Well, cycle day one has arrived a couple of days early, and with a definite vengeance. Today marks the beginning of our first, and hopefully last IVF cycle to conceive our first child. Tonight I will take my first birth control pill and baby aspirin.

The next two months will be a whirlwind of meds, blood work, injections, ultrasounds, hotel stays and lots of four hour car trips.

We are hoping that in the end, we will be blessed with a healthy pregnancy. Until then, we’re just trying to enjoy the rest of our summer and stay as positive as possible.

Yesterday I went to my third ever Reiki session with Lisa. When we sat down, she asked me how I had been doing and I told her that we’ve decided to move on to IVF and will be starting that at the end of this month. I also told her that I’ve been feeling so much less stress and pressure lately. I’m not sure if it’s because I feel like IVF is going to work for us, or if I’m just over my obsession, but whatever it is, I feel good. So she said let’s get started and see what comes up.

She started by putting her hands over my eyes and normally within a minute she takes her hands off and we talk about something. The first session she said “You’re all in your head, aren’t you?” and the second session she said “Tell me how you’re feeling about moving on to IVF.” This time, she had her hands there for a good 5 minutes and didn’t say a word. Finally she moved on to my head and she said “You REALLY are feeling so much more calm.” I agreed and said that I felt so much less stressed about everything. I mentioned how we had told my parents about our upcoming IVF cycle, actually our fertility struggles in general, and how they had offered to watch our dogs and go to appointments with us and everything. I said how it was nice to know that we had their support. By this point she had moved her hands over to my chest and she immediately said “So tell me what it is about telling your parents that has left you with a heavy heart?” Shock. That’s all I could come up with was shock. I started giggling because I immediately knew what she was picking up on, but I was so shocked on the inside. While telling my parents did not go at all how I had envisioned it going, I certainly didn’t feel bad, sad or hurt about the way it went. Or did I?

So I explained to Lisa what had happened, and mentioned that I was surprised by what she had picked up on because I didn’t even know that I felt anything other than impartial about the subject. She said that there was definitely a blockage in my heart about this subject and we needed to fix it. Lisa sensed that the “little girl” part of me felt like she was hurting and that she wanted recognition from her mom. Like when you were little and fell and skinned your knee, you wanted mommy to pick you up, take you inside, clean you up and make you feel better. I didn’t get that from my mom when we told her about the IVF and the little girl inside of me wanted that recognition of her pain and struggles, but it never came. So Lisa had me envision a younger version of me and had me tell young me that it was OK. That mommy didn’t even realize that we were struggling with infertility and didn’t know how to react. Mommy didn’t mean to be hurtful in the way she responded, she just didn’t know how to respond in any other way. And as hokey as it sounds, it worked. Though I can’t honestly say that I felt hurt by it, I did find myself replaying the whole discussion with my parents over in my head once or twice a day, so it was probably weighing on me. Since my Reiki session, I haven’t thought about it at all (until I started to write this post, that is).

After that, most of the rest of the session was devoted to getting myself into a “good place” for the start of our IVF cycle. She had me ask my mind, body and spirit to clear any blocks that might be in the way of our success and then to give thanks for all of the work that my mind, body and spirit have done so far. At the end of the session, I felt good and ready to start on our IVF cycle in a couple of weeks.

In other IVF news, we got our home equity loan squared away so we’ll have the money ready to go when we need it. Our plan is to put the whole shebang onto 3 or 4 credit cards (gotta get our points!!), then pay those off immediately with the home equity loan. Then we will likely use some of those balance transfer checks that we get in the mail all of the time to transfer the money from our 7.45% interest home equity loan onto “no interest until September of ‘09” credit cards. I think that we’ll definitely be able to handle things financially and hope to have the debt paid off in three years or less.

We also got a rough estimate of our IVF calendar yesterday. I was concerned about the timing of everything since Mark was supposed to go to Vegas for work the week of September 21st and I also though that was going to be the week of my retrival. As it turns out, my estimates were off by a week and I won’t go for retrieval until the week of the 28th, so it shouldn’t be a big deal. It’s crazy how having that calendar right there in front of me makes me realize how real this really is. Two weeks from now I should be popping my daily birth control pill and we couldn’t be more excited! How crazy is that?

Yesterday we FINALLY told my parents about our fertility struggles. To say that it went nothing like I had imagined would be an understatement. Here is how it went down:

Me: So Mark and I went to Iowa on Thursday
Mom: What did you do there?
Me: We went to a fertility clinic.
Mom: Oh really? What for?
Me: Because we’re going to be starting IVF soon.
Mom: Now what exactly does that mean?
Dad: It’s in-vitro fertilization, right?
Me: Yes.
Mom: Would you consider doing acupuncture first?

WHAT?!? That’s the first thing out of her mouth when she finds out that we’re struggling with infertility? This was not at all what I had expected from her. If you’ll recall from my post here, I had envisioned her being so empathetic to our situation and immediately understanding the emotional side of things, but this could not have been farther from what actually happened.

After I told my mom that we had actually been doing acupuncture off and on for over a year, she went on to tell me about how she was at an acupuncture appointment at the end of the day and they forgot about her and everyone left the office while she was still laying there on the table. The whole time that she was telling this story, my head was just spinning. I couldn’t believe that this was her reaction to our news. She didn’t ask any questions of us, just launched into this story of how she was abandoned at an acupuncture appointment once. Mark and I exchanged looks of disbelief and I could feel my dad looking at me and then Mark and then back to me again. I think he was right on the same wavelength as Mark and I; wondering why in the world she was telling this ridiculous story when we had just told them that we’re about to begin the most intense of all reproductive technologies.

I have a feeling that our news shocked the hell out of her and she didn’t know how to respond, so she just went with what she knew so that she could try to process the information and ask intelligent questions. A stall technique, if you will. This is what I’m hoping at least. It was just really atypical of my mom and not at all how I had envisioned everything going down.

Anyway, after we had finished the acupuncture discussion, they started asking questions and we explained our history to them and why we are doing IVF. Then we got more of the response that I had expected. My mom said that while she and my dad hadn’t had a chance to discuss it yet, she was sure that they would be willing to help us out financially if we needed it, or whatever else we needed as well. She offered to go to my appointments with me and then said “I know you’ll probably laugh, but I would love to do Reiki on you if you would like.” (This is the ONE part of yesterday that DID go exactly as I had pictured it.) I told her that would be great since I’ve been seeing someone for Reiki for a few months. My dad said that he would be more than happy to take care of the dogs for us when we needed to be gone overnight, and also agreed to let us use their Prius to save some money on gas if we wanted.

I still don’t think that my mom has even begun to realize the emotional struggle that we’ve been through over the past 21 months, which is weird. I think my dad got it so much more than she did and he even made a comment about how it had probably been a huge emotional burden for us. He did mention that he had read this article and this one, which were run in our local paper about a month ago, so maybe that’s why he was a bit more understanding of what we’ve been going through. Either way, my dad gave me an extra big hug when we were leaving yesterday, which was a nice recognition of the fact that things haven’t been easy for us.

In the end, the whole thing ended up being OK, but it certainly did get off to a weird and unexpected start.

In other fertility related news, my support group had a BBQ last night so that we could get to know each other’s husbands and also spend time together outside of the support group environment. I had a really good time and though I know Mark was dreading it, I think he might have even enjoyed himself. There is one woman in our group who is not even TTC, but did have a significant struggle to conceive her son and attends the meetings with the sole purpose of supporting the rest of us through our journeys. It is so great that she is there for us and so refreshing to see things from her perspective now that she is on “the other side” of infertility. Anyway, she and her husband brought their two and a half year old son and he was just a doll. He was adorable and funny and just a joy to be around. He called all of the ladies “Miss” (I was Miss Jessica) and it was a hoot. He was a definite reminder of what it is that we’re pursuing and helps to reinforce that doing IVF is right for us.

Additionally, I found out that one of the girls who was planning on moving on to IVF is indeed doing so, and it sounds like she may be only a couple of weeks behind me with her first cycle. I’m hoping that we’re somewhat close in dates so that we can go through this together. There are plenty of online buddy groups that I could join for support, but it would be really nice to have someone in real life to talk to about things.

We are so hoping that IVF does the trick for us, and hopefully with the first cycle. While failed IUI’s are difficult to deal with, I can only imagine how much more difficult and painful it is to have a failed IVF. Overall, we’re feeling good and are excited to get going! Our rough estimate has me starting birth control on the 21st and we can’t wait!

So last summer we got some new across the street neighbors and the woman just happened to be pregnant. Of course it was a lot of fun for me to see her out and about in the neighborhood all cute and pregnant. We aren’t really good friends with them, so we didn’t have to hang out with them too much, but we would chat with them frequently. The minimal exposure to her pregnancy suited me just fine and she gave birth to their son in November.

Today their blog popped up on my blog reader as having a new post, so I went to check it out. There was an adorable picture of their 8 month old son and at the very bottom, the news that she is pregnant yet again.

Holy crap. I’ve presumably been lapped in the big game of trying to conceive. Obviously I have no idea how long it took them to conceive their son, but I’m guessing that since she was able to get pregnant only 8 months postpartum that it didn’t take them too long to get pregnant with the first.

So yeah. That feels just great. Fortunately, I have my own good news to share. We’ve been accedpted into the shared risk program and I’ve already had my sonohysterogram, so we’ll be starting our IVF cycle with the start my next cycle! We are really happy to have everything figured out and ready to go.

Oh yeah, since I never did a follow up post, here is how everything went down. On Monday I called the financial services lady once again trying to get a hold of here and of course, no dice. I was freaking out, second guessing our decision to go to MIF (our fertility clinic) because we couldn’t get anyone to call us back. Finally Mark called and for some reason she decided to respond to his message. Long story short, her mother was very ill the week prior and she was out of the office all week. She kept thinking that she was going to back each day, but wasn’t able to return to work until Monday. So when Mark finally got her on the phone, she apologized for the lack of communication, explained the circumstances and managed to arrange our IVF education class for us on Thursday as well.

In the end, everything worked out great and we were able to knock out both the SHG and class at the same time. We had a good time in Iowa and are feeling really good about our upcoming IVF cycle! Now I just have to find the patience to wait it out!

So last Tuesday we got up bright and early to head down to Iowa for our consultation with the new clinic.  We were really early, so we had some lunch and then went to the mall for a bit before heading over to the clinic.  We registered with the receptionist and were taken back within a few minutes.  The nurse that took us back took my weight and blood pressure and then we met with Dr. C.  As usual, he started with the whole medical history bit, and went through my records and entered all of my test results into his system.  After that, he went through all of the basic causes of infertility and crossed them off one by one and ultimately came up with the conclusion that we have unexplained infertility (duh).  The only possible explanation that he gave us for our difficulties in conceiving was that that it is possible that Mark may have developed antisperm antibodies as a result of a hernia repair surgery that he had last year.  If that were the case, it would lead to fertilization problems, which could explain why we’re not pregnant yet. 

Once he officially gave us his diagnosis, he said that he guessed that we were ready to move on to IVF since most people wouldn’t travel 4+ hours for clomid and IUI’s.  BINGO!  At his clinic, they do ICSI for 90% to 95% of their IVF cycles, and he would recommend that for us too because of the possibility of antisperm antibodies and ICSI would bypass the entire fertilization issue.

Dr. C seems to think that IVF will do the trick for us, and of course we are hoping that he’s right.  He said that I have responded well to the oral meds in the past and that bodes well for how I will respond to the injectables.  He also thought that we should be able to participate in the shared risk program which will allow us to do three fresh IVF cycles along with any associated frozen cycles for one fixed cost.  The nice part about this particular program is that meds are included in the package price which is a HUGE cost savings.  Comparing my previous clinic’s shared risk program to this new one, we will save somewhere between $6,500 and $17,500 depending on how many tries it takes us to get pregnant. 

So before we can move on, Dr. C said that I would l need to have another sonohysterogram/mock transfer.  This will be done so that he can determine the curvature of my cervix so that inserting the catheter for the embryo transfer is as easy as possible, and also to determine the shape of my uterus so that he can put the embryos in the “sweet spot” where they will have the best chance to implant.  Mark and I also both had to have blood tests for HIV, Hepatitis, etc, which we did on Thursday. 

All that’s left now is to have a phone meeting with the financial advisor Monica and then take the IVF patient education class.  And unfortunately, that seems to be where we’ve hit some stumbling blocks.  Dr. C said that he would have Monica (who also seems to be the person who determines if we can participate in the shared risk program) call us last Wednesday to go over everything.  Well, today is Monday, and we still have not heard from her.  I left her a voicemail and also sent her an e-mail, and still no response.  My mock transfer is scheduled for Thursday and I need to know if we are accepted into the shared risk program before then.  If for some reason we cannot be a part of the shared risk program, then we will likely not go forward with this particular clinic due to the distance.  There is no sense in heading down there for a mock transfer if we won’t be pursuing treatment with them.  So at this point I am beyond frustrated with the lack of communication.

Additionally, we need to attend a patient education class before we can start IVF.  It just so happened that they were doing one of these classes on the very same day that we were there for our consult.  We actually asked if we could stay and do it then since it would save us a trip, but the receptionist insisted that we must have all of our pre-testing and financial appointment completed before we can take the class.  We had asked Dr. C if there was any way that we could do both the SHG/mock transfer and the class on the same day, and he said that it would probably be doable.  Well when I called to make my SHG appointment, the receptionist told me that the next class wasn’t until late, late August.  What?!?  Do they only do these classes once a month?  If we had to wait until late August before we could take the class, we would miss a whole other cycle, which is certainly not what we want at this point.

So I called on Friday afternoon to see if there was any way that we could pay extra to have a special class just for us.  If not, could we start the birth control pills BEFORE we took the class since you don’t really need a whole lot of education to pop a BCP.  Either of those two options would work out just fine for us (of course we’re hoping that somehow we can arrange a special class just for us on Thursday, which would save us another trip down there), but we still have not heard anything back yet.

I’m frustrated because when I initially contacted this clinic, I had asked about doing treatment from out of state.  Monica had responded that they just had a client from Wisconsin get pregnant from treatment there the previous week, which made it seem like they were experienced in dealing with patients from out of state and that perhaps they were accommodating to their needs.  So far I have not noticed that to be true, and my frustration with their lack of response is certainly growing with each passing hour with no return phone call.

In my heart, I feel like this is the clinic that we need to be at and we will get pregnant from this.  But at this moment, I am so upset and frustrated, I just don’t even know what to do with myself.  I know that frustration is the last thing that I need when we’re going to be starting IVF, so I really hope that the communication improves from here on out.  I have no idea what we will do if it doesn’t.

In more positive news, a woman in my real life support group who has been undergoing IUI’s for over a year (her husband is sterile due to cancer treatments) finally got her BFP.  It was so thrilling to hear that it finally worked for her.  I cannot imagine taking 12.5 mg of Femara and doing two IUI’s every month for 15 months.  The stress and emotion of 5 IUI’s was nearly too much for me. 

Additionally, two women from my online buddy group are also pregnant, one of which was just about to start IVF for severe male factor infertility.  She thought that the only way they could get pregnant was IVF with ICSI and somehow they got a miracle BFP.  It is exciting to know that it is happening for other women.  On one hand it makes me think that if it can happen for them, then it can happen for me.  On the other hand, of course, it makes me wonder how come they can get pregnant with presumably such major issue, but we can’t with presumably minor or non-existent issues.  It’s a frustrating mixed bag of emotions.  But I am very truly happy for all of them.  I’m just wishing that our time comes soon too.

So I was watching HGTV the other night and on came a commercial for Lowe’s. Essentially there’s a woman who looks to be 6, 7 or possibly even 8 months pregnant on the phone saying “Well mom, it looks like we’re going to have to pick out couple more names…we’re having triplets!!!”

Good lord. Are you kidding me?

Does Lowe’s honestly believe that in today’s day and age people don’t find out how many babies they’re having until the woman is as big as a house? I sure hope not. I’m guessing that they’re aware of how stupid this commercial makes them appear, but they just couldn’t resist the obvious increase in store traffic that this great commercial would bring. Riiiiiiiiight…

In non-pregnancy commercial news, I am super excited for our appointment with the new clinic on Tuesday. We are so hoping that we will be accepted into the shared risk IVF program and can get started soon. Please keep us in your thoughts as we move forward with this next step.

Well, I’m exhausted since I can’t seem to get myself into bed at any sort of reasonable hour when my husband is away on business trips, so I’m going to finally go to bed.

At the dog park just about a year ago, an acquaintance told me that she just found out that she was pregnant.  She went on to say that they had been trying for 11 months before they finally got pregnant.  Without thinking about what I was doing, I blabbed that we had been trying for a while too, I guess mostly because I felt like she could relate to the difficulties we were having.  I was shocked that I just opened my mouth and told her this, especially when I hadn’t even really told any of my close friends about what was going on.  But it was too late and I couldn’t take it back, so I just kept questioning what they had been through and how they got it figured out.

When I finally got all of the details, it turned out that they were just mistiming things each month.  Her cycles were very irregular coming off of birth control and so it was hard for them to cover their bases every month.  She went to her OB/GYN and asked for help and was told to just keep trying.  A few more months went by and she went back to the OB/GYN, but happened to see a different doctor on that day.  The OB/GYN suggested that they try using OPK’s to help maximize their chances.  They did, and what do you know?  She was pregnant the next month.  No blood work was ever run, no clomid was ingested, no artificial inseminations took place, all it took was good old fashioned well timed sex.

Now I felt like even more of an idiot for opening my mouth about our difficulties.  I didn’t have any of the same issues that she did.  I had great fertility signals and knew when my most fertile time was each month which was corroborated by the charts that I kept.  Timing was certainly not an issue for us.  As far as I knew at the time, my biggest problem was chronic spotting and had actually just had my blood drawn that day for a 7DPO progesterone level.  She hadn’t even heard of having your progesterone checked and so was no help with that issue.  In fact, she seemed to know virtually nothing about infertility at all.  Up until the month prior, she didn’t even know about OPK’s.  I just couldn’t believe that in 11 months, she had never typed the words “infertility” or even just “how to increase chances of getting pregnant” into Google. 

When she had initially told me that they had been trying for a while, I felt hope because if it could work for them after so long, then there was a good chance that it would work for us as well.  My hope faded a bit when she said that their problem was just a matter of timing because we had already gone though six very well timed cycles. 

Of course I didn’t let it get me too down.  In fact, I fantasized about getting pregnant soon and being able to go through pregnancy together with her, albeit a few months behind her.  How great it would be to have someone in real life to discuss all of the weird changes that pregnancy brings?  And how wonderful for us to have kids approximately the same age? 

But as we all know now, the months slipped by as I continued to remain not pregnant and her little boy is four months old now.  So at the dog park last week, I asked her what she and her son did that day.  She told me how they went to Target to try out convertible car seats since he’s almost outgrown his infant carrying seat.  She was explaining how she was doing research and looked up reviews on different seats, but still wasn’t sure what to get.  I felt somewhat helpless to provide any advice since I know absolutely nothing about buying anything baby related, but then it crossed my mind that many, many months ago (when I naively believed I would get pregnant within a matter of months), I purchased a book called Baby Bargains.  While the title implies that the book is about thrifty tips for buying baby gear, but it’s actually more like a consumer’s guide to all things baby related.  They review nearly every model of every baby related item that you could think of and provide info on costs and manufacturer reputation.  So it’s rumored to be a fantastic resource for anyone who needs to buy baby stuff. 

I never envisioned that this book would sit, alongside of 5 or 6 other pregnancy/birthing books, on my bookshelf for over a year.  So I offered it to her.    Much better for her to get some use out of it than for it to sit on my bookshelf unopened and unused.  While I was glad to have someone get some use out of it, it was just another reminder of what I don’t have.  At this moment, we’re not pregnant, and to admit that it may not happen for us any time soon was somewhat of a relief.  I do think that in some ways I’ve put way too much pressure on myself in regards to getting pregnant.  I always feel like “What if it doesn’t happen this month?  What will we ever do with ourselves?”  I’ve made getting pregnant into the only thing that I really strive for anymore and that’s not fair to me.  In some ways, passing that one book on has helped me to realize that I’ve been unfair to myself in creating possibly unrealistic expectations for us.  It helped me to release some of that pressure that I’ve built up for myself and allowed me to let things go just a little bit.  It was like coming to terms with where we are now and letting go of that constant fear of what might happen if it doesn’t happen.  It was an unexpected, yet very much appreciated side effect of doing nice for someone else.

Well, after I posted the below entry, I started thinking about that OPK this morning that was so obviously positive. It kind of annoys me because I’ve never had a clear cut positive on an OPK before. In fact, I was so bad at reading the darn things (it can’t be THAT hard, can it?) that I bought some very expensive digital OPK’s a few months back when we were doing IUI’s. The plan was to continue using my cheapo OPK’s until the lines got relatively dark and then use the digital ones so that there was no confusion as to whether the test was actually positive or not.Well it occurred to me just now that I sadly never even got to use the darn things. My lines the past few IUI cycles have never even been close to positive, so it seemed a waste to use a digital one. Since this will hopefully be our last cycle before IVF, those tests are going to go to waste, and gosh darn it, I want to pee on one! So I just took one of them if for nothing else than to experience the technology of it all, and what shows up?

This little guy taunting me with his smiley face, as if he’s saying “Nah-nah-nah-a-boo-boo! You’re surging and your husband isn’t even here to take advantage of it!” Bastard. Add in huge ovulation pains on my left side that make even sitting down uncomfortable and Jess is not a happy camper tonight.

A quick search of sidestep.com shows that flights to LaGuardia can be had for $302 and I briefly consider flying out there to conduct a little business with my husband, if you know what I mean, but quickly dismiss it in favor of putting that money towards our looming IVF cycle.

Here’s hoping that tomorrow is a better day.

Mark left yesterday for a business trip and will be out of town until Thursday evening.  Knowing that, it totally figures that today on cycle day 13 my OPK is 100% positive.  Only twice in my 14 cycles of charting have I ever ovulated on cycle day 14 or earlier, and one of those times was brought on by a trigger shot of HCG so it totally figures that the ONE cycle that Mark is unavailable until cycle day 15 I will ovulate early.  There goes the dream of getting a miracle natural BFP during this break cycle before we begin IVF.  Oh well.  It would have been a long shot anyway. 

It will be extremely strange to go through a two week wait with absolutely no chance of being pregnant.  I have no idea if that will make things go faster or slower, but there will definitely be less anticipation.

In more positive news, I passed my clomid challenge test!  My cycle day 10 blood work showed an FSH of 4.3, so that puts me well under the maximum combined total of 20 for the two FSH scores and means that I passed!  I e-mailed our (hopefully) new clinic and told them that we have had almost all of the required pretesting done within the last year.  I wanted to know if we would need to repeat all of those tests, or if they would just take them as is and let us into the IVF shared risk program.  She stated that if the doctor felt that “the results were within normal range then we would not need to repeat.”   This is great news for us as hopefully it means a small cost savings for us, but more importantly it means that we will hopefully be able to get going on an IVF cycle as soon as this cycle is over.  Of course I don’t want to be overly optimistic as I know that something will probably come up that will prevent us from getting going right away, but I sure hope that we can start at the end of this cycle.

There is one thing that has become increasingly clear as I’ve struggled with our fertility issues; I am spoiled.  Spoiled rotten.  I’m used to getting what I want, and usually when I want it.

Everyone says that youngest kids are spoiled and always get what they want and I guess from my experience, I can’t really disagree.  While I was most certainly not a spoiled brat demanding things from my parents, they did tend to give me most everything I wanted. 

• My parents sent me to a private driving school the summer before I turned 16 because I had just missed the cutoff to get into the class at school (though this was probably a little selfish on their behalf as well because then they wouldn’t have to drive me around anymore). 
• My parents paid for half of three week long field trip to Europe when I was a junior in high school.
• My parents paid my tuition, room and board while I was in college.  They even paid for me to spend a semester studying in France.

Beyond all of the financial support they have given me throughout the years, my parents have always been there for me emotionally.  Sure, we’ve had our disagreements, but I honestly could not ask for more compassionate, kind and caring parents.  They have always been willing to stop whatever they’re doing at the drop of a hat in order to help me out with whatever was going on with me.  I can’t imagine how different my life would be without their constant support.

Even as an adult, without the assistance of my parents, I’ve been pretty spoiled.

• I got every job that I’ve ever interviewed for
• I got every house that I’ve ever wanted
• I got the man that I wanted
• We make enough money that nearly anything we want, we can just go out and buy or do

On the whole, I’ve been exceptionally fortunate.  And spoiled. 

Except for this one thing.  We can’t manage to have a baby on our own. 

The frustration of wanting something so bad, but not being able to get it is beyond anything that I’ve ever experienced before.  And it’s different from everything else that I’ve ever wanted in that there’s no guarantee that I can get it, no matter how much time, money and effort I throw at it.  This is something that I have, quite literally, no control over.  And I’m still struggling to try to figure how to handle it.