The Aftermath

When my first IUI failed I fell apart.  I had been keeping the hope this entire time that we just needed a little nudge, that this would be our answer.  But it wasn’t.  And the disappointment from that literally broke me down.  It did not help that the fertility doctor that we were seeing was playing around with new drugs and not getting the results from those drugs that he wanted to see.  When I questioned him on it he would get defensive or cut me off or flat out not give me an answer.  During the second IUI the nurse and the doctor started to discuss the position of my uterus.  They were using terms like “Retroverted Uterus” and they needed to use the ultrasound to inject the IUI.  When I questioned them about it I received no response.

They would not keep me informed about my own body.  He would also get annoyed when I wouldn’t understand his medical jargon.  During my first visit my ovarian reserve numbers were low which no one mentioned until a few visits after my blood draw.  When I asked what that would mean for me, he just repeated the medical definition for it.  There was not one time that I left his office that I didn’t have to get on WebMD and try to find out what the heck was happening.  My distrust in my doctor was one of the reasons why I hinted in my last post that I had doubts of trying a second IUI.

The day that Aunt Flo appeared after that second IUI was a rough day.  My Grandpa had just died that morning.  I spent 4 hours at my Grandma’s, comforting her and my Dad-helping them make phone calls, etc.  I met my husband for lunch when I finally left my Grandma’s house around noon.  Before we left the restaurant I used the restroom and found out I was not pregnant…again.  The feeling I had this time though was not sadness but extreme hot anger.  I walked back to our booth-steaming.  My husband asked if I was ok.  I told him no and promptly stormed out of the restaurant.  I was so angry.  I should have been focusing on the grief I was feeling for losing a man who had been such a huge part of my life.  And it was trumped by my grief for a pregnancy that I may never have.  And it made me angry.  And I was done.  And my husband was done (probably with dealing with my hormonal self).

I called the fertility clinic that week and told them that I would not be returning.  I thought I would feel better once I did that but I didn’t.  It was a terribly hard thing to do.  It almost felt like admitting defeat.  Maybe it meant that I didn’t want this enough.  Sometimes I worry about that.  If I wanted this enough it would happen.  I wouldn’t let something small knock me down.  I would find a way to afford IVF.  I would try natural therapies.  In fact it was this thought that led me into the natural section at a local market here and buy progesterone cream and red raspberry leaf tea.  It was this thought that still had me hooked to my fertility app on my phone.

I never ended up opening the progesterone cream or the tea.  I have to command myself not to track my temperatures.  And definitely not to google or look in my big scary book about “Taking Control of my Fertility”.  This cannot be the main focus of my life.  And I really am trying to move on.  In fact when I found out last week that I was again not pregnant I did not fall apart.  I did not cry or get angry.  I just thought “well at least it was on time”.

But I am still angry and at times I feel what I guess would be-grief.  There are fleeting moments when the thought of “what if I can’t have a child” looms in the back of my head.  It sits there like a dark cloud. The sadness is so profound that I can hardly breathe.  Can someone grieve over the loss of an idea of how their life should be?  That seems to be the only way I can describe this feeling.

Somedays I’m so bitter that I can’t speak to pregnant people.  My sister who is about ready to pop will go on and on about preparing for the new baby.  She’s understandably excited and I am excited for her.  But there are days where I want to scream “I don’t want to talk about your happiness right now!”  I feel like this is probably a normal thought.  But I don’t want to turn in to the type of person that other people feel like they can’t share their happy moments with.  I just try to swallow it down.

And then there are days where I don’t think about it at all.  And those are good days.  I’m hoping with time I can feel more at peace with the whole situation.  Most of all, I don’t want to give up hope.  I want to get back to feeling optimistic about my situation.  It will get there.  Just one day at a time.

Is it Time to Call it Quits?

The last time I wrote, I was lamenting about the side effects of Clomid.  Much has happened since that post was written.  I will give you the condensed version of events that have occurred.  In early November, we met with a fertility doctor who gave us great hope that IUI (intrauterine insemination) would be our solution.  In December, we again tried Clomid and no IUI to start.  Doctor moved me to Femara due to a short luteal phase.  We did our first IUI in January to start the new year out with a bang!

Funny side story here.  For anyone who is on a similar journey to myself you know that with an IUI comes an HCG trigger shot 36 hours before the procedure.  We go in to see the doctor in January and he tells me I am right on time for ovulation.  When we saw the nurse on the way out, I still thought in my pretty little head that they would do the shot for me.  The first thing out of the nurse’s mouth is “have you ever given yourself a shot before?”.  “No…”, I answered tentatively, still not sure what she is getting at.  “Oh it’s easy, I will give you a brief tutorial”.  “Are you really sure you trust me to do that?” I demanded of her.  Listen, I know what you are thinking, but my Mom did not even trust me with sharp knives until I was 19.  I’m accident prone!  I can somehow sabotage the easiest thing.  The first time my Mom trusted me to light a match: I lit the match on fire but the head broke off and flung right into the crease of her pant leg.  See?  A walking disaster.

The nurse showed me what to do, how to get rid of the air bubble and where to insert the needle.  But that night I was still really nervous.  My Mom has diabetes and has to give herself a shot everyday, so I called her first for help.  She had plans that night.  Then I called my mother-in-law, who has MS.  She said she would come over and help.  But it turns out my father in law was always the one to give her the shot because she could never do it.  So here we all were standing in my kitchen: my husband, my mother-in-law, and father-in-law crowding all around me staring at my bare stomach and watching me with anticipation.  It was an odd first self shot experience.

Anyways, the first IUI failed.  I was a hot mess about it.  Even up to the day of the second IUI I had doubts of doing a second round.  But I went through with it.  But I was so heartbroken that this time I didn’t track my temps, take any ovulation tests, and pretty much didn’t let my husband touch me all month.  Doesn’t sound like a great set up of a second try does it?  So when I found out on Thursday that our second IUI failed my husband and I both said no more.  I feel so relieved and yet so guilt ridden.  I think I have experienced every emotion possible in the last few days.

My mind keeps going back this week to the conversation that I had with my husband in May, when this all first came to light.  What we would do, how far we would go, when we would just have to stop and walk away.  I never thought, during any point in that conversation, that we would actually reach the point of having to stop trying and pick up the pieces of our lives and move on.  And here we are, at the point where we agreed to do just that.  And I realized that I am torn.  I do want to walk away and piece my life back together.  I want to move on from this constant month to month heartbreak of numerous ultrasounds, blood draws, pumping myself full of hormones just to see a negative pregnancy test at the end. The other part of me says to not give up so easily.  But I think a break is definitely what we need at the moment.

I’m Sorry for What I Said When I Was on Clomid

Credit: http://www.someecards.com

To catch you up to speed in my last post I talked about my struggles with infertility-but I really didn’t get in to the nitty gritty details of my story.  I mentioned that my husband and I started trying to have a baby last December.  It was fun, it was stress free.  January, February, March passed.  No positive tests.  It was a little less fun, still stress free.  It doesn’t happen right away for everyone.  I went to my annual exam at the end of April.  The nurse practitioner said everything looked fine.  I quizzed her about why I only had three cycles in 2014 and why cystic acne had completely taken over my body when I quit the pill last year.  “Nothing to be worried about”, she replied.  “It takes a while for your body to adjust back from the pill”.  After a year and a half?  Hey, what do I know.

I get a call three days later from the nurse at my doctor’s office.  It’s 1 PM and she wants me to get to the closest lab to get some testing done.  “Everything closes by 4” I said to her.  She knows this, she says it’s urgent they need the blood work today.  She finds me the closest lab in the downtown area.  I’m shaking the whole way.  I don’t entirely get what’s happening but it doesn’t sound great.  Didn’t the Nurse Practioner just say three days ago that everything looked fine?  The next day, the nurse from the doctor’s office calls me again with the results.  My progesterone levels are pretty much non-existent, therefore I am not ovulating.  She told me that the doctor wanted to prescribe me a fertility drug called Clomid.  She told me to take a little time to think about it and call the office back when I was ready to move forward. So much for fun and stress free.

I still remember the conversation I had with the nurse when I called her back to tell her that we wanted to move forward.

Nurse: Great!  I will let Dr. P know to send the prescription to your local pharmacy.  You know…I used Clomid to conceive all three of my children.

Me: So it is pretty successful then?

Nurse: Typically yes.  However, I feel like I should tell you about the side effects that I got.  Have you ever heard of ovulation pains?

Me: Yeah.  But I’ve never had them.

Nurse: Same here but you may!  Oh and the hot flashes were bad.  But everyone has different experiences with it.  Just thought I should warn you.

I took my first round of Clomid on days 3-7 of my cycle.  I remember idiotically thinking “Huh maybe I won’t get any side effects”, until about Day 15 when my ovaries literally felt like they were exploding.  I also thought I was pregnant that first month because I had some pretty intense nausea.  I could hardly even look at food. On the 4th cycle my OBGYN thought it was necessary to double the dosage as a last ditch effort.  Hot flash city.  I suddenly felt terrible for ever making fun of my Mom during Menopause.  It was just hot, it was fire ants crawling up your neck hot.  I would get so hot at work that I thought I was going to be sick. My coworkers probably thought I was nuts when I would start stripping off sweat soaked layers.

The worst part was my mood.  I was so up and down and easy to anger.  One time a customer at work yelled at me and I cried in our bathroom for 15 minutes.  I had massive sobbing fests.  My husband literally thought I was possessed. When I would get angry, I would literally throw a temper tantrum.  I would scream and punch pillows like a two year old.  I felt out of control. It hurt our marriage.  I even saw a therapist a few times.  The therapist gently suggested that we stop trying altogether.  “Your marriage is suffering” she told me.  “I think it’s time you guys took a break”.

This leads me back to the title of this blog post.  I saw this on the internet during a low time after I discovered last month that I was yet again not pregnant.  Just the fact that this existed out there made me feel 100 times better knowing that what I was going through was normal.  That there are other people out there that understand.  We start another round of Clomid again next in a few weeks after a few months off from my 4 round stint.  Wish me luck that the Clomid rage doesn’t strike again and if it does please disregard the crazy lady.

Oh Baby…Or Not…

It’s been months since I wrote something in this blog or really just in general other than a work email.  I started my blog as a creative outlet last year.  I had just graduated with my Master’s degree and I actually missed writing papers for class.  I also had a job where I was not being challenged, so I needed something to keep me occupied.  Of course, if anyone has read my handful of entries they would know that soon after I started writing that I accepted a new job.  Although it is still not the job I necessarily hope to stay at forever, it is definitely more of a challenge.  I’m an introvert by nature and the new position deals a lot with the outside public-either in person, on the phone, or by email.  This has left me exhausted and desperate for quiet time when I do eventually arrive home at around 6 PM.  It has been the same routine for a year now.  Arrive home at 6, make dinner, walk the dogs, arrive back home around 8-8:30.  By this time I am ready to start unwinding and preparing for the next day.  To make a long story short, I have been neglecting my creative outlet.

However, on top of my new job I have also been battling another issue that has taken over my mood, my relationships, pretty much everything.  So, I decided that I needed to return to writing to get my life back on the right track.  2015 has been a year of curveballs-and I’m not doing a very good job at dodging them.  In fact, I’ve been letting them hit me right in the gut.  I have started this blog post multiple times in the past 11 months.  Trying to figure out how to put my feelings in to words.  But every time I tried it just did not come out in a cohesive way-so I deleted the post altogether.  I will try again today.

Doctor’s have determined that I am infertile. Nothing, and I mean nothing, makes your biological clock tick louder than knowing at 28 that you may not make a baby naturally.  And I still do not know why.  I have also learned many things in the past 6-7 months.

1. Good god the reproductive system is so much more complicated than I thought.  Right after I got the test results back showing that I was not ovulating I was recommended a book called “Taking Control of Your Fertility”.  I stood in front of the fertility self help section at Barnes and Noble and guffawed at the amount books and theories and methods of getting pregnant.  Not only on how to get pregnant but WHY you are infertile.  Endometriosis, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, etc.  I started hyperventilating in the aisle.  The book that was recommended to me was thicker than the bible.  It was insane; it was information overload.  Plus when I opened the book and tried to read it I was just overwhelmed by the process of getting pregnant.  The book has been collecting dust on my night stand since that first week I have bought it.
2. People say the dumbest things when you confess to them that you are having trouble getting pregnant.  I have heard responses such as “well I guess I was just super fertile with all my kids so I never had that issue”.  Awesome for you.  Or when we told my in-laws, my father-in-law replied “when I just touched your mother she got pregnant”.  Which is actually better than my Dad’s reaction; which was to say nothing at all and pretend like he had never heard me. My own Mother cried.  She was super supportive.  But then after the first round of fertility drugs failed and I expressed my disappointment to her she said “You know what?  People try for years to get pregnant and can’t so you are really lucky”.  I stopped expressing my frustrations after that.  My own personal favorite response though is “You just need to relax.  You are stressing yourself out.  That’s definitely why you aren’t pregnant yet”.  I fully realize that all of these people are coming from a place of love and concern for my well being, but COME ON!
3. How even more clueless my husband is than me about the reproductive process.  On my first round of fertility drugs I did ovulate.  Which I was happy about and relayed to him.  Two weeks later, after I had started my period, his family turns to me at dinner and says “We heard you are ovulating now, do you need to leave to…you know?”.  Palm to face.  I did not have the heart that night to tell them-the time had passed and failed.  This led to a long talk about ovulation and the course of a woman’s cycle with my dear sweet husband.  Since he has asked me about it a few more times I know it did not fully sink in.
4. Lastly, how incredibly guilty you feel when you find out that you are the one who may not be able to have children.  This feels terrible to admit but I felt better about it when I wasn’t sure whose fault it was.  Seth got tested early on.  Apparently his swimmers are “awesome” according to my OBGYN.  I remember feeling like I got punched in the stomach when they told me that.  I remember letting out a loud “HUH” when the nurse laughingly told me that my husband had super sperm.  Of course I didn’t want anything to be wrong with him.  But it was the realization that this was fully me that sucked all the air out that day.

So there it is, out on the table.  I have been slowly starting to tell more and more people about our fertility struggles.  It’s not something to be ashamed of, some secret we have to keep tucked away.  So I realized after almost a year of keeping this all to myself that there was really no reason to do that.  It certainly didn’t make me feel any better to keep everything bottled up.  However, telling people has also really not helped me to feel any better about the situation.  I think this is just one of those things that sucks while you are going through it.