Holy Cramps Batman!

Yesterday I was concerned about not having enough of a flow to go in for my baseline ultrasound. When I told the nurse I was only spotting, she said I might need to cancel my appointment since they couldn't count it as day 1 unless I was really bleeding (and miserable). I shouldn't have wasted a second fretting about it.

Today I was popping Advil like tic-tacs. I usually only need two to control cramps for about 8 hours, but these seemed to break through after only 2 hours. As long as I was consistent they weren't too bad, so I took another two before I went to bed at 2:30am and figured they'd be enough. BIG HUGE MISTAKE.

At 6:45am I woke up to absolutely horrible, body twisting cramps. I haven't had cramps like this since High School and back then they used to keep me home, in bed, in a ball. It took another bunch of Advil over 3-4 hours and a heating pad on high to get them down to a manageable level, and I may have told E mid cramp that I would not be having his babies naturally after all. He laughed at me and said Duh so we'll see how that goes when (not if!) we get there.  I'm pretty sure I have the progesterone to thank for these wonderful cramps, I'm definitely not looking forward to it this month.

Once the afternoon rolled around, it was time for my appointment! I went nice and early but ended up losing my advantage to the 30 minutes it took to find parking -_- There was street cleaning today so half the parking was unavailable and I had to park 4 blocks away. No fun when you have to run back and feed the meter.

Since today was just a baseline ultrasound, my appointment was with Nurse C instead of Dr. K. I had been looking forward to chatting with Dr. K, since she had forgotten our previous meeting, and I had practically cried over having to go through the whole thought process again. Luckily, she ended up leaving detailed instructions for my cycle that matched our previous plan so all was well. We saw at least 6 little antral follicles and I would love to see those turn into 6 mature eggs. The new plan is:

CD 2 - CD 11 - Birth Control Pills
CD 12 - CD 14 -  No Meds
CD 15 - CD 18 - 8 vials Menopur, divided into 2 doses daily, E2 Ultrasound
CD 19 - CD ? - More Menopur
CD ? - Trigger
CD ? - IUI or Egg Harvesting, probably IUI

We're hoping that suppression with birth control first will help my eggs develop at a similar rate. Usually, your body selects 1 egg as the dominant follicle each month, but we'd like to get many more than that. The birth control should stop that one egg from getting a head start so hopefully the smaller ones we saw last cycle will be able to catch up and mature too.  Then we're going all out with the max dose of Menopur to see if we can wake these lazy ovaries up. 

That B*tch AF and Planning for Maybe Someday

AF arrived with a vengeance today that viciously stamped out any hope that we might still conceive on our own.   Even though I know, logically, that E's swimmers can't swim, everything about this month pointed to possible success. I was taking Metformin, FertilAid and FertilCm, we used Preseed, our timing was literally perfect.  I thought that maybe, just maybe, one really determined guy might have made it through. Plus, we just ordered a whole bunch of vitamins for E to improve his count and motility, and the laws of the universe clearly dictate that we should get pregnant right before we get a chance to use all those expensive goodies we already paid for. Apparently, E's swimmers didn't get the memo.

So after feeling miserable and sorry for myself most of the day, with the added PMS hormones making me feel like my chest was/is being crushed under the weight of my grief and yearning, I decided to distract myself with some photoshop decorating. I wanted to work on picking out a new aquarium to replace my current set up that is getting a bit old, but my mind was too stuck on babies.  I will blame the hormones again, but the truth is that it's difficult to think of much else these days, hormones or no.

I've mentioned before that I'm a bit of a planner. I like shopping in advance, prepping early, spreadsheets with color coded lists and goals and budgets. With this one track mind, I already have a vast amount of baby stuff stored that I've been buying over the past twoish years. I won't confirm its existence, but there might even be a list of every item organized by size and type so as to keep me from over buying in any one category.  First it was just a really adorable onesie or toy that was too cute to pass up and easy to put away for the future. Then several stores had unbelievable sales, there were some great craigslist finds, a fantastic thrift store and before I knew it I had amassed enough designer baby clothing to open a small boutique.

I have a very strong preference for gender neutral items and for the most part, didn't purchase anything that you couldn't put on a boy or a girl. There are a couple girly outfits, maybe 4? that I figured I could sell or gift if we don't have a little girl, but everything else is pretty neutral.  We could probably have twins tomorrow and have enough clothing to dress them until they're 2, with occasional gaps where one size category is a bit light. We also have my favorite LifeFactory bottles, some organic baby products, a couple blankets, some towels, some toys, even two terry cloth crib mattress covers. I freely admit that baby shopping was a form of birth control "we are waiting to have a child now, but I can buy this and know we'll be able to use it in the future!" and it has definitely helped me feel prepared and like we're making some sort of forward progression in the face of our complete lack of success.

Among my shopping goodies is the crib set and some nursery decor that I can't wait to use when we're finally successful. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it and haven't wavered in my desire to use it since. Using it as a starting point, E and I have already designed the nursery we'd like our future baby to have. Of course this was based around the idea that we'd have a singleton baby, but I'd feel perfectly comfortable adapting it to twins if we end up that lucky with IVF. Again, it's very gender neutral and it gives me hope that one day we'll have a baby to go with it.

I fully realize that it's kind of pathetic to be planning a nursery for a baby that doesn't and might never exist, but I have to hope that we will be successful eventually, even if we have to do multiple rounds of IVF. E and I want to be parents too badly to give up, however we have to build our family, and photoshopping our favorite items together made the weight crushing my chest feel a little lighter this evening. I think I might be a bit of an oddball here too, from my limited experience with the infertility world, it seems that most women find it too painful to see and interact with babies and the things that go along with them. I feel completely the opposite, spending time with my wonderful friends and their equally amazing kids makes me feel even more hopeful for the future instead of depressed about the present.

There's no denying that our fertility present sucks really, really hard right now, but someday in the not so distant future, I will be putting together this nursery for a little one of our own.