When I travel to see my folks, I always - always - make a good Target run. I love Target, and I miss Target. Wal-Mart doesn’t even come close. While I no longer decorate my house with picture frames and pillows from the big T, I’m a sucker for things like the Choxie candies, cheap white socks, and, my new obsession, HPTs and OPKs.
Dude, I had no idea one could purchase a Clear Blue Easy 20 stick OPK box for under $40. $40 here in Calgary gets 5 lousy tests. I also stocked up on OPKs, the ones promising “5 days before missed period.” Does anyone know if these are indeed more sensitive than the ones here? The best I’ve found are 4 days before missed period.
In any case, I’m looking forward to another month of peeing on white plastic thingies.
I’m done with the Prometrium as of tonight, and I feel like AF is just around the corner. I’m absolutely ravenous today. This is a new symptom I’ve just noticed for the past few cycles, and it’s kind of inconvenient.
Case in point… I ate a big chocolate glazed donut for breakfast and washed it down with a venti nonfat cappuccino. Not even two hours later, we went to Milestones for lunch and I downed a set of Thai Chicken Tacos while Sandra was still casually munching on her beef dip. Now it’s about 4.5 hours later and I’m counting the minutes until she gets back from the store with some kind of red meat to throw on the grill.
If this is any indication of what hormones do for me, what in the world can I expect pregnancy to be like? I’m terrified!
Today is Day 5 of the progesterone, so as of tonight, I’ll be halfway done with the 10 day program. I should be seeing AF around Friday, I’d guess. This has been a long cycle with not a lot going on and I’m ready to move on to the next one.
My friend Annie bought me a real basal thermometer, so I guess I’ll start temping again on Day 1 or so. I’ve been pretty lazy about it the past few weeks. After all, I’m not looking for anything specific right now, so it’s lost it’s thrill.
I will be doing 100mg of Clomid this time around, and am going to ask about doing an ultrasound or two to check out those follicles. We’ll see. Ultrasounds are one of the things covered by Alberta Healthcare, so I’d imagine it wouldn’t be a bit problem, but then, who knows.
Alright, I’m ready for this week to be over now, thank you very much.
It’s been a long month chez indigirl. My dad had knee surgery a few weeks back, and despite being put in ICU for a few days, went through it pretty well. I’m back home now. The photo above is of me and my new puppy Jackson Brown. I guess I should change the blog name, eh? Jackson was a rescue, but we suspect he’s related to our older lab because they have so much the same faces and eyes and there just aren’t that many lab breeders in this area. He’s five months old and oh-so-much-fun. You can read more about it on my main blog. (There’s a whole story.)
It’s day 34 or so and I still haven’t had AF show up, nor any signs of it, so I’m on the prometrium again. What fun! What joy! Since I haven’t taken it in about seven months, I’ve been feeling so sick all day, mainly nauseous. If I remember correctly, it does get better for me, but probably not this month.
I will be taking 100mg of Clomid this time around, so we’ll see what happens. We had talked about taking June off, but I think we’re going to go for it. This is our second and last month’s worth of stuff from the BFM, so it seems like it’s a good time to take a break after this cycle, mostly for financial reasons. We’re getting into summer now, and at a knitting store, that nearly always means a huge slowdown and lack of income for us personally. Taking some time off will give us time to save up more fertility funds and investigate alternative donors.
So, it’s good. I don’t feel all that positive going into this cycle, but then, I felt really positive for the last two months and not that much happened! Hopefully I’ll at least ovulate this month… that’d be good, eh?
So, I’m just sitting around my parents’ house waiting to see if I’ll get a period next week or not. My temp hasn’t really changed much, although with the travel and the time zone change, I wouldn’t expect it to be all that “accurate”.
We did figure out a way to get that blood work done at the local hospital tomorrow. I have to pay for it, but it seems to be ok. They’ll be testing my progesterone level to determine whether or not I missed my surge. (And let me tell you, if it turns out that I somehow missed it, I’m going to be sooooo mad!)
Other than that, not much going on here. My mom and I have been joking about having triplets or quintuplets, and I just keep saying, “I just don’t want to make the news.”
So, the ultrasound went really well. As usual, Sandra had more cramps and discomfort from it than I did! 
The result is that this month is not going to happen. I had many folicles, but none of them were more than 0.6cm, so none of them are prepping for ovulation.
Either the 50mg of Clomid wasn’t enough this cycle, or I somehow missed my surge, despite testing regularly every morning and sometimes a time or two extra “just in case”. I’m guessing since I didn’t notice too many horrible side effects of the Clomid, I probably didn’t ovulate.
So, I’m flying to Chicago tomorrow to see the folks. I’ve arranged my next blood test to be done in St. Charles at the hospital. I have to pay out of pocket, but being able to be there for my Dad’s knee surgery (he’s 87) is more than worth it. On Monday I’ll be doing a progesterone test to see if I have missed ovulation or if my body didn’t cooperate at all.
And if I don’t get a period when they think I should (by day 31 or so), I’ll be taking prometrium to induce a cycle again.
So, I’m a little bummed this month didn’t work out, but I’m really relieved that we didn’t spend over $1k to have this month not work. And we still have one more cycle’s worth of our number 1 donor’s… ahem… to use.
So, after an afternoon of phone tag, I finally got a message from the clinic to go get some blood work this afternoon. They’re checking my progesterone, FSH, and estradiol (sp?) levels. Tomorrow morning, I get to have another ultrasound to check on those developing follicles.
So, I’ll probably know tomorrow more about what the plan is. I do know I’m not flying to Chicago tomorrow for that family visit, but here’s hoping I can reschedule for later in the week. Moving into June, it’d be hard to plan a good time to go. Bah.
I’ve been using those OPKs like they’re going out of style. The last few days, I’ve been waking up at 5:30am or 6am to pee or let Cooper out. So, I use an OPK then, just in case I don’t fall back asleep or make it a few more hours. And then I do fall back asleep, so I better use another one at 8am when I normally get up. And they’re still all negative. All very very negative, with just the faintest line visible if you squint hard enough.
I did speak with the nurse at the clinic this afternoon and she’s not that concerned. Since I had a surge last month, I’ll probably have one again. It just might take longer. But, since it is Day 17, I’m supposed to test for one more day, then do some bloodwork, then go in for an ultrasound to see if anything is happening.
All this means that if I don’t get a surge tomorrow morning, I’m not heading to see my parents this week at all.
Which is fine.
And disappointing at the same time.
So here’s hoping that tomorrow is the day.
It’s two days later than my surge last cycle and I’m starting to get nervous. Last month, my OPKs showed a surge on days 15 and 16, and we did the IUI on day 15, which would have been yesterday. As of this morning, my OPKs still show nothing… nada… zilch.
I know variance is normal, and two days isn’t much of a difference at all. But I’m under instructions to phone in tomorrow if I haven’t yet surged.
