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So I have immensely enjoyed riding my bike to work the past few days (it’s National Bike to Work Week, for those who are unaware). All of the trees are spouting leaves and the crabapples and magnolias are in bloom. It’s gorgeous.
But even more wonderful than the physical beauty, is the smell. The smell of lilac and magnolias is just intoxicating. The smell of a freshly cut lawn… These are the smells that take me back to my childhood, a time when things were simpler and I had no cares in the world. All of the neighborhood kids would stay outside playing games until the sun went down and our parents called us in to get ready for bed. It’s a nice reprieve from the reality of being an adult and all of the responsibilities that come along with it.
As for the source of my confusion, I’m fairly certain that I’ve already ovulated. This doesn’t make any sense at all though, since I’ve been testing twice a day since Saturday and never got a surge. I took my Ovidrel trigger shot last night at 8pm, and according to Dr. O, most women ovulate right around 38 hours after taking the trigger. If that’s true, then I shouldn’t ovulate until 10 am tomorrow.
So what gives? Are my surges just so short that testing twice a day isn’t catching it? Or does my body react weirdly to the HCG shot and ovulate early? I don’t know. I will definitely be asking Dr. O tomorrow.
Other than this morning, I haven’t been temping at all this cycle so I have no idea where my coverline should be, but tomorrow’s temp should tell the tale. If it’s high, as I expect that it will be, we’re skipping the IUI. I’m definitely bummed about this, especially since we didn’t get any old fashioned baby making in lately because we were abstaining for the IUI. It basically translates into a wasted cycle, which makes me sad. I was having a really good feeling about this cycle and to have it end as a bust is disappointing.
I see that my blog has been hit a few times by women doing a search with the terms “fertility” and “Femara.” I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea about Femara from my previous post Fertility Hogs and Why Femara Sucks, because as a whole it has been GREAT for me. Since I started seeing my new RE and we bumped the dose up to 12.5mg, I’ve had 3-4 follicles and my lining was great. I also have great cervical fluid and nearly no side effects to speak of, other than the one day of intense headache and a few days of sore shoulders.
I’ve never been on Clomid so I can’t provide an objective comparison, but Femara is rumored to have fewer side effects, and I’ll definitely take that. Many women seem to have issues with Clomid thinning their lining and drying up their cervical fluid, neither of which I’ve encountered on Femara.
And as for the study that seems to suggest that Femara is linked to higher rates of birth defects, I think that a number of the methods used for that study were flawed and therefore the study holds no weight for me. If you’re concerned about the reports of higher birth defect rates when using Femara (Letrozole) then I would encourage you to read this article. It certainly helped to calm my fears.
I will continue to use Femara until it is determined that Femara and IUI will not work for us at which point we will move on to injectibles or IVF. I’m willing to assume the risk (however large or small it may be) in order to gain the benefits (shorter half life, doesn’t thin the lining, doesn’t dry up CF) that Letrozole has over Clomid.
So here’s today’s gripe. A couple of years ago when Chili was just a puppy, I was walking him and Popeye around the block. A few houses down from ours, a little boy came running up to us and just LOVED Chili (who wouldn’t though, right? That dog is freaking adorable!). So I asked him if he had a dog of his own. He said no and his mom came up behind me and said “He doesn’t need a dog, he’s got 5 brothers and sisters to keep him occupied!” Yikes. That’s a lot of children. So a couple of weeks ago, I was driving down the street and I see the same mom crossing the street to pick up a ball one of her kids kicked across the street. She was as big as a house, clearly ready to be popping out another child soon. Yesterday as I was riding home from work, I notice that there are pink balloons all over their yard and a “It’s a girl sign in the front yard. Good lord, the next child has arrived.
I immediately think that this is clearly a very selfish woman. She is hogging all of the fertility on the block, and very obnoxiously so. She’s already got SIX children! What in the world does she need with another one? Share the love woman! Then I thought about the formers owners of our house who told us that the block is known for twins. They had a set, the next-door neighbors have a set, and two houses down there was a set. So what the heck is up with all of the fertility hogs that live on my block?
End of rant.
And because I know that you are super curious as to why Femara sucks, here’s my explanation. Yesterday I had really, really, REALLY bad tension in my shoulders and I had a terrible headache yesterday too. My shoulders were super tight last month around this same time frame, and I also suffered from a really bad headache then too. Of course I should give Femara the benefit of the doubt and say that my sore shoulders could have been from sleeping funny the night before, and that my headache was probably due to the fact that I am really bad at drinking water during the weekend, so I was probably just massively dehydrated, but the coincidence seems too obvious to ignore. Either way, I’m feeling much better today and I’m hoping that this month works for us so that I don’t have to go through this again next month!
