Prego Test with a Side of Infertility

As a woman with dysfunctional lady parts I've probaby taken more prego test than the Duggan mom. Seriously, why haven't I invested in First Response yet?! I'm expecting a thank you letter from their corporate office. I think I single-handedly doubled their annual revenue. Perhaps they will send me a 'Coping With Infertility' book as a reward.

I take a pee test everytime I visit the doctor. When you were a kid the doctors gave you stickers for behaving. As you get old (24) and infertile you get prego pee tests. Sometimes I just want to scream, "Let me spare you the 3 minutes it takes you to sniff my pee and get the results back, I can tell you now that I'm NOT pregnant!" But they make you take the test anyways, and I get all excited like maybe the 10 tests I took at home were all false negative and I really am pregnant! Maybe the HCG didn't spike until just this moment and I just barely caught it ... if only. At least the prego pee tests are complimentary. Like the peanuts they give you on airplanes.

Yours Turly,
Sister K

It's the Ovulation Game!

A normal fertile woman has a hormone cycle like this:



Any variation of these hormones can sabotage your chances of conceiving. So the past few days I've been waiting for my LH hormone to spike. This would indicate ovulation and consequently, baby making time!! Each morning I wobble to the toilet, take a seat and aim into that oh-so-tiny cup. Then I wait 3 minutes for a line to appear. For those of you who haven't had the privilege of monitoring your hormones in this fashion, it is just slightly more confusing than taking an at-home-pregnancy pee test. But this time the "test" line that appears doesn't really count unless it's as dark or darker than the control line. And if comparing lines wasn't confusing enough you have a 7 minute window to read a positive test but a negative test isn't read until after 20 minutes?? I'm not sure how this makes sense so I just keep checking the test every 2 minutes in case it gets darker.

After 11 days I never did see that elusive "dark/darker" line. The doc had me come back in for more blood tests to check my progestrone to make sure I hadn't ovulated and missed it. I don't see how I would have ever missed that . . . I didn't ovulate (sad face). I think my hubby is gettting anxious for us to get pregnant because he suggested not only upping the clomid dose but also monitoring my ovaries throughout the month and an HCG trigger shot to force an ovulation. I'm starting to feel like an experimental bunny rabbit.

Even though I didn't ovulate I have to wait til day 35 and have a negative prego test before they force Aunt Flow to stop by, ten days later on day 45.

I wish there was a fertility clinic where you start in the first room with a treatment for a few minutes, and if it doesn't work you go to the next room to try the next treatment, and just like that you keep going room to room doing different things until you're finally pregnant, and the whole thing takes less than a day.  Not five years.

Yours Truly,
Sister K

It's a race!

The all too familiar phrase to those who also belong to the Highly Dysfunctional Uterus club. It always seems like its a race to get prego before your youngest cousin's blushing bride has time to pull her pants down on their wedding night or before your best friend decides that taking birth control everyday is too much for one person to remember. Welcome to my summer vacation ladies! I am now approaching the starting line of my new race towards birthing the first grandchild on my husband's side of the family. Yep, you've read that right my brother-in-law is getting married and yes her uterus does not fight against her every month. Even though she may not know that we are now racing, she is clearly a threat to my womanly stance as first married first to have children throne. I can't help but to roll around the thought that while they begin to baby dance daily, I should be plotting my way into robbing a fertility clinic and taking a lifetimes worth of meds so that I have a smidgen of a chance of winning the gold! What do you think my chances are? Probably not that good but here's to hoping, wishing, and praying that I can show that stage-stealer up and get prego FAST! I have T-14 days to mentally put on my helmet and swallow as many hormones I can before my race officially starts! Wish me luck! As always remember you're not the only one who cries until she laughs about her highly dysfunctional uterus =] 

Sincerely,

Sister H