Merry Thanksmuskah

First, I want to apologize for the delay in posting. The Holidays have been busy, and I haven't felt any epiphanies or realizations in the realm of infertility, so my blogging fingers have been quiet.

It was a great Christmas. I have been talking recently about taking some classes or at least reading some books about jewelry design. I have a particular aesthetic that revolves around old Victorian along with more modern elements, that I am sure stems from my recent steampunk art and literature fetish. Well, my husband shocked me by giving me a beautiful necklace that he designed and created himself. It has exposed clock parts and beautiful green jewel (green is my favorite, in fact my engagement ring is an emerald). I was seriously shocked and touched. He is so wonderful.

Enough gushing. Tomorrow I leave for the west side of Michigan to a rented cabin for New Years. In college, a great friendship developed between the groupies of my husbands band. We started getting together during college for drunken revelry and thanksgiving. It is always such a wonderful time of year, and we dubbed it Thanksmuskuh, since there are friends from all backgrounds. In the end, we have created a tradition that has lasted over a decade and I am going to live it up. 2010 can kiss my ass, but I will show it off with a bang.

Here's to 2011 and to dreams coming true in the new year.

My Perfect Cycle

My body cracks me up.

True to form, my cycle this month has been picture-perfect. My reproductive system is a full-on Monet. Sure it looks good from far away, but up close its a big mess. (Thank you Clueless).

In a move that brought on the creepy deja-vu heebie-jeebies, I restarted my fertilityfriend account and dug out my thermometer. My accupuncturist has decided she wants to see some charting, so she can more finely tune the Chinese herbs she is prescribing me.

Have I mentioned that these Chinese herbs taste like the ass of a tree. Well they do, so I'm not too excited about having a variety of tree ass to test my gag reflexes with twice a day. But, I'll do it. Just mark it down as one more thing we infertiles have to go through to achieve the same goal that Candy Crackwhore manages to achieve when accidently tripping in a semen-filled alley.

But I digress. My temps looked great. I had a dip yesterday, and also noted some great egg white goings-ons...and my temp shot up today. My Ovu-cue also detected ovulation as well. Day 15. Pretty perfect. Not that it matters of course.

It depresses me that I've never been pregnant, even once, even a little, even for a week. I am still left wondering, if my body is doing what it is suppose to do...what is wrong with me?

If I have terrible egg quality...Why? Has any RE in the history of RE-dum ever answered this question?

Sometimes I think my RE wants me to admit I lied on my paperwork and I'm actually older than I am, that way he could just blame it on my age and be done with it. But its hard to tell a 28 year old that her eggs suck because of her age. I'm afraid it's not going to be so hard to tell a 31 year old that...as my birthday is a short 3 months away :(

Oh well, I'm really not as bitter or depressed as this verbal diarrhea post may have you believe. I am excited for Christmas. I have some great presents to hand out this year and I am looking forward to spending some time with my wonderful family and being thankful for all the blessings I have in my life.

With that, I will leave you with this funny cartoon from Mompetition. I ran across her videos yesterday, and they crack me up. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY5ZDMLpXUU&feature=player_embedded

Consolers of the Lonley..

Infertility can be especially isolating for the introverted.

Books, movies and videogames currently hold more appeal to me than most people.

To be honest, it may be that these distractions are easier than
keeping up with high school and college friendships that have loss common bonds, as they achieve parenthood and I am left yearning for something they have started to take for granted.

During my first IVF, my immensely ignorant, delusional, and overly-confident self told my best high school friend (and maid of honor at my wedding) about my treatment.

We loss touch over the ensuing months, and when I spoke to her again, I was gearing up for IVF #2. Since she had been one of the few people I told about #1, I told her about my anticipation for IVF #2. Her response was "You've done this before"?

Nice huh?

I have a vague recollection of my ears turning red (one of the lovely side effects of my embarrassment and/or anger) and mumbling something dismissive trying to find a way to leave so I could go home and be by myself.

And since then, I've managed to stay by myself pretty well. This was helped when my workplace allowed me to start working from home. So now, not only am I a hermit, but I'm a hermit that doesn't even have to get out of her ultra sexy hermit snowman fleece pants.

I have kept my current infertility woes between myself (and N8 of course) and you lovely folks.

I didn't even have the heart to tell my Mom about this latest cycle, and my
in-laws in all their ultra-conservative Catholicism, I have decided to keep in the dark.

So really all I have to vent to is you, my consolers, and I am immensely grateful for your pixelated presence in my life.

Every once in awhile I need to put down my dragon slaying axe, or my newest steampunk paperback novel and face reality. I am infertile and lonely and it hurts.

Wow, reality sucks. I think I'll go back to dragon slaying. The villagers need me.

Songs for Happy

When I was younger I use to ask my Mom about the year I was born. I remember her once telling me that she would always remember 1980 for two reasons. She gave birth to her first child and John Lennon died.

At the 30th anniversary of his death, I still feel a pang of sadness. My Mom instilled in me a love for music at an early age, and I feel lucky that she had such great taste.

I mopped floors to blaring Led Zeppelin and washed dishes to Elton John. And the Beatles..the Beatles were everywhere.

Music is very important to me. I married a musician. (I will have a great post on how I managed to snag the sexiest musician on campus some other time.)
Now, he's an engineer by trade, but I know his passion is music.

I have been to more concerts than I could count. I use to spend every last dime I made in college on concert tickets. Practically every other weekend I was in Detroit or Chicago to see a show. (For the curious, The Flaming Lips on New Years will never be topped in my opinion).

Maybe its because I love music so much that it can affect me so. I did a few things this week to actively try to pull myself out of the depressive slump I've been in. I hung Christmas decorations and put up our tree, and I made a new mix of my favorite music that fills my heart with happy.

Maybe they could fill your heart with happy too! Don't you love presumptive people who believe you will love whatever they love??? Well, you're in luck because I'm one of those people!

Here is Reese's Cure for the Blues:

1. Sigur Ros - Gobbledigook. One of my favorite bands, even through I don't know a word of Icelandic. Every time I hear this song it just makes me smile. I look out the window of my home office and can't help but be overwhelmed with how beautiful my little piece of the world is.

2. Sufjan Stevens--Concerning the UFO sighting near Highland, IL. - Only Sufjan can make a song about Alien abductions beautiful.
Funny story about Sufjan Stevens. He grew up in Michigan and attended a Liberal Arts College with one of my friends I work with. When I discovered this fact I squealed and jumped around. She just shrugged "I think he was in my English class--He was a dirty hippy".
A DIRTY HIPPY! I stood there with my mouth open, trying to force syllables out of my mouth. She sat in English class with somebody I consider one of the greatest musicians alive today..and that is all she can say. Of course, I've tried to convert her to little avail. *Sigh* Don't worry I don't give up.

3. Phoenix--Love like a Sunset. I want to live inside this song.

Hope your day is happy and that if you find yourself in one of those dark places infertility sends us, that you have a beautiful song that can help pull you out. And if you do, please share! I'd love to know what songs help you out.

The 180

This morning I was still high on the words of the Hope Harpy that's been feeding me advice for the past week. I was still feeling A.O.K.

I'm not sure what triggered it. Was it SIRM's OBRS Success Rates.


I am a "B". That means my chance of success is about 29%. That means my chance of failure is about 71%. I was floored by this.

Or was it just the motion of my fingers typing "IVF #4 success" into Google and clicking "I feel lucky".

Suddenly, another version of myself, the 28 year old version of myself from a short 24 months ago saw me type IVF #4 and I couldn't help the rush of despair that came over me.

How the f*ck did I get here?

Who is this person?

How can I possibly be going into IVF #4.

I'm 30.

I have f*cking glowing FSH levels.

Why are my eggs always immature? Why has nobody given me an answer?

How can I keep doing this? How can I possibly look at my husband and tell him it didn't work again? I love him so much. I feel like such a failure. I feel irrecoverably damaged. There is something wrong with me. Something so wrong that IVF will not help me. This is how I feel today.

SIRM Consult

Happy Friday Internets. Your pixelated skin is positively glowing today!

I can honestly say I am feeling...fine. I think I've bounced back from this loss faster than my first two cycles. I'm getting good at this.

Not something I was hoping to excel at. Maybe Ballet, violin, or synchronized swimming? But no, I excel at processing pain and moving on. I think it may be my Irish Heritage. Nobody I know has been dealt with more pain in her life than my Mom, and she has to be the most gracious and warm (and stubborn) person I know. If shitty things happen, you just deal with it and move on. That'll be a fun topic for a gloomy day. But today is Friday so lets celebrate.

I had a good consult with SIRM yesterday. Dr. Fis.ch can sure talk, let me tell ya. But I liked what he had to say so it was all good.

He thinks I probably have some variation of PCOS. He thinks the A/ACP is a great protocol for me, but would not do estrogen priming with it like I did last time.

He would put me on birth control, and start out with a FSH only protocol at the beginning of stims and then add in some LH towards the end. (This is the opposite of what happened last month, my RE started me out with 225 Follistim, 225 Menupur and when my E2 started skyrocketing he dropped the Menupur. So I got LH at the beginning when its more likely to damage my follicles, instead of at the end when they need it more.) He also gave me a COMPLETE Biology lesson on why you do not want too much LH at the beginning of a cycle, especially if you have PCOS. It was interesting, but I was running out of ways to say "uh, huh" whenever he paused to make sure I was still listening. :)

He also said he would absolutely not recommend Donor Eggs for me at this point. I am young, and though it may take a few tries he is confident with the right protocol that good eggs can be produced.

I am going to bring all of this up with my RE. I hope I can anyways, I have a tendency to clam up when I feel like I might be critical..I don't want him to think I am criticizing him personally. I need to keep the goal in mind. This is about me getting pregnant...not his ego. Right? Right!

I think going to SIRM may be higher on our list than CCRM right now. I know CCRM's rep is great, but their prices are prohibitive. We are a straight up middle class couple, with very little extra cash to go around. We would definitely have to take out a loan to pay for any extra IVFs. SIRM would be a lot cheaper than CCRM and I think probably a better experience than my current RE. Plus they have some packages that help lower costs.

However, if my RE will take these recommendations and go with it, I may be convinced to go with him again just because it would be so much less disruptive with my job and would be incredibly less expensive than traveling anywhere else.

For right now, I feel closer to making a decision. Wish my WTF meeting wasn't so far away. I am anxious to KNOW NOW and get prepared.

With preparation in mind, I am going to get back on a diet I did at the start of this year that helped me lose 20 lbs. I could stand to lose 10-15 more before I'd be at my "ideal". I am also going to start my weekly accupuncture sessions. I miss them, and I definitely think they helped with this last cycle.

Ta-Ta for now!