Saturday, April 25, 2009

Baby's Momma

I'm cracking up right now after watching "Baby's Momma" for the first time. I had no desire to see it when it first came out, but it was on so I gave it a go! I love that she gets pregnant when she had given up...I have heard so many stories like that. That is why I am really aiming for staying calm throughout the whole process. Hopefully I'm not just internalizing it all! That is why I really hope this summer that Deb will be still be here with me to go to the treatments. I think it will be easier having a partner in crime since V will still be MIA. :) 

The other part of the movie which I loved was the creepiness of the surrogacy agency. When I think about having a paid surrogate as an option, I can't imagine. Having friends/family volunteer to help if we decide to go that way is amazing. Shocking--but amazing! I'm glad to know it's an option if we get to that point.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

One Month Until R&R

I am officially starting to get excited to see V. It sounds funny that I wouldn't be excited earlier, but the reality is that things change so much with the Army. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and then realize that maybe it already has with the fiasco of him coming home early, then not. Anyway the point is that today at my inservice training, I realized that I could possibly try one more time with an IUI since he will be coming home during the month of June. If the timing works out, we could be good for another round. Since the last round had a low number of sperm available, it might be a good idea. Yippee! Now, I just need to wait to find out the range of dates that he will be home. That's the job for May.

The other part of R&R that will be great is that it will just give us a chance to relax together. Since he doesn't want to go anywhere very far away, it will be really nice to hang around the house with the dogs. V wants to mow the lawn, pressure wash the house, and grill some steaks--he misses all of those normal things! I thought we might take a few days and go to some of the plantations near Baton Rouge and then on to New Orleans. I'm looking for somewhere that is just romantic and easy. Since we are not the big romantic couple, it will be a nice change of pace. 

Monday, April 13, 2009

Why am I not crazy?

Because I took awhile to find my hubby, it seems like I have watched all of my friends get pregnant and have their three kids. Although it might have taken them a few months, inevitably, none of them had a trouble getting knocked up by their adorable husbands. :) I watched them go through the stages of being upset, happy, devastated, hopeful, exhausted, grumpy, hungry, really really hungry, in pain....the list goes on! 

I figured when I started trying I would be a little crazy. But I am not. I can't figure it out because I typically obsess about most things. When I saw that "irrationality" was a listed side effect of one of the drugs I was taking to get pregnant, I figured that I would go a little mental. Of course I have my typical fun moods, but I don't have the kind of craziness I hear about on other people's blogs. Why am I not crazy about something that is so important?

I guess that it just comes down to the fact that I have accepted that I will either get pregnant or not. I don't feel jealous of pregnant women (although it makes me sick whenever I hear of someone not taking care of their child). But for the most part, I'm okay. Isn't that a little strange?

The history...

There are some things that are just strange about being a military wife.  I would call trying to get pregnant while my husband is deployed overseas one of those strange times. Usually getting knocked up while your husband is gone is a bad thing. For us, it has been the running joke we keep hoping will happen. 

So let me give you a rundown on where we have come from. I had DH (dear hubby) home for almost two years between deployments. We started tried to get pregnant the natural way with no success. The on-post doctors put my on Clomid for two cycles while I waited for my referral to the specialist about two hours away from my house. During this time I also had a hysterosalpingogram (HSG) done to make sure there was no physical blockages preventing pregnancy. Analysis of DH showed that he had low-sperm count.

We lucked out and got in early to the specialist by way of a cancellation. The doctor met with us together and immediately got us going. He ran another sperm analysis which was fine and checked me for polycystic ovarian syndrome which was negative. Physically nothing was wrong with us except I seemed to not ovulate on a regular schedule. The next step had to wait for my period to start except when it did I ended up having cysts that which meant I couldn't take the fertility drugs that month. 

In all of this, DH was getting ready to deploy so he gave some "donations" so that I could try when he was gone. So he left. We had a hurricane that day too. Then the next month I tried my first round without him and used the "turkey baster" method, also known as an IUI. I took Follistim for four nights at 75 mg, went in for an ultrasound, took the HCG, and went back for the IUI. It wasn't painful, but rather a slight pinch. 

The worst part of the whole thing was walking into the waiting room by myself. Driving two and half hours to get to the doctor, I stepped in right on time to find the whole room full of couples. As it was Saturday, everybody came at the same time for the IUIs. I was the last one called in, and I just felt alone. My husband called while I was sitting there by chance. He had completely zoned out that it was the day because his days seem to just run together a lot.  Poor guy. 

So pretty much for the rest of the year, it has been a rinse and repeat of this cycle including all of the months where I had cysts that were too big and required a month of rest. Then the donations ran out. 

Unfortunately, it's not like I can dial up my husband and ask him to come home. After a lot of working, we have him coming home for R & R  in a month or so. He'll have to go back, and so I'll be facing the process alone again. But I guess that is just the life of a military wife. It scares me because we're moving on to the next step of IVF. 

Shelling out that kind of money is scary, but I've been working a second job all year to pay for it. We'll see what's coming.

Until next time...