Pinterest

Nothing ruins a good infertility pinner on Pinterest more than a pregnancy.

I feel like there needs to be a warning label.  Instead,  I suddenly get pins about maternity clothes, breastfeeding,  and prenatal exercises. It’s like she pinned every single possible pregnancy related pin in one day. And it’s not like she has one pregnancy board that I can unfollow. No,  she’s organized. As soon as I unfollow one board,  three more pop up. Nurseries! Baby carriers! Maternity pics! Pregnancy announcements! Birth announcements. It just kept coming.

So I unfollowed her.

I feel a little bad,  but she shifted focus. Her audience was infertiles, and now it’s not.

My plan was that if I were to ever get pregnant, I’d start a new blog focusing on pregnancy after infertility, grief,  and loss. New focus = new audience = new blog.

What about you? Would you keep your old blog or start afresh of you finally got that elusive sticky BFP? Or am I just too sensitive?

My Friends

I have the best friends.

Ever.

I have always known this, because I don’t befriend superficial assholes. But this whole process has reminded me of just how incredible they are, in many ways that I just take for granted.

1. The ones who know what I went through have not made any disparaging comments. Granted, most of my friends are rather liberal, but I think even my conservative friends would support me. I just didn’t tell them all the details because I didn’t want to say anything that would offend their beliefs or cause them any conflict, especially my Catholic friends. If anyone did disagree with me, no one said anything to me about it, or treated me differently.

2. No one has ever made me feel bad for skipping a baby shower. Ever.

3. I don’t have any pregnant friends who call tell me that they are pregnant. I don’t have people sending me ultrasound pictures. I don’t have people who pretend that this never happened to me.

4. I have friends who honor my pregnancy. They don’t treat it as a fantasy, and they remember how much I relished my time being pregnant. Those who know my daughter’s name use it. They urge me to honor and remember my daughter.

When I read the stories that other people went through, my heart breaks. Veritable horror stories. Cruelty. And I sit and read slack jawed because I just assume that everyone has friends like mine.

It has become painfully aware that that is not true.

One of my friends, S. went through TFMR and lost what she considered to be a close friend. I think it had to do with the fact that the friend got pregnant and felt that S wasn’t as supportive as she should have been.

Ouch.

Supporting others? Somedays, I can barely support myself. Even when I was pregnant, I never expected anyone to be as happy as I was. I never expected anyone to “support” me. Maybe she thought that T should have thrown her a baby shower? I’ve read about some women who have thrown baby showers after their termination – WHAT THE HELL? Seriously? How cruel? I know people will blame ignorance or other reasons why this would happen, but I have to be honest – I don’t think I would want anyone who acted like that to remain a friend.

If you have lost friends (or even had a friendship tainted) because of a loss or termination, I am sorry. That’s a needless additional loss.

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?

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.