in between

Thanks for all your good wishes! I really appreciate your support. I’m very hopeful, but simultaneously quite scared. Perhaps because I now have a better idea of what we could lose… and what we could gain.

A & C’s due date, February 25/26^* will be during my 2ww. Somehow that seems fitting. It would have been a waiting period – theoretically at least, given that they were twins they’d have been early either way, but I never specifically calculated any other date. Now it will be a waiting period, filled with hopeful thoughts for a first step towards bringing home a sibling for them.

For Christmas, H gave me a ring in memory of A & C. We bought it in the same place where we had gotten my wedding jewelery^**, and a part of the ring was called “starry sky”. Obviously it was perfect. When I got back here, a few people admired it, but then nobody commented on it for a while – until just before and just after the lining ultrasound. I like to think it was A & C telling us they’re ok with us moving forward.

* even with IVF we didn’t get an exact due date…
** that sounds so fancy and expensive, but in reality I think it was quite modest, or at least appropriately modest for a grad student wedding

a random collection of nervous bullets

• Over the weekend I thought I might go back to some of the regular yoga exercises I had been doing previously, after two weeks of fertility yoga. Except on Monday morning I felt queasy, and on Tuesday it was pretty much all-day queasiness. My innards remind me of an active volcano, considering eruption (although fortunately so far nothing has actually happened yet). So I’m sticking with the laid-back version that just gives an extra Good Morning serving of oxygen to all my cells and embryos, and some sanity to me.
• My tight pants are too tight.
• H is getting increasingly worried about twins. The other day he threw two 20-sided dice – 2 and 2 came up. I keep telling him we haven’t even made it across the 50% barrier of getting pregnant at all, although I have to admit that I’m really hopeful at this point.
• I saw some cute shoes downtown. H asked to see them online. I had to laugh when I saw their name.

so much fat

Yesterday my clinic called me to ask how I’m doing in my 2ww, which I thought was very sweet of them. In fact, I had two presentations at work last week and have thus been so busy that sitting around and wondering wasn’t really an option. Not that I don’t think about our precious little embryos every day hour minute (ok, maybe every few minutes). But overall I’ve been remarkably calm, much in contrast to previous (natural) cycles that had me in tears about the possible outcome every other day.

I still don’t have many side effects, not even sore boobs, which I’ve definitely had in the past. The progesterone shots and the egg retrieval were the two parts of IVF I was physically most afraid of. After retrieval I was sore, but not worse than after my saline sonogram (though I’m sure the drugs helped). My husband is admirably performing the PIO shots, although his frequent comment on the fact that I have “so much fat” back there shadows the experience slightly. He’s quick to reassure that this only is a technical observation because he needs to get the needle into the muscle, but still, not what a girl wants to hear. Although, admittedly – the nurse offered to draw circles around the injection sites after retrieval, and when I took her up on it, she made smileys. Which I thought was cute and wanted to post here, until I saw the picture H took. My butt is so out of shape it isn’t pretty. (My front side is fine, if I may say so myself, so that sort of came as a surprise.)

Something – or, hopefully, someone – is pinching me from the inside every now and then. Beta on Friday. I hope this week will pass as quickly as the last one, and I so much hope we’ll get good news on Friday. Thanks for hoping with me :)

unsurprisingly, that didn’t work

Negative. Again. Though I think I took it ok this time (as in, I did not burst into tears). And of course I had coffee — real, proper, caffeinated coffee — today.

There was something weird about this cycle though. Last week, I noticed that I lost much less hair when showering and combing than usual. And I had cramps — not bad, but of increasing strength over the week. Until Friday evening, when they suddenly stopped without any apparent reason (that would be 9dpo, I think). From Saturday on much more hair loss (back to normal really — I don’t know if it’s actually a lot, but I have dark and thick hair so it’s very obvious) and no more cramps. Could this have been a very early miscarriage? Or am I over-interpreting my symptoms? I only tested today, didn’t even think about it on Saturday, so I have no idea if there would have been any hcg to detect… I’ve had one sort of similar experience with symptoms until 9dpo, but again, I have no idea if I was pregnant then, or just symptom-crazy. If anyone has experienced something similar, or more ideas on how to interpret this (and what to do), please share.

still standing

After almost 2 months of doing different stuff, I’m back. Still not pregnant. The good news is a job lined up for next year that I’m totally excited about — I’d love to start much earlier than I probably will. Like, tomorrow. Maybe a change of scenery would help us in another sense, too.

Before the summer, I thought that, while we may be trying without much (ok, any) success, at least I wasn’t surrounded by bellies popping up here and there. Well, that changed, without warning — at least 5 of my friends are either pregnant or have just given birth. In fact, I heard about a new baby in the family today where I hadn’t even known they were pregnant. Sigh. That did hit me rather unexpectedly this morning. (I don’t like crying at my desk. Good thing nobody seemed to pay too much attention that moment.)

Last Sunday, I woke up at 7am (which never happens), lay wide awake and wondered whether getting pregnant right now would be a good idea (see job above). But now, sad again over everyone else succeeding so seemingly easily*, I would be so happy about a 2nd line. Somehow I just don’t see it coming though. Ideally of course I’d love to start my job, get settled, get some work done, and get pregnant then. But as you all know from unfortunate experience, we cannot exactly schedule this…

Thanks for all your comments on the HSG vs. lap question — since I was travelling most of the time I haven’t had any appointments yet, but I lean towards the lap at the moment, in part because I’ve had some odd pain during my period which I very much hope is not endo, but I’d rather have someone check.

I’ll try to catch up with your blogs in the next days — hoping I’ve missed many BFPs!

* Not all of them: one of my friends told me that it had taken her “a long time”, which gave me some hope — she knew we’ve been trying. I don’t know how long long is though.

if you can’t stand the heat

Dear 2ww,

you’re more than halfway over. I don’t feel any particular symptoms, but I wanted to remind you that I’ll be travelling a lot next month, including interviews and going out with people that know that I’m normally not against a glass of wine or two…

hinting broadly,
with love,
CC

***

A bummer despite the probable good timing is that, given the (outside) temperatures around here, I don’t have much hope for H’s sperm, to be honest. Technically we do have air conditioning. Practically though, we have neighbors that smoke a lot. So when get to choose between hot air and cold smoke. Lovely. Heat to kill the sperm or smoke, what’s your pick?

In other news, I’ve been to the doctor and we made tentative plans for the next tests (assuming the 2ww doesn’t listen to my hints above), but I need to think about this some more and I’m really busy with everything else at the moment (which is not bad as it’s rather distracting).

when the 2 in 2ww isn’t a 2

Thanks for all your kind comments on the last post. I’m still not bleeding (though I had another horrible dream, with amounts of blood that would easily qualify for the ER).

For a while, my 2ww was really a 1.3ww — hello LPD. That clearly was a problem. Now with the progesterone though, I’m 21dpo. That’s 3 weeks. Some cramping (middle, left, right), some pain in the boobs, but nothing that seems like a “real” symptom (and even if real, it might be caused by the progesterone). I need to pee a lot, but maybe I’m just drinking more? I don’t really want to take another test for fear of disappointment. (I do realize that this is sort of silly.) Argh. I have no idea how to interpret this, how much longer to wait.

Meanwhile, there have been so many bad news in the blogosphere — Adele, Alex, Jess, and several more. I’m sad for them, and find it difficult to be hopeful. Go over and let them know you’re thinking of them, if you haven’t visited already.

3 letter abbreviations, or when to test

The jury on this cycle is still out. My symptoms are neither here nor there. Breasts not really sore, but whenever I think that this cycle wasn’t it, I get stabbing pain in Breast Central. 2 days ago I suddenly had to pee every half hour — sounds more like an UTI than anything else. It was painful and annoying, but just when I was seriously thinking about emergency care, it got better. Weird. (And the fact that UTIs can cause miscarriages just scared me more.)
I don’t really want to test, thinking that a BFN would be more depressing than CD1. But, if I want to keep up the progesterone (still waiting for my doctor’s answer), I should know… because if it’s negative, then the sooner I can start the next cycle, the better. So I checked this fertilityfriend article to find out when I should test. They say that right around the expected period is most reliable (low risk of false negatives). The expected day of my period, though, is 5 days after I stop the progesterone, so that doesn’t work. My normal luteal phases are too short, so that doesn’t work either. I’m 13dpo today, so tomorrow could be ok, what do you think?

Regardless of the test outcome, though, I’ve added three letters to my name this month, three letters I’m very proud of :) To celebrate, I probably had more alcohol than anyone serious about tcc should (2 glasses of champagne and 2 glasses of wine… not a lot in absolute terms, but still). I’d love to get a BFP in addition to this, but I feel like I cannot complain if I don’t get it this month.

And just because it’s another 3 letter thing, we’re off to my MIL’s birthday celebration next weekend. For which I’d like to know if I can drink or not. About a year after our wedding, this is bound to lead to questions revolving around our future offspring. And I’m not looking forward to this part.

distractions, looking for

Boobs: hurting/sore. Not all the time, but more than usual. Ute: crampy. This is 7dpo though, can this mean anything at all? Other than that I’m obsessing over symptoms, I mean.

So far, having the Big Event distract me from the 2ww doesn’t work. Instead I’m fretting over two issues instead of one.

Yesterday I went to exercise. Which did distract me, as it requires a lot of attention. But, as we’re not talking about something smooth as swimming here, I’m also starting to worry. Truth be told, it’s martial arts (don’t scream) — I’d say the impacts are similar to running, though less frequent (if you can do it really well you have much stronger impacts, but I can’t and have no desire to learn it at the moment). Still… should I take a break? What do you do?

Also, sort of unrelated: do you take progesterone until you test, or do you stop when it’s taken you “far enough” to allow for implantation? As I’m getting sort of hopeful (and scared at the same time…), I don’t want to screw anything by stopping too early. My doc told me 10 days, which is what I’ve done so far. I could check back with her, too…

my favorite xenobiotic

Yesterday I had 3 cups of coffee accidentally. How can that happen accidentally, you ask? Well, I ordered a latte with just one shot of espresso (instead of the two they normally add), but got one extra. I did notice it was strong (which I don’t even like!)… but didn’t do anything about it. Only this morning when I rediscovered the bill with the charge for the extra shot I understood. Ouch.

So there, I haven’t given up coffee completely. Why? Two reasons, mainly. One is the lack of data showing that it’s harmful — I’ve found several resources saying that moderate amounts (1-2 cups) don’t seem to have adverse effects (even though others have seen growth restriction from caffeine during pregnancy, and I’ll be happy to cut it out if/when I manage to get pregnant — note that they consider all caffeine, and actually over 50% come from tea according to their analysis).
The other reason is that ttc can already take out a lot of the fun things in life. Hell, even sex becomes stressful when you follow the chart instead of the moods. I don’t want this “trying” to dictate my life even more than it already does. Normally I just have one cup per day, one short espresso (even before ttc). Hoping that this isn’t too bad. But of course, sometimes I wonder: am I hampering our chances? Would we be pregnant already if I had cut it out right when we started trying? Should I at least reduce it even more in the 2ww? (Here it would help to know what problems caffeine causes / is supposed to cause — I couldn’t find out.)

Then there are the alternatives. In the morning I usually have a cup of green tea — full of antioxidants. Should be good, right? Except that some say it blocks absorption of folic acid. Which would really be a problem. So for now, I have my green tea in the morning, and my folic acid in the evening.

What do you do about the drinks? No coffee, no tea at all? Different in the 2ww than pre-O?