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!