Overqualified

How to Become Fertile 

Warning: This will probably offend some people.

So Bean and I drove past the local waterpark on the way to dinner the other day.  They had their "now hiring" sign out for summer.  I should apply and sell tickets, or serve ice cream. Even though I'm way overqualified.

Overqualified.  I started thinking about certain fertile people and began wondering how they do it, getting pregnant and all.  Now these are not observations about every parent and pregnant women, nor are they describing a particular person.  But small things I've seen in my life that are not what I would want for my child.

I've come to the conclusion I'm doing this all wrong.  So I wrote some tips for myself so I can become fertile too.

Get a Minimum Wage, Unskilled Job or Go on Unemployment
I could do this.  I'm going to apply at some fast food restaurants or other jobs that pays minimum wage.  I'm thinking I'll only work 20-25 hours a week so I can spend the rest of the time playing video games and partying.  Since I won't have enough money for anything else, I'll have to drop my health insurance. Don't worry, once I become pregnant the government will provide me with free insurance.  Along with food, rent, etc...  Life is good on welfare.

Eat Less Healthy
Who need fruits and vegetables?  Say hello to junk food and tons of preservatives.  Once I'm dead my body won't even start to decay for awhile.  Like a Twinkie in a landfill.  Fetuses don't need vitamins and nourishment, they need preservatives and crap.  I'm canceling my gym membership too.

Lots o' Alcohol
Oh I don't think I can drink like I'm in college anymore.  But I'll give it a try...

Cigarettes & Drugs
This isn't going to work.  I'm pretty against smoking and any type of drugs.  All I got is some leftover liquid codeine from my last surgery.  Hardcore...

New Baby Daddy
It's not the 50's anymore, no one cares if the baby is born out of wedlock.  I'm thinking maybe someone I just met at a bar or the local Denny's.  But I already fucked this up by getting married.  I'll have to pretend my husband is some new guy when I BD him.  His swimmers will work harder at trying to find my egg then.

Shithole Apartment
This three bedroom house with it's huge yard and playground is too nice for a kid.  I need a crack whore apartment on the wrong side of town.

No wonder I'm infertile...

PS I really did meet my husband at a Denny's.  Thought I'd sneak that in there.

CD14

Random Update

I promise this post will be less depressing than the last.  I assumed talking about my family would make me feel better.  Instead it has resulted in a glass of orange juice, peach schnapps and vodka.  Ummm, yeah...

My OPKs are all negative so far (well a faint line).  But it's only CD12 so too early to tell if the Clomid worked.

My temps are starting to drop.  But they are not too far off compared to the last time I charted my BBT.  (I really have no TTC updates besides those two things, sorry! )

I've had two appointments for allergy testing this week.  My arms are still bruised from the 40+ tiny needles.  I might be starting allergy shots next week.  ENT is hoping it will make some of my hearing

return.

I told Bean we need to buy an SUV (or larger car) before we have a baby or move again.  We move a lot!  Currently we have a pickup truck and VW Beetle, nether are "family friendly."  We looked at a newer SUV outside of Boston a couple weeks ago.  It was a great car, but too much money for the number of miles on it.

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I'm going to be traveling a lot in the next few months.  Mid-April I'll be southern Connecticut (military ball).  In May I'll be near Boston, Massachusetts (Steampunk yay!),  Rochester, New York (Lilacs), Ontario, Canada (Tulips), Albany, New York (more Tulips).  In July I'll be in upstate New York (covering a wedding).  And Bean and I are thinking of going to Las Vegas for our anniversary in August, but that's still up in the air.  I'm really looking forward to spring and the new photography season.

Talking about spring, IT'S SPRING BREAK!  Well last week was for my school.  Between the bikinis and sun I was getting all week long... OK both of those are lies.  It actually snowed all week and never got above 50°.  Yay spring!

I kind of regret my decision to go with Blogger over WordPress this time.  My other blogs were with WP.  I miss the customization. :(

This week I found Nip/Tuck on Netflix.  Julian McMahon is hot.  Bean wants to watch the X-Files and other sci-fi shows instead.  Blah...

CD12

Family

I've decided to talk about my own family.  They are part of the reason I want my own child and why I want to be a great mother to him/her.

I hate going to social outings and listening to people talk about how great their family is.  It's almost as bad as the pregnancy and newborn baby talk.  I don't have much to say in response besides "that's nice".  It's hard to me to describe my family with the same happiness.

Let's say I didn't have the worst life ever.  There are a lot of other people who've have/had it worse.

I'm an only child.  My parents had me when they were in their mid-to-late 30's.  Not sure why I was an only child, if that was their choice or they couldn't have anymore.

I'm unsure of my father most of the time.  Sometimes he is like a normal father and caring.  But through my life he has always been verbally and sometimes physical abusive.  He has a short temper, after losing it he can say some horrible things.  Those things have always stuck with me, whether they are true or not, they've hurt my self confidence.  This type of verbal abuse even continues today and is one of the reasons I don't return home that often.  Over my life I've tried to stop it, ether with talking to him or fixing myself to what he wanted from the "perfect daughter".  But you can't fix other people.

My mum is a different story.  She's been in and out of the hospitals since I was a child.  I never understood why.  My parents divorced when I was 11.  My mum took off running and I stayed with my father.  I saw her from time to time but it was never enough and I was never close to her again.  I raised myself after that, pretty much everything I taught myself or Googled.   Being an adolescent girl without a mother really sucks.

She has schizophrenia.  She's never coming back mentally, never.  I've included her in several important events of my life but she is never "there" or supportive like I wished from a mother.  She's now in assisted living.  I blame her for my fertility problems but that will be another post someday.

My father's side of the family is small.  I have two older cousins but nether are married or have children.  We are of German/English ancestry with a few migrating to Canada.  My mum's side of the family is huge.  Unfortunately the last time she took me to see them I was 5. I don't know them all that well.

I'm much closer to my husband's side of the family.  However, they are spread all over the country.  I have an older/younger brother-in-law (older to me, younger to my husband) who isn't married yet.

You can't fix the past.  You can only fix the future.  I promise to be a great mother to my future child.  I will be there for them.  Teach them.  And never abandon them.  I never want them to feel the pain I did.

I am very excited to make things right for my own child.  My own child will be perfect to me.

CD11

Drawings

The last few months have sucked.

This was going to be a post about a bunch of different random topics.  But after five paragraphs about the same thing I decided to leave the other stuff for a different day.

I moved to a new state last summer, only about 3 hours from the last place we lived.  Originally I was all for the move.  I moved here with a bunch of women I was previously friends with, group move for my husband's job.  So the movers came and took all my things away to delivered in our new home.  Bean's job made him be away for over the first month so I was stuck in the middle of nowhere programing my GPS for the local Wal-Mart.  My "friends" began dropping off the face of the earth.  My pell grant dropped me for school, which means I now have to pay a lot out of pocket.  My mum visited in September & then fell down a flight of stairs right after arriving.  Long night at the ER and a broken wrist later... Then my pet got diagnosed with cancer in October.  His surgery was for December but that fell through when the x-ray came back showing he had an enlarged heart.  After finding out (what felt like) everyone I knew was pregnant and my own missing AF, I decided to make an appointment with a new doctor.  I realized I'm way more broken than I thought.  My "Welcome to (this awesome new state)!" package got pissed on.

After feeling like shit and another argument with Bean about who knows what, he dropped me off at the therapeutic pottery painting studio.  I had nothing I really needed to paint, my house is already filled with tons of cute figurines and bowls.  I picked a small tile and decided to paint that I was feeling instead.  Although what I painted wasn't pretty, it seems to make me feel a little better.

But pottery painting is expensive and I can't have a million little tiles all over my house.  Honestly the one I painted is not something one would display to guests.  Ummm... errr...  So I bought a sketch pad and began drawing how I felt instead.  It really began to help, although the first month most of the drawing were pretty depressing.  Most show some sort of infertility issue, female nudity and/or abuse from my past life.  However, I feel better now.

One morning I woke up from a dream I was having.  It was of myself during natural childbirth and breastfeeding my future child.  It wasn't a scary dream at all, it was a happy one.  I drew what I saw in the dream, post-labor with my new baby.  I've never been a fan of fertility drugs and treatment.  I realized I would never get a chance to experience that happiness if I didn't stop dragging my feet and a least give the drugs a try.

So that is how I got where I am today.

PS My drawing are not that great.  I only took one drawing class in college and I almost failed it.  This is as good as it gets, the others are way worse.

PSS I added some new about me-ish pages on here.

CD10

The Complainer

I started my first cycle of Clomid on Friday.  Yay!  It's going better than I thought.  I tend to have bad vomiting when there is extra estrogen in my system.  So I stocked up on ginger ale and ginger snaps just in case (although I ate all the snaps by now, they were so good).  But I've had zero side effects so far, minus a bad sinus headache (but I think that was more my allergies).  Hopefully that doesn't come and bite me in the ass after I post this, or after I'm done taking them.  One more pill tomorrow and I'll be done for the cycle.

I'm taking my BBT (basal body temperature) this cycle also, along with the OPK.  I'm really pleased with the numbers so far.  I tired last summer but the numbers were all over the place (95.6, 95.9, 97, 95.8, 96.5...).  Good thing I eventually gave up because the cycle was 7 months long!  But the last week they have all been really close (97.7, 97.1, 97, 97.1, 97, 97.2).  Hopefully they stay that way and I see some sort of shift.

I got my U/S results today finally after waiting almost a week.  Everything looks normal.  No cysts, no PCOS cysts, happy fallopian tubes, uterus and vagina.  Little annoyed they didn't call me with the results, I hate when doctors do that, even when tests come back normal.

The Plan: Finish Clomid on CD (cycle day) 7.  Start OPK on CD8 & keep doing BBT.  Hope for a +OPK and/or temperature shift. If not, call GYN about CD35, whine, asked to be induces for cycle two, increase Clomid.

I decided to give Instead Softcup a try for TTC.  I gave them a test run with AF.  I got it in and out fine (well with some digging, ewww)  But after a few hours the seal came loose, or I just didn't put it in right.  Anyways, it was a big mess!  I might hold off on using them again. :/

So my pet peeve this week is people that complain how bad their children are on Facebook.  I'm sorry your kids are so horrible that you have to complain to all 267 friends.  Maybe you should have waited to have children, maybe some BC or condoms, or even an abortion or adoption.   It is no ones fault but your own that sperm found your egg.  I'm sorry your life is over and now you can't go to Las Vegas now because you have a child.  Being IF (infertile) I have very little sympathy for you.  (I will however post some photos from my last trip to Vegas, a trip I was very trashed for most of.  But that's the IF way.)

First Ultrasound

I had my first ever ultrasound today.  Honestly it was depressing.

When we think ultrasound, we think of the one during the first trimester of pregnancy.  It's an exciting time.  The U/S is the first time you get to "see" your baby.  It's so magical.

My experience was far from magical.  The place I went to seemed nice, I just wasn't in a happy mood.  I was in the waiting room with another women my age.  She stared at me the whole time, I tried not to make eye contact.  A few minutes later a nurse came out to congratulate her.  I couldn't help but think that maybe she was thinking I was just like her.  :/

Another FaceBook contact announced she is pregnant this week.  I said my fake congrats.  But since there has been several posts a day about morning sickness, maternity clothes and other pregnancy related things.  I understand she is excited but... Anyways her first U/S was today also.  The comment that upset me most was "I am hoping to have a picture to share".

I didn't get to look at the screen, I didn't get a photo to bring home.  It's not like I knew what I'd be looking at anyways.  I felt distanced, saddened and alone.  Let's just say this is not what I imagined.

On a positive note, I should get a call from my GYN in a few days with the results.  I'm hoping to look normal inside, or at least fixable.  And I really can fit 32oz of water somewhere in my body at one time.

Wanting Children

My recent need-to-have children.

My mum left me when I was 11.  I don't even remember what it's like to have a mother.  I always just assumes I had no motherly instinct, thus told myself I never wanted my own kids.

I've owned ferrets for about 12 years now.  Many have come and gone.  My Rikki passed away in 2006 and soon after I started looking for another.  Late in the season by I found a breeder with a male that fit what I wanted.  I choose a private breeder this time, they tend to have healthy ferrets with less cases of cancer.  I got photo updates of him every week.  Then I drove eight hours to pick him up, and eight hours home.

My eight week old Munchlet cried when I didn't hold him.  He would drop everything to come see me walk in the door.  He was helpless without me.  He wanted and needed me.  My motherly instinct kicked in, even though he was just a pet.  I though, "maybe I can be a mother".  But I was only 21 at the time, I waited.

I'm now 26, married, financially stable, rent a house.  My husband is five years older with at least another five years in the military.  Most of my friends have children by now.  Sometimes I'm even ostracized because I don't have a toddler or bun in the oven.  But then again why would I want to be around your screaming child or listen to you complain how horrible being pregnant is.

Munchlet was diagnosed with cancer in October.  It's a common, slow-moving cancer called insulinoma.  He still has time, but there is no cure and it will kill him.  I tell people him having insulinoma is normal, a lot of ferrets get it.  It's a way of life.  I stay strong for him.  But I am heartbroken.  He is too young for this, it wasn't supposed to happen so soon.  My "baby", the eight week old baby that has been though everything I have in the past five years, is dying.

My husband and I have been "all natural" for awhile now.  But when you have up to eight months between periods there isn't much hope that something is going to happen.  I've decided to start fertility treatment.  I understand I could get pregnant next cycle or years from now.  I understand I am high rate for miscarriage.    But I need to at least give it a try.  I need to move onto a different stage of my life.

Blaming Google

Doctors Appointment 3/7

New OB/GYN today.  It was kind of weird.  And every time he starting talking about a different medicine or procedure I would already know all about it, sometimes the pro, cons, side effects, what it's used for.  Maybe I just have too much GYN knowledge.  I blame Google.

• I have my first ultrasound next week, pelvic (lower stomach) and transvaginal (inside).  Looking for PCOS and/or whatever else they can find.

• I have PCOS, whether or not they find cysts on the ultrasound.  A mild case, I guess. 
• I have: acne (but getting better, my back is the worst), irregular periods (very irregular), obesity (maybe, BMI 29), breathing problems while sleeping (I'm a ENT mess), oily skin (goes w/ the acne), infertility (yeah...), elevated blood pressure (thanks to Microgestin), excess hair growth (I guess, I have hair?), pain in abdomen (sore ovaries), mood swings (it comes w/ being female), anovulation,  dandruff (but cleared up since I use henna). 
• I don't have: skin tags, skin discolorations, high cholesterol, smaller breast (opposite there), deeper voice, thinning hair (super thick hair here), darkening skin.  The irregular periods are the worst though.

• He thinks I'm anovulatory, or very, very close to it.  

• My blood pressure keeps increasing.  It was 120/80 three months ago before starting Microgestin. Last month it was 130/80.  Now it's 140/90.  

• I start Clomid 50mg day 3-7 next week.

• I also need to start using OPK (ovulation predictor kits).  Already bought these from Amazon.

So I got what I wanted out of the appointment, an ultrasound and Clomid.

My ENT ran a full thyriod check, it came back normal.  So no hypothyroidism.  I do have a vitamin d deficiency.  Could explain why I am so tired.  I need to take my vitamins more often, at least 1000 IU/day.

I also found this website: Taking Charge of Your Fertility. They have charts you can create for everything fertility related.

Hidden Text:  York Hospital OB/GYN, Surgical & Midwifery Associates, Kent Scherr, M.D, Dr.,

Broken

I'm broken, I've known for awhile now.  It's pretty obvious.

I decided to start this because I think pregnancy blogs are a great way to document the 9 months.  Unfortunately I'm not pregnant, I'm broken instead.  Sorry, not ultrasound photos or cute photos of my growing belly (it might be growing, but it's not cute).

So here is the story how I got this way:

I got my period just like any other girl.  Nothing odd there, it was even regular back then.  But when I was 16 I skipped a month, then another month, then a couple months... That pattern continued. I now get my period anywhere from 3 weeks to 8 months apart, lasting 3 days to 3 weeks long.  It almost sounds kind of awesome, but now I'm 26, married and ready for a child.  I want to know why I'm like this.  I've also had two LEEPs to remove precancerous cells from my cervix when I was 19 and 24.  That is a while other set of problems...

In the past I have been on Ortho Novum, Ortho Evra (the patch), Depo-Provera (the shot), nothing, Depo again, Yaz, nothing and now Microgestin (Loestrin).  The ones with estrogen are supposed to "fix" me.  They really just hide what is wrong until I get off them again.  That and the side effects are horrible.  The progestin only ones are great, no side effects, except they stop my period all together.

I've been to probably 10 OB/GYNs in the past years (we are military, I move around a lot.)  I said before I moved here I would get myself "fixed", or something like that.  Of course I stalled for 6 months to make an appointment (normal for me.)

December 2010:

First appointment with new GYN.  I have a body temperature of 94.8°F on two different thermometers.  I'm sent for a TSH thyroid test after the doctor felt my neck up.  I'm told it came back normal.  GYN couldn't find my cervix during my pap smear, a lot of scarring & very small opening due to second LEEP.  I'm put on Microgestin for 6-12 months to correct my irregular period.

February 2011:

Another GYN appointment to switch my Microgestin, that was running out, to the patch (less side effects & easier to use).  Doctor told me I had to stay on Microgestin for at least another month.  Blood pressure increased from 120/80 to 130/80.  I asked for testing for PCOS (Polycystic ovary syndrome). I'm informed it is just an ultrasound & GYN wouldn't authorize it.  I got the "no testing, no treatment, no need to know" speech and told all they can do is keep me on Microgestin.  I'm told to come back in 4 weeks to recheck the blood pressure & more Microgestin.

March 2011:

Ditched that GYN & had appointment at my regular primary doctor to get a referral to another OB/GYN (military policy).  I'm told I'm most likely having anovulatory cycles (stopped ovulation). Microgestin will not fix that & I'm taken off it.  My thyroid test (from December) came back at 4.08, slight hypothyroidism (underactive).  Could be the cause of my problem.  I'm maked down for Oligomenorrhea (4-9 periods/year, 35+ days) for the first time, even though I've know that's what I've been for years.

I have an appointment with my new OB/GYN on Monday.  I'm worried I'm not fixable...