New Regimen = New positive outcome (hopefully)

It’s difficult to not let infertility consume you when you feel like you are swimming in a sea of ultrasounds, blood work, pills and needles. How do you remain a woman, a wife, a daughter, and a friend without being the woman with infertility, the infertile wife, the daughter who hasn’t been able to produce a grandchild or the friend whose shoes you do not want to wear? To rise above the labels that infertility gives us and conquer the fears, heartache, and pain is not the ultimate goal in the struggle but it is the battle within the war. This is where I am finding myself on a daily basis – struggling to stay just “Me”.

Today is day 1 of my brand new cycle. I am almost completely finished mourning the last one – it’s amusing how much hope and emotional attachment you can project on a cycle as if the child was already there. Maybe the problem isn’t that I do this to myself each and every month but that I haven’t quite learned what is left to learn or for that matter what the lesson even is. I have faith and hope in God and that he has a plan and the past two years of trying were not in vain, but a part of the journey that will lead us to our baby and make us better parents at that.

I spoke to Dr. T by phone earlier this morning. My appointment with Dr. McNichol is on Monday but I feel better under the care of Dr. T, so I wanted to make sure that Tom and I are on the right track before Monday’s appointment. Dr. T went over my cycles with me and said that it might be time to stop doing IUI’s and begin saving for IVF. At this point I just do not feel comfortable with stopping treatment to save for a bigger treatment… although I unfortunately see that this might very well be in our future to do. He advised with four failed IUI’s under my belt the likely hood of an all injectable cycle making that much of a difference is slim but worth a shot. The injectables should help with my lining, which is a plus. I also asked him about a laparoscopy which he advised that although it might be covered by insurance it really would not benefit Tom or myself in our path to parenthood. I show no signs of endo, my tubes are clear, and my biopsy came back normal. He said that if I do have endo it would be so minimal and since there is not obstructions that it really wouldn’t be what he suggests to do because the scarring from any removal of endo could be worse then the endo itself. I am still on the fence about this, but am comfortable moving on with one to two injectable + IUI cycles first before doing a laparoscopy and then pursuing IVF.

So my plan this cycle is to do more low impact exercise on a regular basis, begin our first ever injectable + IUI cycle, keep praying and hoping for a different outcome and when life starts feeling gloomy I will continue distracting myself with two things (other then my hubby) yummy Peach Mango Passion sherbet from Publix and the Outlander book series (I highly recommend both).

Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe. ~ Gail Devers

Same Old Same Old...

In two days I will be able to test yet again to see if this my sixth medicated, fourth IUI cycle has worked. I hate to say it but I am just so pessimistic about it - since it hasn't worked before, and this time I had only made one follicle, and my lining was just a little over 7mm I just cannot fathom that this cycle has worked. Unfortunately every medicated cycle I get the blues the few days before I am able to test.

Our next step (once this cycle is a confirmed bust), will be a laparoscopy to rule out endometriosis (which I have begged and begged my doctor to do just for peace of mind since he is convinced that there is no possible way that I have endo) followed by two more IUI's before we consider financing an IVF. It is so scary to think how far we have been with nothing to show for it and now how close we are to beginning the next stage in treatments and at the same time IVF is the end of the line for us, if it doesn't work I am not sure how we will handle not having our own biological children and me not ever being able to experience pregnancy. I try not to think of this, and still like to imagine being pregnant, feeling the movement of OUR child stirring inside of me, and dreaming of what characteristics of each other will be passed down to our baby - this is what gets me through the day - HOPE...

There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality ~Jonas Salk

Busy Bee

I have been trying to keep busy this cycle off while waiting for the cyst to go away, during my time away from blogging...

Tom and I went away for a long weekend to Palm Coast for our 3rd year anniversary. It was fantastic and definitely nice to get away from everything at home and focus on each other without the stress of everyday life. I am not saying that we needed to reconnect but it was absolutely incredible to focus on our love for each other, rather then constantly thinking of our next step with infertility.

However our mind couldn't slip away that long from our journey with infertility. We attended an IVF seminar that our RE's office has each month. We learned quite a bit and overall we were both excepting of this as being a possible next step as well as having a bit of anxiety about it all. If we had IVF coverage with our insurance I know that it would be a much easier step for us to take, however the financial burden is very scary.

Besides his medical office our RE also has a charity organization that gives away 3 IVF cycles a year. We submitted our application yesterday (it was due today). It took me two weeks to get all of the necessary information together and it was definitely the hardest letter that I had ever and will possible ever write. I wanted it to be perfect and in a lot of ways I feel like I was trying to put all of the effort and emotion of the last two years into a letter (without writing a novel). I didn’t expect for it to take an emotional toll on me as it did, but let’s face it - this one letter/application can be life changing. I am still not sure that I conveyed our message and desire to have a child as much as I wanted to in the letter. We will be anxiously waiting until the fall to find out if we have been chosen.

Currently we are waiting for AF to arrive so that we can begin our next cycle, and hopefully not need the grant after all!

Submitting yourself to positive distraction is like a nap for your soul ~Unknown