Maybe next year...

Test was glaringly negative. It's day 15 (3-4 days longer than usual), my temperature is still above the coverline, and I have no period or spotting. My body is obviously messing with me now.

But... I can drink wine over the weekend in Spain. That's something.

Thanks for the hand-holding. It's nice to have someone to wait with.

The Good News and the Bad News

I'll start with the bad. Mr. got his second semen analysis results via telephone yesterday and they are worse. To recap the last results: less than a million total and all have very poor morphology. The doc told Mr. over the phone that we should make an appointment because ICSI may not even be an option. Yeah, that super attitude is why our appointment in December is with another clinic, one that likes to share stories of how they found two lonely sperm in a sample and still created a pregnancy.


Now for the good - or at least not bad. It is 14 days past ovulation, which is two days longer than normal, and my temperature is still quite above the coverline, although a little lower than yesterday and the day before. I have no signs of my usual cramps or spotting or any of that. Yeah, combined with the results from yesterday, this is weird.

So, if nothing occurs by tomorrow morning, I'm breaking out that test. :) Thanks for the good wishes!

Idiot Anonymous

Hi, my name is Beth, and I'm an idiot.

*Hi Beth*

I'm setting myself up again for a huge disappointment. I don't want to be one of those crazy women who posts every last little symptom and sign: could I be? am I? am I not?. I think I've said that quite a bit before. So I guess I also should locate the nearest chapter of Boring Repetitious Bloggers Anonymous. But I'm not here to talk about that, I'm here to share my latest tale of idiocy.

I have a very, very regular cycle. This cycle is turning out not to be so regular. And my heart is saying "neener neener" and doing that thumb-to-nose finger-waving thing to my brain. My brain is getting rather pissed off at such a juvenile display and is kind of hankering to bitch-slap my heart when it's not looking, but the brain has no arms and can't reach that far so that's kind of a stupid thing for a brain to want to do.

I went searching through my apartment for one of my cheap pregnancy tests this morning. The only one I could find was the expensive-ish one, and I'm not about to pee on 8 euros just because I'm an idiot. I may well be an idiot, but I'm a frugal idiot who is planning three vacations and IVF. So now we're at the waiting stage - waiting for the cramps, spotting, and temperature drop that I expected a day or two ago. Two more days to wait and then we'll see.

I've been away...

I've been working in another city for a few days, and I don't have internet there.

Just in case you were wondering what the big deal a few days ago was... I quit my job of 4 1/2 years. And my new boss is friends with my old boss. Which made quitting rather uncomfortable.

In any case, contractually I have to give notice for the end of the quarter (Dec. 31st) six weeks prior. But I have vacation starting Dec 17th... which means only four more weeks! And two of those involve long weekends!

So that's where I've been. I have a six month probationary period at the new place, so of course I had to tell them about the IVF. I can't continually be gone for appointments without them knowing why. It was odd to tell them and still not have told our families. Ah well, the bosses won't point to my *ahem* not-so-studious (i.e. not-so-sober) college days as the reason we are having trouble now.

Second time's the charm?

Mr. went for his second sperm analysis today. We get the results in a few days. Ah, more waiting. Just what my patient self loves to do. I also never get marks in my fresh nail polish because I'm that good with waiting.

Ahem. Back from Fantasyland. Sorry about that little diversion.

The doctor from our IVF informational evening and Dr. Silber, author of my favorite IVF book, both stress how variable these results can be from day to day. They have charts! I like statistical charts! So now I'm wondering if the last results were on the bad end... we were in Amsterdam right before the last sample, ahem. He also hadn't quit smoking at that point. Or maybe the result was on the better end, despite the indulgences. Or - and this is what I am expecting - it was a fairly normal sample.

Mr. is finally ready to start learning more about the situation. He's read his sperm report a number of times, but I think until now he'd only seen little Viagra pills dancing across the page, taunting him and denigrating his manhood. Nasty little buggers those, making him think that a bad sperm analysis means he's impotent or will soon be. Last week he finally asked me if I knew what it all meant, so I gave him the synopsis and suggested he look at some of my books. So much for light bedtime reading. Last night, his brain started smoking over a section on azoospermia. I had to calm the poor guy down and show him the section on oligospermia. Our new mantra: a few is better than none.

Mr. was on a prize jury, so he's off to the awards ceremony tonight in another city a plane ride away. That's good - something to get his mind off of it, at least for tonight. As for me, I'm going to light many, many candles and watch crap TV and try not get marks in my nail polish.

Keeping Up

I want to do NaBloPoMo with both this blog and my regular blog that has nothing whatsoever to do with babies. I got a late start on this one because it didn't occur to me to post on both.

But tonight it's really cold in our apartment and I just battled it out to get two FTP servers running on two different computers at home (yes, I'm a total geek). Now I want to go to bed so this is all the post you get for today.

I think this is technically cheating, but it's better than flaking out in the first week, right?

Some People...

I like Oprah. She seems smart and compassionate, so it pissed me off even more than it should have when I read an transcript of one of her shows wherein she asks a woman struggling (and spending) to conceive if she had considered adoption.

It is a loaded question for infertiles. 'No' implies that you are selfish and don't care about giving a loving home to children who desperately need one. 'Not yet' suggests that these kids would be second choice, again making you selfish. 'Yes' means you've given up. Notice that fertile people are never guilted with the 'poor little orphans' number.

You wouldn't suggest to a family who just lost a child that they get started on a replacement. The need time to mourn their first before they can be healthy parents to another. The feelings are similar for the little one you've dreamt of but haven't met yet. You imagine seeing your husband's goofy grin or your freckles on this person who the two of you created. We as women have heard so much about the amazing experience of carrying a life within us... and now we're supposed to turn all of that emotion off and just be happy to have any child.

Adoption is a wonderful thing. I know that adopted children are just as wanted and loved as biological offspring. But I don't want to adopt out of desperation. I want to want to adopt. I'm a long way from that point. Am I selfish for spending so much money in an attempt to have my own baby? Damn straight. And if it doesn't work for us, I'll cry and mourn and eventually get over it. And that's the point where I'll research adoption more thoroughly.

But don't suggest it to me before I get there.

Quickie

My husband gave me flowers for exactly the second time in our relationship. And I can't stop staring at them, even though they give me butterflies in my stomach. I'm that sappy and in love.

But the big news is... we have our first IVF appointment. December 6th. St. Nicholas Day. I don't think we'll be able to start any treatments before January or February because we'll be visiting my parents from mid-December to New Year's Day. But we're moving forward, and I have to be happy with that for now.

Two are here

Two of the many expected babies have arrived.

One was a week early because a hemorrhage sent blood into the mom's spinal column, paralyzing her. They did a caesarean without anesthesia and then rushed her into surgery. Mom and baby are both home, baby is fine and Mom will make a full recovery but has to do a lot of rehab. (The condition that caused this was pre-existing but not detected and not pregnancy-related. I don't want to scare any expectant moms out there.)

The other was induced about a month early because the baby was stressed. I haven't heard how they are doing, so I'm going with "no news is good news".

I'm no where near finished with the first blanket and haven't started the second. I thought I had more time!

Hiatus

We're off in a few hours. I've just started my period (of course), but I'm not bringing any thermometers, infertility books, or the like along for the week. It's going to be sun, sand, margaritas, and nothing else.

I hate to call this our honeymoon because it's so cheesy, but I'm afraid we haven't had any other and this is the first non-family related vacation since our wedding... so yeah, I guess it's our honeymoon in Fuertaventura.

I wanted to sneak to Cuba.

Vacation Time!

Woohoo! We are flying on Saturday for some lovely sun, which is very important as this summer the weather here has suuuucked. Summer is not supposed to be sweater weather.

And I made it to the store yesterday to get yarn for the many baby blankets I'm preparing to make. (I crochet little one-color afghans as my standard baby gift.) The beer in my system (thanks to my friend Simon and his suggestion that we meet up at an Irish pub) didn't make me sleepy enough to hinder the blanket-starting process, but my husband did end up falling asleep next to me cuddling a ball of yarn instead of his sweet and attentive wife who went to the pub instead of staying home to take care of her poor husband with a bad cold. (Why did I not take a photo of that?)

And... I just got a notification that my books have arrived. Thank you, Amazon! My book club will be reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, but I didn't particularly care for the second half of The Kite Runner so that was a grudging purchase. My other books are much more intriguing to me: IVF: The Wayward Stork: What to Expect, Who to Expect It From, and Surviving It All and How to Get Pregnant: The Classic Guide to Overcoming Infertility. I really want to dig into these, but I think my husband would throw them into the ocean if I brought them along as my beach reads.

8!

I know seven (!) pregnant couples. I just found out about the eighth - Jonathan was born on September 14th to a former colleague and his wife.

Fate

I'd only told one person about trying to have a baby: my dear friend, who lives thousands of miles away and is a birth doula and childbirth and lactation educator. Of course, she now knows about our infertility, too.

There would just be too much pressure if people knew, and I really didn't want to hear constant questions, advice, whatever.

The fertility boards were a good start for support, but lately I've spent more time writhing in my seat and yelling at the monitor instead of being a productive member of the group. Vox is many orders of magnitude better... I can vent, introspect, and laugh and not feel like I'm all alone in this (I love reading your comments and messages, by the way.)

In my non-electronic life, I'm an expat. I'm fairly fluent in the language now, but when I first arrived I couldn't follow the rapid conversations that occur in a group, and as a result I have a very small circle of friends. I'm working on that, too. I've recently joined a knitting circle where I get to practice my language skills and my knitting at the same time. And I joined a club for American women... this is the club to which I refer in previous posts, and about which I wrote those horrible (but true) things on my other blog. (I'll also post later about why I didn't want to join until now, more than 4 years after moving here.)

I attended a new member evening last night. I could talk! Freely! In English! I wanted to keep chatting all night. At dinner, I was seated next to a woman I'd never met, and we got to talking, as you do. Without going into boring detail, there was a point when I just had this feeling that I had to tell her that we are going to start IVF.

It was amazing. She told me that she had been through it 4 times with no success, but had so much to share about the local clinics, including some very bad experiences with the clinic we were planning to use. She took my hands and made me promise to get a second opinion from her favorite clinic, and said that every woman she has sent there has had a baby. She called herself my talisman. She also made me promise that I wouldn't invite her to the baby shower.

In the end, she gave me her email address and offered any support she could give.

One day, I'll post the whole incredible story of how I ended up moving here. For now, just know that every step seemed to be fate. Meeting my husband when I did (about a year after moving here and a month after deciding that this does feel like home) and our further story again seems like fate. And yesterday... the day before my fertility forum membership expired, I met my talisman.

Now I'm just being mean

This is my last little fertility board rant.

Number one: No, wikipedia is not sufficient evidence to convince me that global warming does not exist.

Number two: Of course you know who killed Madeleine McCann.

Number three: Oh for the love of pete - learn to use an OPK or stop using them. Posting three times a day with "Did I O? *pic*" is getting old. I don't want to see your pee sticks with more regularity than my mealtimes.

Number four: This crying escalation is getting silly. One poster says she's choked up, another says tears are rolling down her cheeks, the next can't see the post through her tears, and the last couple are actually bawling. (No, this isn't hypothetical. A cat died and that's really, really sad, but I say no bawling unless you've ever actually touched the cat.)

My subscription runs out in three days. I'm not sure I can bring myself to renew.

Shushy McJudge, at your service

I know kids don't need a whole lot of material stuff. I know parenting has very little to do with what you can physically provide for your children.

But (you knew that was coming, right?), when you are posting on a fertility board about whether or not ovulation predictor kits can be used as pregnancy tests because you have zero dollars until your husband gets paid next week and so can't afford a pregnancy test... that might be a sign that now is not the best time for you to bring a life into this world.

Same goes for the lady who requested your cheapest recipes, who then replies that they aren't cheap enough because she's already having to cut back to feed her family of four. Again - is now really the best time to add a fifth?

I don't want to sound like a snob, but is reality at all entering their reproductive choices? When you are struggling to provide even the basics like, uh, food, it might be wise to postpone taking on further obligations.

I'm kind of surprised at the number of women who are posting like this. I'm kind of shocked at the number who post about their husband's mental abuse (it's totally my inference that it's mental abuse, but hey... when a guy tells you you are stupid and no one else will have you... it's not a huge leap.)

And now Paris Hilton is talking babies. Did any of them really think this whole thing through?

Baby booming

There seems to be an explosion of expectant parents in my circle of friends. The problem is, explosions tend to leave a lot of collateral damage in their wake.

A friend called to wish me happy birthday yesterday. He had a bit of news, too: he's going to be a father in December. With a colleague with whom he wants no relationship. Who is also not his long-term, charmingly beautiful and intelligent live-in girlfriend. Who now neither lives-in nor is his girlfriend.

I'm not close with his now ex-girlfriend, but I want to reach out and hug her. And I want to kick my friend's ass.

Happiness, in husband form

We drove a total of 6 hours last night to spend 2 hours celebrating a friend's 40th birthday. I'm so glad we went, and I know it meant a lot to our friend that we made the effort to be there, even if we did leave at midnight because we are lame like that.

When we got there, I wondered if his girlfriend was wearing a particularly unflattering shirt. Nope, she's due in February. They are the sweetest couple and will be incredible parents. I was truly, truly happy to hear their news. On this night, there were no twinges of jealousy or longing. Just happiness for them.

It seemed to hit my husband kind of hard, though. On the drive home, he asked me if I'd asked her if it was planned. (I told him in no uncertain terms no, but that she volunteered a little bit of info that makes it sound like it was unplanned but completely welcome. They've been together for ages, I should add.) At the party, he quietly asked me if I was upset that it couldn't be us, too.

I took the opportunity on the drive home to reassure him that I don't blame him at all and that I've heard IVF is scary from the sound of it, but the actuality isn't so bad. You see, we have stopped talking about the whole baby thing for the most part. He's still feeling guilty and overwhelmed. There's not much we can do until his second semen analysis confirms the doctor's diagnosis. So there's no point in inviting the elephant into the room. He'll poke his head in every now and then so that he knows we haven't forgotten about him, but he can go graze in the yard for a while. (Do elephants graze? What about the fact that we live on the 6th floor without an elevator and have no yard? Am I totally blowing my metaphor?)

All of the unhappy Princess Diana coverage reminds me that I'm lucky to be in such a loving marriage. He's taking this hard, sure, because it affects his 'manhood', but more because he's worried about me. We fell asleep at 3 am holding hands.

Sigh.

I've been OK with the whole infertility thing. Not great, but OK. Until yesterday.

I am usually a happy person and it takes a lot for me to cry. I've only cried once since I found out the sperm analysis results, and that was only for a few seconds right after hearing the news.

But last night, one stupid commercial sent by a friend was enough to send me. And today I stumbled on a blog with all sorts of "can't live without" baby products and a personal review of each... now I'm trying to hold back the tears at work.

A friend is coming to visit tonight, and he and his wife just found out they are expecting their third. I'm glad he's dropping by and I really do want to know that everything is progressing well. If anyone deserves some joy, it's this family. (They had a butthole doctor who wouldn't believe that their normally healthy son was truly sick, so he kept sending them home. The fever and infection got so bad that their poor son is now permanently brain-damaged and will never walk, talk, or sit on his own. He will always have to be fed and have his stomach massaged afterwards to aid digestion.)

I just wish his visit wasn't today. My hormones are so far from cooperative right now (thanks to my period, I think), and I don't want to do the fake-pleasant thing. I want to be truly happy for his wife and him, and I think I could do that tomorrow.

But he's coming today. So I'm going to end this post and work on collecting myself.

I'm an adult and I'm gonna post like one

I'm old. I think I'm technically ancient in the online world.

I refuse to post like a tween. I can type, and a few extra keystrokes aren't going to make my arthritis flare up.

I do not have a DH. I have a husband (who, like all husbands, sometimes just isn't that darling. No one is.) And I certainly don't BD or even baby dance. Just... ew. I have sex, damn it. And I don't need a blinkie to tell the world that fact.

A few blinkies can be cute (not in my signature, but whatever) and even informative (it can be good to know that someone else is also a fan of Grey's Anatomy). But holy crap, I think I'm going to develop epilepsy from a half-screen of blinking animated crap in the signature just one poster. Add scrolling to the mix, and that would be smoke you see coming from my eye sockets.

Alright, now that I've shown my age and curmudgeonliness (and aptitude for nonsense, based on that last word there), I'm going to go retreat into my Luddite cave with a book.

Edit, one hour later:
I'm slightly revising my position here. There are very helpful abbreviations. I don't mind TTC. It stands for what it is, it's not a cutesy euphemism. LOL, IRL, O... all of these are just the first letters of phrases that we all know and like. I like acronyms. I have nothing against that. Thanks for letting me clear that up. Do I have to add some sort of winky, blinky thing here so that you know I'm not so serious IRL?

And I thought Mondays had to suck.

Embattled Attorney General Resigns

Off to see Mr.

Mr. is filming some commercials in one of my favorite cities. I'm off in an hour or two to visit him. No computers, thermometers, or fertility books. Just me, my man, and hopefully my favorite Indian restaurant.

Snoopy dance

I swear, I'm in a great mood today. Everything is coming up Beth. My husband is on a business trip and I might go visit him over the weekend, it is nearly said weekend, and my boss has been gone for 3 days. My beer-induced fog has nearly completely lifted, and I actually brought my gym bag with me this morning with the real intention of going after work. A colleague brought a big ass Toblerone bar to share today. Does it get much better?

This doesn't even bother me. This... this... I don't know what. It's a chunk of my FertilityFriend chart, showing a bounce-back today. Did my progesterone decide to take a couple of days off? Did it at least bring me a nice souvenir?

Some context to the madness

It might be helpful to tell you a little bit about where I'm coming from. (I thought this was going to be my quiet little online journal that no one would ever read, but now I'm digging the interaction and I guess that's kind of the point of Vox instead of Blogger or what have you...)

So. Here we are.

I'm 32, my husband is 37, and we've been married for a whopping 9 months. I know, not very long at all. That might make you wonder how long we've been dealing with infertility and why I feel the need to whine on the internet. The answer is also not very long at all and because I'm a big whiner. More specifically, since the beginning of May (yes, this May) and I'm more of a closet whiner. Or mind whiner. (I whine to myself a lot, but not very often out loud.)

About 6 months before I got married, I started to lose gobs of hair. (Gross.) And from that, they found out that I have high androgens. That can, but doesn't have to, signal a condition called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). When we decided to start trying to have a baby, I went and got checked out. It appears now that I don't in fact have a serious case of it. Hooray, right?

Well. Mr. had a hunch that something was wrong on his end, so he got checked out, too. Not so good. Horrible, in fact. A total count of under 1 million (normal is like 50-150 million, I think) and all of them, every last little bugger, was abnormal. The actual results said that each one checked had head, neck, and tail deformities.

The doctor won't confirm anything without a second sample, so my husband will have to go back in another couple of months. The doctor also said he's nearly 100% sure that the next sample will be just the same and that we won't be able to conceive naturally.

I'm OK with that. Mr. is starting to be OK with that.

But now you know why I need the sounding board.

P.S. I've heard it from other forums: I know it's really early to be complaining already, I know we're lucky to have found out so early, and I know that others have it a lot worse and have more of a right to bitch and moan. This is my blog therapy and I can do whatever I want with it, and that's why I'm writing here and not on the fertility boards. That's also why I'm keeping my board identities to myself. Thanks for understanding.

Now I've convinced myself

I went out last night with some friends and drank a whole lot of beer. See, now if I were truly delusional about being pregnant, I wouldn't have done that. Reality wins. (Or was it the beer that won?)

Oh, and I know you were wondering. Well, you probably couldn't care less, but I'll share anyway that my temperature is way down today. I don't think an implantation temp just keeps plummeting. More reality.

I have a headache (oh beer, last night you were my friend and this is how you treat me?) and I have work to do so I'm done posting for today. See you tomorrow.

(Oh, and no. This will not be one of those blogs where I update daily on my temperature or cervical position or other things that no one really needs nor wants to know. It just happened to fit into the reality smackdown theme today.)

I know better than this.

I know that I'm not pregnant. I can't be. It's nearly physically impossible.

But, as an insane person is apt to do, I thought felt 'twinges' yesterday. Down there.

I think I'm about 8 days past ovulation. That's just the right time for implantation to occur. And when I took my temperature this morning and added it to my chart, I thought, as an insane person is apt to do, "I wonder if that is an implantation dip."

I know better than to put myself in this position emotionally. I know better than to think that a drop in my temperature signals something. I know that this mythical 'implantation dip' is just some coincidental occurrence that has been built up in the minds of hopeful moms-to-be all over the internet.

And yet. Here I am.

My husband is away for 10 days on a business trip. Maybe this is a bit of guilty indulgence on my part. I don't think I'd dare allow myself these thoughts if his voice of reason was around. I have to talk myself down off of this ledge because it's too early in this process to start getting hopes up like this. We haven't even started treatments yet, except for Mr. Twinge's new vitamin regimen.

I have hope, sure. I know that one day we'll have an acceptable resolution (and I hope that comes in baby form). But I have to maintain a long-term hope, and not a daily "what does this or that or the other thing mean" kind of hope. It would wear me down too fast. I'm a laid-back, non-confrontational kind of person, and constant oscillation of emotion is something I'm not good at nor comfortable with.

But just writing this has already brought me a little closer to reality. Wow, blog therapy. Who knew?

Introduction

Hi. Call me Twinge.

This is a word that comes up over and over again in the world of infertility. A twinge when you want to be pregnant could be a sign of ovulation, a sign that a pregnancy is taking hold, a sign that something is going wrong, or maybe just that twinge of emotion from wanting something so much.

I've read and read and read about the condition of 'subfertility' and now I need an outlet to process all of that. I started a journal, but I type much faster than I write. It's such an intensely personal subject, and it might seem strange that I've chosen such a public platform. I don't mind sharing all of this as long as I can anonymously hide out on Vox behind a nickname for a while.

We've only told one person in the whole wide real world out there that we are trying to have a baby. And after I told her, we found out that we are 'subfertile'. So now she knows that, too. But really, there's only so much she and my husband can take of this subject.

What about my mom or my sisters? In the spirit of anonymous blogging, I'm going to admit that my family can be a pain in the ass and I don't want them to know until I'm safely in my second trimester, should that time ever arrive. Oh, don't worry about the details of my family right now. They'll be the subject of many posts to come, I think.

So if you've found me, hi. I'd be happy to chat with you, about anything. Books, TV, politics... whatever. Send me a note or post a comment. And I hope I'll be seeing you again.

Deprecated

Yet again, I'm moving platforms. You can find us at www.bethundmartin.de.