Turning Points

For some reason we all look at new years as an opportunity for a fresh start. Somehow, the date shifting from December 31st to January 1st offers a cleanse that going from April 8th to April 9th doesn't. It's a psychological cleanse, an opportunity to shake off all that old year before baggage and start over. It marks the comeback of hope.

This year I have laser focus. I have an intentional, honest, achievable goal. My goal is to stay focused on what I do have. I am blessed in so many wonderful ways. I gain nothing by dwelling on what I don't have so now, when I start to get frustrated about a struggle I remind myself one of any of the wonderful things I do have.

I don't usually make resolutions on New Years. I have to many memories of drunken promises that had the shelf life of milk. But this goal, it's different, I've been so stressed about so many things but what does belaboring it accomplish? Stress breeds more stress, it's a trip down the rabbit hole. But if that's true wouldn't the opposite also be true? Does happiness breed happiness? I'm performing a social experiment with myself as the first test case.

So far it's been a rousing success. Professionally this has been an exceptional two weeks. One of my projects came in second place in a national design competition, I've been promoted, I recently found out I passed my licensing exam and I just negotiated a healthy raise.

More results later. Stay positive!

Allow me to get on my soapbox for a minute

I know you all have heard me rant about this before but seriously, where are all the black sperm donors? We're looking for a new donor at our RE's request. Our only guidelines are that they be black and anonymous, we are not interested in contact down the road, hubby will be this little ones dad, period. I've been all over the Internet again and I've found 11 donors that meet both our requirements. No that's not a typo, I found 11. Hubby wants him to be at least 6' tall so that's probably going to eliminate about half of them so I guess choosing will be easy (silver lining). The other thing I noticed was there's such a dramatic difference in price. They range from $440 to $800 for one vial plus shipping. They all seem to have the same guarantee so I've agreed to get long profiles of my top three and let hubby choose from there without me telling him the cost, he wants to make an unbiased choice. The goal is to be ready next cycle, we'll see if we can get this taken care of by then, I've got about 3 or 4 weeks. But really, we have maybe 5 options, does that sound right? I pray we don't end up feeling like we are picking from the best of what's available, I want us to love the profile we pick, I think we deserve that. Ok, I'm off my soapbox now.

I was going to get on here and blog about the lovely job hubby did picking Christmas presents. We did our late Christmas on New Years this year and he did great. Instead, I'm so annoyed by this I'm going to have to put that off till next time....

I hope you all had a lovely new years, more later

Resolutions

I resolve to...

...get back on the elliptical machine, show hubby every day how in love with him I am, be the fun aunt, finish my portfolio, pay off my Macy's card, cook more, buy a new (to us) car, call my dad at least once a week, do something selfless as often as possible, be less controlling about hubby's irritating spending habits, treat myself to something nice at least once a month without guilt, go to church more, and try to focus more on what I have.

What about you?

Happy New Year, be safe

Maybe baby

We got our appointment with the specialist moved up to today. I went in really nervous that he was going to tell us nothing was going to work except ivf which we can't afford but instead he's decided to do a super aggressive IUI cycle. He wants us to find a new donor, he doesn't like the inconsistent numbers we were getting from the guy we were using and he wants to take me off all pills and just do shots, but a lot of them. In previous cycles I'd do Femara days 3-7 with gonal f 75 iu on 7 9 and 11. Now he wants me to come in on cd3 for a baseline ultrasound and do shots of gonal f 150 iu every day till they tell me to stop. He thinks the Femara was screwing up my estrogen levels and says this is the compromise since ivf is out of reach for us. Luckily we still have a little of the donated meds left. He gave us another cartridge which should be enough for one more cycle so we just have to pay for the extra monitoring. Before an iui cycle cost about $1k not including sperm, now we're looking at about $1,750 so it will be a stretch but hopefully we'll just need the one.
I'm off to look for a new donor, hope you all are doing well.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays

I know I've been away for a while.  DH and I needed some time to just exist and not think about getting pregnant.  We are no closer to deciding what we're going to do but we have decided we're not going to close any doors just yet.  I've started looking for jobs in states with infertility coverage and have reached out to mutual friends who've adopted to see how that process works.  One way or another we'll figure it out.
We have an appointment to review all the tests we did last month in January.  I'm going to call and see about getting the appointment moved up but in the mean time I'm just going to enjoy the holiday season.  We hosted Thanksgiving this year and have already decorated our tree, written our Christmas cards and stocked up on rum and egg nog.
I'll be back with news on how our appointment went soon.  In the mean time, I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday season.

I'm not average

Pet peeve: when doctors (or their nurses) try to force you into the little box of what's 'average'. Hint - if I were average I wouldn't need a fertility specialist. I have to remind myself that I need these people and the temporary satisfaction I would have felt by putting that nurse in her place would have cost me more in the long run.

...But damn it would have felt good...

New RE, new plan

The RE we've been working with left the practice so we have a new doctor. We finally met with him and were comforted by his easy going demeanor and seemingly genuine desire to find a different, better plan for us. He had already reviewed our records and is suggesting we find a new donor but thinks that ultimately we will need ivf to get pregnant. He thinks I have an egg quality issue, he's also concerned about the low estrogen levels and wants to run some tests next cycle. So, our plan is to get the testing done and depending on what we find out we will either try iui with a different donor or figure out a way to make ivf happen. Making it happen will probably mean moving but neither one of us are tied to here. If one of us can find a good job in Illinois, we could be closer to my family and be in a state with infertility coverage legislation.
In the mean time I guess we just tread water.