Ocean Dreamer » TTC

blog birthday! some reflections on 2 years of blogging & TTCing…

erin — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 01:05:35 +0000

I started this blog two years ago today. I started it after reading a post on the old blog Uterus x2 called “build it, they will come.” The gist of the post is that the owners of that blog – a fabulous couple whose blogs I have followed for a long time now – started noticing all these folks who were dealing with infertility who, once they started blogging, also started getting pregnant. So they decided to do the same. I’m not big on the whole positive-thinking, visualize-your-wants-and-they-will-appear-before-you mentality, but I liked the sentiment. More importantly, I had searched the blogosphere for tales of other single LGBTQ folks starting families and found the results woefully lacking. So I started this blog as a way to build community with and for others in similar situations.

Now I sit here two years later and reflect on the process so far. When I first started this blog, I was TTCing at home with ICI-ready frozen sperm. I wasn’t taking any meds and was wary of having to do so. I’m not sure if its a Seattle-specific phenomenon or something common to dyke culture in other places as well, but in Seattle at least, using meds to get pregnant (and sometimes also using a bank as opposed to a known donor) is seriously frowned upon. I think it comes from the whole DIY movement – creating a baby is seen by many as something that is ideally DIY as well. And of course its wonderful if that works for you … but for some of us that road dead ends and we have to try something else. It took me a while to grow comfortable with that.

So from TTCing at home, I headed to my gyno’s office and then on to doing IUIs with femara at a fertility clinic. My experience at the clinic hasn’t always been positive (timing of insems was done on their schedule, not my body’s, for example), but I was also surprised to find that I had a great deal of control over what meds I took and what interventions I did when. In addition, I began seeing an acupuncturist who specializes in fertililty and who also gave me (terrible tasting!) herbs to take 2-3 times a day. After my first five femara cycles were unsuccessful, I started combining a double dose of femara with HCG shots, and continued with the acupuncture and chinese herbs. I have now done three of the femara/HCG cycles, none of which were successful. So here I sit getting ready for IVF, and I am alternately excited at the new possibilities and increased chance of success on the one side and freaked out at all that is involved as well as the medical risks on the other side. I’ve talked to a few folks who’ve done IVF – and read some of y’all’s blogs about it – and, for the most part, the consensus has been that its not as bad as people thought before they started trying. I have my 2-3 hour (!) intake appointment on Monday for the IVF, and will likely start birth control next month and the actual IVF procedure in June. (I’ll also probably have to take ~2 weeks off work in June, too, because of the daily ultrasound monitoring! How exactly do people work while doing IVF – especially as teachers, where you can’t just leave work for an hour or so and make up the time later?)

My blogging has changed since I first started Ocean Dreamer as well. When I first started it, I started it with the intention of building community for other single LGBTQ parents/parents-to-be – and also of building community with LGBTQ parents/parents-to-be in general. As a former social worker, this fit quite easily in my professional mind and within my professional boundaries. At times I felt I didn’t share my full self on here because I was living within the confines of professional boundaries instead of personal ones (of course, I would never share everything in a public forum, but I hope you know what I mean by the difference). I shared some of my misadventures on here (such as refilling the tank), but I hesitated to share much of my real feelings about the process. Now, though, my feelings around that – and my relationship to this blog and the community – have changed and I imagine you will find my posts to be more complete now and in the future than they were in the past.

I am hopeful as I look into the future. I recently had a conversation with some friends over whether saying “I’ll be a mother some day” was good (in that I really believe it will happen some day) or bad (in that positive thinking in any form can be damaging to folks dealing with infertility and that you don’t really know that you’ll be a mother some day – there is no way to be 100% certain). I believe – as did these friends for the most part – that it is good. I do believe I will be a mother some day. It may be through pregnancy, it may be through a different path, but I wholly believe that one day I will get there. And, for today at least, I am feeling hopeful about it.

“why don’t you try adoption?” Its been a year (exactly!) since I posted on here....

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“why don’t you try adoption?”

erin — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:20:07 +0000

Its been a year (exactly!) since I posted on here. In that year, I also haven’t been reading y’all’s blogs, and I’m sorry for that. Things got very busy with school and then life and something had to give and it was the blogging. So I apologize and do want to get back to it. I don’t know how often I’ll be posting on here, but I want this to be a resource for me, instead of something I feel I need to do – which only made things more stressful rather than a source of stress relief.

So, basically, I am still TTC. I’ve now tried 15 times. The last seven have been with meds; the last three with a double dose plus HCG shot. And, here I am, still not pregnant. (Though I’m currently in the 2ww – but don’t think it will take.) I’m also doing fertility yoga and acupuncture, have stopped eating soy and started eating chicken, and a friend’s mom is saying a Catholic prayer for me each week.

These last three tries in particular have been really tough. As my friend said, I’m now pulling out all the stops and things still aren’t working. If I’m not pregnant this time, I’m moving to IVF. It takes too much out of me to keep trying. Of course, who knows if the IVF will work, but at least it will up my chances significantly and the fact that I’m using frozen swimmers won’t make a difference.

What I am most sick of right now is people asking me, “why don’t you try adoption?” or something along those lines. Yes, of course, I have looked at adoption. And I have always wanted to adopt, and fully intend to do so. But for a single queer woman – even in Seattle – the average wait is 4 years. I just don’t want to wait that long. Maybe if this were my 2nd kid or something, that would be okay, but its not and so I’m not. I always thought that there were so many kids out there waiting to be adopted, but in truth, there aren’t. There are *way* more potential parents out there than there are waiting kids.

Foster adoption is an option, but not something I think I could do at this point. I used to work in foster care and have seen more than one potential foster adoptive parent who was told one day that the kid was one step away from becoming theirs forever and then the next day told the kid was returning to the bio family. And just like that the kid is removed. And the foster parents are left heartbroken. After all this, I just don’t think I could do that right now.

So, yes, to answer the question, yes, of course, I have considered adoption. But, no, I don’t think its a good choice right now. But please don’t think that I haven’t thought about it, that I haven’t spent hours and hours thinking about – and stressing about – all of my options. Please recognize and respect that I know what all my options are and I have made the choice that is best for me right now.

As always, thanks for listening, y’all.

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busy days…

erin — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:12:21 +0000

Hey Folks,

Yes, I’m still here. It’s been a busy month with school. Sorry for the lack of updates.

I’m heading in to the doctor in a couple of hours for my next insem. I’m crossing my fingers that it’s the right time. I got a very odd reading on my OPK last night – it looked like it was reading peak, but the lines (both of them – the control and the test) only appeared in half of the window. Bizarre. Anyone else had that? This morning my fertility monitor still read high, not peak, but I’m going for it anyway. It feels like now is the right time, the other signs line up, and it’s friggin’ cd 18. So maybe I’ll be too early, but maybe I’ll miss it if I wait too much longer. Oh, and I think they got rid of the scheduler I don’t like at my doc’s office. Or, at least, she wasn’t the one answering the phone. Everyone else in that office is so sweet and wonderful, but she is always pissy and unwilling to be at all flexible. (As in, last time, I asked if I could drop off my spermies in the morning so they could be thawed for my afternoon appointment, as opposed to bringing them in 30 minutes before, and she refused. Then the nurse called me back and said that it was no problem.) I was so dreading having to speak with her to make my appointment, and so relieved not to have to talk to her.

In other news, I’m on break this week, which is giving me a bit of time to take care of some much-needed non-school/non-baby stuff. Ah, nice. Plus, I finally have time to see my friends a bit more. Yesterday I had a lovely lunch with one friend and then a lovely walk around Green Lake with another.

I’m still catching up on everyone’s blogs.

I’ll post later about the insem.

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at least a little good news on the baby front

erin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:41:00 +0000

I just got a call from my sperm bank with some good news. When I ordered my IUI vial last cycle, I asked about changing over my pre-purchased ICI vials to IUI vials, since I’ll now be doing IUIs instead. At the time, they told me they didn’t have any more IUI vials! They had some still in quarantine, but the donor was sick and hadn’t been back in to have his next round of testing. They kept telling me they would call me the next day, in a few days, in a week to let me know the status. Well, when I hadn’t heard anything from them in two weeks, I called on Friday and left a message for them. They just called me back and said the IUI vials are out of quarantine! So I now have six prepurchased IUI vials waiting for me. This is so nice, because I really like this donor and I was worried that I’d have to switch to someone else.

I do think I’ll take this cycle off so I can make an appointment with my doc and get things figured out. But it’s a relief to know that I have all six vials waiting for me.

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First IUI! and on cd 14!

erin — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:16:05 +0000

First, thanks for all your sweet comments about the homophobia and everything at school. I really appreciate them. I have some updates – check back tomorrow for them.

Also, sorry for not posting sooner! Things have been crazy busy with school; this quarter is supposed to be our busiest of the year.

And now for the real purpose of this post – I had my first IUI today! So cross your fingers for me. After the craziness of my cycles in November and December, when my cycles lasted 24 and 42 days respectively, I decided to take a cycle off. Then, this cycle I started TTC again. My acupuncturist has been focusing on improving my fertility and so my last cycle was 29 days and this one looks like it will be regular, too.

When I met with the nurse practitioner at my obgyn in December, she suggested switching from ICI at home to IUI in their office, so that’s what I did. I was nervous going in today because I’d heard that it was painful. It was a bit painful for me because she had to use a clamp, but it wasn’t that bad – at least, the pain didn’t last that long. I’m having a bit of cramping right now, nothing too bad. I’m also enjoying yummy celebratory gluten free pizza from my local allergen-friendly Italian restaurant. And now, the waiting begins….

Also, a question for y’all. So, I was doing OPKs 2-3 times a day, which meant that yesterday I did one while I was at school. The problem, however, was that I couldn’t wait in the bathroom for ~3 minutes while the OPK calculated its results. Thankfully it was actually pretty quick – thank god for the definitive positive – so I had my result before I left the bathroom. However, what if it hadn’t been so quick? Have y’all had this problem? I don’t exactly want to carry the pee stick around with me waiting for the 3 minutes to be up, but I’m not sure what else to do if I don’t get a quick result. Thoughts?

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cd 42: Aunt Flo Arrives

erin — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:17:40 +0000

Okay, y’all. My period *finally* arrived yesterday. I don’t know what was going on, but this was the longest cycle I have ever had. Perhaps my body and clearb.lue pregnancy tests are conspiring against me to get me to spend money – I spent over $30 on 4 pregnancy tests (the good ones with the actual words “pregnant” or “not pregnant”), convinced that I might actually be pregnant. But no. I don’t think this was an early miscarriage, either, since all 4 tests came back negative.

I’m thinking of skipping the next cycle to let my body get back to its old routine. I’ve certainly been under a lot of stress between school crap (more than what I’ve written on here) and everything else that’s been going on. And I’m sure the chemical pregnancy didn’t help, either. Plus, I can only keep the nitrogen tank for a week – anything beyond that costs $30 a day – and with my cycles’ recent craziness, I don’t want to wind up owing the bank even more money.

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not preggers :(

erin — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:51:27 +0000

I took a pregnancy test last night and it was negative. This was not a surprise, but it isn’t as easy to get the negative results now as it was earlier on. I haven’t actually gotten my period yet either, so I suppose I could still turn out to be pregnant, but I don’t think so. I don’t have a whole lot else to say about it right now, but I wanted to let y’all know what was going on. I do believe it will happen for me eventually, but the waiting and trying is rough, especially since there are other things going on right now that are taking away my emotional energy.

In other news, I realized that I’d gotten away from posting many pics on here, so posting more pics is my New Year’s Resolution for my blog.

And in even more other news, I am done with my quarter and am *loving* the free time!

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ttc #5 – and the glories of charting

erin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:13:09 +0000

This post is a bit late, but I did my last insems on Sunday and Monday the 30th and 1st. The 30th was cd 17 and I got my first positive OPK, so I did the first insem. I got a second positive OPK on the 1st and did the second insem that night before going to bed. I can usually feel ovulation and did feel it a *tiny* bit Tuesday morning (the 2nd). What is really odd, though, is that I haven’t gotten a peak reading at all on my fertility monitor. Usually, it and the OPKs have been aligned pretty well. I kept thinking, “oh, well, it’ll read peak one day soon.” But no. I’m still peeing on a stick each morning, and it’s still reading high each morning. But that’s it. Plus, my BBT, which has always been a bit odd, hasn’t gone above my cover line *once* this entire cycle. On Monday the nurse practitioner told me just not to worry about the BBT anymore. That certainly makes things easier. Although I’ve taken it every morning, I’ve only written it in my chart twice this entire cycle. I go through phases with charting and right now I’m in a lazy, avoidance phase. Next month I may get really excited about it again, but as for right now, I’m completely unmotivated to write anything down – or to do much more than pee on a stick and stick a thermometer in my mouth once a day.

How do y’all keep yourselves motivated to keep charting?

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the doc visit (or, small world, eh?)

erin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:13:07 +0000

School is finally calming down some and I have a bit of free time, so I wanted to give all of y’all an update. As I said here, I think there may be something wrong with my cycles since my previous one lasted only 24 days (with only a 9 day luteal phase), and so I made an appointment with the nurse practitioner at my doctor’s office. So I had my appointment today and guess what? The nurse practitioner also happens to be in my Maybe Baby group and is preggers herself! Small world, eh? And who knows, she may even read this blog, since I did send the link to the Maybe Baby email list awhile back. As far as I know, she’s the first queer doctor I’ve had (other than the docs at queer camp), and I loved it – no need to explain what I was doing or worry that she might be homophobic (not that I’ve had much experience with homophobic doctors in Seattle, but you never know.)

So, basically what she said is that she’s not sure why my cycle’s have been off but that she thinks I should start doing IUIs instead of home insems. My original plan was to do home insems for 6 cycles and then switch to IUIs – I’ve done five, so that’s pretty close. I just hope my sperm bank will let me exchange my pre-ordered ICI vials for IUI vials. She also only wants to do one IUI per cycle, which means I will actually save money each month even though it’s more invasive. Ha! Oh, and she told me to stop using my fertility monitor and just use the clear.blue OPKs each afternoon (ideally between 2 and 5pm) – testing in the afternoon apparently tends to be more accurate and timely. She doesn’t think I needed to start on clomid right now, though if I don’t get pregnant after 3 cycles, she wants to refer me to a fertility clinic, where they will most likely put me on it.

I did an insem this month and could be preggers right now (more on that soon), but if I’m not, I’m going to skip the next cycle because of the holidays and will try again in January.

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it’s all in the timing

erin — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:50:21 +0000

Well, y’all, I could be preggers right this minute. (How’s that for an opening sentence, huh?)

The timing was *tricky* this time around. For the past few months, when I wasn’t trying, my cycle was pretty long. Last month it was 34 days. So this month, when I called to order my spermies, I figured having them delivered on cd 15 would be fine. The challenge is that the vials can only be delivered Tuesday – Saturday. So that meant having them delivered on cd 12 (Saturday) – and paying exorbitant extra fees for a Saturday delivery and possibly having to get the tank refilled if I didn’t ovulate until cd 18 – or having them delivered on cd 15 (Tuesday.) I went with cd 15. Well, here is where things get challenging.

Monday afternoon (cd 14), I decide I should start using my OPKs in the evenings (I use a fertility monitor every morning). To my *immense* surprise, the OPK read positive that afternoon. That is when my mildly OCD self begins to mildly *freak* *out.* The tank was supposed to arrive on Tuesday, but it would probably come while I was at school, I thought. Which would mean that I’d have to wait to get it until 6pm on Tuesday, which would be a full 24 hours after the positive OPK. Not. good.

I was hoping the Fedex guy would show up before I left for school yesterday, but that didn’t happen. So I left a very sweet note for him (I know it’s a him, it’s always the same guy), asking if he could possibly return to deliver it after I was home from school and that I would be forever grateful. I also offered to meet him wherever he was at that time. Well, sweet Fedex guy just happened to have a pickup Tuesday afternoon in my neighborhood and returned to deliver my spermies to me! I was *soo* relieved.

I had an appointment Tuesday afternoon as well, though. I went ahead and did an insem before the appointment, even though I couldn’t lay in bed for the two hours they recommend. It was better than nothing! I then did the second insem yesterday evening, while watching all the exciting (and woefully disappointing, in the case of prop 8, etc.) election coverage. So I wasn’t out celebrating Obama’s victory with the rest of Seattle, but if I get preggers this time, my kid may well end up with the middle name Barack.

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