Thanksgiving

It's 4:00 a.m., Eastern time - 10:00 a.m. where I am. The day after Thanksgiving. My wife is in line at Kohl's, with her sister, joining the hordes of Black Friday shoppers. She's never done it before, and I think it's sort of funny / crazy that she's actually out there.

Update on our progress: None - my wife is just taking progesterone supplements, vaginally, until December 9th. She also gave herself another shot yesterday (same stuff as used for the trigger, which supposedly further elevates levels of progesterone) So, it's wait and see some more.

Everything that follows is unrelated to fertility, and purely editorial.

I spent my Thanksgiving working, in Germany. Not an ideal way to spend the holiday, but really all I missed was my wife, and my dog. We talked on the phone a bit about Thanksgiving dinner, and why it's such a big deal. We agreed that it really isn't that big of a deal ... here's why: Turkey is not good. It is boring, and when you really think about it, it tastes bad. At least some parts of it do (i.e. white meat) If you eat just a piece of white turkey meat, and judge it's flavor subjectively, you'll likely say it doesn't taste good. Turkey's place in the food chain is that of a low fat alternative to better meats, like beef and pork - it's a filler. To use it as the focal point of the most overindulgent meal of the year is sort of stupid, and inefficient. All sorts of effort is spent on creating a supporting cast to prop up the dead weight focal point that is the turkey. Stuffing, gravy and cranberries are only there to make the turkey worth eating. Give me a cheeseburger any day.

Or maybe this is just a way for me to feel better about not being there - tune in this time next year to hear my rant about how Thanksgiving dinner is the greatest meal ever.

Wishy washy, I am.

The Counts

Sample of 75 million sperm with 60% motility.

My dear wife had a good deal of cramping on the morning of our procedure - we think it was the follicles being fired from ovary to uterus. We speculated that, given our luck, two follicles were probably emitted at the same time, one from each ovary. The follicles, having been emitted at near light speed would then collide in her uterus causing a firey explosion, taking out all sperm in the surrounding area. My wife's uterus was likened to a cyclotron.

Or maybe the eggs tumbled gently down into position where finally, after 2+ years of doing this dance, they managed to coordinate with their sperm partners. Babies!

Final day is December 9th - that's the day when we should call the office if flow has not started (down there)

Follicles - Part 3

The office called - protocol is as follows:

Trigger shot administered at 7:00 p.m. tonight - this poses a dilemma as my wife has class at that time, which will require her to slip into a bathroom at precisely 6:58, and self-administer the shot. She has completely melted down in past attempts at giving herself shots and the timing of this one, being critical, allows no margin for melt downs. I volunteered to drive to where she is to give her the shot in my car (which would kind of be like a quickie, right?) but she is pledging to be strong and do it on her own. I love that girl.

Tomorrow we abstain, then Saturday morning we go into the office to frollick with cups (me) and to have have a baster thrust unto thee (wife)

There are 6 follicles that should be at or about the size we need them to be. The lady on the phone told my wife that if it results in multiples we might have to have a discussion about terminating one or more. I say the hell with that ... the real decision is just to pick which channel we want our TV show to be on.

Follicles - part 2

One measures over 18mm, and three others are at 15mm ... they said they usually like to trigger as soon as one gets to 18mm, so we are expecting to do so tonight with IUI tomorrow morning. But, can't we wait until the 15mm triplets get to proper size as well - I hope so (assuming they need to get that big to be "ripe")

More later - until then, I will be watching Detroit get erased from the map.

Follicles!

The ultrasound tech told her that there were at least 3 in the left ovary, and at least 1 in the right ... not sure how ovaries work, but I thought only one ovary released eggs each month ... either way, there is more than one, which is good news because now my sperm will have a higher chance of running into an egg when they take their wrong turns.

She's back in for an ultrasound, and blood work this morning. Hoping they provide an estimate of when we will do the trigger shot (we're thinking tonight, or tomorrow, which would mean IUI tomorrow or Friday morning)

I didn't write about this yet, but I thought I'd share - when I was in France last weekend I attended a mass at the Cathedral Notre Dame - a beautiful Catholic church in Paris. I don't know what it was, but I was sort of taken in by the place when I saw it on a tour the day before, thus compelling me to trek from hotel to church on Sunday morning. Anyways, while I was in mass (which was said in all sorts of languages that I don't understand) I looked up and saw a banner ... I could only see half of it, but that which I could see contained the word "Annee" .... if you go way back into my blogging history, I bet you can find a post that details the name we like for a girl - Annie. Weird ...

I know the word Annee is French for something completely different from how I interpreted it, but still - weird. I'm not a superstitious guy ... but maybe I am ...

In U.S.

Back home for this week ... always nice to take a breather from the project, and from the constant routine of checking into new hotel, unpacking, working 14 hours a day, cleaning exploded hair gel off of other bathroom items, packing, moving to new hotel, traveling to strange Euro city by weekend, not knowing how to do basic tasks like pay for food, get taxi, ask for bathroom, etc. Life becomes quasi-normal this week ... then I return to Germany next Sunday evening.

We are going on day 4 of our shots - so far the blood work has revealed adequate levels of stimulant, so we're on track. She goes in for an ultrasound tomorrow morning ... hoping for more than one follicle this time, and a better idea of when we'll do our IUI (likely to be late in the week)

I'll keep you posted ... enjoy the next several posts because, remember, this is the end of the road for us. We're going to be pregnant for sure in about three weeks.

Next round

This next round is going to be the one - here's why:

• Because the endometriosis surgery was only recently completed - we have only one cycle completed since
• Our only post-endo cycle was conservatively medicated, resulting in only one follicle
• Progesterone deficiency was also recently detected (I think we have ~3 cycles of progesterone supplemented work behind us)
• Our next cycle will be more heavily medicated, likely resulting in multiple follicles, thereby increasing our odds
• My wife is young, and has very regular cycles
• Our Dr. said my sperm is fine ...
• I'm going to be home, and we're doing an IUI next week (shots start this Wednesday)

So, I'll check back in later to tell you that my wife is pregnant. Don't go anywhere.

Losing streak

Our string continues - but not before a tease. In a normal cycle, she would have "started" on Friday, Saturday at the latest. So, when Sunday rolled around and flow had not yet commenced, our naive minds started to take the bait. And when Sunday evening came with no change in status, we were letting our minds venture into dangerous territory. Then, I received an e-mail from my wife stating the inevitable:

After the 800th wipe, the last one had a nice pink line of blood on it. Not pregnant.

Quite literally a losing streak.

So, that brings us to, oh let's see, somewhere around 30 cycles with no success. Impressive, no?

Guest post - from my wife

Here's the text of an e-mail I got from my wife this morning. She has been dutifully e-mailing me every night before she goes to bed - when my Blackberry alarm goes off in the morning I immediately check my Yahoo e-mail, and there's always a message from her (it's as close as I can get to waking up next to her - I appreciate her messages so much more than she knows)

Anyways, here it is, published without her permission (she'll be cool with it ... so no worries):

Do you remember me telling you about that girl in my class that has two sets of twins????? Well if not there is a girl in my class that has two sets of twins and in a conversation today during class we somehow got to talking about being put under and eventually it turned into the laproscopy surgery. She said that she had to have it done b/c she had endometriosis, moderately. She was put on clomid and got pregnant with twins a few months later. She then tried for a while the second time and was not getting pregnant so she was put on injections and did IUI and her third round got pregnant again with twins! It gave me hope and made me feel a little better.

It's weird because the last two days I've felt like giving up and just saying screw it. But then when I heard her tell me her story it gave me a little more hope. I think it's God's way of telling me not to give up and that I'm not alone. Now my whole group knows our situation and they are praying for us too. It was kind of a fun class.

I love that girl - it's so nice to see a message with a positive spin on it. It's soooooo easy to get down during this process. We need a little boost to keep our heads above water sometimes, and at minimum, believe better days are coming. I sincerely believe they are, and I'm glad to have my wife share those sentiments.

Sarcasm Well Placed

I'm glad I hedged with all that sarcasm in recent posts, because, there have been reports of spotting from my home. Wanna know something? Sometimes a small amount of vaginal progesterone cream obliges gravity and escapes to freedom. The end is in site when the cream turns pink - and it started turning pink this morning.

Fuck.

On a happier note this is pretty funny

(Final?) Countdown

She's going to blow in 6 days, or less. Oh, and her whole boob hurts now - both of them - not just the tips any more.

I hope the sarcasm tied to the mention of every symptom is coming across (maybe it's lost on the black background?)

Can't ... wait ... to ... see ... what ... happens ...

To be clear - if she makes it to Saturday without starting, that's when she goes into the office for a test (or POAS at home)