Guess what? I'm waiting.

I feel like trying to have a baby is one huge cosmic effort to teach me patience. It's like some children's fable where the girl who always wants things now Now NOW has to wait in some uncomfortable way to teach her a lesson that what she really wants is better if she patiently waits for it. (Alternatively, if this is an Andersen fairy tale, she gets cooked up and eaten by a witch because she was impatient.)

So yeah, I'm learning to wait, and yeah, I haven't died yet from the waiting, although I swear there have been a couple of times when I thought my head might literally explode. And I repeat things to myself like "it's only another week" or "what difference does a month make" or "in the grand scheme of things, 6 weeks isn't that much time." But really, I am seething under the surface, mentally trying to will this process forward.

Because it's all well and good for me to be a model of patience and forbearance, but it sucks mightily to watch every single other woman on the entire planet just go out and get knocked up exactly when she wants to and then enjoy life with the children she had no trouble creating. Why am I the only one who has to be patient, for fuck's sake? (Sorry, I'm working myself up.) I know I know I'm not the only one, but that is just how it seems to me, and it just feels shitty. And unfair. Really fucking unfair.

What am I waiting for this time? Since I stopped the bcps Thursday, I am now directing all of my energies towards willing my period to arrive. All indications are that it should be here some time real soon, and once it does come, I'm on the express train towards another ER. So please please please body -- hurry along already! I'm seriously going mad waiting for this cycle to get started.

Un-birthday cake

So I haven't been blogging all that much recently, and I think that's generally ok, because frankly there just isn't a whole hell of a lot going on with me, infertility wise.

Today was my lastest bcp and so now I'm waiting for the cycle to start again so that I can begin injectables.... I'm relatively sanguine about this whole thing, because this time we are not going to do a single embryo transfer, and since I've rationalized in my head that was the cause of the failure of my first IVF and FET, well -- this one clearly is going to work. Note to all of you paying attention: 1+1=2. So even if I had put those same two embryos back in at the same time, it's pretty damned likely that it would not have worked that way either. But I'm irrational about this and need to believe that this cycle is just the magic one.

Plus, I can't possibly reach 40 and not be pregnant, right? Please? Seriously, whoever out there is listening, I'm turning 40 at the beginning of May and I'm really worried that I am going to become totally unhinged as the day approaches if this cycle doesn't work.

I mean, I'm already 3/4 of the way to crazy most days -- if this goes bad and I turn 40 all at the same time? I suspect I'll need a padded room.

To ensure that I am fat (as well as crazy and still barren) on my 40th birthday, I have hidden away in my bag a piece of cake that I acquired on the way home from, well, from the gym actually. I'm kind of debating waiting on eating it until tomorrow, but what I'm really thinking is that a piece of cake and a glass of milk would be a perfect accompaniment to the Daily Show in 10 minutes. So cake it is. If only I could eat my way to a positive pregnancy test.

All's well with the nest

I had my very first saline sonogram on Friday to check out my insides. Turns out it isn't the most comfortable I've ever been although my RE did warn me that the saline was going to cause cramping.

Frankly, this was a lot less comfortable than the HSG, although everyone says that one is worse. My view: saline sonogram = bad, HSG = ok.

Initially, for those of you interested, it looked as if my entire uterine cavity was filled with some sort of mass, but with another pain-inducing squirt of saline it was gone and my insides were as clean as a whistle and looking just perfect. I understand that that second squirt saved me some unnecessary surgery, but it certainly didn't feel very good.

So while that's all good, I'm left thinking: if everything is checking out perfectly, then why aren't I pregnant/ a mother yet? I know that "unexplained" IF is often the diagnosis, but part of me really would like to be able to identify (read: blame) some cause or another. The "well, it's kind of a mystery" is really highly unsatisfactory.

So in my search to find a cause for all of this IF crap, I asked my RE about some of the tissue biopsy testing/ clotting issues. While she is certainly willing to run all of the bloodwork now, in her view there is nothing clinically pointing in that direction, as it's not like I am getting pregnant and then repeatedly miscarrying. So I am thinking I should let that rest until after this cycle.

I am, however, going to ask her to run a full thyroid panel, since I have had borderline thyroid function issues in the past. It just makes sense to me to be sure.

I'm really out of ideas of how to answer this "what's behind the IF" question, and am thinking that continuing to try is not really all that helpful. But it really would be more helpful to me than to just have generalized, unexplained IF.

Sigh.

Once more, this time with feeling

Since I am not pregnant, I now have my period. And since I have my period, guess what that means? It means I get to start another stimulation cycle in 2 weeks after I shut my system down with bcps for a while.

So, I guess, yippee?

I guess I'm enthusiastic about this cycle, since it means that there is still forward progress, but it's somehow less exciting the second time around. Maybe it's just that the novelty has worn off. But novelty or not, I have a big box of drugs in my closet, and went in for my day 2 vagicam and bloodwork today. So 2 weeks of bcps start now, and then hopefully I will be able to muster up the appropriate enthusiasm to not mind the shots so much.

I wish I felt something more than "meh" about this process right now. I just feel kind of let down by the magic of ART and my hopes for an insta-solution to our infertility woes have not been really fulfilled. I guess that was never realistic, but it sure would have been nice.