Still Late

R is still late, now by 9 days. We don't have an appointment until the 16th of April. Hopefully AF shows her ugly head by then. No idea why she's late. There haven't been any swimmers up there since December. Ever since that try things have been screwy. The first month she was late a few days and the flow was really light. Every month since then she has been late if you take into account that for the 8 years we've been together she's had a 28-29 day cycle and starting in January they have been 37-42 days. Don't know if the cycles are just changing, the screwy hormone levels are causing this, or she's got something else going on. It's worrisome and I want it to stop!

We're making progress

We finally have an appointment with a new doctor. Our midwives don't prescribe any medications for fertility treatment so we had to change providers. Our new RE is, according to a friend who is a patient, really nice and knowledgeable. Our friend is straight so no word about how he is with same sex partners. Our appointment is April 16th. Hopefully we can start TTC again soon after that!
R is late again. Her cycles were like clockwork until about 4 months ago and then something changed. We're not sure what changed, but now her temps don't always behave and it's hard to tell from temps if she's even ovulating anymore. We were temping for months before we started TTC and every month she was ovulating on day 16 or 17 of a 28 day cycle. Our midwife was concerned about her LP being a bit short so she ordered testing and R's LP progesterone levels were really low. Also, R didn't ovulate at all that month.
Any suggestions about what we can do to try and get R's cycles back on track? We will be asking the RE the same question, but wanted to know if there was anything we could do in the meantime.

Holding Pattern

In TTC world: We haven't heard from the old doctor and we don't yet have an appointment with the new doctor.
In school world: I am really too late to apply to any graduate schools for the fall semester. Most of the programs I'm interested in don't accept students for the spring semester so it looks like graduate school in Fall 2008 for me. The question now is what do I do until then? Should I get my teaching certification (1 semester of classes and 1 semester of student teaching)? I took the first semester of classes 2 years ago and stopped. The only reason I stopped is because I wanted to graduate earlier. Now that it looks like I'll have another year to wait what should I do? Where should I live? R is applying for jobs. She's looking all over. She's looking where we live now, where we used to live in the south, and in California. If she gets a job in California then we're hoping they'll help with relocation costs.
Everything feels so up in the air right now. My happy world of plans and lists isn't working. I don't like not knowing where I'll be living in a few months. This is scary. To add TTC on top of this is crazy, but I guess we're crazy. We want a baby before we are 30. We have another 18 months to make that happen.

I hate that I'm selfish

Our donor called me tonight. He has a job interview for Ha11iburton tomorrow. If he got the job he'd be moving to Houston. He will be graduating in May. He told me that he also has applied for jobs in San Francisco, Sacramento, Honolulu, Boston, Los Angeles, just to name a few. He's not applying for any jobs near us or his hometown. I wish him the best, I really do. It's not the easiest thing to find a job in your field so soon after graduation, but I am secretly hoping that he doesn't get a job so far away. Does that make me a bitch? There are plenty of jobs close, anything on the East Coast would make me happy. We're already 400 miles apart. Any of these jobs would increase that to thousands. We can't afford to fly back and forth every month. Here's to hoping that the doctors can give us the help we need and we can get pregnant before he has to move.

I posted the answers for the movies (and the books in case you missed them).

When will we get to try again?

We're still waiting to hear back from our doctor's office. There are a few RE's in our area. Only one group works with our insurance. We do have some coverage for infertility treatments so we're lucky. Our insurance is pretty good. When R had her heart surgery we were worried, but most of it was covered. Our out of pocket in an Office Setting is $25 per visit then 100% of eligible expenses & Outpatient is 90% of eligible expenses after satisfying $200 deductible. I'm confused after looking over the lists of things they do cover and things they don't cover though. It seems like the lists contradict themselves, especially the first items on each list. What do you think?

Services they cover:

• Diagnosis and treatment of infertility when provided by or under the direction of a Physician.
• Embryo transport.
• Donor ovum and semen and related costs, including collection and preparation.

Services they don't cover:

• Health services and associated expenses for infertility treatments.
• Fees or direct payments to a donor for sperm or ovum donations.
• Monthly fees for maintenance and/or storage of frozen embryos.
• In vitro fertilization, gamete intrafallopian transfer procedures, and zygote intrafallopian transfer procedures, and any related prescription medication treatment.
• Artificial Insemination

It seems like the testing we need to figure out what's going on and the meds needed to fix it will be covered. I think sometimes that we're moving too fast, but at this point we're ready for a little more intervention than our at home attempts.

We were hoping to try this cycle, since our plan was to try every month in 2007 until we get pregnant, but it doesn't look like it will be possible. This may be a watch, test, and learn cycle. I will be out of town the weekend R should ovulate. The next try will be early April. This will be our last chance to have a baby in 2007.

Test Results

R's progesterone level was 0.9 when anything under 5-10 range is considered low. The doc said that with progesterone that low there's no way she ovulated. It was low at CD 24-25 for the past 2 months so she doesn't think that it was just a freak anovulatory cycle since she had two in a row. We've been referred to an RE because our midwife doesn't deal with infertility issues. They wouldn't even prescribe progesterone. It was suggested that we have more testing done.
I'm a bit upset but at least we're finding this out after trying since August and not one year later.
We're definitely not trying this month.

I cried

I can't believe it. When I handed in my keys I CRIED! I didn't think I would get that upset, and certainly not in front of my staff. It's just Bl0ckbuster. There, I said it, Bl0ckbuster. I was there for almost 8 years. I can't believe it's over. I think the stress is just adding up.
Don't know where we're going with R's cycle. She's late again. Until we started TTC she was never late. Before you get excited, we didn't try in January. Our donor won't be able to come visit this month but now that she's late we don't think the weekend R requested off from work will match up with ovulation. We also don't know what the doctors will be doing about the low progesterone. We will call the Dr's office tomorrow. Hopefully they don't close because of the weather.
It's snowing and has been all day. People feel the need to rent movies when it's snowing. That means I had a terribly stressful last day. We were very busy and I was supposed to be alone for part of the afternoon.

I'm still in a funk.

Way too low

R got her bloodwork back. Her thyroid is fine but her progesterone was "way too low." Our midwife is going to talk to one of the doctors in the practice and see what to do about things. We don't know if we're going to try this month. Still haven't heard from our donor to see if he can come visit this month. If not R is off work the weekend she should ovulate so we can go down there if needed.
I'm in a funk.

I'm such a baby

I've been home sick since yesterday afternoon. I have bad cold/flu symptoms. I'm achy, dizzy, exhausted, and grumpy & I've had a fever for 3 days. To make matters worse I have AF. Thanks to the PCOS I don't have a pd on my own anymore and haven't in about 7 years. I take progesterone for 14 days every three months to lower my risk of endometrial cancer. The progesterone makes PMS symptoms worse, cramps, sore b00bs, etc. I feel sorry for any of you that have to take it for longer than 2 weeks!

On the TTC front, no news about R's blood work. We should know something early next week.

Testing Testing

R will be going in for blood tests tomorrow. I have a long day tomorrow, well most of my days are long days but Monday is always exceptionally long, so I won't be able to go with her. Results will take a while because her midwife is on vacation (skiing, in this weather-it's currently 12 degrees with a wind chill of -6, but again I digress). Hopefully we'll know results next week because we will be insemming around the 15th or 16th of February. Hopefully all her hormone levels look good. There was some concern about progesterone levels and LP length.
We still don't know if we will be driving to visit our donor or if he will be coming up to visit us this month. We'd much prefer that he drove up here. We have 2 dogs & 2 cats that we'd need to make arrangements for. He only has 1 dog and she can come with him. Also, I have a lab that usually lets out around 4pm on Friday, putting us at his house around midnight. Depending on the cycle R might O the same day we're driving down there and we could end up with bad timing for the insem. So far we've gone to see him every time. He's never come to visit us, even before TTC, so we'd get to hit up all the touristy sites. I REFUSE to go the fake Amish farm, maybe we'll go to D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore, or NYC. They're all within a 1-3 hour drive. It would make for a nice day trip. We haven't done that in a long time.
We used to take day trips all the time. When we didn't have 2 work schedules and 2 school schedules to work around. Now that R's out of school & I'm losing my job maybe we should make that a priority. We still don't know what city we'll be moving to this summer and we should make the most of our time here.

Try #3

We will be TTC again in February. R and I talked it over and decided that, even though I will be unemployed, we will continue to try. We're hoping the blood tests come back fine so we can try in Feb.

Well it happened

I lost my job. Well, I didn't exactly lose it. I know precisely where it is. They've taken it away from me to give it to a girl right out of high school with no experience. My last day is February 20th. They wanted me to leave at the end of this month but I asked them to let me stay until we got our 2006 bonus payout on Feb 16th. At least they're letting me have that. They won't fight unemployment if I don't get another job right away. They also told me that I am eligible for rehire if I want to go back after graduation. (because that's just want I always wanted to do with my chemistry degree).

R doesn't want to TTC again until I get another job. I want to keep trying. We'll see which way it goes.

I did get some good news today though. I will be graduating with departmental honors.

Moments from the Midwife Visit

• We were sitting in complete silence when, all of a sudden, R said, "I bet if they played tapes of children screaming, crying, and whining instead of soothing music while you're waiting it would lower the population of [our hometown]." Which caused me to let out a guffaw just as the midwife came back in the room.
• R's midwife spent a majority of the visit talking to me. This happens to me when I'm with R all the time! People even think that I'm her mother, all the time! I'm younger, so what if I'm 2 inches taller. If we're out to dinner, I get the check. If we're shopping for a major purchase (car, jewelry, etc.) sales people always address me. I just wanted to turn to our midwife and scream, "It's her body, you can talk to her too about when her LMP was!"

In defense of the midwife we saw, she's not R's normal midwife. We did throw her off, when we made the appointment we told the receptionist that we just wanted to have a check-up and make sure everything was OK. When the midwife walked into the room she was under the impression that we had had a positive HPT and were just coming in to confirm a pregnancy because that's how the receptionist had coded our visit. Once we got that cleared up she reviewed our charting and says we're doing a good job. She reassured us that sometimes, OPKs just don't work but as long as 3 other signals line up we shouldn't have anything to worry about (haven't I heard that before...). She was a bit concerned about R's short LP so she's ordered blood work. She's most interested to see how R's progesterone levels are. She did chastise R because she hasn't been taking prenatals. She gave us free samples and will write a script when we get pregnant. She's going to call us with the results from the blood work this month and wished us luck. The last thing she said was that she hopes to see us pregnant soon.
We were very surprised, this is the same practice that friends of ours had problems with a few years ago. All in all, a good visit.

We've decided not to try this month. We didn't want to throw off any testing that the midwife ordered, plus our donor couldn't come visit, and R couldn't get off work so it doesn't seem to be a good month. One month into 2007 and our 2007 plan of attack is out the door. Oops... We will be trying in February, the plans are already made.

As for my job, I still don't know if I'll have one in a few weeks. I am supposed to know on Monday so, hopefully, I'll still have a source of income.

Travelling South This Month

Our donor can't come to visit us this month so we will be travelling to visit him, assuming that the midwife doesn't find anything wrong tomorrow.

Checkup Tomorrow

We made an appointment to see R's midwife tomorrow. We're seeing a different midwife than the woman that normally does R's Paps and checkups, but she's part of the same practice. We have a list of things to talk to her about & just want to check in and make sure all the plumbing is up to par for our next try.
Our questions:

• Why the funky AF this month with high temps?
• Why hasn't R ever had a positive OPK even though CM & temps show she's ready to O? If there's a problem, how can we fix it?
• Is a LP on the short side (9-11 days) something to worry about and, if so, what can we do about it?
  

If there's anyone actually reading this thing...

We need some advice. This month R was 2 days late. She spotted for 2 days & then started what, for her, would have been an extremely light period. That lasted a little over a day and it's now back to spotting. At first it was brown & would just show up when she wiped. It progressed to red but was never heavy enough to warrant anything more than a panty (oh how I hate that word) liner. Thing is, her temps haven't dipped at all; they're still at LP level and have been for 18 days now. Should we be concerned? Does this warrant a trip to talk to our midwife (we were thinking about checking in with her anyway this month)? Is there anything that could cause a light & late period with elevated temps? It's not that we think she might be pregnant, we just want to make sure everything is in tip top shape for the next try which starts in 2 weeks or so.

No Baby

R started spotting late last night, full on AF by tonight. We called donor & will be insemming in about 2 weeks.

Looking Ahead

We've started discussing our TTC plan of attack for 2007. We haven't been actively trying every month. We haven't given up hope on this cycle, but with three peoples schedules to work around we decided to start planning for next cycle. We've decided that we will try every month until it happens, no taking months off (in case we really need it emotionally). We've requested off work for each anticipated weekend through June. Thank G-d R usually ovulates on the weekend. Our donor has scheduled classes so he has a long weekend every week so we will alternate visiting him and him coming up here each month.
If we still aren't pregnant in June we'll start thinking about IUI in a doctor's office with or without meds. I guess we'll have to get our donor tested and find a doctor that will work with us. A lesbian couple we know were TTC a few years ago (they have since broken up, guess there was a reason they never succeeded) and they weren't able to find a doctor within 40 miles of our ultra conservative county that was willing to help them. Luckily Baltimore & Philadelphia are close enough to drive for appointments if needed. Our doctor & midwife have no problems helping us once R is pregnant but they won't do IUIs on any couple that is not married, no matter what their sexual orientation. They're the only local doctor that accepts our insurance. We really need to get out of here.

Still Waiting

We're still waiting, no AF and no positive HPT. We're going nuts! R has never been late, not in the 8 1/2 years we've been together. She had open heart surgery a few years ago and that didn't even affect her cycle. Lots of other symptoms but we're not sure if we're noticing them just because we want to. R spotted late yesterday, just a bit of brown blood on the TP (mixed with tons of watery CM, another phenomenon that has been around for 3 days now) when she was wiping, nothing on her underwear. No sign of it since. If this keeps up she's going to go to the doctor on Tuesday. Damn the long weekend!

We may be Jinxing Ourselves...

but this was too cute (and too true) to pass up. It's our first baby clothes purchase.