I have been asked by many of you about how I'm doing...since our most recent disappointment during this baby-making journey. I am OK. I'm sorry if I worried anyone. I wasn't doing so good for a while, but I have (mostly) turned the corner and am picking myself back up and moving on. Yes, we are taking a break from fertility treatments...we need to regroup emotionally and financially...all of this has taken a huge toll in both areas. We are still paying for my surgery in February (shit, that was expensive), not to mention the procedures that've been done since. My goodness, the bills. We were really hoping that having that cyst removed from my fallopian tube would be the key to enabling us to become pregnant, but that just hasn't been the case. It is disappointing for sure, and leads us back to believing that, again, there is more that's wrong with me.

I just wanted you all to know that we are alive, keeping very busy with work (I will be teaching my first university-level technical and business writing classes this fall, so I am busy developing those courses), and trying to just enjoy our summer. I love West Michigan in the summer...feels almost like we don't need to take a vacation elsewhere!

Hope this finds you all well.

-Em

Fine. You win, infertility. You've beaten me down yet again, hard. Some couples can endure this for 10 years, 5 years...I guess my breaking point is 2.5 years.

I'm out.

-Em

Yesterday, I left work a little early to stop by my doctor's office for the FSH injections. When I arrived, the receptionist told me she'd tell the nurse I was here, then proceeded to pack up, close the glass door, lock it, and leave. The other receptionist did the same. I sat there in the waiting room, um, waiting, and there was silence surrounding me. The place was deserted. I started panicking, mildly. "Oh no," I thought. "The receptionist forgot to tell the nurse who's supposed to administer the injections that I'm here, and we'll miss our chance. This has to be done today, now. Oh no!" I tried to calm down and concentrate on a magazine, repeating to myself that I had not been forgotten. I thought back to yesterday's office visit, during which Drew and I sat in the examining room for more than an hour and a half before the doctor came in to do the ultrasound. I had begun to lose hope then, as well. Was so frustrated sitting there, on the cold examining table. It couldn't be prevented--the doctor was called into a delivery--and the nurse had been instructed to make us wait there for her to arrive, because, again, timing is crucial.

Finally, I saw a nurse peek her head out the door. I've never been so happy to be called into that dreaded examining room. She apologized profusely and prepared the crazy-long needles. I assumed "the position" and received the dreadful pokes. "Damn!" I was yelling in my head. "Hold it together...don't cry....you've gone through this before."

It still freakin' hurt. It still hurts now. Damn. No matter how hard I try, or psyche myself up beforehand, I cannot get used to all of this. The crazy drugs. Needles upon needles upon needles. The cold, hard examining table.

Right now, I am praying that we'll be successful so that I won't have to experience all of this again next month. Next month, the doctor said, it'll be even worse. More drugs, more ultrasounds (one every few days), even more shots. Please...let this be it.

Because it just hurts so much.

-Em

I saw the egg. It was just chillin' out there in the follicle, waiting. Waiting to mature just a little bit more, waiting to be released and travel through the fallopian tube. The doctor showed us both the egg on the ultrasound screen, and measured the lining of my uterus as well. I go back in tomorrow for FSH injections, one in each hip, to get that little egg to (hopefully) release and start its journey. For many, the presence of an egg within the ovary is nothing special...it is something that happens like clock-work every 28 days or so. For me, even without knowing for sure whether or not we'll conceive this cycle, it feels like a miracle. Could this little egg we saw today be a potential baby? In a few weeks' time, will it be an embryo...a few weeks after that, a fetus? I am so excited, so hopeful...so desperately wishing that this is our second chance. If it doesn't happen, we will try again next month. We will grieve for a few days, then pick ourselves up and try one more time. I don't want to think about that right now, though. Right now...I'm going to revel in the knowledge that I have an egg. And hope and pray with all my might that all the drugs and shots do what they're supposed to.

-Em

Since receiving the "plan" from my doctor at the end of last week, I've been researching where to get the self-injectable FSH shots, sans insurance, at the best cost. On one fertility drug web site, I came across this page. I thought it might be helpful to link to it here, because it provides good insight into the feelings of infertile couples, from different perspectives.

I fail so often at writing coherently about the subject (hmmm...perhaps I'm a little too close to it to be objective?) Hopefully this helps you, fertiles and infertiles alike, better understand what it's like.

-Em