So today kind of sucks…A LOT!  I’m feeling quite miserable, to say the least.  It started this morning when I was laying in bed trying to convince myself to get up.  My back has been bothering me the past few days but I think it has to do with the progesterone supp’s, or at least that’s what I’m attributing it to.  But today, it is terrible soreness, all in my lower back.  I laid there squirming around like a fish out of water, ok maybe not that bad, but you know what I mean.  So needless to say I just did not want to get out of bed.  I know I know, you’re all saying, “hey, you think I want to get out of bed in the morning?”.  But this is like, it takes everything I have, every ounce of energy inside of me, to drag myself out.  It was 8am, and I literally picked my legs up and threw them to the floor.  I was finally up.  But I know in a few hours I will be tired again.  Tired to the point of nodding off.  I have started drinking decaf tea in the morning and caffeinated in the afternoon, to help keep me away until bedtime, which has been earlier and earlier each night.It wasn’t long before my crampiness started in again.  I think this may be a byproduct of the backache?  If that makes any sense.  Either that or it’s again, attributed to the progesterone.  As I sit here in my awesome office chair that I L.O.V.E., usually, I am so ridiculously uncomfortable.  I don’t know what position will leave me feeling better today.  If it’s not sitting and it’s not laying, what then?  I think I will run out and grab some Tylenol, since that’s the only thing they tell you to take when you’re pregnant, or possibly could be.  Got to play it safe here, right? 

Then there’s the constipation.  I’m not the kind of person to get constipated, EVER.  But I am.  Ho Hum.  At first I thought that it was due to the salads I’ve been eating.  Every night for the past few nights I’ve been making myself a nice big salad with baked chicken on it.  Delish!  But I’m pretty sure salad is roughage, and the opposite would happen.  I am now chalking it up to the progesterone.  Poor progesterone, such a bad rap! 

Anyway…sorry to complain to you guys.  Instead of complaining to my husband, I figured I’d spare him the frustration and pile it up onto you guys!

Oh yeah, when talking to my acupuncturist yesterday, he seemed rather confidant with our chance for success.  He said that with my age, my husband’s count and the success I’ve had with ovulating the past few cycles, we should be in good shape.  Although I know I can’t feed off of everything he or anyone else say’s and get my hopes sky high thinking this is a no- brainer, b/c it very well may not work the first time.

It’s funny because you can read any message board and find these same complaints from women who are pregnant.  I’m trying not to read into anything here.  I’m trying to stay as sane as is humanly / womanly possible. Besides, it’s waaaaay to early to feel any symptoms.  Both fortunately, and unfortunately.  Thoughts are positive, but not getting my hopes up higher than they already are.  Coasting along until next week

I can’t believe it’s been 3 days since I’ve updated my blog!  What’s wrong with me??  I feel like a bad Mom or something.  This week just seems to be escaping me.  Quickly!I did go to the doctor for my 7 day post iui blood workup yesterday.  Actually it’s just my Progesterone levels they tested.  No sono, no meeting with the doctor.  It was literally a 3 minute visit, I was floored.  Usually there are a handful of women in there and I’m in and out in all of an hour or so, but not yesterday.  I was actually the first / only one there.  They told me they would call in the afternoon by 3pm if anything to report.  This is usually protocol.

My phone rang around 2:30.  The nurse told me that the doctor wants me on Progesterone supplements…intra vaginal suppositories to be exact.  Mmmm.  Fun.  The nurse also made it very clear that this does not mean that I AM or I AM NOT pregnant.  Point taken.  I’ve read horror stories from women who are on these things.  But, I gotta do what I gotta do.  So I get instructions that the pharmacy who distributes these little fun pockets will contact me and deliver them tonight.  I get the call, go through all the insurance b.s. and they got here around 9:00 last night.  They aren’t as bad as I’ve read…yet.  The instruction packet warns of side effects such as abdominal pain and swelling, extreme fatigue, depression, mood swings, amongst many other really scary things you wouldn’t want happening to your body/ mind.  Besides the depression, I have all of those NOW!  Can these things actually make it worse?  Because honestly, if I get any more tired, I probably shouldn’t leave the house because I’d be a threat to society out on the road! 

Despite the instructions and graphic details on how to administer the meds…I wonder how many people actually still try to swallow them…LMAO!!!

So now we wait until the tail end of next week for anything more.  In the meantime I saw my acupuncturist this morning for a support session to help raise my progesterone levels as well.  Besides it is uber relaxing!  Ahhh, I love it.

Otherwise, nothing new going on ’round my hood.  Things are status quo. 

Happy Super Bowl Sunday!  Although I don’t follow football…queue Booing now…I understand it is a HUGE deal for many and I hope you all have a terrific day of munching, drinking and hanging with friends!

That being said, today is day 23 of my cycle and I’m now 5 days past the iui.  The longest 5 days known to mankind.  I feel crampy every day, it comes and goes.  It is so early in the game however, that I am sure it is just all in this crazy ass head of mine.  My lower back is also bothering me, but I believe it is from sitting on the bleachers for 2 hours watching my cousins wrestling match Friday night, combined with the ridiculous cleaning I did yesterday.  My boobs are also super sensitive since the day of the iui.  I’m 99.9% sure this is from the hcg trigger shot I had Monday.  Pregnancy hormones = pregnancy symptoms.  Right?  Although I am checking more often than I care to admit, to see if my nipples are any darker, LOL!

So Tuesday can’t come fast enough.  I’m so on edge about this appointment because even though I know it’s too early for a beta; my biggest fear right now is being told “It doesn’t look like it worked this first time.”  I will be crushed.  I will be crushed because I have gotten my hopes up.  I have gotten my hopes up so high, despite the fact I told myself I wouldn’t.  I feel in my heart that this was it, one try and bam, in 9 months I’ll have a perfect little miracle to ooh and ahh over.  I mean, it happens to many people on their fist shot, right.  Besides, our only fertility issue is my lack of ovulation.  And in the past 3 months on the lowest dose of Clomid, I have been ovulating.  So taking the distance away from the little swimmers should be all it takes, right?  Only time will tell.  We will know in a few weeks.  Tuesday’s appointment they’ll test my Progesterone to make sure it is optimal to sustain a pregnancy should this cycle result in one. 

As I try and pass time efficiently, I have many “to do’s” on my list for today.  I will be going through my husbands clothes to make him aware of the fact he only wears the first 2 layers of clothing in each 15 inch deep drawer (which leaves about 5 more layers of clothes untouched!) and purging things he hasn’t worn in years and/ or is over 10 years old.  He doesn’t have the time to do it, so I will.  Then I have my normal food shopping, laundry and then doing some “me” things.  I don’t yet know what they will be, but I’ll find them!  I also want to spend some time preparing food for the week.  It doesn’t take long at all to prepare a few meals and freeze them or separate serving sizes of salad out so all you have to do is grab them and mix them up.  We used to do this religiously every Sunday; We would spend about 1 ½ hours preparing everything (sans dinners- those are made fresh) and then we are totally set for the week, it’s awesome!  We are getting back into the swing again.

On a super happy note, early Friday morning, our friends gave birth to their tiny little twins, at 36 weeks, Craig and Emma.  We went yesterday to see them and they may just be the cutest, tiniest little angles I’ve ever seen.  They were born at 4lbs 10oz and 4lbs 8oz respectively.  Tiny little fingers, tiny little noses, tiny little everything.  It was amazing to see them.  She got pregnant on the first shot with the same doctor I’m seeing.  Not that that has anything to do with anything, it’s just promising to personally know a success story with my doctor.  They were conceived through IVF.  There were actually 3 sets of twins there in the hospital, it was so great! 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Ok, so the results are in and tomorrow, 9am is GO TIME!  I am so excited and so anxious it’s ridiculous.  I am so very hopeful that this will be it and on the other hand so scared to get my hopes up in case it does not succeed. My E2 was 280 which was significantly higher than the 154 it was on Saturday.  Also, my LH soared to 43.6 today, from just 9.4 on Saturday.  They told me to administer the trigger shot and show up with a good sample in the a.m.

OK…administer the trigger shot?  Myself?  Hhmmmm.  Yeah, not so much.  I figured I’d be able to wait for my husband to get home to do it for me, but the nurse told me it would be best to do it now, since I’m surging.  I called my girlfriend, whom even though she had never given herself or anyone else a shot, said she would do it for me.  That’s the kind of friend she is…will do anything for you…even if it means sticking a ½ inch needle into your subcutaneous belly.  I decided to give another friend a try before making her do this, one whom went to nursing school but has since decided to become a teacher.  Nevertheless, I thought maybe she learned to give shots in school.  No luck.  But, her mother is a nurse up at the local hospital and was on her way over…S-C-O-R-E!  What luck?  So I dashed around the block to her house and she was there waiting to stick me.  It was nothing and I could have done it myself, but I was a nervous wreck; between learning that tomorrow was the day and then thinking of sticking my belly.  I mean, yeah…no.  I’m the kind of person that if I don’t wear earrings in my second hole and then try to put one through, I get freaked out about breaking that tiny layer of skin.  That little pop sound, ewwww!

Anyway, so that is taken care of and now tomorrow is the big day.  I called my acupuncturist immediately and let him know that I have my appointment tomorrow morning (as he wanted to see me immediately following the IUI) and he told me he would come into the office early to treat me.  I thought that was super awesome of him.  So I will come home, lay low for a bit, and then head up there for a 2pm appointment.  Then back home to lay low some more.

Exciting day coming up folks, really exciting day!

It has definitely been one of those non- stop weekends for sure.  It was a long time coming since we’ve been pretty lax about our weekend schedules and have had no real structure, which kind of kills me. There are many thing to be done around our house; things like purging our bedroom, spare rooms, and hallway closets; painting here and there, both upstairs and down; and finishing some moulding work throughout the living room/ dining room areas of the house.  We have been saying that we are going to start working on all that is unfinished in the house, to get organized and have things finally be complete.  That is very important to me.  So we decided to sit down with a calendar and pick projects to be completed for each month.  We will spend some time each weekend to complete our projects and still have time to enjoy ourselves.

That being said, if I had one word to describe how I feel right now, it would be “accomplished”.

Today I purged and completely cleaned our downstairs coat closet.  Now you may not think that this is a big deal, but it is.  It’s not your normal hallway coat closet, it’s almost the size of a bathroom, it’s pretty big.  We had a ton of shit in there to be thrown out and / or donated.  Now it is spotless!  Also, yesterday when we finally returned home from our myriad of doctors appointments, I began going through all of our Christmas decorations that until now, were always stored in our downstairs spare bedroom closet.  I also still had about 6 boxes of crap in that room from when I lived at home with my parents to go through.  I ended up having 7 huge bags of garbage, a billion empty boxes to recycle and 4 boxes of donations- Christmas decorations, stuffed animals, clothes, you name it.  There are also a few items that I’m going to put up on eBay. 

So, yeah…accomplished…both my closet and spare bedroom are looking good.

**And now for the good stuff**

We had a monitoring session yesterday morning and I got to meet Dr. Kreiner himself!  For those of you who live on Long Island you have probably heard his name on the radio amongst other sources.  It was kind like meeting a celebrity…a celebrity who was going to look at my hoo-hah 2 minutes after meeting me…what a whore I am!  He prefaced the exam by telling us that he couldn’t find the last 2 patients’ ovaries.  LOL.  Anyway, so he does the sono and says that I have 1 dominant 16.5 mm follicle on the right side.  I asked him where the other follicle went (remember on Thursday I had 1-11mm and 1-13mm follicle) and he told me it went to small follicle heaven.  LOL, again.  He definitely lightened the mood for us, the fact that he was dressed in jeans and a button down flannel helped a bit too.  So they called with my hormone levels later on and told me they wanted me back for monitoring Monday am.  Basically I’m hoping the follicle will be around 19-20mm by then, so they can administer the trigger shot that I’ve been carrying to every single visit since day 10 (we are now on day 16). 

After the monitoring I had my fist acupuncture visit.  After just one session I can tell you that I absolutely L-O-V-E it!  I felt like it almost put me into this trance like state.  It was pretty cool.  I had about 20 needles in me- I think there were 6 below the knee in each leg, 4 in my belly under my navel, 1 in each hand and 1 in my ear.  He started the visit by taking my husband and me into his office and doing a brief medical history (my husband sees him too for shoulder/neck issues and has given him background on our fertility journey).  He explained that expects to be able to improve the quality of the dominant follicle and possibly help some others to grow larger, giving me more of a chance.  During the treatment, I laid there with heat lamps on me for probably about an hour and it went by so fast.  Probably because for once in my life, I felt relaxed; so relaxed!  After he was finished taking the needles out, he placed a tiny seed in my left ear.  He said to leave it in until after the IUI.  It is supposed to combat uterine contractions.  He also wanted me to call him with my hormone levels later that afternoon.  I did and he told me to let him know what my levels are from Monday’s monitoring session as well.  He also wants to see me immediately following the IUI.  He is a young guy; super nice and so easy to talk to and get along with.  I’m happy.

So pending my 1 dominant follicle is between 18 and 22mm when I go tomorrow morning, we will be set to trigger and then hopefully rock the IUI Tuesday morning!  Which reminds me, I have to leave myself a note to get a sterile cup and maybe prepare a performance of some sort ;-)  We’re looking for a big count here!

I’ll be back in the morning with an update!

On Friday’s my husband works from home because he has his recurring appointments to deal with his neck / shoulder issues in the morning hours.  He has been having neck / shoulder issues for about 2 years now and it is finally starting to improve.  After seeing an orthopedic surgeon, a physical therapist, a spinal surgeon, a neurologist, back to the physical therapist, a chiropractor, an acupuncturist and now physical therapy yet again, he is experiencing significant leaps and bounds due to the later three ‘techniques’.This morning he comes home and hands me a folder of information from his acupuncturist.  He tells me about the wonderfully informative conversation he had this morning with the guy in regards to acupuncture for fertility issues.  He tells me to read through the info and if I want, call and make an appointment for a consult. 

Being the super excited little school girl I am, I take the folder, run to the kitchen, make myself some soup for lunch and dive into the folder choc full of info!  I read everything, picked up the phone, and scheduled a consult for TOMORROW morning, immediately following my monitoring session. 

I have to say, I have it my mind that I will have some acupuncture and than literally float out of the office I’ll be so relaxed.  See, there go my crazy ass expectations getting the best of moi again.

Hopefully a little acupuncture can help balance out all my imbalances and pump some extra blood into my baby making organs!  Let’s go qi!

Have any of you loyal readers had acupuncture for fertility issues?  Or for anything for that matter?