And Baby Makes 8… ummm…. 9

Somehow, seeing that scrawled in red across my chart makes it a little bit worse. Friday’s ultrasound showed almost no growth for any of the follicles. I think one or two were .1 larger than a couple of days before. They wanted me to come back on Sunday, but since I was going out of town, thought it would be better to just can the cycle and start again. I have been testing for a surge and haven’t had one. Not even a hint of a line. And my temp is still down, so I doubt I missed ovulation. 

Frustrated doesn’t even begin to describe it. The only good thing? Being able to be in Las Vegas and not worry about what I was eating and drinking. (I am paying the price this morning, however, after about 3.5 hours of sleep last night!) 

Here’s my question for you… they want to push me to 200mg of Clomid. I’ve seen other people taking this high of a dosage. But, I’m considering calling in and requesting to switch to injectables. I’m not pleased with how many “off” months I’ve had on the Clomid. Not to mention the hot flashes and mood swings and all that. Of course, I know those can be just as bad on any other drugs. But different = good, right?

In other news, while we were enjoying the not-so-hot hot tub at the Treasure Island, we ended up having an interesting conversation with a couple of straight couples from Seattle. One of the women started talking to us by noting our rings and asking where our husbands were. Weird, right? I mean, who asks that? So, I said that we were together, and she was a little over the top excited about that. And we talked about our ttc process and the frustrations, and they were all quite funny about it. They kept saying how great kids were, and so on. But I really got the feeling they’d never met a gay couple before. Never. I suppose that’s a good thing, in a way, to be able to be out there and present. 

I was thinking a lot this weekend about the concept of being out. With Clay on the cover of People, it felt like there were more gay jokes that usual going on. Half of the time, the people saying them were saying them to me. Nothing overly negative, mind you, but still far from PC or sensitive or whatever. I’m a fervent believer that the more of us that are out, the more people will begin to understand that there’s nothing that different about us, about our lives. And maybe then we can stop having “lifestyle choices” and start just living.

I’m with-it enough to know that I’m totally over-reacting. Either the Clomid is going to do nothing this time around, or it’s going to work… just a little later than I’d planned. 

On the very large positive side, we are going to Las Vegas this weekend and I can really live it up.

You’re not going to believe this.

Today’s ultrasound showed three or four follicles on each side, all around .9 or 1.0cm. 

How did they go backwards in 2 days? The nurse believes that it was likely an error on the previous ultrasound. Still, I cried like an idiot in frustration. It made it a lot worse when she started talking about the “cycles of hope and despair” that we all go through in this process. 

For me, I just want to ovulate. That’s it. Anything else will be a nice bonus. 

The plan now is to go in for another ultrasound at 9:30 on Friday morning. That’ll let me get to the airport with enough time to make our flight. And, I should still be using the OPKs over the weekened, depending on how that ultrasound goes. She said that at this point, the earliest I could expect to IUI would be Sunday. The very earliest. And, since we’re out of town, that would be a no-go anyway. More likely they’ll need to see me again on Tuesday for another ultrasound.

I’m not out of this cycle yet. But still. Can I really believe that the doctor doing the ultrasound on Monday made that big of a mistake?????

… 2 on the right ovary, both 1.4cm. One on the left, 1.3cm.

I spent several hours yesterday doing up a new blog template for my main blog, indigirl.com. Go look. I like it quite a bit. But now this blog looks a little less than “me”, if you know what I mean.

Not that I even remotely have time to do a new layout for makingbabies.indigirl.com. Not even close.

Today is the first ultrasound of this cycle. I’m glad they scheduled it for Day 12, as opposed to Day 10 the previous cycle. I seem to like to ovulate around Day 16, so hopefully this will avoid going in for three or four ultrasounds.

I still don’t know exactly if this cycle is going to happen or not. If past cycles can predict anything, I might surge on Thursday, which would be great. Or Friday, which would be not so great as we’ll be on a plane flying to Regina en route to Las Vegas at noon.

So, I suppose I’m leaving it up to fate. I’m also planning on asking if they can give me an early morning IUI time for Friday, just in case.

In my defense, when I joined Weight Watchers in July/Aug, we had been planning to take several months off from the baby-making-craziness. And the way it works, you prepay for coupons or pay per week. If you miss a week? You have to pony up for the extra coupon. If you miss enough, they’ll make you repay the initiation fee. 

And it’s been going pretty well so far. Before today, I was down about 8 pounds in 6 weeks. Yay for that. Losing even a little bit of weight can help get your cycle more regular. This week? I gained 1.6. Or 1.4. I’m refusing to look at my chart and see. I’m pretty mad. I definitely slacked off this week, but with the raging hormones, it’s been harder to not give into any of my teeny tiny cravings. And it’s been hard to convince myself to go to yoga or dance class or anything. 

On top of that, the frustration, the utter <i>anger</i> about gaining a week’s weight loss back when I feel like I’m working so fucking hard to do things “right”, eating all those apples instead of chips. Carrots instead of trail mix. One glass of wine instead of three. Lean pork and chicken instead of beef. Counting points. Writing things down. 

I know it’s just my hormones but I’m way more upset than I should be about this. I just need to pick up where I was and it’ll be better next week. But it feels like too much to worry about while I’m going through all these hormonal ups and downs.

What I posted before is that I think that IUI will be on Thurs or Fri of next week. We’re set to fly out around noon on Friday. I called today to change it for the following day, but nothing was available. I’m not freaking out yet. I might be able to call the clinic and get an earlier morning IUI time. But I kind of asked last week and they said that it wouldn’t be possible to change it for this month. And I might not have any follicles. And I might surge on Thursday. So it’s all up in the air. 

Not a big deal to wait another month. On the other hand, I’ve just ingested 750mg of Clomid over the last 5 days. I’m hot flashing and irritable. I don’t feel much like myself at all, and I want to have done this for some purpose.

I don’t know about you, but I always feel like progress is just around the corner after I finish that last dose of Clomid the night of Day 7. In a few more days, I’ll go for my first monitoring ultrasound of this cycle, and hopefully see some nice follicles developing. 

I’ve given up trying to predict whether any cycle will be ovulatory, and I’m trying to not pin too much hope on it this time around. If it is, and if it works similar to the other two ovulatory cycles, IUI day should be in another week from today or tomorrow. 

This waiting business is hard work. I’m a person who likes taking action, enjoying accomplisments, happily crossing off items from my persistent mental to do list. Waiting? I don’t do waiting. Not easily. Not well. 

I can’t belive it’s been 6 months since we started trying. 6 months. 6 cycles. I thought, back in March, I’d be knocked up by now. But then, how can you go into this with anything but optimism and tons of statistics? Hopefully this will be the month, but if not, we’ll just keep going. 

And one of these days, my clinic won’t advise me when to “make love” to my husband.

Or rather, en-raged. This is the Clomid. It has to be. I’m working very hard to not bite anyone’s head off and chew it up for lunch.

My temps have been pretty high the last couple of days, since I started on Clomid. 97.9, to be exact. I looked back at older charts, but that doesn’t tell me much; it’s not until last cycle that I started waking up at the same time every day. And last cycle’s chart was low prior to O, then higher. Just as it “should” be.

In any case, I’ve read that it’s normal to see higher temps when on Clomid, so I won’t worry. A huge part of me is worrying that this is going to be another anovulatory cycle, but there’s nothing I can do now. Except worry, that is. 

My first ultrasound this cycle is on Day 12 instead of Day 10. I think this is a good plan. On both ovulatory cycles so far, I registered my first lh surge on Day 15 or Day 16, putting a possible IUI day as the 26th of September. A week and a half away.

When I put it that way, it sounds so soon. In reality? This first week of the cycle feels intolerably long for me. While a lot of bloggers have commented that it’s relaxing with very little to “do”, I miss feeling busy. I miss peeing on various sticks first thing in the A.M. I miss trying to <i>not</i> pay attention to every little twinge, every little possible symptom. 

So, here I am, on Day 5. One week to go before the first ultrasound. But I’ll start using my OPKs this Sunday just in case.

On to another round of Clomid. I started on the 150mg last night and am already having hot flashes. How is that possible? Does that mean I’m really in for it this time around? Ugh.In a lot of ways, it feels like it’s been a heck of a lot longer than just a month since the last time I was doing this.  I feel like I should be actively doing something right now, but it’s a week tomorrow until my first ultrasound. This is going to be interesting too, because some of my u/s appointments are at really horrible times - like 9am. An hour after I get to work. I’m going to phone the u/s place directly on Monday and see if I can change them to something near the end of the day or around lunchtime so I don’t run into any conflicts with meetings, etc.