Surprise!

My brother is here. We decided to surprise our mom. He told me about a month ago that he was coming out here to see his friend G who lives 2 hours from me, and they were going to a motorcycle show about 40 minutes from me. So — he wasn’t really coming to see US, he was coming to see G and motorcycles and making a side trip to see us. He NEVER comes to see us. The last time he came, was before my doggie Cleo died of cancer — she had been through radiation and chemo to no avail…I had just gone through two failed IUIs and I was having a really rough time. Cleo was given a clean bill of health and 5 days after her last treatment, I checked her throat (she had oral melanoma) and I could see that the tumors were growing back with a vengeance.  There was nothing more we could do. My brother’s ‘wife’ sent him to see me. I am certain it wasn’t his idea — he would NEVER think of it. But I talked to my SIL and then two days later my brother called to say he was coming to visit…then it was the SIL that bought the plane tix, etc.

Anyway, that was about a year and a half ago. My brother lives in NYC with his evil “wife” (I put it in quotes because they never got married but had a huge “commitment ceremony” that looked so much like a wedding, I am sure half of the guests were fooled). He claims he doesn’t have enough vacation time to come out here, but (for example) they were just in New Orleans for Jazz Fest and later this month they are going to the Galapagos islands for 9 days (SO JEALOUS!). They were in Costa Rica for New Years and France last Thanksgiving. SO….anyway…

My brother isn’t into family. He is childless by choice (his wife — not so much). He told his wife when they were first dating that he NEVER wanted kids. She thought he would change his mind. She is now 43 and I think has finally come to terms that kids are not in her future. But she stayed with him knowingly — she KNEW that he didn’t want kids. There were a handful of years where I was waiting for a big announcement that she was pregnant…I really thought she was have an “ooops” on purpose. But it hasn’t happened and now that she is turning 44 pretty soon, I seriously doubt it will happen (well, with my luck it may still happen). I don’t know how she got past it. For the first 3 or 4 years she talked about kids constantly — she would say she dreamt she was pregnant, and at one point she was researching adoption until my brother said, ‘DUH…I don’t want kids!’ I don’t think I would have married TW if he told me straight up that he didn’t want kids. It would have been a deal breaker. That is all moot now, of course…but anyway.

I invited my parents over for dinner a month ago. They are here from France until mid-June and they are such social butterflies it is almost impossible to get an “appointment” with them. After my brother called to say he would be in town, I called my dad and we conived about surprising my mom. So my dad was in on it. Yesterday was the big day. My brother’s friend G drove him down from the motorcycle show, and he arrived at about 4pm. I made a big dinner - turkey and 3-bean chili, cornbread, home made caesar salad, home-made guac and salsa, and we had all the fixin’s like sour cream, cheese, chopped onion, cilantro. And for dessert I made this chocolate truffle cake, but I drizzled it with raspberry jam and sprinkled tons of slivered almonds and fresh raspberries on top. Ugh, if you look at the recipe…it is no wonder I have gained 5 pounds in the last few months!!!

So my brother arrived and we drank some beers and hung out, finishing dinner. Then my mom and dad arrived at around 7pm. I hid my brother in the back room and sat my parents down with a drink. Then I said, “Oh! Mom — I have an early mother’s day present for you! Wait one sec” and I went to get my brother. I pushed him into the room and BOY was my mom surprised.  But then it just got annoying. My mom has nothing nice to say about my brother. Just that he causes her so much heart ache. Because he never visits and he rarely calls and he claims he has no vacation time but travels all over the world. That his priorities are fucked up. But the minute she is in the same room as him, she WORSHIPS him. And I disappear. I am the one that stayed in our home-town. But when my parents realized that my brother wasn’t coming back, they decided that there was nothing keeping them here (ummm…hello?) so they moved to France. I am the one they turn to anytime they need help. I am the one that talks to them at least once a week when they are in France and e-mails almost every day. My brother? He does shit. All he does is complain about them, and he sees them maybe once every two years. So watching my parents fawn all over him is so hard. I feel really jealous. He is their golden boy, no matter what he does. And somehow, my parents’ behavior always suprises me. And then so does my reaction.

 

Kill me now…

I have this “friend”. She is from my college days and lives near me. We only see each other a couple of times per year. She drops off the face of the earth for a while and then I contact her and we have dinner, and then no contact for months…I am always (almost always) the one to make contact…but she e-mailed me out of the blue yesterday — because, yes, she wants something. She and her husband are going to France for a wedding and they would like to stay with my parents for a few days. Whatever. She asked me how I was doing (she knows I am TTC) and so I briefly wrote back that we are still trying and not having any luck. And this is what she wrote back…mind you…she has NO clue about any of this stuff. She and her husband have been married less than two years and are not TTC. Although, for some reason they have already researched IVF clinics, and it is mostly her husband that is doing the research. He has been married before, and he didn’t have any kids, so I am assuming that he already knows that he has a sperm problem. Why else would a guy be researching IVF clinics before even trying on their own? It sounds a little fishy to me.

Anyway, here is her e-mail:

“I am so sorry you are down about getting pregnant. This probably isn’t going to be much help, but in the celebrity magazines I keep reading how certain celebs try 2, 3 sometimes 4 times before it happens –and even some give up and then presto, it happens on it’s own. Stress is such a big factor.  Also, I hope your place has a good track record cuz’ M keeps telling me about this place he found in the Peninsula that ‘guarantees’ you will get pregnant. Let me know if you want the info. I’m sure you’ve already read every book on the planet, but I read somewhere it also depends what you eat that day/week -something about changing the chemistry in the uterus. Seems to me they are implanting you with fertilized embryos, so I would think it’s some slight chemical imbalance down there that needs to be worked out. What do they tell you?”

THANKS for the advice Dr. C! Yes, it must be some slight chemical imbalance “down there” that needs to be worked out. I never thought of that, and neither did my doctors!!! I should probably eat something different on the day of my embryo transfer. OMG could she add anything else annoying into this e-mail? At least she didn’t say, “Just adopt!” I wrote her a RANT back, she probably will never speak to me again, but I just wasn’t in the mood for her blathering!

On another note, my friend that blew me off on Sunday wrote me an e-mail. I didn’t make any contact. She apologized about backing out and explained how exhausted she was because she worked two nights until 8pm and for about 5 hours on Saturday, and she was feeling overwhelmed and not enthused about coming to the event that she promised to come to and help with. I haven’t responded, I am leaving her hanging for a bit longer. I know that is a petty way to behave, but I feel petty right now. I will forgive her, but I have to be in the right mood to talk to her. My thing is that I was WAY more tired and she was, I had to be. I had worked until 10pm for the whole week, all day Saturday and by the time she flaked on me, I had already worked 6 hours on Sunday, and I had to work on Monday too. So hearing that she was too tired didn’t help her case. I know I am being harsh, but I just don’t have the energy to deal right now. I will probably contact her in a couple of days. Thanks for all your support on this one!!

Save the Polar Bear

Will you sign this petition? Let’s help save the Polar Bear.

Skydiving was AWESOME!

I have nothing to report on the TTC front, so just some random babbling for now.

Indoor skydiving was SO MUCH FUN. I was really lame at it and I could feel drool (yes) streaming UP my face because I was laughing the whole time, and I guess my spit was being picked up by the wind. Grody! But it ROCKED. If any of you have an iFly or SkyVenture near you, I would highly recommend checking it out. It wasn’t scary at all — just really great fun! We couldn’t bring cameras into the wind tunnel for obvious reasons but the websites for these places have videos posted so you can see what it is like.

I am in a bit of a quandary now. My mom has a charitable organization and we have a huge annual fundraiser each year — the event was on Sunday. I worked so hard on my piece, I was in charge of the silent auction. It was a lot of work! I solicited a friend to help me on the day of the event….I invited her two months in advance and we spoke about it at least once a week leading up to it. We talked on Saturday and then three times on Sunday morning…each time I talked to her on Sunday morning she said she was on her way. Then 20 minutes before the event, she called me up and asked me if I would mind if she didn’t come because she was so tired. YES I MINDED! I ended up practically hanging up on her. She did say if I really needed her, she would come. But I am not going to force someone to do something they don’t want to do.

Now I am waiting for her to contact me but she hasn’t. We usually talk on the phone at least 2 times a day, and no contact from her at all. I am wondering if I should just get off my high horse and call her first. I think we need to talk this out, otherwise the friendship will be damaged. My thing is — when I commit to something, I follow through. I am not a flake. Flakes SUCK. I thought it was totally inconsiderate of her to leave me hanging like that. Especially since this was planned so far in advance. And I talked to her THREE times the morning of the event and she didn’t say anything until 20 minutes before she was supposed to come. Am I over-reacting?

Bad Blogger!

I have been such a horrible blogger lately. I actually was laid up with the flu since Saturday. The body-achy-headache-fever-cough-sneeze-skin-crawling kind of flu. IT SUCKED. My husband had it before me and bless his heart, he gave it to me, even worse than he had it. I took two days off work to get over it, which I NEVER do.

I got my new protocol and I was upset at first because it looked exactly like the first cycle, except I would be on birth control for 34 days instead of just 19. WTF? No mention of micro-dose Lu.pron and no mention of Men.opur. So I called them up to see what the deal was. I guess the document they e-mailed me wasn’t as detailed as it should have been, and they cleared up my confusion. I will be on micro-dose Lu.pron and they are giving me Go.nal-F instead of Foll.stim this time. Phew. I definitely wanted something new to try - you know? One sticking point - TW has to redo all his pathogen blood work. Ugh. The less I have to ask him to do, the better. I know he will do it but it will be like pulling teeth. Kind of a bummer that they only consider these blood tests good for one year. But whatcha gonna do.

I got my schedule and they wanted me to start stimming on May 30th - my birthday. June 1st is my wedding anniversary too, and I have a big party to go to on May 31st. Is it horrible to want to postpone my cycle so I can party a little bit? Well, even if it is horrible, I am doing it. I just couldn’t handle starting my stimming process that weekend. I am taking the 30th of May off and TW and I are planning to do something fun. So we are actually going to move everything back by two weeks which will make the timing PERFECT. I will start stimming on June 13th and ER should be the week of June 20th. This is the absolute BEST timing for work — after the big commencement activities and all the students will be scarce. I can take a few days off and no one will even notice.

I am taking my staff for a ‘retreat’ on Friday. It is “Administrative Professionals Week” (or something like that) so I got flowers from my boss. But I am taking my staff on an all day retreat. which sounds better: flowers or an all-day retreat? First we are going to go to pick up a digital camera for the office so we can start taking pictures of all the events we do and post them on our website. Then we are going to go to lunch. Then we are going INDOOR SKY DIVING. It is a giant wind tunnel that blows air upwards and you get to “sky dive” without jumping out of a plane, which I would NEVER do. YAY!

 

Going backwards

Got my lupron challenge results back. For comparison, here are the results from all three cycles:

IVF Cycle 1
FSH: 8.2
E2 before injection: 43
E2 after injection: 100
Change in E2: 57

IVF Cycle 2
FSH: 6.5
E2 before injection: 48
E2 after injection: 225
Change in E2: 177

IVF Cycle 3
FSH: 7.5
E2 before injection: 48
E2 after injection: 137
Change in E2: 89

I don’t know what to think. I know I am not supposed to think too hard about these numbers, and I know from experience this is not an exact science. But it is hard not to be worried that these past numbers don’t look as good as Cycle 2. And we all know what happened last time…how will it work this time if nothing has improved, everything has gone backwards?

I double checked my clinic’s protocol. This is what it says:

Your treatment can start this cycle if:

1) Your FSH is less than 8.0 and your estrogen is less than 75, and after the lupron injection, your estrogen increases by a minimum of 30
2) Your FSH is 8.0 to 12.0 and your estrogen is less than 55, and after the lupron injection, your estrogen increases by a minimum of 30
3) Your FSH is less than 12.0 and after the lupron injection, your estrogen increases by a minimum of 125

Your treatment cannot start this cycle if:

1) Your FSH is greater than 12.0
2) Your FSH is 8.0 to 12.0 and your estrogen is 55 or higher
3) Your estrogen is 75 or greater and after the lupron injection, your estrogen did not increase by a minimum of 125
4) After the lupron injection, your estrogen did not increase by a minimum of 30

I have had a passing result all three times, but the results have been so different each time, I don’t know what to think. Some of my on-line friends have told me their clinics don’t do this test each cycle…they say that your FSH is only as good as your highest number and that is all that counts. I have to pay $395 each time I do this test. I hope the doctors aren’t doing it just for a little extra cash for their kid’s college funds and their wives’ SUVs.

I think I am getting sick. TW was really sick all week and now I think I am getting what he had. My throat is super sore and I am starting to feel feverish. I am really glad it is the weekend.

I start BCP tomorrow. UGH. The rest of my protocol will be e-mailed to me next week.

Do I sound excited or what?

Back to the drawing board

I had my blood drawn this morning, by my favorite tech “K”. She is so incredibly sweet. She is leaving at the end of May to go to nursing school, I am so happy for her. She has been at my every appointment and has taken my blood each time. I was asking her about her plans, when she is leaving, etc. And she told me she wasn’t going to leave until this happens for me! Ugh. Be careful what you say, K….you may never be going to nursing school then!

Walking into the clinic was really weird. I remember going in for my first IVF and feeling so excited and hopeful. Now I am just going through the motions, you know? If we hadn’t paid for the 3rd one up front, I probably wouldn’t be going through with it again.

I am shooting up at work today and going back in for another blood draw at 8am tomorrow. Keep fingers crossed for me that everything is a go for this cycle! I ate two soft boiled eggs for dinner last night. My acupuncturist would be so proud. And since I got my period — NO MORE ASS TEA!

CD1

It is CD1 - again.

Called my clinic. Going in tomorrow at 8:00 for a blood draw. Will do a lupron shot in the afternoon and then have a 2nd blood draw on Friday morning.

Hope the “ass-tea” has helped.

IVF Cycle #3 — here we come.

Waiting for Daisy

I have been so bad at posting lately. I just haven’t been inspired to write.

I read the book Waiting for Daisy this weekend. I don’t know what I expected. It was a quick read and very well written. And I found myself wanting to yell “Yes! I know exactly how you felt!” — the arguments with her husband, the obsession, the sacrifices, the will to do anything, anything to reach the goal. And losing sight of the ultimate goal — becoming a mother — by focusing so solely on becoming pregnant. She had several passages on her reactions to comments such as, “Everything happens for a reason” and “God doesn’t give us what we cannot handle” and “Why don’t you just adopt” — and I could have written those sections of her book myself. I thought her story was so similar to mine it was almost eerie. Then I thought how many other women out there have the same story, and THAT is just a tragedy.

And then she got pregnant - the “natural” way, with her husbands sperm, and her egg, by having sex. I think there may have been clomid involved, but still. She had a miscarriage. It was a molar pregnancy, which is attributed to sperm problems. They tried IVF and her response was even worse than mine, and they were given horrible chances for ever conceiving naturally. But she did, twice more. She miscarried both times and they tried a donor egg, an egg from a close friend that she met on-line after writing her book “School Girls”. The IVF with the donor egg didn’t work. There was some indication that the clinic mishandled the procedure but it is unclear whether it would have worked anyway. They were thinking about their next steps, when she discovered she was pregnant - again the “old fashioned way”. This pregnancy was normal. The book ends after she finds out her CVS results were normal (her other miscarriages were due to chromosomal abnormalities). The epilogue skips to two weeks after her baby, Daisy, was born.

I was feeling very close to Peggy while I read her book, and having met her probably only helped that feeling. But then, when she started getting pregnant on her own, I felt that connection snap. I felt like, ‘OH - we really aren’t the same after all’. And each time she got pregnant, I felt worse for myself. I was hoping that this book would give me some hope that my story will have a happy ending too. I know that my story has NOTHING to do with her story, and my own hope shouldn’t hinge on someone else’s memoir. But it did, and it does. We were not in the same boat. I am on my own journey, one where pregnancy has not ever been part of a chapter. I have NEVER been pregnant and each month that goes by without a positive pregnancy test, hope gets a hairline fracture that only grows with time. I don’t know how many women are out there with a story like mine but I am beginning to think I am the ONLY ONE.

It is funny. I used to root for my friends IRL and on-line when they were trying. And I would cheer for every one of them when they got pregnant. But now when I hear that women with prior miscarriages are TTC, I shrug my shoulders. Because everyone I know and have read about that have had a miscarriage end up having a baby eventually. And the stat is something like 90% of all couples where the woman is over 38 will get pregnant within two years. But most people that age don’t wait two years, they rush to the RE within 6 months or a year. I just don’t feel like my IF and their IF are the same - at all. Because I have no idea whether my eggs and my husband’s sperm can do it. I have zero evidence that it can happen. And each day that goes by, hope slips away a little bit more. And I am beginning to believe that all this money I have spent, am spending, will spend would be better spent on the house, or (gasp) on the future adoption that we may or may not go through with.

If I never get pregnant, I really don’t think it was “God’s Will” or “Not meant to be” or my fault because I couldn’t de-stress, or I smoked when I was in college, or I drink too much wine before I ovulate, or that it is evidence that I really don’t want it that bad. It is just bad luck. We all don’t get everything we want, do we? To me, it is beginning to feel like the lottery. I won the bad luck lottery.

Women’s Health Conference

Yesterday I spent the whole day at a Women’s Health Conference. I was a little worried that it would be lame, but WOW was I completely (and pleasantly surprised). The highlight was that I got Peggy Orenstein’s book “Waiting for Daisy” signed, Peggy was the first speaker. She was amazing. There were so many amazing women — each of the five speakers were dynamic and awe inspiring. They even served us breakfast and lunch! Not bad for $25.

The hard part was that the assumption was that each of the women attending the conference already had kids; there was a lot of talk about being a mother, raising children, “empty nest syndrome”, etc. I went with my girlfriend that has a 15 year old. It is funny though — I know my friend loves her daughter more than anything and at times, I am envious. But I would not switch lives with her for a million dollars. She got pregnant right after highschool and never got a college degree. This is a real hindrance for job searching so she has never advanced the way she would like to. Her ex husband is an asshole to her, but let’s their daughter do whatever she wants. He is WAY behind in child support too. But now the daughter has decided it is “more fun” to be with daddy so she has moved out of my friend’s house and only visits on the weekend. And the dad agreed, most likely so he wouldn’t have to pay child support anymore. My friend and her daughter were getting in horrible fights about school work and grades. To top it all off, my friend was engaged to this guy and they are living together, but they  broke up. However, they still live together because she cannot afford the deposit and first month’s rent on a new place until the lease is up (the end of May). So she has been living with her ex-boyfriend for the last 5 months! What a nightmare. So — yes, I am envious that she has a daughter. But the rest of her life? No thanks.

I know I preach to myself all the time, that I have a GOOD life. And it is true. And I hope to add a baby to this good life that I have. But if I can’t, then I will have to make sure I stay thankful. Because things could be a whole lot worse.