Just when you think it's ok

Sister in law tells me all about a tattoo she wants to get representing my brother, her two children, and her father who passed away. I tell her about the tattoo I was thinking about getting to represent my miscarriage.

Momentary silence.

"So you guys still trying?"
"Yeah, but we're sort of on a break to save money for more treatments. We need about $4,000 for an injectable medicated cycle."
"What are the odds of it working?"
"My doc thinks the odds are good. I have the parts, they work, I'm just not making the hormones to make them work."
"All that money just to have a baby, and then the cost after..."
"Yeah, well we're hoping one time is enough. We're willing to try it twice, after that it's on to adoption."
"I have a sick kid in there I'd love to give you, she comes complete with clothes and everything."

I change the subject after a momentary awkward silence.

I wonder if I'll be able to cope better with this type of awkwardness, or if it's just going to make me more bitter and bitchy as the years go on.

One family Thanksgiving down, one completely avoided, and one more to go.

It's moments like this when I wonder why my parents, and my husbands, all had to get divorced. (But in honesty, I am quite thankful they did get divorced. Some people just should not be together.) At least my dad doesn't celebrate the Holidays, he's a regular old bachelor. But still, we end up having to go three different places every freaking year to everyone's little rendezvous. It's like overkill.

More ranting coming to you soon.

Tunnel Vision

It's a busy week. School projects to be filmed, papers to be wrote, papers to be wrote, more papers to be wrote, work to be done, people to see, places to go...

Other than that, I have started watching my calorie intake... trying to be mindful. See, I'm not eating horrible (Except for all those pizza's that I cram while I'm cramming for Midterms and Finals!) I'm a vegetarian, 6 years now. I don't eat lots of greasy foods, or fatty. I actually don't get enough fat and protein in my diet... I need to be extra mindful of that I think. I've really really got to get the protein thing figured out, my soy products are not cutting it. Neither is the dairy. Blah. Anyways, I am watching my calories. I was getting a few to many, I think. Now, I can watch that and make sure I don't. That should help some. In a few weeks I am going to start an exercise routine. You know, after finals and while I'm on break.

For now it's baby steps. I am watching my food intake, taking my Metformin, and hopefully soon I will be working out.

On the baby making side of things...
I need to figure out when I should get the Prometrium to bring on a new cycle... I think it should be soon. I'm on CD 24 with no sign of ovulation. But I wasn't counting on that anyway...

I hate having to decide when to get my period. But, how about I look at this in a more positive manner... I get to decide when I get my period. No wondering if it will show up when I don't want it, or if it's going to ruin my day/weekend, my swimming, show up randomly when I'm in class or at the movies... I am in control. I never thought of it like that. Huh.

Muahahahaha! (I just felt like that this was necessary here!)

CT results

Fatty liver... just as we suspected.

The good news? I get to go back on the Metformin! I just have to get my liver enzymes checked out each month while I'm on it. No biggie.

Needless to say... I am relieved. I hope it helps out. My temps have been CRAZY this cycle. They're like the freaking Rockies, up and down and up and down. I've been charting since March, and they've never been like this before. It's driving me crazy. I haven't changed anything in my temping routine, and even on anovulatory cycles (or ovulatory cycles for that matter) have never been like this. Blah, oh well.

Drifting through a fog

I'm having a hard time tonight. This Thursday will mark the one year mark since we had a doctor confirm I was not ovulating. One year since I was told I probably had PCOS. We'd stopped using protection 7 months prior to that, in the hopes of concieving in our own time.

Yeah, right. Here we are, one year and seven months later... still childless.

I should be due in a little over a month. I wish I was... the New Year is like a ticking time bomb. It's ticking, "Not yet, not yet, not yet. Too bad, too bad, too bad."

I want my baby back.

It's been a long year. Diagnosis', fertility treatments, pregnancy and loss, empty month after empty month. Failure, failure, failure.

I can only try to hope that next year will mark something different, a new beginning. But not tonight, I don't feel that way tonight. I feel like it's just getting worser the further I go down this rabbit hole. The emptiness, that hole in my heart, keeps growing bigger.

I wish I could go back to that naive woman, one year and seven months ago. I wish I could still feel exhilarated about the thought of making a baby. I wish I could still hop into bed excited, expecting that this time... maybe this time... I would get pregnant. I wish I could go back to that girl who left the spare bedroom empty, full of hope that soon it would be a nursery.

I don't like the routine of sex anymore, knowing that I have to do it this day and that day in some vain effort. I don't like feeling completely hopeless all the time. I don't like that the would-be-nursery is now my office/art room. How I would rather it be full and ready for my baby, due a month from now. But it's not. I'm not pregnant, I haven't been for almost 7 months now. And that naive woman is long gone.

I miss her. I miss those hopes, those dreams, those feelings of joy.

I have my CT scan in the morning, and my follow-up appointment on Friday. Thursday, the day the shit hit the fan... I'm going to a concert. I hope it's a good enough distraction.

More CloMOOD ranting

Darn you Clomid, ye fiend!

How dare you bring me these headaches, and ovary pains... and yet still not deliver an egg. I am not your fool, I know your whiley ways. You trick, you over-compensate, you are a villain yet.

What I won't miss most about Clomid... all the signs that I might ovulate, and then I don't ovulate.

Sure won't miss that. Not the stabbing ovary pains either, or the headaches from hell... or the wasted months.

Now, I know... I'm only on cycle day 14 of this fiasco now... but with my track record? This was a "just for the hell of it" cycle. A, "Whatever... not like I'm going to ovulate" cycle. I don't care... which is a lie. Because I do. I care that I don't ovulate, month after month after month. It hurts to fail so absolutely, so miserably, to the point of "I'm trying, but not really trying" because if you don't ovulate you don't even have a shit chance out of hell. Not without absolute miraculous conception. It's not just a failure of the cycle, but a failure of the body, of hope, of chance. It's absolute failure, like shooting blanks. Well, not blanks... more like shooting a gun with no bullets. I have the guns, but no ammo. It doesn't matter how much I try to materialize bullets out of thin air... I can't. So the gun is ready, always at the ready... but then nothing happens. Ever.

I'm already trying to figure out how the husband and I can squirrel away massive amounts of money each month, so that we'll have enough saved up for injectables and IUI. It's going to be hard, I know that much. But I'm hoping it will be worth it.

Ungh. I need to stop thinking so far ahead. My psyche only reaches so far before it gets smattered from overstepping it's limits.

It would

It would be nice if the Clomid was working... I've had a migraine for the past 3 days. No doubt Clomid induced. Clomid always causes migraines. I've been finished with taking the Clomid for 5 days, I think, but that doesn't stop the Clomid headaches from making short work of me.

I skipped class today... Shhh, don't tell.

I just didn't feel up to it. I'm exhausted, my brain feels like someone is taking a riveter to it, and I didn't get my homework done (I spent most of yesterday laying in a dark/quiet room... rather than doing my homework.)

MIA

I've been a tad MIA lately... compared to my normal chattiness.

I've been distracted. Haven't been thinking, or rather I've been trying not to think.

My liver u/s was inconclusive. Have to get a CT scan next week to check it out. Hopefully we'll get some answers then. I've been swamped with school, as the quarter is winding down and we're getting hot and heavy into papers galore. I have a massive headache, probably from the Clomid.

I'm still planning, trying to figure out what's next.

Nightmares

I had three hours of sleep last night. I woke up early to get my liver ultrasound. Then I went to work. Then I went to my friend's house to visit her and to meet her baby. While I was there I get a call from the new doctor's office. Turns out the lab messed up my blood work, as well as many other people's blood work. I have to redo the blood work tomorrow. Great. Then I came home, and clonked out.

And of course, while I was catching up on Zz's, I had a nightmare. I dreamt I was pregnant again, and I was having another miscarriage. And the doctor's were incompetent.

Yeah, thanks subconscious. I really needed that today.

Appt. on Tuesday to go over everything with my doctor. I finished my Clomid tonight. Good thing too, I wasn't sure I'd be able to take 4 a night for much longer! Those stupid little pills always get stuck on my tongue, and they're so nasty! Ungh. Just... ungh.

So now we wait.
Of course, we're always waiting. That's nothing new.

Flip Flop

So... I changed my mind about not doing the Clomid this cycle. I know, I am a flip flopper.

I can't get my HSG done this month because of scheduling conflicts. My RE does HSGs on Tuesdays... he's not in next Tuesday. O....K.... so it was postponed until next cycle. This left me feeling like nothing was getting done this cycle after all... I didn't like feeling that. So I was like... ok, new plan.

A- and I decided that we're going to do the Clomid this month without follicle monitoring. I doubt it will work, so what will it hurt... I say. And if, when, it doesn't work... we can be done with Clomid and start saving for injectables. That's the new plan.

So, I got the news about the HSG, hadn't made decisions about the Clomid yet... hadn't even talked to A- yet... and I go get my bloodwork done for the liver function test and the anaphospholipid test.

I was already in the barren bitch mood... the lady takes me back. She ties the rubber band around my bicep. She asks how I'm doing, while she digs in the drawer for the right needle. I say, "Fine. Besides the band hurting. Those things always hurt." nervous laughter from me. She pauses, and then says something like, "No it doesn't. Those things don't hurt." I retort, "Well it does for me." Now... I know I've been through worse, but that doesn't mean that the band didn't hurt at that moment... damn it. But she, being a smart ass, says, "Do you have any children?" I tense, reply, "No." She gets a self satisfied tone to her voice, and says that having a baby hurts. I look at her and say, "Yeah? Well I've had a miscarriage, and that hurts pretty bad too." Stupid woman. She mumbles, "Yeah, I guess that would too." Stupid woman. I was silent, she was silent, for the remainder of the time. Stupid woman.

And that's my rant for the day.

For those in America... DON'T FORGET TO VOTE! (Preferably for my guy, but... you don't know who that is! So... I'll give you a hint. I am PRO woman's rights. And I'm voting for "that one.")