Skip to main content

The Next Cycle

Yep, another cycle has begun.
Month 13, cycle 11, Clomid round 3.

The past few days have been full of tears, frustration, questions, and doubt. And prayer. Lots and lots of prayer. I have to remind myself every morning that God has a great big plan, and it's better than anything I could imagine. We are struggling with infertility for a reason. This phase of life has a specific purpose. I just need to follow Jesus, pray, and wait for His timing in this.

As we start our 13th month of trying to conceive (TTC) my Facebook newsfeed continues to be flooded with pregnancy announcements & complaints over certain symptoms, baby pictures, and all around happiness. It's a struggle, and to be honest with you, I've unfollowed almost all of my pregnant and recently-given-birth friends. Don't get me wrong, I still love you and want to hear about your life and your precious babies. I just need to be able to do it in my time, not every time I open Facebook.

I just got back from the fertility doctor and he wants to change it up a little this cycle. This will be our third cycle on the fertility medication Clomid. The first cycle was a great success. Well, maybe not great since I didn't get pregnant, but the medication at least gave me what the doc called a "strong ovulation". Granted it wasn't until cycle day 45 that ovulation actually occurred. Last cycle I didn't have a strong ovulation, I wasn't able to pick up my LH surge (the hormone that surges just before ovulation) meaning I didn't get a positive ovulation test (OPK). I had to go into the doctor for an ultrasound and blood draw last cycle to confirm that I had ovulated. He estimated that it happened between cycle day 18-21. Obviously that cycle wasn't a great success either. I am also now having to take progesterone supplements because I have low progesterone, which is one of the predominant pregnancy hormones. It hasn't been that terrible taking the progesterone, though it artificially lengthens the time after ovulation and before the next cycle (aka the two week wait or TWW), so it makes you dream that you are pregnant because you are late for your period.

So, this time we are trying something new. This cycle I will still be on Clomid to help ovulation, but now mid-cycle the doctor wants to check my ovaries to see if there is a maturing follicle & egg and then give me a shot of Ovidrel to trigger ovulation at an earlier cycle day than my last 2 cycles. Also, the trigger shot will enable us to better pinpoint when ovulation will happen so we can have sex, or baby dance (BD) at the right times.

Though I would love to have gotten pregnant without all this help/medicine I am incredibly thankful that we live in a place that has these technologies, and we are blessed to be able to afford to go to this doctor and get these medications. Always look at the positives, right? And heck, maybe fertility drugs will give us 2 or 3 babies at once. I'd totally be ok with that!!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Miscarriage

They say the statistic for miscarriage is 10-25% per 100 pregnancies in the US. 1 in 4 women will experience this loss. Personally I know more women who have miscarried, some more than once, than that statistic allows. I am now part of that statistic. Friday May 26, 2017 after just over 3 years of trying to conceive we got our first ever positive pregnancy test. The test line showed up almost immediately. Of course, it was a Dollar Tree test so we had to test again with a Clear Blue digital later in the evening (after 3 years you learn to buy the cheap ones before double checking with the expensive ones.) Both tests were positive. The screen of the digital pregnancy test read positive. It was surreal. Was this really happening? After waiting so long was this dream becoming reality? Five days later the dream began to fade and concern and fear crept in. On Wednesday I began spotting. After initial concern and a call to the nurse at my new Ob/gyn office I was reassured th...

Open, Ready, and Waiting

We are once again an open foster home! We were officially approved last Friday and opened for kids a couple of days ago. We are incredibly excited and so ready for that call that there is a baby who needs us. As excited and ready to help as we are we also know that for us to get a baby like this it means that a family is being taken apart, and that is heart wrenching. The jobs that I have had over the years have placed struggling families in my life in a variety of ways. Through working at daycares I was able to see so many working moms and dads striving to make the lives of their children good and fun. At Early Head Start I worked with some incredibly vulnerable families and children; the struggle these parents went through to make a good life for their children was evident. Some did a better job than others, some struggled constantly. These children lacked rules and boundaries and didn't know how to get love and attention without behaving badly. My work at the variou...

Life with Two Littles

Well, we've had two babies for 7 weeks now. It finally feels like we've settled into a new normal. And let me tell you this normal is crazy. I've had so many ideas the past several weeks about things to blog. Clearly none of them contained enough content to become actual posts. That's just how my brain is now, all over the place. All. The. Time. Life with two littles under the age of one is a little insane. I'd like to be able to say that it's all fun all the time. If I did that I would be lying to you, so I'm not going to say that. This life definitely has its ups and good times, but there is also a fair amount of tears and screaming--from the babies and from us parents. The older of the two littles has had a hard go of life so far and my heart hurts for her when she is hurting because she is still struggling with trust and feeling safe. Due to this she has horrible screaming fits when she is tired or hungry. The poor girl, when she gets so tired she w...