Before a new cycle

I always get anxious before a new cycle. I wonder if it will work and what I can do to make it successful. I get excited thinking about the what-ifs. Every new cycle starts out positive; a chance for me to achieve that elusive bfp. I usually stay pretty positive until after ovulation. Then, the doubts and fears rise to the surface and I think of all the reasons why the cycle will fail.

So here I am with PMS again and it really sucks. My only comfort was my sushi dinner. I have to thank Nancy (who gave me a heart attack and made me do a happy dance in the space of 30 seconds) for planting the whole sushi idea in my little head. I have been craving sushi and thought for certain that my "seared ahi" dinner last weekend would quite that craving. My bad! I finally got a plate of ahi tuna sashimi. MMMMMMMMMM!!!!! My little belly is very happy right now.

I am still excited about this coming cycle. Scott and our construction guys demo'ed our downstairs rooms and right now I am getting excited that I could be picking a room out as a nursery. I was talking to Scott about baby names last night. I did a happy dance when I got my trigger shot in the mail today. It seems like all things could be coming together but after all this time I don't want to jinx it either. I can't imagine truly planning a baby nursery or picking out baby items. I get this way every few cycles or so and always get let down. I am going to think positive for now and keep my hopes up.

For now, I am going to be riding the ups and downs that go with cycling and wait for my aunt flow to again make her appearance. You know, I don't miss her ever so why she seems to think that I want to see her again is beyond me. LOL!

Renewed Hope

I have decided to try to get a few more medicated cycles in before the end of the year. I feel like there has got to be a "right" combination that will work and I will end up pregnant. More importantly, I feel like it I just give up now, when I do IVF I won't be as positive.

I met with my gyn yesterday. Did I ever mention that I love my gyn and his staff? They are wonderful! They got me and gave me the necessary lab slips and wrote me out my scripts. We came up with a plan of action too. I will do a medicated (clomid) cycle this month and will hopefully know either way if it worked before I leave for Thailand. If it does not work, then we will do another lap. My doctor is very concerned about the lack of report (reporting?) from my last lap. I will probally go on the pill either while in Thailand or just when I get back. He would like to do the lap toward the end of my cycle. If everything is clear and there is no endo to deal with, I can cycle right away. If there is any endo or signs that my endometrial lining is not aged properly, then it will be another cycle on the pill. The good news is that I can still get in a few cycles before we go on our cruise (my first!) and should have a nice uterus for IVF still.

In other news...Scott nearly gave me a heart attack yesterday. He messaged me to say that Boucher, Roenick and Pavelski all resigned! I was ready to puke. I rushed off to the SJ Sharks Website and read they all re-signed and not resigned. Its a little wonder that the english language is hard to master! ;)

I got home from work and errand running yesterday to discover we have plants! We are looking wonderful in the landscape department and are another step closer to actually finishing. There is still trim to be painted, the front door needs painting, some work upstairs and floors to be finished. Oh yeah, and a bathroom sink to install, garage shelves to be built and a cabana that needs to be tiled. I think the remodel list always seems longer to the women then the man!

Please gag me!

Jamie Lynn Spears gave birth to a baby. WTF?!?! She is like 16. I swear those 2 sisters are uber-fertile. It sickens me. Sure, she has got money (and lots of it!) and a mommy to help her out but seriously!! She is 16!!! Urgh! It sickens me that young girls who have no clue about life in general are able to pop out babies left and right and yet, here I am still trying. This story made me puke a little in my mouth. 17 girls (all minors) pregnant and no one seems to thinks its odd!? Hello parents of the world out there...17 is way to young to procreate. Be prepared to raise your own grandchild. <-- Ok, that's a whole 'nuther rant.

Celebrity baby bump and stories of their pregnancy don't really bother. Some do but most of the time, I pity the unborn child. Not because their parents can't afford to provide them with anything and everything that child will need but the fact that the kids won't be able to fart in public without making headlines in US Weekly or People Magazine. Sad, sad, sad.

I just have a hard time stomaching a teenage girl becoming a mom.

Met a real life IF'er

On Saturday, Scott's company had a pool party. I was talking to one of the wife's and we got to talking about kids. Actually, about her son. She told me that she had been pregnant 6 times and was only barely able to carry one to term. My heart just about broke. She was so educated on the IF and the tests and procedures women put themselves through. She wanted more kids but it never happened for her.

It was nice to talk to someone about pee sticks and drugs and use the proper terminology without having to explain what a LP defect was or what it means to have EWCM.

The train has left the building

Last night a group of us went out for dinner. Scientist and Engineer (from a few posts below) invited us, along with Musician/Engineer and Artistic Business Woman. Nice people, great wine, ok but way too expensive food.

Through out the conversation, my brain wondered away...repeatedly. And it was pointed out to me...repeatedly. I am not sure what is was but seriously, I had no interest in the conversation. I am not an art person. My idea of good art is Diego Rivera. Artistic Business Women (ABW) is nice. I love her as a person. I found it odd that she decided that we must all try the corn bread and artichokes. I did and the corn bread was ok (Scott makes a much better jalapeno corn bread) and the artichoke was just that...an artichoke. S asked if I had ever made an aloi (aloy?) sauce for anything. First lie of the night..."No, but I would like to find a good recipe for one!" Yeah...I don't know if I would know it if an aloy/aloi sauce bit me on the butt. ABW insisted that there was not a bad item on the menu. Well, let me tell you how disappointed I was in the ahi tuna sashimi. I was so expecting a plate of raw fish (ok, seared fish) and my ahi tuna was waaaaayyy over cooked. And OMG! Don't get me started on the cole slaw we just had to have!!

The conversation then turned to something about spirituality. S commented that we all have these persona's we use for different people. Man, ain't that the truth. I was actually crying over this a few weeks ago. I try so hard to appear this smart, sophisticated person around our friends. But the reality of it is, I may not be stupid in the traditional sense, but I am more street smart then book smart. I am not even sure if that is totally true but I haven't traveled, I don't watch historical programs, I am ok if I don't listen to some jazz great and yes, I love to watch General Hospital. I am not sure that makes me a dumb person as opposed to a less cultured person. But hey, this is who I am. Oh yeah, I love to say ain't too!

ABW and I were talking about my still paying for pole dancing lessons. She herself could not justify the cost of the classes. To me, the cost is worth it if it means that for one hour a week I get to spend time with women...my age. I love our friends, but sometimes its nice to talk to someone who is from the same generation as yourself. But for the sake of not offending I let the subject drop.

You know, at some point during the dinner, I realized that when you can quote "Pulp Fiction" and no one else gets it, you should just sit and look pretty as to not embarrass your significant other. So that's what I did until the whole "how can you not like cats" conversation started. At this point I wanted to through my hands in the air and declare me unfit for the polite company. Man, and I was in a good mood too.

My archey arms

Today we got our shots. LOL! We got immunized in order to travel to Thailand next month. Hep A and Tdap...both were IM. My little wimpy arms are sore now. Oh well...its no worse then an IM trigger shot. ;)

Hellooooo out there....

Let me preface this post and say that I am a very private person. I tend to keep things bottled up inside me and generally don't share my feelings/ thoughts/ opinions.

But I feel so alone right now. I have this blog and various messages boards that I go to to talk. I am so very grateful for the wonderful ladies I have met on the various message boards I go to and for their support, either here on the blog or on the board. Some of these ladies and I will never meet in real life. But I truly have no IRL people to talk to about my IF. Well, that's not true...I have Lizzy and a few others. But other then Lizzy, most of the people I do talk to IRL about If just don't get it.

I want to talk about it and not hear "just relax" or "at least you're having fun trying!" I want someone who gets when I say that I am afraid that I won't be able to save up enough money for IVF. I want someone who gets it when I say that I am still comparing clinics and different IVF plans.

Want, want, want, me, me, me....

Fathers day

I woke up this morning convinced that fathers day would be 100 times easier on me then mother's day. I mean, afterall, I will never be a father. But then we went to breakfast. I was sad. I see Scott with his son and how much he loves him. His face lights up when his son is with us. I wanted to see him with our child.

I have been feeling rather desperate lately. I feel like I will never become a mother; that IVF is too far out of my reach. What if my eggs are just to bad. Sometimes I sneak off to the ladies room and cry. I can't help it. I just start to panic and then I can't breathe. The flood of tears follows and I can't control them.

The Secret

I am going to preface this post by saying that I don't not know a whole lot about the "Secret" or exactly the philosophy behind it. I have heard the cliff notes version of the "Secret" is if you want something all you have to do is believe you will and get it and Poof! You will get it. I know that proponents of the "Secret" will say there is far more to it then that. I know that some would say the "Secret" is sort of like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

With that said, I am sure that religion and the "Secret" do not go hand in hand. I understand that for some people out there, there is no high power, no God. Others are very saddened by what they think is God's refusal to help them.

I am not going to push my beliefs (religious or otherwise) onto a person. I believe in a higher power...I believe in God. To be honest, I have faith but I am fed up with organized religion.

Does this post have a point? Yes! See, Scott and I were having dinner with some friends. I have noticed that many of my scientist and engineer friends don't believe in God. I am not making a generalization here...I am sure there are scientist and engineers out there that do believe in God. Our friends (a scientist and an engineer) were talking to us about the "Secret". (I am use the " " to emphasize the theory that is very popular right now.) They agreed that what I know about the "Secret" is the easy, not detailed version, and there is more the "Secret" that what I mentioned in the first paragraph. But, I just don't buy it. I didn't wake up one fine morning and say "hmmm....wouldn't it be cool to have arthritis?!" Yes, I thought that it wouldn't be easy to get pregnant, but I seriously assumed that it would happen within the first 6 to 12 months of trying. Did I bring infertility onto myself (self fulfilling prophecy) by thinking that ttc would "take a few tries?!" I don't think so. I never wished for infertility and I would never wish it upon anyone.

S & E (leaving out their names on purpose) explained that they had to get rid of self doubt and learn to think differently. I swear I felt a "just relax" statement in the air. Guess what?! I tried that...not the "just relax" part but the get rid of my self doubt (I will never get pregnant) and think positive (I swear I am pregnant this cycle). I am sure it works for some people but all it did was raise my hopes and get my spirits down. I decided that all my ART cycles (injects, iui, ect.) that I was going to use a visualization technique. I would visualize the sperm-meets-egg-meet-happy lining-get a positive HPT cycle over and over in my head. I would be sooo excited to guide my little embie to my uterus. I would will my uterus to be a place that an embie would want to implant and live for the next 9 months. In case anyone is curious, yes, I did try to "relax" and I still very relaxed. But, I could relax until I fall into a coma and that isn't going to get me anymore pregnant then I am now. By the way...I am soooo not pregnant!!

Eventually, the conversation changed. I was happy about this since I started to get annoyed. We are all human and to have self doubts is normal. At some point in our lives or another, we have to learn to think differently. That's what makes us human!! But, I have this faith ingrained into me that I just can't let go. And this faith and belief tells me that I did not inflict infertility upon myself. And to be fair, I would never force my faiths and/or beliefs onto another person. That's just not who I am as a person. I don't think S & E were trying to force the "Secret" on me. Actually, I was waiting for them to pull out a sales kit of sorts and attempt to get me to sign up for Amway or the Secret-way or some Ponzi-scheme-ish.

Now to be PC. I am not knocking the "Secret." If it worked for you, well more power to you. It seems like more bull shit to me then not. But what do I know. I am not saying you are (or were) wrong for believing it. What I am saying is that its not for me.

ETA: I am not trying to knock my friends for believing in the "Secret." Its great to be able to believe in something. I am glad they believe in it. Nor am I saying my S & E were talking about the "Secret" in regards to my IF. I don't think the general conversation was about me at all. Believe it or not...its not all me, me, me. For the record, to the best of my knowledge, I don't think S & E even know about my IF. But it is my blog and I was trying to wrap my mind around the "Secret" and why I don't think it applies to me.