Chasing Baby Mayr

An Honest and Hopeful Fertility Blog
Chasing Baby Mayr
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    • 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
    • Cycle Day 23: Sick And Defensive

      Posted at 2:09 am by amayr1984, on January 11, 2019

      Last night was absolutely treacherous for me. I stayed up all night being sick. I threw up this morning and it was painful. I don’t know if I have a stomach bug or what is going on. As with anything in the Two Week Wait the fear at that point becomes “am I jeopardizing my potential for conception?” You know that is the drag of the Two Week Wait. You think everything is going to cause you to not become pregnant, however there is nothing you can really do even if you know that is the fact. I can’t not have a stomach bug.

      The worst however was losing my appetite. I have struggled with that in the past with my depression, most significantly when my father passed. Today being sick and throwing up made me not anxious to eat, however I got some chicken noodle soup at Chic Fil A before our couple’s counseling session.

      That only went OK today. I thought we were going in on really good terms but I took a ton of offense when my husband said he was worried about me and my sleeping so much and struggling to have a good appetite. I felt attacked because I really feel like I put a great effort into TRYING to be ok even when all of this is very overwhelming. I exercise. I eat healthy when I do eat and I do not sleep well when I sleep. Part of why I have been sleeping so much lately is that my luteal phase causes me to be very restless when I sleep. The hormone shifts keep me awake at night. I am sure my husband meant well but hearing things like that make me feel hopeless because I feel like I am carrying a lot of weight trying to achieve this pregnancy. I am taking a ton of medications it seems like and that Metformin just really makes me feel awful but I know it is helping me ovulate so I soldier on. Maybe I need to get on a more regular schedule and start taking it closer to the same time but I always take it with my first meal and that all depends on when I get up and when I feel like eating.

      I wish I felt like my husband trusts that I am going to take care of myself during this pregnancy. What he was saying today made me feel inadequate in a time where I feel like I am giving everything I can.

      Here is the thing: I do enjoy sleeping and I want to do that without setting off alarm bells that I am in some kind of crisis with my husband. My depression largely manifests as loss of appetite and sleeping so I get why he is alarmed but I am not in a bad place right now in my opinion and the hardest part of dealing with depression is having people watching you waiting for you slip back. You want them to enjoy you while you’re well and just be supportive when you’re not. My doctor took me off my medications for this attempt at pregnancy so I am giving it all my best and taking medication that regulates your blood sugar and has the side effect of suppressing your appetite is not going to make you extremely energetic either.

      The best support a person can give someone who is trying to conceive is to listen, and don’t judge. I am sure my husband has very reasonable concerns and I need to listen to them too. And try not to be so sensitive about them but it is hard not to be sensitive when you are giving your all to something. I hope in time we can gain understanding. I know I am going to be a great and healthy mother and I know I am going to take care of our baby when we are pregnant.

      As of right now though I am not sure of how I feel. If I think I am pregnant or not. Time passes when I am sure I am going to have twins for some reason I can’t explain then at other times that dread washes over me that I will get another negative test on Monday and be gearing up to chase Baby Mayr all over again for the 15th time. I asked my husband how he will feel if we’re not pregnant. He said “I’m reserving my feelings for my own blog.”

      At least I can laugh during the two week wait. And having a sparkling water since I drink til it is pink.

      Please, be pink.

      | 0 Comments Tagged Black, Conceive, Depression, Infertility, Pregnancy, To, Two Week Wait, Woman
    • CD 21: Progesterone Draw And Depression

      Posted at 1:26 am by amayr1984, on January 9, 2019

      Today is the 21st day in my cycle and I am about halfway through the dreaded Two Week Wait. Tomorrow is usually when I start to get anxious and worry about whether or not I am actually pregnant this time. I hope blogging helps me to avoid those feelings. I hope processing them helps to keep me from becoming a wreck this last week of my cycle. That is all I want.

      I have been extremely tired lately and I have been sleeping an awful lot and not experiencing very much hunger. I’m not sure if it is a physical ailment or just general depression but I am plugging alone just the same. I rolled around in the bed til about 2pm today. I wished I could sleep longer but I simply couldn’t. I had been dreaming about 3 amazing little girls and a happy family that I was apart of. They were my daughters you see and I did not want to wake up. I wished to return to my dream with all 3 of them. I do want 3 children and would actually like to have at least one of each but a dream with any children is wonderful. It is better than the real life situation anyway.

      I arose and had breakfast but I really didn’t have much of a taste for anything. I have been eating oatmeal with maple syrup and chocolate protein powder with toast. Afterwards I took off to get my blood drawn to check my Progesterone. I said in the previous post that I have long believed my inability to get pregnant is due to low progesterone so this test is a big deal for me. I actually hope I am wrong. My greatest hope is that I will fall pregnant this cycle so of course I want the test to come back high enough to indicate I ovulated. That would be so wonderful. I’m sort of nervous about what the results may be. I hope they are posted tomorrow so I can get some kind of closure.

      I also worked out at my local boot camp today and I was quite winded afterward. I felt like I would just pass out so I stopped off and got tacos and went home and just relaxed. I have been watching Dynasty reruns again since I got home as there is nothing on TV to really distract me. And I plan to practice my Spanish and Italian tonight as well. I find that staying busy somehow does distract me in this time period of waiting.

      I have to take a test per my RE at cycle day 26 to see if I am pregnant. This is my least favorite part of this journey. I had a chemical pregnancy last April so after that I really have tried not to do any testing and just let my period start. I find it is better not to get your hopes up and you can stare yourself into seeing anything on those tests when you want it so badly. I have believed I have seen a faint line on the starkest of white negative tests and logically I know it is negative but my heart continues to ask me to just keep looking. Keep looking for the baby I constantly hope is there. After that I usually hold up well and then I am a wreck on cycle day 1 when my period comes until I tell myself well I can try again soon.

      Tryin again soon. I have been trying again for quite some time now. For today I want to focus on being hopeful, and believing I could become pregnant. People usually implant between days 7 and 12 post ovulation so I am hopeful I will become pregnant and this is the end of the line with all the medications and the time intercourse. It has been a bit of a strain.

      I’m just ready to be a mother.

      | 0 Comments Tagged Cycle, Day, Depression, Infertility, One, Progesterone
    • 14 Months Of Trying To Conceive

      Posted at 4:14 am by amayr1984, on January 8, 2019

      There has been no journey that I have embarked on that has been more difficult, all encompassing and exhausting than the journey of trying to have a baby.

      And it has been a long year and couple of months of disappointment and plenty of money spent and tears shed. Disappointment, loneliness and depression have lurked around me off and on since the journey has gotten to about the 4 month mark. It is so very hard to hang on to hope but I continue to do so as I am chasing our first child. I hope we can catch him or her and catch the little one before my hope is completely expired.

      When we started this journey I was 33 years old and had been on birth control off and on since I was 19. Mostly on. I took the contraceptive pill and I had never experienced a pregnancy before. I wanted to be married before I had a baby and so after my husband and I got married (and my 6 months post the acne drug accutane expired) my husband and I embarked on the journey of trying to conceive.

      At first I thought it was going to be easy and go quickly. I joined a few trying to conceive groups on Facebook and checked out some forums on the app Glow and I thought the women on there seemed pretty obsessive. I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t just relax and try to enjoy the process of getting pregnant. These women were taking multiple tests, stressing themselves out trying to spot every single symptom and were constantly buying new gadgets and supplements trying to get pregnant.

      I was very confused by them, and had no idea eventually I would become them.

      I predicted it would only take us about 6 months to get pregnant. I am from a family with a lot of children and all my siblings who have tried to have children have been pretty successful at it so I saw no reason I would have fertility issues at all. I just knew if my husband and I just had sex on the right days we would be expecting our bundle of joy in no time.

      Well no time quickly passed and I became everything I saw on those forums along with extremely depressed and angry. I have become resentful as well. The longer it takes to get pregnant the more I wonder if it is even worth all of this worry and testing and the money. I have been from the general practitioner to a OBGYN who did nothing but hand me Clomid without checking me with an ultrasound and wish me good luck. I tried that for a month and of course that didn’t result in a baby either. This was at the 10 month mark and by then I was a wreck. I had spent money on expensive fertility monitors (Ovacue) and I had purchased the Ava device as well. All in all I think I had spent over a thousand dollars on test and kits and anything that looked like it was going to possibly give me a chance at becoming a mother.

      It was after all, all I have ever wanted. It began to weigh on me and I began to wonder if I was even worthy of motherhood. So many people bragged about how easy it was for them to get pregnant to where they didn’t even have to use ovulation predictor kits and here I was buying the expensive ass Clear Blue Advanced ones. Where is the fairness in any of it? For six months I quit drinking period even and made my husband quit. I allowed him to start drinking again after that because clearly my way was not working and why should we both be miserable?

      In any event hope was all but gone until we finally decided to give the Fertility Center a try. I have been going there since October and while here it is January and still no baby at least I saw them doing things that seemed to be trying to help me to get pregnant. They tested my husband’s sperm (it’s in great shape) and we knew I wasn’t ovulating which as why I got put on Clomid before so they switched me to Letrozole. We gave it a good shot around the fertile window but still: no baby.

      We took December off to enjoy the holidays and came back and now here I am in my two week wait in January. Waiting again to see if I am pregnant or if I must go through the misery that is starting all the way over again in Chasing Baby Mayr.

      You see, I am a hard worker and pretty goal driven and oriented. I feel like if you do certain things then you should get results. So this struggle in getting pregnant has stripped me to my very core because I feel like we have done these certain things repeatedly. For 14 months we have done these “certain things”…more things than a lot of people do to get pregnant period and yet where is our baby? What do we have to show for it?

      I have come to think of attempting to get pregnant as running a race. Every month at the beginning you get everything together and you do what you are supposed to do and you take off at the starting line and you run. You run and you run until you get towards the finish line. And when you get there there is either a positive pregnancy test or there is your period mocking you. And as your period mocks you you wind right back at the starting line. You have gained nothing for all your hard work and you have no idea what you could have done differently or how to win the race so you just run it again. And again. Until you get your baby. And the longer you run it the less you begin to believe that anything is at the end but Aunt Flow. Because it becomes all you have ever known.

      This month my Letrozole was increased to 7.5 Mg and I had four healthy follicles and my husband and I had sex at what appeared to be the right times according to my ovulation predictor kits and my Ava bracelet temperatures. So I am hopeful as I am sitting here about a week into my two week wait. Tomorrow I get my progesterone drawn and we will see if I did indeed ovulate. I hope I did. I need that much to go my way.

      The struggle with the Two Week Wait is how not to go insane. It’s 14 days where you don’t know what your body is doing and you won’t find out for sure unless you get a positive pregnancy test or you get your period. I never used to even think about this time period before I was trying to conceive. Now it looms over me in a way, and never the first week.

      It’s the second week that is absolute torture. You are dreading the potential that you will get your period and so every symptom seems more severe and like a foreboding of doom. Or it does when you are this far out trying to conceive and you don’t think they all mean you are pregnant.

      No symptom means pregnancy to me. Nothing short of a positive test will make me think I am pregnant. That is just how jaded I have become during this journey.

      If I can say anything else about it the journey is lonely. It never feels like your partner understands because it isn’t happening in their body and they aren’t getting probed or filled with the disappointment that they can’t carry the baby for whatever reason. If anything has been most hard it is knowing that it is something wrong with me. That I don’t ovulate without help and I also feel like I do not produce enough progesterone in the luteal phase but nobody is listening to me about that and helping me by supplementing it. I hope after this test tomorrow if it is low that I will get that help. I have long suspected that is why I cannot get pregnant, just as a hunch.

      I started this blog so I can write freely about how I am feeling and what I am experiencing. It was impulsive on my part but a necessary thing for me. I have found the Facebook Support Groups the most helpful but I am taking a break from Facebook. Sometimes seeing a page full of positive tests when you are struggling is just as hard as any of the other bombardments from other people’s pregnancies can be. Hell I am watching a Dynasty rerun right now and had to pause it when Krystle was talking about her pregnancy because I got a little bitter. This far along it can become that triggering that even fictional pregnancies bother you.

      All in all I wouldn’t wish infertility on my worst enemy. It is a terrible battle to be in and it makes you feel a level of anxiety and unworthiness that I have never experienced before.

      That said even as I am here on Cycle 14, Cycle Day 20 I still refuse to give up. I will never stop chasing you, Baby Mayr. Not until I am at the finish line with you. I love you already. Please don’t make me chase you much longer

      | 0 Comments Tagged Fertility Pregnancy Black, First Time Mother, Infertility, Pregnant
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