......and finally the phone rang!

7:30 am....My alarm rings. I get up, walk to the bathroom, brush my teeth and decided that I was going to lay back down for a few minutes. I have been stressed lately and I am not sure why. Last night I had my 2-hour hot stone with Tammy which I slept through most of..lol! But it was just what I needed. When I got home, I made a quick dinner and literally passed out on the couch. Billy woke me up with a thousand kisses on my cheek when he got home from work at 11:30. I struggled to open my eyes but it didn't work. He did manage to get me up long enough to get me off the couch and up to bed.

7:59 am....Billy and I are laying in bed talking. I did wake up feeling refreshed and a lot better mentally. We weren't really talking about anything important, just small talk, how our day went, the massage, he showed me 2 videos on YouTube. Then the phone rings. We both looked at each other like - Really? Who is calling at 8:00 am? Our family's always call us on our cell phones so we knew it wasn't them. I look at the caller ID and it's Dr. L!!!! I have to admit, I love when Dr. L calls me. He is such a sweet man and you really feel like he cares about you. It's very comforting. Plus, not many doctor's call you themselves. They usually have one of their staff call you and God forbid you have a question, they tell you that you have to speak to the doctor anyway. Well then why didn't HE call me?? DUH!
Anyway....Dr. L tells me that Billy's analysis results were in and he compared them to the results from 2008 and everything looks good. He said Billy has more than enough..lol..for this to work and in his opinion, we will be fine and he will see us soon.

YAY!!!!!

So we are officially 1 step closer. Now if only my damn period would come....son of a bitch!! LOL!

PMSing = HUGE RANT!

Today on facebook, I was being super-sarcastic when I wrote a post about taking the medical advice of someone other than an actual doctor. Needless to say, not many people got my sarcasm.

One of my favorite things has always been when people start with - Oh, you aren't REALLY infertile. Just start talking about adoption and you will get pregnant or The doctor's don't know what they are talking about. Just get drunk and go for it and you will get pregnant when you least expect it! Ummmm....news flash, and please excuse my brutal honesty, - Billy and I have been screwing, unprotected, A LOT..lol....for 10 years. It ain't happening! I do not ovulate. It's a fact....proven by numerous doctors, fertility doctors, blood tests, ultrasounds..you name it. I DO NOT OV-U-LATE!!!

Now, I am not a sheep. I am not easily fooled so therefore I highly doubt there is some grand conspiracy by every doctor and lab tech I have ever come in contact with since I am 17 to make me believe that I do not ovulate, just for shits & giggles. Like they all got together in some dark alley one night and said - Ya'know what would be hilarious?? It's like come on now.

I do understand that yes, many women go thru IVF or IUI or AI or whatever else unsuccessfully and half of a percent of those women magically become pregnant on their own when they least expect it. And that is great. But, I kind of find it hard to talk myself into holding on to that big of a "what if?". The way I see it, I got 4 chances. That's it. What's meant to be will be. I have learned not to read the stories of others, successful or unsuccessful. This journey is mine and mine alone. I can not base it on someone else's experience. I have to take each step, each day, each milestone, each failure, each everything and embrace it and deal with everything as it comes because it may not work. And then again...it may. I don't know. Nobody knows for sure. Does that make my doctor a monster because he can't give me a definite answer? Of course not. He isn't a God. He is a man.

I told someone not too long ago - Billy and I got married because we love each other and we were the right two people for each other. Not because we were desperate to be parents. To us, marriage isn't about taking care of a baby. That's what parenthood is about. Marriage is about sharing your life with someone who you love. A baby isn't going to make us happy because we already are happy. Would a baby be great? Probably. I mean it would be kind of cool to have a little person hanging around. But it's not the most important thing.....or the only thing. You know?

I know to some, those words may be hard to understand or that I may seem like a bitch who could care less about becoming a mother. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I need to hold onto to us, to the strength of my relationship with my husband because it will get me through this. And in the end, it may just end up being...Billy & Arge. And that's okay.

Scheduled sex day. How romantic!!

Some good news..LOL!

So Billy and I do not have AIDS, HIV, Gonorrhea, Herpes, Syphilis or any other STD. We are genetically stable (that's good to know). We do not have Hepatitis either...A, B or C and apparently our hormone levels are fine. Still no word on Billy's "boys"...LOL! The nurse said we should have those results today.

Waiting SUCKS!

By nature, I am not a patient person. I am usually rushing through whatever it is because I can't wait for the end result. So this entire IVF process......................is killing me!
Waiting for test results, waiting for appointments, waiting for cycles to start. I feel like I am back in high school staring at my phone waiting for it to ring.
I don't think I have ever had this many people so anxious for me to start my period EVER! Nor have I ever had this many people ask me if I got my period yet.

The point of this post - waiting for Billy's analysis results..........................since 7;30 am. LOL!!!

Be brave...

Since Bravelets doesn't sell a bracelet for infertility (only PCOS..which is blue and I already own), I decided to buy a white one. To me, white always stood for hope. This Bravelet is actually the one for child abuse which I thought made it kind of special. I think I just needed something that I can wear everyday to remind myself that there is always hope and to Be Brave.



www.bravelets.com

Bravelets makes charity bracelets. Each charity has a different color. The bracelets are $35.00 and $10.00 is donated to the associated cause. Love them!!

Stick a needle in me........

So...tomorrow is my first acupuncture appointment. Fun.

LOL...actually I have done acupuncture before and I have to be honest, I found it to be very relaxing. Plus, right after my acupuncture appointments, I got a 30 minute massage. And I was going for acupuncture 3 times a week! Go me!! Upside to infertility? Hey...I have to at least try to convince myself that there is an upside.

From what I have read, research has shown that acupuncture raised the odds of achieving pregnancy through IVF by about 65 percent. Acupuncture's circulation-stimulating effects could help elevate blood flow to the uterus, which creates a more welcoming environment for the embryo and the therapy is also thought to lessen uterine contractions and regulate stress hormones to levels found in healthy pregnancy cycles.

I have also known some women who went through a few unsuccessful IVF cycles then did acupuncture and were successful. All of them also had twins or triplets. Hmmmm....on second thought....LOL!

Something like that...

Welcome!

When my husband and I decided that we were ready for IVF, I made the huge mistake of buying a book in Barnes & Noble about IVF. Upon initially flipping through the pages to see what it was about, I was kind of shocked at what I was reading. Page after page of the authors interpretation of how a couple going through IVF should feel, depressed, sad, unworthy, unfulfilled, inadequate.....none of which we were feeling. So I stopped reading it. I tucked it away under the sink and vowed to never open it again.

A little background information - My husband Billy and I were married on December 31, 2006 on the Jersey Shore. We never gave much thought to having kids at first mainly because we were having such a great time being married. Kids to us just seemed unnecessary. We didn't feel like we were missing anything and to be quite honest, the idea of having to alter our already perfect life, was absolutely out of the question.

Fast forward 5 years...We buy a 6 bedroom, 5 bathroom mini-mansion in NJ.....just me, my husband and the dog.
Now skip to year 6...we find ourselves sitting in the waiting room at the fertility doctor waiting to start our IVF class.

I had always been irregular. I once went an entire year without my period. I was told it would be difficult for me to get pregnant because my uterus tilted backwards. It wasn't until my mother in law asked me if I ovulate, that I actually questioned whether or not I actually did. So to the gynecologist we go and guess who doesn't ovulate? ME! So we do some research and we find Dr. Jane Miller, fertility expert. Right from the start, this is a bad experience. We just wanted to know what was up with my body and why it was choosing to hold on to all of my eggs. So they do an analysis on Billy to see if his "boys" are up to the task. They do a painful HSG to see if I have any blockages or if my uterus isn't the correct shape. Everything is perfect. Dr. Miller said she couldn't have asked for a better uterus. Awesome! Then comes the BOOM. The doctor is sitting in front of us telling us that even though we have great insurance, they don't take insurance and we have to pay out of pocket.
Yeah...no. So that ended that. And back to our happy, child-free life we went.

In the meantime, niece #1 is born and I am in the delivery room for that. Watching her come into the world changed me. It woke something up inside me that I didn't know even existed. My family works together so every day for the first 2 years of her life, she was here at work with me. Her mom refereed to her as my daughter and my life became about feedings and napping, changing diapers, belly laughs and temper tantrums. It was bliss.
One month after niece #1, comes niece #2, my brother's daughter. Now I am in love, hard. Every picture and video that he sent to me, fueled this maternal fire inside of me.

You know the saying - Kids can be cruel? Well, adults can be crueler. Things that have been said to me, literally have me floored. I have been told that I am not complete as a woman unless I have a child, My life is meaningless without the love of a child, I am not blessed, Why did we get married if we had no intention of having children. This was always my favorite since I thought marriage was about marriage and parenthood was about taking care of your children. Plus, if I would have known this 6 years ago, it would have saved my parents a pretty penny on a wedding. If I ever hold a position of power, I am putting into effect a law stating fertility tests are mandatory before applying for your marriage license. Insert eye roll.

I am not alone. Apparently many of our childless friends have met with the same comments from assholes who either just don't get it or are just....well.....assholes.

March 12, 2013.....IVF Class appointment. I'll admit, I was hella-nervous the morning of. I texted my friends Kelly and Lita knowing that they would talk me off of the proverbial ledge. Billy woke up. And I have to admit, the words - Let's not go...would have been met with an extra enthusiastic - OKAY!!. I am not sure why I was so nervous. I mean it wasn't like we were going to walk in and the doctor would be standing there with a turkey baster and a pair of tweezers saying - Get in the stirrups cupcake! And then - BOOM! PREGNANT!
So we go to the class. There was another couple in there with us. It was a lot to take in and some of what the nurse was explaining did get me nervous, like with the insurance and medications but we ordered everything there and were told that our insurance covered everything. We were lucky. There was one thing that made me tear up though. As the nurse was explaining the extraction, she said that they would call us after the insemination to tell us how many embryos we had. I don't know why that got me, but it did. Billy didn't understand it either. He said they aren't babies yet and I said - Well, they are pre-babies!

So now the waiting game starts. Wait for test results. We wait for insurance approval. We wait for my cycle to start. And somewhere in the middle of all this waiting, I'll breathe and take it all in. And with a little lucky, at the end of the road, we will have a small piece of the two of us.

Where there is life, there is hope...