And the winner is....

So, it's taken me several weeks to post this, because I'm still getting used to the idea. But here it goes....


Guess what?

(what?)

I'm pregnant! (feels weird to say)

It was Friday, September 30th. I had taken the day off of work, to try to get yard stuff done before it starts freezing 'round these parts. It had been 16 days since my Ovidrel shot (the one that makes your eggs pop out), and 14 days since I was pretty sure I ovulated (because that day my insides felt like they were exploding). After B left for the day I did the obligatory pee-on-a-stick. I put it down on the edge of the tub, and didn't look at it for a while. After a few minutes I gave it a cursory glance, and was deploying my arm muscles to chuck it in the trash. I did a double-take - what the hell was that?


Two lines. My brain slowed WAAAAY down. I looked again. It wasn't a squinter. It was a dark pink line.


I called my RE's office, and asked what I should do.

Nurse: "You should stop taking the progesterone for three days, and if you don't get your period, you should come in for a test"

Me: "I really don't want to do that, as I have low progesterone to begin with. What if I am pregnant and miscarry?"

Nurse: "Have you ever had a miscarriage before?"


Me: "No, and I don't want to start"


Nurse: "Your positive home pregnancy test could just be leftover HCG in your system from the Ovidrel shot"

Me: "Yes, but that is supposed to leave your system ins 10-14 days, and it's been 16"


Nurse: "We like patients to wait 17 days"

Me: "I'm not comfortable going off the progesterone. It's not going to hurt me to stay on it. Can I just come in for a blood test?"

Nurse: "Your chart says you should go off the progesterone"

Me: "Like I said, I'm not COMFORTABLE doing that. Can you please talk to the doctor and see what he thinks?

Nurse: "He'll probably just say to do what your chart says"

Me: "Can you talk to him anyway?"

[continue this conversation for the next 10 minutes, the nurse gets more and more nasty, I get more and more insistent]

Finally, the nurse agrees to talk to the doctor, and says she will call me back.

[5 minutes later.....phone rings]

Nurse: [like the previous conversation never happened] "Dr. X says you should come in for a blood test, and that you should stay on the progesterone"

Sigh.

So, here we are. Preggers. [Blood test was also positive]. We're still getting used to the idea. Sometimes I hear women talk about how they loved their baby from the moment it was just a ball of cells. And we know we WILL love the baby, we're just withholding our outpouring of love for a bit. Because we already know what heartbreak feels like. So we're being cautiously optimistic.

The Two-Week Wait

Subfertility is an endless cycle of hope and heartbreak. Right now, I'm on the upswing of hope. This month my bloody cysts shrank down and stopped producing estrogen, and I got the green light to start the fertility drugs (technical term: gonadotropin therapy). This included jabbing a needle into my belly every day, and then going in to get an ultrasound every other day or so, to see how my eggs were growing, and to take a blood sample to measure my estriodiol levels (E2, as the cool kids call it). I've heard some women respond to the first round of the treatment in as little as 5 days, but no, I took 13 days. By the end, I was so bloated and uncomfortable I couldn't even bend over ,and even sitting was difficult. I began to see the benefit of having an IUI - sex just didn't sound appealing. Towards the end, the ultrasound technician would really have to jam the wand against my ovaries, causing all kinds of discomfort. If I haven't told you before, this isn't the nice kind of ultrasound where they rub jelly on your belly and move the sensor around. This is a trans-vaginal ultrasound, where they stick a giant sex-toy looking thing up your hoo-ha and look at your insides.

But, after 13 days, they declared me gravid, and told me to take the trigger shot. The trigger shot is basically HCG (the pregnancy hormone) - it's supposed to kick the little eggs of of the ovaries. I took the shot on Wednesday night, and we got busy Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night (yeah, we were pretty tired of it by Friday night). Then, Saturday morning I started on progesterone suppositories, to keep any embryos that might be forming from falling out. And now....I wait. I wait and wait and wait. I'm supposed to test this Friday or Saturday. Actually, what the nurse said was, "stop taking the progesterone on Saturday, and if you don't get your period, come in for a blood test". Because I'm paranoid about my chronically low progesterone levels, I'd rather not do that, so I'll take a home test on Friday. And probably Saturday and Sunday. The only thing that is keeping me from testing every day is that the trigger shot has the same hormone as the one the pregnancy test looks for, and that shot can take up to 2 weeks to leave the body. So, testing early might give me a false positive, which I'm just not up for.

The annoying thing about the progesterone suppositories is that they mimic pregnancy symptoms - cramps, bloating, exhaustion, sore breasts, and nausea. So, we'll see. Three days until I can test. I hope my fingers don't develop gangrene from being crossed for this long.

Set Backs

Today was...well, today was crap. There's really no other way to describe it. The day started with a 10am ovary check, after my second round of clomid. It was supposed to clear the way for me to start a round of injectable fertility drugs. It's the 3rd day of my cycle, so I also got to have a pelvic exam while on my period. Which, probably didn't bother the doctor, but really grossed me out. The doctor didn't like the look of my right ovary. It seems that the combination of the PCOS and the clomid turned my ovary into a misshapen mass of cysts. Bloody ones. He sent me down to the lab for an estrogen panel, and told me to show back up at 3:30 for a shot training class. While getting my blood drawn, the lab tech felt the need to not let the alcohol swab dry before stabbing with me a needle. And, despite my great veins, she also dug around a bit with the needle, making a bunch of ugly red marks on my arm. I was also told by my doctor to get a sample cup for a semen analysis for my husband. Which, first of all, involves asking my husband to provide a semen analysis. Then I had to get him entered into the computer, set up a lab drop off time for him (even though I couldn't tell them a date), and having another lab tech tell me that my husband needed to have abstained from ejaculation for 3-7 days. I asked if longer than 7 days was okay, and he said no. And now he also knows that we don't have sex that often. Sigh.

3:30 comes around, and I'm in a class with a bunch of other subfertile women. The nurse practitioner tells us all about how to give ourselves shots, how to store the shots, when to give them, and what the schedule is like for the month. Apparently, they have everyone on the same schedule, so they can treat a bunch of people at the same time. Kind of like inseminating cattle. At some point, the NP looks at my chart. "We need to call the doctor before we give you the first shot today". She calls him. He tells her that I need to wait a month or so, to let my ovaries calm down. She tells me this information, and says I need to go on birth control. WHAT? Apparently, this is what you do to let the cysts go down. At this point, they don't know when they are starting the August cycle of injections. So, I'm supposed to start taking the birth control, and call in a week or so when the hopefully have their schedule. However, B is taking a climbing trip in September, and he's been planning it for a year. So, if it conflicts, I have to stay on the Pill for two months, before starting the next round of treatment.

For some reason, this totally undoes me. I start crying uncontrollably in front of the NP, and the other subfertiles. The other subfertiles have their partners with them, and I'm all alone. Not that I need B to be there - he has a job. But it still makes me feel stupid. The NP gives me some line about infertility being hard. Then, to add insult to injury, she tells me I should still practice giving myself a shot, otherwise I'll have to come back and do this stupid seminar in a month. So, I jab an empty needle into my belly, and pretend to inject myself with hormones.

On the way out of the clinic, I stop at the pharmacy to pick up two months of birth control pills. The pharmicist sees that I am also on a bunch of fertility drugs, and questions why I would do such a thing. So I wind up explaining my subfertility, previous clomid cycles, and ovarian cysts to her. Which is exactly what I wanted to do.

At this point I go in the bathroom and sob for about 10 minutes. Then I go to meet B, as he has a work picnic. I'm pretty sure they'll all be asking him tomorrow why his wife is so morose.