Imagined Pregnancy Symptoms

Damn this Countdown to Pregnancy site! It’s the cruelest thing ever. As it I wasn’t crazy enough already.

I have to remind myself that I’m not pregnant. I’m not.

However, I keep mistaking my impending AF cramps as a pregnancy sign. My lovable cat sitting on my lap has turned into cats-sensing-pregnancy-hormones phenomenon. I keep groping my breasts to see if they are tender. I take my pre-natals on an empty stomach and convince myself that I’m having morning sickness.

What is wrong with me?

I’m terrified to take a shower because I don’t know hot is TOO HOT. I refuse anything with shrimp or HFCS in it to avoid mercury.

I can’t stop clenching my teeth.

I had a dentist appointment on Thursday, and refused the x-ray in case I might be pregnant, and they told me they couldn’t even do a cleaning during the first trimester without a dr’s note! What??? I had my teeth cleaned in October when I was still in the first trimester. I don’t know what gives. New policy?

Oh dear God. Could a tooth cleaning have caused my NTD?

Stop it. No. Plenty of pregnant women have their teeth cleaned and everything is ok. It was just a fluke.

Fluke has become one of my dirty words lately.

I cannot get enough of San Pelligino’s Limonata. Yum. I’m thinking about buying it in bulk from Amazon since I drink it faster than I go to the grocery store.

Maybe I drink/eat too much lemon juice and that changes my pH balance and makes my cervical mucus hostile?

What is wrong with me?

If I could just pee on a stick, get my negative test, and move on, that would be one thing. But you don’t believe it until you actually get AF. Even then, I still don’t believe it. Last month, the cycle was so light that I continued to look up “pregnant while taking clomid” up to my ovulation on CD 15. Even then, I still thought about asking my RE if my cervix was closed, but thought the better of making myself look like an idiot and kept quiet.

I’m scheduled to start AF on Wednesday. I think I can make it to Thursday without testing. Even if I get a positive, it’s not like I’m going to be able to relax!

*MY* Ten Words

I tried to make my ten words different from the original, so here’s my half-hearted attempt.

1. Empty – There are times when I feel like my life is empty, that it’s meaningless. My job doesn’t matter (why am I raising other people’s kids?). My house doesn’t matter (why do I have those three extra bedrooms upstairs?).
2. Worthless – I am inherently not female. I can’t do the one thing that other women can. I can’t give my parents or in-laws a grandchild. I can’t give my husband a child.
3. Failure – I can’t do it.
4. Guilty – If DH had married someone else, he might have a child right now. I am costing us thousands of dollars that could be spent on a vacation back to Scotland so he can see his friends. I am causing all this stress and anxiety in our lives.
5. Bipolar – One minute, you are excited and happy – you just KNOW you are pregnant, and one pee stick later, you will never, ever, ever have a child. There is no happy medium, no cautiously optimistic in my world.
6. Helpless – I have no control over this situation, so I control what I can. My pills. My diet. What I do. How I spend my time. Who I talk with.
7. Exposed – Everyone knows everything. I’m not just talking about the doctor, I’m also talking about my friends and outsiders. Every time they ask how things are going, they know. It’s not just another month – it’s another BFN.
8. Violated – I have had so many instruments, doctors, nurses, and medical students examining me that my body doesn’t feel sacred anymore. It’s not something that I can share with just my husband. I know that no one is getting sexual gratification off of me, but I don’t feel like my body is sexy anymore. I feel like it’s a medical experiment.
9. Jealous
   I am jealous of everyone. I am jealous of pregnant women, mothers, and even people doing IVF. I get jealous of people with better sperm counts, and people who have not been TTC for as long as I have. I get jealous when people just TALK about having a baby (I start to think of all the ways that I am worthier of parenthood). I get jealous of the people who DON’T want to have kids, those who don’t have this emotional roller coaster every month and who can just let go. I get jealous of every single positive person I know – ok, maybe jealous isn’t the right word – how about irritated?
10. Angry

 

You Know You Are Infertile When…

I smiled when I saw this on one of my TTC boards this morning.

So, it got me thinking about all the crazy things we do when we are diagnosed with infertility.

Feel free to add your own in the comments and I’ll edit this post add them in. 🙂

 

 

1. You have your RE’s personal cell phone number programmed on your phone.
2. You start to recognize other couples at the andrology lab.
3. You think 8 million sperm is a depressingly low number.
4. You know more about statistics than a professional bookie.
5. You sit and watch the pee line creep up the pregnancy test, waiting to see the second line.
6. You come back ten minutes AFTER you confirmed a BFN just to make sure it’s still negative.
7. You know more about ovulation and reproduction than a high school biology teacher.
8. Everything becomes a pregnancy symptom.
9. You forbid yourself from Google during your TWW.
10. You’ve seen pictures of cervical mucus.
11. You’ve skipped a party or event because you have a prior engagement in the bedroom.
12. You know from which ovary you are ovulating from each month.
13. You have no problem giving yourself a trigger shot.
14. You’re on your period, yet you take x-rays at the dentist with two lead vests around your ovaries – just in case.
15. You’ve seriously considered (or are already) using egg whites as lubricant*.
16. You’ve tried at least two “quack” sciences trying to get pregnant.
17. You wake up hoping to have symptoms of morning sickness.
18. Friends and co-workers stop asking you how the baby making is going.
19. You have emergency sub plans for your class just in case you have to make an emergency visit to the RE.
20. Your husbands complains about having too much sex.
21. You’ve had more than five people in the OB’s office with your legs in the stirrups.
22. You’ve fallen asleep with your butt propped up on a pillow after you’ve had sex.
23. You’ve been able to use the “I might be pregnant excuse” to get out of cleaning the cat’s litter box for the past four years.
24. The Big O doesn’t mean the same thing as Orgasm anymore.
25. You have pre-planned pregnancy announcements and photos.

Two Week Wait, Dreams, and OPP*

*OPP = other people’s pregnancies

Yeah. I’m there again. Trying not to obsess about it much, but I think my teeth grinding indicates otherwise.

We didn’t go crazy last week – no temping, no testing – just sex, and lots of it. Charting my temp always gets me too worked up – I start waking up earlier and earlier every morning because I get so excited about it. I don’t mind waking up, but how can the temps be accurate if I’m psyching myself out the entire time? No, no temping for me.

I’m trying to stay away from the TTC boards right now, because they get me convinced that I’m pregnant. I did a few pregnancy tests because everyone else was, but I on;y had the cheap-o tests that don’t detect as early as theirs, and even then, I tested WAAAAY too early. I don’t think I have any tests left, so that’s a good thing – I’m not going to allow myself to buy anymore. However, I did break down and buy some from Amazon, and these are supposedly what the medical field uses. The pictures on Amazon show what a positive test at 9 dpo looks like, so if I had them now, I could find out early. Maybe.

I have been having a few drinks, because there is that part of me that is a little negative and doesn’t think that I can conceive naturally, but we’ll find out. I’m planning on going out Thursday night to an 80’s sing along, and that’s the day my AF is supposed to come, so if it’s not here my Thursday, I’ll test just to make sure that I can have as many drinks as I want.

I’ve decided that I like the idea of the BFN purchase, but I don’t really need it to be a BIG purchase. We’re already making a few big purchases this month (landscaping and a loveseat, supposedly), but I would like to have a nice meal out with the DH. Something nice. Maybe something downtown. I don’t know. I have a few days to think about it.

I had a dream the other day that I had a baby boy and he was flying around like a cherub with my co-worker’s baby (who was also a cherub). Then things got weird. They were both dictators, and they were fighting each other. It wasn’t a scary dream, just a weird dream.

Then last night I had a dream that I was buying dice for my friends S and T – the ones who are due with a little girl in June. In my dream, I was buying handmade malachite dice for S, and I was buying “peacock” dice for T. Two horses showed up in the dream, and one followed me around nuzzling me.

I think the horses were in the dream because I was have been od’ing on Game of Thrones recently.

But the dream got me thinking about S and T’s baby girl – I don’t want to always look at her and be sad because I’m thinking of MY loss. So I think I’m going to treat her as a god child, and remember my daughter through her. Is that weird? Is that normal? Or is that sick way of dealing with grief?

How to Still Love Each Other

No matter how many times you *think* you are communicating with your spouse, I guarantee he is not hearing what you are hearing. At least he is not comprehending it the way that you intended for it to be comprehended.

Take last night. My husband and I were sitting on the sofa, no computer, no distractions, and we were just talking. Conversation veered to the RE appointment (this AM), and that was the end of the good night.

He thought he had made it clear to me that he did NOT want to continue IUI’s, that he wanted to take a break for awhile.

I thought I had made it clear that I wanted to start up IUI’s right away, before my mild endometriosis returns and before my eggs and hormones get older.

It turned into a nightmare. He (never told me) that he hates the IUI and feels they are embarrassing and for some reason, he thinks that we can get pregnant on our own. (Yeah, I snarked out a few choice comments to THAT, alright).

He says I’m just baby crazy and that my quest for a child is changing our relationship. I agree with some aspects, but anytime I try to talk, I know that it’s going to turn into a blame game. I don’t WANT it turn into a blame game, but it will. And getting him to talk is like trying to leash train a cat. It’s a slow, painful process for all involved.

If he would just be willing to BD when we’d need to, I’d be ok. But that doesn’t just mean BD on ONE day during that week. I know he wants sex to be a spontaneous event, but that doesn’t work when TTC.

Honestly, I thought the IUI’s were better for our relationship because it took the pressure OFF of him.He just had to “perform” one day on command, and then he could go back to the way he ran things.

It’s so hard to love yourself, let alone your husband when TTC.

I’ve been trying to do more Dating Diva activities with him, and they sometimes work.

I think I’m going to do this Chocolate Tasting for him tomorrow night. A past one that we did was the book store date/scavenger hunt – he had fun, but I think it went on too long for him. I just need to find things for him that don’t require him to leave the house. He’s a bit of a home body, especially on a week night.

No Such Thing as “Cautiously Optimistic”

In the land of Infertility, there is no such thing as being cautiously optimistic. I remember one day, when I crying about how I would never get pregnant, a friend gently scolded me for being too pessimistic.

Pessimism is a defensive mechanism. It’s easier to expect the worst and hope to be wrong rather than be optimistic about a BFB, only to have your world come crashing down around you when AF starts (because no optimistic person actually believes that negative pregnancy test). There where times when I was sure that my AF was just implantation spotting. I could earn award for my delusions.

There is no “wait and see” attitude when infertiles TTC. The TTW (two-week wait) is the worst emotional roller coaster you can possibly be on, because honestly, it doesn’t seem that bad. You think that it won’t last that long, and the first few AF’s you get, you are saddened, but still positive that you’ll “get this” next month. You resign yourself to the fact that you won’t have a Leo for a child, but you might possibly get a Virgo – so you start researching while waiting to try again.

You don’t even realize you are on a roller coaster until you are at the top of that first peak about to have what THINK is a little dip when you realize that you have been doing this for 13 months. And THAT’S when the CRASH hits. There is no more cautiously optimistic after that.

I’m still cautiously optimistic about other things in life, just not my fertility or ability to create a healthy child.

Back to Normal?

If there is one thing that my body can do well, it’s have a period. Exactly 28 days (maybe 29), my cycle started as if I had never even been pregnant.  I was dreading this – I expected that it would be the physical reminder of the finality of my pregnancy, but it wasn’t that bad. I don’t even remember crying. I think that I already experienced that finality when the procedure happened. Even though I was under twilight sedation, I distinctly remember it: It was near the end, and while I did not feel any pain, I did feel a wetness. I knew at that moment it was over.

So it wasn’t that big a deal that my period came back. The big deal was today – I ovulated.

I should be happy that my body is back on track, right? I should be elated that I’m stop step closer to my rainbow.

And that’s what scares me. I’m terrified to get pregnant again. I’m no longer that naive girl who thought that the biggest problem that I’d face would be getting pregnant. The next time (if there is one!), I’ll be a hot mess. Each ultrasound will put me in a panic. Blood tests, which once were just an inconvenience, will send me into hysterics. I hope that once I get past the 20 week ultrasound, I’ll be more at ease and relaxed, but I’m not sure how I’ll feel.

I took measurements last night for a new costume. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m older now or because of the pregnancy, but my waist has increased 3 inches. It’s one thing to get bigger and have a baby in arms afterwards, but this… this is salt in the wound.

The reason I’m so scared to try again is because I’m scared that somehow, I’ll screw it up again, either by not getting pregnant, or worse.

My First RE

For the uninitiated, RE means reproductive endocrinologist.

Before we even contacted a specialist, we knew that we had low-normal sperm count from my husband (a bad case of the mumps a few yeas ago). Everything was fine with me – I ovulated perfectly fine. My fallopian tubes were clear. My hormone levels were fine. We were given the diagnosis of unexplained infertility.

I first contacted in March of 2011 to what our options were. This was the only time I ever talked with or saw the doctor. We were told by the nurse that everything was good to go, and that all I needed to do was call the clinic at the start of my period when I ready to start treatment. In October, we were ready to get a little more aggressive, so I called the clinic. That’s when I learned the nurse gave me the wrong information.

I had to wait another month to start treatment.

So, in November I started Clomid – 100 mg. From what I have read, there was no reason for me to be on that high a dosage since I produced eggs just fine. with this dose, I produced five eggs.

This clinic was very much like an assembly line – I was not an individual. Hell, I wasn’t even a patient with a name. I was a paycheck.

After we determined I had five eggs, I was given a trigger shot of Ovidrel to make me ovulate. I don’t have a problem ovulating, but they wanted to make sure I ovulated at a certain date to make it convenient for the clinic.

I went in for my first IUI on Thursday. No big deal. The catheter wasn’t painful and I only took half a day off work. The doctor wasn’t there – I think it may been a nurse who did the procedure.

Friday was traumatic. My appointment was at 10, but I had to wait an hour. When I finally had the IUI performed, I was told that my husband’s sperm counts were so low that this IUI probably wouldn’t work and we should look into IVF. I was sick to my stomach.

After the procedure, I was left alone to stay on my back for 15 minutes. When the timer went off, I was allowed to get up. I dried my tears, and opened the door, and the nurses stared at me.

Nurse 1: What are you still doing here?

Nurse 2: Did you get sick?

Me: Uh… What? My timer just off. I just had my IUI 15 minutes ago.

N1: Ohhh! You poor thing! Let me open the door for you!

The nurse then proceeded to UNLOCK the door so that I could leave the office. They had forgotten about me and locked me in the office while they were going out to lunch. No one else was in the office. If shudder to think what would have happened had I waited a few minutes more to leave.

That was the last time I visited that “clinic.” I am now with a RE who is professional, capable, and compassionate.

I did not get pregnant with that clinic, but I’m glad that they don’t get to mark me down as a success in their book.