Too Tired to Care

Dude, it’s over-emotional central over here.

It could be stemming from a number of things including… 1. We are almost finished with our last assisted cycle.  If this doesn’t work, the chance of us having our own kids is very slim.  2. One year ago tomorrow, we found out we were pregnant.  One year ago on Tuesday, we found out our baby had died.  3. There are so many artificial hormones floating through my body!!  4. I’m just exhausted.

There’s just a lot going on right now.

We’ve been looking more into adoption and, more recently, more into foster care.  I don’t know if I’m ready, or comfortable handing $10,000+ that I don’t have over for a baby.  The idea of buying a baby is still really bothering me and I can’t seem to shake it.  It’s probably still something we’ll do eventually, but I think we’re keeping our options open and hoping and praying that something good falls into our laps.  We could really use something good.

I’m just so tired of having to work so hard at something most people don’t even have to think about.  I want that weekend in Vegas baby.

Yesterday’s monitoring showed that I probably only ended up with 1 egg this time.  1 egg.  The rest of the follicles are still hanging out, getting bigger, and turning into cysts.  That’s so nice….  They did assure me that I have a wonderful ratio of estrogen to progesterone.  Although I’m not sure I care any more.  I’m just too tired.

Meanwhile the greyhounds got collar lights last weekend.  They now glow in the dark.  Love them.

12 Weeks To Go

Not a whole ton going on here currently.  I received my first Lupron injection this past Monday, which means I will be done with it in less than 12 weeks.  It still seems crazy long, but I’m trying to keep nice and busy.

This week, I’ve been working in the garden a lot.  The landscaping was seriously lacking when we moved in last fall, so I’ve been focusing on that and am not planning on having a lovely vegetable garden like I usually do.  BUT, our patio is starting to look pretty beautiful and I’m looking forward to spending lots of time out there this summer.

I also finished finals on Monday.  I got my grades yesterday.  All A’s!!  My first two semesters of graduate school have been the most difficult semesters I’ve ever had.  I began injectable medications and had 3 IUI’s.  I had a miscarriage.  I had a laparoscopy.  I was diagnosed with endometriosis.  But despite all of this, I managed to get all A’s both semesters.  Despite all of this, I still have a 4.0 gpa.  Bragging?  Maybe a little bit.  But I feel so incredibly proud of myself. 🙂

I’m gearing up to start some hardcore twin knitting as well.  A good friend who got pregnant with twins via IVF just found out she’s having 2 girls!  I’m super excited for her and can’t decide what to knit first!  I am loving all of the yarn I picked up today.

Some sad news?  The momma robin from this post hasn’t been to her nest in a week. =(  Two more momma robins are sitting on their nests in our yard, but I’m more than a little sad that this first set is gone.

29: 3 more months

We saw Dr. B today.  We were expecting him to fill us in on what kind of IUI we’re doing next, give us some pretty pictures, and send us on our happy way.

OF COURSE, that didn’t happen.  He has decided there’s a good chance that there may be more endometriosis lurking under the surface and he only gave us a window of 1 to 2 months before it comes back.  His solution?  Lupron.  For 3 months.  He thinks that will give me a 1 to 2 year window of being relatively endometriosis free.  What is lupron?  It’s an injection that shuts your reproductive system down to allow the endometriosis to heal.  It’s a whole lot like menopause.  It’s also used to treat cancer.  

I wanted to start crying right then and there.  While it might be an effective way to treat endometriosis, I’ve heard nothing but bad things about the side effects.  All I can think of is how completely horrible I felt when I was taking Clomid last year.  This will probably be worse.

He made the case that my quality of life will improve significantly if the lupron can successfully eliminate the endometriosis symptoms I’ve been living with.  It’s pretty impossible to argue against that.  It’s true.  I always feel bad, something always hurts, and I’m always just exhausted.  But this drug scares the bejeezus out of me.  Googling it brings up nothing but horror stories.  However, I know women who have taken it and, other than some God awful symptoms, been fine afterwards.

So we told him if our insurance will cover it, we’ll do it.  What else can we do?  I trust Dr. B.  I know that he knows what he’s talking about.  I made him promise me an IUI right away after we’re done with it.  No natural cycle.  This needs to be over.  I’m going to hot flash my way through this summer… again..  fml.

And so, I will be more than halfway to 26 by the time we start trying again and close to halfway to 27 before we have a baby at this point.  Our earliest due date?  One year from now.  I would like to start drinking heavily now….

Also, the birds who live in my yard are very fertile.  A-holes…

Birth Control Optional 2.0

I went in to see Dr. G again today.  The first thing we did was go over my x-rays from Saturday.  He thinks my main problem is my pelvis: it’s sprained…. SPRAINED!  He said based on my x-rays, it’s been sprained for at least 10 years, maybe longer.  He said it could have happened when I was learning how to walk and fell wrong.  Or it could have happened when I was a basket ball player — I fell a lot because I was a boss like that.  Or I jumped off of something wrong as a teenager.  Or I fell out of bed once and hit it just right.  The possibilities as to what happened are endless and really don’t matter because he thinks he can fix it and completely eliminate my lower back and hip pain.  Doing so should also make my infertility disappear (or at least lessen).  The only reason it’s gotten worse as I’ve gotten older is because I’m far less active than I was as a teenager and the muscles that were cushioning everything just aren’t cutting it anymore.

The only bummer?  As he starts to fix it, in theory, I’ll become more fertile.  But it will be a few months before my pelvis is healed enough to carry a baby without miscarrying again.  While he couldn’t outright tell me not to try, he did tell me if we continue to try, we probably wouldn’t like the outcome.   So, for the first time in 2+ years, we’re back to preventing a pregnancy.  Out of control.  BUT, this is so preferable to losing another baby.

He said we should aim for May, or April if we’re really desperate.  I can do that.  He’s given us a very good reason and I have a goal to work towards that I’ll be able to feel.  I’ve also registered for 3 graduate classes in the spring, so I can focus on those without any distraction.  By the time spring semester is over, it will be time to try again.  Plus, I’m seeing him 3 times a week.  Yikes!

He started adjusting me today as well.  He cracked my neck (it’s tight and doesn’t curve the correct way, so why not?) and started working on re-positioning my pelvis.  It hurt at first, but felt better afterwards.  I think he’s moving something though, because it’s pretty uncomfortable tonight.  He’s also having me ice my back at least once a day… Apparently heat is bad bad bad for pelvis sprains.  Just think of all those years of HOT baths… In my bathtub.. Oops. 😉

The last thing I’m going to tell you is what I wish someone would have told me… If you’ve never been to a chiropractor and you’re having your lower back and hips examined at your consultation , wear real underwear, not a skimpy thong, and shave your legs…  Because I didn’t do either and it was mortifying…

You’re welcome.

I have 3 more lesson plans and 1 final exam to go until Winter Break!  I’m writing a final unit plan on this book.  Yes.  That is what our education system has come to. 😉  In my unit plan’s defense, I’ve created a course on classic literature and its modern counterparts and I’m having my students compare this modern vampire novel to Dracula.  So it works.  Somehow.

Waiting

For the first time in almost two years, I’m waiting anxiously for my period to start.  I want it to start.  Dr. B is almost positive that we won’t be pregnant this month, and I’m convinced that I’ll finally start feeling better once it does.

The stabbing, burning pain from the cysts has turned into an intense cramping.  It was getting a little better every day, and I was starting to have a little more energy every day.  Until I woke up at 4:30 this morning with the worst cramps I’ve had in years…   Blah.  I’ve been sleeping a lot.  Some days I can’t stop eating, other days food sounds like the worst idea ever.  I’m hoping the calorie intake is balancing out.  I only have one vicodin left.  I’m saving it just in case things start to feel worse.  These cysts are definitely worse than last time, so I’m assuming they’ll take longer to feel better.  I can touch my stomach now, which is a huge improvement.

It’s still making me crazy that all of this pain is really for nothing.  There’s nothing good or beneficial about this.  There will be no baby from this.

The cats, however, are taking full advantage of all of this laying around…

 

Pink Vinaigrette.

I’m still hanging in there for now.  I had a nice chat with my doctor on Friday.  Apparently the on-call doctor misread my ultrasound and I have a bunch of smaller cysts that equal the size of a golf ball.  This makes me feel much better.  She doesn’t want to add any medications to my body right now since technically I could still be pregnant.  We’ll chat again about how to proceed once my period starts.  She wants me to take at least a month off from the clomid.  It’s really bothering her that I’m getting cysts on the lowest dose.  I’m honestly not too broken up about a taking a break.  Clomid is kicking my butt big time.
Jeremy and I decided that it will be a break from temping and ovulation sticks as well.  We’ll still try, but it’s going to be far more relaxed than it’s been in a long time.

I’ve been taking it easy for the past few days.  I’ve had a lot of pain in my lower abdomen, a lot of nausea, my boobs are killing me, and I’m hungry constantly.   Part of me is looking forward to my period starting because I know I’ll feel a lot better.
BUT, in the meantime, I’ve been catching up on some knitting.  I really burned out after Christmas knitting, so most of my projects have been sitting in my knitting basket in my office for the past 6 months.

I finished these socks on Saturday.  I used the Plymouth Yarn Stiletto that I found at the Chicago Yarn Crawl last fall.  I started these just before Christmas and I’ve dragged them around the country with us recently trying to tempt myself into finishing them.  It just took some time on the couch. 😉
 I’m working on some stranded color work socks right now.  It’s going so much fast than I remember it.  I had to retrain my fingers to knit English and Continental at the same time.  Out of control. 😉  They’ll be really pretty when they’re finished.

Finally, the hot, humid weather we’ve been having seems to have worked wonders for my garden…
My tomatoes and tomatillos are getting really big and strong and my zucchini plants have a TON of flowers on them.

I let the chive plants flower this year…
Once they were past their prime, I chopped the whole plant down so that it will flower again.  I’m freezing the leaves and I decided to try to make a chive vinaigrette with the flowers.
The vinegar is supposed to turn from clear…
To pink…
To pinky-lavender.
The lettuce is almost big enough to pick.  I think we’ll try this pretty pink vinaigrette once we can use our own lettuce. 🙂

Pre-Baby Shopping Confessions.

Just as a side note… If you search “HSG test” in google images, my uterus is no where to be found on the first 10 pages.  I don’t know if I should be appalled or grateful.. 😉

This has been the topic of a few other Trying to Conceive blogs lately, and it’s been on my mind a lot for some reason: buying things for your baby/maternity wear before you get pregnant.  Dude, I’m totally guilty of both of those things.  The first month we were trying to get pregnant and I was blissfully assuming it would only take a month or two to actually get pregnant, I was shopping for one of my best friend’s little boys’ Christmas present.  My thought process that one can never have too many books led me to the toddler’s book section.  More specifically to the Dr. Seuss books.  I love Dr. Seuss.  One of the things I’ve been most looking forward to buying our baby is a complete collection of Dr. Seuss books.  I picked out Put Me in the Zoo (it’s not actually by Dr. Seuss, but it’s still adorable).  I gave him the little stuffed animal that matched.

I was so positive that I too would soon have a little person, that I bought myself a copy.  After it sat on my desk for a few months, I convinced myself that I had jinxed us and it made it’s way into the bottom of one of my filing bins.

I swore that I wouldn’t buy anything else until we not only were pregnant, but through our first trimester.  I’ve done really awesome for the past year at not even thinking about buying anything baby related…

 

WIP = Work in Progress.. I ❤ knitting terms.

Until Ravelry sent me an email that their WIP maternity shirts were back in stock.  I signed up to be emailed when they got restocked almost a year ago…  It all went downhill from there.

I currently have 2 of them sitting in my office with a 3rd on the way.  No, I’m not stocking up.  Their sizing runs epically small and I’m waiting for my extra large to come in the mail.  I promise, I’ll send the other two back.  Although… Wearing the large now wouldn’t technically be lying since this whole thing is a work in progress…. 😉

 

 

 

 

Finally, this onesie.  I have a really bad habit of going back to this picture when I’ve had a really bad day, or have a month when I’ve really gotten my hopes up.

It usually goes something like this: Get teary.  Put on melancholy music such as “Heartbeats” by Jose Gonzalez or “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri, open my “For the Future Baby Geelen(s)” board on pintrest, look over all of the wonderful things I’ve been collecting, get even more teary, end up looking at this onesie with “Heartbeats” on repeat.  Repeat once or twice and get on with life.

I gave in to how positive I feel about this month and bought it.  It’s also on its way here.  By the time it gets here, I’ll either being a complete mess or completely elated.  Either way, it will serve it’s purpose.

Those are my pre-baby shopping confessions.  NO MORE!!  What are your thoughts on this?  Are you guilty of pre-baby shopping?

Also, 9 DPO. 3 days to go.

 

Square One

Did you know that sperm take around 90 days to develop completely?  Did you also know that illness or high fevers can dramatically alter a man’s sperm count?  Neither did we.

A week or two before Jeremy’s first test, we both had a horrendous flu.  High fevers, body aches.. the works.

Sooooo, Dr. R wants Jeremy’s test repeated the first week of April.  Which means, we’re back to square one.  We have no idea what’s wrong and we’re back to waiting.  I am thankful that there’s a good possibility Jeremy is fine.  He didn’t need that hanging over him.

Two weeks from tomorrow, I’ll see my doctor and hopefully we’ll get more answers.

I’m taking my Christmas decorations down today.  I planned out my garden the other night.  I’m working on some stranded socks.  I finished Might Be Our Power last night.  Focus.

Meanwhile, Bella has to visit the vet in the morning.  She’s got a urinary tract infection. 😦 Poor kitty.

❤