I haven't blogged in a while, I just havn't been feeling inspired to write about anything, its seems my day to day life just goes by without incident, without anything special to write about. How sad is that, that I don't even feel happy enough about myself or my life to even write a few sentences about it every few days.....very sad.

Disturbing

I'm talking about the octuplet mom....I just can't let it go, I am angry at the unfairness of it all, I am angry at all the publicity its getting all of which only outcome will give ART and IVF a VERY bad name, I am disturbed that there is an RE out there who would transfer 8 frozen embryos at once, especially to a single mom that already has 6 children under the age of 7 - who is this guy? How on God's earth did she afford IVF for 14 children? How on earth will she feed/take care of 14 children by herself? It just makes me so sad and angry, I realize that doctors job is not to police how many children a person can have, but WHY WHY WHY ? Who in thier right mind would let this happen?

You gotta hand it to her

My best friend Aunt Flo that is, she really knows how to keep me guessing, I'm having a cycle like never before, but that's no surprise, browsing my fertility friend account, I don't have a typical cycle, not a one....this cycle, spotting on CD 17, EWCM on 21 and 22 along with a + OPK, now spotting 7 or 8 dpo, then no spotting, then spotting again, all spotting has been very very minimal an only light brown and mucousy, so who the hell knows what's going on, I'm feeling very crampy, but this is going on long enough for me just to get my hopes up....I've got plans for the weekend to play softball in the snow and hang out outside with friends all day Saturday, so I am sure she will show up just in time to make my life miserable and difficult by showing up at the worst possible time.....like I said you gotta hand it to her, villian that she is, she is very very good at it.

Spot.....

Need I say more.....

Blech...

So Saturday night I woke up about midnight with the worst stomachache and proceeded to the bathroom to throw up several times, went back to bed, woke up feeling a bit better but still very achy and my stomach very unsettled, spent all day on the couch Sunday.....my husband was totally convinced I'm pg...dumb boys...I would've only been 5 or 6 dpo on Sunday, not way morning sickness kicks in that fast, but of course he had to put the idea in my head....well the achiness has subsided but my stomach is still upset, everytime I eat something I feel icky and end up burping up the taste of whatever I ate for hours (TMI I know).....I KNOW its impossible, why does the body have to be so tricky? My husband wanted me to pee on a stick immediately (he even used the words POAS) I don't know where he got that from, I have NEVER used that terminology with him...but I refuse, I have some serious partying planned for the weekend, its the annual winter games celebration in a town near me which involves getting up at 7 am to play softball on the snow and also begin drinking at 7a.m., just to satisfy myself that I am not harming anyone but myself I will test Friday morning, but not until then....I know better.

Got my Rock on....

I have a list of things I want to do/experience before I die, morbid maybe, but you gotta have goals right? Anyway an AC/DC concert was on that list, since the boys are not spring chickens anymore I thought my chances were probably slim, well to my excitement they began a new tour and were scheduled to come to a city near me. Being the spaz that I am I didn't pay attention to when the tickets went on sale and before I knew it the day passed and the tickets were completely sold out - I was sad and upset that I let this chance go by, but a little hopeful that somehow I could still fulfill this item on my list, so I started frequenting e.bay and craigs.list and to my dismay the tickets were selling for upwards of $200 per ticket- yikes! I refused to pay that although face value was over a $100 per ticket, I was bound a determined to find another way. I remember that often after the actual final stage configuration is set in stone they often sell tickets they previously had blocked off, so I started checking t.icketmaster daily time was running out with only 5 days to the concert and I thought all efforts were lost.....but lo and behold 3 days to concert time I hit the jackpot, not only were there tickets for sale but AWESOME ones at that, I quickly bought them and started making plans for this list worthy trip.

The concert was last night and it was pretty much all I had hoped it would be, my seats were unbelievable, right next to the state but a couple rows up so I could see everything. Angus was A M A Z I N G - he is truly an unbelievable talent - its like the music posesses him, it would be nearly impossible to find another musician who throws himself completely into the performance the way he does, I have been to many concerts in my day and have never seen anything even close to that. I was kicking myself for not bringing a camera or even my cell phone, I guess I will just have to keep those images locked in my head.The concert rocked, my ears were still ringing as i went to bed last night, but I think it was a small price to pay to say that I rocked out with rock and roll legends!

Unhappy

I am not a happy person, I am unhappy because my infertility has consumed me. My babies died, there isn’t an hour that goes by that I don’t think of that fact, I realize people have miscarriages and lose loved ones all the time, I don’t think I’m special or deserve special treatment, but nevertheless, the grief is still very real to me and has a huge effect on me. When most people suffer miscarriages, they get pregnant again and go on to be the parents they hoped and dreamed of becoming. This has not been the case for me. We have been trying for over 5 years, everyday that goes by, I get older and the dream of being a mother gets further from my reach. While there are some options for treatment and advanced reproductive technology, these are things we cannot afford, my insurance plan only covers diagnostic testing, it does not cover any infertility treatment, in fact the policy book now states that if I do have any procedures done and pay for them out of my pocket, they will discontinue all of my coverage as it relates to infertility…doesn’t leave me any options. Treatments that increase chances by only a few percent cost $3,000 to $4,000 per cycle, In Vitro Fertilization which only has about 50% success rates, one cycle costs over $12,000.00. While that may not sound like a lot of money that’s half of what I bring home in a year, and that’s only for a chance, no guarantees. If we were to take a loan for that kind of money, and it actually worked, with the added costs of actually raising a child (or children as IVF usually results in multiples), and our expenses as they are and the way they are rising, we simply couldn’t make it. These procedures involve numerous, at times daily, doctor visits, poking and prodding that I won’t go into, extremely expensive drugs administered at home by injections with needles, the drugs have numerous side effects….all of these things for a 50% shot. All of that for something that almost any moron, thief, murderer, drug addict, 13 year old, pretty much anyone, can accomplish with ease. They say that often times an infertile woman’s state of mind or depression level is like that of someone with a diagnosis of terminal cancer, I wouldn’t disagree.

Now people are quick to chime in with ‘why don’t you adopt?’ Adoption is an very expensive option, an average domestic adoption costs around $30,000.00, we cannot afford that, plus you have to jump through so many hoops, and someone out there has to choose you, you have to sell yourself to someone in hopes that they may even consider you to be a parent, as you know, the state has all kinds of rules and regulations before they consider you fit, your financial situation, which in our case is not great, your extended family, the home you live in, I could go on and on, its not an easy option, waiting time can be years. Not to mention the emotional aspects of never knowing what your biological children would have been like, the stigma and negativity that goes with adoption, people thinking less of an adopted child, or stereotyping the type of people that would give their children up for adoption, and in the process stereotyping your child, for example as a baby of a drug addict, or worse. While these are things I could get past, the financial issue is not.

So all of this leaves me childless, feeling defective, betrayed by my body, bitter, hopeless, sad and at times, probably irritable, I cannot even begin to explain the despair that I feel not only for myself, for my husband, for my in-laws who will never have a grandchild at all if we don’t give them one, I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea. These thoughts and feelings consume me everyday, I try to not let it consume me, and some days are better than others, I can guarantee my worst days are the days when yet another one of our friends announced they are having their second or third baby, or our neighbor’s 15 year old daughter is pregnant, or another person I know completely takes their child or their pregnancy for granted, these things have a huge emotional drain on me. We have very, very few friends who don’t have children, its very hard to be friends with people, most anyone close to our age are parents and they want to talk about their children, their lives revolve around them, I simply can’t relate, it causes me to turn inward, it causes me much bitterness and resentment. To add fuel to this fire, my husband is very adamant that we don’t share our struggles with anyone, he feels it is our business and our business alone, honestly, only a couple close friends are the only ones who even know what we’re going through, others may know on some level, but we have never told them.

Why does life have to be this hard, I know life is unfair, but why do some of us have such a huge burden to bear and others none at all? Add it to the list of things I will never understand.

Seriously.....

Spotting.....CD 17.....WTH???? Need I say more...I've felt like I may some cysts leftover from last medicated cycle so who knows what is going on, hopefully nothing too bad, I just don't have the energy to go get it checked out, hopefull it will resolve itself, why can't my body just behave normally?

Good gracious!!!

So I wrote the other day I started cleaning out one of our spare bedrooms, I was feeling pretty motivated so I kept on going, closets, bedrooms, attic - I hauled 4 carloads of stuff to the thrift store, and ended up with 14 huge garbage bags of stuff to throw away - can you say PACKRAT!!! It feels so good to have that stuff all cleaned out, I've got some organizing to do yet but I'm really feeling like I've accomplished alot, a good start to a fresh new year!

Cleaning up...

I was cleaning out our spare bedroom last night and came across I file of papers essays etc. I had written over the years in high school and college. I was completely amazed that I wrote those papers, I'm one of those people that remembers EVERYTHING, I can tell you the most minute details about almost everything in my life, its freaky actually, but some of these papers....I have no recollection of writing them, if they didn't have my name on them I would have thought someone else wrote them. I used to be so open minded and if I do say so myself, I was smart, I had the whole world ahead of me and I saw things so differently then....it was obvious in every sentence that I wrote no matter the subject.

It made me sad, I miss that wide eyed innocent girl. The one who hadn't yet been betrayed and scorned by life, she had her whole life ahead of her, so much optimism and hope....I miss her so much, I wish everyday I had a time machine and could go back to those days and make so many decisions in my life differently, but I can't, so I just have to try to learn something from that girl, try to find that optimism and hope back somehow.....

Living my whole adult lifehood in small town nowhere has certainly changed me, I never saw myself here, but here I am, I've forgotten all the wonderful things that are out there, I've decided that I need to get some of that old me back, I need to keep learning, I need to stop making ttc my one and only obsession, I am going to check out some classes at our local community college, I used to love literature and poetry classes, I'd love to learn more about photography, I've got to open my world to all those things that used to be important to me, I'm really excited, I've been contemplating therapy for a while now, I think just some non-ttc outlet is gonna be just what I need.

My story

I thought I'd give a go at this, I love to read everyone else's blogs, I thought I would start my own.

So I'm 32, soon to be 33 and as my title implies very reproductively challenged. It all started in in June, 2001, we were married but were not in a big hurry to have kids, we had bought an old house we were remodeling, which took a couple years, we weren’t making much money, had big student loans, etc….Thanksgiving 2003 we decided to give it a try…we were so excited...4 months went by, then 9 months and I was starting to get worried something was wrong and then in August of 2004 we got a surprising beautiful BFP, everything was going well, I was feeling good, we were SO excited I had started telling people, I told my family at 8 weeks, the very next day I started spotting on a Saturday went to my Dr first thing Monday morning, she did an exam and sent me for an u/s, by this time I was bleeding a little more and was sure it was all over, did the u/s and there was our little bean, heart beating away, but measuring 6wks instead of 8wks, they were optimistic, I was completely clueless, but I knew despite the heartbeat, it was not good, the bleeding and cramping got worse as the day went on, they wanted to me to wait 2 days to come back, but I insisted on an u/s the next morning and my little bean wasn’t there any more.

We were so devastated, but still hopeful, so we waited one cycle and tried again, and the very 1st month we got a very faint positive, so faint I wasn’t sure it was real …I kept testing waiting for the line to get darker and at 6 wks finally tested with a digital which popped up “Pregnant”, the next morning before I could even make a dr. appt. I started cramping and bleeding heavily, went in and they took blood, I was pg, but the numbers were on their way down, again devastation but this time with panic – why did this happen again!! My dr. set up an appt. with an RE to do some testing for recurrent m/c, they tested me for everything under the sun and then I had a consultation with my RE, the only things that came back abnormal was that I have MTHFR – which is a gene mutation that can cause blood clotting issues and the way your body absorbs folic acid and they suspected I had PCOS, so we did more testing and u/s and they found a gigantic 8cm cyst on my ovary, they started me on glucophage for the PCOS and baby aspirin and folic acid for the MTHFR and birth control pills to see if we could shrink the cyst, they also did an HSG which was completely clear and normal, the cyst did not budge so they wanted to do lap surgery to remove it, I had to wait until tax season was over and had the surgery in May of 2005, they removed the cyst and also found some mild spots of endo which they removed, at my follow up appt the dr. was sure with all the “cleaning up” they did and the glucophage, that I would get pg easily.

So we tried and tried, 6 months went by and I was getting impatient, the RE suggested Clomid, so with great optimism we tried it for 3 cycles, with u/s and trigger shots, but nothing, took a little break and did two more higher dose cycles, at my last u/s which was by this time October 2006, they told me that I had another large cyst and would probably need surgery again and they would want to move on to injectibles…..I went out to my vehicle and bawled and bawled, I knew we couldn’t afford injectibles, my insurance does not cover fertility drugs and will not allow IUI or IVF, and I did NOT want to go through surgery again.

So two years passed and I hoped, and cried and prayed and started posting on community message boards for other girls like me. A very kind woman that I met offered me a very generous gift - she had suffered numerous miscarriages and was giving ttc up for good and had tons of injectible meds leftover, I of course took her up on this generous offer and set up a long overdue appointment with my RE. I had to start testing all over again since it had been so long, everything turned out normal and we were off and running. My first injectible cycle went great, I had 4 large follicles on CD 10 and triggered, but unfortunately it didn't work and we tried a second cycle.

The second cycle was frustrating to say the least, I took the injections til CD 21 and finally had some follicles big enough to trigger but sadly again, no pregnancy. So I am at another crossroad in my journey, do I try to scrape the money up for IVF, do I give up altogether? I have also thought of seeing A NaPro doctor, I think this will most likely be my next step.....you'll just have to stay tuned to find out:)