We had another ultrasound yesterday and I guess things looked good so we are going back in again tomorrow. The nurse said the doctor is concerned I will ovulate on my own before the trigger. I am not really sure why that would be a problem, but I will take their word for it. At last report my lining was an appropriate thickness, I had a larger follicle on each ovary at about 13 mm, and then another 12 mm ish one on each ovary. I also have a plethora of smaller ones in the 10-11mm range. 

They said they want the follicles to be 18 mm before I trigger, I am guessing that the art right now is getting those bigger ones to mature and then to trigger at just the right moment before the smaller ones catch up. Less I become pregnant with a litter of children and qualify for my own reality show.

In other news today is the first day of the Tour De Fleece. What's that you ask? It's a spinning event where you spin every day of the Tour De France. You pick something challenging on the harder days of the ride and you rest on the days the cyclists rest. I have failed every year that I have attempted this so far. I am having a little party this afternoon to kick it off. 

I THINK things looked good on my ultrasound yesterday. My RE has a policy where they tell you any follicle less than 12 mm is not measurable, which is bull because you can watch them measure the smaller ones and see the numbers pop up on the screen. Yesterday I for sure had an 11.5 mm follicle, and two other smaller 11 mm follicles and one odd sort of kidney shaped 10-11 mm follicle. The ultrasound tech gave me this information after much pleading on my part, but made me promise not to tell the doc she told me. So I am just telling the internet about it instead. 

They said they would call me by 3:00 and let me know what to do. I waiting until 3:10 and called them. I thought that was reasonable, but the nurse sounded a bit grumpy on the phone. She said "Take 75 tonight and tomorrow and then come back Friday". And that was it. I wish I had asked what my estrogen levels where and if they thought things looked good, but I was off the phone before I had the chance. 

So we are a bit in limbo. I think things look good, we should know more on Friday. My friends on Ravelry have reassured me that those numbers look good. What I don't know is if all 4 follicles mature if they will cancel the cycle because the risk of multiples is too high. When I have asked how many follicles is too many they have been very vague, so we will wait and see.

So far I have done 5 days of the Gonal-F shots. We did 150 IU for the first three days, and now we are down to 75 IU. I have an ultrasound this morning and after that I will increase/decrease my dose depending on response.

I have to admit, doing the shots has been harder than I thought it would be. Luckily we have had very few side effects (mostly, I am just very bloated a bit emotional), but the actual puncturing myself with a needle is hard. I thought the first one would be hard and then it would be easy, but psychologically it's harder than I thought to puncture the skin. Last night my friend who is an RN showed me how to do it in my thigh though and that was much easier, so I think I will do that from now on.

Mr. Chickadee and I are both feeling pretty anxious about my ultrasound this morning. We have yet to have confirmed ovulation, so we are nearing the point where it all went to shit last time. I am trying to tell myself that CD 7 is early and if there isn't a lot of growth that does not mean the whole thing is a bust, but I know that I am going to feel crushed if I leave there with no measurable follicles.

Wish me luck that my ovaries are not continue to stink at being ovaries.

Hello again

I've been absent for a while... our last cycle was so crushing that it has taken a while before I felt like I could talk about my empty uterus and I have not been in the mood to photograph my crafts. Truthfully, my mental health has not been a good state overall. Try as I might to just live my life, I am constantly thinking about infertility.

What do I think about? It varies day to day. Some days I think fondly of the children I know I will have eventually, some days I think about how many days I have until I have a chance of ovulating, often I think about dates coming up and wonder if I could be pregnant by then, or I think about friends that I know are trying and how I am going to react if they get pregnant. Mostly I think about how unfair this all is, and what I did in a past life to deserve this.

Right now I am patiently waiting to start my menstrual cycle. Once that starts I can start doing my injections the next day. Then I go in for an ultrasound on CD 7 to determine if my ovaries have done anything or are continuing to be the useless pieces of crap that they have been all along.

I'll update as conditions warrant.

We met again with the doctor last week and have a new plan. We are going to do 3 weeks of birth control pills to suppress the ovaries and give everything a rest and then we are doing Gonal-F shots. We will start with 3 days of 150 and then 2 days of 75 and then go in for an ultrasound and see how things are progressing. I have to wait a little bit to start my birth control pills because I want to be sure my husband is home for any follicles that have grown and he is away June 20-24.

I am of two minds about this. On one hand I am really excited to try shots and I am pretty optimistic that they will work, but on the other hand I am terrified they won't. We are starting to run low on options and it scares me that I won't be able to have biological children at all. 

The other downside is infertility is really, really, really expensive. I am working over 50 hours this week and next week and it's exhausting me. My job is pretty physical and I come home tired and aching all over. At least the time is passing quickly until our next cycle this way.

Well that sucked

Had my second ultrasound yesterday and I did have a little bit of follicular growth, but nothing bigger than 12 mm which is what they want to see. My estrogen level was also very low so my doctor's office called and cancelled the cycle. We were completely crushed that Femara was not successful in inducing ovulation. We had prepared ourselves that it might not make us pregnant the first time, but we were really hoping that it would at least give us a shot at hoping that we might be pregnant for a couple weeks.

In the fertility community there is an expression called the two week wait, it's the time period between ovulation and taking a pregnancy test (or getting your period, whichever comes first). People get very excited during this time period as they endlessly google signs such as "weird forehead sweating on 4 days post ovulation" to see if anyone has ever had this as an early pregnancy sign.

It's SO frustrating to have never since we started trying to conceive to ever have had a hope that it was even possible that we could be pregnant. And every treatment that we start that fails to induce ovulation brings us closer to running out of options/money and it scares the crap out of me.

We are going back to see the doctor today, we are really hoping he will have some good ideas for some next steps

Disapointment

Well I went in today for a cycle day 12 ultrasound and things are not looking good in there. Blood work showed low estrogen (not good) and the ultrasound didn't show any follicle larger than 12 mm. I am in the waiting game right now. I should know more on Tuesday when I go back for a follow up, but as of right now I am not feeling terribly optimistic. True some women are late responders to Femara, and still ovulate but on a later day, but others don't respond at all. I feel like I am not going to respond at all. 

I think the worst part of infertility is the feeling like your entire life is on hold while you wait to get pregnant. For example right now I know that I have 72 hours before I find out if I can grow a follicle and I most interested in those 72 hours passing as quickly as possible. I know that I only will be alive on this earth for a finite number of hours and I should probably enjoy every one of them (or at least try to). I wasted my entire summer last year worrying that I was infertile only to discover that yup I sure am and now I am worried I will waste this whole summer worrying if I will ever ovulate. 

It's been a rough day. 

It's been a while since I had time to update as I was away this weekend for my grandmother's funeral. She passed away on Feb 8th, but we were unable to bury her at that time due to the ground being frozen. I miss her more than I can express in words, but it's comforting that she's resting peacefully next to my grandfather who she was faithfully devoted to for their entire marriage. 

My baseline ultrasound went smoothly on Thursday. Everything looked ok for me to start taking the Letrozole/Femara. I am now done 5 days of that and I can't express enough relief that it is done! I was not expecting to have any side effects since Clomid was a breeze for me, but that was far from the case. The first two days I had a forehead splitting headache, that resolved on the next three days if I took a Tylenol with the pill but I had SEVERE vomiting and GI upset at night on the other days. It was extremely unpleasant being woken up from a sleep with a horribly upset stomach. 

So I am now on (adjusted for meds) cycle day 7. Most people ovulate somewhere around cycle day 11-17ish while on Femara/Letrozole. I go in for another ultrasound on Saturday to see if it made anything happen. REALLY hoping it woke up my ovaries!

Uncertainty

I went to an infertility forum tonight in my town. There were 7 local western medicine professionals that gave a short presentation each and then afterward some local alternative medicine professional gave complimentary sessions. Some of it was redundant for me (get an Hsg, yup done, get a semen analysis, yup done, take omega 3, yup etc) but parts of it were helpful. 

One thing was that it made me realize that I probably should get involved with my local resolve chapter. It was nice to see so many other couples there, and know that I was not alone. I found myself wanting to ask them questions and talk to them, but I was too shy and it's too personal a subject. I think it would be helpful for me to have a place where I can meet other women and talk about what we are all going through. For a while I thought I hadn't been TTC long enough, but I am past that point now of being judged as not "infertile enough" for a group like that. 

A reproductive endocrinologist was there and he spoke up and for a couple minutes talked about how one of the major sources of stress for couples who are struggling with infertility is the uncertainty that accompanies it and I couldn't agree more with that. When you first start TTC you are uncertain if you have a problem, then you are uncertain what the problem is, then uncertain if one treatment will work, uncertain if you are ever going to become a parent.
He went on to talk about how people can deal with uncertainty for a short amount of time (like here in New England when they were searching for a bombing suspect loose in a nearby town) but people can only take so much of it. 

This really resonated with me, I feel so uncertain all the time and like all these circumstances are beyond my control. I don't know how many interventions I am going to have to do or if any of them will work and that is what makes this so hard. It's nice to know that I am not the only one who feels that way. 

 

Exhaustion

Through an unfortunate set of complicated circumstances I am currently on a stretch of working 9 days in a row without a day off. It's compounded by the fact that I am just finishing my transition back to work after my hand injury. I am exhausted beyond words and my hand hurts like hell. 

What is keeping me going is knowing that Thursday is my baseline ultrasound to start our fertility cycle which I am BEYOND excited about. I will update after that.

How to behave around your infertile friend when you're pregnant

Yesterday I talked about some pointers for acting around your friend who has infertility, today I'd like to focus on how to act when you are pregnant yourself.

Expect that your friend with infertility may distance a little from you. She's probably trying to be happy for you, but watching your body change and seeing you reminds her of what she can't have. It's ok to still reach out and call your friend or see if they want to make plans, but if she doesn't call back as often know that it's probably a protective mechanism for her. She's not mad at you and she still likes you, she is just really jealous. 

Please don't complain about your pregnancy symptoms. Your infertile friend is not going to feel sorry for you, and your complaining makes you sound ungrateful. That said, if your friend asks how you are doing, be honest and tell her. Just don't rub all your pregnancy symptoms in her face. 

When you announce your pregnancy, please be respectful. Please don't do it in a huge group with a lot of excitement. I still burst into tears when I find out someone is pregnant, and I don't want to do that in public. Don't get me wrong, I am happy for you, really I am, it just brings up a lot of emotions for me that I would rather a big group of people not witness. Personally, I would rather be told in a text message or email so that I can have some time to process before I react, but I am sure that is different for everyone. However you do it, just please don't make a big silly show of it. 

Other than that, just be yourself. Don't be scared of being around your friend. We still like each other, and have all the reasons we became friends in the first place. I am sure that we still have a lot of common interests that we share. 

I think Garfunkel and Oates sum it up nicely (warning, gets a little weird at the end)

How to behave around your infertile friend

I realize as I write this that really all I am saying is how I prefer people to act around me, but it may be different for everyone. The words that make me want to punch you in the face, may give someone else comfort, but I think a lot of people who struggle with infertility have similar triggers. 

Please don't:
- Make jokes about your own super human fertility powers

- Offer insight on how tiring motherhood is, or offer to give away your children. We all know that you love your children and think they are worth the work, don't imply that someone might not be up to the task. 

- Say cliche's about how everything happens for a reason or children come when they are ready. I have a medical problem where I don't ovulate. Children will happen when we can figure out how to make my ovaries work. Just like cancer is (hopefully) cured when they resect a tumor or figure out the right dose of drugs for you.  

- Tell me to relax. Or tell me about how Monica from Friends got pregnant after she decided to adopt. Everyone has a story about someone who stopped trying and got pregnant. Here's the thing about that; almost no one is completely infertile unless they have no uterus and their partner has zero sperm. Most of us are actually subfertile, and spontaneous pregnancy is possible but does not occur within a reasonable time frame naturally. Most of those women who got pregnant naturally did so after many many years of trying. Don't minimize their struggle by saying they were too stressed and that was why they didn't get pregnant. I feel shitty enough about the fact that I can't get pregnant, and yes that leads to stress, I don't need further stress by you telling me it's all my fault.

Please do:
- Listen when someone with infertility is sharing their story with you. It's a deeply painful and personal thing they are describing, and listening is a way of showing respect. 

- Be willing to tolerate a little extra bit of crazy. This whole thing is really hard and leads to a lot of stress and the fertility meds can make you wacky.

Shellseeker

I cast on for the Shellseeker sweater about a week ago. It's a top down raglan pullover with a neat little pocket detail. I am usually way more of a cardigan girl, but I have been having a hankering lately for a cozy pullover. I am using Cascade 220 that I bought last year at Webs on my way to Rhinebeck. 

My grandmother died this winter, and one of the things I inherited from her was her knitting supplies including the basket that you see in the above photo. I miss her so much every day. But when I am with her knitting tools and supplies and books, I really feel like she is there with me, helping me pick a pattern or reminding me about gauge. It's amazing to me how the things we touch and use and value everyday become such a part of us. I think she would have liked the sweater I am making right now. She might have even asked me for the pattern, and that makes me smile and feel like she is still with me. 

Chomping at the bit

Two weeks tomorrow I go in for my baseline ultrasound. As long as my lining isn't too thick we will count that day as cycle day 3 and start taking fertility medication. Why call it cycle day 3? Historically doctors would wait for you to have a menstrual cycle and then start you on fertility medication on either cycle day 3 or 5 depending on their preference (cycle day is the first day of your period). Calling it cycle day 3 makes is easier math-wise to date everything else.

For women who don't ovulate like me, and therefore get cycles very rarely a lot of doctors will induce a period using progesterone before starting medication, however my doctor says that is not needed as long as your lining is not prohibitively thick. It's a bit controversial, but I am trusting my doc on this one.

If my lining is too thick then I will need to induce a period, that usually takes about a week or so. I don't mind it too much, expect taking the progesterone makes me really sleepy and feel icky. I guess I shouldn't complain though, if I ever get pregnant that is probably what I will feel like all the time since pregnancy causes a huge increase in progesterone. 

I wish wish wish that I could start right away! Mr. Chickadee and I had to put a hault on this whole thing in early January when we decided that I was going to have hand surgery because I needed to wait until I would be eligible for an FMLA again by my due date. As it is we are cutting it a little close in case I do get pregnant and have to go out early... but we will cross that bridge when we come to it. 

In the meantime I am nearly constantly consumed with thoughts of what if. What if it works, what if it doesn't, what is NOTHING works, what if we are bankrupted by trying only to end up bitter and childless forever,  what if it works and then I miscarry (which is fairly likely with PCOS compared with other women), what if it works and I get preclampsia and have to go out of work when I am 5 months pregnant and I lose my job and then we lose our house and then I get deported back to Canada. Yup... reasonable concerns. 

Amy Butler's Modern Diaper Bag - Finished

I finished my version of Amy Butler's Modern Diaper Bag. Overall I liked this bag pattern. As I mentioned earlier some of the pattern notes were oddly worded, but if you have any prior sewing experience, especially with bags it's pretty simple to figure out. For example when making the pockets, just make the markings and then go ahead and make a box pleat, don't even try to decipher her instructions, just make a box pleat the way you know how. And if you don't know how, Google it, it's not difficult. 

I read that some folks online had a hard time assembling the pockets, I didn't find this too hard personally. I was a bit worried because I did not have enough fabric to make the long pockets as long as they were suppose to be, but I just made the pleats smaller and it worked out fine. I think might actually have been better, as I have read online that a lot of people found the pockets took up too much space inside the bag. 

The only other modifications I made was using the outside print for the pockets (because I didn't have enough liner fabric) and I eliminated one layer of interfacing. I thought two layers of fusible fleece gave enough structure without a third layer of midweight interfacing.

One more thing, this bag is HUGE, like HUGE. I would look totally ridiculous carrying this thing around town. That said, none of our family lives super close so it will be a perfect travel diaper bag. And if the whole having kids thing never happens for me I will definitely use it as a weekend away bag for myself.

Chase is shown in the last picture partly for scale and partly to illustrate how this little tabby lets me get nothing down without nosing her way into it. She can hear the sounds of me getting ready to do a project and loves nothing more than to get between me and whatever I am working on. Shortly after this picture was taken she climbed inside the bag.

Happy Birthday Mr. Chickadee

Today is husband's birthday.  We celebrated this weekend with a dinner out on Saturday, a little celebration with cake and friends last night, and tonight I will make him his favorite meal (pork curry with squash, sweet potato, and spinach). 

We've been a couple since I was 18 and he was 19, about 10 years now, because we met so young we have grown up together a lot. I have been teasing him this weekend about how much lower key we are then when we met. We will both now admit without shame that an ideal Saturday night often involves being home by 8:00 curled up on the couch watching procedural detective shows, whereas when we met and I wasn't legal to drink I thought nothing could possibly be better than staying out as late as possible because WE DIDN'T LIVE AT HOME ANYMORE!

He has helped me to be a calmer happier person. I tend to be a little ball of stressed out anxiety, with a special talent for taking any problem and assuming the worst possible outcome. He on the other hand is the calmest person I have ever met with a constant view that everything is going to work out. Just because it has to. This calm attitude has been a rock for me with my infertility journey, his quiet confidence that our becoming parents is a matter of when not if. 

I like to think that I have expanded his culinary universe. When we first met his favorite food was spaghetti and he had never really had a lot of food that was unusual or spicy. He still is not obsessed with food and talking about food the way my family is, but his taste's have become much more gourmet. I am very proud that his most favorite birthday cake is no longer store bought mix but my home-made chocolate marble chiffon cake. So yesterday I was more than happy to spend the majority of my afternoon beating egg whites to stiff peaks, folding them into the batter, carefully separating the batter and mixing in the chocolate and pouring it into the pan to get it just right. And it made me so very happy to see his delight as he ate his second slice after dinner.

About 15 months ago Mr. Chickadee and I were in a car accident. We were rear ended while waiting to turn left and it scared the living shit out of me. Took a long time before I could ride in a car without panicking and to be honest, I still don't like being in cars. Psychological trauma aside my worst physical injury was to my left hand. I broke my hand in at least 5 places (a few more spots have been debated back and forth) including two bad fractures through my proximal interphalangeal joint. See picture below for reference.

I was out of work from my regular job for almost six months, which is a crazy amount of time, I just had too much pain and no strength in my hand for a really long time. The pain never really went all the way away, so in January I decided to get two joint replacements, I got one in my index finger PIP and one in my middle finger. It's still semi-experimental, but so far the results have been good. I still have daily pain, but I think it's getting better. 

The best part is that knitting doesn't hurt anymore, yay! Knitting has always been one of my favorite occupations, and it was so hard for me not being able to enjoy doing it as much since my accident. AND this week I got permission to take my bike riding. It feels like I might finally be coming around the other side of this thing.

Effie and Ollie by Heather Bailey

My first sewn toy was from Heather Bailey's Effie and Ollie Elephant pattern. I love love love this pattern. This was my first, and I have made a few since then (my new ones actually look a lot better). They can be made with less than a fat quarter, probably you could actually get two out of one fat quarter, although I have not tried. There is minimal notions, just some safety eyes (or black thread), a little interfacing and of course poly fill. The pattern is beautifully clear, and once you get going with these they come out pretty quickly. I plan on making a heard of them for our future kids.

So it's probably becoming noticeable that I make a lot of baby things for someone that is "subfertile" as the Reproductive Endocrinologist puts it.  I have days where I wonder if this is wise for my own sanity. So far though, it feels right. I love to knit and sew and I want my baby to be surrounded my handmade things. I really don't think I will have enough time in my pregnancy to get everything made that I want to (especially since we plan on doing cloth diapers, and I want to sew all of them).

When I make baby things it doesn't make me feel sad that we don't have one. It just makes me feel warm and happy thinking about one being in our house. I know that one way or another we will have a family, and I can just save things in the meantime for when that happens.

Pain

I work in a hospital, and I see people in a lot of pain every day. I have experience with physical pain too, after my car accident my hand hurt more than I can possibly describe for a long time. I remember having my eyes opened to what real physical pain was. But the thing about pain is that once it's over, you don't really remember what it was like. You remember that it hurt, but you can't really feel that pain again. 

The emotional pain from infertility is similar. You want something so much that your heart aches, it can consume you, you would give anything, ANYTHING to have a child. It can feel hard to take joy in anything else in life when you have this gaping, raw, sorrow following you around everywhere you go and in everything you do. 

At least with physical you can talk about it without shame or embarrassment and be reasonable sure people won't say completely unhelpful things in response. After you break your leg no one tells you "Probably the bone will heal if you stop thinking about it so much" or "Your leg broke because it was meant to be, it's part of God's plan" or "haha, wow my bones never break! I wish they would break more often!"

The pain from infertility changes who you are. I find myself thinking horrible, hateful things about pregnant women. Today I was listening to NPR and there was a woman talking about how she "had three babies" while working on this book and how it hard that was. I found myself thinking "oh you got yourself knocked up, how HARD for you". That's not the kind of person that I am. I like other human beings and I can normally empathize with their strife and identify with their own situations. 

I hope that I won't be infertile forever, that I will be able to have my own family, and if not I hope that I can find a way to live without feeling this huge hole in my heart. 


 

Amy Butler's Modern Diaper Bag

This weekend I started making Amy Butler's Modern Diaper Bag, from Little Stitches for Little Ones. I have made a number of projects from this book and so far have been really happy with how they turned out. So far the pattern is very Amy Butler, overly wordy with way too much interfacing. Seriously, I think she has stock in Pellon. For fabric, I'm using Avery II from Joel Dewberry that I have had in my stash for a while. 

I read online from a few other bloggers that it turns out way too large to use as a regular diaper bag, and I tried to scale it down but the link to the blog that everyone else used for scaling it down is missing, and hating math as I do I decided to make it the original size. So far it is HUGE, however it would be a great bag for a weekend or long day trip. Made with less pockets it would be a great overnight or beach bag too. 

I'll update when there is more to show. 

Clara and Clancy aka Francis Bacon and Hamantha

 
When I do have children I want to wait as long as possible to get them any kind of plastic/mass produced toys. My husband works for a non profit that has done some research into plastics/chemicals and it is alarming and horrifying to me what they put into children's toys. A lot of even very popular main stream toys contain lead. What doesn't have lead may contain BPA or some other chemical that we don't even know is toxic. I am well aware that eventually all kids end up with "regular" toys, but I'd like to keep it home-made and natural for as long as possible.

Recently I started making kids toys. I have knitted some, but I find them to be fiddly, time consuming and tedious. I wanted to sew a few toys, but I was really intimidated by the process. I was worried I would end up with some vague toy type shaped blob that would frighten children away from miles around.


I was delighted to discover though that Heather Bailey's patterns are really easy to do. The directions are so clear and well written that as long as you take your time, and don't mind a little hand sewing they come together really quickly.

These two friends are from the Clara and Clancy pattern. The first one I made was the green "Sir Francis Bacon". When I bought the fabric I didn't realize it was shaded until it had already been cut from the bolt, but I like how it turned out. You can see that when I got to the second pig "Hamantha" the nose turned out a bit better, and the head shape is closer to the pattern. I thought about fixing Francis but the general consensus is that he looks good the way he is.

A few notes about the pattern. You don't need nearly as much fabric as is called for. For the hooves, ears and snout you can away with 1/8 yard, and although for the shirt the pattern called for 1/2 yard, I did it with one fat quarter (with some very careful layout).

Francis's shirt was a bit time consuming, but worth the effort in the end. I had the hardest time with the buttons on his shirt, but that was mostly because my one step button-hole maker and myself are not good friends. I do like the little details on his shirt, such as the back pleat and collar facing.

Hamantha's dress was easier for me, although that may be because I am very comfortable with rouching. I like the back detail and snaps on the back.

Both the pants/bloomers were very easy and came together in about 20 minutes each. I really like how Francis's came out, I had some leftover cotton/linen that I think makes him look very classy.

Overall, I was very happy with how they came out and I may make this pattern again. I think it was worth the time and effort. Now I just have to figure out what to do with them.

The past two years of my life have had some changes that were beyond my control that caused significant stress. This blog is intended as a journal, to chronicle my adventures in photography, sewing, knitting, infertility, arthritis and life. If anyone finds this blog: welcome, it's nice to meet you.