Things I Love... *updated

*Updated* My husband, family, friends, duh (they're people, not things though; I decided that I should put them on this list)
All things "Tw.ilight" except being called a Tw.i-har.d. *(Update for Lindsey and anyone else who was wondering - I won't see "Ec.lipse" till late Friday night for 2 reasons: 1) scheduling conflicts, and 2) I saw both "Twil.ight" and "Ne.w Moo.n" on opening night and had to sit through 2 hours each of screaming teenagers and missed most of the dialogue. Not again!!! I figure 10 pm on a Friday, 2 days after the premiere, should lower the chances of screaming teeny-boppers so that I can actually enjoy the movie with DH (a reluctant date) and my giant tub of completely unhealthy popcorn).
*Updated* Movie Popcorn, yum.
All things "Har.ry Pot.t.er" except when DH teases me b/c ONE TIME I had a dream I kissed Daniel Radcliffe.
Arrested Development - get that movie on its way!
Golf.
My new irons.
My new driver.
My new bag.
My AWESOME HA.WKEYE SHOES.
Pino Grigio wine - chilled.
Chopped.
Top Chef.
The words "Amuse Bouche".
The Real World circa Season 1 to about 2003.
Road Rules before it got stupid.
MTV when it showed videos.
Sporty polos.
Bermuda shorts.
Cats - especially kittens.
Tosh.0. Love him! Love his show!
Musicals.
Broadway.
Glee.
Lea Michelle.
Kristin Chenowith.
IDINA MENZEL.
Wicked.
Les Miz.
Funny Girl.
Funny Lady.
Candy - way too much.
Diet pop.
Kohls bucks.
My new HTC Hero phone.
Mom's spaghetti, potato salad, rhubarb cake, blackberry cobbler, ranch dressing.
Grandma's pear jam.
Cupcakes.
"The Notebook".
"Titanic".
"Tommy Boy".
"Dumb and Dumber".
Seattle Mariners (when they aren't awful - mostly the 1995, 1996, 2001 teams).
Seattle Seahawks (up to the point that they lost to the Steelers in the 2005 Super Bowl and then got rotten).
Seattle SuperSonics (1990's - Rain Man, The Glove...wow).
College Softball.
Olympic Softball.
SYTYCD - new love!
My wedding.
My honeymoon - Jamaica (Couple's Resort in Ocho Rios, now named Tower Isle).
My cockatiel Teo - he's 15 years old.
My kitties Milo and Jack (ages 3 and 5, respectively).
My new landscaping thanks to MIL; the lilies are blooming, as is my Angel/Memory Garden plants/flowers.
The town I live in (small town hicksville compared to Seattle!).
Driving 78 mph whyile blasting my CDs and singing loudly on the highway during my 90 minute commute (total/both ways) every day.
Thunderstorms.
A cold Bud Select while on hole #5 at Meschers.
My hair after it's been done at the salon - it stays nice for at least 1 more day!
Full body massages - when I don't feel fat, pasty, and gassy (hasn't happened but I've been nervous).
A picture of me from college when I was pitching in Florida - I was RIPPED!
My tattoo - yes I have one; it's a rose with Del.ta P.hi Sig.ma in greek letters underneath; lower right pelvis under belly button.
My birthmark (took me decades to get over it, it's under my left butt cheek - kids teased me endlessly).
Traveling.
Currently, my job.
New technology I understand.
Ooh...Netf.lix - we stream it to our flat screen via the W.ii. Love it.
Sleeping in.
Breakfast Pizza.

Okay that's enough.

I needed to be positive for you guys and you also got to know me a little better, I suppose.

Thanks for all the support - I still need it so much!!!

*Wince*

I was at the Dollar Tree during the lunch hour to buy a bunch of ovulation and pregnancy tests. I then threw a bunch of other crap on top to a) hide what i had in my basket, and b) enjoy a session of retail therapy.

I went to check out and the 60 year old employee saw what was at the bottom of my basket and told me to "just relax.....go home and open a bottle of wine and turn on some music and have some fun...", that she and her husband had problems and that's what she did...they didn't need these pee tests back then.

I wasn't even mad. I was more embarassed for her b/c she shouldn't say that stuff to anyone, and then embarassed for myself because if I wasn't an infertile, i'd probably laugh at someone buying that stuff at the Dollar Tree.

So even though what she said was technically offensive to an IF-er, I just laughed and told her to have a nice day. Why be a bitch, you know? I'll save that for comments from family or friends - like when my sister told me, after my third miscarriage, that "God will give you a baby when he thinks you're ready". 

Why I oughta.....

Perspective Change Please

You know how in the movies, when there’s a flashback or flash-forward though events in someone’s life? We observe the heroine meet Mister Right and they get married. Then they buy and fix up their dream home. Finally we see them having kids, going to soccer games, carpooling…all the boring, normal stuff. Or think about movies you’ve watched when the main character ascends the corporate ladder. Remember how we sat through The Lion King and hummed along as Simba transformed from a cub to an adolescent/adult lion during the “Hakuna Matata” song?
It’s so easy for the audience to go along with the life-changing events or trials and tribulations of a person (or animal’s) journey. The problem with the point of view from the seat in the audience is that we don’t feel what the characters are going through because we get to be a fly on the wall.
I wish I was a fly on the wall in my life. I want the last three years of my life to be one of those sequences with no dialogue, just sweeping, melodic music and a disconnection from the sadness and despair that is infertility and (recurrent) pregnancy loss. I wish I wasn’t taking three Benadryls every night just to be able to fall and stay asleep.
I wish a lot of things.
But if wishes were fishes, we’d have a huge fish fry. You like what I did there? Yeah, not so funny, but I don’t know what else to say on the subject.

Updates...

AF started Saturday/Sunday, around midnight. Painful, ruined some clothes at a family gathering yesterday...yay. Glad I've learned over the years how to get those stains out quickly and easily.

So AF #1 has started. AF #2 should begin sometime around July 18th-20th. IUI #8 should be the week after the 4th of July. At least I'll get to imbibe a little, unless they say don't drink with all the injectables. No biggie, b/c no out-of-town family visits are in order and we just get to relax that weekend with a family reunion and golf outing on my side.

Other updates...golfing is going well. I have a tournament this afternoon, league on Wednesday and the women's city championship (2-day) this weekend.

...9 days till E.clip.se is released in theaters!!!! Not sure if I want to watch all 3 at the theater next Tuesday night and stay for the premiere at midnight b/c I won't get home till like 3:30 am, maybe asleep by 4...i can barely stay awake past 11 on weeknights. I have a hair appt at 7:30 next Wednesday (the first night I can see the movie after work)...and that's been pushed back a month already. So do I wait till Thursday night? Yeah...probably. I have to be a responsible adult I suppose. Not looking forward to all the screaming teenagers so I figure Thursday is a better night to go b/c the weekend will be insane!!!

...SIL is not pregnant. yet. i feel like time is running out on that one though, they have to get lucky sometime. they always get what they want.

...DH is looking for a new job, desperately. It's impossible to find a job for someone with an MBA and 4 years out of college with a job at one location that he only took for the benefits. Sucks. He's so underpaid.

We want to do IVF and his car is about to die. We need him to make a lot more money and he's trying. If he doesn't pass the Series 63 test next month, he's fired anyways. We can't afford that....

So there we go. I'm sorry if I haven't been commenting, I guess all the pregnancies are still hard for me to take but I'm sure that once some more time passes and we start doing treatments again, I'll get more hopeful.

Genetic Testing Results

"No Chromosomal Abnormalities."

Me: 46 XX
DH: 46 XY

It's an answer, but still leaves unanswered questions: why all the miscarriages? do we really have that bad of luck?

Well that's done.

Also - could I be doing ANYTHING worse during the 2 weeks post-ovulation? Drinking, exercising, not taking prenatals/baby aspirin, enjoying junk food and lots of coffee.... like our sad attempt to get pregnant right after a d&c would have worked anyways.

At least, according to the Mayo Clinic, we should be able to have a biological child together.

I'm Still Here

I've been golfing a lot. I had a tournament yesterday (got 2nd overall) and have one next Monday...then the 26th and 27th of June is like the Women's City Tournament. Individual play. DH is my caddie on day 2. I hope to be in the top 10. That'd be nice.

DH and I were golfing on Saturday, just the 2 of us. We got in a stupid fight and I started crying, pretty hard. Choked on my iced tea. I guess that holding back all the pain and tears from all of this can hit at crazy times I guess. I've also been really b*tchy lately. That's not like me. I don't know if suddenly, 4 1/2 weeks post-d&c, hormones are screwing with me. But I'm pretty out of it these days.

I am a nut so I'm planning on seeing if our +OPK trysts worked by testing this upcoming weekend. Yeah, well I need something to look forward too. AF or a BFP are both fine with me. AF means we can move on.

I got the results from my chromosomal tests today - NORMAL. DH's are due in a couple days. At least its not me. I'd feel awful if DH had something wrong, but I'd like to know if that's the reason for RPL. If his test is normal, we'll go ahead with 1-2 more (DH wants 3 more) Injectable IUI cycles. Can you imagine? 10 IUIs?

We found some mini/micro-IVF in Madison. I'm following one blogger (makingmemom.blogspot.com) using this method; unfortunately, for some crazy reason it's not working for her (yet, b/c I think it will). The price is right...any thoughts on this?

3 of my co-workers are expecting. Due in September, October and November. I was the fourth one who was pregnant and would have been due in December. I have to see their growing bellies every day. Only 35 people in the office. The three of them work several feet from my desk. Some days, I'm fine. Others, it's tough. I just hope I don't start having crying jags. I would have been 12 weeks this Thursday.

Is it just me, or are most of the bloggers I'm following pregnant now? It's not fair, it seems, that I've been pregnant before them and they had to read about my pregnancies. Sad though, how the tide turned after my most recent loss. BFPs everywhere. 

With my luck, we'd get pregnant during our "break" and lose that one too. This sucks.

I'm Pathetic

Yesterday...6pm. Feeling cranky, wondering if it's legit or hormone-based. Felt boobs. They were sensitive. I've felt crampy lately.  Remembered I had 3 Dollar Tree Ovulation tests in my car along with 4 Dollar Tree HPTs. Decided to take an internet cheapie OPK. It was blazingly positive. 2 thoughts ran through my mind: (1) how am I ovulating 3 weeks after the d&c? I thought it'd be 2 weeks and I'm supposed to get AF this Friday b/c it'll have been 4 weeks since the surgery.... (2) holy shit what if I'm pregnant again ALREADY?

So I got an EPT out...kept it in the package. Doubted that I'm pregnant even though we BD'd (finally) 2 weeks after surgery. Ran down to car to get boxes of tests, DH stared at me, asked what I was doing. I said, "nothing" and ran back upstairs. Desperately tried to pee again. Got enough for an HPT and an OPK.

Guess which was positive?




....the OPK. Scared ya didn't I?


I squinted at the negative HPT (which had a fricking evap line) and told myself I was a sad, sad loser and shouldn't even be pregnant yet b/c my body needs to reset.



Then I said that I didn't care and decided to try to get pregnant again. Already. Even though our chromosome tests are on their way to the M.ay.o Clinic.



Needless to say, I'm trying to have an "oops" baby. I'm sick. I'm trying to punish myself. Why can't I just enjoy the 2 months off?


Because it's been my life to TTC for the past 33 months straight. I've been pregnant 4 times. Something's gotta stick one of these days.

Sigh. At least (TMI) our sex life is back on track. For now.

WTF Appt

Here's the plan:

Must wait till AF #2 post-D&C to start trying again. AF #1 isnt due till next week or so. Perhaps next Friday, perhaps the week after. I took an OPK on Saturday (15 or so days post-d&c) to see if I was ovulating or something to be able to better track AF's arrival (she comes 14 days after ovulation, typically no matter what). The opk was negative so I'll take one more probably tonight and if nothing then I'll just wait and see I guess.

So AF #2 should be mid-July. Fine enough.

In the meantime, I will live life and golf A LOT. I got new irons yesterday (Taylormade Burner Plus) and a new driver (Nike SQ Dymo Str8-fit Driver), a new Nike 4-wood and a new bag (also Nike) in Iowa Hawkeye colors.

Big purchase but 1/2 the price of DH's clubs he bought last year. I'm golfing 2-3 days a week now for the next several weeks with some big tournaments so I'll just enjoy that and not worry about meds, beta hells, 2wws, etc.

We are doing the karotyping/chromosomal analysis too. We'll get our blood draws done this week and get the results back hopefully before AF #2 arrives so we can finalize our decision to do 2 more injectable IUI cycles. If they don't work we'll go to IVF.

Dr. B understood our frustration with the "local" (1.5 hrs away) clinic and recommended Madison. I have been in contact with the Reproductive Center in Minneapolis but Madison is closer (2 hrs at most) and will allow all monitoring here, so we might go that route.

Dr. B said that barring any abnormal results of the testing, he believes we should be successful with an IUI. DH's parts work, I can clearly get pregnant, but Dr. B thinks we're just having awful luck.

I'll keep you all posted but I think it'll take me awhile to get back to daily posting. Lots of BFPs out there and I'm so happy for everyone who's found success after so much struggling.

I guess I'm just sad that I'm not on that journey with them right now and I kind of need to take a deep breath after miscarriage #4. It hit pretty hard. I'll try to do 1-2 posts a week. I will try to comment on other blogs, but the pregnant ones might take some time for me. I'm so sorry but again, I'm so happy for all of you.