okay, I have a big credit there from my IVF round.)

And then I wait.

At about two, the phone rings.  It's my doctor.  She's confused.  Did I take a home pregnancy test yet?

HUNH????  I say.

Apparently, I was SUPPOSED TO take a home pregancy test.  And THEN, if it was positive, come in for a blood test.  But since I just showed up, the nurse assumed it was for Day 2 bloodwork, and they tested all the wrong things.

Upshot?

TAKE A HOME PREGNANCY TEST.

So I hang up the phone, and now I'm starting to freak out, because I really hate home pregnancy tests.  They ALWAYS come up negative.  Plus, I only have one in the medicine cabinet, and I know that's not going to be enough.  No matter what it says, I'm going to want to take more than one.

I grab my friend Lesley, who has the good/bad luck to be staying with me for the week, and make her go to the drugstore with me.  I'm in silent-grim mode.  Because, one way or another, this is it.  I'm not happy about the delay, I'm not happy about the mind you-know-what of the phone ringing and seeing it's my doctor and then GETTING NO ANSWER, I'm just downright not happy at this point.

I get two brands of tests, a multipack of each, and we head back to my house.  

Where I then have to wait until I have to pee.

That takes about half an hour.  

Finally, I pee on the stick.

And there slowly emerges a vertical line to go along with the horizontal control line.

Hmm.

I take it out and show it to Lesley.  She agrees.  There's a vertical line and a horizontal line.  Also known as a plus sign.  As in positive.

I text a picture of it WP.  She confirms the sighting.  

We're all very restrained at this point.  Because this can't REALLY be happening, can it?

I wait forty-five minutes, and then I pee on a stick again.  Different brand of test.  On this one, I'm looking for two pink lines.

Sure enough.  There's that second line, clear as day.

I show Lesley.  This time there's a lot of laughing and not a few tears.  I text another picture to WP.  I email my doctor.  She emails back "Yahoo!!!"

Lesley pours two glasses of champagne, and I admit it, I have a couple celebratory sips-- my last alcohol for a very long time, I hope.

And it's still not totally official, because thanks to the doctor's office snafoo (which was probably my fault), I won't be getting the blood test results until the next day.

Which is why when I wake up in the middle of the night and have to pee, I take yet another test.

This time, the vertical line comes up at the same exact time as horizontal line.  And I figure that's good enough for me.

Still, I'm happy when my doctor calls the next morning and says "It's real!!"  My beta was 82, which (according to her nurse) is "a good pregnancy."  Because my beta is so high, I don't have to go in again until Wednesday of this week.  

At which point I will be five weeks and one day pregnant.

Still, a long, long way to go.  And I'm not holding my breath.

But I think (knock knock knock on wood) this one might be a keeper.

Bridesmaids Saves The Day

I got up this morning after eight hours of sleep, went to breakfast, came home, and took a two and a half hour nap.

THAT'S how tired I am.  (Pregnancy?  Progesterone?  Symptoms are the same.  I have no clue and wouldn't venture a guess.)

It's nine p.m. now.  I could've easily gone to bed at seven.  

Fortunately, I have Bridesmaids to keep me up until a reasonable hour.

I've watched it twice this weekend.  

For my money, no movie has better captured female friendship.  And it's easily the funniest movie I've seen in years.  From the opening bad-sex sounds to the Wilson-Phillips finale, there's not one second I don't love.

If you haven't seen it yet, you're in for something special.

And that's it for me and coherence.  Bedtime. 

I Gotta Get Some Sleep

Sorry for being so absent this week!

I'm dealing with a lot of fatigue, and also have a LOT of work that needs to get done without delay.  So whenever I'm not napping, I'm working.  Which is fun!  But leads to more exhaustion.

I did go to yoga this morning, and my yoga teacher (who's extremely intuitive) thinks at least one of my three eggs fertilized... and that there's a chance he or she will be sticking around.  I just need to stay positive!

Which, I'm finding, is significantly easier to do when I don't test early.

So if nothing else I've learned something from this cycle: testing early is bad for my mental health!

Eight Days And Counting

I got nothin'.

This is my tenth Two Week Wait.

What can I say that I haven't said before?

I'm more tired this time around.  I'm grumpier.  (It's too soon for that to mean anything, so don't bother reading into it.)  I seem to have a bad case of allergies.  Or an impending cold.  Not sure which.

I guess the one difference is that it's sort of a relief that I've decided not to test early.  I don't have to think about when/if I'm going to test... I'm just not doing it.  

Otherwise... I dunno.  I'm not optimistic, because how could I possibly be?  But I'm not pessimistic, either.   I'm just taking it one day at a time.

In a tired, grumpy way.

Thirteen Days And Counting

I'm an early tester.

By that, I mean that I start taking pregnancy tests WAAAY before they could possibly show an accurate result.  I just can't stand the waiting.  Even though I know taking the test is a totally pointless waste of time and money (and pee), it gives me something to do other than twiddle my thumbs and wait.  

So I test.

Well, not this time.

One of my best college friends is moving to LA a couple days before my Official Test Date.  She'll be staying with me for a few days-- including Official Test Date day.  And we've agreed that I'm not allowed to test until she comes to town.  If at all possible, for the very first time, I'm going to wait until Official Test Date to do any testing at all.  I may not even do a POAS test.  (That's Pee On A Stick, for those of you who aren't familiar with fertility lingo.)  I may, if I can handle it, actually wait until my doctor appointment and let the blood test do all the work.

Crazy, I know.

But that's how I roll.

And Another Two Week Wait Begins...

Well, that's that!

My donor had excellent motility and the timing was good, so this is officially the first IUI I've ever had that actually has a shot in hell of being successful.

How insane is that?  I've been at this for almost two years.

My first five IUI's were with a moronic doctor who timed everything badly and didn't give me progesterone, then I did two more with my RE before she discovered the field of polyps in my uterus, and then, once the polyps were gone, one more IUI with a donor who had a TERRIBLE sperm count.

And then there was the IVF.  That totally could have worked... but didn't.

Making this my second real shot at getting pregnant.

At least I'm headed in the right direction!

That's something.  

Too Tired For Words

Well, most words.  

I can manage these:  Wish me luck.

IUI #9 in the morning.

One Foot In Front Of The Other

Saturday morning, I gathered up George's things-- food, toys, leash-- and dropped him off at Downtown Dog Rescue.  

I got a little teary when I said goodbye.

And then I came home.  I expected to fall apart, but I didn't.

I felt... flat.

Which is pretty much how I've been feeling since I found out I had to cancel IVF on Friday.

Flat.

Numb.

I've written about numbness before, but it's been awhile since I felt it.

I just kinda hit my limit.  There's no point in crying.  There's nothing to do.  (Except everything I'm already doing, which I have to keep doing, including taking hormone shots.  Ugh.)

It just is what it is.  

There's nothing to do but get through it.  

I know in a few days I'll feel fine.  

Just in time for a two week wait.  And we all know how fun THOSE are.

Yeesh. 

So Much For That

IVF #2 is canceled.  

I went to the doctor this morning and my follicles are no longer synchronized.  One follicle has taken a significant lead, and two others are still growing well, but the rest have completely stalled or disappeared.

Which basically means that this protocol-- Clomid, then Menopur and Bravelle-- doesn't work for me at all.

I also HATE how it makes me feel, which is incessantly miserable and depressed.

All told, I can't wait for this whole cycle to be over.

I have to take the meds for one more day, then take a trigger shot on Sunday, then I'll go in for a good, old-fashioned IUI on Tuesday morning.  

After that...

Le'ts just say I won't be holding my breath.

And Now I Shoot Up In Bathrooms

You guys are pretty cool.

And you're right.  Again!

Lots of people have positive outcomes with six follicles.  Or five.  Probably even four.  It's all about egg quality, not quantity.

Just gotta stay the course.  

So that's what I'm doing.

Tonight the course led me straight into a bathroom in my therapist's building in Beverly Hills, where I had to mix and inject two hormone shots.  

So.  Fun.  

(You have to take them at the same time every day, and the drive is so long that I couldn't take the shots before I left the house or wait until I got home again.)

Anyway, I was there in the stall, saline solution and drug vials sitting on top of the aluminum toilet paper holder.  And as I was clearing air from a needle, having mixed the saline solution with the Menopur powder, I caught a motion out of the corner of my eye and realized that the door to the stall had somehow unlocked itself and opened several inches.  

By the time I got to the door, whoever had been there was gone.  

But I'm pretty sure some nice lady in Beverly Hills thinks I'm a heroin addict.