Posted at 3:59 am by amayr1984, on January 23, 2019
It was that day again today. One of my least favorite days. I got probed.
You know the first day they told me I had to go in for one of these Ultrasounds I thought it was going to be like the ones on TV where they do it on top of your stomach. Never did I imagine that when I got there they’d lube up and condom up that white probe and put it up my vagina. But here we are into our third month of Letrozole and now I am for the most part used to it. But I never look forward to it.
Today they were looking for cysts on my ovaries because they saw such big follicles last go round but I did not get pregnant. Well, thankfully, no cysts! I was actually worried. I just don’t want anymore speed bumps on this journey. I even saw a couple of follicles developing on the right side already. Please please please let cycle 15 be our cycle and one of those follicles be the beginning of one of my babies.
After the Ultrasound I met with my Clinical Nurse and she said this is our last round before I will possibly be put on stronger medication and other options will be explored. Not IVF which I am in no rush to get to mind you, but possibly IUI which I was about ready to try anyway. I am fine with not trying it until the end of next month for sure. I really would much rather keep trying with the timed intercourse since that is actually free…but of course a lot more work. But 600 bucks a pop timed intercourse is not, and an IUI is. Either way I am beyond hopeful again. Leaving she reordered my Letrozole so we will be trying again at the same dose. I took my first dose today. I actually had some leftover at home thank goodness because the pharmacy didn’t have it filled and the roads were too icy to go back out later on. I will fetch the rest of it tomorrow.
Mostly my spirits have been okay. The fight I had with my husband put a damper on things but I am hoping we will get back to normal very soon. I hate fighting with my husband and he has a lot of anger demons that I just cannot understand because we had such polar opposite childhoods and I think sometimes our experiences just clash. Hopefully we will be able to find more peace and resolution on his day off and through our counseling session next Wednesday.
But today is a hopeful day, A day where I can imagine that we can get this right and that science and nature may be on our side. I hope I am right. I don’t feel like getting probed again any time soon.
Posted at 10:53 pm by amayr1984, on January 19, 2019
The hardest part of trying to conceive, besides the constant disappointment, is how it impacts your relationship over all.
It consumes it in many ways.
And as a woman it often is an imbalance of labor and guilt on your own end that you feel like your husband never really feels or experiences. In a lot of ways he gets a break that you never do.
Really if all the testing and everything is done your husband only has to be there for one week out of the month and the rest is back to his regularly scheduled program if you are doing just plain old timed intercourse. It is hard to not make the entire sex life of the relationship revolve around this though because after a while sex seems to be a part of a routine. And it can be draining on both people.
But to hear your husband complain about it you feel this quiet rage brew in you…like gee…could you just work with me on this little part? Could you?
Today I began to explain to my husband, in admittedly not the most exciting way that this month I wanted to try the Sperm Meets Egg Plan and I had highlighted on the calendar to make it easier what days we would need to have sex. This is not romantic. A sex calendar. My husband told me “way to put the spark back into our marriage” and in that moment I was delivered back to a nightmare I had the previous night where everyone was pregnant and I was crying the entire dream. At one point one of the pregnant people told me if I all I was going to do was cry she wasn’t going to let me near her baby. At that moment I came and got on the computer to blog all of this.
My husband was joking and he didn’t mean to hurt my feelings. And I was serious and I didn’t mean to make sex more of a chore than it already is for us. We both want the same thing but our approaches just are not matching and neither are our moods.
For me I am willing to do about anything to increase our chances of getting pregnant. I can’t pump myself full of anything much else short of doing IVF at this point which we simply can’t afford. I am trying to maximize the free method for what it is worth. Is trying the SMEP plan really going to change things so much?
All I have asked my husband to do differently is drink more water during the fertile week and try this plan. He takes a vitamin daily too.
I have to go to multiple ultrasounds to make sure I don’t have cysts and suck down a medicine cabinet of supplements and medications and be the reminder of when to have sex. The sex bad guy. The spark killer. I am in charge of all of that. And then after all of that is done I get to ride the emotional Two Week Wait rollercoaster while he watches from below. Sure he sees me and experiences me as I am going through it but I am riding it by myself and only I feel the sickness, twists and turns and dips and highs.
Perhaps he is on his own rollercoaster he hasn’t told me about? I can’t testify to that I suppose. I shouldn’t try to speak for how he feels but that is how it seems to me anyway. That there is still a lot of his world that isn’t about this and this is an irritating side project with ever changing rules.
You know what would be dope to hear from my husband?
“I would love to try that!”
“Great idea, honey!”
Or to even know he has been researching ways to increase our chances to get pregnant and he came home and suggested something to try so we could have a more successful outcomes would feel supportive as well.
Actually this whole thing has sprung into a half of a fight between us. I asked him was he doing anything independently to help with us trying to get pregnant because I didn’t want to assume for this writing he wasn’t? He said he felt the questioning was judgmental and explained why. I don’t feel it was but because I said he was “irritated” by some of the plan changes (which I still do. There isn’t enthusiasm a lot of times when I suggest something new).
Even trying to write this blog and really get some of his ow perspective on this to make sure I am not just living in my own head and being grossly unfair has removed the “spark” in some ways I guess.
It can be difficult to stay connected as a couple in these relationships where you are trying to conceive. It can be difficult to feel supported. And these challenges are just from trying to make a baby which to some people would be really fun but for many of us couples, especially when we have been on the journey a long time, the fun dissipates. The life wafts out.
And then you don’t want to talk about it. Then it becomes that hot button issue you want to avoid or have to mentally prepare yourself for because of all of the feelings. So many feelings.
Posted at 2:11 am by amayr1984, on January 16, 2019
And now the acceptance stage rolls around the day before my period right on time.
I accept I am not pregnant. I have talked to a couple friends on the phone. I have purchased iron to add to my daily supplement and medications for Fertility arsenal. I made it to boot camp today again and I checked off most of the goals that I had for myself though Lord knows I have not tackled the upstairs and cleaned it like I keep lying and saying I will. (I will).
I know that all there is to do is to try again. Most of the time I am very sane and realistic about this journey. I just started blogging in the bad spot but I am sure I will be back in that bad spot pretty soon. That’s what the picture is for. When I saw it in a Trying to Conceive group I was like “O MY GOD! That’s it!”
That is the rollercoaster ride I am on when I am in that last week of the two week wait. Up and down. Down and up. Hopeful then pessimistic. And it’s not something I really see changing any time soon. Maybe if this takes a whole lot longer it will change or become a straight line. I would love for it to change but the past 14 months have shown me that change will not come easily.
So as my cycle ends I consider my goals for next cycle:
Workout 5 days a week
Continue to eat well. Incorporate more fruit.
Find more time to clean and organize as this is therapeutic for me and I want to get my house a certain way before I head back to work.
Talk to your friends more. Call them. FaceTime them. Go see them.
Ask husband to drink more water closer to Trying to Conceive time
Try Mucinex because I didn’t seem to have a lot of cervical mucus
We’ll see about that Diva Cup thing again. I found it weird and after one round of it not working I wouldn’t miss giving it up.
Most importantly though: Be Kind to Yourself
This is the lesson I will have the hardest time with as beating myself up is a reflex that I need to eliminate from my psyche period. It’s not your fault you are not getting pregnant. You are trying your best. One day it will work out.
You are going to be an amazing mother one day. And I know you won’t be comforted in the last week of the two week wait next month reading this…but just know at the end of the rollercoaster there is peace.
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.
Posted at 11:32 pm by amayr1984, on January 12, 2019
Did I not tell you this journey was a ride in these Two Weeks?
I have been through a large range of emotions even just today. The fears of course come from knowing that test day is nearly upon me and I have had so many disappointments so far. I honestly hate that I am asked to test as apart of this new fertility program I am on. There is really nothing that seems more menacing than having that white screen with that one pink line wink back at you and your hopes. Usually after I see that one pink line I will hold the test up to the light to make sure. I will squint and a couple of times I will hopefully fool myself into seeing a second one until I tell myself to really be honest and then it is just the one white line again. Afterward I feel that twinge that tells me that Aunt Flow is coming. It’s always afterwards. Never a true warning before and so begins the despair of knowing I will get my period and the race will begin again.
So as I deal with all of this I have of course been trying to pass my time in a more relaxing and productive way. I have been successful in keeping up with Duolingo doing Spanish and Italian lessons daily. I managed to half assed do a Jillian Michael’s workout because let me tell you, I am winded trying to throw this body around. I finished the entire series on Netflix called Friends From College which I have a love and hate relationship with. The characters absolutely get on my nerves but I enjoy the show. It is very confusing but that killed enough time.
And now for the first time ever I am watching one of the DVDs of classic movies I have received from Netflix before my husband mails it back without me seeing it because I never watch them. He is right; usually I do not watch them but that is because I do not know how to use the HDMI system. He showed me yesterday and so here I am watching an old version of Wuthering Heights on DVD.
Here I am. It is funny, how I both want time to speed up til Monday and I am dreading it just the same. Because I am afraid of what always was. The negative. I have felt some confidence during this Two Week Wait that maybe things will turn out different this time but do you know this wouldn’t be the first Two Week Wait I have felt confident about either? I have had ALL of the symptoms in the past including heartburn, sore breasts, nausea, tiredness (the most common in my case haha). I have felt every sign and had nothing. It seems this Two Week Wait there really haven’t been many signs at all for me. My lab work looks great but I haven’t had the sore breasts as early as I usually do in my Two Week Wait and I haven’t experienced anything telling me I should be confident. Nothing but hope.
But as the days march on the hope almost feels like it could be a liability to hold on to because it will be mocked internally if you do not get the positive. Because it won’t be the first time you hoped. And it won’t be the last time you’ll hope. But until you get the positive you just don’t want to ride the hope elevator to the top only to be pushed out into an empty shaft when there is no positive.
I want to win the race. I am coming closer to the finish line now. I want to win and I do not want to start over again. But I must be reasonable if I lose and be prepared to do just that. To prepare for both possibilities seems contradictory to hoping as well. But I a grateful for this opportunity. These quiet times and these distractions.
Spoiler:
Friends From College ended with a pregnancy and the moment where the character heard her child’s heart beat I teared up. I cannot wait to have such a moment. The idea that I may be very close to it right now is so invigorating.
Tomorrow for my distraction my husband and I will clean out what will be the nursery and put some things away to make room for what is to come. I do hope that my body has made room for this baby. That while we are making plans my womb is already set up. I do hope. I should not be ashamed to nor let every twinge I am experiencing in my body scare me away from that.
One phrase I hate in the Trying To Conceive Community is “You’re not out til Aunt Flow shows!” When people show up with negative tests they are told this all of the time. I suppose in some ways it is true. You can’t really be sure until then but some of us have gotten no enough times to know when the no really means no. We feel it, And once the hope has been sucked out we don’t want to be inflated again only for Aunt Flow to let us down again.
Monday I hope to finally get my two lines. If I don’t, I know I will be out. I don’t need to see Aunt Flow. Aunt First Response has not lied to me yet.
Posted at 7:36 am by amayr1984, on January 10, 2019
Do you know what I hate most about this time period?
Having to constantly remind yourself not to symptom spot.
Since I have been trying for quite some time I really don’t symptom spot as much anymore. The reality is I have been not pregnant for the duration of us trying so much that nothing really means anything to me anymore. Sore breasts, tired, nausea, loss of appetite, etc etc are all things I have experienced when I was not pregnant anyway. So many of the symptoms women rave about telling on them being pregnant before their period are just regular old symptoms that happen because progesterone is rising anyway whether you are with child or not. It’s all hopeless guesswork but some women will swear by their ability to tell their regular PMS symptoms from pregnancy symptoms.
For women like myself who have yet to have any success as I said you come to ignore the symptoms anyway. The only thing I would say is much different this Two Week Wait is that I do NOT have sore breasts of any kind and normally I do by this time and they taper off about 3 days before my period. Mine aren’t even slightly tender this go round but I don’t read anything into it really. O sure, I do hope I am pregnant. That is of course the hope every single month. But I don’t read anything as a promise. You have to hope even when there isn’t anything to really hang it on. The best thing to hang it on were yesterday’s progesterone results and that’s just the hope that eggs were released. Did we hit them? Did they stick? There is nothing that will tell me that before Monday.
I went to acupuncture today and that was really all I did. I enjoy acupuncture and do recommend it for those who are trying to conceive though I would be lying if I did not say it was not QUITE expensive. I pay around 100 dollars a visit and at once a week visiting it’s a financial burden for sure. Being off work right now I wouldn’t even be able to afford it save for my Flexible Spending account. That said I am very grateful for it. I do think this along with seeking help at the Fertility Center is why some of my levels are turning around. I also enjoy the time I have the needles in. It may sound odd to say but you have the best naps and dreams while on the acupuncture table.
I typically start out trying to imagine and picture myself pregnant. From there I let my mind drift and it almost feels like I am traveling through several doors of my mind. One thing leads into another but they don’t seem to be really connected and I never totally remember what all I dreamed about when they come to tell me the session is over. A lot of the time I am saddened when they come to remove the needles because it seems like if I could wear them for 8 hours I would actually get a decent night’s sleep (which I do not in my luteal phase. I am awake now at 2:30 am after patchwork sleep last night and a nap for two hours that was wholly unnecessary). It’s wonderful and I have seem and improvement in my mood overall since going and it has certainly helped with managing my anxiety and depression which I am not on medications for right now while trying to conceive per the recommendation of my doctor. My anxiety is not very bad but my depression can manifest in tiredness and low feelings in the winter. So far this winter I am okay. Not great, but okay.
In any event when I returned home from acupuncture I wanted to eat but I did not have the urge to eat at all. I just wanted to lay down. So I did for a couple of hours though I don’t think I fell asleep. I just laid there in bed and watched Dynasty reruns (perhaps that is a sign of depression in itself? Can’t truly say). Afterward my husband coaxed me out of bed and made oatmeal with protein powder for me and it was delicious but at the same time I didn’t really want it. He offered me eggs and I only asked for one scrambled and a chicken sausage. It was about all I could stand. Later I ate some reheated Mexican rice and now I am sitting up awake slightly hungry but uninterested in anything we have available to eat.
I am also irritable about things that normally wouldn’t bother me or haven’t really forced their way to the surface. My husband, for example, a lot of times does not clean up the kitchen after cooking. Tonight this bothered me. I tried to say so in a kind way but I need to be more assertive. It is important to me the dishes get washed every night and night’s he works since I am off of work I don’t mind cleaning up after him but he should definitely do it the nights he is at home. Be assertive.
Anyway, as I sit awake I am hopeful but I don’t count anything as for certain. I am just hoping this time passes quickly and we can get to Monday where I will test and from there know whether I am starting the race again or at the finish line finally hoisting my positive pregnancy test.
All I know is right now I don’t want to do much but rest, watch Dynasty reruns and eat something that I have yet to discover.
Chasing Baby Mayr 