My Cup "Crappeth" Over

I have to say I have been procrastinating about writing this post; it has been difficult to think about it much less talk or write about it with many other things going on in my life personally besides infertility. However, I feel as though I owe my blog a post about this cycle since the last post was a “to be continued…” type of post - and after all this blog was meant to be a see all journal about our battle and hopefully perseverance over infertility and an outlet for me to connect with other women who are also in my situation reaching out to them so that they know that they are not alone. So since everything needs an ending (happy or not) here it is the conclusion to this, my fifth IUI Cycle…

I can honestly say that this cycle was perfect, I really responded well to the ALL injectible cycle. I had 8 follies - four good size follicles and four not so good size follicles; my lining was thick and had the triple striping that it is supposed to have at the time of ovulation. I had high hopes going into the eight medicated cycle and fifth (my lucky number) IUI. We knew that this would be our last shot at pregnancy before stopping all medical intervention to save for in-vitro fertilization and I believe that Tom really needed a ‘perfect’ cycle to fail before he was at a place where he could think about moving on to IVF *squinting pretty hard to see the silver lining in this cycle*.

Unfortunately the first test was a false-positive. Those ten minutes between the first and second test (having Tom bring me the test -since I couldn’t bring myself to go into the bathroom and check the test for myself, realizing it was expired, running to the drugstore to pick up another test and all of the time between) was definitely one of the best feelings I have had in my life. I never thought I would actually see “pregnant” on a test and it be wrong. However the expired date on the first test made me try my hardest not to get my hopes up – but failed miserably and unfortunately they were the highest my hopes had been since trying to become pregnant. The second test came back negative and soon after I began spotting, with AF arriving in full force on Saturday. It was the hardest end to a cycle that I have had in what seems like longer then two years of trying to conceive.

With this cycle coming to a devastating end, I finally feel comfortable with stopping the treatment until we can afford IVF… for a while I felt like I wouldn’t be able to take a break, knowing that I most likely will not be able to get pregnant without medical intervention. However now I know that although it will appear and may even feel like we are taking a break from treatment we are actually moving forward in trying to conceive, and this break will be necessary for our dreams to come true at last. Being that we are now on a hiatus from going to the doctor to get ultrasounds & blood work, having multiple shots and being poked in prodded in places that I didn’t know existed before being seen by a reproductive specialist. We are now beginning a new chapter of trying to conceive – one that involves getting healthier, exercising, saving money for a baby, and taking care of our first child aka our fur-baby Austin (who has pneumonia right now – please send a little prayer his way). I am not sure what my next series of posts will contain but I will do my best to keep everyone updated in our journey, consultations and whatever else comes our way during our (hopefully little) vacation away from our fertility clinic.

If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere. ~ Frank A. Clark