Building a Bethards

Today is nine days post ovulation. Cycle eleven. Month thirteen. Third Clomid cycle. First cycle with hCG trigger shot. So many emotions all rolled up into a bunch of little numbers. There are constantly numbers going through my head. At any given moment I could probably give you a number in my head that would mean nothing to you, but would in some way be significant to me. Whether it is the cycle I'm on, the day in the cycle it is, how many days till or post ovulation I am, or how many days I have left to wait to find out if it worked this cycle. Today, one of those numbers is nine: days post ovulation. The other number is seven: days until I can take a pregnancy test. And since the hCG trigger shot could cause a false positive if I test too early, I must resist the urge to test early and wait all seven days. Killer. As we continue the waiting phase of this cycle I try to divert my mind to anything not baby related. It's an hourly struggle. Sometimes it's a mi...

Thirteen months into this journey and waiting is still killer. Waiting is one of the hardest things to get through each month. The only thing harder than waiting is getting a negative pregnancy test & starting the subsequent period. The beginning of a cycle brings new hope, but also a new waiting period. After the menstrual cycle has ended it becomes a waiting game for ovulation. After ovulation it becomes a waiting game for either pregnancy or another cycle. As today marks ovulation day we will begin the next phase of waiting tomorrow. Waiting and praying. Lots of praying. Praying that the medication to mature eggs worked. (Clomid) Praying that the shot to release the mature eggs worked. (Ovidrel) Praying that the sperm meets and fertilizes the egg(s). Praying that the fertilized egg implants at the right time and grows. Praying that the pregnancy and baby are healthy. Or, if that doesn't happen, praying for our emotions & hearts; praying that we accept that...

Those of you who know me know that I love the TV show Friends. I not only own all 10 seasons on DVD and Blu-ray, I also own the Friends Trivia game and the Scene It Friends Edition game. I have watched every episode multiple times. I have watched the entire series from start to finish at least 3 times since I've had the DVDs. I can pretty much say every line of every episode before it's said in the episode. As I've gotten older it seems that every episode, no matter how many times I've watched it before, I see or hear new things that didn't register before. There are many things in that wonderful show that now, as a married woman, I see differently than I did in my late teens and early 20s. My husband knows that when I'm in a bad mood (thanks hormones & fertility meds!) popping a disc of Friends into the Blu-ray player will usually help get me in a better mood. Well, just yesterday I was in one of those moods so a Friends disc was put in. It ended up ...

Over the past year I have hear, and said, many phrases that I'd never thought about before. Infertility does that to you. It makes you research & google things you never imagined. It makes you follow blog post and pinterest pins you wouldn't have noticed before. It also opens up a new world of vocabulary. Of the many things I've heard, some of which I'm sure I'll share at some point, one of the weirdest things was heard at yesterday's mid-cycle ultrasound. During the ultrasound the doctor remarked "You've got at good looking uterus." Have mercy. Really? I've got a good looking uterus? It'd be better looking if you found a baby in there! Alas, he was simply commenting that the lining of my uterus was building nicely and should be thick enough to provide a good place for a fertilized egg to implant. But, hey, I guess it's good to know I've got a good looking uterus! The next thing the doctor started talking about ...