Dear sweet clomid, I'm NOT going to miss you

                                                                       

Tonight is my last night of clomid and boy am I glad!. The first few days I had no side effects but last night I had clomid induced rage. Poor Jared was the victim of that and to make it worse, he laughed at me for my crazy mood swings. Thinking back on it I'm sure it was pretty funny to see me fly off the handle when all he was doing was sticking his tongue out at me. Then all during the night I had hot flashes. Today I'm extremely dizzy, I had a very hard time getting home from work because I was scared I would pass out right there on the highway. I'm curious about whats going on down there cause my ovaries have been killing me! Hopefully lots of eggs developing, but not TOO many. As much as my mom would like it, I would not be able to handle having 5 kids at once. My next IUI should be at the beginning of next week.
I'm going to attend an infertility conference April 30th and I'm pretty excited. It will be sooo nice to be around a bunch of people going through the same thing I am. For your reading pleasure I want you all to look at this link. It is the resolve website for people going through infertility and this is for family members. It gives a brief description of how it feels to go through infertility and what to say to the infertile family member. I think infertility is the hardest disease for family members and friends to deal with cause most of them can't possibly understand the pain associated with it. Many try to say the right things, and end up saying something hurtful. I don't get mad at the hurtful comments because I know most people don't know what to say and just don't understand. Anyway here is the link. There is 3 topics to read so I'll post all 3

http://www.resolve.org/support-and-services/for-family--friends/when-infertility-strikes.html

http://www.resolve.org/support-and-services/for-family--friends/myths-and-facts.html

And the most important

http://www.resolve.org/support-and-services/for-family--friends/infertility-etiquette.html

And the verdict is...

                                                                    
Yep that's right. My first IUI failed. We both expected it though. It was a last minute deal so not a big chance it would work. One thing that was new was that I had symptoms of low progesterone this cycle. To get pregnant and maintain a pregnancy, most doctors like to see a luteal phase of 12 or more days. If any spotting or a period comes before that, then that means low progesterone. I had spotting for 4 days so I get the pleasure of starting my first round of progesterone supplements this cycle as well as clomid. (tmi? Ha! Nothing is tmi anymore when it comes to infertility. lol) I start clomid Friday and I'm kinda anxious since clomid has some side effects of extreme mood swings. Poor Jared. I'm on the lowest dose possible though so hopefully I won't have the side effects. So basically I start the clomid friday and stay on it for 5 days. Then I wait for a positive ovulation test, I get the iui, and then start progesterone until I either get a positive pregnancy test or go 15 days without a positive test.
I had MORE insurance problems today. Story of my life right now. They denied a claim for a diagnostic x-ray. I called them asking why they denied it. They said "well it says right here that we cover diagnostic only for infertility" So I responded "alright, let me read this claim off to you. It says right here DIAGNOSTIC x-ray. So please tell me why it wasn't covered". I need to take an insurance class cause clearly I'm doing their job for them. Jared is going to take care of it tomorrow hopefully.

Still Waiting....

So a lot of people have asked me for updates. My sister even asked me for an update 2 days after my iui. lol. Well the update is that...I'm still waiting. Sorry guys, but pregnancy doesn't happen overnight. Well it kinda does, but it won't show up on a test for another two weeks. :) This whole process is a waiting game. Waiting to get a lh surge, waiting to ovulate, waiting for a temp rise, and then waiting to test. It really is a boring process.  So there is nothing really to report yet. I'm not looking forward to testing so I'm going to wait till the last minute before I have to test. I wish there was a sure sign that a woman was pregnant other then taking that evil test! I hate searching for that darn pink line that never shows up but seems to mess with my mind.  

MORE insurance problems and other ramblings

                                                                 

Okay for those that don't know yet, I've been at war with my insurance company. My insurance covers 90% of diagnostic testing for infertility, well lately they have covered 0% and I have made 4 phone calls to them already trying to get things straightened out. So today I got ANOTHER explanation of benefits saying that my claims have been denied. It will get straightened out eventually, but I just wish I could stop getting those stupid EOB forms cause they just create more worry and stress in my life. I'm so glad that I'm done with insurance for now. They don't cover any of my treatment and for right now I'm done with the diagnostic tests.
On to the good stuff. A couple months ago I felt led to read Dave Ramseys book and start his program. I started working on my emergency fund and then I found out I was going to start treatment sooner then expected. I didn't think we would have the money to do 6 rounds of treatment like the doctor wants to do. But I sat down and really went over finances and I've realized that somehow I have enough to pay cash for treatments and then probably do one round of injectibles and a monitored IUI. Injectibles means shots to stimulate egg growth and then shots to release the eggs. And when I do that I have to be monitored by occational ultrasounds so I don't produce to many eggs and end up as the next octomom. lol. So I guess I should be trusting God a little bit more and turning all my concerns all over to him cause I don't know how I'm ending up with the extra money to do these treatments so he must be taking control somehow.

On a Good Note

I'm gonna end this night on a good note. I was surfing the internet and found a conversation between a fertility specialist and a group of patients. One of the members asked " Are some of us with unexplained infertility possibly normal, it just takes longer to conceive?" The doctor replied "Yes. Unexplained infertility is referred by some as subfertility. The purpose of therapy is to shorten the time to conception"
So I might be subfertile. I like the sound of that. Gives me hope. Good night.

So many thoughts

I can't write everything down cause my thoughts are so jumbled right now. First of all I'm discouraged about the iui. I mean if it hasn't happened naturally after 2+ years, what makes me think it will happen now? I told Jared that next time he needs to make sure his sperm brings my egg flowers cause obviously my eggs have very high standards. I'm in a give up kinda mood right now. I do feel better, however, knowing that my RE is gonna take care of me and she will do everything she can to make this happen, even if it means we will be eating beans and water for the rest of our lives. lol
One good thing about infertility (I guess once you fail long enough at something, you can start to see the good in situations) is that I KNOW I'm going to be an incredible mom! If I hadn't gone through infertility, I wouldn't have a clue how to raise a child. This journey has opened my eyes to others parenting styles and techniques. I watch people and I take notes on what I will and won't do with my kids. I know that they will act up, but I can just think back to the long road it took to get them here, and I will be so much more forgiving. I'm going to write a letter to future Megan just to remind her of the struggles she went through. I don't want to dwell on the hard times, but when I have a hard time with my children, I want to be able to be reminded of how much I went through to get them here. Nothing is worse then infertility.

I'm Blogging!

                                                                             

Okay so I never thought I would start blogging. I now that I'm starting to loose my mind with baby fever, I needed a way to sort out my thoughts. In the back of my mind, I kinda knew this was going to be a difficult journey. I was hoping I was wrong, but I couldn't have been more right. Difficult is an understatement. The first month we started trying, two girls at work ended up pregnant. Those were the worst 9 months of my life. I felt like everywhere I turned people were reminding me that we were failing so miserably at conceiving. After about 1 year of trying, we decided to take a 5 month "break". Basically not trying, but not preventing either. We got better insurance and then started trying again. We are getting serious about this now. I am ready to be a mom!
In December we started infertility testing. My hubby passed his s/a with flying colors. I had 2 blood tests done and my numbers were perfect. Then came the dreaded hsg. Boy did that hurt! But I passed it. I did the hsg 3/3/11. We met with my RE again to discuss treatment options and she wanted to start off doing 1/2 a pill of clomid next month along with an iui. Since the hsg is supposed to make me more fertile, we decided to do an unmedicated iui this month, so we did that 3/9/10.
Fast forward to today. I'm feeling less confident about these iui's. I mean the success rate is so low, I'm having a horrible feeling that we are headed towards ivf. I have been so hormonal today and ended up getting so mad at Jared for not bringing a can of chicken broth home, that I ended up backing up into his car as I huffed off to the grocery store. (oops) So that's pretty much where I'm at right now.