January 31, 2013 3dpiui

Trace posted this on his Facebook today and it cracked me up!

So we are already 3 days past IUI! Whoo hooo! Lots of twinges and cramps since IUI. I've took an OPK every day since I triggered and they've been positive, but today it was a little lighter so maybe my triggers getting close to gone. It's been 6 days since my trigger. I'm not sure, but I would think you could test out your trigger with OPKs. We will find out.

Tomorrow my two friends and I are heading out on a road trip. Our destination is
Tishomingo, OK to check out Miranda Lambert's new store. We've talked about checking out Memphis and Tunica so we will see. No reservations and no definite plans!

January 28, 2013 IUI #1

This morning we had our first IUI, and I was sooooo nervous! We left our house at 5 to make Trace's 7:30 appointment. When we got to the appointment they gave Trace a paper to fill out while I paid $616 for the procedure. No infertility coverage, but we had been lucky so far with insurance covering all our testing. As Trace is filling out the paperwork he asks me what our doctors name is, and the receptionist answers him with a different name. I think she's mistaken so I go to correct her and she tells me that our doctor had her baby. WHAT?!? Our doctor was pregnant???? How could I have missed that?? Then I replayed the three times I had seen her, and every time she had a giant lab coat on. Ah Ha! She was hiding it out of respect for her patients desperately trying to get pregnant! Wow.... How hard that must have been! I was told that I would be seen by another RE and she was the one listed on the top 100 bet in the country so that softened the blow.

Any-who, Trace went back to give his sample and I waited in the waiting room, and waited, and waited.... Then I started worrying. I mean there is no way in hell I could do what I expected him to do by myself. Then the guy that went back before him came out so now I'm really freaking out. So I send him a text. No response. Then I hear his voice and I hear a lady say "oh no you leave that in the room". I'm like holy hell he's carrying his sample around the office. :) Finally he comes out and I've never been so relieved when he said "I did it but it was fucking hard! Did you know you gotta do it dry?!" Then he tells me that he had been done but he had to check out at least one of the dirty DVDs they had. He said it would have never helped! I asked him what he was carrying around that he was supposed to leave in the room and he said his paperwork and I sighed a big sigh of relief.

I was supposed to take him and drop him off at work, but his boss had called him while he was giving his sample and told him just to take the day with pay! I love his boss. So we walked to a nearby diner and ate breakfast and killed some time till 10 o'clock when I was due for the insemination. The closer it got to 10 the more nervous I got. Finally we got called back to an exam room and I was told to strip from the waist down. As I'm stripping Trace told me to look up at the ceiling and I see a picture of flowers in a field duct taped right above the exam table. Really? That sure as hell wasn't going to help me relax. In walks my favorite fellow and instant I start to calm down. I ask her a ton of probably insane questions, and she never let's on how crazy she might think I am. I verified Trace's specimen, laid back, and started trying to do relaxing breathing. She inserted the speculum, cleaned me off with what Trace called a "Giant Ass Q tip", placed the catheter which cause a little bit of cramping, and bam all done. I can't believe I was so worried and nervous and it was way less painful then the HSG. The whole procedure might have been 2 minutes.

Now on to the dreaded two week wait. I am so very thankful for my husband. I could never had made it this far without him. He is my rock. He's strong when I need him to be and funny when I need to loosen up. I'm so lucky to have found him

January 26, 2013 Trigger

Tonight I did my first trigger shot! My best friend started texting me at 9:45 asking me if I was ready, I think that my mother in law and her were more worried about the shot then I was. I had more issues getting it unpackaged then actually giving myself the shot. I was about to stick myself and Trace was like wait you forgot to clean your skin off with the alcohol! So he wiped the spot and I stuck it and it was really no big deal!

Then I walked into the bedroom and no shit that show 6 Little McGhees was on! I was like seriously! Trace said it was freaking him out so we had to turn it. :) That's all I keep saying is I don't want to be a reality show.

January 25, 2013 Monitoring Appt

Today was our first monitoring appointment and I had a 15mm follicle on the right and a 14mm follicle on the left. The US tech told me I had stuff cooking but I wasn't there yet. She told me that they might bring me back for another look Monday and then decide, but to just wait and see what the nurse said our plan would be.

I got the call at like the busiest part of my day and I had nothing to write on or anything when she called. I stole a pen from a random guy walking by me and wrote all my info on a glove I was wearing. They decided to do my trigger tomorrow at 10pm and then my first IUI is scheduled for Monday at 10! I can't believe it's really going to happen! I had kind of prepared myself for something crazy to happen like over stimulation or something that would make this cycle a bust.

My favorite part of the day was my text from Trace telling me how much he was looking forward to Monday and that he was excited. He is really amazing and supportive!

January 22, 2013 CD9

The suspense of my first monitoring appointment on CD12 is killing me! I know that there are so many things that can happen (Follicles not large enough or too many of them, no response to Clomid, early ovulation, etc..) and I'm trying not to be overly excited, but I'm just ready to know what the next step is. When I started this cycle I really had no hope of success, but now the hope has emerged.

I'm thankful for some distraction tomorrow going out to eat with my family to celebrate Trace and my mother's birthday. Then Thursday is Trace's actual birthday and he wants Japanese and yogurt. That will maybe keep me sidetracked till my 7:15 am appointment. I'm so thankful we have a girls road trip to Oklahoma planned for my hopefully 2WW if I'm this impatient for my monitoring appointment.

My best friend, hairstylist, and I are going on a road trip to Miranda Lambert's new store in Oklahoma and whatever else we can find along the way to get into! We are also going to check out Graceland along the way since none of us have ever been.

SA

Getting my husband to do a semen analysis was like convincing him to sell a gun. Straight up impossible. My OB requested the analysis kind of early in our TTC journey due to some concerns from a surgery Trace had when he was younger. In my mind the SA was no big deal. He had an excuse to jack off! He did not see it that way. I had his order for 3 months before he actually did it. The only reason he finally did it was because I had an utter melt down. I'm talking crying, kicking, screaming melt down.

Well we live out in the sticks and it is over 30 minutes to the hospital I work at, Trace just happened to be doing plumbing at my hospital too. This means that we had to get his sample while we were at work. Who would have known such a simple test could be so damn complicated. Trace's ideas on how to obtain sample:

T: I know! Lets have sex and i'll pull out and put it in the cup!
Me: No
T: How bout we have sex and I'll wear a condom and then I'll just put the condom in the cup!
Me: No
T: Uhmn.... What if you gave me a blow
Me: NO!!!!!

The day finally arrives and it's time o get his sample and I asked him where he was going to do it, and his reply was in the car in the parking deck. I'm like omg No! All I could see was him getting arrested and being labeled a sex offender for life. He tells me a story about his boss doing it in a Steak and Shake bathroom. Ewww. So I cleared out our locker area at work and sent him in. My two co workers that know all about it and I just sit there and stare at the locker room door. Talk about no pressure. Then I start feeling bad because I'm sure it can't be easy and I've hounded the hell out of him so I decide I'm going to go help. I walk in the locker room and he's like here and hands me the sample.

I walk his sample over to the lab and all they see is a girl with scrubs on so they keep pointing me to the back. I finally get to the right lady and she asks if I have the stool sample. Uhmn no.....my husbands semen. She laughs takes it from me and I'm on my way.

A few hours later I get a phone call saying the results are "within normal limits" what a relief! Before I get off the phone Trace has shot a text off to both his parents "Guess what? I'm not shooting blanks!" When I found out what he text I freaked and said they're going to think I'm pregnant!!! The words were barely out of my mouth and the phone was ringing. So after lots of explaining we found out that they had been worried about Trace's condition too and were relieved to know everything was all right.

January 19, 2013 CD6

We are starting our first IUI cycle this month, and I have been prescribed 50mg of Clomid CD 3 through CD 7. The word Clomid terrifies me after all I've seen and heard on the Internet. When I first started to realize that it really was taking us a long time to get pregnant I called my OB and spoke to his nurse and she threw the word Clomid around like it was candy. She told me over the phone that she would talk to my OB, but she thought he would just get me some Clomid and BAM I'd be pregnant. Thank goodness I have a good OB! He made me come in and we poured over my charts and he said your ovulating just fine and there is no need for Clomid in that aspect, but he referred me to an RE then and there.

Fast forward to now, I'm on day 3 of Clomid. I haven't noticed any of the side effects yet that I read all over thebump and google. I think I'm getting a low dose though compared to most. I had an HSG, CD3 blood work, diagnostic ultrasound and Trace had a semen analysis and all our results came back fine. We will be monitored on CD 12 to check our follicles growth and to make sure I haven't overstimulated my egg production. No sextuplets for us! Hopefully everything will look good and they will tell me when to trigger and schedule our IUI.

I want to be excited, but I think I've already decided this is going to be a bust. I want to be positive and I bet my hopes will go up once I've had the procedure. The success rate is not that much better then trying naturally and everyday it seems I see 2 or more failed IUI on forums I frequent. I know this sounds crazy and is probably flammable, but when we were going over percentages with our RE I kind of wanted to move straight to IVF. 60% sure sounds way better then three cycles of 20%. When I voiced this my RE and Trace just didn't see it the same way as I did.

First RE Appointment

I was referred by my OB/Gyn to see a Reproductive Endocrinologist (RE) and he told me it was my choice on who I wanted to see. I called to make an appointment and the first appointment was a month out. I had to choose which doctor over the phone, and that lady gave me all my options names,where they studied, and where they did their residencies. After this overwhelmingly lengthy spiel I just chose the doctor with the same first names as mine.

November 29, 2013 we had our first Reproductive Endocrinologist appointment in Atlanta. It took us over two hours to get to the office, and I was super nervous. We ended up getting there an hour early and we were whisked up to the 18th floor office. We were handed a questionnaire to fill out and when I get to ethnicity white or Caucasian was not and option. None of the other choices seemed right either. I leave mine blank and then I'm filling out Traces portion and I ask him when I get to the same question. He's like I have no idea and whips his phone out to google it. Well of course they call us back at this moment and Trace says we're not done with this paper yet! The lady was like don't worry about it they'll get all your information back here. So in we go to a small conference room where a resident starts going through tons of questions and I get the feeling she read my chart in bed the night before.

Then she gets to the ethnicity question... And I still don't have a answer. I'm feeling dumb and I'm like I have no idea. My dads Greek and Russian and my moms Dutch. Plain old white is not an option! Ah ha! I had her stumped too so she just wrote all that in. Then she turns to Trace and his response with a straight face was "Alabamian". I died laughing and so did the resident. In all seriousness as far back as Trace's mom can trace everyone lived in Alabama.

In comes Dr. Jessica who tells us about all the test I'm about to go through and all our treatment options. She tells us IUI cost less then what her plumber charged her last time and that IVF can cost around $16,000. Trace asks if that guarantees we have a boy. :) She told him no, but he just guaranteed himself 4 girls by saying that. So I left the office with a ton of lab work, vaginal ultrasound, and HSG orders. And we're off!

January 13, 2013

Yesterday the hubs and I went to Buy Buy Baby while we were in Birmingham to get a shower gift (that's the excuse I gave him anyways! I'd seen lots of chatter about it on thebump and knew with it being 2 hours away that I had to see what all the talk was about) WOW talk about overwhelming! Trace described it as the Bed, Bath, and Beyond of baby shit. :) he made me drag him in there, but once we were in he wanted to look at everything. He even picked out the outfit we got by himself.

My favorite part of this excursion was while we were in the stroller section. There were hundreds of strollers on this wall and Trace said "that's the one we're going to have to get", and I said "which one?" Thinking he was going to say one of the all terrain mud bogging looking strollers. Nope... The double stroller cause he thinks because we're going to a fertility doctor we're automatically going to have twins. I just died laughing in the store.

So we are about to check out and of course, 2 hours from home mind you, Trace sees someone he knows. I just can't take him anywhere without him knowing someone! We had a great evening and finished it off with some awesome food at Dreamland BBQ. I told my mother in law that the second I had a positive test we were heading back to Buy Buy Baby!

About Us

My name is Jessica and I'm 29 years old. I'm a radiologic technologist and we live in Alabama. I've been married to my husband Trace since August 21, 2010. Trace is 30 years old and is a plumber. We just purchased a 17.5 acre piece of land and are in the process of making it our dream farm. We currently have 3 horses, 4 dogs, and 2 goats. We like to shoot guns, ride horses, hang out at the lake, and just about anything country.

I have been off birth control since June of 2010 and we did the whatever happen happens method of trying to conceive. Nothing happened. December 2011 I started charting my temperatures, using OPKs, and getting lots of great information off of  www.thebump.com. We got our first positive pregnancy test in July that resulted in an early loss. We got referred to a Reproductive Endocrinologist and now we are starting this adventure called fertility treatment.