One of those “mad at the world” kind of days

I have been whining to people all day, so I figured I might as well whine a little bit here too.

I have had the worst cramps all day.  I think I’m just weird, but when I get really bad cramps I get chills- like fever chills.  Those are the kind of cramps I have had.  All day.  I’ve lost track of how much ibuprofen I’ve taken, but it’s not helping much.  I would have gone home early from work, but I had something this afternoon that I couldn’t miss.

I hate this.  What’s the point of going through this every 24 days if I’m not going to get pregnant anyway?  All I’m doing is wasting eggs- not good when I’m not sure how many I’ve got left in the first place (stupid high FSH).  I hate being completely exhausted, I hate having cramps that won’t go away, and I hate the reminder that yet another month has gone by and I’m *still* not pregnant.  I hate the fact that I have to go buy more tampons and advertise to the world that I’m *still* not pregnant.  (Yes, I know the people at Walmart couldn’t care less, but when I’m feeling angry and bitter I tend to think these things.)

A couple days ago at work I was talking with two friends.  Friend A is married and has one kid; friend B just started dating someone (the topic of conversation).  B knows about all of the infertility stuff and has been really supportive; A doesn’t know anything about it.  We were talking about the potential future B and boyfriend might have together, and A said to B, “Who knows, maybe you’ll be the next pregnant person walking around here.”  I really wanted to tell B, “You better not be”, but I figured that would probably be one of those inappropriate “bitter infertile” comments, so I held my tongue.  But seriously, isn’t it my turn yet?

So yeah, one of those bitter, self-pitying, mad at the world, kind of days.

Tomorrow has to be better, right?

Another extended absence

I’m not doing very good at this whole blogging thing.  I feel like all I’ve been thinking about lately is work, but maybe I needed the break?  My depression has been better,I’m back on all my meds so I’ve been at my normal level of mild depression.

I think I’ve been doing a lot of processing the last few months.  After our miserable attempt an an IUI cycle, I hit that point of hopelessness, helplessness, and desperation.  Trying to decide if we should just “give up” and move on to adoption, or if we keep trying (which means more waiting, and I’m so tired of waiting).  I was feeling like I *should* give up, but couldn’t get myself there.  I think I’ve decided that I need to go through one IVF cycle before I can move on- I can’t give up when I haven’t really even had a chance.  I really don’t even expect IVF to work for us, and I still don’t know when it’s going to happen, but it’s something I need to do.  Is that terrible?  That I want to spend $15,000 on something I don’t expect to work, just for my own peace of mind?

I recently hit the 2 1/2 year mark of trying to get pregnant, and completed my 36th cycle.  I’m so tired of all of this.  The sadness, anger, and bitterness, being hopeful and hopeless at the same time, the constant reminders of what I don’t have, the uncertainty, and the intensity of all the feelings.  But there’s no way I could go back to not wanting this.  I’ve realized that I can actually relate to (sensitive) fertile women more than I can to my friends who don’t want kids right now, for whatever reason.  There’s something about that longing for a baby, once you get there, I don’t know if you can really go back.  My friends who aren’t in that place don’t really understand why this is so consuming.

In some ways I’m feeling more alone right now than I have at any other time in this journey.  I’m not actively doing treatment. I’m in such a different place from all of the “newly infertile” ladies- they still have hope that treatment will work.  It seems like most of my non-infertile friends are tired of hearing me complain about the same thing over and over again, and even if they ask about it, I don’t know what to say- it seems like I’m just stuck in the same place.

I’m getting to the point where I wonder if I need to not let other people’s pregnant bellies and babies bother me so much.  I know that would make my life easier, but it also feels like if I did that, it would be a sign of surrender.  Kind of like one more step toward giving in, giving up.  I know the two things aren’t really connected, but at least when I have to deal with the sadness and bitterness I know that I’m still fighting.  And that I still have at least a little hope.

So depressed

Life really sucks right now.  I don’t want to deal with anything.  I’m not getting anything done, I don’t want to do anything, I’m not even really trying to connect with people (and I’m not really caring about feeling so alone).  I’m crying almost everyday, when I wake up in the morning I literally feel like I don’t have enough energy to move, I feel like I’m walking around in a fog.  I’m not suicidal, but I think that’s only because I’ve been here so many times before.  I haven’t cut myself, but only because I’m already worried that I’m not going to pass a home study with my history of “mental health problems”, I don’t want to do anything to further jeopardize my chance of becoming a mom.

I’m tired of being depressed.  But apparently it’s just how my life is.  The ironic thing is, I’m way too depressed to be capable of making any important decisions right now.  Like the decision of whether or not I should go back on my meds.

I just want everything to go away.

Where to start . . .

It has been almost a month since my last post.  I guess I’ve been a little depressed.  And I’ve had so much internal processing going on, I don’t really even know how to get it all out.

I made it through my first injects/IUI cycle.  I started the injects 5/30; 225iu Repronex days 3-5, 150iu Repronex days 6-8, trigger day 9, IUI day 11, luteal phase: 9 days; started my period last Tuesday.  We had almost no sperm, so I pretty much knew it wouldn’t work.  Now we’re back to waiting.  Again.  I’ll send my husband to do another semen analysis in a month or so and see where we’re at.

I’m down one medication (it’s been about 5 weeks now).  I don’t think it’s going so well.  I’ve been pretty depressed the last couple weeks.  With lots of negative thoughts.  Of course all of that could be related to everything else going on in my life and have nothing to do with the medication I’m not taking.  Who knows.  I’m so tired though.  I just want a break from everything.

I’m starting to wonder if maybe I should give up on trying to get pregnant.  Maybe it’s not supposed to happen.  (There are a few different reasons I’m starting to think that, and I’m sure I’ll write about them later.)  Just thinking about that possibility is killing me.  I feel like I’m going to break into a million pieces.  And there isn’t anything that I, or anyone else, can do about it.  I just have to keep going.

My husband got mad at me last night when I got upset about something little.  He told me that I can’t handle anything.  I told him that I am handling SO much.  All of this stupid infertility stuff, making it to work everyday, helping him with some of the things he needs to do, doing some things around the house . . .  I think I’ve said all that before, but I guess he actually heard it this time.  It was so nice having someone acknowledge how hard this is; having someone be at least a little aware of the daily struggle that goes with infertility.  I apologized to him too- I hold it together all day long for everyone else, he really does get the worst of it.

Anyway, I’m going to try to come out of my hole now and rejoin blogland.  Thank you to everyone who left me a comment in the last month.  All of the comments have helped keep me going.  I’m going to work on returning comments (and getting caught up on my regular reads) during the next week or so.

Laptop woes

My laptop is just over 4 1/2 years old, and it is on its last leg.  The connection to the screen is getting finicky and so half of the time when I open it up and turn it on the backlight for the screen doesn’t come on.  Which means a very dark screen.  So I have to close the lid, push it down in a couple places, and hope that the screen lights up when I open it again.  Sometimes it does, sometimes I have to do that three or four times before I get light.  Very annoying.  And I have no idea how long it will be before it completely dies.  So I need a new laptop.

There is a laptop that I have been wanting for over a year now.  It’s a tablet and I think it would help make getting paperwork done at least a little easier.  Plus it’s fairly small and would be much easier to carry around- a nice benefit, since I take my laptop with me almost everywhere.  My husband is supposed to get his last financial aid check in the next month or so.  And we were planning to use some of that money to buy me a new laptop.  The one that I’ve been wanting forever.

Except now I feel like I can’t buy it.  Because we’re going to need that money for a shot at getting pregnant, for a chance at having a baby.  $1400.  Probably a little less than 10% of what we will need for one IVF/ICSI cycle.  How can I put a new computer over a baby?  But it’s not fair.  I want my new computer.  And I’m mad, darn it!  On top of mourning the potential loss of my ability to even get pregnant, I’m mourning the loss of a stupid computer.  I know it sounds ridiculous, and probably very selfish.  And I know that a big part of being a parent is having to make sacrifices for your kids.  But I almost never spend money on myself.  And I’ve really been looking forward to that laptop.  And it shouldn’t cost anyone $15000+ to even have a chance at getting pregnant.

So I’m having a major pity party for myself.  It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s NOT FAIR!  And I’m feeling very bitter about the whole situation.  And I know I probably need to just get over it.  But underneath all that, I’m TERRIFIED that I’m never going to be pregnant.  Completely and absolutely terrified.  And I think the bitterness and anger are easier to cope with than the terror.

I want my computer.

A whole day

I can’t believe it.  I made it through a whole day without crying more than a few tears.  Hallelujah!  

I didn’t, however, make it through the day without yelling at my husband.  My poor, poor husband.  Anyone who knows me in real life would never believe me if I told them about my fairly frequent “temper tantrums”.  You know, yelling, slamming doors, banging things around, the works.  I’m horrible sometimes.  And my husband is pretty much the only person who gets to witness all that.  Isn’t he lucky?

I’m singing in church tomorrow, so I’m sure there will be plenty of tears then.  I don’t go to church all that often these days, but I cry pretty much every time I do go.  That reminds me, I need to put more kleenex in my purse!

Can I blame this on clomid too?

This week I think I’m averaging about an hour of crying per day.  Between depression and infertility it’s not completely unusual for me to have periods of time when I’m doing a lot of crying.  But an hour a day? For five days straight?  That’s way more than I’ve cried before.  So I’m blaming it on the clomid.  And telling myself next cycle will be better.  It will be better, right?

I have way too many stressors (sorry, therapist talk) in my life right now.  WAY too many.  I’m sooooo behind on paperwork for my job.  We have no money and things keep coming up to eat away at the little we do have (like needing a new alternator for one of our cars last week).  My husband is so stressed about trying to get things finished for school that I feel like I need to take care of everything else by myself.  Oh yeah, and we had another fantastic appointment with the RE this morning.

The first time I had my FSH checked it came back at 14.  Scary.  We met with the RE and my attitude was basically “we’re screwed, right?”  The RE wasn’t convinced (hence the clomid challenge test) and seemed to have more of a “let’s not panic yet” attitude.  So we went back today, to review the results from the clomid challenge test.  And the RE’s attitude was “there’s a good chance you’re screwed.”  He didn’t say that, of course.  And he’s more than willing to let us try at least one injects/IUI cycle.  And then we’ll have a better idea of how well I respond.  But when he reviewed our options, donor eggs and adoption were both on the list.  Nothing like that to instill hope.  Hearing your RE say you might end up needing to adopt.

I know we can “always” adopt.  And if we did, I know I wouldn’t have any problems loving my kid(s) or thinking of them as truly being mine.  But . . . I want to be pregnant!  I’ve wanted to be pregnant since I was in high school.  And if that isn’t going to happen it’s going to be a huge loss for me.  There’s a very real chance that I will never see a positive pregnancy test (unless it’s right after a trigger shot).  I might never get to know what it feels like to *know* that I’m pregnant.  To be terrified that it won’t stick.  To excitedly wait for an ultrasound appointment and get to take home ”pictures” of my baby.  To have to deal with morning sickness, aches and pains, and clothes that keep getting smaller.  To know that, by some miracle, there is another life growing inside me.  To have that automatic and deep connection with my child.

Our current plan?  Next Friday my husband and I get to take the injections class.  And I call the first day of my next cycle to schedule an ultrasound.  And then I start injects.  And pray that my ovaries respond the way they’re supposed to.  And we at least try IUI.

We have to figure out how to come up with money for IVF too, since the IUIs aren’t likely to work.  I would like to be able to do an IVF cycle by the end of the year, before my ovaries completely fail me, but we’re barely getting by right now so it’s going to take some creativity and lots of discipline (something neither I nor my husband have very much of).

I know life isn’t fair, can I maybe get a break from the reminders?

Responsibility

Sometimes having to be responsible really sucks.  I got a positive OPK this morning.  Of course.  It actually made me laugh- it just fits so well with everything else going on in my life right now.  And I just don’t feel like I can miss work at all tomorrow for an IUI.  So we’re waiting until next month I guess.  I know that was the right decision to make, but I’ve still been feeling sad and disappointed all day. 

I had an all day training for work today.  A lot of it was about what it really means to empathize with someone and how important that is when working with clients.  Feeling their pain, taking time to understand and to let them know you understand.  One of the good things about all the crap I’ve gone through is that I really like being able to do that with my clients.  It doesn’t scare me like it might.  I know I made it through my own intense pain; I have no doubt that I can hold my clients’ pain and help them get through it.  That’s one of the things I love about being a therapist.

The bad part about the day?  They showed this music video:  The Eleventh Commandment.  I work with kids who have been abused everyday.  Sometimes I work with parents who have a history of abusing their kids.  I can do the empathy thing when it’s on an individual basis.  Taking each client as they are and accepting that.  But this video is a much broader view of child abuse.  And that, combined with my disappointment about not doing IUI this month, started the tears and the “Why God?”  Why is it so easy for people who are going to abuse their kids to have them?  It’s so not fair to those kids.  And why are there so many people who desperately want kids and would be good parents that can’t have them?  It’s not fair for us either. 

Holding my breath

I don’t think I have ever been so anxious about when I’m going to ovulate.  I’m really worried that I’m somehow going to miss that surge of LH and have no clue.  I’m worried enough that the last couple days I’ve woken up at 5:30am to take my temperature.  I haven’t temped in forever.  And this morning I actually dragged my butt out of bed after taking my temperature so I could pee.  Because I’m supposed to do these stupid OKPs using smu (second morning urine) and I’m supposed to call the RE before 8am if it’s positive.  I’ve been using fmu, but apparently the increase in anxiety while I wait this out has made it easier to wake up and harder to fall back asleep.  Hence the blog at 6am.

Confession: I’m a bit of a math geek.  I am forever adding things up, figuring out percentages, figuring out averages, highs, lows, etc.  Maybe I’m a little OCD too.   But, according to the 24 cycles I have charted on good ol’ FF (wow! has it really been that long?), my longest cycle to date has been 27 days.  Out of those 24 cycles (not including this one), I temped and/or used OPKs to figure out when I ovulated for 19 cycles.  The latest I have ever ovulated is cd (cycle day) 16.  On a side note, the 3 cycles I ovulated on cd 16 my LP (luteal phase) was 9 days long (for 2) and 10 days long (the other one).  Apparently my body has been more concerned with keeping my overall cycle length the same rather than keeping my LP the same.  Today is cd 15.  Not even a slightly darker OPK yet, to tell me I’m at least heading in the right direction.

Of course I’m actually kind of hoping I don’t get a positive OPK today.  My day tomorrow is packed and I don’t want to cancel any clients because I didn’t see any of them last week (thank you clomid).  Plus one of our cars died yesterday.  So getting my husband and I to the RE’s office, from different sides of town and at different times, might prove difficult.  So, no positive today.  Please?  Of course, I wouldn’t really even be surprised if the clomid somehow had the opposite effect on my body and made me NOT ovulate this cycle.  I have very strange reactions to medications sometimes.

Sigh.  I’m off to get another glass of water.  So I can pee again before I have to leave in just over half an hour.

NaComLeavMo

NaComLeavMo: More Conversation Than You Can Shake a Stick at

As I’ve said before, I’m really good at starting things and not so good at sticking with them and/or finishing them.  But I’m going to try this.  It will probably be good for me to get out of myself for a while.

If anyone knows why the image isn’t showing up on my sidebar feel free to tell me how to fix it!  I’m totally new at all of this code stuff.