I've been tagged!

I've been tagged by Sarah at "A Baby for Carter"! What fun, what an honor. I've been loving her blog lately because we're going to be starting IVF at the same time. Also, I can click between "A Baby for Carter" and "Carter Time" to look at all of the adorable pictures of her son. Go ahead, I dare you to look at those pictures and tell me you've ever seen a more handsome little guy.

So the rules as I understand them are as follows:

Link back to the person who tagged you. Done. Tag 10 other blogs and tell 'em why you love 'em. List 10 honest things about yourself.

It appears that most people on my blogroll have already been tagged, so I'm not sure I can come up with 10 blogs. I'm trying not to double tag anyone.

First I'd like to tag Lisa at "And Baby Makes 3" She has been giving me helpful, supportive comments from the beginning. I never knew I could feel so grateful for a person I've never even met. And I am so excited by her recent BFP!

Next, I'd like to tag Jersey from "Woes of a Barren Lesbo" She makes me laugh. And she's from New Jersey. What other reasons do I need?

Third, I'm tagging Keely over at "Schroedinger's Womb" because any coffee addict is a friend of mine.

Tag number 4 goes to "Mommies in the Making", because they seem very sweet, and they're on a small break, so they need something fun to post about.

Number 5 goes to "Figboiler". I love how open and honest and raw your emotions are on your blog. You have a way of articulating what so many people are feeling but can't put into words. Yeah, I know you're been tagged already. But there are TWO of you. So this is my way of making sure that Justine and Boo each give us 10 things. No splitting the list!

Sixth, I'd like to tag "Journey towards our Baby" Because I feel like I could have written a lot of their posts, and because they're hopping on the IVF train too. I thought I saw somewhere that they'd already been tagged, but now I can't find where. So, just to be safe I'm tagging you too.

Number 7 goes to Rachel at Single Mom Insanity. I've just started following your blog, but I already think you're cool. Plus, I was raised by a single mom, so I've got a great deal of admiration for all the single moms out there.

And finally, I tag anyone who happens to be reading this! If you're on my blogroll and I didn't tag you, it's because I saw (or thought I saw) you on another list and not because I don't love you. Any lurkers, or people who have not yet commented are invited too! This is fun.

10 Honest things about me

1) I don't think I'd feel any great loss if I never spoke to my father again.

2) My first celebrity crush was on Whitney Houston when I was 6 years old. Remember when music clubs (C0lumbia House, etc) would send you little stamps with pictures of all the albums you could chose from? I used to tear out the Whitney Houston stamps and save them. Oh, and Jennifer Beals too. After I saw Flashdance I stretched out the collars on all of my T-shirts and sweatshirts so they would hang off of my shoulder. My mother was PISSED!

3) I usually have a meltdown when I go clothes shopping because I hate my body. Therefore, I don't go clothes shopping very often. And then I get cranky because I have nothing to wear. I just can't win.

4) I have a thing for artificial watermelon flavor.

5) When I was 5 years old, I was in a Su.baru commercial. I think it's what made me gay.

6) My biggest pet peeve is people who have no sense of the world around them. People who talk very loudly on cell phones on public transportation, line cutters, people who walk 3 or 4 abreast on narrow sidewalks and don't move for people walking in the opposite direction- they all make me nuts.

7) The ASPCA commercials make me cry.

8) I wish that I had taken time off between high school and college, because I didn't get as much out of the experience academically as I would have liked. But I did meet the love of my life at school, so I suppose it was worth it. :)

9) I subscribe to 3 foodie magazines and I have a shelf full of cookbooks, but I rarely use recipes when I cook.

10) I am SO EXCITED to be starting IVF soon.

Shhh, I'm just an impostor.

I'm feeling like a bit of an impostor in TTC blogland since I'm not actively TTC at the moment. I took August off to wait for a consultation with my RE. Now I have to take September off to prepare for IVF. I really don't know what to do with myself. I won't have anything TTC related to blog about for some time. I fear my readership abandoning me for more exciting blogs with betas and ultrasounds and belly pics. I am feeling restless and unproductive and boring.

When I started out, I thought I would get pregnant easily and have a baby by the time I was 30. But somehow that birthday snuck up on me last week, and I have to come to terms with the fact that I wasn't even able to get pregnant before I turned 30. I know, I know, it's such an arbitrary number. But 30 just feels so...grown up. Like I can no longer use the fact that I'm only in my twenties as an excuse for not having my life exactly where I want it. Ok, enough of that. I feel like I should offer you some cheese with that whine.

I am trying very hard to shake the negativity and restlessness, and come up with some things that are GOOD about waiting until October to try again:

*My poor little credit card will get a much needed break

*I have a better chance of having a summer baby. That would be great for Elizabeth's schedule since she's in the education field. And my summer baby would turn 5 just before the start of the school year, so he / she should be able to start kindergarten right away.

*If my first round of IVF works, I should be able to tell my family about the pregnancy at Christmas.

*I can make another half-assed attempt to lose weight before I get pregnant.

*I can wear loose winter clothing to hide the pregnancy during the early stages, so my co-workers won't get suspicious before I'm ready to tell them.


That's all I've come up with at the moment. If anyone else has taken a slightly longer break and wants to tell me how beneficial it was, I'm all ears!

Pulling out the big guns

I had a consultation with my doctor yesterday afternoon to talk about why 3 home insems, 4 unmedicated IUIs, and 3 medicated IUIs have failed to get me knocked up.  I was a bit worried that she would say I was a lost cause, but the meeting went well and was actually quite reassuring.  This doctor is a tiny, bubbly-to-the-point-of-hyperactive woman who speaks about a mile a minute without pausing to take a breath.  Fortunately, she had some good things to say.

One of my biggest concerns was that my short cycles on g0nal f were an indicator of a much larger problem.  But the doctor assured me that since the injectables make your follicles grow really fast, they can speed up the rest of the cycle too.  She said that all of the testing and ultrasounds they've done on me so far indicate that I should be able to get pregnant, and that there is nothing major that's "off".   Her explanation for why I haven't gotten pregnant yet is that human reproduction is remarkably inefficient, and that under the best of circumstances, a couple having intercourse at ovulation has about a 20% chance of conception each month.  My chances are reduced quite a bit because I'm using frozen sperm.  As she put it "it's tough to be frozen and thawed".  Poor little spermies.  I know, it's a bit of a lame explanation.  Part of me is happy with the idea that it might just be a crapshoot, that there might not be anything horribly wrong with me.  The other part of me wanted her to find a small, manageable problem with an easy solution.    

Her recommendation for the next step is IVF.  We're fortunate that our insurance will now cover IVF since I've had so many failed IUIs.  So it looks like we're hopping on the IVF train.  I'm happy that we're moving forward, and that our odds will be much better.  Still there's a small part of me that is absolutely terrified that we won't have any luck with IVF either. We're pulling out the big guns, and we can't step it up if this doesn't work.  It's scary to be out of options.  I'm sure that some of this anxiety is just jitters that will subside once I get over the shock of moving to IVF.  Right now it doesn't quite seem real.  

Never would I ever

My consolation prize for BFN #10 was a visit to the bar with Elizabeth and our friend Alyssa.  Alyssa has been away all summer doing research for her dissertation, so it was good to catch up.  She told us about one of her friends who is trying to start a family and (gasp!) took fertility drugs. "You know they make those drugs from guinea pigs" Alyssa said.  I had to stop myself from telling her that it's actually Chinese hamsters.  (That's the fun of secretly TTC-  you have to pretend you know nothing about the process).

 "I would NEVER do something crazy like that to have a baby," she later asserted.  Ladies, I almost choked on my beer laughing.  I remember feeling exactly the same way before I started this TTC madness.  I remember a time when I thought I would just adopt. I remember when I thought I'd get pregnant easily and wouldn't ever need fertility drugs.  I can't pinpoint the moment when I knew that I wanted to try to get pregnant.  I'm not sure when I became the type of person who would happily inject myself with something that may increase my risk of ovarian cancer just for the chance of having a baby.  This journey sure will change you.

On Wednesday, I have a consultation with my doctor to see where I go after 10 failed inseminations.  A big part of me is hoping that she'll recommend IVF, because somehow I've become the kind of girl who WOULD do something crazy like that to have a baby.

On to the toes...

I have learned something about myself.  G.onal F, when taken in higher doses, appears to make my cycles really short.  This is my second time doing 150 IU and AF showed up on day 20 cutting my TWW down to just one week.  The first time I did 150 IU, I had a 21 day cycle.  For those of you keeping track, that's 7 IUIs and 3 home insems without a single BFP.  10 total BFNs.  I have run out of fingers on which to count them.  Guess I should start counting on my toes now. 

I've reached a point where the numbers are hitting me hard.  Getting up to the double digits is a big blow.  Celebrating my 30th birthday without a BFP is tough.  Hitting the 1 year of TTC in September is going to be hard. 

Overall I think I've been taking it pretty well.  I've tried to keep busy and focus on positive things.  Moving has provided the perfect distraction, so I don't have too much time to dwell on the BFN.  We've also had some unexpected good news.  Elizabeth found out the other day that she got a postdoc, so we're incredibly relieved to know that we'll be okay financially next year.  But the thing that has really kept me from wallowing was reading about these wonderful ladies who finally got a BFP!  (congratulations!) Just gotta  be patient, and it will happen for me too someday.  

Movin' on up

After 4 years of living in a neighborhood full of undergraduates, Elizabeth and I decided that we'd had enough. We spent all weekend moving to a new apartment about 15 minutes away from the old one. Both apartments are on the second floor, and neither building has an elevator. We have a lot of furniture for a one bedroom apartment and Elizabeth has buttloads of books. By the end of the day on Saturday, my legs were like jelly and every muscle in my body ached. Now I remember why I hate moving. Even our brains were fried. On our way home from returning the U-Haul, a car in front of us had a bumper sticker that said "If you enjoy your freedom, thank a vet". Elizabeth stared at the sticker for a while. "What the hell does that
mean?" she said, "that doesn't even make sense!" To which I replied, "Honey, you do know that they're talking about war veterans, NOT veterinarians, right?" Dead silence.



Anyway, our new apartment is so much nicer than the old one. For the first time in our lives, we have a dishwasher. And central air. Even though the apartment is by most standards ugly and dated, it feels positively luxurious compared to all of the other places we've lived. To top it all off, it's only 3 minutes away from our favorite dosa place. Really, what else does a girl need?

And now for your viewing pleasure, some photos from the apartment's web site:

The cabinets are crappy, but there are SO MANY OF THEM!

Someone put a lot of work into making the bathroom this ugly. I wonder if we can get a shower curtain to match the tile?