Please Exit to the Left.

It's been quite a while since I sat down to update here. Not really because I was so busy, but because I didn't want to. I thought about it all the time, but actually sitting down and having to put into words what has been going on the last few months is hard. Soooo hard. Going through this every day and then having to rehash the last 3-4 months...ugh. Just thinking about it makes me exhausted. But it's good for me to do this. One day (hopefully) I'll be happy I brought myself to do this.

February was a great month! My birthday and J surprised me with a trip to Vegas! Planned it all out with my work and everything! Even invited my sisters and best friend who surprised me at the airport! yay! BEST TRIP EVER! It was still less than 3 months post-op so we knew we didn't have a chance so it was fun! I also have the best husband ever. He knew this is exactly what we needed. I was actually able to forget about our infertility for a few days. Of course, except for the occasional ovarian twitch. Damn oversized ovaries. grr!

March - 4 month follow up. great news! His counts tripled. yes! Tripled!!!! Pre-op we had 6 million swimmers/ml and now we had 19!!!! (however, in our previous IUIs we had anywhere from 10-16 million/ml....different labs I guess calculate differently) What?!?! That's almost normal! (Normal range is 20/ml) We still have a LONG LONG way to go. But the fact that after only 4 months, there was this much improvement is very comforting.

I also had my follow up with my RE, Dr. D. Just walking in that place brought up so many memories. I hadn't stepped foot in there for 6 months The first thing I noticed was the smell. It's the overwhelming smell of defeat, sadness, anxiety, tears, prayers, questions, the memory of uncomfortable probes up the who-ha. All of those things at once hit me like a ton of bricks. It took all my strength to not just run out there while hitting every pregnant woman gleefully walking through the halls. (My RE is connected to a huge OBGYN practice...yeah, tell me about it!) The first few minutes just brought up all of the negative emotions our BFNs the past few months brought us. Not one single positive emotion. I was about to the point of tears and I had just reached the elevator. As if seeing the pregnant women and the maternity/baby clothes store at the entrance wasn't enough, once I reach the 4th floor you go right to the OBGYN ("fertiles section") and left for the "infertiles" section. haha ok, it's not called that but you do go left through a set of glass doors that say "Fertility Specialists of Houston". Our stork apparently has an alignment issue and always makes us take the left exit. Taking deep breaths, I check in and remember the receptionist as I'm sure she remembers me. I hate the feeling of pity, I just know she has so much pity for me that I'm back, again. Oh well, time to suck it up. I'm finally starting to feel a little hopeful, afterall it's just to talk with Dr. D. Nothing else.

He's very pleased because I've managed to lose 14 lbs since last time and I've ovulated on my own for the last 6 months. yay! We decide to go ahead with an IUI with a new drug I haven't tried yet, Femara. I know it will be a long shot because J isn't really even all the way healed yet, but I've waited 6 months! Let's get this show on the road!

Well we tried and failed. BAM! Devasted as usual. I forgot how hard it was with medicated cycles. That unicorn gets all riled up and the fall is so much worse. I knew it was too soon to start another treatment, but I had try it. J was really reluctant, but knew I was chomping at the bit to try again so he agreed. I had been as patient as I could be. That failed cycle was a nice little reality check for me. As I sat in bed before work crying about the arrival of AF I heard a voice whisper "Be Patient". It was a soft whisper in my head and I know it was God. It was clear as day. God put that in my conscience. That's it. Be Patient. At that moment I pulled myself together, didn't allow myself to feel bad and decided to move on. Deal with the fact that this cycle didn't work. That moment was a huge moment where peace washed over my entire body and I was okay. I was actually okay with our situation. I had never felt that before, but the undeniable truth was that My Protector, My Creator just let me know personally that he was taking care of it. I took it as "be patient, it's coming, I'm handling it". I took it as a promise and He doesn't break His promises, so I'm holding on to that.

April & May - We decided to take those months off and wait until J had his 6 month follow up. Typically, 6 month post-op is really when you see major improvements and then you continue getting better from then on. We also were scheduled to have the DNA retested as that was the major factor. If you have more than 27% fragmentation you are real unlikely to have a successful pregnancy. Well pre-op, ours was 50%. Yeah. Almost double as bad as it should have been. There really is no point in continuing any kind of treatment, even IVF, when the numbers are that bad as we will not yield a successful pregnancy. So we decided to wait until we get the results back and then decide how to move forward. We get the simple analysis right away..his counts double AGAIN!!! Hooray!!! 36 million per ml. Now that is WAY normal! yayayayayayayyaya! Morphology is still really low and motility is just okay. Improvement is always good no matter where it is. DNA frag test will take at least 2 weeks.

June - Call the urologist to see if the DNA fragmentation results are in.....THE LAB NEVER DID THEM!!!! WTF! RAGE! RAGE! RAGE! The Dr. ordered the test and it's clearly on J's chart. Stupid lab. Our whole struggle is based on that percentage. WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Our baby is depending on those numbers. RAGE! I'm not even on any fertility meds and I'm raging over this. So what am I supposed to do, make J go submit ANOTHER sample? no. I'm not making him endure the humiliation again . He's been such a trooper! I mean SUUUUCHH a trooper through this. How can I ask him to do that for the 8th time when it may or may not be used because this incompetent lab cant read instructions. I feel bad enough that he has to do it all, even when it is being inserted through my cervix via catheter. (sounds sexy right? oh yeeeaaaahhhh)

So guess what? We wait. I get so wrapped up in statistics and numbers. We decided we are going to do 3 medicated cycles with injectibles and just trust that DNA fragmentation has gone down. And by trusting, I mean it has improved by 50% or more. That's some BIG trust right there, people. If we got the results back and the DNA was unchanged we would move on. We would know that these next 3 IUIs aren't going to work, so we wouldn't put our hearts through the torture. That is information I'd really like to know beforehand. But since the lab messed up, maybe it's a sign. After all, it's just a number. We can beat the odds and I need to positive about it. So we may be blindly walking into all kinds of heartache and torture. But we have to try. J is really positive about our odds now that its been 6 months post surgery.

We won't be doing a treatment cycle until July. We scheduled a vacation about 4 months ago for the first time in 2 years without considering our fertility treatments. Guess what? It's either skip our vacation or have an IUI. New Orleans, hand grenades, shots (alcoholic, that is), gambling, staying up til 3 AM, partying our asses off, and even a hang over sound a lot more fun than catheters, sperm washes, IUIs, speculums, ultrasounds, literal shots with needles, pills, stress, thinking about follicle growth, thinking about the follicles not growing and extra hormones. What do you think? Thought so.

So July it is.....hopefully it will only be a short time until our stork's navigation instructs us to make that right turn :)

A New Year, A New Outlook

As this new year rolls around, I'd really like to look at it as a fresh start; a new start; a new beginning; anything other than what 2013 entailed. To sum it up, 2013 was a really crappy year for us fertility wise. However, many of the events of 2013 changed my life forever and taught me some really valuable life lessons that I'm not sure I could have learned without enduring the things I did. (I could do an entire blog of the life lessons infertility has brought us)

A lot of the worst days of my life happened in 2013. It will be a year to remember, that is for sure. But without those hard times, I wouldn't be in the state of mind I am today. Yes, that state changes rather quickly, but overall I feel like I'm in a healthy place to be able to look back at the last year, learn from all situations, count my blessings, reflect and grow.

- Our infertility struggles have made our marriage so strong that nothing can break it. We have grown together and stood firm together through the thick and thin. We now know what each other is made of (literally, ha!). At times it wasn't pretty (i.e. the ugly cry times 100, disagreements, having to feel emotions so deep we didn't know they existed, devastation, anger, frustration, etc.) but in the end we would center around each other and pray. The power of prayer is amazing and when a husband and wife pray together there is no greater your bond will ever feel than those moments.

- Perspective. Wow. How my perspective has changed! I feel like I'm a totally different person than the girl who nonchalantly threw the rest of her birth control pills in the drawer in September 2012 thinking she'd be pregnant soon. If I could only warn that girl what was to come.
In general the way I view others has changed. I feel like I'm less selfish and I take the time to look at their life through their lens instead my self-centered, egotistical world view I had before. I really didn't care how other people felt, what they were going through, or even try to empathize with them. Now I feel compassion and empathy for even the smallest things. I try to understand what it is to walk a mile is their shoes. I'd say I've done as much maturing in the last year as I had in the last 10 combined. Growing up is not as much fun as I thought it would be. But I am so thankful to have a new perspective on life.

- Strength - When you feel like you cannot go on, but you do....The strength we have been able to muster within our selves and each other is tremendous and an accomplishment in itself. The strength to walk into those office doors and endure another treatment, the strength it takes to pick yourself up off the ground every month. Strength is something I didn't know I had until I had no other choice.

- Friendships - I've gained some really terrific friendships through this hardship, 2 in particular. They are dear friends who have gone through the same things and have been here for me every step of the way. They are my confidants, my shoulder to cry on, and the people I vent to. They have shown me how to be a real friend, I mean a REAL friend and I'm so thankful for them. As one of them put it, "infertility is a sorority that no one wants to be invited to" but like sorority sisters, she will be a sister to me for life.

We are hoping and praying that in 2014 we will continue to grow and learn from our experiences. We hope for our miracle. Sometimes we get so mad at our "drunk stork", although he isn't finding his way as quick as we'd like, I can now look back in our rearview mirror (with a new perspective) at 2013 and see there was meaning in those detours and maybe our stork had to take a few extra pit stops along the way, but it was because WE also needed those pit stops for whatever reason. 2014 brings us tremendous hope. I'll be visiting with our RE late February to map out our plans and try a new route. We know the  issues with my husband, we know the issues with me, we at least know what we are battling. I have a feeling 2014 is going to be a great year! I'm sure there will be plenty of ups and downs, but we sure will continue to our destination no matter what 2014 has in store. Happy New Year!