Feeling a Little Blah

I'm on cd13 and still no surge. This is not a surprise. I go in tomorrow for the fun ultrasound and to see how many follies the hot flash-producing drugs have stimulated in my ovaries. I will probably ovulate in the next couple of days or so, if my previous cycle that resulted in the chemical pregnancy is any indication of timing.

I feel like I should be more excited than I am. Defense mechanism? Probably. But here's the crazy thing - I'm afraid that if I don't have a good attitude about it that it might not take. You know, the mind-body connection, stuff like that.

On top of all this, I am fairly stressed about work. Yes, I am missing a very important meeting that my boss said I didn't have to travel for. My boss was pretty darn cool about it. Why can't I just be more of a guy, and take the boss' word at face value and move on without all the over-analyzing? Because I'm a chick, that's why. This is what chicks do. We take a perfectly good situation, over-analyze the heck out of it, and worriedly twiddle our thumbs as we play through all the what-if scenarios. What if my boss really isn't ok with this, and is just playing nice? Women are pretty darn notorious for avoiding confrontation and not expressing their true feelings, especially when they're anything but nice. What if this jeopardizes my career, at least in the short term? What if I have now been knocked down a peg or two in my boss' eyes? Should I have just skipped this cycle and gone to the dang meeting?!

The meeting starts tomorrow. On top of all this, I have to go to the RE's office for the ultrasound, and have to hightail it home in time to call in to the meeting that I didn't travel for. I hope my husband can come with me, so that I can call into the meeting from my cell phone if we can't make it home in time. My husband is working day and night on his current catastrophic project at work. So it's not like he's just sitting around waiting to chaeuffer me to my RE appointments. But he is being a dear, and refused to travel this week because he wanted to be here with me for my IUI(s).

Perhaps it's good that I'm so busy; it could make for a relatively painless 2ww. I just hope that all this juggling, planning, and sacrificing is all worth it. I really do.

Life revolves around getting knocked up

So I started a new cycle a few days ago, and am humming along with the fertility drugs. Taking Clomid right now, and am happy to report that the hot flashes have yet to begin. Instead of being so depressed last cycle after the miscarriage, I am now dutifully distracted by all the drugs, cycle days, and other various details one has to pay attention to when trying to conceive.

I have been super-busy at work, and so has hubby. While it has been a challenge, I've been thinking we've been doing a pretty damn good job; leaning on each other as needed, and the not-so-busy person picking up the slack without needing to be asked. And then trading places appropriately. Then, some business travel of mine just got reshuffled, and BAM!...it's smack dab in my ovulation window.

I try not to think of myself as a special person just because of my IF challenges. I know that people are challenged in a myriad of ways, so my IF plight is just par for the course. It just really stinks when you're doing your best to hum along in life (with IF being a subset of said life), and you realize your life really does revolve around it because it's such a timing game. I talked to hubby about the trip, and we both decided we wouldn't travel that week. Period. So I told my boss I had a personal conflict, and she was ok with it. Hopefully this isn't a foreboding of things to come with future cycles.

Let the New Cycle Begin

Ok, today is Day 1 of my new cycle. I do have a question for people, though. If you had a miscarriage previously, or know someone who did - did the start of your next period begin with old blood? I had a little spotting last night that was brown, and then I started full-flow today. The RE thought it might be related to the drugs I took previously, but that explanation sounded a bit strange to me. How come you can never think of good questions until after you hang up?

I just spoke to a nurse from the RE's office, and I'm going to follow the same protocol as my previous IUI cycle. Clomid, Estress, HCG shot, IUI. Apparently I had 2 follicles on either side last cycle! I thought I only had 1 on each side...

So here we embark on our 2nd attempt via DIUI. It is nice to be starting anew. It gives me hope and gets me out of the little spiral I was in (this is not to say I won't spiral again, but let's just take one day at a time). Bring it on!

My Breaking Point

I grew up a casually religious person. Casual in that I always felt that I believed in God, but had never gotten deep into church or the Bible, and didn't feel right affiliating myself with deeply religious people. Not that I had anything against them, I just felt uncomfortable hanging out with them knowing that I didn't share their convictions. Now for the deeply religous folks who largely kept their beliefs out of mainstream conversation, I was fine. But for the ones who were always wrapping your life around your religion - this made me feel weird.

However, later in life - I have started to ask some of those life questions, and when my family experienced a tragedy two years ago - I found an enormous amount of comfort and strength from a then new church that my husband and I found. We attended regularly for about a year, and then tapered off when life started to normalize and we started to think how nice it would be to find a smaller church that could provide more intimacy amongst church-goers. We never found that smaller church.

Then, with everything that's been going on in our lives, I had started to get the yearning to attend church this past weekend. Funny enough, my husband mentioned it on Saturday as well. So we went on Sunday. It felt nice sitting in the church again, and as I admired the woodwork on the ceiling, the associate pastor began her prayer during the collecting of tithes. I barely remember the words, but they hit me like a ton of bricks. Her comforting voice, her powerful words...it was too much. I started to cry. Right there in church. Imagine my utter shock when I next saw the title of this week's message, "The Breaking Point". I felt like God was talking directly to me. I have felt so alone during all this, as if He has forgotten about me, or is playing some cruel joke on me. Maybe I have forgotten about Him. And I have found my way back.

I cried during the entire service. Not a sobbing cry; just tears flowing down my face the whole time, and the occasional nose-blowing. I'm sure other people noticed me, but nobody made a big deal out of it. I did notice one lady at the end of the service. She looked at me a couple of times. I didn't really return the look, but I could tell it was just a look of concern. That made me feel a little better. And my DH was there the whole time. He asked if I wanted to leave, but I said no. How could I leave when this message was here for me?

Here's what I got out of the sermon: When you have reached the breaking point, your thoughts and emotions are impacted in a radical manner different than when things are just humming along in life. It impacts your perspective and makes you forget the good things. And it makes that additional pain that much harder to take. While it can seem like no big deal, someone who is in that state of emotional stress does not process life's little bumps effectively. Boy, is that the truth.

Even though I have a job that is pretty great, I have let recent events at work really get me down. And I'm normally a pretty optimistic person. I think I've realized in the back of my mind that I'm responding to things differently due to my IF challenges, but this sermon really put things into perspective. It was like - of course things have been tough, look at everything you've been through these last two years! I lost a brother and dear friend to cancer, and have been dealing with the IF blues. And I have a very demanding job that has had an incredible amount of change and churn...

But the purpose of this post is not to complain about my life. Because I have a huge amount to be thankful for. I come from an extremely close-knit family, and I see them all the time. I have many wonderful nieces and nephews, and they make me smile and laugh with their innocent questions (the younger ones) and teenage trials and tribulations. I have a small group of very close girlfriends that "get" me. I can call them at any hour of any day and cry my eyes out. I have done this. They have done this with me, too. I have a really cool dog. When I am sad, he comes up to me and looks right at my soul with eyes that understand my grief. And his usual jubliant self is quiet, and sits with me for support. I have a beautiful home in a wonderful neighborhood, with some great neighbors. I have really made my house a home, and have all kinds of relics from my happy youth, and from my various travels around the world. I have been fortunate to travel quite a bit, both on business and pleasure. I've been to some fantastic destinations, both domestic and international, and will always cherish those experiences. And I have a husband who I am completely in love with, and with whom our relationship continues to evolve and deepen with each "experience" that life throws at us. IF is definitely no exception!

This is the perspective that has been clouded by my grief as I have reached my breaking point. I am so thankful that God has reminded me of this. I have thanked Him several times today. I'm sure I will thank him again tonight. And tomorrow. And the next day.

So please, all of my IF sisters: If you find yourself on the tumultuous path to your breaking point, or are already there - remember to right your perspective and take a deep breath. And if you're a believer of God, talk to Him, believe in Him, and He will be there. And take another deep breath. And tomorrow will be a better day. It was for me.

I Sent Him an Email

As a follow-up to my last post, I wanted to provide an update on what I did last night. After the feeling-sorry-for-myself stage passed, my husband called me. Still feeling blue and uncommunicative, I wasn't very chatty, and our discussion was brief. Then I felt like a complete jerk, and wrote him an email.

I told him how, although I've had my good days, I've had some really bad days as well. And that, although I know he's got a lot of stress in his life, that this sort of trumps all that other stuff because...well, because it does. I told him I was sorry for coming off as mean, aloof, and distant. And then I told him that I really miss and love him, and can't wait for him to come home on Friday so we can make the most of our weekend (I leave on business Monday night). He responded like the gem that he is. Tomorrow will be a better day.

Back to Normal

I went in for another HCG test on Saturday, and I finally tested negative. So I guess that means my body processed the miscarriage fully on its own, and now I just wait for my period before I kick it into high gear again.

This has been a reflective day. Maybe it's the cloudy weather that's got me feeling a bit ho-hum. You all must be thinking I'm a bit bipolar, what with my last post proclaiming my utter happiness with life, and this one, that is on the gloomy side.

Let me explain why I'm sad. I have always been a great communicator when it comes to work, school, arguing with the sales clerk on why she should allow me to return an item, etc. You know, the easy stuff. But when it comes to emotions, I am NOT one to wear my emotions on my sleeve. I tend to bottle stuff up. My husbands says so. It's been a couple of weeks since the whole miscarriage started, and sometimes I just get down about it. And I don't want to sound like a broken record about it with my husband, so I just acknowledge that I'm sad and let myself experience the plethora of emotions. Then the logical side of me kicks in, and I tell myself that while this was sad, this was only my first DIUI, it's a good sign that I even got PG, etc., etc., etc.

And then I get upset because my DH hasn't picked up on the fact that I'm sad, and wonder how he can be so insensitive about this, because, excuse me - it needs to be about me right now. I know, it's totally unfair. He can't read my mind. But he has so much crap going on in his life right now, I just keep my mouth shut so that I don't add to it.

So then I go and listen to sad music, look at the gloomy day, and let myself be sad. Oh, and he went out of town on business again today, and won't be back till Friday. I'm away on business next week, and 2 weeks after that. Even though we have our weekends together, just knowing that all this time apart is coming up just sucks. Because even though I'm not being the best communicator about what I'm going through, just having his presence really does help. And now he's gone again.