Update: I'm having a GIRL!

Just a quickie post to update you all that I've got a little lady on her way! 

I'll post more later about our 20 week u/s but everything checked out good and so we're now TEAM PINK!

Look who showed up!

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The wait is over. On my drive home from work I felt strong cramping and lo and behold the Old Hag showed her face. She'll be traveling with us on our weekend getaway to CA. I plan to entice her with red wine and brie cheese, drown her with vodka martinis and stuff her with sushi. Hopefully that'll teach her to stay away next time!

It's really just as well. I am ready to put Cycle #2 behind us and move on. Initially we thought we'd TTA in May since that would mean potentially having an Aquarian child, which concerned us Sagittarian and Gemini parents-to-be. I know, silly right? We care more about the astrological sign of our phantom baby than his/her gender! Well, after talking it over today, we've decided our desire to get PG is greater than our desire not to live our lives as parents of an Aquarian. Afterall, there's no guarantee it will even happen next month anyway. So...

It's onto CD1 of Cycle #2. Things will be different this time. For one, I will not set today as CD1 on my CBEFM. According to the userguide, they ask that CD1 (m1) be the morning of the first red flow. Since my started this evening, tomorrow will be considered CD1(m1) on the CBEFM. Also, I will not temp during the 2WW. It's too stressful. I will not POAS unless I am past 14DPO (at least now I can be fairly confident that my LP is a consistent 14 days). Finally, Mr. Divasaur and I plan to FWP at least every other day between CD15 and CD25...that way if there's any question about my CH or the actual O date, we should be covered.

A gal on The Bump suggested I do the First Response Fertility Test on CD3 that looks for FSH levels. I don't think I can deal with the potential results at this point. So we'll go into Cycle #2 without that and then see. Mr. Divasaur has agreed to do the at-home sperm concentration test called Pre-Concieve Plus. He's agreed that it shouldn't be all on me to worry if my baby-making parts are up to par. I picked the test up for 50% at Walgreens and figured it would be worth a shot (no pun intended). At least we can potentially rule out one issue with that test.

Most of all, I think we're just going to chill a bit on this whole thing. I've decided we'll try until I get KU or 6 cycles, whichever comes first and then we'll see what the next step will be. Getting KU seems so easy on TV and in the movies. I have friends and family who never tried, it just happened, by surprise. But I am quickly learning that wanting to be PG and getting PG are two very different things. And I am definitely getting a dose of patience and learning to let go of that which I have no real control anyway. For that, I am grateful for the old hag's lesson today.

Five thoughts I wanted to share...

Instead of doing up 5 separate posts, you're going to get all that is rattling around in my head in one super-duper post!

RANDOM RAMBLING #1:

• I belong to a message board. It's not a public one, it's one that you have to pay a one time membership fee and then you're a member for life. For the most part, I used to love that message board, but there's some sad reminders on it.
  
• There is one girl who was a week behind me in her pregnancy, so we used to private message each other back and forth quite a bit. And since we live in the same town, we even got together for lunches to discuss our babies.
  
• Now that I'm no longer pregnant, I'm having a REALLY hard time reading her posts. Yesterday she posted that she felt the baby move for the first time. That post completely put me in a downward spin - I was an emotional wreck. I was consumed with the yearning to still be pregnant after reading her post. I couldn't help but shout in my head: THAT SHOULD BE ME.
  
• Thankfully, I feel better today. I have amazing friends and an even more amazing husband. I am truly very lucky.
  
• Oh, and I've logged out of the message board and have resolved not to check until the weekend. If I can hold out, I will not check until next week!

RANDOM RAMBLING #2:

• I am feeling a bit ruthless these days. I'm starting to realize that there are people in life that are "there" for you during good times and bad, and others that are dead weight.
  
• I have resolved today to cull the dead weight. It makes no sense to waste any energy on those who are dead weight, I should concentrate that energy on those who count.
  
• By the way, my sister-in-law is dead weight. I am going to tie a sack of bricks to her ankles and throw her over the edge of my life raft. (You have no idea how good it feels to write these words for the world to read!)

RANDOM RAMBLING #3:

• I am becoming a champion of women who have lost pregnancies. Somebody needs to stand up for these ladies, and explain to others that what they are going through is devastating to them.
  
• I had an argument with a friend the other day. Her close friend, Sally, lost a baby in her third trimester about 6 months ago. Sally is pregnant again. My friend thinks that Sally should stop being sad and angry about the loss of her first pregnancy, and just enjoy her new pregnancy. I completely disagree.
  
• Please, if you know someone who has lost a pregnancy, remember this is a loss they will carry with them for life. A new child does not replace the one lost. A new pregnancy is scary, because of the associations you carry from the loss of your previous pregnancy. Give the woman time, let her speak, do not judge. You do not understand until you have walked a mile in her shoes.

RANDOM RAMBLING #4:

• I am terrified to get pregnant again. Simply terrified, because I do not think I will survive another devastation like this. I would be emotionally and irreparably broken. Forever.

RANDOM RAMBLING #5:

• I've been spotting a bit lately. And feeling a bit crampy. I wonder if this is the beginnings of AF.
  
• This Friday marks 30 days (where did the time go?) from when I passed the last of the placenta.
  
• I have been doing some reading/internet-snooping, and most women seem to get their AF between 20-30 days post-miscarriage. But some have to wait a long, long time (like months!) before they body starts up again.
  
• I am eager for AF to return, because that means only one more cycle and then we can start trying again.
  
• Yes, we're waiting for 2 full cycles before trying again, because that's what my doctor recommended and from what I've been reading/internet-snooping, that seems to be the safest course of action. Sometimes, if you get pregnant too soon, you can have a higher chance of miscarrying because your uterine lining is not built up enough to successfully support a pregnancy. I want to do everything I can to minimize the chances of it happening to us again.
  
• Wait a minute, didn't I just post in #4 above that I am terrified of getting pregnant again? Yes, I am. But I am also equally desperate to be a mommy. And, unfortunately, I have to go through pregnancy to get that. Unless I can convince my husband that adoption is a really, really good idea. Any ideas on how to do that?
  
• Just to share because I like to get things off my chest, I did have a scary thought last night. What if I'm pregnant again? What if we weren't careful enough? If AF hasn't come by Monday, I might just do a test to calm my nerves a little.
  
• Shopasaur is soooooooo right. This whole fertility thing is all about hurry up and WAIT!

Still Waiting or The Pitfalls of Charting

So yesterday my temperature took a big nose dive. And to be honest, so did my heart. I cried. My chart was looking so good, and of course my "symptoms" made the little pregnancy points indicator give me a 99/100 at FF. Not that I put a ton of stock in that, I mean it's just a computer generated analysis of user-determined "symptoms." That said, I do trust my body and much of what I have been feeling lately is outside the "normal" range for me. It’s so amazing to me that for years the thought of POAS and getting a BFP terrified me and now, it’s the one thing I want the most!

That said, after getting myself together emotionally I combed the Internet for fallback rise charts and implantation after 10DPO, pregnancy charts with a dip below the coverline, you name it. Chalk it up to my lack of patience and hyper-educated, type-A tendencies. Then it dawned on me. What if I wasn’t actually 14DPO? So I looked at my chart and remembered an OPK I had taken on CD16. I had a left over Answer strip from my last cycle and even though I was using the CBEFM I figured what the heck. Those two line tests are always in the eye of the beholder and now I am wondering if I saw a positive because I wanted to see one. Well, I think that little decision has thrown my chart off this month by two days.

Take a peek and see what I mean...

With the OPK factored in, my CH are at CD17


Without the OPK factored in, my CH move to CD19


If I change the FF analyzer to Monitor Mode only, my CHs are at CD18


So, what does this mean? It means I O'd sometime between CD17 and CD19. The timing is good no matter, although I have learned from this experience that it's best to FWP a couple of times during the days just following your suspected O date. If I actually O’d on CD19 and not CD17 or CD18, then yesterday, I was only DPO12. This still doesn’t quite explain the temp drop, but since my LP is 14 days, it gives me a glimmer of hope that I am not totally out this cycle. Those pregnancy points are still at 99. Only time will tell and the wait continues. I won’t test until AF is officially late.

Mr. Divasaur and I head out of state tomorrow for a getaway. I am not packing any FRERs. I will however, bring my CBEFM, sticks and a stock of tampons, just in case I need them. If I don’t, then I will POAS when I get back next week. At this point, all I can do is hope and wait and see.

What's Wrong?

After 11 months of being off birth control, and 9 months (7 cycles) of actively TTC, we started our IF workup. I really thought that when I asked my doctor about this, she would say, "Oh, just give it some more time. The average couple takes one year to conceive." I was a bit surprised when, after reviewing my charts, she told me that we could actually start investigating things right then. With my long, irregular cycles, she thought there was a distinct possibility that something could be wrong. So she gave us the option of trying on our own another cycle and then testing, or just moving forward with things. I just had a gut feeling that something was wrong, so we decided to just do the testing. Unfortunately for us, nothing really came up in all the testing. The doctor was still worried though, that given the appearance of my charts (quite a bit of variation in cycle lengths, mostly all greater than 35 days), I might be anovulatory.

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So the plan was to do a natural, monitored cycle, trigger ovulation with an injection of hCG when my follicle reached maturity, and then do timed intercourse (TI). That way, if my LH surge wasn't strong enough to trigger O, the injection would basically guarantee it. Having always had longer cycles, my first u/s was done on CD16. At that point, I had one dominant follicle measuring 14mm and my uterine lining was a little on the thin side at 7mm. The doctor wasn't too concerned though, explaining that since my cycles were longer, it would still take some more time for my follicle to develop and my lining to full develop before I ovulated. So we scheduled a follow up appointment for CD20. The doctor explained to me that most follicles grow 1-2mm/day until they are fully mature. On unmedicated cycles, this would be around 20-24mm. So assuming my follicles were a bit slow growing, the follicle we were monitoring should have been at least 18mm at my next recheck. Imagine my surprise then, when she did the u/s on CD20 and my follicle measured 14mm and my lining measured 7mm. No growth. Really? How could there be no growth??? Slow-growing maybe, but no growth whatsoever?!



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I was surprised, devastated, shocked, and sad. How could this be? Why did my body just stop working in the middle of a cycle like that? Even if my body was producing an LH surge (which I had confirmed with OPKs), telling my ovaries to O, there were no mature eggs to release! Rarely does a follicle measuring only 14-15mm actually contain a mature egg inside. Even if my body were to release a mature egg, my uterine lining was too thin to support a healthy pregnancy. Ideally, your lining should be 8-14mm. It is possible to get pregnant with a thinner lining, but often times, those pregnancies are not viable. So without any mature follicles, we cancelled the cycle and decided to start medications the next cycle.



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I was willing to try the medications to see if we could fix this problem, but part of me couldn't get over the fact that my body wasn't working like it should be. I was broken. I wasn't ovulating. No egg = no baby. For no apparent reason, my follicles weren't growing and my uterine lining wasn't gearing up for a baby like it should be. Something was wrong with my hormones that wasn't allowing my cycle to proceed normally; yet nothing was wrong enough to show up in any of my blood tests. I was sad... sad that I probably wouldn't ever have a baby on my own without medical intervention. I was also upset... angry that I had spent so much money over the years on birth control, something that I did not even need. Oh how nice it would be to have that money back now to pay for fertility treatments - ironic huh?




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So, as I waited for AF to show up so we could start our first medicated cycle, I had some time. Time to let all of this sink in. I was infertile - with a diagnosis of anovulation, I was unlikely to conceive a child without medical intervention. What else might be wrong that I didn't know about? Mild endometriosis? A septum in my uterus? Fibroids? Clotting disorders? What if the first line of treatments didn't work? Would we want to do IUIs? Would we pay tens of thousands of dollars for IVF? I knew plenty of women who started their IF journey thinking they would never go as far as IVF - yet when finally faced with that decision, chose to push forward with it. What if we were faced with that decision? What would we choose? So many questions, so few answers. The worst part was the uncertainty of what the future held for us - where would our IF journey take us? Only time would tell...


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Coming out of hiding

I'm not one of those people who keep their mouth shut and their opinions to themselves. In fact I've been known to share my thoughts and views whether they are asked for or not. I'm that girl who if you bump into me on the street, I will look you in the eye and say "Excuse you!" I'm also the same girl who will stop and ask a confused looking old lady if she is lost or needs help. I don't shy away from interactions with other people; in fact I'm more than happy to chat to people on public transportation and share my story. I don't care what people think of me or worry about what they'll say, I am who I am.

Yet today, as I road the bus into work I found myself using the bit of paper I had as a bookmark as a sort of book cover. I didn't want people to see I was reading "Miscarriage: What every Woman Should Know." Okay, so no one I know in person, besides my best friend, knows we are TTC, let alone about the miscarriage and subsequent chemical pregnancy-ugh don't you hate that term "chemical pregnancy,” makes it sound like your body had tricked you; I'll rant about that another time- but I don’t know anyone who ride the 41 bus the mile from my house to my office. In fact I rarely even see the same people day to day.

Yet I didn’t want people around me to look at me and feel pity or anything for that matter. It’s my body; I don’t want anyone else knowing what has happened. We’ve been TTC since early November and I was surprised to find out I was pregnant in late January. We’d traveled transatlantically and I thought I’d gotten my period, but after my jet lag wouldn’t go away once I got home and I had other strange symptoms I took a test and was cautiously excited to be 6 weeks pregnant.

I still don’t know if I was 6 weeks or when I miscarried. Not even a week after the first positive test, I got a negative test. I went to my doctor and a blood test confirmed that my Hcg levels were not high enough for a continuing pregnancy. The best I can figure is that I miscarried about a week before I got my first positive test, which was only positive from residual Hcg, but that is all speculation.

It was hard, but I had already gone into the situation cautiously and had only thought I was pregnant for a week. Unfortunately this last cycle I had a “chemical pregnancy.” I really hate that term; luckily here they call it an early miscarriage. I just feel the term chemical pregnancy makes it seem like your body tricked you into thinking you were pregnant and you never were, when in reality it just means the egg implanted enough to release some Hcg, but didn’t develop any further.

So that’s my story so far. It’s not just my story though, it’s lots of women’s stories. I think knowing I’m not the only one and then trying to learn as much as possible about it is what helps me the most. I’m waiting for an appointment for further tests to see why this keeps happening and in the meantime we are still trying and reading as many books as I can get my hands on.

Not the most upbeat post you’ll ever read, but I promise I’m normally pretty perky. It’s just my TTC, like so many other women’s stories just hasn’t had the perkiest start.

It's a ...

.......... Boy or a Girl? Take a guess in the comment section! 

I find out tomorrow afternoon at our big u/s what the sex is, assuming my babe is not shy and shows us his or her stuff!

To aid in your guesses, here is some random information: 

• I did not experience m/s; my face did not break out
• I have gained about 10 pounds and it's all in my belly
• It's too early to say if I'm carrying high or carrying everywhere though
• I crave BOTH sweet stuff (frozen yogurt! OJ!) and salty foods (nuts! cheese! meat!)
• The Chinese gender chart said I'm having a boy (age 32; conceived mid-Dec)
• But if you go by lunar months, then the Chinese chart says it's a girl! 
• According to this quiz, we have a 76 percent chance of having a boy...
• But according to this chart, we have a 56 percent chance of having a girl!
• DH's dad sired a girl first, then a boy; his maternal grandfather did the same; but his paternal grandfather sired two boys, then a girl
• DH just turned 40, so you might think his swimmers are slow (girls) but you never know!
• Based on the timing of sex (3 days before, 1 day before, on the day of O), it means...

I give up! I have no idea! Place your bets now...