Trust me, I'm a Professional

Some of my most brilliant moments happen on the toilet. I have had great ideas while sitting on the can and from what I hear, this isn't uncommon. I'm trying to come up with an example for you, but on the spot, nothing immediately comes to mind. Hmmm, maybe I should go have a seat in the 'oval office' and think about it for a moment.

I was in a bathroom stall at work the other day and I noticed that the toilet paper holder was made by Kimberly-Clark and it was part of their "Professional" series. This really made me think... What does it take to be a "professional" in the bathroom? Am I really qualified to use this toilet paper? I mean, I've been going to the bathroom all of my life and potty trained for most of it, so I'm probably qualified, but really how do I know for sure? Is there an application process that the building owner must go through to have professional TP holders installed?

This got me thinking about all of the other products that I buy or have bought in the past which I was probably grossly under qualified to use. Off the top of my head, I have professional series food processor, blender, toaster, hairdryer, hairspray, gel and hairbrush. I promise when I bought these things, I wasn't trying to impersonate a chef or a hairstylist, I bought them without thinking. Now I feel like a fraud who is completely under qualified to operate the machines in her own home to make hummus and toast or even dry her hair.

:Sigh:

I'm sorry I haven't been updating much. I hate to admit it, but I am in a real funk right now.

I hate break cycles. I really didn't want to take a cycle off and I am having a very hard time sitting out this month. I will start prometrium tomorrow in hopes that AF will show around Thanksgiving and we can finally move on.

I temped this cycle just in case we got lucky and I ovulated on my own, but it didn't happen. Honestly, I don't know which is worse, a failed cycle or knowing that we had no chance at all this cycle. There will be no Thanksgiving BFP or Christmas PG announcement for us again this year.

:sigh:

Flipping the Odometer

Wow...I just read my little profile blurb and realised that I have our ages wrong. I'm not 31 anymore and Tim's not 32 anymore. Damn...when did that happen? It's time to fix that. I think I'll leave it for a few more days though, and just pretend that we aren't yet another year into this journey.

It's crazy to think that we are almost at the 2 year mark. This time last year I was trying to convince Tim that we needed to get a puppy, but he was still flying and I was working long hours so he talked me out of it. The compromise was that if I still wasn't pregnant by Christmas 2010 we would get a puppy. I'm pretty sure he didn't think there was any way another year would go by sans pregnancy/baby. Sadly, it looks like I need to make a trip to the local dog shelter. It's nice to have something to look forward to though! :)

Timing FAIL

Well, September was a bust and I am super bummed. :(
I was really depressed on Friday after yet another BFN and then I started spotting on Saturday which killed any bit of hope I had left for the cycle. I had a wonderful martini on Saturday night and a margarita yesterday as consolation prizes, but ya know, they don't quite cut the pain of a failed cycle. (they were tasty though...)
As for this cycle, we have to sit it out which is absolutely the worst. I will be in Baltimore at a meeting for work from CD14-CD18 so my RE said it wasn't worth doing any meds this cycle. It's so incredibly frustrating to sit out, particularly when we really don't want to.

In the mean time, I'll try and come up with some fun/funny things to post about to help the time go by, but today, I'm still sulking.

The Women Who Stare at Pregnancy Tests

I have become a member of a very elite group of women. We are the women who stare at pregnancy tests a la The Men Who Stare at Goats. I don’t know how it happened, one day I was taking a pregnancy test, as I so often do, and it was negative, as…well…it ALWAYS is, and I proceeded to stare at it for an inordinately long period of time. I don’t know what prompted this behavior, but it has now become a part of my routine when I POAS. {Technically, I pee in a cup (PIAC), but the acronym doesn’t roll of the keyboard as nicely so I type POAS instead.} So anyway…I POAS, I use the “internet cheapies”, and I wait maybe 10 seconds for the control line to show up. Then, I pick up the stick and proceed to stare at it for at least 5 minutes WILLING it to be positive. I haven’t quite gotten one to turn yet, but I think I've almost got it. Until then, I will keep practicing. For anyone else who is interested in becoming a member of this elite club, here are some step-by-step instructions. You too, can be one of the women who stare at pregnancy tests.

Waiting

Waiting is what women with IF do. We don't always do it well, but we don't really get much of a choice. We wait for AF, we wait to ovulate, then there's the 2ww which feels more like a 2 month wait sometimes.
I'm in an odd in-between kind of wait right now. I had an IUI on Friday which was not pleasant, but no one was seriously injured in the process so I guess it was a success.
The hard part is that I don't even know if I ovulated this month. I had several follie scans, the last one being Monday, and they showed multiple follicles, but none of them were overwhelming in size. Tim gave me a trigger shot on Wednesday hoping that the follies would be big enough to ovulate by Friday when we did the IUI.
I've been temping to try and keep track of things in hopes that I would be able to confirm ovulation, but my temp shift has been kind of pekid so far. So now I have to wait until Friday to get bloodwork to check my progesterone level. If the level is at least 10, then I ovulated. Over 15 and the RE will be pretty happy with the strength of the ovulation.
Another odd, in-between...I am testing out my trigger shot. See, the trigger is an injection of HCG which is the same chemical that HPTs detect in urine during pregnancy which means as long as the HCG from the shot is in my system, I will get false positives on HPTs. So, I took a test yesterday and it was positive and I will keep testing every day until I get a negative. That way, if I get another positive test after that, I'll know it's the real-deal.
The crazy thing is, I stared at that false positive for at least 5 minutes. Almost willing it to be real and true. We have been trying to have a baby now for 21 months and that is the first positive test I have seen. I hope I get to see a true positive someday.

Don't Forget to Relax!

I had another monitoring appointment today. My follicles are being stubborn and haven't gotten much bigger. It looks like we'll be triggering Wednesday night and doing IUI Friday morning. I think Tim is more nervous than I am about the injection. I'm sure he'll do fine though.

Anyone who has been through IF has heard the phrase "just relax" or "don't stress" or "maybe you're just tyring too hard". Let me just say. These phrases do nothing but make me more tense and irritated. I don't know how or why someone thinks that relaxation is the key to pregnancy and that I am somehow "trying too hard" to get pregnant. Unless you see me standing on the docks waiting for a group of random sailors on shore leave, I'm not trying too hard.

Let's take a moment and think about stress. Think about animals which are under a lot of stress all of the time. What comes to mind? I'm going to venture a guess that the animals are not those at the top of the food chain, but rather prey animals like mice and rabbits and even deer. Hmmm...something tells me that their stress levels haven't had a major impact on their ability to procreate.

One of the funniest examples of the stress --> no baby stories I have is from this past spring. I was having lunch with a couple of my coworkers, one of whom was pregnant and the other has a young daughter. They both know that we have been struggling to conceive and frequently ask the "any news?" question when I see them.

On this particular day, the one with the young daughter was asking me what treatment we were currently undergoing. I told her, femara. She said "oh, that's the one that will give you like 5 kids at once, right?" Um, no. She then starts asking me about my stress level and how the treatments must be really hard on me and dealing with work and everything on top of it must be really stressful. I know exactly where this is going and I decide that I will hit her with a dead end in the conversation, but alas, she outwits me.
Here's how it played out.
Her: Wow, with all of this stuff going on in your life, it must be really stressful for you...

Me: Not really, actually. I have a wonderful husband, supportive parents and work is going pretty well.

Her: Really, you don't feel stressed?

Me: Nope, not at all. I'm all good.

Her: Hmmmmm. Well maybe you should try and get MORE stressed. I've heard that stress can have an effect on getting pregnant so if you aren't stressed, maybe you should be more stressed.

Me: Blank f-ing stare. I kid you not.

I mean really, what do you say to that? I think I said ok, maybe I'll do that, I'm not sure though because so much of my focus was directed at not letting my head implode. After that conversation, the geek in me wrote out what I believe to be the mathamatical equation for what she said. Here it is:

ΔStress α P(KU)

For those who aren't mathmatically inclined. That means a change in stress is directly proportinal to the probability of getting knocked up. Now go forth and change your stress!