Someone PLEASE, knock me up!

I don’t have anything to post about.  Nothing is happening.  I’m just letting time pass.  I’m supposed to have a beta on December 5 to see if the IUI worked — hey stop laughing! not funny.   I really don’t think it worked.  I mean, I can’t even count the number of IUIs I’ve done over the past two years and they’ve never worked for us so I don’t think I’m jinxing anything by saying that.  As if I could jinx it or not.  If it worked it worked, if it didn’t it has nothing to do with jinxes.

I am closer and closer to being finished with this whole IF thing.  I’m seriously re-thinking if I even want us to try with my sister or not.  I’m just too tired to keep up the struggle.   I know I’ll do that final IVF but that won’t happen until February.  I was hoping for January but we are going on a week’s vacation to New Orleans in January and it comes right at the time I would be needing to do ER and ET based on my regularly scheduled cycles.  Oh well, I’ll keep popping the DHEA until then and maybe I’ll get my 11 eggs again.

Work is work.  Board crap is still Board crap.  I only have 3 more meetings and then I’m out of that hellish situation.  I’m pretty sure I will be appointed to the Board of Managers for our building but that is only 3 people and 4 meetings a year.  I think I can handle that without wanting to stab myself in the ear with a sharpened pencil.

I’ll let you know how the beta goes.

We did an IUI this morning and will do another tomorrow morning.  After 600 iu of stims per day for 10 days and 100 mg of clo.mid per day for 5 days I had a whopping the 3 follicles.  What a let down.  That’s a lot of meds for that little result. 

 
I don’t know what we will do next.  I really had the plan laid out with this being my last IVF and now I don’t know what to do.   Should I call it a day and move on to my sister and/or DE?  Or, should I go ahead and try to get that one more IVF (and possibly 11 follicles and a 5 day blast transfer) done and then call it quits with me and mine?   I’m leaning towards trying IVF#4 again in January.   I really want that one last chance of a good IVF try for the closure.  I was fairly certain I would have some feeling of closure, or at least a willingness to finally move on to the next step, after this IVF but since it was canceled my feelings are all over the place. 

 
SB says we don’t have to decide now, but is he crazy?  Of course I need to decide now – I HAVE TO HAVE A PLAN.

 
On a lighter note, I get out of work early tomorrow and I have scheduled a massage.  I haven’t had a massage in 3 years and I really feel I need something resembling TLC right now.  So, I will bite the bullet, spend the money, and hope for the most relaxing, stress-releasing massage ever.  What a better way to end this futile IUI effort – you know, besides getting a BFP!?

I only have 3 follicles with one dominating.  We will convert to an IUI.  I am beyond devastated.   We have to decide if we will try again to see if we can get a response like last time or just move on.  Moving on means I have to accept I will never be pregnant with my own eggs and likely never pregnant at all.  DE aren’t fool proof either. 

Too much to think about right now.  I just have to cry some more.  I’ll think about it all later.

More and more I find myself trying to figure out how to live my life without children.  It is terrifying to contemplate but it is more terrifying to think about continuing this fight much longer.  I’m worn out, worn down, and dog-tired.  I just want to have a happy life where I’m not struggling all the time.  It feels like my whole life has been a struggle.  I’ve never gone into it here but yeah, my life has been rough.  More difficult than some people’s and not as difficult as other people’s. 

 
The thing is, I have worked very hard to leave those difficulties behind.  It has been hard but in many ways I have been very successful.  I was raised on welfare in a single parent home, moving all the time and even going to 13 different schools in one school year.  We moved so much that my mother would forget which grade my sister and I were in and sometimes we’d end up in a new school in completely new grades.  No one in my family ever went to college until I did and many didn’t even finish high school.  I worked full-time and went to school and finally, after some terribly hard years I graduated from an Ivy League University.  I graduated early from high school and left home at 16 taking my younger, 13 year-old, sister with me.  It was the only way change could happen for us.  It was terrible.  I was frightened all the time but I did it because I knew that the life I had had up until then was not the life I wanted.  I now own property in NYC that has risen in value threefold since I purchased it six years ago.  I work in one of the most prestigious Museum’s in the world.   I am married to the most wonderful man in the world for me – this after spending 10 years married to an angry, unhappy, and violent man.

 
In a word, I’m ready to be happy.  I’m ready to stop having to fight for what I want in my life.  The problem is that I’m ready for a baby.  After all the struggling when I was young, my life is just perfect for a child.  My SB would be the most amazing father.  It breaks my heart to think of giving this reward up.  (I hate to say reward but all these years I’ve always wanted a baby but would only let myself think of having it once my life was settled and that would be the icing on top of the cake of my life.  I’ve always held the idea of getting to be pregnant and have a baby as something I would deserve and could let myself have once I took care of business, ergo reward is the word I use.)

 
Finally, my younger sister really wants to try to have a baby for SB and I.  We really sat down and discussed it last night and if (when) this IVF fails she will be ready to try a few IUIs.  She would go so far as to try IVF if we wanted her to do so but since she is only a few years younger than me we figure if we are  going to go to the expense of IVF we’d go all the way to DE with a young (YOUNG) woman to have the best chance.  My sister has three children so she has proven fertility and she was always the one who got pregnant easily – as in it didn’t even take s.ex, all she needed was direct eye-contact with her husband after 8 o’clock at night : )    Of course, her youngest is 7 years old so who knows if her fertility is still as potent as it was then, but we will give it a try.   If she gets pg, the baby will be as closely related to me as a baby can be that wasn’t born from my eggs and the baby will be my SBs biological child.  We really hope it works as I can’t do this much longer.   SB says we’ll try with my sister.  If it doesn’t work, we should try one round of DE.  If that doesn’t work, that is the end for us.  That is what I fear the most.   Our marriage will be fine, we will still love each other, we will still be together, we will still have our best friend but it is what we won’t have that will preoccupy my mind.    

 
Please find a pill that takes away this want and send it to me as quickly as you can.  If I find it first I will share it with any of you who wants it.

 
Disclaimer:  I’m not a writer.  I wish I were b/c this post would more clearly say what I really mean.  It is close, but not close enough.   Sorry about that – if you find a pill that makes one write more eloquently please send that along too, k?

Went in for a follie check this a.m. and well, it was a pretty sad show.  I had one follie at 13mm, 2 at 10mm, and 1 at less than 10.   V. sad indeed.   I’m not going to get too worked up about it because I have been known to have a slow start.   If it doesn’t look like at least 8 follies by ER then we’ll convert to an IUI.   I really don’t care at this point.   I don’t know why I’m even trying again.  I’ve had astonishing (my doctor’s word) results in my last two IVFs for my age and yet, I AM NOT PREGNANT.   Astonishing doesn’t help me much apparently.

 
My SB pissed me off this morning.   I told him after our last SPECTACULAR IVF FAILURE that I couldn’t do this stuff alone any more.   He agreed that he would go with me to appointments and this morning when the alarm went off, he copped out.   Jerk!  He said, “will you hate me if I don’t go?”.  I said, “fine” and got up to get ready to try to have his baby – BY MY SELF.   I didn’t even go into the bedroom to say goodbye when I left.   I felt that I would scream if I even so much as caught a glimpse of him still sleeping blissfully away as I was leaving. 

 
That’s it, that’s all I’ve got.   I hope you are well.  Take care.

Not much to update.  Went in for monitoring on CD 2.  All was clear and I started meds that night.    Nothing new, nothing exciting.  I’m over being excited about starting a new cycle.   I’m tying to convince myself that I’ll be fine if/when this one too bites the big one.  I tell myself that my sister still wants to try a few IUIs for us and I tell myself that there is always DE in Argentina or South Africa or The Czech Republic.   I guess my biggest fear is what do I tell myself when none of those things work either.   I’m sad on a daily basis but trying to push it away by telling myself I can be really sad when all of our options are used up.   Sad – I don’t think that fully describes it.  Such a small word for such an overwhelming emotion, no?

 
I love my SB more everyday but wonder what our life will be like without a child.  We are a boring couple.   We’ve been waiting around for a couple of years now for a child and we’ve become boring.  I worry that we won’t be able to break that boring routine (which would be great to have a baby in) and end up bored with each other and our life together.

 
I know we will be okay because we are both committed to our relationship but I wonder how hard it will be to deal with that after dealing with the hardships of infertility and loss.

 
I go back on Thursday, CD7 and will probably add cetro.tide to my already huge arsenal of drugs.  I’m at 450 gonal.f, 150 of repro.nex, and 100 mg of clo.mid.  I am totally maxed out on all drugs RE’s will throw at us.    I’m hoping I respond as well as I did last time and get 11 eggs.  That will bode well for the 5 day blast transfer I am going to insist on having.   My doctors want me to only do day 3 transfers but I’ve tried that three times now without any good results that I’m at the point where I’d rather have the embryos die in the petri dish rather than in my body.   Blast transfers have a higher percentage of positive pgs so why not.

 
Take care.

So, the answer is no, my last chance (last ever) Bab.yMak.ingS.ex did not work.  Who’s surprised by that outcome?

I don’t have much to say except that emotionally I’m still in a pretty low place.  IVF#4 begins tomorrow if all checks out well at morning monitoring.  I hope it does.  I really need to get this show on the road.

I’m sorry I haven’t been commenting – I have been reading when I can but I just really had to pull myself out of the game as much as I could.  I’ll start giving back as soon as I can.