Do I know how to have a good time or what?

You know what's totally awesome? Working from 9 am to 9:30 pm for the second day in a row, then getting your period on your way home. Best Friday night EVER. At least I was standing in line waiting to pay for my beer when it happened.

Day 3 blood and scans this morning. Dr. SF recommended waiting a couple weeks before starting stims, because my ovaries are, and I quote, "looking a little beat up." So I'm going back for blood and scans in two weeks and we can go from there, unless of course I ovulate on my own HAHAHAHAHAHA hoo boy that was a good one. I'm a little relieved, honestly--I think the break I had before starting last cycle helped me handle it better. Not that it made it any easier when it went bust, but at least the cycle itself hadn't been torturous to boot.

Still have a lot to say about failure and other delightful topics, but no time to say it. But don't worry, it's coming.

10dpiui

I woke up before my alarm this morning and lay in bed for a while, feeling completely Not Pregnant and delaying the moment when I got up to take the test that I knew would be negative.

And it was.

I have a lot more to say on the subject but I am just. so. angry at the world and sad and I can't focus enough to say what I want to say and I have to go do some bullshit work at my bullshit job and all I want to do is crawl under the covers and cry.

(Yes, I know things could still change blah blah earlycakes and if I end up being wrong and pregnant after all we will all have a good laugh. But I am pretty sure that this is over.)

Exhale

Other than Saturday's heart attack, it was actually a good weekend. Lots of good kid fun, and a wonderful dinner out with friends for my husband's 40th birthday. I'm still a little shaken by what-could-have-been, but trying to get past it. The scariest part, as my husband pointed out, is the total randomness of it all--that no matter what you do and how hard you try to protect your kids, bad shit happens. Even if I had been right there, holding her hand, a car still could have come from nowhere and hit both of us. We are so lucky.

And here we are, 8dpiui. Assuming that Renaissance medicine was incorrect and experiencing a great emotional shock does not spell reproductive doom, I'm now in the thick of the 2ww. I decided to test out the trigger, because apparently I'm bored and have money to burn on HPTs. So I tested on Saturday and got a faint positive (trigger), and tested this morning and got a negative, meaning the trigger is no longer registering (though I still have bloating and sore boobs). Will test again on Wednesday and Friday (or until I get my period, whichever comes first).

Heart attack of the day

As we have all learned from watching Cops, trying to escape the police via high-speed car chase never, ever succeeds. So it is some small comfort to know that the jackhole who, in attempting to avoid being pulled over in his fancy automobile*, DROVE UP ONTO THE SIDEWALK FOUR FEET AWAY FROM MY CHILD**, will surely be rotting in jail tonight.

*Probably stolen. Or full of drugs. Either one.

**That is the last time I ever let her run ahead of me.*** My throat still hurts from screaming.

***At least the squad car in pursuit stopped long enough to let me run up and grab her before itself screeching off down the sidewalk, sirens blaring.

The wait begins

IUI yesterday morning. We had to do the whole hectic kid-swapping thing again (husband goes off to give his sample, I follow with BG an hour later, hand her over to him at a cafe, go get inseminated, meet up with family afterward), and the rest of the day was hectic too, with music class and a birthday party and lots of subway riding and a cranky overstimulated child at the end of the day. I was very bloated and achy and exhausted by evening--I swear I could feel those eggs popping out one by one over the course of the afternoon.

IUI was performed by Nice Lady Doctor (I hope that doesn't come off as condescending; she's just the only female doc in this practice), who declared my husband's sample "excellent" at 60 million, more than twice what we've had at previous IUIs. Now we cross our fingers and wait. I must say, if I can't get pregnant with at least half a dozen eggs and 60 million swimmers, I will be very put out.

Reckless

I'm sure you will all be as pleased as I was to know that yesterday, CD8, my ovaries were back in their respective corners, keeping a chaste distance from each other as nature intended. I was directed to take 37.5 IU last night and come back in this morning.

This morning, CD9, I had two 20mm follicles on the right, one 19 or 20mm on the left, and whole mess of 15s and 16s lurking around on both sides. OK, well, sure. This is someplace we've been before.

The very nice female doctor who did my ultrasound this morning spent some time talking to me about it. I expressed some nervousness, then said something about lead follicles and she said quite frankly, "Well, they all ovulate into the fluid and then there's no way to control which ones and how many the fallopian tube picks up." Which is, I have to say, the first truly concise, hand-to-forehead, "ohhhhh now I get it" explanation of the total randomness of IUI (and hell, TTC in general) that I've ever heard. I mean, I guess if I had really thought about it, I would have realized that this is what happens. But there was a part of me that sort of visualized all available eggs pinging one-by-one down the tube like pinballs heading down the chute, biggest ones first, despite all experience and reason to the contrary.

The doctor told me that if I'd had a left tube, she would say that I had a very high chance of multiples. "With only one tube, though, it's really impossible to say. But you have to remember, this is not IVF. Your chances of getting pregnant at all are still only around 20 percent." Which echoes something Dr. SF said to me on my very first (successful) cycle, that the chances of not getting pregnant at all are still a lot greater than the chances of conceiving multiples

At any rate, assuming we were willing to go ahead, she said we'd trigger tonight, IUI Sunday morning. So I went ahead and asked the nurse to call in the Ovidrel script, and scheduled the IUI for Sunday. I can say with certainty that five years ago I would have pulled the plug on the cycle. But time and age and repeated failure can make you a little reckless.

When the nurse called with instructions for tonight, I asked her for my E2 level, and that did give me pause. Last cycle my E2 was 1128 on trigger day. Today it was--well, I left the Post-It I wrote it on at work, but it was just over 2000. If you take the E2 level as a general indicator of how many mature follicles there are, that's...a bit concerning. But I'm putting my head down and going ahead (and dragging my husband along with me). Like I said, a little reckless.

I've gotta say, the further in I get, the less I'm able to judge those families who end up with sextuplets. I can see a lot more clearly how it happens--and how once it does, it's hard to turn back. Because while we would definitely reduce higher-order multiples, I have to say that if I got pregnant with twins, there's a good chance I would continue the pregnancy. Even though twins in me is equivalent to at least triplets if not quadruplets in a normal uterus. And knowing this, I'm still willing to go ahead.

I'm just rambling at this point. I'm going to go do my trigger shot now. Hope this is the last time I ever have to inject myself with anything.