The bottom line

In the USA we have this belief that you can achieve anything if you try hard enough. I was raised with the belief that, if you properly applied yourself, your smarts could get you what you wanted in life. In Western medicine there is a prevailing additude that a patient should pursue every avenue, regardless of the cost. Whether that cost is in money, overall health or quality of life. 

We are, at times, a truly stupid, short-sighted culture. Sadly, more often than not.

So much of my life has been about unlearning these beliefs. It has been the hardest unlesson ever. This time it is in the subject of infertility. Monkey and I have decided not to do the last two medicated cycles. We have decided to stop trying to get pregnant. We are "giving up" our babyquest.

I tried as hard as I could for six years. I applied every ounce of my brain power to books, studies, charts, and tracking. I tried alternative medicine...just about everything I could try. I looked to Western medicine with tests, medications and a minor procedure. Monkey and I always agreed that IVF wasn't for us. We don't think there is anything wrong about it just that it wasn't what we wanted. That said, I think if we had it offered to us for free (in money anyway) the temptation might have been too much for us to pass up. However, it is not free. Not free in money, risk to my health or my continued quality of life. 

And that was the bottom line really. I have devoted six years, nearly half the time Monkey and I have been together, to attempting to grow a fetus inside me. I'm done. I want to see what else life can be for us. We knew the success rates for unexplained infertility, with perfect cycles and obvious ovulation, and with how very long we had tried. The likelihood of those last two medicated tries resulting in a pregnancy were tiny. Not worth the mental and physical strain it would put me through. The only thing with better success, and not much better at that, was IVF. So, we quit. I quit, for my health, for my quality of life, for the chance at a different life than I imagined for us. 

Monkey thinks about private adoption. I am not thinking about anything. Adoption can be just as stressful and heart-wrenching as infertility, especially for alternative families like ours. I'm not ready to think clearly about diving into that. Right now we are rethinking possibilities for our life. We are...satisfied with our decision. Not happy about it but at peace with it, I think. Some days it still hits me like a knife in the heart. Some days I feel so light to be free from a horrible burden of constantly trying. It may always be that way. I'm okay with that.

The other things in my life.

I've been thinking....

This was never meant to be a ttc/infertility blog. I meant it to encompass all the different facets of my life. However, ttc/infertility hijacked my brain, hell, my life! I rarely blogged about anything else. Well, now that part of my life is coming to a close, most likely without me becoming a parent. I have been pondering what to do with this accidental ttc/infertility blog. 

To put it bluntly, I want to get back to writing about my commitment to living in a D/s relationship with Monkey and Author. (For those not in the know, an educational quickie! D/s is short for Dominate/submissive. This dynamic falls under the larger umbrella of BDSM practices. For a definition of that acronym, google it yourself as I haven't the time to do a Kink 101 class.) However, my blog is listed and pops up on searches for queer ttc. This means many people who may not be comfortable with overtly sexual and kinky subject matters, let alone a lifestyle 24/7 D/s relationship, may show up here. They may be surprised and disturbed by suddenly surfing to what they think is a ttc/if blog and finding themselves knee deep in the ramblings of a kinky submissive. 

On the other side of this, I am a kinky lifestyle submissive who was trying to get pregnant and deal with infertility. I don't like the idea of compartmentalizing my life into separate blogs. I've done it before and it felt very unnatural. It felt like I was hiding my submissive, kinky side. Like I should be secretive and ashamed of the way I am and the way I live. This, of course, is a load of bullshit. I am proud of who I am and the dedication I have to service. I'm not ashamed that I'm a masochistic either.

So here is my dilemma. Do I abandon this blog so that ttc/if followers and searchers don't get freaked out by the newer focus? Or do I continue my blog as it was first intended? A messy mash-up of my life as a kinky, submissive, poly, housemaker, hippyish, punkish, chronic pain suffering, infertile, depression-having, genderqueer. 

I put the question out to the interwebs. Dear readers (all 3 of you) and guests, what are your thoughts? 

Yesterday, Monkey and I talked...or I talked and he mostly listened. I told him it felt pointless to continue with donor inseminations. We've been doing this, off and on, for six years. We figured we have done at least 36+ cycles. We've tried different methods, different donors, acupuncture, herbs, Clo.mid, IUIs at home and in clinic. I've been tested up, down and sideways with nothing really wrong. If the polyps were the big problem I should have conceived by now and the polyps were definitely not there for the first couple years of ttc. I felt there was no realistic chance, after all this time, that I would get pregnant just by shoving sperm in me each month. Something is wrong in some subtle way that we can't detect. I wanted to quit the inseminations and reserve my energy for the two medically-directed cycles. Actually, I'm not sure I want to do even those but I couldn't take that small chance that forcing the system might actually work.

It was so hard to watch Monkey caught in a tug of war between his natural optimism and his logical nurse's brain. He knew I was right about our chances. He knew it was an energy drain with very little possibility of any success. He also really wants to believe that I could still get pregnant. In the end, logic and statistics won out but it hurt me to see his optimism fade. 

So, we have stopped trying until January when we will make one of our last two attempts at having a kid. This is it. We are coming to the end of our ttc-turned-infertility journey. After everything we have been through, no matter how it ends, I feel relieved.

Hoping for a bfn?

As the date of my expected period approached I had two wished. One, that it be late so I didn't need to deal with it while camping (it was) and two, that it would definitely arrive (it did). I actually was hoping to not get pregnant.

For the first time in six long years I've truly had enough. I still find myself sad when I hear that yet another one of my old group of friends has had a baby. I still mourn the loss of the experience of pregnancy and parenthood but even with all that I find myself more and more excited to start the life after infertility. A life where I can make plans without wondering if I'll have to cancel them because I'm pregnant or have an infant. A life where I can redirect all that energy back into my (ahem) adult interests. A life where I can put the sex and BDSM toys back on the freakin' walls! The different life that is waiting for me when we stop trying. I am 99.9% sure that I will never get pregnant and I'm finally okay with that. I'm ready to transfer all the energy it takes to ttc (tracking, sperm donor wrangling, inseming, testing) and move it on to other parts of my life.

So what now? Have I given up? Hell if I know. I only got back from my camping trip yesterday and CD 1 is today so I haven't really had time to talk with Monkey about my feelings. I suspect that, no, I am not giving up quite yet. Monkey isn't in the same place as me with this. I'm willing to keep going for awhile for him. At this point I'd be so shocked if we hit that 0.1% chance of pregnancy that it would likely take me a couple months to mourn the loss of the life I imagined without a kid! Ah, what a mind-fuck that would be!

MIA

So, yeah, I've been missing all summer. I've been feeling pretty ambivalent about this blog. There is so much about ttc here. Coming to this blog seems like I must post about trying to get pregnant or infertility and that feels so...burdening. I do post about other things here but, well, after 6 years of ttc dominating my life those other things are few and far between. Blogging is good for me and I want to continue doing it. I just haven't figured out if it is time to retire this blog and start a new one or continue this one with a commitment to write more about the rest of my life? This will take some thinking.

In the meantime, here are some bullet point updates.

• I'm still ttc with our latest known donor through the end of the year. We have put off our last two infertility intervention tries until at least January. I don't plan on continuing ttc after those tries. I often forget when my period is due now because I only pay attention around insem time. I've been emotionally distancing myself from the process with very little effort.
• Monkey is having a hysterectomy in November because of a hefty fibroid that has taken over his uterus. This doesn't really effect our ttc options as Monkey has never been a possibility for so very many other physical and mental health reasons. It does effect timing and this is why we are postponing the IF tries. I can't imagine trying to handle Clo.mid, IUIs and trigger shots while he is preparing, having, and recovering from surgery. Thankfully, the surgeon is confident that it will be laproscopic surgery so recovery time should be only a few weeks. 
• I've spent the summer really trying to accept and embrace a modified life due to my chronic pain conditions. It has changed the way I do things HUGELY. It is still a struggle not to just push through the pain and finish this or that task. I still hate having to pace myself so carefully. I have managed to accept that I must do this or I will end up even more physically disabled than I already am. 
• I've started baking bread weekly to supply the house rather than buying it. (We do have a back up loaf of store-bought bread this week because I've been sick.) I'm really hoping to get a winter veggie garden up and running as well. This is part of embracing homemaking as my career. I feel like there are so few role models for what I'm doing. I'm no June Cleaver and don't want to be. I'm learning to make my own ideal for being the homemaker for my household (with or without kids).

So, that is the highlights. I'll be posting here still until I decide if I need a clean slate blog or if I want to embrace my baby-crazy past and let the current blog evolve with me. 

I'm off to listen to horror fiction podcasts (or maybe some Nine Inch Nails instead) while I dye some sheets black, clean the bathroom and mop floors. (Yeah, definitely NOT June.) 

Preview of the end

Over the last few years, Monkey and I have drifted away from a specific group of friends. This included drifting away from attending any Jewish events because those friends were also part of the queer Jewish community here. We did this without talking about it or thinking about it too hard but both of us knew it was because of kids.

Monkey and I were the first in this group to start trying to get pregnant. Others started having kids either through birth or adoption. All of them had some struggle or another. One tried for 3 years and had a very tough pregnancy. Another did foster to adopt and had some very rough experiences. I just found out that another couple had a baby via IVF recently. I'm happy all of these people have now had a kid and settled into new family life. In the past five and a half years that we have been trying I've watched this group of friends go from zero kids to several. When Monkey and I started, everyone thought ours would be the first kid in the group. Now we are almost the only ones without kids. We are the only ones that wanted kids but don't have them.

I recently ran into one of this group at a store. We hadn't talked in well over a year. We chatted a bit. I could see in her eyes she wanted so badly to ask if we were still trying. That is when I realized what it would feel like socially to give up on trying. My city isn't very big, our Jewish community is small and our progressive community is downright tiny. Unless I completely stop attending Jewish events, I'm going to run into these families at some point. At some point after giving up I will have to start telling them we gave up. We, the first to start trying, were the ones left empty-handed. The thought of looking across the synagogue to all these friends with kids around them just makes something crack in my heart. It wasn't until I ran into this friend that I realized how hard the social aspect of giving up would be. It isn't just about telling them we couldn't have a kid. As nice and understanding as these people are some of them are going to say something that unintentionally cuts deep and I will have to deal with that, hopefully gracefully.

I haven't given up yet. I know that there is still a chance, small as it is, that I could get pregnant and have a child. There is a chance that Monkey and I will feel emotionally able to look into adoption if we don't have a kid. But because of how slim our chances are now, I can't help but wonder at this possible future.

Finally over

My gyn NP sent me in to get a blood test and an hour later the results were officially negative. Not even a tiny bit of HCG in me. So, this was all just a giant head-fuck courtesy of my little friend Clo.mid. Who knows what it did to mess up my cycle so much. I'm assuming it was a serious delay of ovulation but it could have also been jacking my corpus luteum up so much that it took awhile to let go. No matter the why the what is still the same: No pregnancy....again.

My cycle is so messed up I'm taking off the next cycle. I don't want to go through the stress of trying to plan timing when I really don't know what my body is doing. We have plans to do the first Clo.mid/trigger shot/IUI in Aug/Sept.

What little extra hope I had after the polyp removal is dwindling. I'm moving back to baseline, that place where I'm just going through the motions to check the final steps off my list. I'm not quite hopeless but I wouldn't say I'm all that hopeful.

Late...maybe.

I'm late...maybe. Or maybe I'm not. I have no fucking clue when I ovulated. I know I did because the progesterone test came back higher than I've ever gotten. I've tested and gotten 2 negative pregnancy tests. I have no clue what is going on. This is such a mindfuck. I just want to know, one way or the other. I hate not knowing when I thought I'd have known at least 3 days ago. I'm assuming that I'm not. That my period is just late. It happens. But I can't assume completely. I can't assume enough to have my usual bfn martini. Because I could be just too early. It happens. So which is it?

I've emailed my Gyn NP to ask her how late until I worry that something is wrong. If I hadn't been trying for 5 1/2 fucking years I think I'd have a little more patience. After this long, I think I've shown enough patience for a lifetime.

Clomid Crazy

Okay, so I exaggerate a bit. It actually hasn't been that bad. Well, I say it hasn't been that bad. My household may have a different opinion. I've asked and they say, very quickly, that it hasn't been as bad as previous Clomid cycles. I'm not sure if I believe them but, either way, I feel like I have a handle on the crazy hormone fluxes this time around.

I got my new FSH results. Four years ago, when I first got my FSH tested it was a 5. That is an excellent number for anyone at any age. Now, at 37 years old, my FSH is a 9. That is...fair. It is actually a pretty good number for some one my age. Still, my ovaries are showing my age a bit. I was ready for this result. I knew the statistics. I knew that my age, and the fact that I haven't gotten pregnant after all this time, is counting against me. Monkey, ever the optimist, had a bit of a shock. He's a medical professional so he really likes to grab on to hard results of scans and test. This is the first time we've gotten a test that clearly shows our window is closing. I've tried to tell him this. I've showed him the statistics on fertility over 35 years old but I think he always thought of me as outside of those numbers. When faced with a change from 5 to 9 in FSH over the last 4 years he was taken aback. There in the lab result was a hard fact about me, about our only available egg producer and womb. For the first time in the last 5 1/2 years of ttc it really hit him that I might not get pregnant. Suddenly my sense of urgency seemed more valid to him. Suddenly, he had the same sense of urgency. It also has added a touch of sadness to him that wasn't there before.

On one hand, I like that he is finally on the same page as me. When I say I don't want to wait too long to do the full clinic Clomid cycles he heartily agrees. He has even mentioned months a little before what I was thinking! On the other hand, it hurts to see his optimism fading. Yes, it is realistic and appropriate but I hate to see the sadness in his eyes when he thinks about never having a kid.

Well, statistics and realism aside, I'm not out yet. My FSH shows good ovarian reserve and my estrodiol was good too. My post-ovulation progesterone test is on Sunday so we will see if that is responding to the med as well. My polyps are gone and unlikely to come back rapidly. My donor was able to offer 3 donations this cycle and, even with the weirdness of Clomid, I think I got the timing right. And if it didn't happen this cycle, well we still have a few more over the summer. After that we still have our full on infertility clinic rounds. Who knows, we could get lucky finally. We both hold on to that.

On to the next

My period came a day after the bfn. Kinda late but there can be several reasonable explanations for that. I suspect it had something to do with the horrible antibiotics I've been on for the entire 2ww. I won't go into detail but they really did a number on my digestion. So, here I am at cycle day 2 with my packet of Clomid and my list of instructions for blood tests.

This feels familiar.

Even so, I'm not as down in the dumps as I thought I might be. I didn't cry when I got the bfn or my period. I was disappointed and somewhat annoyed but, in general, not crushed. I'm ready for the next one. I'm ready, more ready than I've ever been, for the Clomid Crazies. I'm ready for the series of blood draws, the OPKs, the frustratingly different fertility signs I get on Clomid and even for the possibility of bursting into tears if some one gets my coffee order wrong. I'm feeling strangely, wonderfully zen about it all. It may not stay but I'm going to enjoy the feeling while it is here.

Waiting for the end

I tested this morning and got to see yet another blank white window on the pee-stick. Another BFN. ::sigh:: I was secretly harboring some high hopes this time but I guess I was just fooling myself again.

I still haven't started bleeding so I'm waiting for that final end. I'm in limbo between a negative test and menstruation. I can't focus on the next try because everything is dependent on what day is cycle day 1. Also, even the most pessimistic ttc-er has that tiny bit of hope that maybe, just maybe, the test was wrong. Maybe the blood won't show and the next test will be positive. I can't help but wish that just a little but mostly I just want it to end so I can move forward.

The longest day of the 2ww

Today is the worst day of any 2 week wait. Today is the last day. My period is due tomorrow. I will be testing tomorrow. Today will be a long day.

I've become so much better about dealing with the ups and downs of trying to get pregnant and infertility but this last day is always hard, no matter how well I'm doing. Will I bleed? Are those menstrual cramps or pregnancy stretching cramps? Are my boobs more sore? If they are, is that a sign that I will or won't get my period. Every trip to the bathroom includes staring at the toilet paper after using it. Is that a spot of red I see or just a trick of the light? The last day of the 2ww takes so much energy.

If this cycle is a bust then I start my Clomid Challenge Test. Joy.

Is it really different?

I've been afraid to post. I'm afraid to talk about what is happening in ttc because things have been going so smoothly that it seems all too simple right now. I guess, after 5 1/2 years of fertility angst, I feel I might jinx any smooth sailing we have. If I manage to get pregnant I'm guessing I will feel this even more. But I'm trying to embrace the positive so here is what is up in our queer ttc-land.

I healed up from my polyp removal procedure very well. I had my post-op check up four weeks after the surgery and the doc cleared me to start trying again. With in a week I was hunting for a new known donor. Last week we met with a finalist on our potential donors and by the end of the meeting we were setting up the first insemination date..which happened to be less than a week later. That was this past Monday. Wednesday was the second insem. Timing was perfect and I ovulated Thursday.

Now for a bit about Mr Donor. He prefers to be pretty quiet about all this but I can say that we are only his second donor experience. The first couple he worked with was last month and they got pregnant on the first try after a long time trying with frozen. He is kind of Conservative which is a little strange but he seems to be a bit Libertarain leaning so the whole "live and let live" thing makes him okay with us being queer, poly, tattooed and pierced weirdos. His only rule is he wants to know the relationship is solid and stable. Well, Monkey and I have been together for 12+ years so we passed that requirement. :) He met Author and, after some questions about how we structure our family, he said he thought it was unique. That was it.

Every donor brings a unique and often hilarious situations. Mr Donor prefers to keep exchanges during working hours and in public places. This is so it doesn't take time away from his family. As a result, we are doing the sperm pass-off at a local mall food court. Yes, really. As long as there is less than an hour between creation and insemination, and is in a dark jar with a lid and kept warm, it is still viable. Author has decided that if I get pregnant the belly name will be "mall rat".

So I'm back in it! Next cycle I'll be doing a Clomid challenge test with lots of blood work and insems with Mr. Donor. I'm on the last leg of my ttc journey. I either get pregnant or I accept a new future without children. Now I just have to wait to find out which one it is.

Polyps-be-gone

I am in love with my nurse anesthetist. My whole surgical team was fab but he really made my experience a million times more comforting. He came in to ask me the same questions as everyone else for the millionth time. (Since I know exactly why they do that so I don't get annoyed like some patients do.) When I told him I'd rather do deep sedation than general anesthesia he asked me if there was a particular reason. When I told him about my horrible experience with general when I was 12 years old he seemed horrified. He immediately left the computer terminal he was working on and came to kneel by my bed. He told me that he could tell from my description what drug was used and they administered it way too soon. He told me he doesn't use that drug at all. He carefully described what he does now, how it will feel and that he will be able to tell if I'm in any discomfort. I felt completely reassured. I trusted him and the rest of the team to take very good care of me.

I don't remember the surgery at all, though there was a chance I might remember something. I dreamed about the BBC Sherlock series reboot while I was sedated. I don't remember what exactly I dreamed but I remember being quite entertained. I woke up kind of fuzzy headed and took awhile to really get back to reality. I was sore and a little crampy but not a lot. My cramps got worse later on in the day but I had plenty of pain med options and got it under control. All in all it was a very positive experience.

It turns out there were actually 3 polyps in there. The one we could see on the ultrasound was just the easiest to see. The second polyp was almost as big as the one we knew of but shaped and positioned in a way that would make it difficult to see any other way but with hysteroscopy. The third one was a tiny one just starting to form. He didn't even need to snip that one as it disintegrated when he started to try to remove it. After he was sure they were all removed he did a D&C to clear out the lining. He said that this should really make a difference in the changes in bleeding I've been noticing. He also said he really hopes "things work out" for me. (We couldn't actually say that the main reason for this was fertility since it wouldn't have been covered by my insurance but everyone knew that was my main reason.)

Knowing that there were 3 polyps crowding in my uterus, two of which were big enough to cause breaks in my lining, I feel pretty confident that this could be the cause of my infertility the last few years. That doesn't leave a lot of room for anything to implant comfortably. Dr. M said I could start trying again after I have one normal period.

I'm not sure what comes next. I'm not sure if we will try a medicated cycle first. All I know is that I'm more hopeful now than I've been in a very long time.

Fears and hopes

My surgery to remove the polyp in my uterus is Monday. I've had my pre-op exam and instructions have been given. It didn't seem very real until my pre-op yesterday. Now it seems to hang in front of me full of hope and fear.

Fear because I'm not accustom to medical procedures, even minor ones like this one. I'm a pretty hail and hardy person. The last time I had any kind of surgery it was to remove my tonsillitis when I was 12. Monkey has been doing his best put me at ease. He was a very sickly child and his life has been filled with surgeries and procedures of varying seriousness. (The fact that he is so healthy now is a testament to how hard people worked to get him that way when he was a child.) Compared to the things he has been through this is nothing but I'm still a little nervous. The pre-op helped to calm me. I like to know everything, all the little details, and the surgeon was happy to talk me through it all. Between Dr. M, Monkey, and Author the fear has been dimmed down to a dull anxiety which seems perfectly manageable all things considered.

I think the thing I fear the most, really, is the hope this brings. After five years of trying, and failing, to get pregnant and never knowing why that might be I finally have a possible explanation. With that explanation comes a rather easy possible fix of the problem. This may be what has been getting in the way of a pregnancy. After this I'll be heading back into ttc-land with a fresh start. A truly fresh start with a cleaned out lining, a lower weight than a few years ago and a much better handle on my mental health. I'm afraid to hope too much. This may not be the reason I'm not getting pregnant. I may start ttc after this procedure and spend the next year on the same disappointing roller coaster that I've ridden for the last five years.

But, maybe...just maybe I will finally get that elusive prize. I have to hope, no matter how much I fear that hope. What else can I do? I'm just not quite ready to give up on this dream just yet.

The new hope?

After waiting for 2 weeks we finally got the results of my pelvic ultrasound. I knew after a week of no info that something might be up and when my NP called me at 7pm on a Friday I was sure it was more than just an "all clear" talk.

It seems I have a significant polyp in my uterus. Well, large when you consider the normal size of a uterus. It is about the size of an eraser on the end of a pencil. The delay in getting the results was my NP wanting a surgery consult before talking with me so that she could tell me all the options. I think she was also figuring out a way to code it so that it is covered under regular gyn rather than infertility so it will cost us a lot less to get it removed. I love my gyn NP. :)

It has been over 4 years since the last time they looked inside my pelvic area but it could have possibly been growing and irritating things for the last 2 years considering the size. Removing it may not magically result in a pregnancy but there are studies showing that it can be a significant factor in infertility. No matter the lack of certainty on effecting fertility we are having it removed. I'm waiting to hear from the surgeon's office to get the ball rolling.

Is this an explanation? Is this possibly a chance to hope again? Monkey and I have decided that there is enough evidence that it could be that our planned "2 last tries" are not enough. If I'm going to have pevic surgery for this then I want at least 6 more tries. Monkey is hoping I'll be willing to go for another year of tries. We'll see. We will still do those 2 clo.mid/trigger/IUI tries in there somewhere but we aren't sure what we are going to do about the rest. Find another known donor? We have an offer that came out of the blue that Author and Monkey are exploring. Or are we going to do some home IUIs with frozen so we don't have to coordinate another person's schedule? Neither of us can think about it too much until after the surgery.

I'm feeling...ambivalent about all this. Hmm, yes, simultaneous and contradictory feelings. Ambivalent is definitely the correct word. I know that this isn't a guaranteed solution. I could do the surgery, try for another year and still not get pregnant. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed and angered by the thought of another 6-12 2 week waits. I just got to a place of acceptance that chances are I wouldn't have a child! But, the chances are in our favor that this polyp has been preventing me from getting pregnant and removing it could be what we need to finally become pregnant. An exciting and hopeful thought. I'm trying to hold on to the hopeful side of this new development. Maybe this will be the magic treatment that finally gives me a baby.

How did it get to be 2012?!?!

Everything is moving so fast! How did we get ankle deep in to January already?!

I'm making good things happen in my life. I've been doing lots of new crafty things, started a (phone) photography project, plugging away at hooping, knitting outside my comfort zone, clearing out clutter and planning some redecorating. All of this is helping with the seasonal crap that has been bogging me down a bit.

December contained:
*A sick dog who is now all better after $1,000 of vet bills. That was after the savings I get for having a Pet Insurance Plan.

*An XBox 360 with Kinect as a holiday gift for the household. I'm not a big gamer but this thing is a lot of fun. Also, having my Hulu and Netflix set up through the XBox is super cool.

*A Nook E-Reader. I love it. So far I've been loading it up with knitting patterns and taking advantage of my local library's e-book lending. After a book resell trip to Powell's for credit I'll be loading it up with some books from their e-book offerings. (Nook is from Barnes & Noble but, unlike Kindle, they make it easy to put other format types on your e-reader.)

*A very crazy month of eating whatever I wanted...a bit too much. I'm back on the WW wagon to continue my healthy habit building.

*An Instagram photo challenge where I took a photo every day of December to match each day's theme. I'll be doing a post with a link to those pictures. I loved doing the daily themes but I've moved to weekly themes for 2012 to give me a bit more breathing room. If you are on Instagram and want to follow me I use the name "yeledov" so look me up!

*A lot of physical therapy for a moderate tear in my right rotator cuff. I'm improving slowly and have at few more months of this. It has put a serious cramp in my hooping practice but I work with what I have.

Coming up in January:
*Baseline ultrasound to double check that my reproductive bits are structurally normal. I've had one before but it was 4 years ago.

*Clomid Challenge Test without insemination. Now that I'm in the "elderly" age bracket for infertility my NP wants to check my response to Clomid again. I have another cycle of side effects and blood tests to look forward to. This will tell us if it is still worth the money and stress of doing the last two infertility cycles or if we should just throw in the towel now. Strangely, I'm not too worried about this. I think, whatever my problem is, it isn't my ability to ovulate.

*A landmark birthday for Monkey. He is crossing the 35 year line. I'm not sure why but this seems like a big deal.

*Lots and Lots of new crafting/art/knitting things.

I'm going to try to blog more. I'm still trying to decide if I need to make a creative arts blog as well or if I should keep it all mixed up here. Hmmm.

This old hen

At 37 years old I am solidly in the "elderly" category for a woman trying to get pregnant. I started this journey at 32 years old. A year later we did the basic infertility work up and found nothing wrong. "Keep trying" I was told "sometimes the mystery resolves itself". Now I'm back in infertility treatment and the basic work up has some different weight to it. Now there is an "age factor" to my infertility. Though the work up is exactly the same the focus is different enough. Looking at my FSH at 33 years old is to make sure something isn't "wrong" with me. Looking at my FSH at 37 years old is to see how far the natural aging of my reproductive system has gotten and if it is enough to have me give up then and there.

So I'm going in for a pelvic ultrasound to make sure there are still no masses in my uterus and my ovaries look normal. Then I'm doing a Clom.id challenge test, without insemination, and blood work to see if my body can still get poked and prodded into making some decent eggs or if my laying days are over and it is time for the soup pot.

It feels strange. I've had these tests before, nothing surprising. This time, however, the results will decide if those last two IF cycles are worth a try or if I'm already out of the baby-making game. Stranger still, I'm not sure which result I'm hoping for anymore.

Leaves fall and I fall with them

I have major depressive disorder. When you look at my family history it is pretty easy to assume that a good chunk of this disorder is a result of a bad roll of the genetic dice. I don't process serotonin and dopamine in ways that keep my mood generally stable.

Depression is cyclical with me. Late fall and winter are the hardest times. This was made even worse with the anniversary of my mom's suicide landing on December 1st. I was hoping with the amazing success of my latest drug therapy and the changes in my life that I would escape my usual Fall/Winter depressive episode. No such luck. Of course, some of this is situational. The issues with infertility and the impending unsatisfied ending of my ttc journey is a huge stressor that isn't making the season any easier. We are also trying to clean up our finances and that isn't any fun no matter what the season. In general though, my life is very good. "The house guest", as Monkey and Author call my depression, doesn't seem to care that things are generally good. My mind is a funny ol' place right now. And though it is not nearly as bad as it was this time last year, I'm still struggling.

The last chapter

Bee contacted us last week to officially end our donor relationship. He's sorry. He wishes things hadn't worked out this way. Blah, Blah, Blah. Whatever. Really, I'm not upset with him. A little annoyed but I can't work up much anger at him. I've been through this before and I don't get terribly attached to donors anymore. After last month I expected this.

So, here is where we are: I'm done with donors. I can't muster up the energy or hope it takes to slog through and find a match. We feel we've done all we can ourselves. We have two Clomid/Trigger/IUI cycles waiting for us with our NP. We think that Feb/March 2012 will be a good time to do those. As I've said before, these are our "no regrets" cycles. The last thing we need to check off our list to feel like we did the best we could manage. We will use frozen sperm and jump through all the fertility clinic hoops for those last two cycles but if those don't work, well, not every infertility story ends with a baby. Actually, a majority of them don't.

After that we will go on with our lives. Our hearts will break, and mend. We will grieve our loss of the child that never was and then move on to celebrate the life we already have. Until then, I try take care of myself and to start learning to let go.