Road Blocks

My life is like going through the airport security..you rush to get to an appointment...wait some more...get poked and prodded..told little information and then they make you wait some more.  As you can probably guess...the appointment I had this past Thursday did not go as we had originally hoped it would. I have taken a couple of days to mull over what we have been told and was not quite sure how to word things exactly. It's alot to swallow.  The waiting game is something my husband and I are getting to be good at. I can not say We always find it fair though.

We are of course delayed again. Road Blocks if you please. We waited a month to go back and see him...rearing to get going onto the next step..jump in as you will...move on forward in our journey and he hands us another sheet and lets us know he does not want to start the next part of our process/journey until January in the new Year.. Grrrrrrrreeeeeeeaaaaaaatttttt! NOT what I wanted to hear at all. Take a deep breathe and everything will be OK...lol not. It is like waiting for Santa or Christmas to arrive and you open up say a Christmas cracker and you get a silly puzzle. Disappointment is something I know a little too well lately. Sooo now we wait some more. Waiting to see if its this month..or waiting until we cycle again and then...onto the next step if we are not there yet. In the mean time... we are still on the drugs still. We are being delayed due to the doctor having meeting and vacation time in December..so we now work around his schedule..even though we are the ones trying to move onward.

The next process called the IUI was explain to us at the last appointment.  It is not my ideal way of getting there..but we are being dealt this hand as Doug would like to say. So as soon as we start my monthly..I notify the doctor...then on days 5-9 I take the clomide like normal..Later on we might be upping the doses..who knows. So on days 9-11 I have to get blood work and an ultrasound done..then the doctor will decide if we will be doing an ultrasound everyday or every other. This all depends on the results of the blood work and ultrasound in days 9-11. So lots of appointments will be happening... After this happens when enough eggs are formed and moved down enough in the fallopian tubes. Which means 1 or more eggs have moved down and 18 mm down the tube.
    
    I have to get a HCG injection and yes by injection I mean needle. 18-40 hours later we refrain from basically touching each other to have the highest quality of swimmers and Doug gets to drop off a sample..Which is cleaned..that's the expensive part. Now when I say cleaned it is called spinning. This is where they remove the seminal fluid..which apparently..even though it is in semen it kills sperm..So it is removed..then they put in a nutrient solution..and the strong/fast sperm swim up and the dumb/slow motility sperm get discarded. Then they take the sperm...form a sperm pellet..and injected it inside of me using a catheter..right up near the eggs...so they do not have far to swim.  Then lucky me I get to take daily Progesterone Suppositories. Now does that not sound like a whole lot of fun.

Of course there is pros and cons. For example...we could have multiples...which I mean at this rate would not necessarily be a bad thing. I want about 4 kids..I have Doug worked up to about 3 children. At this rate..multiples would be lucky. We also have to be careful about Ovarian cysts and Ovarian Hyper stimulation. So here we are sitting at our roadblock patiently waiting to move forward.

Upcoming Ackward Discussion

So it comes down to this.. Doug and I are now at the point where if we are not prego by the end of this cycle we start the IUI process. To be honest its all a little scary..frustrating...and stressful. I never thought that when we started all this, that it would all go this far down this path of infertility.


About a month ago now we were given a sheet about IUI's and whatnot. That was sooo old it was not even funny. In fact it was so old..the specialist had to cross out sections of the pages so that we would ignore those sections. I think legally he had to give us about a month to think about all of this. Doug was ready to pounce on the opportunity in the room. I distinctly remember Doug saying " Well we are doing this RIGHT?" As you are sitting there listening to the doctor not saying much that you wanted to hear but knew was coming. I even remember asking.."are you sure there is not something else I can take to help the process first?". I got a swift "No, this is the next option/step". I remember swallowing like it was horribly hard to do. As we are leaving the office..Doug kept asking me " We are doing this next step right?" over and over again..

All of this is alot to take in. I sometimes forget with all of what we are going through, how young i actually am. Or how much we have gone through already. Alot of people like to tell me God only gives you what you can handle..well I sure hope we have learned the lesson he is trying to teach us already. Because I am sometimes not sure how much more I can take.

In 2 more days we will right back where we were again. Not done our full cycle..not knowing if we are pregnant or not. We are in infertility limbo! Part of me just wants to just be there already. And just in case any of you out there are thinking this..at this point..it has nothing and I mean NOTHING to do with trying to hard. When you are where we are at in this process..it is the last thing you want to hear.

Moving onward..scared..taking leaps and bounds. We are going for knowledge and planning with the doctor. Learning more about this next whole process and what we need to do. I sometimes feel like a test subject being poked and prodded all the time and made to take certain medications. We are hoping all of this perseverence and patience and love will in the long run lead to the end goal..forming the beginning of our family.
I am sure I will be back on here thursday sometime, just to give you all the latest of course.Like the butterfly in the picture above. We are all geared up for the long flight ahead.

Never Alone

"May the angels protect you ,Trouble neglect you . And heaven accept you when its time to go home
May you always have plenty ,The glass never empty Know in your belly ,You're never alone"

As much as people want to help and say they understand..until you have truly gone through this process there is no way to understand. I am a true believer that you are formed by the experiences you have throughout life and morals you are taught growing up. I believe Doug and I are closer and stronger due to this whole journey so far. There are times however that you feel very alone. This song brings comfort, music is a great way to express how you feel. You need outlets..wether it is a blog..or music or working out to blow off steam..spa visits..alternative medicine ect. 

I would like to say a big thank you to all of you who has chose to take part in our journey in following our blog and those who come along later. I would also like to give a big THANK YOU to all of our friends and family who have supported us this far.  This is not something we take lightly and definitely something we can not do just alone.  

  

Never Alone-(lady antebellum) is a song I find that alot of people can relate, no matter what sitution they are fighting in their lives. I am asking you all..do not afraid to follow the blog..comment..relate stories and situations or even if you just want to see how we are doing. I will try to keep ppl posted on what is going on.  The outstanding support and response  I have received so far is breathtaking.  Right now we are facing the unknown and like the in the song " I'll be in every beat of your heart, when you face the unknown". To be honest I find this whole experience sometimes quite scarey. 

We don't know what will happen next time. How long this will take. If we will miscarry again. All of these things run in your head..the difficulties...stressers..worries..which you can only block out for so long... at this point we are moving forward and onward to the next step. We have an appointment with the specialist again next thursday to talk about the next step and the process of an IUI.  For if we are not pregnant this cycle we are moving on to the next step.

For all of those whom I do not know that happen to come across this blog and are looking for some light at the end of your tunnel of fertility woes. Please know that you are not alone..if you need to talk..contact me and never give up hope.

 

Could Really Use A Wish Right Now!

“Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky like shooting stars, I could really use a wish right now”
Sometimes when I listen to this song("Airplanes'-B.O.B featuring Hayley Williams) it really makes me think..what if you could just wish on star and it would come true..to count the amount of times I have wished prayed ect...and feel like no one is listening. It makes it harder to have faith..when it is taken away so quickly. Do you remember when you were a small child and your parents told you...if you ever see a shooting star and you wish on that star the wish will come true. When I was small I believed in the tooth fairy and santa..and fairies, you know all of the fun stuff. Until you get older and some other kids ruin it for you...due to the magic is not in their lives anymore. Sometimes I wish that things were always that magical..you know images of fairies carrying a child laughter to create new fairy life..lighting up the garden at night...finding sparkles on your pillow because the tooth fairy came to see you. I want to keep the magic alive for my children when we have them...my mom did it for us...and we were so happy..it makes life so much more exciting and light hearted.. 

    Doug and I ...have prayed together...we have even gone to church with my parents...we have talked to God together..which I believe is a large step in life.  Not something I expected him to do with me or even on his own...life is full of surprises.. doug is more spiritual than religious...we have not really found the knack for what religion we want to follow. Faith is always a strong thing..despite what you believe in.. despite how frustrated I may be with things and not understanding why god needs/wants us to wait this long to start to have a family together..we have to accept there may be lessons we need to learn..skills we may need to build..we still hope pray and have faith that we will be blessed...even if it takes a lot of stars and prayers to get there.

Time

Time has definitely been moving quickly this year. I find that the process seems long and tiresome..at times very frustrated. Time has helped Doug and I to grow closer is some ways. We probably share a lot more than we did before...which is healthy...but also scary in what we have had to deal with together. In the beginning we knew we may have some problems...but why not give it a shot right.

When I first got off birth control, august of two years ago. I thought okay we have to let the birth control ware off. I had one regular period after that and then did not have anything at all until Feb of the following year, that was only due to being put on a drug called Metformin. We found out I had a Syndrome called PCOS ( Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome). This means I have cysts all over my ovaries. My sugar levels were not processing properly and were affecting my hormone levels..which caused me to not lose the weight I was working on so hard to lose. Not ovulate properly, throwing my hormones around..excess hair growth, my sugar levels were turning into high levels of testosterone, which then releases and forms cysts and does not let me cycle properly. Metformin helps my sugar go through properly.
    The metformin was not going to work on its own though. We went through months of dealing with periods still being very long for cycle days. Sometimes skipping every other month. In the end of the first year of trying we found out not only do I have lots of cysts on my ovaries I had one large one that was not benign , it was one I called “ Paul Anka” I figure you might aswell make light of my ackward situation. We were then sent on to a specialist who is named to Dr.Maskins. He is the guy to go see for fertility issues in the area. We had to wait a month or two to get in to see him. Popular guy. My period at that point had to be forced and I was put on Provera and then Clomide for three months.

    I now thought hey we are making progress. I could deal with hotflashes and not feeling good or getting sleep for 5 days a month if this is going to work. Well three months passed and no results. So we had an HSG done..which is a dye test where they shoot dye up your fallopian tubes and take exray’s. Very painful process...do not recommend unless you truly have to get one done. After that happened we got pregnant..not knowing that we were. Doug was traveling a lot and we were trying but it was very difficult due to a little thing called TIME. That time thing seems to affect a lot in our lives. I took a pregnancy test seeing as it was late..it said no..so I thought well I better get the provera to force in....progesterone replacement is what provera is. A week after I was done taking the provera is when I started to feel ill..and my boobs hurt..I took another test and found out "hey we are prego"...we were full of excitement...and slowly told some family...big mistake.. We started to go to the doctor to get our levels tested weekly. They confirmed we were pregnant..but about week and  a bit later, my levels were not going any higher and I started to spot..which turned into bleeding and us getting pretty nervous about the whole thing. He confirmed we had miscarried..after going to an appointment that same week...then we can to go through the torture of getting my blood levels taken numerous weeks following to insure that my levels were dropping naturally and that no surgery was needed.

   Within a few weeks time we were excited and relieved and then had it all taken away quickly..excitement turned into sadness, frustration, anger...shock. Telling my parents was harder than other ppl. Knowing my mom had to deal with that feeling so often when they were trying to have children made it that much worse.
   We went through more appointments making sure everything was okay again...and are now back on Clomide. We are on our 6th amount of clomide spaced out with time. One of our last appointments with the specialist was ackward due to the amount of ppl in the room with us. But gave us good news of a thick lining and useless small cysts. So now we wait and see if the next cycle is the one.

For the past couple of appointments we have been just doing internal ultrasounds to check and see if everything is still clear and been waiting for the doctor to decide  whether it is time to move on to the next step..after a couple more rounds of clomide we are moving onto the next step if we are not prego this month. Secretly we are really hopeing we are just going to be pregnant before we have to go that far. Now after going through all of this, we are now onto thinking and discussing IUI's. Inter Uterine Insemination. The more medical approach to TTC, with the help of modern medicine. Ofcourse now this is where things start to cost a little more money than we had anticipated in the beginning. But this is afterall what life has thrown us and what god has in his hands for us.

Time has taught us to respect each other more ...love harder...cherish little moments. pray together..talk more..have patients,take one month and day at a time. We may still be healing and dealing with lots of emotions and drugs and situations but that is all part of this journey. I am always curious to see what TIME is gonna send our way next. I know that when we do finally get pregnant and start our family we will be the ones who are sooo lucky and loved and cherish everything that much more. Some days I am frustrated with how long this has taken me. But this journey and time I am learning to embrace whether it be good or bad. The waiting is all part of the steps towards our destination.

A new Outlet

At one of my past reflexology appointments I had, my RMT Kristy had recommended me to start keeping a journal about my feelings, ect.. to help release stress and express how I feel. It is probably something I should have been doing a long time ago..maybe since the beginning of this whole journey. I used to journal way back..its a form of release..its nice to be able to talk..feel that someone is listening but not discouraging you or judging you about what you are saying. There are times where I would probably like to hear some feedback..so feel free..but please try to be possitive..I have enough negativity happening in my life some days. But feedback is sometimes harder to accept due to it might not be what you needed or wanted to hear in the first place.

I believe I am a stronger person due to this whole journey and experience. But sometimes find it hard to show that I am. We have just past the 2 year markin August of trying to have children or a family.We are now almost at 2 1/2 years of trying. I am not sure which is harder to accept..the fact that it has taken this long, Or the fact that we were so close and it was taken away from us so fast. I am not really sure anyone can fully understand what we are going through unless they have gone through this situation themselves. Its not just that we miscarried, but the simple fact that we have gone through so much before getting to that point.

The Spa has helped with me becoming a more relaxed person, Doug and my mom notice. I do not see it exactly as they do..I feel more relaxed somedays. The thoughts are always in the back of your mind..whether you want them to be there or not. I try to have loads of faith and patience!