Chasing Baby Mayr

An Honest and Hopeful Fertility Blog
Chasing Baby Mayr
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    • Cycle 16 Day 12: The Fertile Window Is Here Again If You Can Call It That When You’re…Ya Know…InFertile

      Posted at 3:22 am by amayr1984, on March 1, 2019

      I’m on the Clomid again and boy does the Clomid suck. My husband and I are getting along better but not by as much as I would like. Our time in marriage counseling though I think helped some things along for us and I am hoping that with all the challenges ahead we are not going to fold like an umbrella to the pressures of the world. My husband is a good but flawed person. Honestly if he would only get his act together with money then I could probably endure the rest as he is a really good partner otherwise except for a short temper and his believe that people are out to get him even when they wish him well.

      But who among the trying to conceive is perfect? I have been a crying and anxious mess on Clomid and I can barely stand myself. Luckily my husband works a lot but unfortunately for me there is no vacation from the madness and many of my coping mechanisms are out the window.

      Still jobless I can no longer afford Fit Body Boot Camp and this week thanks to Clomid (which I am gonna call CloMAD from now on because I hate it that much) I haven’t even gone the last few days I could go. I just couldn’t make myself leave the house. The disappointment of all the rejection emails from trying to get a job just has me in a place where I don’t want to be bothered. But the reality is I NEED to be bothered. Being alone all the time with everything I am dealing with just isn’t good for me.

      And for a while I was doing well. I was even cooking again and pretty active about taking care of myself but with CloMAD the good days come and go just like the bad ones. I am trying very hard to be patient and positive with myself even though it feels like every little thing in my life is going wrong.

      I have had some wild dreams on CloMAD and I dreamed the other day of breastfeeding a beautiful baby girl. I want children so very badly and as the time and the medications tick on I am starting to lose hope. I even had a bracelet that said hope on it that I lost just this week. So that bummed me out even more.

      I just want a baby and I’m tired of all the hard work in life with no rewards. Filling out job applications and constantly being rejected. Struggling with weight loss. The Golden State Warriors struggling after the All Star Break (ok that is not that important but today it feels important) and my husband and I humping our lives away and dealing with my mood swings on medications and having no baby to show for it. All of it is just beyond overwhelming at this point.

      Where is our win? And when is it coming?

      Tomorrow I have my ultrasound appointment and I hope I have some follicles that are close to mature. I hope I have 60 of them. I don’t care if they say there are too many we will still have sex and try to get pregnant. I just don’t care anymore. It doesn’t seem to matter even when we do have them we do not get pregnant. I hope this time is different but it’s hard to have faith when you keep getting the same negative results as time goes on.

      I also have a step 3 hearing for my case of wrongful termination at work tomorrow. I don’t expect it to be overturned or anything but it’s another step in the direction of getting me my job back and that matters a great deal to me that I may finally have my name cleared of this wrongful termination that has haunted me.

      I don’t know where our win is coming from. But I am ready for it. That much I do know. And for the Warriors to start winning again.

      We are still doing Sperm Meets Egg like previously explained so wish us the best. No baby dust. That shit does not work.

      | 0 Comments Tagged Ava, Baby, Black Women Trying To Conceive, Fertile Week, Golden State Warriors, Infertility, Personal, Pregnancy, Sperm Meets Egg, Struggles
    • Cycle 15 Day 11: I’m Snowed In But Fine

      Posted at 9:44 pm by amayr1984, on January 28, 2019

      The Fertile Week is almost upon us. Another chance to run the race. I’m very calm and excited though. I still marvel at the mood swings of each cycle. To go from despair to hope and riding this trying to conceive see saw just amazes me. I’m like a completely different person than I was two weeks ago.

      My husband and I have been feeling pretty great which is good. We’re both more conscious of drinking more water and I am swallowing my handful of pills daily. Tomorrow is my next ultra sound. I have another date with that probe in my vagina that I am not excited for BUT I cannot wait to see how many follicles I have. Every follicle that is mature enough is an opportunity for us. And I am just ready to see the whole picture going into the fertile week.

      My OPKs are still negative which is to be expected. I have two different predicted days of ovulation however. Ava, which was right on the money about my period last month when Glow was off about 2 days. Ava said I will ovulate on February 2nd. I am not sure which to trust at this time but I will cover all the days and of course keep the OPKs outcomes in mind. It can be tricky to pin it down on medicated cycles because there is something other than cyclical body chemistry at play but we are trying the Sperm Meets Egg Plan this go round and my husband is really involved about his part which makes me appreciate him so much more. At times it felt like I was doing most of the heavy lifting with this trying to have a baby thing and he was just complaining about his part which was like…hello? I’m the one in a perpetual cycle of hope and meltdowns while swallowing every supplement my Reproductive Endocrinologist can think of for me. But this time he has been very supportive and on top of getting the days we have to have sex right which has been so…just such a relief. Partner support can mean the world.

      So I am hopeful again. And I hope to keep this hope and that this hope will finally turn into our win. I would love to finally get my big fat positive test. My husband and I will have to explore other options if it doesn’t work out. And I am just exhausted of everything. I want this baby more than anything in the world and I am ready.

      | 0 Comments Tagged Ava, Ava Bracelet, Femara, Fertile Week, Letrozole, OVulation, Sperm Meets Egg, Trying To Conceive, Trying To Get Pregnant
    • CD 27: The Big Fat Negative Wins Again And The Race Resets

      Posted at 9:25 pm by amayr1984, on January 14, 2019

      I actually didn’t cry so very much this time. The saddest part is you get used to the pain. A callous forms and you can still feel it but less and less as time goes on. Over a year and you cannot help but harden to the constant disappointment. You cannot help but have the most agonizing negative thoughts after you have faced your dragon and been burned yet again. You cannot help but resent you body, and the people who get pregnant without trying and brag about it, and the people who will inevitably get pregnant before you do in the journey moving forward. Mostly you will resent those who will try in futility to comfort you when they know all you want is a baby, your own baby and not their meaningless words of “rah rah rah! You’ll get em next time Tiger!” Say do you know how many next times I have been through? Even the words lose their impact as the pain creates the callous. They hit the same hard spot and bounce right back off.

      So no I didn’t cry so much this time. I woke up at 4:30 am after having gotten a fairly decent night’s sleep (which should have also been a warning sign because I sleep terribly during the Two Week Wait when my temperatures are up). I checked my Ava against my better judgment and there was another temperature drop. It was still above the cover line but low enough that I knew that it wasn’t a promising sign. I lay there wondering should I just take the test now or would I even be able to fall back asleep with that looming over my head. After a while of laying there I decided to get it out of the way.

      On the long, but actually ridiculously short walk to the master bathroom I lived a thousand different moments of pregnancy test anxiety and reflection. I thought about all the times I had come to this same bathroom to get my heartbroken repeatedly this entire year and a couple of months now. I thought about the one chemical I had and how it had later been undone in that same bathroom hours later. I still hoped, because you always hope.

      When you grasp that package of First Response Early Response and you begin unwrapping it you can’t help but to hope. You want someone, anyone, or in this case anything to tell you that what you have already told yourself will be is wrong. You deserve that. I mean haven’t you suffered enough? You pull the stick out and pop the pink plastic top off and you think for a moment that there are so many people in the world who don’t even WANT those two pink lines who are going to get them this morning. There are so many people who are in the middle about what they want who will get them. Then there are those who absolutely are dying to get them like you this morning. Who have put on hold drinking, and coffee, and trips to Zika islands and have taken pills and vitamins and their entire sex lives have become timed intercourse…the fertility soldiers. We have put in work for it. And you pee on the stick and you dream that no matter what your temperature and your body is telling you…this time you are going to get what you deserve.

      This time you will get those two pink lines. You recap the test.

      You watch it develop. You watch as the moisture slides into the window and across that oval and you wait for that second line to fill in. You wait and you think of the look on your partner’s face when you tell him or her. You think of the joy you will feel and the time you will spend decorating the nursery as the moisture reaches the end of the window. You think of the baby shower and the surprised looks from friends and family when you tell them. And you think of the Facebook announcement and how you will recount your success, finally, to all the people in all those trying to conceive groups and message boards you are on. You remind yourself you will be sensitive that other people are trying so you will never start out bragging about how simple it was or it only happened in one cycle! Not you. You will remember that you were once them and you will write the most thoughtful recap of how YOU got YOUR very own…

      Big Fat Negative.

      And excuse me because I don’t know how to flip it around. That second line never colored. The last line, it always does. So you stare at it some more and you think maybe you see something. You trick yourself that those moments are still so very possible.

      You don’t see anything. Because there is nothing to see. There is nothing in your uterus. There will be nothing in your nursery. There will be no Facebook announcement.

      You hold the test up to the light to make sure you don’t see anything.

      Then you throw it in the trash because you want to get far away from it. Months previous you might have dug it out to just make sure there was nothing on it. But YOU, you are a veteran of infertility now. You know looking 6 more times won’t change anything. Besides you have to wash the deep conditioner out of your head that you wore over night so you can get back to your bed and have the good cry that is always in order and terrorize yourself with anger, self doubt and resentment.

      I texted my husband soon after. He called me from work and he is sick. I feel bad for him because I know he cannot help me and yet he wants to help me. I know he doesn’t even think about how not being pregnant is effecting him at all. But I wish he would. I wish he would say he is so disappointed too and thought we really did everything right and he will just be miserable if we don’t get pregnant some time soon as well. He doesn’t. He feels he has to be strong for me and listen to my feelings. But my feelings about my infertility have eaten our relationship whole. I don’t even know that he really likes me anymore because I am just so miserable all the time, who could? But that’s just me taking this out on myself isn’t it?

      It’s not my fault I am not pregnant. Logically I know this. I lay in the bed for a couple of hours after talking to my husband and I just go over in my mind all the what ifs and scenarios that would somehow make me even more miserable. If his brother and sister in law got pregnant before us after being married for a much shorter time. If we don’t get pregnant in the next 6 months. If we never get pregnant.

      What if I never get to be a mother? Why I won’t be happy. I won’t. I don’t know if I will never be happy because I can’t be if I do not become a mother or if I won’t allow that for myself because I keep repurposing this struggle into a personal failure?

      When I do finally wake up again it is 1:33pm and I cannot believe I slept so late. I had nightmares I can’t recall but none of them are as scary as the reality I face. Another month ahead.

      Another race. Will I ever catch Baby Mayr? Will it ever not hurt to get a negative pregnancy test.

      Will I ever smile and think…”well we got this next month!”

      I don’t know. I just know I don’t like riding this ride or running this race much at all. I don’t like knowing the hurt over and over and over again. I want to know victory.

      And why for me, potential victory means so much suffering.

      | 0 Comments Tagged Ava, Baby, Black motherhood, Depression, Fear, Hope, Hurt, Infertility, Motherhood, Pain, Sperm, Trying To Conceive, Trying To Get Pregnant
    • Cycle Day 26: Temperature and Spirit Drops

      Posted at 10:54 pm by amayr1984, on January 13, 2019

      Anyone who does Basal Body Temping knows that temperature drops, no matter how small, feel foreboding during this time in your cycle. (I use the Ava and the skin temperatures from that I input into my chart. Works on the same basic principal I just don’t have to remember the thermometer every morning)

      I woke up today to that drop and to a sense of dread and sadness. I do not want to seem the pessimist…or is it possible I have seemed the pessimist this entire time anyway. I can read back and double check on that one I guess.

      I got annoyed with my husband because he went out to go get storage boxes and stopped over to help his brother with something or other. I don’t really care he stopped over to help his brother but today was the day we were going to clean out the spare room to make room for the potential nursery I will do the painting on when I get some money to buy paint (a lot of requirements to be met). It felt like once again he was gone somewhere else doing something else when there was plenty to do at our house. It was partially selfish and unfair of me but also partially very true in the emotional moment I was in. I expressed my irritation. Thankfully it didn’t turn into a fight but I can tell it is still a source of tension between us. I just needed him today but he can’t ever fully understand the angst or dread I am going through anyway waiting to test. Do our partners truly understand any of it? He’s not even on a countdown. I had to remind him tomorrow I will be testing. It’s not really happening to him so it’s not a weight on his shoulders. Only some of the aftermath is.

      And…I hate testing. Whatever comes up I will post it and share it. I have the strong feeling it is a big fat negative since my temperatures are going down again. I don’t feel any cramps or anything particular but that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t feel very different either.

      Now is the time where I reflect what could have been done differently? Why are we so unlucky? Now is the time where I prepare to feel sorry for myself tomorrow. I wish I could march forward into the testing with a brave and confident face. I wish I could take that test and say to myself “I Know I Am Pregnant” even if I am not. I wish I could just believe that for a change because the sadness is harder. I did believe these things once a few months ago but the disappointment just weighs you down and it mocks you when you try to lift yourself up again.

      Remember down here where you always are? Remember.

      I wish I did not.

      As we cleaned out the room today I did begin to feel a small sense of destiny. I didn’t enjoy moving all that stuff into the basement mind you but I did enjoy getting rid of a lot of trash and clearing out the space. We have a lot of clutter that is very unnecessary. It is funny to see what you have accumulated when you really sit down and go over everything. Old dresses from college that I quickly put on Poshmark to try to get rid of because some of them are still in great condition. Old stuffed animals, Tons of books you haven’t even thought about…there is so much one accumulates over the span of their life and I am someone who gets rid of things two times a year and yet here was so much still. It was a bit of a relief to gather all that stuff up and move it out of the room.

      I found myself focusing on minor details afterwards that I hadn’t noticed like how the walls were textured and I didn’t particularly like that. Truth is all of our walls are textured and I just find it so irritating. So I was nitpicking even the thing that was supposed to be possibly bringing me so much joy which is getting to paint this nursery. Getting to believe that a baby will be in it one day.

      I don’t plan to buy anything for it before I get a positive pregnancy test. My husband wants me to but I feel if I do it will become my crying place while we continue to try. I don’t want that. I don’t want my depression to taint that room that will one day be the source of so much joy. But I do want to paint it. I do want to invest in it since investing in myself so much hasn’t yielded what I wanted yet.

      I want this baby so much. I will continue to chase you but please do not make me chase you anymore.

      Please do not make me spend this last day before they make me test trying to do some all encompassing chore so that the hours will drift by and I can ignore my sadness again.

      The truth is I want tomorrow’s test to be positive, of course. I just fear that it will not be and I will have to run this race again. The emotions are the worst part of this race. The changes of hearts and the slipping from hopeful to filled with despair. Trying to read your body even though you swear you aren’t doing just that. Your spouse joking you are pregnant even when you find yourself creating a superstition that doing so is damning so please join me in that superstition. O truly, they will never ever know what it is like for us to live this torture. They will see our moods and probably dread the two week wait for that reason alone but they will never know what it is like to be in it.

      To exist in anxiety, dread, hopefulness and fear all at once and to wait to take that test that you don’t want to be negative but it has been so so so many times. They will never know.

      Tomorrow I hope it will not be something I will know again. I hope this is my last two week wait for a long time. Please.

      The nursery is empty now and it just needs to be painted the way I want. The clutter is gone. We are waiting for you, Baby Mayr. Chasing you. Please let us catch you.

      | 0 Comments Tagged Ava, Basal Body Temperature, Charting, Depression, Glow, Hope, Infertility, Personal, Pregnancy Test, Two Week Wait
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      • Cycle 16 Day 27: Injectable Medications Arrived With Another Big Fat Negative
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