Intrauterine Attempt #1

Tomorrow morning we're off to the doctor to give D's little guys some direction. When I went for my check-up yesterday, the doctor told me that I had one really good follicle that will absolutely produce one good egg. She said we'd be ready on Friday morning. D had to give me the trigger shot (obtaining the medication is a whole nother story that I'll deal with in a separate entry) at 9 pm on Wednesday.

My insurance company covers at least three intrauterine insemination attempts (IUIs). Tomorrow begins another two week wait. I should have sushi tomorrow night.

The latest worry: a friend telling me that the quality of a woman's eggs at this age can mean that if assisted fertilization and implantation actually does happen, a less-than-perfect egg can produce a child with flaws. I harbor no illusions that my possible future child will be perfect; no one is. But to intentionally create a less-than-perfect infant....gives me pause. I gotta find more information about that.

Indeed, the ovulation test showed a surge just an hour before I was to leave the house and go away for the weekend with my girlfriends while D packed up to head off in the opposite direction to a frisbee tournament. Thankfully, we had given it one try in the morning before we knew the surge was positive. What happened that day, however, I think will bear more fruit, so to speak, in the coming months. We had a really difficult discussion about priorities and our approach to this whole babymaking project that will be helpful next month. And then we gave it another try before I ran off to catch the train. : )

To my delight, D actually drove up the Catskills from his tournament in Philadelphia so that we could log one more attempt during the second fertile day. I love him for that (and so many other things).

I don't want to say "fingers crossed," because I don't want to set myself up for a big disappointment in two weeks, but I can honestly say that we gave it the best try yet.

Now, I just have to make sure that I scale down the stress level next month.

Too Busy for a Baby

I think we might be too busy to have a baby.

This past month was a wash--after getting the HSG test, I never got an LH surge, and we actually kept waiting for the LH surge before having a really good go at it, so conception certainly wasn't going to happen from our July chance.

I got my period yesterday, which meant a whole new round of planning. And guess what? All online ovulation calendars confirm that it's likely that my next two most fertile days will be next Friday and Saturday night--the two days that D and I have planned to be apart. He's going to a frisbee tournament, and I'm going to the Catskills with some friends.

I can't cancel, because my friends (one family coming from Buffalo, the other friend coming from Boston) have all taken time off and we've been planning this for two months. D could theoretically cancel, but he hasn't offered to.

I wouldn't ask him to cancel, but there's part of me that wishes he'd think about it. It's about weighing taking every chance we have (and the first, second, and maybe third month after the HSG are more likely to be successful) against the importance of this particular frisbee tournament. He used the excuse that I needed him home for babymaking to get out of a tournament he DIDN'T want to go to--even though babymaking was not on the agenda that weekend. So....now that it should be....

Now, the other possibility is that my LH surge comes two- to three- days later than the ovulation calendar predicted: which was the case during the two months that the ovulation tests actually worked. So if he did cancel the frisbee trip, and the LH surge didn't come until three days later, I would feel terrible. Sometimes I wish he were the kind of guy who would drop everything and come running the minute the test strip showed a surge....The place in the Catskills is three hours from Philadelphia, so maybe I can convince him to either come with me on Friday and leave from the Catskills on Saturday morning, or come back early from the tournament if the surge says: "go!"

That said, the last thing I want to do is be seen as a ball & chain.

I haven't even asked him yet. Let's see what he says.

WTF.

So I had the HSG test on July 28, where they shot radiation goo through my innards to see what was goin on all up in there (everything was all clear!) and I leaked for like a day and a half. I did ovulation tests every day since then (19 days now) and no freakin' LH surge. WTF. They say that this HSG test has a chance of resulting a smoother journey for the sperm, so there are some women who get pregnant after the HSG test. Well, we didn't take advantage of this extra boost this month, unfortunately. We should be doing it like bunnies right now, but instead, I waited for a positive LH test, and heat, exhaustion, and other diversions kept us from the job at hand and the LH surge never came. I totally don't understand it, and I am getting very frustrated with how little I know about reproduction, and how little it actually out there in a coherent, public way about conception. July-August was a bust. My doctor says not to worry, try again next month, but I feel really stupid. Not only did I waste a huge amount of money on these ovulation tests which were all negative, we also kept getting ready for the right moment to have sex, which never came. I am going to have to try to plan for less stress this coming month and just get myself ready for sex 24-7.

Finally, a surge!

Well, already our zero dollar baby is not a zero dollar baby. I've spent well over $50 on ovulation tests so far! ($15.99, $23.99, and $22.99 respectively)

Yesterday, I almost became hysterical when the test, again, failed to show an LH surge--the sign that you are about to ovulate. I let out one of my banshee yells (which David hates), spent about an hour googling things like "Does no LH surge mean that I'm entering early menopause?", and then finally made up my mind to be calmer and go through with the plan--have sex anyway and just cross my fingers. I didn't get to the stage where I attempted to make peace with the fact that we might not be able to have children--I'll save that effort for a more desperate time.

This morning we tried again, and after breakfast I walked up to the drugstore to purchase yet another kit. This time, I bought the one with 20 test strips (I've been testing 2-3 times a day).

I waited a few hours, tried not to drink too much water, and when I finally tested at around 2 pm, voila! The test line was darker than the control line, which means that there is now an LH surge. I think this morning's attempt was perfect timing. Now we just have to keep at it for another day or so and hope for the best.