Anyone want an update?

holy crap its been a long time since I've written a post!

let's get up to speed...

nothing much happened leading up to the appointment with the fertility clinic, so i'll start there.

i'm so glad I kept the appointment! they were really nice and understanding about the situation and were willing to do what they could to help get answers, if there were any to be found. they sent me for an HSG, a hysteroscopy and a list of blood tests (both pre-O and post-O). the HSG was pretty easy for me, minimal pain, but the hysteroscopy later that afternoon? holy! my uterus had decided to move during the 2 hours between the tests and the gyno had a bit of a difficult time finding it. the US wand was so uncomfortable, the most uncomfortable one of those has ever been. the damn thing was perpendicular by the time she found my uterus! o.O  but everything checked out, still completely normal and nothing pointing towards a fertility problem. fuck. not that I want there to be a problem, but it would help to know why things took so long or why I lost 2 babies. I hate not having answers! when I went for the follow up to get the results, she sent me for 2 more tests, one for a few more blood disorders that was new protocol as well as a genome or karyotyping (can't remember which one) to see if it might be a genetics issue. I haven't booked my appointment for that follow up yet. its not high on my priority list atm. but they did say that now that i'm a patient, as long as I go for yearly check-ins with them, I won't have to go through the entire referral process again and have the 18 month wait to get an appointment again. so that's also why I haven't booked the follow up to those tests yet. figured i'd stretch it out so that its a bit longer til I go for a follow up to keep my status with them.

I did ask about my future options, like if i'm not with a partner by the time i'm 35-ish and decide I want to go it alone and go the donor sperm route and she just about sent me home with an information packet! gah! I wasn't quite ready for that, but just wanted to have an idea at what i'd be looking at if I go that route, and it sounds relatively inexpensive (in comparison to IVF anyway) and i'd likely be on minimal meds to help with ovulation so the only big cost would be the sperm and the IUI procedure. so its definitely something i'm keeping in mind for the future if I don't find mr right in the next few years and still want a baby of my own : )

i'm still not on BC, and i'd prefer not to be. my main reason atm is cost since I don't have a health plan to help pay for it and i'm not having sex (at least until the last few weeks, I know, big life things that i'm not giving details about yet, sorry!) so there wasn't much of a point in paying for something that was kind of pointless. I also am a little scared to put on weight with it after working so hard on that...

I think i'm going to break my updates into a few posts that way it doesn't feel like a novel to read (or write). i'll try to remember in the next week to write up the next update, probably on general life stuff.

fertility clinic

so a couple months ago I finally go the call I'd been waiting for... one I'd been waiting for since before my marriage fell apart. the fertility clinic finally called with an appointment.

I want to go even for just myself so that I can get all the answers I possibly can about my own fertility so that I'm better informed for the future.

I'm just worried about them not taking me seriously because I'm a single person instead of part of a couple still waiting to finally conceive and get their THB  : (  I have a friend going with me for moral support.

It will help kind of determine what direction I want to go in life and my dating future. If having a baby myself is going to be next to impossible, I'm not going to date someone who absolutely wants kids. I'd date someone who is okay with either possibility. if I'm told that I should count my lucky stars that I even got pregnant twice, then I'd date someone who doesn't care to have kids or is okay without them or who already has some but doesn't want anymore. it just helps me weed out who I would and wouldn't date. if I'm told that there's definitely a chance that I can carry a healthy baby to term, then I'd date someone who does want kids, because I definitely still want kids if its a possibility, at least for the next few years its a possibility anyway.... I'm not getting any younger... ugh.

anyway, so my appointment is in a month and i'll update how that goes.

to BC or not to BC?

I've been struggling to find something to blog about given my current life situation. its hard. I don't know what to talk about anymore. I could vent away about a few interactions with XH, but that's not cool of me to do where just anyone could stumble across my blog and see it. and now thinking back, I maybe shouldn't have posted my last blog post  :-/ 

I guess there is a small handful of topics I could talk about. like how I'm trying to decide if I want to go back on BC yet or not. on one hand, it would take the guess work out of when I should be prepared for AF so I'm not surprised by her arrival. but on the other, I'm fairly good at figuring it out (thank you ovulation cramps that seem to be worse now than they were the 4 years of TTC...) and reading all my signs/symptoms, but I have no control over when she shows up. I liked being able to avoid having it while on holidays so I didn't have to pack AF related items with me. I've been off BC for almost 5 years. going back on it isn't exactly something I want to do at this point in my life. I should either be pregnant or still TTC. instead, I'm contemplating BC so that when I do meet a guy, or end up in a friends with benefits situation, there's less chance of an oops when I'm not in a great position to take on the roll of mom. as much as I would love nothing more than to finally be a mom... that's just not the way I want it to happen. I'm lucky in that I know my body very well after years of studying it for TTC purposes, but its kind of awkward to tell a guy "its okay, I'm tracking my fertile signs/symptoms to avoid pregnancy, I've got a few more days or I'm in the last half of my cycle, I'm not fertile". there's also the whole avoiding STI's as well...  : P 

to go along with the internal debate about BC, I'm still waiting for a call from the fertility clinic. yes, the referral went in in October, and yes, I'm still waiting... I never did make a call to cancel it because I was no longer TTC, but after talking to some friends, I'm thinking I should keep it and at least try to get anything to do with me tested so that I'm more informed about my future options. you know, whether i'll be looking for a guy who's open to the idea of having a family or a guy who's okay with not having kids with me. so because of this, I'm thinking about remaining off of BC until I get that testing done. yes, it sucks not having control over AF and if I don't want to have an oops right now, but knowing what's possible in the future is kind of important. it'll help avoid wasting time TTC if I know its just not in the cards, or will help speed up the process knowing if there's something that needs to be done to aid in TTC sooner, rather than later, and not need to wait a year to be put back on an apparently long ass waiting list.

anyway, that's all for now. i'll make another post soon, I promise!

amazing the clarity you receive with information

so just before I left for my time away in Ontario (and literally days after my post about splitting), I was given information that explained a hell of a lot of what happened in the preceding month.

he had started dating someone. the weekend he suddenly flipped a switch and I lost my friend, he was at a hockey tournament and had her there with him. it explained why he didn't want me there (I typically go to all fire dept functions as I have many friends on the dept since I've been around them for the last 7 years, so I wasn't only going to watch him, I was going to watch friends). he said it wouldn't be a long game but then I saw pictures from friends that were there and it hurt that they went and I was told to stay away. so finding out he was dating, explained why he didn't want me there. a lot of his friends were pissed at him because a lot of them didn't even know we had split and felt like he was cheating on me and that he should tell me about her and at least move out before actually dating someone. hence him wanting to move out almost immediately after that weekend (he moved out a week after). they also broke up that weekend (hence him being a jackass most of that weekend to pretty much everyone) so he could get his life post-split together. while they were apart, she was with the guy she had dated before him (they had split, but were still living together, obviously very similar, though he hadn't wavered with me like she did). so they were kind of together after he moved out, but she was still with the other guy.

well the weekend before I left, he actually spent a lot of time at the house finishing up the electrical work that needed to be done for final inspection. I didn't think much of it, just that it was nice to have the friend back that I had lost for about 3 weeks. at the end of the weekend, he finally told me that he had been dating someone (a girl I went to school with and was kind of friends with back then, I wasn't happy that it was someone I knew and was friendly with when seeing her around town the last 10 years) and that they had broken up for good. all of a sudden, it all made a lot of sense. things that I was confused about (like his abrupt change in attitude) were put in perspective. we were really good friends again and it was great. I could actually see us being good friends through all of this.

and then that changed again this past week. he had also taken some time away and in that time, they were talking a lot more (which I thought was weird if she were trying to make it work with the other guy. I wouldn't have been able to keep in touch with him like that, too many emotions and feelings involved and I'd always feel that pull and not be able to fully commit myself to making the other relationship work, but that's just me...) and the day before he came back, she decided she was for sure leaving her guy and once she did that, they were going to start dating again. I think it ridiculous and that if she's wavered that much with all her relationships since high school, he's likely to end up with the same problem. then again, he's also done similar things (though not nearly to that extent as his is every 5 or so years, not every few months or couple years) so maybe they deserve each other.

but I'm hurt. I felt like I lost him all over again. not that I had him back the way I wanted to have him back, but I had my friend back and that only seemed to work when he wasn't with someone.
I also hate him. I hate him for breaking the promises he made in our vows. I hate him for moving on while I'm here, still mending a broken heart before I put myself out there for someone else. I hate him for taking the life I loved away from me. I thought I was doing well after he moved out, but it was only temporary as I'm struggling with it once again.

this does get better, right? I want to either fast forward life to get to the better days or rewind to the time before there were problems...

Mother's Day

for at least 3 years I've hated this day. I still do. not because I hate mothers but because I feel like nobody cares about the bereaved mother who lost their child before they even got to hold them tight and kiss their forehead. the seemingly smaller losses because they were lost far too soon. before you could even really announce to the world that there was going to be a baby on the way. before anyone but you and your significant other could bond with this new life to feel a connection and subsequent loss when things went wrong. I'm not trying to minimize the women who lose a child after that magical first trimester mark, or lose them after being able to hold them in their arms, that's never my intention. I just feel like society looks at the ones who you can physically see the life that's growing, with either a burgeoning belly or a baby in arms, differently. like because they were never really seen, they don't exist. maybe it's because that's all I have experience with...

i'll never forget my 2 little angels. the lives that could have been. how differently my life would be if either of them made it to the other side of the womb.

DH sent me a really thoughtful text mother's day morning and also tagged me in a post on FB.

"happy mothers day.

I know we stopped saying it aloud a long time ago

but I love you and you will always be a mom"

 

he was the only person to take the time to wish me a happy mothers day, or to even acknowledge that I'm a mother, even if they aren't in my arms.

I hope that there's a point in my future where i'm not hurt by this day. I wish even more that i can one day actually enjoy it as a mother to living child. I don't know what the future holds for me, i just hope that it does include a great guy and some kids, even if they end up being stepchildren (since my dating pool will be 50% who already have kids and 50% who don't...).

the day my life turned upside down...

I'm afraid I don't have happy news. I wish I had been quiet on the blog because of craziness that resulted in a baby, but in fact, its quite the opposite.

just days after my last post, my DH came to me and dropped a bomb. he wanted to split. at first he told me he wanted to stop ttc, which I was already having ideas of doing the same because of our struggles ttc, and then told me it wasn't just that, he no longer wanted to be married.

its been a long few months of me hoping we could slowly work it out and get back on track like we've done before, but just a couple weeks ago he started pushing for separation and wanting to move out and live separate lives and move on from 'us'.

much too long a story to tell in just one blog post, but i'll try to condense it. I've gone over everything over the last 8 years in my head too many times, so forgive me if I leave details out. partly because I'm actually getting tired of talking about it and because it doesn't matter anymore because what's done is done.


it started that Friday after my last post with the ominous 'we need to talk about something' and then both being too busy through the day and not getting to talk til almost bedtime. he moved out of our bedroom that night.
what followed in the next 2 months was a lot of destructive behavior on his part. not physically destructive, just a lot of going out, hanging out with toxic friends that just exacerbate his behaviors, a lot of drinking, and overall depressing. in those 2 months, he went to Ontario to be with his family for xmas, got a DUI (yep, you read that right) and was not pleasant to be around. I tried to just be there if he needed me but not be asking when he'll be home, still continuing my house duties and doing our groceries and cooking.
after those 2 months, I felt like something shifted and it might be possible for a reconciliation. we were more friendly than we'd been since the day it all started. I was hoping that if given enough time, he would see the error of his ways and change his mind. I had my friend back. not my husband, but the jokey guy I enjoyed being around forever.
3 weeks into march, things shifted again. not in a good way. that's when he started pushing me to tell more ppl so that he could feel free to do what he wanted without ppl thinking badly of him because he's married (or something to that effect). I was hoping I'd still have that friend that I had since mid January, but after that day, he disappeared, seemingly for good. things were tense at home and felt incredibly awkward. in my head I wasn't expecting him to move until after his court date in july (for the DUI), but he wanted out as soon as possible. something about it being better for both of us if we're not in the same house sharing living quarters anymore... at the time that was the opposite of what I felt I needed so it was hard for me to come around to being okay with him moving out so soon when I had told myself it wouldn't be for a few more months. I need time to process big changes and I had already processed it one way in my head and now had to process it all over again in a new way. it was really hard for me and I spent the time between him voicing his want to move out so soon and actually moving out crying a lot.
it was only a week and a half, but I think the hardest week and a half out of the last 5 months. the very beginning was hard, but I kept telling myself it would get better and it was just a phase and he'll snap out of it eventually. maybe in 3 months, maybe in 12, but it would happen. but after he said it wasn't going to work and we needed to make it more permanent, that's when things got real hard.
surprisingly, after he moved out, I felt like a weight had been lifted. I can't explain it, but not having him in the house anymore felt oddly liberating. I didn't feel like I had stopped myself from doing anything through all of this, but I apparently needed him to move out as much as he felt he needed to move out.
its been almost 2 weeks since moving day, and I'm already feeling better about it all. obviously not happy that I'm going to be starting my life all over again, divorced with no kids. but that weight that got lifted was obviously something I didn't know I needed.


anyway, that's all you'll get for now. i'll follow up more frequently, but this blog is obviously going to change direction. I'm not sure how often i'll post, but I promise to keep in touch far more often  : )

just a quick update

(cycle 50, day 25)

we ended up not TTC this cycle. we did have sex on cd14, but it wasn't of the baby making variety. I was in no shape to BD again til I got back to alberta after holidays (hangovers and all : P ). I also didn't actually take any opks while away like I was planning to do. I could've on cd14, but was too busy most other days to even give a thought to testing. it wasn't until I was back home and finally thought to take one in the evening of cd18 just to see if I might've Od late or if it stayed negative for a few days I would know that I Od while away. well cd18 was pretty dark and then cd19 was very negative, so I can only assume that the positive was either on cd17 or earlier on cd18 and I just happened to test too late. so with that, I'm assuming I Od on cd18 or 19 and I'm about 6-7dpo and AF should be here some time in the middle of next week. BDing on cd14 would've been a stretch for getting pregnant anyway. I didn't care all that much about ttc this cycle so I'm not too upset about not having the possibility, only upset a little bit because of how long its already been. so we'll be back on the TTC train full force once again next cycle and i'll be asking about that RE referral when I go in for my yearly check up in 2 weeks so I know its not fallen to wayside. i'll post a longer update later on my trip east  : )

#50, ouch!

(cycle 50, day 4)

so obviously round 2 of clomid didn't work  : (

AF sure took her sweet ass time last cycle. I figured I'd have a 14 day LP like the cycle before, but AF waited nearly a full 24 hours longer to get going. thankfully the cramps started before going to bed so I wasn't woken up by them (which is a horrible thing to wake up to), but she didn't fully start that night either. so I ended up with a 15 day LP, which just pushed everything for this cycle back by a day (plus the extra days it got pushed back from having the 14 day LP last cycle), so now there's a chance to TTC this cycle instead of having to take it off due to travel and not seeing each other the important days. we'll now see each other starting cd14, so even if I Od that day, if we BD, there's a chance. albeit a small chance given how the last 50 cycles have gone (all but 2 unsuccessful, and even those were unsuccessful if you consider a MC an unsuccessful cycle because it didn't result in a THB), but a chance nonetheless. so I asked DH if he'd be interested in ttc since we'll be seeing each other and to my surprise he said yes (I was kind of hoping for a break, but if it gets us a sticky BFP, then that's worth it, as much as I wanting to take a mental break from all things ttc for a month or so).

right now, I'm very thankful for DH. he's been a hell of a lot more optimistic about us having kids than I've been over the last year. a lot of the time I say "if we have kids" and he always comes back with "no, we'll have kids, don't worry". I'm glad one of us feels that way, because it sure isn't me. he's so optimistic, he even bought a stroller this weekend from a buddy on the fire dept. and here all these years I thought that he'd think I was crazy if I bought baby items if they were on a great sale! ha! to be fair, it was a crazy price, he was selling a $300+ jogging stroller for $25... and its coming from someone we know, so we know its been well taken care of. but still, we'll now have a stroller staring us in the face with no baby in sight to speak of  : /  I can't wait for fb friends to start asking questions if they see the post in the local buy and sell group and see DH's comment about buying it.... that's probably going to suck more than staring at it until we can use it.... sigh. but his optimism that we'll get to use it one day is still nice to see when he's been rather quiet on that front until recently.

the resutls are in

I'd by lying if I said I wasn't nervous going into the appointment.

so far everything checks out for both of us and I finally know my blood type.

dh is an overachiever and has super sperm. seriously. pretty much double normal levels for almost everything, in some cases, 10x better than they're looking for. he told me after doing the SA that he thought it wasn't much volume wise and looked like such a little amount, well it was double what they look for, lol. we had a chuckle at that. the count is where he really excelled, they want over 30 million and he was over 300 million. there was one factor that he was just above what they wanted, but it was such a low number anyway (they want 4 and he had 5, but can't for the life of me remember what it was for) that its fine and normal. overall, he's definitely not the issue, at least not yet, there's still a couple things that need to be looked at his end, but for now, we're ruling him out.

I now know I'm O+ for if I ever choose to give blood (maybe if my fear of needles ever subsides...) and being positive is a good thing baby-wise, which means I can't be RH- and have my body attack the baby's (hypothetical baby of course since we're obviously struggling in that department) because of blood not being compatible. so good news there. all my other testing is within normal ranges. well aside from my progesterone which somehow didn't get entered into the system as though I never did it when I definitely did. so that's the only test result we don't have, if my progesterone is high enough in the 2ww to even sustain early pregnancy. now that I'm already almost a week past that in the 2ww (its the cd21/7dpo test), I have to wait at least 3.5 weeks to do that test again (and that's if I O around cd14/15 instead of cd20, in which case I'd have to wait even longer than 3.5 weeks to do it). which now reminds me that i'll have to do some kind of testing for O so I can get that test at the right time in my cycle, sigh. I guess I could wait another cycle to get it done since it just needs to be done before seeing the RE.... so maybe i'll wait another cycle... anyway, back to the results...

so all that to say there's nothing wrong with either of us at this point that would make it harder to make a baby. frustrating. all that testing to find out we're both fine. or at least as fine as those tests will tell us. maybe there's something deeper that's not right... but we won't be able to find that out until we get to the RE. hoping for something to be wrong? yep, the mind of an infertile works that way. I desperately wanted something to be wrong so we had an answer, a reason for each pregnancy taking so long to achieve, but nada. I'm just left with more questions and doubt.

I was hoping I'd come back from that appointment with renewed hope and instead I feel even more helpless than before. the first pregnancy took 16 months, 11 cycles of which there was some kind of chance. the second one took 18 months with 12 cycles having a chance. here we are, our best record for TTC, 14 months, 15 total cycles and 13 with some kind of chance. other than actual time TTC, we're taking longer than before to get pregnant again. I'm not sure how much longer we can keep going like this because its looking like this cycle won't work either and you can add one of everything to the last tally.

so now our referral goes in and I should be getting a call in a week or so with our appointment date, whenever that may be in the future....

not much to update on the ttc front

(cycle 49, day 26, 11 dpo)

there hasn't been a whole lot to report on. some days I swear I'm pregnant and others I swear we'll never get pregnant. around 8dpo I had some pain in my hips and then most days since then I've had some kind of pain in my pelvis and lower stomach. am I reading too much into it? probably. then yesterday I had a bit of an upset stomach all day. I had gone out drinking the night before so I would normally use that as the reason, but it was constant all day and didn't subside at all, so that made me think it had to be pregnancy nausea. I'm crazy. of course I tested yesterday and not to my surprise it was a bfn. I'm getting so tired of seeing those. I'm welcoming the break that's coming next cycle. of course I hope beyond all hope that we get a miracle, but I'm not kidding myself. I'm still as hopeless as ever. I'm dreading Wednesday still. I don't want to hear our results. I'm terrified of any answer we could get. I'm trying to wait til Wednesday morning to test again, with the hope that I can go into that appointment as a prego, but I know that's a long shot.