Pukey

But not for the right reason. I got some kind of stomach bug and spent the entire night last night violently ill. The phlebotomist this morning, when I explained why I was a little dehydrated and hard to stick, said slyly, "Are you sure it's a stomach bug?" And I had to say yes, yes I'm quite positive, trust me you do not want the details.

I was so sick that I had to call and ask if I could come have my bloodwork done later in the day, because I could not face the physically impossible task of dragging myself to the clinic during regular monitoring hours. I was so sick that when I got home from the clinic (after having spent $60 on cabs to get myself there and back) I crawled into bed and started shaking and couldn't stop, until my husband forced some Gatorade into me. I was so sick that we pushed our departure for the holiday to tomorrow morning instead of tonight, because I knew I couldn't handle three hours in the car today.

But the good news is that today's beta HCG was 669. I didn't even need a beta doubling calculator to know that was a good number (but FYI, it's a doubling time of 40 hours). Progesterone was "over 40," the nurse said. (I was lying in bed half-dazed in a tangle of sweaty sheets so I didn't inquire further. I actually checked my phone log later to make sure I hadn't hallucinated the call.) Bloodwork and FIRST! ULTRASOUND! on Monday morning.

Oh, and PS, as if the projectile vomiting wasn't enough, on my way out to the clinic this morning I slipped and fell down the stairs. Yes. Pregnant woman. Fell downstairs. It was, alas, not a graceful Scarlett O'Hara tumble, but an ungainly slip, landing with a thud on my ass/back/elbow. I felt foolish asking the nurse about it but to her credit she didn't even crack a smile, just reassured me that short of blunt force trauma to the abdomen a little fall wasn't going to dislodge anything.

OK, I have to go pass out now. I just didn't want to disappear for the holiday without updating. Will be out of town for the rest of the week but will definitely update on Monday after the u/s. Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

Two days more

Got the call this morning that I'm being pushed to a 5dt. Hooray! The nurse didn't have any specific information about embryo quantity or quality but she said if the doctor and embryologist make the decision to go to day 5, that means everything looks good.

Progesterone shots have been going fine. I won't lie, I totally cried Sunday night before the first one. It didn't help that my husband uncapped the syringe, stared at the needle, and said, "THIS needle? THIS is what I have to stick in you?" and then had to take a moment to come to grips with the notion while I was lying there pants askew in horrible anticipation. (We'd watched the video several times and took a class ages ago, but I guess he forgot.) The anticipation was the worst, but once he finally did it it wasn't so bad. The EMLA cream really, really helped--the needle just felt like the tiniest prick going in, and I barely felt the injection. My husband was freaked out by the sensation of pushing that needle into human flesh, but then he's an injection newbie. (I had my own moment a long time ago.) I'm sure by the end of the 2ww it'll be old hat.

I followed all the tips I've gotten online--lie on your stomach so the muscle is totally relaxed, massage for several minutes afterward then apply heat--and while I'm a little sore, it's not too bad. So far. Last night's injection was tougher--the needle hurt more (I didn't leave the EMLA cream on long enough, I think) and then I really felt the oil going in. I'll prep better tonight. If anyone got here by googling "scared of PIO" or "progesterone injections pain" or any combination thereof, let me wholeheartedly recommend the EMLA cream, even if you have to beg your doctor/nurse for it. Get some Tegaderm or similar membrane dressing to hold a blob of cream on your skin for the hour-plus it takes to numb. We also had the recovery room nurse draw circles on my rear post-retrieval to help give us a target to aim for--and a good thing too, as the area she marked was considerably higher and more to the outside than I thought it would be.

Two more days until transfer! I'm calling in sick to work and then sitting by the phone waiting for the call--they call in the morning to give you the exact transfer time.

Really? REALLY????

Four pregnancy announcements from friends in the last week. Two second babies, two third babies. Kill me now.

TGIalmostF

I'm having a rough week. As you might guess. My nagging cough has bloomed into a full-on head cold. Work is a PITA. My Facebook feed is full of belly shots and birth announcements*. At least it finally stopped raining in Big City.

I went in on Tuesday for CD3 bloodwork and ultrasound. Except when I was done with the vampires, the phlebotomist told me, "OK, you're only getting blood today, no ultrasound, so you're done!" I knew it was just a clerical error, that I definitely was supposed to get an ultrasound, but I had to go back up to reception to ask to speak to a nurse to straighten it out. And...it was just too much for me. I burst into tears, and once I started I couldn't stop. All the grief I'd been holding in since Friday just came pouring out, and I sat in the waiting room trying in vain to choke back the sobs. Luckily it wasn't crowded (not that anyone would have cared--I mean, if you can't cry in the waiting room at the RE, where else CAN you cry in public?), and luckily I didn't have to wait long for a nurse--perhaps one of the receptionists hit the panic button, I don't know.

The nurse was super nice and waved off my attempts to apologize for being a runny mess: "This is a really stressful place. I know you would be happy never to see me again." That, of course, just made me cry harder, and she fetched me tissues and a glass of water and whisked me into an ultrasound room ahead of everyone else so I wouldn't have to wait outside.

(They've got a new batch of extra lovely nurses lately; when I called Monday to arrange for my CD3 scans etc., the nurse I spoke to actually said--and believe it or not, this is the first time a medical professional has said this to me--"I'm sorry you got your period. That really sucks.")

I cried through my ultrasound, which was actually fine--I have a large corpus luteum cyst on my right ovary, but bloodwork revealed it's not making any trouble hormonally so we're good to go. But I asked if I could take a week or two before starting up again, just to give myself some time to regroup emotionally, and my doctor was fine with that.

If this cycle (#7 for baby #2, if anyone is counting) doesn't work I think we'll take the rest of the summer off. I'm tired, bone tired. I'm sick of being bloated and watching what I eat and behaving as if I were pregnant without actually being pregnant. I almost cried again yesterday morning when I discovered that I couldn't even button the pants I was planning to wear to a business meeting, because I'm still such a puffy mess. (I ended up wearing some shapeless sack dress.) I'll give up bikinis and margaritas and my favorite shorts gladly, if I'm pregnant, but if I'm not, I want to enjoy this summer, dammit.

*Birth announcement today from someone who has now conceived and given birth to two children in the time since Bat Girl was born. One last week from someone who has conceived and given birth to THREE children since Bat Girl was born--I can't resent her too much, since she has three children under the age of 4, poor thing.

On suffering

When I was pregnant with Bat Girl, an acquaintance of mine was pregnant with twins, due three months after I was due. I learned early on that she had gone through infertility too, so I tried to bond with her over it, but it wasn't as easy as you might think. She had endured a much longer and harder road than I had--many more years of struggle, multiple rounds of IVF, miscarriages--and never missed an opportunity to remind me of that fact. She was forever reminding me that my one cycle of injectables was "no big deal," which got to me after a while, as you might imagine.

Of course, I couldn't begrudge her any of it, especially after she told me she'd had a miscarriage just days before I'd announced my pregnancy--god, the pain I must have caused her--or after she, too, went on bed rest, but then ended up delivering her twins months early, with the attendant NICU stays et al. (Her babies are fine now.)

Still, it rankled every time she'd dismiss what I'd been through--I mean, it all felt pretty darn difficult to me at the time, and I didn't appreciate being told it was a piece of cake. But I tried to take it to heart and not only remind myself that I was lucky, but that I shouldn't discount the experiences of others. Those "I took Clomid for two months! It was so hard!" folks I used to make fun of? I tried to remember that their experience was painful in its own way, and no less worthy than my own.

Almost exactly a year ago, I saw this acquaintance at a baby shower for a mutual friend. As often happens in such settings, the talk turned to babies, and she and I started talking about whether or not we'd have another. With her history, unsurprisingly, she declared herself done. Still raw from the first round of TTC#2, I confided that we were hoping to have another, but were taking a break from treatment, not only because we didn't have IF insurance coverage anymore but because I needed a break, emotionally. "We did three or four injectable cycles back-to-back last fall and I just couldn't face another," I said. "You know how it is, sometimes it just gets to be too much."

Right on cue, she said, "Oh, I know. And three or four injectable cycles, that's like nothing."

I didn't say anything, but I kind of wanted to punch her. Like, I GET IT. You had it worse. MUCH worse. Fine. Can't you just let me have my pain???

On the day I knew my last cycle failed, when I was lying awake putting off the moment when I'd get up and take the inevitably negative test, I couldn't stop thinking about that encounter. And it pissed me off. Why was I doing that to myself? Couldn't I even let myself wallow without pulling some kind of messed-up Reverse Pain Olympics on myself? Couldn't I just let myself have my pain?

*****

Thanks for your comments and emails. I'm a little numb right now, but I'm sure it'll hit me hard soon.

Although that was the last IUI cycle that insurance will cover, I'm almost positive we're going to go for at least one more. My husband is willing, and without going into it too much, it's looking more and more like IVF is not in the cards for us. (Yes, despite the fact that IVF with single embryo transfer is the best medical solution to our situation, and despite the fact that it would carry a 40% chance of success versus the cruddy 20% chance that IUI has. And yes, it is very much a mutual decision.)

Based on the bloating I had this 2ww, I'm going to guess that I'll be directed to take a couple of weeks off before starting stims again. And if not, I'm going to ask if I can anyway. I need a little time to regroup.

Trying so hard

to have a good attitude, but jeez, it's like primary infertility all over again with the world rubbing other people's fertility in my face.

I saw the director of Bat Girl's school last week and found out one reason why BG may be obsessed with having a baby sister: Four, yes four, of her classmates are actually getting baby siblings this spring. One I had known about already; one I found out about when the mom showed up at BG's birthday party hugely pregnant; the other two I had no idea. (This is what happens when you're a working mom and never see any of the other mothers and drop-off or pick-up.)

Then, not 10 minutes ago, one of my work colleagues announced she's expecting her second. Her first is 2--hey, just about the age BG was when we started trying for number two! My coworker is also nearly exactly (like within a month) the same age as me, which just adds insult to injury--somehow it would be easier to deal with if she were a lot younger or a lot older.

Then there's my friend whose second pregnancy vibes I was hoping would rub off on me. I begged off a lunch date this past weekend, knowing that I wouldn't be able to deal, and spent the day outside with BG instead, watching her run around enjoying the springlike weather. We ran into one of the I-had-no-idea moms and her newborn.

As usual, the babies of fellow infertiles do not rub me the wrong way, at all. In fact, they delight me--I couldn't be happier, truly. And to be fair, for all I know, all of those other babies might have been hard fought for too. But I'm still not particularly happy hearing about them.

Meanwhile, yesterday I had to go in to my clinic for a blood draw--even though I swore up and down to the nurses that I really, truly do not ovulate on my own, they would not call in a Provera prescription unless I had bloodwork first to prove it. The nurse who called me with the results could have been a little more tactful: "So, we took some blood this morning to see where you are in your cycle, and it looks like there's really nothing going on at all," she said cheerily. "We'll definitely want to bring on a bleed!" That's me, a barren tundra inside! Yep!

(Yes, I'm exaggerating. I know I got pregnant once, I should be able to do it again. Just wallowing a bit here.)

Anyway, I'll be on Provera for 7 days and then we'll start the whole party over again. Whee!

Nope

I don't know if it's because of the hormones, or because my unmedicated cycles are really not normal at all, but I always find that the first couple days of a period following a failed cycle are much rougher than usual. Bad cramps, aching back, weepiness--I don't get those symptoms on a non-IUI cycle.

See what I did there? That's what you might call burying the lead. Yeah, I got my period today. I took another hpt yesterday morning, 11dpiui, and naturally it was negative. Some instinct told me to put in a pantyliner before I left the house, and sure enough, as I was walking across town I started feeling that telltale ache in my abdomen, and the spotting started soon after.

Emotionally, I don't mind telling you I've been a wreck. I had an orthodontist appointment yesterday morning, of all things, and I seriously started crying right there in the chair when the doctor was over an hour behind schedule. I had to go pick up BG soon, and all I wanted was to go buy myself a goddamn donut to try to drown my sorrows in empty carbs, and I wasn't even going to have time to do that. Yes. I was crying because I couldn't have a donut. Then I started sobbing in earnest as I was walking back to the subway. I made it through the rest of the day, then after I put BG to bed, I cried again to my husband as we talked about what to do next. Then I baked a cake and ate...well, let's just say a lot of it.

I don't know why it keeps getting harder and harder. You'd think I'd be used to it by now.

We're going to try one more IUI. If that doesn't work, we're going to revisit the discussion about IVF.

Sadness

This morning, I opened my email inbox to find a message with the subject line, "Baby!" Yes, a birth announcement, from the husband of a friend I hadn't even known was pregnant.

The email brought up all sorts of complicated sadness for me. First, the difficult feelings I have toward this friend, M. I met M when Bat Girl was just a month or so old. Her daughter was six days younger, born in the same hospital as BG even, and we met walking the paths of our neighborhood park with our newborns bundled into baby carriers. We were each other's mainstays through those foggy newborn months, bonding over breastfeeding difficulties and sleep issues, putting together a little moms group for other neighborhood women with newborns, sharing a babysitter, meeting up in the park on summer weekends (once we both went back to work) to marvel at our girls' chubby legs and attempts at crawling. We got to know each other's husbands. We celebrated our daughters' birthdays. I really thought we were good friends. We were good friends.

Then, when our girls were about a year and a half old, M got a job on the other side of the country, and she and her husband and daughter packed up and moved. They had a goodbye party, which of course we went to, and M and I said heartfelt farewells and promised to keep in touch.

And I never heard from her again. Not one email or phone call or text. I sent her a few emails asking how she was doing, but never got a response. At first I thought maybe she was too busy to keep in touch, but then a few other neighborhood moms mentioned hearing from her. Then I thought maybe she didn't have my email address and my emails were going into her spam folder, or something like that. But then I started getting occasional mass emails from her husband--notes that they were looking for a new subletter for their Big City apartment, announcements about a new project he was working on--and I had certainly never given him my email address. So I knew that she had given him my email for his "New York Friends" mass email list, yet somehow never found the time to write me a single word personally, after all that we had been through together. And that hurt.

So of course, seeing M's husband's name in my inbox brought up that hurt all over again. She was pregnant--and I hadn't even known it. I had to find out through that impersonal mass email to everyone they know, after the baby was born.

Then there's the fact that she just had her second baby, and her first is exactly the same age as BG. See, my bitterness about other people's pregnancies/babies is very specific now. I feel no resentment toward people having their first, even if they had no problems getting pregnant. (We've had a LOT of first babies in our lives lately--one born last month, one due this month, two more due this summer. Two of those are to friends who had miscarriages last year, so for those I am especially happy.) Maybe I still resent people who have super easy, robustly healthy first pregnancies--but only a little. I also feel little or no resentment toward people who have two kids under two--I was not ready for another baby when BG was that young, and would not have wanted one at that point.

But people with children roughly the same age as Bat Girl, who are pregnant with or have just given birth to their second? People whose second babies were conceived during the period last year when we were going through treatment? Those people, I resent the hell out of.

Last weekend I ran into the mother of a friend of BG's from daycare, whom I happened not to have seen for several months, and who was obviously, gigantically pregnant. I'd had no idea--and yes, her daughter is just a few months older than BG. I felt like I'd been socked in the stomach. And I ran into this woman and her belly again at daycare drop-off this morning.

AND this morning I got my period. I'd been spotting or bleeding basically every day for about 5 or 6 weeks, and I finally called my clinic last week and got a prescription for Provera. Took the damn prescription, and you'd think that after bleeding for 6 weeks straight there wouldn't be anything left in there, but as it happens, there sure is.

So there I am this morning, feeling terrible because of my period, which had to be artificially induced thanks to my eternally fucked-up ovaries, unemployed with no way to pay for IF treatment and no insurance that covers it, feeling sad and resentful about not being pregnant and not knowing if I'll ever be pregnant or have another child, feeling bitter about someone I know with a kid the same age as mine who's having another baby, and oh yeah, dealing with some more relationship crap that I don't really feel like getting into right now. And then I get a birth announcement from the husband of a friend who basically dumped me.

So yeah, not the best morning.

But dumping it all out on the Internet helps. So thanks.

PS I did write a very nice short email back to M and her husband (he sent the email but she was cc'ed) congratulating them and telling them how adorable the new baby was and how beautiful and grownup their daughter looked and how they both looked great too (they sent a lot of pictures). Because, you know, everyone deserves congratulations when they have a baby, and I'm not an asshole. At least not in public.

Ack.

Because I cannot think clearly enough to compose coherent sentences/paragraphs, I present my Monday in bullet points:

• Called Freedom Drug to confirm delivery of my meds--in case you're curious, that's 2 courses of doxycycline (1 for me, 1 for husband), 1 Lupron 2-week kit, 7 tablets of Medrol (I think that's for in case they end up doing micromanipulation like ICSI or assisted hatching, which I think is unlikely but whatever), and 2 vials of the dreaded PIO. They're going to try to get insurance to cover at least some of it, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that even if I end up having to pay out of pocket, the total will be "only" $314.39. Yay! (And yay again for stocking up on Gonal-F.)

• Got a call from Dream Job--they loved me in the interviews, but have some reservations about one particular issue, and so they want me to come in for one more round of interviews, this time to meet with two new people and a second 1-hour round (third if you count the initial phone interview) with the CEO.

• Basically, I was given to understand that if I nail these interviews, the job is mine.

• The one particular issue they have reservations about is one that I personally know to be my weakest suit. In my most confident moments, I consider this to be an area in which I am merely very competent (as opposed to my brilliance in every other aspect of my work life). In my weakest moments, I feel that this is the weak link that dooms me to a life of mediocrity and/or failure.

• It is incredibly nerve-wracking to know that whether or not you get a job hinges on whether or not you can prove yourself in your weakest area.

• It is incredibly distressing, as useful as it is, to get feedback that basically confirms your own harshest assessment of yourself.

• So much so that I freaked out on the phone to my husband when I called to tell him about this and ended up crying on my cell phone in the middle of a busy Big City sidewalk. Nice.

• Approximately 50% of the freakout was interview-induced, the other 50% was the IVF issue coming up again. Because it's now clear that the decision on this job may come very quickly--may come this week, since I've got my series of interviews tomorrow and Wednesday. May come, in fact, before I start Lupron next week.

• As I was freaking out on Third Avenue, my husband pointed out that maybe I have a little too much on my plate, what with the job thing and the IVF, and maybe we should consider holding off.

• Cue round 2 of hysterics. Panic about cost, insurance, "but I'm not getting any younger!", "if we don't do it now we can never do it!", etc.

• The thing is, if I had already started the IVF protocol when offered a job, I would be OK with continuing, as per my last post. But what if they offer me the job this week? Could I really handle the pressures of a new job and the stress of IVF--not to mention the side effects of the drugs, etc.?

• I have been trying to come up with a zoo-related analogy to illuminate all this, but I fail. But this job involves being head of a small but growing zoo with a very large penguin division (click the link if that doesn't make sense to you).

• If I think about it, as long as the meds will keep (and I checked, the Gonal-F pens have an expiration date in 2011), it wouldn't be terrible if we waited until next year to do IVF. Yes, it would be expensive without insurance, but if I had a job we might be able to make it work.

• But I want a baaaaybeeee noooooooow!

• (Not really. But I do like the idea of BG and her theoretical sibling being around three years apart.)

• At any rate, now I am starting to lean toward holding off--assuming I get an offer before next week, that is. If I don't, all bets are off.

• I realize that is in complete contradiction to where I was going in my last post.

• I am confused.

• I am going to lock down and just keep my head focused on the job stuff for the next couple days, and worry about the IVF stuff later. Or I will try to do that, anyway.

Thanks...

...for all the supportive comments. I wasn't sure whether to post about it, honestly. I mean, as veterans of IF and/or regular readers of IF blogs, we've all seen our share of darkness and bitterness online. But I just didn't feel like posting one more tale of woe. I hate what my blog became when I was in my darkest times before Bat Girl's birth--though I of course leave it all up there for honesty's sake, and to let others know they aren't alone--and I didn't want to go back to being one of those blogs where, as much as you care about the person writing it, you're like, "Oh god, what is she complaining about now?"

But again in the interest of honesty, I continue to put it out there. I probably won't post about therapy in any detail, because who really wants to read that? However, if in the course of therapy I hit on the magic formula for wanting to have sex nonstop (other than, "get in a time machine and go back to being 21 years old"), I will most definitely share it with you all.

Welcome to crazytown

Yesterday I saw a new therapist. I have been in therapy before, but it has been six or seven years since the last time I saw a shrink--before I got married, anyway. The purported reason for my seeing this new therapist was my complete lack of libido and its attendant negative effects on my marriage.

I know I've been promising to blog about the whole sex thing in detail but I've just never gotten around to it, so you'll have to make do with a quick summary: No sex allowed during entire pregnancy, and I was frankly too cranky about it to "take care" of my husband in other ways instead. After I was cleared for sex post-delivery, we tried a few times, but each time was very painful for me. My libido has also been non-existent. It has been close to a year since the last time we tried and while I miss sex, it is only in a theoretical kind of way. I am too tired, too sapped physically and mentally and emotionally, to feel anything approaching desire, and I also just don't feel very sexy or sexual these days. I recognize that this is not good for my relationship with my husband (who is increasingly frustrated with this state of affairs), and I even mentioned it to my OB at my most recent checkup--even asked for a hormone workup to make sure there was nothing physically wrong. She basically said, "You work full-time and you have a kid. Of course you don't want to have sex. If you DID want to have a lot of sex, that would be unusual."

At any rate, I finally got my shit together and managed to find a therapist who not only specializes in post-partum issues, she also specializes in infertility issues AND she takes my insurance. Our first session was yesterday.

I feel pretty confident that, while there are probably biological and post-partum components to my current sexless state, a lot of it stems from relationship issues (sorry, can't go into detail), and the relationship issues and lack of sex feed into each other in a vicious circle. So I arrived prepared to delve into that. I also recognize, intellectually at least, that the whole IF/tough pregnancy/breastfeeding clusterfuck probably left me with some lingering issues about my body and its capabilities. But, while I was certainly prepared to talk about those things, I generally feel on a day-to-day basis that I've bounced back pretty well from all that crap, and in fact I feel pretty proud that I've been able to let go of the horrible bitterness I once felt.

However, when I was giving the therapist a short summary of my backstory, by way of explaining how our sex life had gone south in the first place--two years infertility (which is so short in the grand scheme of things!), tough pregnancy, one trimester of bleeding, two trimesters of contractions, four months of bedrest, c-section, breastfeeding disaster--she kept making these shocked and sympathetic and wow-how-horrible noises. A therapist who specializes in seeing women with fucked-up reproductive histories was shocked and appalled by what I had been through. And the floodgates creaked open, and I started to cry, and I couldn't stop sobbing.

So I guess I'm not as healed as I thought I was. I'm going to have my work cut out for me.

Sniff

Monday pop quiz! Which of the following is NOT conducive to a restful, relaxing weekend?

a) You are sick.
b) Your husband/partner is sick.
c) Your child is sick.
d) Your child is cutting a tooth.
e) No, wait, your child is cutting two teeth.
f) Did I say two teeth? I meant three teeth.
g) Holy fuck, she's cutting four teeth at once?

If you correctly answered (h) all of the above, congratulations! You win a lifetime supply of Theraflu and a hamper full of T-shirts with snot encrustations on the shoulders.

My parents were in town and I'd hoped to go out to brunch for Bat Girl's birthday plus get some professional photos taken of all of us (including with Bat Girl in her dol hanbok, the traditional Korean dress for her first birthday), but instead we laid around our apartment moaning (me) and drooling (BG) and leaking snot (all of us) while my mom made soup. I guess it could have been worse.

I'm at work now and so congested and miserable that I'm getting nothing done. But the alternative is going home and getting another layer of baby snot laid down on me, and right now sitting in my cubicle staring blankly seems more restful.