Femara Cycle #2

Here we are in the midst of Femara Cycle #2. I've taken the first two doses and....helloooooo hot flashes! I'm like my own personal space heater. Even the dog won't sit next to me because I get so hot. I guess its less like a hot flash and more like I'm just an oven all the time.

This cycle will prove to be interesting because we are headed to Italy. I've read that BBT should be taken at the equivalent of the same time each day and should be adjusted for time zone. I don't think I can adjust to Italian time and I have no idea what jet lag will do to it all.

I've been slacking

Cycle #1 with Femara + Progesterone was a bust. I'm not surprised and neither is the hubs.

The weekend of ovulation we were off in upstate New York at a wedding. It was perfect. We stayed at a romantic B&B, got to make googlie eyes at each other, and all around we had a wonderful and relaxing time with family.

Unfortunately the next week at work the Death Flu was going around and I was so lucky I got a wonderful case of it. I wasn't able to rest properly because I was in another wedding the following weekend. Bridesmaid duty called and I ended up with bronchitis and on all kinds of breathing treatments and other drugs. The good news is I felt better. The bad news is I was horribly ill with a fever and on all sorts of medications when implantation should have taken place.

I have no idea if the Death Flu could have messed things up or not. All I know is we did the thing you have to do to have a baby every single day that cycle until the Death Flu hit and nada.

I gave the Death Flu to Mike. I felt bad.

I still l have bronchitis and I'm still up hacking up a lung all night so Mike has ditched me for the second bedroom. We are going to have to remedy that before too long. ;)

I got my Femara refilled and I start again in a couple of days. I have no idea how this cycle will work out because I'm set to ovulate right about the time we leave for Italy. I'm sure that will mess with my BBT big time. I refuse to do any opks this cycle with all the traveling and time changes so BBT it all I'll have.

Oh well. I'll post about some good news on the IVF/ICSI front soon!

Femara Day #4

~Waves the white flag~

Uncle! Uncle!

In the last 48 hours I have slept the majority of it. I am so exhausted! I believe the clinical term I am looking for here is fatigue. Man oh man.

Femara has officially kicked my butt. I've already slept 13 hours today and once I'm done with this blog post I'm going back to bed. I can't think straight I'm so tired.

Day #1 of Femara (CD5)

I can't tell I took anything. I decided to take it in the morning to see what would happen.




Nothing.



Nothing happened whatsoever.



I have heard all sorts of horror stories about Clomid turning people in raging crazy women and I wondered if Femara would do the same thing. The mechanism of action is different for each drug, but they each essentially do the same thing. Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up and be mean and nasty, but I doubt it. I've also heard of people having hot flashes on Clomid. I do seem a little warmer but I always seem warmer when the weather cools off so I don't think my new body temperature has anything to do with the Femara.

I'll be interested to see what Day #2 brings!

CD 4

I am now on CD 4. I had this whole debate with one of my BFFs who is also a nurse practitioner yesterday about whether or not to take the Femara as prescribed. Most people I have seen around the internet baby making sphere take it days 3-7. I was told to take it 5-9.

In the end I went with the 5-9.

I start tomorrow. Now I'm debating to take it in the morning or at night. From what I have read most people take Clomid in the evening because of the side effects but Femara isn't supposed to have such awful side effects. More than likely if there is any side effect to be had I will have it so I'll probably take it at night.

I hope I remember. I am going to tape it to my pillow or something because I know I will forget!!

We will be traveling to my BILs wedding during prime baby making time so perhaps my egg will enjoy a change in scenery. We are headed to upstate New York, a truly beautiful place and one of my most favorite places to visit. We are staying at a great B&B and I can't wait!

Willing AF to Show Up

It's not often I sit at the end of a cycle and will Aunt Flow to make an appearance but today I am.  For the first time in my life I have at least 12 days of an LP. That is amazing for me!!! I wonder if the FertilAid made the difference?

I'm ready to get this show on the road so I can start my Femara and see what that does. My longitudinal experiment is ready for Phase 2.

Come on AF!

Again?

So....a bit of an awkward post. Mike had his urology appointment today. I went along with him. It only makes sense since he always goes along with me and holds my hand. No way was I going to hold his hand through a prostate exam.

No. Freaking. Way.

So I stood on the other side of the curtain and tried not to laugh. This is the second prostate exam Mike has had in the last few months and more than he probably ever wanted to have in his entire life.

The urologist seemed to be slightly more optimistic than we were. He said Mike's counts were still good and his motility was good. He told us past behavior was a predictor of future outcome and we had been pregnant before naturally so we should continue on that path for now.

He also thought Mike's sperm were good enough for IUI so that is an option for us if these medications don't work.

Geez. Baby making isn't supposed to be this hard.



As a side note...I have never seen so many questionnaires about erections! I know I'm a nurse, but even I was giggling the 15th time they asked him to describe it in detail!

I am truly baffled

Two of my friends recommended a supplement called FertilAid to me. Knowing I had a month to blow before I brought out the "big guns" I decided to give it a try. I have no idea what this stuff does to my body, but it does apparently make my temps go up. Here is my most recent BBT chart overlay. It's been pinned on ovulation day and coverline (the line you draw once you have ovulated to show a clear thermal shift into the LP).

Anyway....it's so bizarre. I'm like a toaster over this cycle. This cycle is the orange line. I might as well stick a marshmallow over my forehead and roast it.

Almost There!

I'm 6 dpo today so I'm almost to my next cycle! Yay! My LP is usually 8 days so AF should be here soon. I never thought I'd be so excited to see that nasty relative.

In other news, my BBT is strangely high the last 3 days. I have no idea why, but it's an interesting observation. It's really too bad I am an N of only 1 because I have no comparison group.

Fun with BBT

When I get bored I like to play with my charts. Today I overlaid my BBT from this cycle with my previous two cycles (oooooo a Rainbow!) It looks like I need to sun myself on a rock! Is is possible for someone to even be that cold? (PS that last blue temp is fake. I wanted my cross hairs!)

I guess to some people this makes sense but all I can say is: Look at those pretty colors!!

I'm quite the longitudinal study.

Cool. I ovulated!

I admit I was horrible about documenting this cycle...

(My longitudinal study is falling apart at a rapid pace.)

...but....I think I ovulated yesterday on CD 16. This is weird because Mrs. EGGstraordinary EGG doesn't normally show her fantastic little face until CD 18.

But why?

I've had several friends recommend a supplement called FertilAid and this past month I thought "eh, what have I got to lose?" so I ordered some and took it. I guess it did something because my little chickadee was early. It feels like someone has been battering my Angry Uterus with a shovel for the last 36 hours and I choose to blame the supplement.

~Shakes a pitchfork at the FertilAid bottle~

This was the one cycle where I wanted AF to show up early. The faster the evil witch gets here, the sooner I can start my meds (which are now happily living on my dresser in the same place I threw them on Friday. I believe this is called Operation Ignore the Medications.) Since I O'd early, it will probably be a short cycle. Yay! There is always a silver lining to having my jacked up reproductive system. :) In less than two weeks I can start Operation Holy Batman Side Effects and see what the Femara does to me. The first few cycles of progesterone nearly took me out of this world so I am really looking forward to Femara + progesterone. (Note: Sarcasm)

I'll be obsessively taking my temps on Tuesday and Wednesday to see if my suspicion about ovulation is correct. It always is. I get these strange "feelings"--sort of like a llama has been set loose in my lower abdomen--and I know Mrs. EGGstraordinary EGG is about to show up.

A bright spot among all the gloom

Mike nudged me over to the pharmacy today to pick up my meds. I really didn't know how much all this was going to cost since *surprise surprise* my insurance does not cover anything related to infertility. Basically my insurance covers nothing, but that is for a different type of blog.

Anyway, Femara is used off label in fertility so guess what!?! It was covered! I only had to pay $10 for a 1 month supply. My progesterone was also only $10 for a 30 day supply.

I had planned to shell out a couple hundred bucks per month and so I was pleasantly surprised that it was only $15 (the progesterone will last me two cycles).

I may have moon walked out of the pharmacy. Only the eye witnesses know for sure.

My Femara dose is 5mg on CD 5 - CD 9. The RE says I should get a response from that within 5 days of the last dose, so somewhere between CD 10 and CD 14. I'm supposed to start the progesterone on CD17 but I will wait and start it 3 or 4 days after my temp spike to be on the safe side whatever day that may be.

For the first time in my life I'm ready for this cycle to be over so I can finally take these meds and see if they do anything!

~voo doos ovaries~

How do you know when you are over TTC?

When the RE calls in a million prescriptions to the pharmacy and two days later you still haven't bothered to pick them up.

People ask me all the time how I am coping with everything. Then I get the classic "Relax and it will happen." line.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

First off, no amount of relaxing fixes Crazy Sperm and no amount of relaxing will fix my Angry Uterus. Ok, it's not actually my uterus that is angry it's my Angry Hormones. Relaxing isn't going to fix my corpus luteum!! I have no idea why people think relaxing will ever help anything, but I digress.

My point is, to all you "just relax' advice givers, I am obviously relaxed about it since I can't even remember to pick up my prescriptions!! One would think that if I was anxious or nervous or obsessive about this whole thing I would have been standing at the pharmacy waiting for the call to come in.

I am not.

I am relaxed.

Life is good.

Embracing Life as a Crazy Cat Lady

Well.....

I don't even know where to start with this one. I expected the news we got yesterday but I don't think Mike did. I'm going to have to learn to love cats because it looks like Crazy Cat Lady is in my future.

The good news is that all my girlie parts are normal. No fibroids, polyps, strange shapes, tubes are clear, etc. I still make a crappy egg, but that is a fixable problem.

Mike's little swimmers, however, are worse than what we thought. His morphology remained the same at 1% but his other stats went down (like his count, etc.). What that basically means is that while he does make sperm, they are all funny looking and they can't do things that sperm normally do, like penetrate an egg.

I have no idea how we managed to conceive before between all of our issues.

The recommendation to us was Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection aka ICSI. ICSI is a procedure used with IVF. Basically Mike's sperm suck so bad they don't think we have a chance to conceive naturally and they want to hand select his little swimmers and stick them directly into my eggs. There really is no other way around male factor infertility. There is nothing they can do to fix morphology.

I've been expecting to hear these words since the first semen analysis so I am not totally devastated and heart broken. I was prepared for it. Mike seems totally devastated and heartbroken and I don't think he was really expecting this. He has an appointment with a urologist in another two weeks so we will see what that guy says.

The plan from here is to try Femara + progesterone and continue the process the old fashion way for 3 cycles. I'm not super hopeful but I'm not ready to pull the trigger on IVF yet. I have too many things going on this fall and through the holidays to be able to follow an IVF protocol so we will wait until spring.

I'll probably ask the RE for an additional 3 months after the first three to carry us through to January (I have to feel like I am doing something) and then hopefully we can start IVF/ICSI with my February cycle. I will give it one shot. That's it. After that we'll have to look into other options like donor sperm and IUI but I'm not thinking about that right now. That's a long way off.

D-Day! (or O-day?)

I have been obsessing about tomorrow longer than I want to admit. We get the results of my sweetie's *cough* "tests" and find out what the plan is. (And then I get the joy of waiting for the next cycle. Ugh. All this waiting. ~twiddles thumbs~) While I do hope Mike gets good news about his little swimmers, I know I'll never hear the end of his sperms jokes. I guess if I have to endure sperm banter in order to have a baby....so be it. ~sigh~

I have my list of questions ready for the doc. If he wasn't freaked out by my color coordinated medical chart review then he will be freaked out by my barrage of (practically alphabetized) things I need to know. The good news is I already embraced my slightly obsessive researcher nature when it comes to TTC so I have no problems being overly organized. 

I've been working on my list of questions for like three weeks. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that. I have a few more stragglers that I want to add to it before tomorrow. 

Mike just came at me with a bottle of wine which is probably a hint for me to relax. (Relax? Relax!! How on earth can I relax!?! I'm only finding out the fate of my Angry Uterus tomorrow!)

Stay tuned. I will update as soon as I can. 

Less Than a Week!

I'm counting down until next Tuesday. Finally....FINALLY...we will have a plan.

I am really nervous and scared that whatever we try won't work and I'll be stuck curing my Angry Uterus for another year. Mike is the optimistic hopeful one. He talks about babies and his eyes kind of go all sparklie.

My Hubs Wants the Red Carpet Rolled Out

I'll be honest. I feel really confident that I understand what goes through a woman's mind when she contemplates having a baby. Not only because I am a woman contemplating (ok, obsessing) having a baby, but also because I spend a lot of time talking to some wonderful online friends who are also contemplating (read: also obsessing) having a baby. I get it.

What I don't necessarily get is what women facing infertility think about. In general, infertility is a dirty little secret that isn't openly discussed. No one wants to admit out loud that they are trying for a baby and can't have one. No one talks about their experiences with the constant tests, exams, and disappointments. I have one friend, ONE, who had been open with me about her journey to concieve. It took her 3 years and two miscarriages to get there. If it wasn't for my dear friend I would have gone crazy long ago. (For the record she won her battle with her ovaries and she is now expecting a little boy!) This particular friend is my hope and my inspiration, but other than that, it seems like the other members of the Infertile Couples Club want their membership to stay anonymous. I don't get that.

I have no idea if other women feel the way I do about their body. I don't know if the way I feel is normal or not. I often wonder how many women are out there just like me who are too scared to speak out and say something. Needless to say, my lack of access to an available group of infertile women leave me with only one outlet for discussion. Mike.

After so many months of TTC on the brain it's probably become, much to Mike's dismay, one of my most discussed topics. This whole time I've been thinking to myself: He doesn't get it. He already has a kid. Then I proceed to mentally bash my head against a brick wall.

Turns out I was wrong. He does get it. He does think about TTC. What he thinks about, however, is nothing that any woman would ever come up with!

Mike and I were sitting on the couch a few days ago. Like most guys, Mike is solution oriented. He wants to fix our problem. (Bless him for wanting to fix me!) He told me he had come up with a solution to our baby making issues. Short of coming at my lady parts with a wrench and a crow bar, I really had no idea what he intended to do. I was just so ecstatic that he finally wanted to discuss infertility!

Mike then proceeded to rattle off a list of things I could do to make my Angry Uterus less angry.

Mike's TTC Suggestions 

Suggested in just this order

1. Roll out a red carpet for the guys (meaning little swimmers)
2. Set up drink stations along the way to the egg
3. Hire a sperm masseuse 
4. Offer a variety of refreshments at designated "sperm stops" (he mentioned egg white CF & gatorade)
5. Have sperm rest stations with chocolates on the pillows
6. Hire body guards for his guys so the macrophages wouldn't eat them
7. Install maps
8. install a neon arrow pointing to the correct side
9. Build flower stands and gift shops at the entrance to my fallopian tubes so his guys could buy gifts to entice my egg
10. Play soft romantic music and provide low lighting in my fallopian tubes to encourage conception

Yep folks, that is my husband's solution to infertility. 

Some ladies might have been frustrated if their all their husband offered up as a solution. Not me. I know that for my hubs this was his way of saying that he does contemplate having babies, but he is at a loss on what to do to make one. I have to say, the gift shop idea sounds promising. 

A Visual of the Problem

I briefly mentioned that one of the problems Mike and I have with this whole baby making gig is the curse of a short luteal phase (LP). Today I am poking pins in my LP's voo doo doll. I keep trying to banish it to another dimension or curse it to become the Mars Rover's new BFF because I am so mad! I get mad every month we fail to make a little sticky bean because I know I'm the primary reason for our difficulties. My super sweet and doting hubby really wants a baby, and if he had picked a woman without difficult body parts, he would have one by now. It's depressing to stare that in the face month after month.

Our RE thinks the reason I personally have a short LP is because I make a crappy corpus luteum. The corpus luteum is the thing that sticks around on the ovary after ovulation to make the progesterone that in turn makes women into human incubators for implantation. 

You know what I have to say about that? 

Boo on you Ms. Corpus Luteum. Boo. On. You. All I want is to be a human incubator! Why is that so hard? 

At our initial consult, the specialist recommended Femara + progesterone. The Femara is supposed to make me make a better egg and therefore a better Ms. Corpus Luteum. We are still waiting on our follow up visit to see if that will be the plan. (10 more days! Waaaahoooooo!!!) The progesterone will be because even when I make a good enough egg to get pregnant, I still seem to have a progesterone problem and can't maintain the pregnancy. I couldn't have just one thing. Oh no. That would be too easy. 

While Mike and I continue to twiddle our thumbs for the next 10 days, I thought I'd provide a visual of what my problem looks like BBT style. For those not obsessed with making a baby, normal LP is 14 days. Anything less than 12 is kind of "iffy" and anything less than 10 is "holy batman you have a problem."

As you can clearly see, I am in the Holy Batman You Have a Problem range. ~sigh~

It takes 7 to 10 days for an egg to move down into the uterus to implant. For all I know, my fertilized eggs spend 7 days happily and lazily taking the scenic train from my fallopian tube to my uterus where it spends time checking in to the Uterus Hotel only to lay down and then here the EVACUATE sirens go off on day 8.

I am excited though because this cycle...MY LP WAS A WHOLE 9 DAYS!!! This is an improvement over it's usual 8 days. :) I'll take a small victory when I can.

I didn't take any progesterone supplements this month so my body had nothing to help extend the LP this time. Not that I think that really matters because it hasn't actually done anything in previous cycles. What I learned was that I am practically a reptile without it. (So if you see me sunning myself on a rock, pay me no attention.) Look at that ovulation day (henceforth called O day) temp: 96.4. Crazy! It looks like I slept in a deep freeze. 

Anywho, the main point of today's post is that I am back to CD1 of cycle 1,988,015,653. (At least, that's what it seems like.) 

Onto next month. 

You want me to check what?!?

After so many months of unsuccessful baby making, one has to get serious. A girl has got to pee on a lot of sticks, chart her BBT like she's in a cult, and...

(if you are squeamish, stop reading here)

Check your cervical mucus like your life depended on it!!



Yep, I said it. Cervical mucus. It's as gross as it sounds. As women we all know our body makes stuff but I never thought I'd be quite so obsessed with it. Mike and I read the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility and the author made a great point: cervical mucus is gross but cervical fluid is ok. So I'll talk about cervical fluid instead. :)

I honestly thought determining the consistency of CF would be easy. I am, after all, in the medical field. Ha. Was I ever mistaken! I can't tell you how many hours I spent googling and reading descriptions about all the different kinds. I knew I was desperate when I started googling pictures. I even took a photo once on my phone to show my husband and see what he thought.

He thought I was crazy.


Lucky for me my illustrious hubby, being the spectacular man that I married, stepped in and saved me from wasting my entire life looking at CF. My hubby took over the job. Yes ladies, my husband is now in charge of filling in that little blank on Fertility Friend. At first, it was extremely awkward for both of us. He was embarrassed, I was embarrassed. I'm pretty sure our dog was embarrassed.

Then, we realized baby making is a joint effort and CF and cervical position (oh yes, he checks that too along with how soft or hard that sucker is) are some of the few ways that the future daddy can really contribute during the data collecting phase of this whole project.

As crazy as it is, our nightly routine brought us closer together. It made us more of a team in this adventure and my husband, like most men, was given something he could tinker with and he could finally do something to help us.

Let's Talk about BBT

If the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result, then BBT is the very act of insanity. I suppose for women with normal cycles it might offer some interesting insight or information. For the rest of us, BBT is mostly an exercise in frustration management.

For those who aren't "in the know," BBT stands for basal body temperature. It's your body temperature at rest first thing in the morning. BBT (theoretically) should tell you if you ovulate or not.

It order to keep the act of BBT from driving me stark raving mad, I had to reframe it in such a way that it spoke to my researcher soul. I looked at BBT as one big longitudinal study rather than an act of insanity. As soon as I wrapped my brain around my new way of thinking, I was overjoyed!

Longitudinal studies are relatively difficult to carry out because they take so much time and attrition can be high. (I know this because I currently work on a longitudinal study.) While longitudinal studies can be very informative, much more so than a cross-sectional one, it takes forever to get enough data to see what's going on. When a coupe is struggling with fertility they don't want it to take forever. They wanted a baby like, last year. Lucky for me I am a n of 1, and I can make myself stay in my own personal study.  I refuse to let myself drop out......ever.

At first I found BBT to be a big pain in my butt because it was only one lousy data point every day. I had to wait a full 24 hours to get another data point. I decided my own personal longitudinal study was lame-o. Basically I had to wait an entire month for any of it to make sense. Even then, it didn't always make much sense.

Then.....I discovered.......VIP mode.

I use a program called Fertility Friend and while you can use the free mode, you can pay, and then obsess and add more data! It's a research girl's dream!!

The scientist in mean couldn't be contained. I had to purchase the year long subscription. (I mean, why not? I'm infertile and this is going to take a while.) Once I had  resigned myself to my incredibly long TTC journey and I had access to everything, I could put in lots of data. It made me feel so much better. If I spread out my data entry throughout the day, I didn't have to wait so long to fill in another square. Granted it still takes a month to get any real data, but at least I have some way to quell my OCD data collection tendencies.

Long live BBT!

The Aftermath of an HSG

Nobody warns you about these things. I mean, they can make attempts to prepare you, but you're never really prepared. I could blame my Mom and say she should have told me about HSGs before she earned her angel wings, but she never had one. I guess she's off the hook.

The actual procedure is bad enough. You're stuck on an X-ray table, dressed in a tacky gown, goods hanging out there for the entire room to see, and it's cold. Not cold in a "Wow, it's a little chilly in here wish I had on socks." way, but cold in a "Is that a polar bear sitting in the corner?" kind of way. I don't know why they don't make parka hospital gowns.

Anywho, once you get over the tacky gown, the subarctic temperatures, and the resident hanging on the attending's every single move (which inevitably all involve your goods) you get some strange contraption(s)--plural I think? I didn't look--shoved up there. Up...there. It hurts. They tell you it's going to hurt, but they don't reaaaaally tell you how bad it's going to hurt. I was so lucky that my balloon thingie burst so I had it all shoved up there twice! I tried really hard to convince myself that meant I was getting two for the price of one and it made the whole ordeal a much better bargain. (Have I mentioned you have to shell out close to $800 to have this pain and torture inflicted upon you? You have to pay for the privilege of this agony. Seriously.)

Ok, so after you survive the trauma of the funky contraption(s) shoved up there, you get to see your insides. I guess that's cool except all I could think was "Don't let the radiation zap my eggs! I probably only have like two left!" I tell myself the radiation did nothing to my eggs. I don't care if it's true or not, that's what I tell myself. As for me, my right tube was totally clear. Dye shot out of that thing like an overzealous firecracker. My left tube was a little more stubborn but in the end it admitted defeat and let the dye through. I've now got the all clear and my fallopian tubes could serve as emergency runways for very tiny planes.

Once you have survived your eggs being microwaved and the dye going in and cleaning out all the fallopian tube cobwebs......yep. You guessed it. The dye must come out. There is no preparation for the exiting of the dye. When I heard dye I thought liquid. A friend described it to me like pancake syrup, and she was right. Actually she said it was like shoving pancake syrup through the head of a pin. She wasn't far off. (That explains the pain.)

On the plus side, I now know what it feels like to be a syrup dispenser. I can more freely emphasize with syrup dispensers around the world. Throw in some massive cramping, much like a sledgehammer to your lower abdomen, and that's exactly what the aftermath of an HSG feels like. A syrup sledgehammer dispenser. Great huh? I can't understand why people aren't lined up around the block for these things. ;)

The RE tells me this will increase fertility for the next 6 months or so. I better get something out of this.

How did we get here?

Like most baby stories, this one begins with finding a soulmate and then falling in love. I believe the song goes something like this:

Mike and Lee Ann sitting in a tree,
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First comes love,
Then comes marriage,
Then comes Mike and Lee Ann with a baby carriage!

But what happens where there is no baby carriage? How do couples facing infertility cope? If you had asked me this a year ago I would have shrugged my shoulders and thought it wouldn't happen to me. Now, I feel like a veteran of a war that I didn't want to be a part of.

We belong to an exclusive club where membership cannot be revoked. It's called the Infertile Couples Club and if you ask me, it's a crappy club. I wish I wasn't in it. Mike wishes he wasn't in it either.

When we met and fell in love, we talked about all those things that couples talk about before they get married, including the topic of children. We both wanted a family, and quite a large family at that. (Who knew there were men out there with dreams of big families?) Like most couples, we thought it would be relatively easy to get pregnant. We were both in excellent health so why should we think any different? Turns out it's really hard to get preggo if you're part of the Infertile Couples Club. (Again, how can I get out of this one? Is there an unsubscribe button?)

Way back when (it's been so long I can hardly remember) I came off birth control, we thought we'd give this whole pregnancy thing one good shot and then back off. We were set to get married in the spring and my dress wasn't the kind that could cover a baby bump. In fact, I wouldn't be able to zip it if we got pregnant, but I was willing to ditch the dress if I could have a baby.

It worked!

I was over the moon when I got a positive pregnancy test that first month we tried. It was easy!! I was elated. I knew immediately that I was pregnant and tested before AF was even set to arrive. When those two pink lines showed up, I jumped around and clapped in the bathroom. (If you know me, you probably have a great mental image of this.) I went out that very moment and bought a boat load of baby booties and spread them all around in Mike's sock drawer and then anxiously awaited until he needed some clean socks. It took that man forever to need some socks! I remember him holding up that tiny little sock with a most inquisitive look on his face. It took a while before it sunk it, but he was so happy. We were going to have a family and it was  so easy.

I spent hours just staring at my belly and wondering about the little bean hanging out in there. I talked to it. I bonded with it. I was so attached to it and it wasn't even here yet. Mike mostly looked at me like I had lost my mind but I think he was secretly talking to little bean when I was asleep.

And then....

the spotting started. I was a little alarmed so I contacted my midwife. I knew spotting could be normal and I wasn't supposed to have my first scan until 12 weeks. After all, we weren't expecting any problems so why have unnecessary scans? She had me come in to have betas drawn and my worst fears were confirmed. I was going to miscarry.

Enter from stage left World's Worst Devastation. Miscarriage is painful, and not just physically. Mentally it was awful too. How could I be losing this little bean? I stayed hopeful though. We got pregnant once and it was our first attempt so surely I would get pregnant again.

Ha.
Ha.
Ha.

Life is funny like that. We kept trying and nothing happened. My gut told me something was wrong so I pushed for fertility testing and sure enough, I had issues. We were put on preliminary membership to the Infertile Couples Club. We started fertility treatments with my midwife the same month we got married. It was more of the same. Nothing happened, and my issues clearly were not going to be fixed with the current regime of medications.

Now what?

So what exactly is my problem you ask? I have what is called a luteal phase defect. It means my body is horrible at making progesterone. It means the egg doesn't have enough time to implant on my uterus before AF shows up. Even if I manage to get pregnant, I miscarry. Awesome huh? (This is so not what I really had planned for my life.)

Mike started his fertility work up just after we were married. I'll save the details about the horrifying experience of Semen Analysis for another post. It may, in fact, be the most awkward experience either of us ever have. For better or worse, Mike makes funny sperm. (I picture them with clown hats.) This pretty much sealed out spot on the Infertile Couples Club membership list. (Mike would like for me to point out that he makes like three times the number of sperm that a normal dude makes so his clown hat wearing sperm issue isn't near as big of a deal as my Hostile Uterus issue. He is so proud of his sperm production.)

Fast forward to today, July 23rd, and we were finally sitting in the RE office for our initial consult. (The RE is a Reproductive Endocrinologist and they deal with all things infertility as well as a host of other hormonal problems.)

I may have freaked him out a tad with my color coordinated medical records but I can't be sure.

Today was the first day we got serious about conceiving. It was the first day we really had to admit we have a problem. I have yet to wrap my head around how I feel about this whole thing. Mike keeps making warrior poses. He carries the hope for both of us. (I love that man!)

We call our adventure Operation Baby Johnson because we have officially declared war on my girlie parts. Mike's clown hat wearing sperm have been put on standby and are ready for battle. We will make this baby (or die trying!!)