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

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.

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. 

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.

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.