Starting cycle for IUI #3 today

I heard back from my "favorite" NP at our clinic yesterday around 1:30, and I am doing a slightly different protocol this cycle than last:

Clomid 50 mg CD 3 through CD 7 (11/20 through 11/24)
Follistim 100 units on CD 3 and CD 4, 75 units on CD 6, 8 and 10
OPKs before 11:00 each morning starting CD 8 (11/25)
Follicle check u/s on the morning of CD 12 (11/29). (She had asked for CD 11, as I'd suspected, but agreed to schedule it for CD 12 instead.)
Trigger with Ovidrel when instructed to do so prior to IUI

The NP said that the doctor decided to "tweak" the Follistim dosage a little this cycle, for reasons he did not share with her (and that are not clear to me). My initial dose on CD 3 is a little less (I did 125 units last cycle), but my second dose on CD is a little more (100 units vs. 75 units before).

I remarked "I guess the dosing is not an exact science," and her response was "It sure isn't!" How reassuring. LOL

My only mild concern was that my lining was just over 7 mm last cycle at my mid-cycle u/s. She told that my RE just wants it to be in the 7-12 mm range, and as long as it is, he doesn't worry about it, so he did not perceive it as a problem last cycle.

It should be interesting doing OPKs and injecting myself while I am at my dad's. I'm not usually very good at stealth. ;-)

CD 1 and other stuff

I have been neglecting my blog this week, in part because I have been busy and out of the office, and in part because I haven't really had much to write. This post will be a quick update, bullet style.

• I started spotting Tuesday night, and AF arrived early Wednesday morning.
  
• I placed my cycle day one call to the clinic's nurse line at 8:30 yesterday morning and have yet to hear back. I will call a second time if I don't get a call by noon today.
  
• Because I haven't heard from the clinic, I don't know yet whether they will agree to do my mid-cycle monitoring u/s on CD 12 instead of CD 11. Which means that I don't know yet whether we will be doing treatment this cycle because I am out of town and absolutely unavailable for an u/s on CD 11 (and cannot, at this late date, change my plans).
• If we end up doing treatment, it will be a repeat of last cycle.
  
• I woke up with a migraine on Tuesday morning at 5:30. Nevertheless, I had to drive nearly 200 miles through the open desert to attend two depositions that day.
• The date for these depositions had been set for months, and as they involved multiple parties, some from out of state, could not be changed. No one else could attend because the partner who is the only other lawyer in the firm who knows anything about the case was unavailable. So I had to suck it up and do the best I could. I survived, thanks to regular doses of ibuprofen and Excedrin.
• My RE doesn't like for me to take ibuprofen, but he is even less OK with my taking prescription Imitrex, so I had to "pick my poison," as I needed one or other to function.
  
• By Wednesday morning, my migraine had finally faded to a dull ache. . . . but returned full force yesterday afternoon as I attended yet another deposition.
• I am still headache-y this morning, though slightly improved from yesterday.
• I do not want to be at the office today. Such is life.
• I have hardly seen my husband all week between our respective job responsibilities and my going to bed early due to my migraine(s).
• I get to make a 250-mile round trip tomorrow for my fourth deposition of the week. It's good, though, because I will get to visit M, my CASA case child, briefly while I am in her city.
• I am very much looking forward to next week, when I will only have to work THREE DAYS. Wish every week were like that! ;-)
• I'm also looking forward to seeing my dad. It's been six months since I've seen him, which is probably one of the longest periods ever that we haven't seen one another.
  

Waiting for cycle #20 to start

I spent a good portion of yesterday wallowing in self-pity. On the one hand, I feel a little silly for being disappointed at yesterday's BFN: I've seen so many already, and I know that the odds of success for an IUI with injectables are only about 20% or so at the most. On the other hand, I felt that I wanted to acknowledge my sadness at yet another failure, so I did.

Yesterday's BFN means that MM and I will celebrate our first wedding anniversary on November 28th still childless. This probably doesn't sound like a very big deal to many of you, who perhaps didn't even start TTC-ing until you had been married for some time. But when a couple marries in their late 30s and still wants to have children, it is not at all uncommon, in my experience, for them to start TTC right away. Many even give birth to a first child before their first wedding anniversary. (I can think of several couples of my acquaintance who fall into this category.) Everyone is aware that "time is of the essence" once the woman is over 35.

Our upcoming anniversary also just makes me more aware of the passage of time. In my introductory post, I mentioned the fact that we started TTC just over seven months before our wedding date. (We knew pregnancy could take longer to achieve when the woman is over 35. Little did we know how much longer, in our case.) There was actually a period of months when I was mildly concerned about being visibly pregnant for our wedding. How naive that seems now.

It makes me sad to think that we are nowhere closer to our goal of becoming parents together now, after 19 cycles TTC and nearly a full year as a married couple, than we were a year ago. The only things the past year has brought us in regard to TTC are disappointments, inconvenience, stress and less money in our bank account.

Anyway. It is what it is. I am feeling better today, and I am very grateful for all your supportive comments yesterday. (And by the way, a glass of wine is a great suggestion after a BFN; unfortunately, I gave up alcohol entirely about a year ago due to migraines. Drats! I did throw healthy eating a bit to the wayside, though, and eat foods that weren't "clean.")

Now I am just playing the waiting game. Looking back on the previous two cycles when I used progesterone gel, my period did not arrive for about 5 days after my last dose. Assuming that my body reacts the same way this cycle, I can expect that AF will not arrive for another few days.

I am actually hoping that AF arrives no earlier than Wednesday. . . otherwise my monitoring appointment will fall on a day during our trip to my father's in New Mexico over Thanksgiving weekend. I'm not sure if my RE can/will give me more than a day's leeway for performing my mid-cycle u/s, which is supposed to take place on CD 11. And there is no way I could get the u/s done in the city where my dad lives: even if I could find a place there to have it done, our clinic does not permit that. They will only do my IUI if they do the mid-cycle u/s. (And I wouldn't want to do that anyway, because my dad and stepmom don't know that we are doing intervention, and I intend to keep it that way.)

So we shall see. It's not impossible that AF will arrive earlier and we will have to skip this next cycle. If that happens, so be it. As I've mentioned here before, I have never been 100% sold on the idea that the drugs and IUIs are truly improving our chances, given that the one-and-only BFP I have ever seen was during a break cycle. And I'm not thrilled at the idea of taking Clomid & Follistim while staying at my father's very small house with my nosy stepmother, but I will do it if I have to.

MM and I were talking today about a trip we plan to take in March. MM always takes a week off in March--he has for years--and coincidentally, it is usually the week in which my birthday falls. We had first talked about going to Disneyland and California Adventure, but after a trip to Costco today and looking at their travel brochures, we are also now considering a return trip to Hawaii (though not to Maui, to one of the other islands). It's fun to plan trips and talk about things in the future, but I couldn't help thinking that if I am pregnant by March, the odds of our being able to actually take this trip will likely be close to zero. I didn't mention this to MM, though, because nothing is definite yet--with the trip plans or TTC--and I didn't want to burst his bubble.

Once again during yesterday's wallowing, I thought about how much easier it would be to just give up. We are friends with a couple about the same age as us who married just a couple of months before us. In contrast to us, though, they agreed before they were married that they did not intend to have children. (They have nieces and nephews whom they adore, so it's not that they don't like children, more that they are both very career-focused--both on the police force, one a canine officer and one a detective--and like their freedom.)

I couldn't help thinking how much less stressful their first year of marriage has probably been than ours. Sure, I love MM, and I have no doubt that he loves me. We are happy, in the main. Our relationship is good, solid, and fun. Dealing with disappointment every single month can't help but take a toll on any relationship, though. We are both often angry, sad, frustrated, uncertain, and all the other things that go along with infertility.

On some level, I wish I just didn't have the desire to be a parent. I wish MM didn't have that desire. It would make our lives so much simpler.

Another BFN

On to cycle #20.

Eventually

eventually, -adverb: finally; ultimately; at some later time.

I saw this necklace in someone's etsy boutique a few weeks ago and bought it for myself. (Though the woman who made it is a survivor of IF, I found her blog and etsy boutique in a circuitous way totally unrelated to this blog: she is now an adoptive mother, and a law school classmate of mine who gave up her baby through open adoption had a link to this lady on her blog. Serendipitous.) I've worn it nearly every day since it arrived.

I don't know that it means to me that, in fact, "eventually" we will be parents. I think it's more a reminder that, eventually, our current ordeal will be over, one way or another, and life will still be good, whatever the outcome.

Today is 14dpIUI #2.1 and is technically my test date. I will POAS tomorrow morning and post an update then. (Those reading this who are early testers probably think I'm crazy, but trust me: I would be significantly less productive at work today if I tested, regardless of the result. Better to do my mourning--or celebrating--on Saturday, when I will still be just as pregnant, or not.)

Today's horoscope

"You may be temporarily denied the thing you want. What's important is to trust you're on the path you were meant for. Your day is coming, with celebration and awards, too!"

OK, so I don't really believe in my horoscope, though I read it for fun most weekdays. Today's struck me as perhaps significant, though. (I have no doubt some other Aries read this and thought the same thing about her own situation.)

13dpIUI #2.1, only two more sleeps until I POAS.

Unbelievable

I think I've mentioned here before that I have a bad temper which I have worked hard to learn to control over the years. So though I don't get *as* mad or get mad as often as I used to, I can still become enraged if I feel it is warranted.

Today was one of those days. I will try to be brief. In February of this year, my husband wanted to use the same accountant to prepare our tax return that he had used for the previous few years. I had been doing my own taxes my entire life up until this point, but I agreed. The accountant charges a flat fee (can't recall how much) for the filing of a joint return.

I could not attend the appointment with the accountant in person, so I typed up a detailed list of my deductions, along with dates and receipts, and MM provided this, in total, to the accountant along with all the other necessary documentation he requested. Despite this, when we got the copies of our returns--after they had been filed, never having been given an opportunity to review them prior to filing--I found two mistakes. While they were not likely the type of thing for which the IRS will have you put in federal prison, I felt that they needed to be corrected because my (electronic) signature is on that return.

Finally, a few weeks ago, the accountant filed an amended return on our behalf, correcting his errors. And charged my husband $100 for doing so.

Because MM dealt with the receptionist and not the accountant himself, he did not feel that he was in a position to argue about the additional charge. I insisted that he contact the accountant personally and have him refund the $100. Today he finally did so.

The accountant grudgingly refunded the money but made a sarcastic remark to MM to the effect "your wife is a lawyer, so she should understand about billable hours."

Yeah, I am a lawyer, and I do understand billable hours. I also understand that it is unethical to charge your client extra to fix YOUR OWN mistake. He should be paying US, not the other way around. I could NEVER ethically charge a client for work done to fix my own error, and I would never do so. And all of this could have been avoided had he simply done what he should have done and allowed us to review our returns before he filed them on our behalf.

Needless to say, we will be changing accountants for 2010. I am still debating whether to make an ethics complaint to his licensing entity as well.

Don't f$%& with me, especially during the 2WW!!!!