We are clear for take off

Yesterday was the day I've waited over a month for. My hysterosalpingogram (HSG). As excited as I was to finally get this test done, the last couple days my nerves were steadily increasing.

Would it hurt?
What would they find?
What if I get bad news?

It wasn't easy to watch the hours tick by at work. I hardly got anything productive done. I arrived at the RE's office, filled out my consent form and waited. I had my blood pressure taken and waited. I got changed into the gown / drape and waited. Then it was time for my uterus and tubes to take center stage.

Act 1: The Speculum
I dislike the speculum, not that I think any woman is particularly fond of them, they're just one of many uncomfortable parts of being female. I always feel like I have to stay perfectly still while it's in place, that one good flex would send the instrument shooting out.

Act 2: A Shot of Lidocaine
To help ease cramping and the placement of the catheter, the Dr gave my cervix a few shots of lidocaine. "Cervix" and "thin needle" are not words I really liked being in the same sentence, but it wasn't bad at all (and I hate needles). I felt nothing more than a slight pinch.

Act 3: Catheter and Colored Dye
With all the appropriate parts cleaned and numbed it was time for the catheter to be positioned just inside the uterus. She began to inject the dye and we waited to see what would show up on the screen.

The Main Event!
"Oh yeah those are definitely open," the Dr said almost immediately after the dye began to flow. I watched the monitor as dark swirls appeared filling in the shape of my uterus and the path of my fallopian tubes before spilling into the white void of my peritoneal cavity. At this time the cramps also started.

And then we were done. For how long I had waited for this and the nerves that had built up, I was surprised how quick the whole thing went; door to door I was there less than an hour. The residual cramps and spotting, however, weren't as short lived. My uterus is still occasionally protesting the procedure this morning.

I am relieved though that aside from my hormone problems, Dr. Love and I healthy. My uterus and the fallopian freeway are open for business and his little guys are good to go. Now we just need to get the ovaries on board and hopefully that should do it.

Evolving

In December, my sister in law gave birth to triplets at 34 weeks. For premies, they were healthy but still had to stay at the hospital for several weeks until they could come home. Dr. Love and I went and saw them once in the hospital. They were tiny, looked so fragile, and at that moment I remembered...babies scare me. I didn't grow up around a lot of babies so I'm very intimidated by them. I was nervous to hold them, worried about feeding them, and terrified of trying to burp the fragile looking bodies. I left the hospital feeling a bit disappointed about my prospects of being a good mom considering how intimidated I felt by them. However, I also realized that this was perfectly normal, and it would be different when they were my own.

That was almost a month ago. Last night, after Dr. Love's family birthday party, my sister in law left early to go home and start the process of feeding the trio. I condsidered offering to help, but my mother in law beat me to it and then patted me on the shoulder. "Come over in a half hour and you can do the next one," she said.

Little Becky gobbled down her bottle and then snuggled into my shoulder as I tried to burp her. Whispy smiles swept across her faces as she cooed, and drifted off to sleep. Next to me Dr. Love craddled tiny Mark, and in that moment I caught a glimpse of what it could be like for us. Apparently my mother in law did too as she gushed at us from across the room.
I realized we could do this.
I wasn't afraid.
I have at least a modicum of motherly instinct stashed somewhere inside me.
Now let's hope that Mother Nature gives us a chance.

I never did get a burp out of her, but I'm looking on the bright side and chocking it up to awesome feeding skills instead.

Ships passing in the night

I've been dreading this week. MOLE week. The week where Dr. Love goes into work at 6pm as I'm on my commute home and he gets home the next morning as I'm heading out the door for work. The week where I'll be lucky if I get to see Dr. Love for a hour, total. The week where I'll spend a lot of time alone.

I do enjoy having a bit of time to myself to work on projects in the evening without feeling guilty that I'm taking away from time with him. The problem comes with sleeping, more specifically getting to bed.

12:30am
1 am
2 am

The night ticks by and yet I'll still be awake, either engrossed in a project or wasting time in front of the T.V. I'm tired yet I find it difficult to go to bed as my sense of time is off and the night seems incomplete without him there. I know he won't be coming home, yet part of me figures it can't be time to go to bed yet, Dr. Love isn't home.

I'll hate the alarm clock more so than usual. This fact always seems to allude me when I'm sitting up in the late night as the hours of precious sleep time go wasted. In the morning I make a mental note to be better about it that night yet by bedtime that mental note will have made it's way to the recycle bin.

I'll still sleep on my side of the bed. Commonly people are excited not to share the bed for a night and look forward to stretching out over the free space. Not me. I'll some how stay just on my side of the bed. Even before I was married I predominately slept on one side of the bed. I guess subconsciously I feel that space is not mine and I leave it open, waiting for him to fill it. This week the only one filling it when I'm asleep will be Buster. It's a good thing he likes to cuddle.

On the books

My quest to get Provera to end my long cycle hit a couple bumps over the past few days; some good, some bad. In my discussion with the nurse, she informed me that Dr. M. wouldn't give me a prescription until I had a few labs drawn. He wanted to check my Progesterone, Estrogen, and HCG to make sure that I hadn't recently ovulated and that I wasn't pregnant. While I appreciated his thoroughness I was also a bit frusterated as I was unable to get to the lab for a couple days and I feared that would just prolong the process.

Then something surprising happened. Aunt Flow demonstrated that she does have at least one ounce of mercy and showed up over the weekend. As a result, over a month after our initial consultation, I was finally able to schedule my HSG which is hopefully the last bit of our testing. The icing on the cake? Since I don't feel like I need valium, I can drive myself to and from the procedure thus eliminating the need for me to get my parents involved at this time. My original instructions said that I would need to have someone drive me and since Dr. Love is unavailable to do so this month, that meant I would have had to "come out" about our fertility problems.

I know it's only a matter of time before I'll spill the beans, but I'm not quite ready...yet.

Long road to nowhere

Today marks CD 60, which makes this my longest cycle ever. I tested. Big fat, stark white, not a trace of a line, negative. In my head I expected this but my heart had a bit of hope for otherwise. I thought/hoped...

Maybe, just maybe, I'll follow in the footsteps of a recent string of surprise pre-IF-treatment BFPs on a message board I visit. (I'm really happy for those girls)

Maybe, just maybe, the reason the powers that be have stuck me here unable to continue testing and treatment is because I won't need it.

Maybe, just maybe, Disneyland really is the Happiest Place on Earth and we'd end up with an anniversary baby.

Maybe, just maybe, my relaxing over the last couple weeks and stepping away from my BBT thermometer, will have worked. Afterall it's the cliche advice everyone else gives those TTC.

Maybe, just maybe, I won't have to come out about our issues to my mom in asking for a ride to my test and instead I'll get to tell her she's going to be a grandma.

Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to give Dr. Love a birthday gift only I could give him.

Nope, negative, nada, zip, zilch, zero, bubkis.

I'm going to put a call into my RE for Provera so that hopefully we can get this crazy ride back in gear. My only hope now is that maybe, just maybe, Aunt Flow will be kind and show up in the next few days versus the 1.5-2 weeks that it can take with Provera. Maybe, but she doesn't have the history of being kind, I don't think it's in her nature.

2010 in review

It's said that you don't know where you are going until you know where you've been.


In 2010:

• I got a new job after being laid off a week before Christmas 2009.



• Dr. Love graduated medical school and matched at his #1 choice for residency programs



• We traveled to St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, and the Grand Turk on our first cruise. We got to go snorkeling, parasailing, and risked our lives in a death defying cab ride around the island.


• We said goodbye to my family dog Yoda.

• We adopted our first fur-kid, Buster, to keep me company during the many nights Dr. Love would be away on call. Buster will probably forever be our first born and while we had a couple rocky incidents in the beginning that made me doubt our decision, he's snuggled his way into our hearts and brings so much fun into our home

• We started trying to conceive our first child
• We welcomed 3 new nephews/nieces, and 1 grand-niece into our extended family



• We started working with a RE as I was diagnosed with hypothyroid, and PCOS



• We celebrated our 2 year anniversary and NYE in Disneyland

Here's hoping 2011 is a great year.

Never a dull day

One of the things that amazes me about Dr. Love's job is that every day it's a new challenge and new people. Of course that can bring it's own frustrations too, but it does make for some interesting stories. Currently he is on a OB rotation at our County Hospital. During his time there he has had:
-A patient named Leydi
-A patient named Lesbia
-Had a patient sit up and cut her own umbilical cord because her husband didn't want to
-Delivered a baby with 6 fingers/toes on each hand/foot for a total of 24 digits

And there's still two and a half weeks to go.

Waiting in Limbo Land

On December 13, 2010 we met with a reproductive endocrinologist and formulated a plan to get us on the road to having a baby. In our typical fashion, Dr. Love and I jumped into action. We wanted to take full advantage of Dr. Love's 2 week vacation time and get all of our testing done so that we could hit the new year with a fresh start.

The testing roll call:

-semen analysis: complete. Results=good

-2 hour glucose test: done. Results=passed

-A1C: complete. Results=a little high but still fine

-TSH: done. Results= 1, which means I'm now hyperthyroid. Stopping meds and will recheck in a few weeks.

-HSG:.....:crickets chirping: still waiting for Aunt Flow :(

Currently I am at CD 53 which is just a bit frustrating when I expected to be done with this cycle weeks ago. I took a home pregnancy test this morning and as I expected it came back negative. I haven't had a cycle go this long since going off birth control a year ago. I'm starting to believe that she hibernates during the winter, she is a beast after all. Currently I plan to hold out one more week with a small glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, something miraculous happened on vacation and it's just too early to tell.

I'm frustrated that I've been on the ball and followed through on everything I can do on my part and yet I wait. I have a plan that I want to put into action but I'm stuck in waiting mode. Hurry up and wait seems to be the theme of my life and I'm tired of it. I understand that life is full of things that are out of our control and we have to be patient, but I'm getting tired of being patient.

I sit and watch as others move on with their plans and yet I'm stuck. I know where I have been and I'm on the cusp of going where I want to be yet I'm stuck. Wait, wait, wait. Patience, patience, patience. I'm ready to get off this merry-go-round to nowhere.

The Most Exciting Christmas Party Ever!

I know with the New Year that Christmas is old news but I didn't get a chance to talk about this earlier.


This year was the first year that Dr. Love and I had a work related Christmas Party to attend. Last year I got laid off the week before Christmas (the scrooges) and Dr. Love wasn't working yet. While most work parties can be kind of, well, lame, I was looking forward to a night out on someone else's dime. I guess I could be called a freeloader but I also like hanging out with Dr. Love's fellow residents.


With dinner finished it was time to move onto the activities. There was an audible collective groan as the program coordinator tried to get everyone organized. As she started to give us instructions there was a low boom, the building shook, and a billowing cloud of dust could be seen out the window we were sitting next to. A car had veered through oncoming traffic lanes and crashed into the building.



Now if you're ever going to crash into a building, pick one with a room full of doctors. Within mere moments they were spilling outside to tend to the people in the car. Talk about having your own emergency responders. Miraculously everyone was fine, except the car. According to the driver he had been in the middle of a sneeze and lost control of the car. According to one of the 3rd year residents, the perfume of alcohol emanating from him suggested a different story.

Needless to say all the commotion stole the program coordinator's thunder for a while. If you've ever caught yourself rubber necking on the freeway, imagine getting to watch it all from less than 10 feet away; it was difficult to focus on much else. I do have a new found appreciation for construction, however, as had the building been poorly constructed or had the car crashed just a few more feet down the road it would have been bad news for us.

It will be hard for other parties to top the one where we watched our life flash before our eyes as the walls came tumbling down and let's not forget the purple Snuggie that Dr. Love won.