July 2010 ICLW

Whether this is your first, or thirty-first, visit to my blog, welcome!  

If you are a first-time visitor, you might be interested to read the entry I wrote about myself and this blog back in May for ICLW, as well as the introduction (link just left of my photo).

In terms of where we are with regard to TTC, we are currently on a treatment break and discussing options.  At my husband MM's request, I am still tracking my cycle and we are still actively TTC on our own.

I hope to meet some new people through ICLW.  I have found the ALI community to be so supportive and informative!

ICLW May 2010

Welcome to my blog, whether you are here for the first time for ICLW or have visited before.

I am S, married to MM. We have been TTC our first child since April 2008 and have been married since November 2008. It is the first marriage for both of us. We started TTC before we were married because we knew TTC could take a little longer when you're over 35. Little did we know HOW much longer.

We have two golden retrievers we love, Sebastian and Hunter, both adopted from a local golden retriever rescue organization. (I wrote a lengthy post about them here, including photos, last summer, in case any fellow dog-loving readers are interested.) When we aren't busy with work or fertility treatments, we love going to movies and travel. I love to read, and MM loves college basketball and football and major league baseball.

All of our testing has been normal, so we are "unexplained." Our RE has opined that we are "subfertile" rather than "infertile" and that the cause of our inability to conceive is likely poor egg quality related to my age (39). (MM would want me to tell you that his sperm are awesome, numerous and can get the job done. ;-) )

In 25 months of TTC, we have only seen one BFP last August, which turned out to be a chemical pregnancy. Ironically, our only-ever BFP was the result of a break cycle during which my stress levels were sky-high.

Like many women, I started out small with charting and OPKs, moving on to acupuncture and herbs when I hadn't conceived after 8-9 months. I naively thought I would have no difficulty conceiving naturally. HAHAHA

We started using medical intervention to try to get pregnant in April 2009 and have taken several breaks, long and short, along the way. (Our complete TTC history is in the sidebar if you're interested.) We just completed our third IUI (second one with injectables) on 5/8, and I will be testing tomorrow morning.

In terms of future plans, MM and I have agreed to use injectable gonadotropins, either with IUIs or timed intercourse, until I turn 40 next March. If I am not pregnant by then, we may consider doing donor egg IVF. We do not intend to pursue IVF with my eggs, for the reasons I wrote about here, and have also agreed that adoption is not for us. . . . so we may also end up living childless.

I have found this blog to be a wonderful place to write about my feelings related to the unwelcome and difficult experience of infertility.

ICLW

If you have found your way here via ICLW, welcome!

I am S. My husband ("MM") and I have been married for almost a year! Because of my "advanced" age (I'd just turned 37 at the time), we actually started TTC in April 2008, several months before our November 28 wedding in Maui. We both knew we wanted to be parents, and we had heard that this process can take some time when you're older. Little did we know how long. . . . We live in our suburban home with our two golden retrievers, surrounded by families with toddlers, new babies and pregnant moms, and wait for it to be "our turn."

We are "unexplained." All our testing has been normal. Our RE has told us that the most likely explanation for our failure to conceive is poor egg quality related to my age. (I am now 38 and will be 39 in March.)

We have just started our 19th cycle TTC. I had a very early miscarriage in August, the result of a break cycle. That was my one and only BFP, and I have never been more than about 5 weeks pregnant. (Our complete TTC history is in the left sidebar, if you're interested.)

If all goes as planned this cycle, I will be doing my second IUI in a little over a week. I am currently on CD 6 of my first cycle adding Foll.sti.m to Cl.omid. I hope this works! Even though I would hate to be due in late July--I live in Phoenix, where it gets to 110+ daily that time of year--I will take a healthy pregnancy any time I can get it by this point!

ICLW

Welcome to all those who have found my blog through IComLeavWe!

When I signed up to participate for this month, I thought that I would be in the midst of my first injectibles + IUI cycle. As it turns out, we are on a break cycle instead. Although with everything that has been going on in my life the past few weeks, I am kind of glad we had to wait this cycle out. We have had nearly non-stop dog drama, in addition to the usual craziness of daily life.

I am S. My husband ("MM") and I have been married for almost eight months. Because of my "advanced" age (I'd just turned 37 at the time), we actually started TTC in April 2008, several months before our November 28 wedding in Maui. We both knew we wanted to be parents, and we had heard that this process can take some time when you're older. Little did we know how long. . . .

And now here we are, in cycle 17 since starting TTC, without a single BFP to show for our efforts. We have had perfectly-timed intercourse every single cycle since we started TTC, and all of our testing is normal. So we are "unexplained," and our RE has told us that the most likely cause of our failure to conceive is my old eggs (which apparently know I'm 38 no matter how I feel).

Our TTC history is in the left sidebar, if you're interested.

I use this blog to chronicle our TTC efforts and to vent my feelings about this process. I hope you'll take a look around! ;-)

And now, I must close and pick up my two golden retrievers from the emergency vet hospital to take them to their regular vet. Long story short, they managed to eat an entire vial of Rimadyl yesterday while I was at work.

This and that

I feel a little bad for my last post. Well, not for the post itself, so much as I feel bad that I was so irritable with MM, who really didn't do much to deserve it. Oh well. In reading the comments, I'm guessing that I'm not the only one who has been annoyed by her husband at times. . . . I guess we all have days when we are grouchy, and our spouses sometimes bear the brunt of that.

The waiting game continues. I have had some vague symptoms, but nothing that I wouldn't attribute to side effects of the progesterone gel. My feelings about this cycle see-saw between hope that it worked and resignation that it didn't. Honestly, I am past the point where the thought of failure even makes me sad anymore.

In addition to the irritability I had on Sunday, I have had some free-floating anxiety the past two days--can't tie it to anything specific going on with me--and just some generalized feelings of ickiness. I've also been really tired, in spite of getting plenty of good sleep. To the extent that I think about it at all, I think that the way I'm feeling emotionally at the moment is much more consistent with PMS than with being pregnant. Of course, having never been pregnant, I can't say for sure. But I've always assumed that a pregnant woman has a special feeling of blessedness and grace. (Yeah, dorky, I know.) Anxiety, grumpiness, and general malaise aren't really consist with that.

Work has been moderately busy, which is good for keeping the mind off TTC. MM and I, along with our dog Sebastian, are meeting another golden retriever this evening. If all goes well with the meeting, the other golden ("Hunter") will be coming to live with us and be our second dog! So that's exciting.

Can't believe Friday is already May. Wow.

P.S. Thanks to all the folks who visited my blog for the first time as part of ICLW. I enjoyed reading your comments, and it's nice to know that someone is reading this besides me!

Some random thoughts

I'm not sure exactly when this mental shift occurred, whether it happens for everyone, or what caused it. . . . but my attitude toward TTC is much different now than it was a year ago. As I wrote in my introduction post, a year ago I naively thought that I would throw away my birth control pills and achieve a pregnancy in about 3-4 months, perhaps 6 months at most. It never occurred to me that I would be anything less than fertile.

When I first started out TTC--and even before that, when I was contemplating taking that step--I spent a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to have a baby of my own; what it would be like to be a mother; and how I would feel when I saw that + HPT. I thought about what kind of pregnant woman I would be, what labor might be like, and whether I'd be able to breastfeed successfully.

Now I find that I spend very little time thinking of these things and far more time thinking about how I will cope and adjust if it turns out that we never have a child of our own. I spend more time trying to picture my life as a childless person than I do planning for a future that includes a child. I don't think about nursery decor; I don't mull over baby names and how they sound with MM's surname; I don't think about the pros and cons of having a girl versus having a boy.

I have arrived at a point where the possibility that we will not be successful in our TTC efforts seems more realistic to me than the possibility that we will be successful.

I can't help but think that the difference in my perspective is not unique to me. I have told some people who I know online and in real life that we are TTC (though it's hardly common knowledge), and now that we are doing intervention, it's interesting to compare the comments and viewpoints of women who conceived easily with those who have struggled with infertility themselves.

Almost all of my "fertile" friends are extremely optimistic for the success of this cycle. (Of course, they were optimistic for the success of most--if not all--of my previous, natural cycles, too.) The one exception is a friend whose sister-in-law used IVF for her children; maybe that's because she is slightly more realistic about the odds of success with ART.

In contrast, friends who have themselves struggled with infertility are supportive and understanding, but do not give an impression of being "sure" that the IUI will work. Any optimism that they convey is tempered with the thought that this might not work.

As I explained to the nurse at the RE's office following my IUI last Friday, to me it would seem illogical to believe that something that has an expected success rate of, at most, 20% will work. To me, that means that there is an 80% chance that it will NOT work.

Thinking this way is one of the drawbacks of being an analytical person. I don't consider this pessimism; I consider this a realistic evaluation of the data and information that I have. So while I am hopeful that the Clomid + IUI that we used for the first time this cycle will do the trick, I by no means believe that it will.

When there is no explanation for why you can't conceive, it's hard to know what to "fix." How can I know that Clomid + IUI will help us when I don't even know why I can't get pregnant?

At this point, I will be more surprised to learn that I'm pregnant than I will be to learn that this cycle, like the 13 before it, was a bust.

Does anyone else feel the same?

P.S. If you are here for ICLW, welcome!