HSGs, SHGs, stirrups oh my...

I am now finished with both my HSG and my SHG (sonohystogram), and am proud to say that there was nothing, I repeat, nothing to be seen.  This is happy news, especially after enduring the pain of both procedures, but it leaves me to wonder where I go from here.  What's next for us?  DH went for a semen analysis this morning, and we are waiting on those results, but my next meeting with the OB/Gyne (AKA Dr. No Good News) is not till December, so for now it's just more of the same and lots of waiting.

My birthday is in two days, and this has led to a lot of mixed emotions.  I will be 29, and I always imagined I would be working on baby number 2 at this point, and of course be exceedingly successful and living life to the fullest. Instead, I'm jumping from lab table to lab table, dropping everything for pointless doctor appointments and lab results, and working as a temp in a job wholly unrelated to my field and/or interests.  I want to be better in the year to come. I want to start living my life again, and more than that I want to be free of the crippling emotional pain that comes with the end of each menstrual cycle...I'm not really sure how to do this, but I think I need to find a way.  I can't avoid my pregnant friends, and those with kids for forever, I can't keep beating myself up inside with every new ovarian cyst or visit from AF, and I can't keep planning my every move around a possible pregnancy that may never come.  It's time to embrace my 29th year of life, dust off the cobwebs that have gathered on my dreams and ambitions, and remember how to live.

 

Memories

I was thinking the other day how sometimes a good memory can lift me right out of a funk.  I was watching the very silly, but kind of cute live action Popeye movie, the one with Robin Williams as Popeye, and I realized that the last time I watched it I was maybe 6 or 7 years old.  Suddenly I was right back on the old sofa (old even at that time) in my parents' house, in the den that doesn't exist anymore, and mentally back before life became complicated and the worst part of my day was being told it was bed time when it the summer sun was still out.

In that moment, I could actually feel the scratchy fabric of the couch beneath me and visualize what might have been happening at that exact moment (e.g. my mom in the kitchen upstairs making dinner, our old hamster running in his wheel, my dad coming in the front door, asking, "What's cooking" - I haven't heard my dad say this phrase in years, but he used to say it almost every day when he came home.  It was his usual greeting to my sister and me).   

Anyway, I just thought I would share my musings in hopes it might trigger some happy memories for you ladies and lift your spirits.
Thanks for being there -- oh, and the HSG went pretty well.  It hurt like anything, but my tubes were open and my uterus is not in fact bicorunate!

A letter to your unborn baby

Sometimes we just have to laugh...

A letter to your unborn baby

A letter FROM your unborn baby

Thanks to one of my favorite blogs: http://www.999reasonstolaugh.com/

Poking and Prodding

Last week I had blood drawn for another series of tests.  The nice lady who took my blood, bruised me in three places and left me with one very angry vein.  The results have been trickling in, and so far things look pretty good - even my thyroid levels are looking much prettier thanks to the Synthroid.  The results are both a relief and misery, as I now have to ask the question: what do we fix if nothing is broken?

I was able to get my HSG scheduled for tomorrow, and a sonohystogram scheduled for next week, so maybe we'll have some answers soon.  The waiting is killing me, but I'm trying to distract myself with work and friends as much as possible.

DH is also going for a test, hopefully next week, so fingers crossed that all is well in that department.  He's been incredibly sweet about everything, and I truly couldn't be more grateful.  Having him as my husband and partner is one of the greatest blessings of my life, and the one thing that continues to give me hope that everything will work out just fine.

I'm worried that if we have to go see an RE, the next step from here and one we've been avoiding, it is going to be completely out-of-pocket and outside our budget.  Our state mandates at least partial infertility coverage, but our insurance company has found a loop hole out of that, and they won't cover anything, even an initial appointment.  We will be changing to a better insurance company next year, but that isn't until August, and I just can't imagine waiting that long just to start the process, especially when we don't even know if it will help.
Unfortunately, the most my OB/Gyne can do, is give me Clomid, and right now, I really don't think that will be enough. 

Anyway, more worries for another time.  I'm going to go to work and try to forget all this, even if just for a little while...

A lighter note

So, I'm finally in a better place - having recovered from my period and subsequent emotional melt down - and I'm ready to share a link a friend of mine recently sent.  It's a short cartoon about Facebook and its potentially negative effect on infertile couples.  The writer based it on an article from the Washington Post. 

Enjoy, and Happy Diwali to all those celebrating it!

Trouble and woe

Well, I haven't started my period, but today, at 12 dpo, my BBT dropped like a stone, and I had a BFN to great me this morning along with the sun. 

I don't know what's wrong with me.  I don't know why I haven't gotten pregnant.  All I know is how tired I am: tired of feeling broken, tired of feeling like a disappointment and a failure, tired of the painful, awful looking acne and chronic pelvic pain that no one seems to be able to diagnose, tired of seeing birth announcements and ultrasound photos on Facebook, tired of feeling sorry for myself and yet unable to shake the emotion, tired tired tired. 

I'm angry, frustrated and slightly beaten.  I felt so close this time.  My thyroid levels have normalized, and even though the PCOS is still there, I had ovulated and had all these symptoms of pregnancy to boot.  I really believed I was going to see two pink lines...I hate pregnancy tests.  I hate looking at that miserable one pink line, willing it to change with all my heart and soul.  Willing myself to actually be pregnant, when I'm not.

I have a friend right now who is sick as dog with morning sickness, and is in pretty bad shape, but the crazy person I am, I keep thinking how grateful I would be to be in her shoes.  One month they tried, and just like that, it happened.  I'm so happy for her, and yet I cried myself silly when I found out.  It only made me feel worse, knowing I couldn't just be over the moon for my friend, but instead broke down into uncontrollable weeping ad self pity.  What's wrong with me?  Why is this happening?