Ocean Dreamer » TTC misadventures

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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and … no

erin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:38:44 +0000

Nope, not preggers. I actually think something may be wrong. Until I started TTC, I always had a *very* regular cycle. Not regular down to the exact hour on the exact 28th day like one woman I know, but regular enough that my cycle was always 28 to 30 days long. Not the past couple months, though. My previous cycle was 36 days long. This past cycle – 24. My luteal phase was only 9 days long this time.

Now, my luteal phase has always been a little funky because my temp doesn’t rise right after I ovulate. I asked a midwife about it awhile ago and she said it wasn’t a problem as long as my luteal phase was still 12+ days long. Which it has been … until now.

So I called my doctor’s office today to make an appointment to have someone look at my charts and give me some advice. I now have an appointment with the nurse practitioner in December. The receptionist also wanted me to talk to their triage nurse, in case the problem could be solved without an appointment. So I spoke to her briefly and, without looking at my charts (since we were talking over the phone), she just said, “it sounds like you could be a candidate for clomid.” I was shocked. I was expecting something a bit more, well, gentle. I’ve heard so many horror stories about clomid – I’d really rather avoid it if at all possible. And the prospect of having twins as a single mom – well, I’ve always wanted twins, but I’m not sure about doing it as a single parent. As for the nurse, if this is what she does all day, then surely she has realized that it’s not exactly a statement patients take lightly – let alone take lightly *without having had an exam or anything more than a literally >2 minute conversation!* I was expecting her to say, “oh, maybe you should be on progesterone” or something – you know, because the problem is mainly with my luteal phase. But, no, that’s not what she said.

Could this be caused by the chemical pregnancy? I mean, I’ve never had weird cycles before and then I suddenly start having them right after it. I know women who have a miscarriage can have weird cycles for awhile afterwards, so maybe this is the same??? Please? If any of y’all have advice, I would really, really love to hear it. Thanks in advance.

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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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crisis averted

erin — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:24:36 +0000

So back in June when I last ordered spermies from PRS, I also preordered six samples. (They limit you to six, or I would have ordered more.) Last week, when I went to order more samples for my upcoming insem (hurray! I’m so happy to be back at this), they couldn’t find my samples. I was *freaking out.* Granted, I am under a lot of stress from other things, but this was not good. What the hell had they done with my samples, that I had paid a *lot* for, and that I needed next week so I could *finally* start TTC again?

Well, after several phone calls back and forth, they *found* them. Don’t ask me where they went, but they did turn up. It turns out they had also tried to slip me those 2-for-1 vials without telling me (you know, the ones where the motility isn’t good enough and they try to make it up to you by giving you extra vials). So, I told them I didn’t want them and thankfully they were more than happy to exchange them for regular vials.

This is actually the second time they messed up my order. That doesn’t bode well for the future. But there are many great things about them – they’re lesbian-owned, they happily ship directly to my house instead of to a doctor’s office, they have *lots* of open donors, and I love the donor I’ve chosen. So for now I’ll stick with them, and cross my fingers for future cycles.

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or not???

erin — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:51:04 +0000

Okay, so perhaps I had created a bubble of hallucination, as Sarah commented yesterday. After my semi-confusing pregnancy test yesterday morning, I bought a set of 2 electric ones, so there would be less confusion. I took one yesterday afternoon and it was negative – but, I thought, okay, maybe the HCG* hasn’t had time to build up yet. Then I took another one this morning and it, too, was negative. So, I don’t know….

I do know of one woman who didn’t get a positive HPT** until 6 days after her period was due. However, I also know that for the past week or so I had been feeling bloated (not a normal PMS symptom for me) and had pressure in my abdomen. Now that feeling is gone. So maybe this was a very early miscarriage and there was still a tiny amount of HCG in my body?

In any case, as I was driving to an appointment this morning, I made peace with it. It’s not something I can control and I won’t be doing myself any favors during the next couple of days if I’m just stressing about it (provided my period still hasn’t come). The rollercoaster between yes and no has been really intense and crazy-making. So, as best I can, I am going to just enjoy my vacation and when my answer comes (in the form of a period or lack thereof), I will know. Until that time, I can’t get so wrapped up in it or I won’t be able to enjoy seeing my good friends and my family.

*HCG: Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (what pregnancy tests test for)

**HPT: Home Pregnancy Test

One of these days I am going to make an acronym page that folks can just refer to.

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confused

erin — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:47:52 +0000

Okay, I just don’t get it. As I wrote yesterday, I hadn’t ovulated – at least, according to the fertility monitor and OPK I’m using. Then, this morning, my BBT had risen .4 degrees – above my cover line, though still a lot lower than any other post-ovulation BBT I’ve ever had. So seeing that this morning, I panicked. I did one insem this morning (a rush job – no 2 hours of rotating positions on the bed, since I had an appointment at 10.) My fertility monitor, however, still said “high” (not “peak”) fertility. I thought, well, if I *just* ovulated, then maybe, maybe I can catch it after all. (I know, post-ovulation is too late for an insemination, but I just couldn’t stand not doing anything at all this month.) So, okay, I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I’d just completely missed the boat this month.

Then, I decided, sort of on a fluke, to go ahead and use an OPK this evening, just in case. And guess what? It says I’m surging. WTF? What about the BBT rise? I don’t get it.

It’s an odd test result this time, too. The test I use has a control line (the one on the right in the pic) and a test line (on the left). When the test and control lines are equally dark, you’re surging. So, okay, simple enough. Here’s what’s odd, though. My test line is just as dark as it’s been the whole month, but the control line is lighter. So, by default, they’re equally dark. WTF? I don’t get it.

Has this happened to other people? Am I just overthinking this entire process (entirely possible).

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spermies take a road trip (cd 18)

erin — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 01:30:34 +0000

So it is cd 18 and I still have not ovulated. This is the longest wait I have had in nearly 2 years of charting. I did switch antihistamines in the hopes of upping my eggwhite CM (it’s worked so far!), but otherwise I can’t figure out what’s going on. I haven’t been more stressed this month than any other – in fact, I’ve been feeling more connected to community (what with Pride and everything else) and so have been less stressed. The only other time I’ve had an odd cycle, I had family visit *and* moved *and* had a huge fight with my then-girlfriend prior to ovulation. Nothing like that this time. Odd.

Anyway, so the spermies’ tank is supposed to go back tomorrow, only it can’t, since I haven’t had my LH surge yet and so haven’t inseminated yet. Each day over a week that I have it, I get charged $30. Bummer.

Besides that, the liquid nitrogen in the tank only lasts for up to 7 days, which meant today the spermies and I went on an adventure to get the tank refilled. First I had to find a place to refill it. For those who don’t know, you can take it to either a welding supply or a biological gases company. Make sure that you specify that it’s for *liquid* nitrogen – not just regular nitrogen (gas). I didn’t distinguish that and was told by about five places that they had to exchange the whole tank, rather than refill it. I was panicking. “I can’t exchange the tank,” I told them. “It doesn’t belong to me.” They thought this sounded very sketchy. Add to that the fact that my friend Sarah had cautioned me against telling them that it was a tank for sperm, since she’d gotten some pretty homophobic responses. (She ended up telling people she was a science teacher; apparently science teachers get liquid nitrogen on a regular basis.) When they asked me what I was using it for, I didn’t have a complete answer to give them and I know it was clear I was lying.

I alternated calling places and freaking out before I eventually found a very sweet man who said I should just come down and he’ll take a look at the tank and see what they can do. I called his company just before 4:30. They closed at 5. They are located about half an hour from me. I rushed out of the house, spermies in hand, and raced over to the shop, getting there at 4:56. When I got there, he said, “oh, this is a liquid nitrogen tank. Yes, we can refill it.” There was then a brief debate among the staff over whether or not I’d have to get an account with them. They keep tight records on everyone who purchases gases from them – apparently there are strict regulations. They questioned me about what I was doing with the tank. Despite Sarah’s warnings, I didn’t want to lie to them, so I told them it was sperm for inseminations. In the end, they decided I didn’t need the account and they filled it up. When I left, they all wished me luck with the insems! They were very sweet, like I said.

The spermies and I made it home safely from the mini-road trip. I hope they enjoyed it. Now just let my LH surge come soon!

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1 down, hopefully not too many to go

erin — Fri, 09 May 2008 23:01:04 +0000

Yesterday I did my first round of inseminations. All things considered, they went pretty well. Some friends had really hilarious stories about their first times, but mine went off pretty smoothly … except for the dogs.

For the uninitiated, the sperm comes in a small vile stored in a large tank of liquid nitrogen. Here’s a photo, so you can see how tiny the vile is:

I did my first (of two) inseminations yesterday morning. I followed the sperm bank’s preparation instructions with no problems. Also per their instructions, after doing the actual insemination, I lay in bed, rolling over every 20 minutes, for 2 hours. It was a very boring 2 hours. I watched TV. I read my book. I drank water (but not too much – because you can’t get up to pee.) And since I’m oh, just a little anal, I set my cell phone alarm to go off exactly every 20 minutes, and each time it did, I rolled to a different position. (Hey, if I don’t get pregnant this cycle, I don’t want to believe it was because I didn’t follow their instructions *to the letter.*)

I had shut the pooches outside the bedroom while I was doing this, so they wouldn’t come bursting in and jump on me. Once I had (I thought) put the syringe and everything else away, I let them in and went on my merry way (which for me consisted of several hours of studying). Then, that afternoon, I noticed Miss Cass seemed to have acquired a new toy. She was thrilled with it – she could chew the hard plastic, it had a very interesting smell, and her Mama seemed extremely interested in it. What exactly was this great new toy Cass had found, you ask?

The sperm vile. Gross, I know. Well, I learned my lesson: I will always make sure I throw the viles out immediately after using them. At least she got to it after I’d already taken the swimmers out. Or it would have become a *very* expensive dog toy.

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