Jumping back in

We're back! Back in blog land and back to making babies.  It's been a rough few years, but we're finally in a place were we can resume our pursuit of a kidlet.  Or two. (K says 1).

During our last round of iui in the summer of 2011, I (B) messed up my foot. Ligaments, tendons, bones, all that good stuff.  That was the start our break from ttc. It was only supposed to be for a couple of months.  Let the foot heel, lose some weight, make a baby.    Lose some weight turned into have weight loss surgery.  Six months of insurance required prep for that turned into a 10 month process. After wls, they want you to wait 12 months before getting pregnant.  Bummer, but it made sense.  We weren't counting on me getting terribly ill 8 months after surgery.  Severe damage to the nerves in both of my ears put me out of commission for 7 months.

After relearning how to balance, and walk, and interact with people, I was finally able to go back to work in November of last year.  I finally reached the -as all better as I'm going to get - milestone in early March.  I still can't look up and walk at the same time.  Or look back and forth quickly.  But I'm 1000% better than I was.  Seriously bizarre things happen when you lose the ability to orient yourself in space.  You can't tell if you're laying down or standing up.  Your eyes work with those nerves to adjust how you see things, so you suddenly lose the ability to track objects in space.  And read.  And look at people.  You can only look at objects that remain very still.  People- people move.  A lot.  And forget having conversations.  Every ounce of your brain is being used to try to maintain your sense of orientation.  There aren't any left over neurons to be used for holding a train of thought. Or remembering why you're trying to walk across the house.  Or the name of the the person next to you.  You know, the one you've been married to for years.   It was awful.  It has given me a new perspective though.  I'm much more thankful for all of the little things in life.  I smile when I'm at the grocery store. Or trying to make a left turn in traffic.  It's nice to be able to function independently again.

Anywho.  Back to the making of the babies.  We gave up working with the previous baby doc.  She was really mean.  Really really mean.  I don't want to cry every time I see the doc. I mean, I might cry- this is a ridiculously trying and emotional experience.  But- I don't want the doc to be the one making me cry.  I want to just cry because I'm crazy.  You know.  I know you know. This sh*t makes you crazy.

This time around we have insurance coverage!!!!!   Holy molly.  That's huge.  And after talking to the financial counsellor at the very large baby factory we've chosen to go with, our insurance coverage should pay for a couple of iui's and an ivf attempt.  We'll have to pay for sperm and maybe the meds if we do the ivf, but that's still waaaaay cheaper than doing all of this out of pocket.

I forget who's blog used the term baby factory, but I like it.  It makes me giggle.  So we're going to use it too.

We've done our initial consult and had a few blood tests run.  We're trying to get everything lined up to be able to try on my next cycle - which is prob ~ 14 days away.  We have to do the psych consult and then prob a few other things.  Knocking out the psych meeting tomorrow -being judged is so nerve wracking. And we have a call into the doc's assistant to find out what else we lack.

Once we pulled the trigger on getting back into this insanity, we're very anxious to actually start a treatment cycle.

I must say, after 4 years of not peeing on a stick, I was more than a little out of practice.  Now that we have the psych booked, that little smiley face is welcome to show up any day now : )

Wow, wasn't sure I could do that

We're going to skip the diet update for now, because it's not going so well.  Not horrible, just not well.

But in much more baby-making related news: I ovulated this month!  All by myself!  No drugs, no anything.  And by ovulate, I mean I got a smiley face on the opk.  No ultrasound confirmation obviously, since we aren't actively trying.  This may not be exciting to most people, but it is a very rare occurrence around these parts.   In all of the months that I've pee'd on a stick, I've never gotten a positive opk without drug intervention.

It's so exciting to me that I almost called the fertility doc and told them.  But - then I remembered that I'm not talking to them right now.

One week down

One week down, eight thousand more to go.

I've survived the first week of the diet - hooray.  After one week, I've lost 7lbs.  Pretty awesome : )  I know it will slow down a lot after the first week, but it only leaves me 5 more pounds that I have to lose, but 15 more is kind of my minimal goal.  Hopefully we'll be trying again in September.  We have mixed feelings about delaying until October or not.  In September we'll celebrate our 1 year wedding anniversary, and I'm not certain I want to be all crazy with the peeing on sticks/ shoving things up my hoo-haa.  But- not trying might also make me crazy.  Wait and see I guess.

In foot news:
On Monday, I'm getting an MRI on of my foot and ankle. It seems to be getting worse - not better. I'm a little nervous.  I never knew I was claustrophobic until I was in the middle of getting an MRI on my shoulder.  Not the best timing for that realization.  Hopefully they wont need to put my entire body inside the machine this time.  Really wishing that I had remembered that when I was scheduling this thing.  All I needed to do was pick a different location and I could've had an open mri.  Oh well, instant gratification won out over potential anxiety attack.

But I don't wanna

I don't wanna go on a diet. Diets suck : (

But I really, really, really want to be a mom.


Yeah, I'm still a bit whiny -- and a bit emotional, but it's getting better.  K is doing the diet thing with me, we're both extra cranky right now.  We've survived the first two days and managed to go grocery shopping - so it looks like we won't starve to death after all.  For everyone playing along at home - we're doing the South Beach Diet.  2 carb lovers + no carbs for a month = grumpiness.

Me and my broke foot headed back to work on Friday.  The timing couldn't have been better.  Working definitely helps me to eat healthier.  I'm editing part descriptions in our storeroom database.  It's very exciting work...yeah.   Nothing like going from a team oriented, highly mobile, labor intensive job - to sitting at a desk all day.  But, they're paying me and I'm not stuck at home - all around better for my mental health.

Speaking of mental health - I should probably make another appointment with my new therapist.  That would be the grown up thing to do.  We'll see how long that takes.

Sorry for the scatterbrained post - but it's all I'm up for right now.   Hopefully the mood in our house will improve with time.  Right now our emotions are still pretty raw.

Moving forward

So, since we've had 3 unsuccessful IUI's and I'm overweight, the clinic has kicked us to the curb.  No not permanently, but it kinda feels like it.

Here's the list of what we have to do before we're" allowed" to come back:
Lose weight

Long list, eh?

Here's what they said should help us:
South Beach Diet
Nutritional Counselor
Overeaters Anonymous

Seriously?  Thanks, fertility clinic, for me helping me to feel a little bit sh*ttier today.  And by "weight," they mean at least 18 pounds, but they'd prefer 60.  60?  Dear god.  Even when I ate super healthy and worked out 2+ times a day I didn't weigh 60lbs less than I do now.  I was probably 14 years old last time a weighed that little.

I know other people have struggled with infertility too, but right now it feels like we're the only ones in the world going through this. Sigh



And just because we're having such craptastic day, the IRS decided to join in the fun and garnish K's paychecks.  Yeah.  Thanks to K's ex husband (eww - I know.  She was married to a man, yuck.)  Somehow losing money on a joint investment in '07 has turned our world upside down.  Hello!  How do we owe taxes for a LOSS filed by HIM?  Ugh.  Very frustrating, and definitely not the best day to receive the news.  Luckily we took out a loan to help cover the fertility stuff, so we have to the cash laying around to pay very one.  We'll just have significantly less $$ around for fertility treatments : (  Oh well.  It'd be hard to be excited about  being pregnant if we were homeless : /



Hopefully tomorrow will be a much better day.

The news is in...

The news is in, and it's not good.

IUI#3 = BFN

How can you have a bajillion eggs and still not get pregnant?  This sucks.  A lot.

The clinic called at 8:30 this morning.  Really?  You couldn't wait until this afternoon?  Thanks fertility lady, for ruining my entire day.  ENTIRE DAY.  I wasn't even fully awake when you called.  I could've had breakfast before crying, but no.  Thanks a lot.

K was very sweet and rearranged her schedule so that she could work from home today - even before we had any inkling of how things would turn out.  It's been nice to get hugs and reassurance the world is in fact, not coming to an end.  And she made me tea.  I have the best wifey ever.

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July...or 3rd of July, which is when we celebrated the annual blow things up day.

Today we practiced being couch potatoes and then went to see Transformers #45, or whatever number they're on.  By the way, a side effect of watching said movie: as we were leaving the megaplex - both K and I were staring at all of the other cars, fully expecting them to jump up and start running and doing flips.  Yeah.  I blame the Imax 3D.     

In baby news - dun dudda dahhhh....there's nothing.   

13dpo and still a BFN.

Going for the beta in the morning, but really hoping to see a BFP on a pee stick.   

We should get the beta results Wednesday afternoon.

Come on BFP!  Pretty please.