18 posts tagged “ttc”

Beta on Thursday.

Of 11 eggs we ended up with one single viable embryo, which of course stuck to the catheter during transfer and required a second attempt.

This whole cycle has been rather craptacular.  We got 11 eggs, all of which were ripe.  Of those, only 4 fertilized and only 1 of the 4 passed genetic testing (polar body testing of the egg only - PGD is illegal in Germany). 

To compare, last time we had 9 eggs, 7 were ripe, 7 fertilized, 2 were transferred and 3 were frozen.  (No genetic testing was done).

I'm going to get back in touch with that adoption counselor.

Thank you so much for your kind words.

As I thought, this third miscarriage has hit me harder than I thought.  But we're looking forward to our next shot at IVF, probably in 4-5 weeks.  It sounds like an eternity from now...

I don't know what is going on with stupid clichés in the news lately, but I've heard reference to "you can't be a little bit pregnant" 4 or 5 times over the past two days. 

I think there are plenty of women who would disagree, plenty who have felt they were only "a little bit pregnant."

Test was glaringly negative.  It's day 15 (3-4 days longer than usual), my temperature is still above the coverline, and I have no period or spotting.  My body is obviously messing with me now.

But... I can drink wine over the weekend in Spain.  That's something.

Thanks for the hand-holding.  It's nice to have someone to wait with.

I'll start with the bad.  Mr. Twinge got his second semen analysis results via telephone yesterday and they are worse.  To recap the last results: less than a million total and all have very poor morphology.  The doc told Mr. Twinge over the phone that we should make an appointment because ICSI may not even be an option.  Yeah, that super attitude is why our appointment in December is with another clinic, one that likes to share stories of how they found two lonely sperm in a sample and still created a pregnancy.

Now for the good - or at least not bad.  It is 14 days past ovulation, which is two days longer than normal, and my temperature is still quite above the coverline, although a little lower than yesterday and the day before.  I have no signs of my usual cramps or spotting or any of that.  Yeah, combined with the results from yesterday, this is weird.

So, if nothing occurs by tomorrow morning, I'm breaking out that test.  :)  Thanks for the good wishes!

Hi, my name is Twinge, and I'm an idiot. 

*Hi Twinge*

I'm setting myself up again for a huge disappointment.  I don't want to be one of those crazy women who posts every last little symptom and sign: could I be? am I? am I not?.  I think I've said that quite a bit before.  So I guess I also should locate the nearest chapter of Boring Repetitious Bloggers Anonymous.  But I'm not here to talk about that, I'm here to share my latest tale of idiocy.

I have a very, very regular cycle.  This cycle is turning out not to be so regular.  And my heart is saying "neener neener" and doing that thumb-to-nose finger-waving thing to my brain. My brain is getting rather pissed off at such a juvenile display and is kind of hankering to bitch-slap my heart when it's not looking, but the brain has no arms and can't reach that far so that's kind of a stupid thing for a brain to want to do.

I went searching through my apartment for one of my cheap pregnancy tests this morning.  The only one I could find was the expensive-ish one, and I'm not about to pee on 8 euros just because I'm an idiot.  I may well be an idiot, but I'm a frugal idiot who is planning three vacations and IVF.  So now we're at the waiting stage - waiting for the cramps, spotting, and temperature drop that I expected a day or two ago.  Two more days to wait and then we'll see.

Mr. Twinge went for his second sperm analysis today.  We get the results in a few days.  Ah, more waiting.  Just what my patient self loves to do.  I also never get marks in my fresh nail polish because I'm that good with waiting. 

Ahem. Back from Fantasyland.  Sorry about that little diversion.

The doctor from our IVF informational evening and Dr. Silber, author of my favorite IVF book, both stress how variable these results can be from day to day.  They have charts!  I like statistical charts!  So now I'm wondering if the last results were on the bad end... we were in Amsterdam right before the last sample, ahem.  He also hadn't quit smoking at that point.  Or maybe the result was on the better end, despite the indulgences.  Or - and this is what I am expecting - it was a fairly normal sample.

Mr. Twinge is finally ready to start learning more about the situation.  He's read his sperm report a number of times, but I think until now he'd only seen little Viagra pills dancing across the page, taunting him and denigrating his manhood.  Nasty little buggers those, making him think that a bad sperm analysis means he's impotent or will soon be.  Last week he finally asked me if I knew what it all meant, so I gave him the synopsis and suggested he look at some of my books.  So much for light bedtime reading.  Last night, his brain started smoking over a section on azoospermia.  I had to calm the poor guy down and show him the section on oligospermia.  Our new mantra: a few is better than none.

Mr. Twinge was on a prize jury, so he's off to the awards ceremony tonight in another city a plane ride away.  That's good - something to get his mind off of it, at least for tonight.  As for me, I'm going to light many, many candles and watch crap TV and try not get marks in my nail polish.

I like Oprah.  She seems smart and compassionate, so it pissed me off even more than it should have when I read an transcript of one of her shows wherein she asks a woman struggling (and spending) to concieve if she had considered adoption.

It is a loaded question for infertiles. 'No' implies that you are selfish and don't care about giving a loving home to children who desperately need one. 'Not yet' suggests that these kids would be second choice, again making you selfish. 'Yes' means you've given up.  Notice that fertile people are never guilted with the 'poor little orphans' number.

You wouldn't suggest to a family who just lost a child that they get started on a replacement. The need time to mourn their first before they can be healthy parents to another. The feelings are similar for the little one you've dreamt of but haven't met yet.  You imagine seeing your husband's goofy grin or your freckles on this person who the two of you created.  We as women have heard so much about the amazing experience of carrying a life within us... and now we're supposed to turn all of that emotion off and just be happy to have any child. 

Adoption is a wonderful thing.  I know that adopted children are just as wanted and loved as biological offspring.  But I don't want to adopt out of desperation.  I want to want to adopt.  I'm a long way from that point.  Am I selfish for spending so much money in an attempt to have my own baby?  Damn straight.  And if it doesn't work for us, I'll cry and mourn and eventually get over it.  And that's the point where I'll research adoption more thoroughly.

But don't suggest it to me before I get there.

I'd only told one person about trying to have a baby: my best friend, who lives thousands of miles away and is a birth doula and childbirth and lactation educator. Of course, she now knows about our infertility, too.

There would just be too much pressure if people knew, and I really didn't want to hear constant questions, advice, whatever.

The fertility boards were a good start for support, but lately I've spent more time writhing in my seat and yelling at the monitor instead of being a productive member of the group.  Vox is many orders of magnitude better... I can vent, introspect, and laugh and not feel like I'm all alone in this (I love reading your comments and messages, by the way.)

In my non-electronic life, I'm an expat.  I'm fairly fluent in the language now, but when I first arrived I couldn't follow the rapid conversations that occur in a group, and as a result I have a very small circle of friends. I'm working on that, too.  I've recently joined a knitting circle where I get to practice my language skills and my knitting at the same time.  And I joined a club for American women... this is the club to which I refer in previous posts, and about which I wrote those horrible (but true) things on my other blog.  (I'll also post later about why I didn't want to join until now, more than 4 years after moving here.)

I attended a new member evening last night.  I could talk!  Freely!  In English!  I wanted to keep chatting all night.  At dinner, I was seated next to a woman I'd never met, and we got to talking, as you do.  Without going into boring detail, there was a point when I just had this feeling that I had to tell her that we are going to start IVF.

It was amazing.  She told me that she had been through it 4 times with no success, but had so much to share about the local clinics, including some very bad experiences with the clinic we were planning to use.  She took my hands and made me promise to get a second opinion from her favorite clinic, and said that every woman she has sent there has had a baby. She called herself my talisman.  She also made me promise that I wouldn't invite her to the baby shower.

In the end, she gave me her email address and offered any support she could give.

One day, I'll post the whole incredible story of how I ended up moving here. For now, just know that every step seemed to be fate.  Meeting my husband when I did (about a year after moving here and a month after deciding that this does feel like home) and our further story again seems like fate.  And yesterday... the day before my fertility forum membership expired, I met my talisman.

This is my last little fertility board rant.

Number one: No, wikipedia is not sufficient evidence to convince me that global warming does not exist.

Number two: Of course you know who killed Madeleine McCann.

Number three: Oh for the love of pete - learn to use an OPK or stop using them.  Posting three times a day with "Did I O? *pic*" is getting old.  I don't want to see your pee sticks with more regularity than my mealtimes.

Number four: This crying escalation is getting silly.  One poster says she's choked up, another says tears are rolling down her cheeks, the next can't see the post through her tears, and the last couple are actually bawling.  (No, this isn't hypothetical.  A cat died and that's really, really sad, but I say no bawling unless you've ever actually touched the cat.) 

My subscription runs out in three days.  I'm not sure I can bring myself to renew.