Catch Up

So after our first IUI with Clomid and yet another BFN, I kind of sank into depression. At the same time, my boss gave me the opportunity to work in a town about two hours away for the holidays. So I took the opportunity for a little break! I was driving back and forth and really busy, so we put all of the TTC stuff on hold. I missed my husband tremendously, but it definitely took my mind off of TTC. When it got close to time for me to come home, I started to get really nervous about starting to TTC again because of how depressed I was before I left. I went ahead and took Clomid in November, but we didn't really track anything, and we did nothing in December or January. We decided that we would start trying again as soon as my cycle started and would plan to do another IUI with Clomid. About two weeks before I was supposed to come home, I started my period (almost two weeks early!!) and it lasted for six days!! After it stopped, I continued spotting for about the next week and a half until I was full on bleeding again!!! What the heck?!? So I called my doctor and they prescribed a progesterone supplement of some kind that I had to take twice a day for four days. I stopped bleeding for last two days that I was taking the pill, but then spotted for about a week after that. Now I am just waiting for AF to come back again (in just a couple of days) so that we can start our 6th round of Clomid and hopefully do our 2nd IUI. I am praying for peace, and that maybe this break gave us the fertility boost that we need?!?!

The Lord Will Fight for You, and You Have Only to be Silent. Ex 14:14

Its Not About Me, but Its All About Me

I have said before that when I was younger I felt like because of my childhood struggles, nothing else bad could ever happen to me. Like everyone on earth gets one bad thing that happens to them, but thats all that God allows. Well I know now that I was wrong! So then what do you do with the knowledge that multiple bad things can happen to you? I'm struggling with alot of fear at this realization. So maybe my childhood prepared me for this. I prayed for strength every day and maybe this is just a test of the strength God gave me. But if this is true, my fear is that this is just preparing me for the next battle in life. Like there is something much worse than this coming and God is making sure that I will be strong enough. My church tells me that sometimes God has to do something to you to change something in you to do something through you. I have prayed from a very young age that God would use me. I want to make a difference in this world. I want to help others. I think everyone wants that, but I begged for it. The Bible says that sometimes God will afflict you with something and even if you pray and do everything you are supposed to, His answer to your prayers will be no. This is not meant to be cruel, but to humble you. My mom is convinced that I am going through this so that I can help others, which is why I started this blog. She also is convinced that I will have a child and that I just have to be patient. As much as I love her and I want to believe in the hope that she speaks, I feel that I have been patient. I've had TWENTY MONTHS of patience. I pray that God's grace will be sufficient for me and that His strength will be made perfect in my weakness. 2 Corinthians 7:9

I prayed to the Lord and He answered me. He freed me from all my fears. Psalm 34:4

Meditation

The thing I battle most in all of this is anger. I am angry almost all the time. I am angry at my body, I am angry at God, and I am angry at everyone around me who has no idea what I'm going through. I am a very religious person and I believe that God is good. I believe that we can all have a close personal relationship with Him and that when we pray to Him, He answers us. What I struggle with are the answers. There have been a few times in my life that I have felt like God gave me a clear answer to a problem. When I was growing up, I had a pretty difficult home life. I won't go into details because that is a story for someone else to tell. But I always thought that that was the worst thing that could happen to me, so nothing else could hurt me. Because of what I went through, nothing else bad could ever happen to me. I believed that. Once this journey began, I began to feel that God was drawing me nearer to Him and I felt thankful for the quick growth that I was going through. But that feeling of thankfulness soon turned to anger.
The Dalai Lama says that without basic human goodness, religion cannot work. You have to remember that all beings want happiness and have the right to work on suffering. Compassion is an emotion based on reason and you must meditate your whole mind on this emotion. When the feeling of compassion gets weaker, analyze it again and then when you get it back, meditate on it. This is the way to combat anger.Then you will see the negativeness of hatred and what it does to your happiness. Individual anger is blind energy that brings disaster. It is alright to confront injustices without anger. With compassion comes self-confidence.
Meditating on this wisdom has given me peace on many occasions.
I know that as a Christian, sometimes people feel that looking to other religious beliefs for wisdom is worng. But I feel that wisdom can be foundin many places, and there are truths in many beliefs. I don't have all the answers, obviously, so I will continue to search and listen and pray that God leads me to a path of righteousness.

Clomid Round 4, IUI Round 1

Per my husband and my agreement, I was to be under no stress for any reason during the month of October. If there was something that he thought may stress me out, he was to couch it until next month. I took six days off from work during the time I was scheduled to ovulate. I thought it would be a good idea to have a big support system this month and I strongly believe in the power of prayer, so I told my closest friends what we were doing. One friend even posted on her facebook for others to pray for us. I felt very loved and like this month I was not alone. My doctor instructed me that I was to take an OPK every day starting day 10. Once I got a positive I was to call them and we would do the IUI the next day. I was soooo afraid that I would get a positive on a Friday and it would be too late by Monday. But luckaly, we got our positive on a Sunday (cd15). On Monday morning, I called the doctor. They told me that we needed to be at the lab at 3pm to give a sample. The lab would spin it and pass it off to us to bring to the doctor. They said not to wait in the waiting room and that they would send us right back. My husband and I got all ready, went to a nice lunch, and headed to the lab. I could tell he was nervous. He gave the sample, we waited for an hour. They called us back and the woman gave me the sample to put in my bra so it would stay body temperature. And we rushed over to the doctor's office. When we got there, they told us to wait in the waiting room, which of course irritated me. Then they finally took me back, my husband stayed in the waiting room. I undressed from the waist down and layed on this weird chair/table that could raise and lower my lower half. The doctor and nurse came in and explained what would happen. The doctor said that my husband's sample had 9million good sperm! To the fertile person, that sounds like a lot, but you and I know that its not great. But all we needed was one!! At first it just felt like a pap smear. But then came the catheter and some intense cramping. It wasn't that it was painful as much as extremely uncomfortable. It seemed to take forever! Once it was done, they brought my husband in. He held my hand and we prayed together. I got to lay there for about 15 minutes and then got dressed again. I felt pretty crappy. I went home and layed in bed. I layed in bed for the rest of that day and all day Tuesday. I ate tons of food, all healthy of course. I relaxed. My husband had taken such good care of me all month. On Tuesday I ovulated. I knew that all we needed was just for that egg to attach and we would be pregnant. I treated my body like I was pregnant for the rest of the month. I went back and forth between being hopeful and cynnical, but stayed mostly hopeful. I started using my progesterone cream at 2dpo just to make sure my levels stayed high! Then on 3dpo I started to feel EXTREMELY constipated (sorry TMI I know). I looked it up, and constipation is an early pregnancy symptom! Hopeful. I felt bloated, nauseous, achy, tired, hungry, irritable. I just knew I was pregnant. I felt pregnant. On November 1st (13dpo), I took an hpt. It was negative. After twenty months of negatives being negatives, I now believe a negative. I held out a little bit of hope for two more days, but November 4th (16dpo), I started spotting. I knew it was once again, all over. I was beyond devastated. I was crushed in every ounce of my being. Plus I had told so many people we were having this procedure done, that I didn't want them to be disappointed too. It looked like I would be ending another month with margaritas and tears. The most cruel part of all of it is that at the end of the month, if you aren't pregnant, you get to have cramps and acne. Insult to injury.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life. Provers 13:12

Clomid Rounds Two and Three

I started Clomid round two at the beginning of August. I ovulated on August 15th (cd18). I was pretty depressed all month. It was a bit of a blur. I think it was the feeling that we had been trying for so long and it was a year from our initial pregnancy deadline. When I went in for my post ovulation doctors appointment, he told me that even if we did everything right, it is very difficult to get pregnant. Humans are not particularly fertile creatures. Yeah, tell that to the hundreds of pregnant teens that seem to cross my path every day! He told me that since the clomid was doing what it was supposed to, he didn't need to continue to monitor me every month and that I should go through the next four rounds and just call them when I'm pregnant. I didn't take a pregnancy test that month. I couldn't bear not to see those two lines. On the 29th (14dpo), I started spotting and knew the evil witch had conquered again. It was now September and I was very hopeful and eager for round three! I had read that most people get pregnant during round three or four. I was extremely moody this month. I was either starving, thirsty, exhausted, or all three at the same time. I had a huge blow up with my husband because he came home late from work and I had been waiting for him to go to dinner and was STARVING! In retrospect I see how ridiculous it was. At the time I knew how ridiculous it was. But I COULD NOT CONTROL MYSELF! I yelled, I screamed, I cried...I beat my couch up with a pillow! I called my mom and told her that my husband was probably going to divorce me (and I was completely serious). I was convinced that he was not mature enough to be a father and I was obviously a crazy person and should not be a mother. It felt like all of the pain and frustration and resentment had all culminated in that one night. NINETEEN months of trying to have a baby and it eluding us. I ovulated the next day. My husband and I talked it out and decided that we each needed to do some changing. I showed him a list of possible symptoms from clomid and explained to him that I had them all! I let him know what I needed from him. I made an appointment with my doctor to discuss the next steps, because obviously this was not working. I told him that I was only willing to do 6 total rounds  of clomid and I wanted to use rounds 4-6 to do iui. He agreed. I knew I wasn't pregnant. On Octoer 3rd (17dpo), the evil witch again reared her ugly head.

Let Your unfailing love surround us, Lord, for our hope is in You alone. Psalm 33:22

Clomid Round 1

I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had read all about clomid, the uses and possible side effects, read people's posts about clomid on numerous boards. I just didn't really know what to expect. I think I believed that it was this magic pill and once I took the first one, I would immediately feel different! But I took all five of them, and felt nothing. July 6th I had acupuncture. July 11th (cd17) I ovulated (I was still tracking my bbt). The only symptoms I had was a little bit of extra moodiness and pain during intercourse right around ovulation. On the 15th (cd21) I went in for a pelvic exam and a progesterone test, which showed my progesterone levels were sky high! The doctor sounded very hopeful and said that if I hadn't started my period in a week that I was probably pregnant! YAY! I took an early test on the 20th (9dpo) because my husband and I were leaving on a trip to Europe the next day, it was negative. I took another test on the 23rd (12spo), it was negative. I took another test on the 26th (15dpo), it was negative. On the 28th (17dpo) I started spotting, and I knew it was all over. I had all of these grand hopes that I would find out I was pregnant while wandering the streets of London or Paris. Could I find some fabulous baby names while in Europe? Buy little European baby outfits? I was devastated. I just knew that THIS would work! I had gotten my hopes up again for the first time in months. I had a 10hr flight home on July 31st (cd3) and started round two.

God arms me with strength and He makes my way perfect. Psalm 18:32

The Lord is my strength and shield. I trust Him with all my heart. Pslam 22:7

He renews my strength. He guides me along the right paths, bringing glory to His name. Psalm 23:3