Meds are here!!!

Let the fun begin!! I can't even tell you how loudly I screamed when I saw the box on my porch this evening. I'm pretty sure Ayden thought we'd won a puppy.

The box wasn't as full as the last time since we had a lot left over from the last fresh cyclle, but it is still exciting! They only sent me 10 syringes for Lupron though. That's not gonna work since I take it for three weeks. Plus, I need the same syringes for my low dose Hcg. I'll call the pharmacy and get that all straightened out next week.

This weekend, I plan on enjoying my last three days without Lupron headaches. While I'm excited to get things started, I dread those freaking headaches. Dread them. Hopefully, this time it's all for a good cause.

On another note, tomorrow is the start of Endometriosis Awareness month. My good friend just lost her battle with endo by having a hysterectomy today. She was pretty upset, but knew it was time. She is only 32. She is done having kids, so the decision was a little easier. I told her that I was rather jealous that she was done with the endo pain and moving on to her next stage in life. I feel stuck in mine. Someday, I'm having mine yanked, too. But, first, this freaking IVF needs to work.

To honor all of my endo sisters, I plan on a little education this March. Stay tuned!

Rules for dealing with an Infertile.

In reality, every infertile that I've ever met is a crazy strong woman. I'm not sure many fertile people could jab their asses each night in hopes that it "might" help conceive a baby.

However, just because we are strong on the outside, doesn't mean we are strong inside, as well. I've read many lists of "How to deal with an Infertile Friend Etiquette", but I have my own list and like most things in life, mine isn't going to hold back trying to spare the fertile's feelings.

So, my list of Rules for Dealing with Infertile People:

1. Don't complain about your pregnancy to us. We don't care to hear it. Ever. This is never okay. Even if you have puked so much that you end up in the hospital, we don't care. You have a baby inside of you. Be grateful for you puke and hydration IV damn' it.

2. Don't text us an ultrasound pic every couple of weeks. It's rude. While you may not feel like you are rubbing it in our faces, my broken uterus begs to differ. My uterus wants to punch you in the face when you do this.

3. When you're three months along, spare us the "I'm so pudgy" talk. Please, I was WAY pudgier during IVF and you didn't hear me complaining.

4. Stop complaining about all of your doctor's appointments and your meeting with the vag wand. For the love of everything holy. I'm 100% positive that in the course of my treatments, I've been probed one zillion times more than you have. Deal with it. I don't feel bad for you. Not even a little. At least you saw a baby when you got vag cam'ed. I just saw broken innards.

I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones that people threw in my face just this week. In one week. I wanted to punch each person. Rather, because I'm strong like ox, I just smiled and cussed at you in my head.

One week to go and hormones

Lupron starts next Tuesday! I also moved my appointment to next Tuesday instead of Monday. We're supposed to get another huge snow storm Sunday night and I'm not really up to driving two hours in a foot of snow. Just not my thing.

Today's drive into work proves this. I was in the ditch on the freeway a few times. Great way to start the day. Luckily, my coworkers are amazing and covered for me until I could slide in. I hate driving in the snow. Hate it. This winter can suck it!

This bcp has me a little weepy and bitchy. Not a little bitchy though. I'm a lot of that. Yesterday I yelled at the hubs because he didn't like what I was thinking of making for dinner. As it was happening, in my head, I was fully aware of how crazy I sounded. Didn't matter. The words just kept coming out. The hubs just looked at me like my head was spinning and pea soup was flying out of my pie hole. He said nothing. Smart man.

I'm sure once Lupron is added it's only going downhill. This bcp has me growing hair in places that shouldn't have hair, I'm a sweaty mess, and libido...what's that? BCP is turning me into a middle aged man. It's beyond gross. Lupron may just complete the transformation. I can hardly wait. I'm also looking forward to the headaches and night sweats. Although, to say "sweat" is not a really accurate explanation. It more like every fluid in your body attacks your sheets through you skin and you wake up shivering drenched like you just jumped in a pool, sheets soaking wet, clothes sopping. It really is a sexy time to be a woman.

And, to be funny, I think I'm going to make a day-by-day photo album of my belly bloat during stims. It really is something that should be documented. Last Summer during IVF #1, I was off work so I just lived in sweats and elastic pants. This time? I'm not exactly sure how this will work. At all. Leggings and long sweaters that are forgiving might be my March wardrobe. Hopefully I can wear the crazy ass rain boots that my dad got me for Christmas and they'll distract everyone from my gut bloat. I happen to love them. A lot. I'm not sure if my small town is quite ready for them. If you could see my face, you'd see my "I don't care, get over it" face.

Hopefully, this week goes quickly and I can start jabbing myself again. I'm strangely excited to start shots. Hopefully, this is the last week of no bloat and it's the start of a 10 month journey into giant baby bloat! Not that I want a giant baby. Just a giant gut with a baby (smallish) inside. Just to be clear.

Personal therapy post

I'm having a bad night. I have no clue how to get out of this funk. I'm so angry that my husband is being treated so poorly. It makes me sick to my stomach.

There really are bad people in the world. I feel like it's my job to fix things. I always have. I feel like I have to fix this. But, I can't. I don't know how to just get over it. I'm terrified that the stress is going to ruin my IVF cycle and then that pisses me off even more.

The thought of seeing the people who are being so horrible to my husband makes me physically sick to my stomach. On one hand, I just want to move out of this small town and get away from all of it. On the other hand, that would let them win. I hate that idea. But, in the end does it really matter? Isn't being happy more important?

I have to just let the attorneys just do their job. I have to trust that they will defend my husband the way I would defend him. I'm just not sure how to get there. Clearly, I have some major trust issues.

I have 2 weeks to get over it or just let go. If you're a praying person, help me out a little.

Funny teacher story. If you have a weird middle school teacher sense of humor.

Blizzard Bags will be the death of me. Let me explain. This year, we have missed a total of 15 days of school due to weather. This winter is bad. Like BAD.

So, to help us out, the state department of education approved the use of Blizzard Bags. Basically, it's online school for the kids when they're sitting home during a snow day. Rather than playing in the snow, they're supposed to be glued to the computer doing school work.

I know you're all shocked to hear that most kids go outside to play in the snow rather than do their Blizzard bags on their day off. But, it's okay. See, they have two weeks to get them done. Today was the first due date...like teenagers tend to do, they procrastinated and some of my kids still needed to get a few done. I let them come up at lunch to work on them.

Go figure, the Blizzard Bag website was down. How did this happen you ask? Well, "someone" hacked into the site and posted Viagara videos. As soon as the district found out, they shut down the site. HA! The lengths kids will go in order to not have to do work! I get that it's wrong, but it's so darn funny. Not sure if they can catch the hacker, but kids will be kids, I guess.

Yesterday, my classroom smelled like a cat had peed in ever single corner of the room. I probably smelled like cat pee all day. The day before, we had a snow day. The day before that was just plain crazy. I'm sooooo glad it's a weekend!

Tonight I'm ordering my meds and paying a crap ton of money. Whoot. I applied to this program through our pharmacy for poor people so I can get a discount on my meds. I realize we're not really poor, but you know what I mean. We had to send both of our W-2's from last year. I tried to explain that my hubs' shouldn't even be taken into account anymore. They didn't care. So, we didn't qualify for poor people pricing. We do get 25% off of Follistim just for applying to the program, so I guess it was worth the headache of sending a zillion emails. Not that I want to be poor, but 75% off would have been nice. I don't really like money, so it's fine. Really. It's fine.

Freaking period. Not the punctuation.

I swear to all that is holy. I started bleeding again. Hoping my RE could make the madness stop, I called this morning. Not such good news. It's not bad, just not what I want!

Instead of putting me on estrogen again like they did two weeks ago (or whenever this happened last) I'm just gonna bleed until I start Lupron. Uh, really? That's not until March 4th. He doesn't want to get my E2 too high before starting stims, which I appreciate, but bleeding for the next week and a half. Blah. I know. Things could be worse.

It's just a minor annoyance, but my mind instantly goes to how this will impact our cycle. Of course, now that this is happening, in my head, I'm already out. I realize this isn't true, but I'm not rational at this point.

Fun times.

It's over. Finally.

Last night, the hub's resignation was announced at our town's council meeting. It was a very somber experience. I sobbed like a huge freak, which made everyone quiet as all get out and then the mayor tried to say something nice to my family and I basically told him to shove it. My hubs had explained the entire story of what was happening to him to the mayor, in hopes that he would help him. Instead, he stabbed him in the back.  Yep. I don't play these small town games. Our attorney will sort it all out in the end.

In the meantime, we have this huge thing coming up in just a little over two weeks. IVF #2 anyone? Oh yeah. I'm trying to put this entire job loss thing behind me and just get excited about IVF. I'm not gonna lie. It's hard. Very hard. Of course, I want it to work, but I'm just so mad. I'm not good at forgiving and forgetting. Not even a little. I'd rather tell them to shove it. Which I guess I did. It didn't really help though.

The pharmacy called last night to give me our total for our meds. Not horrible this time because we have some left over from the last time. But, with ICSI being added, we're still spending much more than before. That sucks. Hopefully, when the big meds start, I'll get into the swing of things and be excited again. It's just hard to be excited when you feel like the world is crapping on you day after day.

On a cute kid note, my kiddo is the cutest little guy on the planet. He went to the meeting last night and had no clue what was going on and was bored the entire time. I'm fine with that, but the message we wanted to send was that they were messing with our entire family. This momma doesn't do well with that. Today, we all have a snow day (again) so we're just hanging out and watching movies. Fun (cheap) times here!

Lupron starts on March 4th (ha!) so there are only a few more boring posts until then!

Goos Fa-va

Or however it goes. I'm seriously insanely pissed today. We live in a small town. VERY SMALL. So, people talk about everything that isn't their business and they make connections about things where there aren't even connections to be made.

Well, the hubs "resigned" a week ago this past Friday. He was a cop. I can't really get into why, but it's good for us. Unfortunately, on the same day, another cop that the hubs worked with was arrested for doing some horrible things. These two things aren't connected at ALL! However, in a small town, people are talking.

I didn't grow up in a small town. Where I grew up, people minded their own business and only worried about what was happening in their own lives. This nosey shit is more than I can take. Not only that, but the hub's resignation will be announced at the town council meeting tomorrow night. So many people are pissed about the hub's leaving that they are going to the meeting to show support to him. It's like a Lifetime movie.

I'm so grateful for all of these people. It makes me feel like I'm not alone in this horrible thing that is happening to my husband. These are good people. But, all of the other nosey people, can suck my ass! When the whole story comes out (my husband's. Not the other guy, he's pretty much screwed.) it will all make sense to everyone. However, in the meantime, I have to sit back quietly and pretend like I have nothing to say, when the exact opposite is actually true.

In the meantime, stims start in less than one month! Yay IVF. I really am excited, but I wish this other crap wasn't going on, too. But it is. So, I somehow need to figure out how to deal with it. I can't even drink right now. Or have caffeine. This is impossible!

Happy Valentine's Day!

We don't actually celebrate, but we did treat ourselves to Chinese carry-out. Then, it made me sick. Fun times.

But, on an IVF note, we got our bill in the mail today. Holy.Shit. ICSI is almost $2k. So, our bill almost made me crap my pants. Oh, no. That was the Chinese. Maybe it was actually from the shock of seeing our bill. It's a good thing we are already excited and have the money saved up. Otherwise, I'm not sure we'd go through with it.

So, now were at $10k plus meds. Wow. This shit better work. The hubs also got the actual report from his DNA frag test from our RE's office, too. It was very interesting. He has a high number of free radicals and a high frag rate. The report said that natural conception and iui has almost a 0% chance of working. Regular IVF (without ICSI) has a lower success rate. However, with ICSI, we're back up to where everyone else is.

For anyone getting ready to do IVF (or iui for that matter) I so strongly urge you to do this "cheap" test. It was $200. We're now on our 2nd fresh IVF, but 3rd transfer. So, $200 is cheap as far as this is all concerned.

Of course, in the grand scheme, let's imagine that last year's IVF would have worked. Or the FET. We'd be due to deliver any day now. Yeah. Remember that whole issue with the hub's job loss? Yeah. Tell me that things don't happen for a reason. I can't even imagine getting ready to bring a baby home right now. I mean, if we were, we'd certainly deal with it and be so happy. But, with only one salary coming in? Yeah. That would be hard.

On the job front, the hubs has applied for a few and has some really good leads. I'm very excited for him! Please say a few extra prayers that he can get this all squared away by the time we start IVF again. The less stress, the better for all of us. Especially for his swimmers, apparently. Who knew?

Appts made!

Even though the last couple of weeks have been insane, having IVF to look forward to again has kept me in decent spirits. I have finally figured out what it means to really just let go. I always thought I was doing it before, but having the hub's job loss thrown in, I've literally just let go. I can't even imagine trying to be in control of anything in my entire life right now.

As I was looking at my cycle calendar last night, I realized how freaking close we are to starting. Lupron will start on March 4th. It's already February 11th. LESS THAN ONE MONTH! I called and set up all of our appointments and right now, having 7:00am appointments seems ideal. Once I'm getting up that early and driving the 1 1/2 hours into the office every other day, I'm pretty sure I'll regret this decision. It'll be over before we know it, so whatever. Plus, it means I don't have to take as much time off work. That will be nice. I can keep things as normal as possible for my kids at school and that is really important to me. However, sleep is pretty important, too.

I need to email my nurse the meds we have so she can order what we need and then, the big bucks start leaving our account again. Blah. Who needs money anyway? Oh. That's right. We do. I am so grateful that we had already decided to do IVF before the job loss because we'd have never set it up afterwards.

That's all for an update now. Silly me. I was afraid I wouldn't have anything to write about as we waited for our cycle to start. Ha! I guess it's true what they say: Ask and you shall receive!

Believe it! God is GOOD!

I'm not really sure how to explain the emotions of the last week. Watching your husband lose his job, one that he loved, is really sad. And I was pissed. I had a major panic attack this week. So, that was fun. I maybe slept 12 hours the entire week. Maybe. If any good came from it, I lost five pounds, so my clothes look amazing. At least I have that going for me.

My husband had a meeting with three of his bosses. I went with him, just to be his support. Our attorney said there was really no need for him to go, unless we wanted to pay $1500. Uh, no. So, in this meeting, my husband was so composed and honorable and I couldn't have been prouder of him. He stood up for himself and then, he was told that he going to be offered a severance package! What? Come again?

Like I said before, I can't say much more, but I really think it will be alright. It will be tight, but we can live on just my salary. We already have our IVF money saved up AND the hubs will have his severance money as back up, just in case.

All I could do this week was give this over to God. I had no choice. Then, like a gift for my faith, in the mail today was my IVF calendar!

I'm pretty sure that in this week, I experienced every emotion on the spectrum. It was rough. However, the hubs kept it in perspective. He kept reminding me that, once you go through a military deployment, everything else is easy. We went through two deployments. One year each. One right after the other. The hubs missed the birth of Ayden. I was a single mother for six months. I constantly thought that my husband was going to die. This week? The hubs was right. It was upsetting, but at least we were right beside each other. And, in the end, we got everything that we need.

God's Grace

Where to start? My most amazing DH is now jobless. It was unexpected. There is a lot to the story, but I can't get into it. You can see where this is going, right? Now that our income has been cut in half, how do we do IVF? We're not sure. Not even a little sure. DH is ready to still do it. I can't fathom the thought of going through it before he has another job.

I'm pissed. If I could even get into the whole story, you'd be pissed, too. This is America at work. The hubs fought for this country and is being treated VERY unfairly at work. Yes, we have an attorney. We've had him on retainer for a couple of years. The hubs has a strong discrimination case. It's a case of retaliation. But, it would take three to five years to get it through the court system. It would cost a lot of money. We aren't willing to spend the next three to five years going through the courts. We have other things that we would rather spend that money on. That isn't how we envisioned our lives. It's so unfair.

I'm not sure how this will all play out. I have no idea how we will ever do IVF again with DH not working. The only way it could possibly happen is with God's grace. If there was ever a bigger sign that we weren't in charge of things, I'd hate to have it happen to me.

Now, while I'm not able to sleep (even with Tyle.nol PM) or eat, the hubs is more relaxed than he has been in years. Clearly, because we have an attorney, we've known that they've been after him for years. So, now that it has happened, he can finally move on. I'm excited for him for what he can do now, but maybe it's selfish, I'm sad that our fertility treatments will have to be put on hold. I just have to have faith that in time, this will all work itself out and be for the better.

February is here!

NEXT MONTH! And, February is a short month, so it will be here in no time! This month will be full of basketball game watching, snow boot wearing, and freaking out because next month is IVF #2! I have to say, I am really happy that I'm excited about doing this again. It really was 50/50. At first, I was very unhappy about not using our last embryo first. But, the hubs is excited, so that helps. Of course, he just gives the shots. His part is easier.

If you are new to my blog, it's important for me to tell you that my hubs and I have Secondary Infertility. So, I talk about my child through the blog. I only tell you this so if you are having a bad infertility day, you aren't blindsided by this on my blog. The last thing I would ever want to do is upset someone through my writing.

Secondary infertility is a weird thing to deal with. First, in no way am I unappreciative for the blessing I have in our son. But, the feeling inside to have another child, that biological clock, well it ticks in me, too. Over the last decade, it has stopped ticking and is now just screaming really loudly. So, that's fun.

I spend a lot of time feeling guilty. I feel guilty that our time dealing with infertility takes time away from our son. However, I also feel guilty that he won't have a sibling if I don't continue to fight. Up to now, he is the only grandchild on both sides, so he has no cousins either.

I feel guilty being upset in my situation when there are so many women who would literally give their left arm to be in my situation. Sometimes, I think I should just give up the fight because, in reality, I am so blessed.

I have been called a liar when I have told some people of our infertility. Not in those exact words, but that's what they meant. Some people, just the ones who have sex to have babies, really don't understand what infertility is about.

Yes, I have a child. In knowing what I know now about my body, knowing how I should have never, ever have been able to carry him, having miscarriage talks with our OB, twice, during my pregnancy with him, I am so aware of how blessed I am that it physically hurts when I think of how this amazing boy was almost taken from me. Of course, knowing how stubborn he is now, I'm pretty sure that he had just as much a part in surviving my pregnancy as I did, if not more.

But, in learning to be happy about our upcoming IVF, I also need to stop feeling guilty. It's just as unhealthy. I need to remember that it's not my fault that I cannot get pregnant and so I shouldn't feel guilty, regardless of what others think I should be doing or what they think they'd be doing if they were in my situation. Endo causing our infertility is not my fault. I shouldn't feel guilty anymore about trying to resolve it.

The only things I have control over are how I feel and how I choose to react to others judging our infertility because it doesn't fit their definition. So, as of today, I choose to be grateful that we have the financial ability to try and solve our problem. I also choose to not let other people's opinions change how I feel. Isn't the saying: How other people feel about you isn't your concern? It goes something like that. However it goes, it's true.

In life we can't please everyone, although I wish I could. It's just impossible. So, to the person who had the nerve to tell me that I'm not infertile today, this blog post is for you. I'm sorry that you feel that way, but I am infertile. I'm sorry that this fact upsets you. I would gladly trade my endo riddled uterus for your healthy one. You game? And, I don't feel guilty seeking treatment because you think I should just be happy with what I have. I am happy. I'm not trying to replace what I already have, I'm trying to add to it. This is wrong? I never got the memo.

So, shove it ass wad!

That might have been taking it too far. But, I wasn't judging her walking around with her Co.ach bag and Hun.ter boots, and fancy bedazzled ass-pocket jeans, while her kids looked a mess. Ok. Maybe I was I little.

Now, that felt good. Ok. Going back to my happy place.