Infertility sucks

Just thought I'd poke my head in and drop a little note. 

I've had a hard week on the fertility front.  A friend of mine recently became pregnant with her second.  She is the first in our baby group to have her second.  She had a previous miscarriage so was anxious about the first ultrasound.  When she reached out for support and encouragement it was hard for me, and that shocked me.  I guess it was because of the ease she had in becoming pregnant with her second...

For me, I am filled with fear, not knowing how hard it will be to conceive again. 

Hubby doesn't quite get it.  He says we'll just try and "see what happens."  But allowing ourselves to "try" means the possibility of it not working... and that would mean facing all the rest. 

I just want it to happen without having to face all the rest. 

I want to go back and be naive and carefree and be surprised if it did happen.

But I can't.

Infertility sucks.

Though we are not officially "trying" I am working to get my body in health and shape.  Part of that for me includes acupuncture. 

I had a visit yesterday and she did a few deep needles in my abdomen.  I instantly felt a tenderness and almost a bridging to my fertility.  I relaxed into the treatment, but partway through the sensation in my abdomen began to increase, to the point where I felt uncomfortable, almost stabbing cramping pains.  I called her in and as she was coming in, I felt a surge of anxiety and it felt like my abdomen was on fire with heat.  She assured me that it was fine and took the needles out, letting me know that it was a release.

There is a book called "The Body Remembers."  It's about the way that the body holds onto trauma and the muscles have memory of traumatic experiences.  I felt like that treatment activated the trauma I faced during my pregnancy and in my bleeding afterwards.  I let my tears fell, and I felt like it was an honouring of my experience.  I hope that it was a release. 

I don't know where this journey will take us next. 

I'll keep you posted.

This cycle

In case anyone is interested, I thought I'd record what I had done for this cycle, that may have been different than past cycles.  I always found it interesting to see what other people have done on their route to a BFP.  Feel free to skip on over if you're not interested.  Like the last post, I found it helpful to see what other people were going through as they made their way to a BFP.

As I have mentioned, in December my Dr. found that my FSH was high and diagnosed me with Premature Ovarian Aging. 

Supplements I was taking:
- CoQ10 - To help improve quality of eggs
- Prenatal multivitamin
- Vitamin D
- Iron supplements (I started taking these myself when I was feeling like I had no energy)
- Clomid (taken day 3-7 of my cycle)

Natural remedies I was taking:
- Up until the IUI, I was on some TCM herbs to help tonify my blood, as my TCM doctor diagnosed me wtih blood statis.  I took this tea twice per day.
- Black cohosh - This is a natural supplement supposed to help lower FSH and stop the ovarian aging (I think, I can't quite remember why she put me on it).
- Gaba-Pro - This is one that I am soooo thankful to my TCM doctor for making me take.  Gaba is a naturally occuring substance in the body that helps lower anxiety (it's what is produced when you have yoga, or do relaxation, etc.).  My doctor told me to take it every day after the IUI to help curb any anxiety that might affect the baby from developing.  It has been a lifesaver!  On the day we found out our results, I made my husband take some too!

Dietary:
- Actually I am doing lent, which is a focused time of giving up something to spend more time with God, and go to Him for comfort, rather than an earthly thing.  For lent, I gave up sugar!  Not completely... I just couldn't do that.  I still have sugar in my tea/coffee, and I've had bits of dark chocolate almost every day.  Just no more candy, sweet treats, baked goods or sugary pop.  I want to try to keep this up for the pregnancy as much as I can.
- We did a month of complete wheat-free eating in December.  I haven't kept it all up, but I have worked hard to lessen the amount of wheat I am eating.
- Earlier in the year I did allergy testing.  My results were a bit strange, but I have given up the foods that were especially flagged.  Those included: bananna (which I used to eat daily), pineapple (so no pineapple juice after the IUI this time, hazelnuts, and Whey protein.  I don't know if any of that played a role, but I assume it helped clear up any inflammation that may have blocked the way to a pregnancy. 

Other things I was doing:
- Before this IUI, I went for 5 sessions of acupuncture.  My doctor was working on eliminating blood statis so that my "chi" could flow freely.  As I have mentioned in past posts, she also helped me to avoid some of the unwanted side effects of the clomid, and increase my relaxation.  These treatments were my favorite!
- I exercised every day up until the IUI.  I was going to the gym 2-3 times per week and walking on the alternate days.  After the IUI I focused on walking and doing some yoga.

Then there was the faith side of things... but that's a whole other post, which I may, or may not share.

Thanks for hearing me out!

CD28...the suspense builds!

The 2WW is almost over... but these last few days are so long.  We had a wonderful time camping.  It reminded me of the times we spent camping when we were first married.  It was just the two of us (and our pup) and we played scrabble, read by the fire, swam in the ocean and napped in the tent.  Apart from feeling terribly sore from sleeping on the ground (we are getting old!), it was perfect.

I'll admit...I took a pee-test this morning.  Here are the reasons why:

The day we left for camping I started feeling pretty sick, like flu-sick.  All day I was naseaus and had a headache and felt sore.  The next day camping felt the same way, but a bit less intense.  And pretty much for the whole camping trip (and still today), I've been feeling not great.  It's not a stay-in-bed-all-day kind of sickness, but a general ickyness.  Fortunately, when camping, all I had to do was relax and snack all day.  I found that when I was hungry it was the worst, so I just kept snacks around me all the time and I was fine, haha.  But, maybe my body was just fighting off a bug.

The next thing I noticed was that for the entire camping trip, I had to pee ALL THE TIME!  Seriously, every hour I was heading to the porter-potties.  DH couldn't believe how much I had to pee.  But, this could have been due to a new prenatal vitamin I started taking.  Maybe they make you pee more?

Other than that, I haven't really had any "symptoms."  But... before we left for camping on Friday, I had an acupuncture appointment.  It was regular.  I was feeling pretty dizzy and nauseaus that morning so I welcomed the chance to lie down in a dark room for a bit.  After my acupuncture, though, when my ND. was taking out the needles, a bunch of the points started to bleed a little bit.  That has never happened to me!    She commented that she has never seen that with me, and that I must have some "extra blood" flowing through me.  Seriously!  Extra blood... that is a great sign of pregnancy!  That got my hopes up a bit but I didn't want to put too much stock in it.  Maybe the Hcg trigger stimulates your body to produce more blood?  I don't know.

We weren't supposed to come home from camping until this morning, but we made an executive decision to have a good night's sleep before work this week.  So, last night before it was dark we packed up most of our campsite.  We had dinner and sat by the fire till the stars came out, and then drove home arriving home by midnight (so nice to live close by a great campsite).  We slept in our amazingly comfortable bed.  And this morning I took a test.

And it was negative.

Oh, also I forgot to mention that last night I dreamt that I went for my bloodwork and it was negative.  I bawled and bawled my eyes out in my dream.

So part of me has lost hope and is bracing for the negative.  But part of me still has the hope alive... When I told DH, he reminded me that these stupid cheap pee strip tests I bought online, didn't register my last pregnancy until far AFTER the blood test had shown a positive.  That time, we had used a Clearblue to get an accurate reading.  I had completely forgotten about that!  So maybe these tests are duds too and there still is a chance?

I am picking up a real Clearblue test today.  We will likely test tomorrow morning.  I wasn't going to blog about all of this, but right now I just needed to let it out.  And it's kind of fun to keep the suspense alive, right???

TCM and Acupuncture

Well, I visited another TCM practitioner today.  I specifically wanted to check about traditional chinese medical herbs.  Let me back up a bit to fill in some things that have happened in the last month or so. 

First of all, I met my new baby niece for the first time.  The visit actually went pretty well.  I didn't have any major meltdowns like I expected.  She was sweet but still a bit too little to have much personality, so I didn't feel like I bonded terribly to her (which was just fine).  The hardest part about the visit was being around my parents.  I don't know why, but it just made me incredibly mad seeing them act as grandparents.  I felt like my dad wasn't being authentic and was just saying things that he thought he should say - cheesy jokes about being a grandfather and how his granddaughter was the best thing ever.  It just annoyed me.  Anyways, got through that and started the new job and have been spending time adjusting to it all.

In other news, did I mention about DH's cousin?  I recently found out that she has been struggling with infertility as well.  And then she heard about this TCM doctor in Oregon who specializes with infertility and who actually offers a money back guarantee if you don't get pregnant within the year.  She went to see him and was diagnosed with a cold uterus.  She started on some chinese herbs and actually became pregnant right away.  However, she had a miscarriage and lost the baby before she was very far.  DH's mom had offered to take me to see this doctor, but after we found out about the miscarriage we weren't sure what to think.  I decided that I still would like to pursue the route of TCM because I've heard of a lot of success with it.  So today I went to talk to a doctor here in town to see if she could help.  She asked me a lot of questions and then did an acupuncture treatment and massage.  She said that my case was hard to diagnose (mainly because nothing really seems wrong), but during acupuncture she talked about spleen qi blockage and too much heat in my abdomen.  My stomach is pretty sensitive and ticklish (isn't everyone's?) and she said that means that the energy was blocked and not getting through there.  I really don't know.  I'm still not sure I fully buy everything she said, but the acupuncture was kind of nice.  She did way more needles than the ND usually does.  I started to get a bit anxious part-way through and told her, and then as I was talking about it I started crying.  She said it was good because I was releasing emotion.  After the treatment she did a massage on my abdomen.  I felt really good after, like I had a huge emotional release.   And I was really tired too.  She said I should come back next week and that she did have a formulation that would help to release the energy in my abdomen.  I just don't know.  I never like acupuncture while it is happening, and I don't know if I feel way different after, but I feel like I am doing SOMETHING!  I'm sure that energy release is never a bad thing (if in fact it is working).  I don't know.  Has anyone had experience with acupuncture and found it helpful?