Video that's worth watching

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqfGqOx2iDQ

This is an amazing music video (and a great song for that matter) about infertility...I've seen it 3 times and I'm still crying. Sometimes it helps to feel less alone, just for a little while.

And again...

Well things are going well so far.
My mid-cycle u/s yesterday showed a 17mm and a 15mm follicle on my right with a smaller 12mm as well (that won't release most likely) and a few under 10mm on my left...no wonder I'm so crampy! How do you IVF girls carry around all those eggs?!?
Anyway, we're triggering Saturday (tomorrow) so that the 15mm will release as well. By Saturday, they should be at least 21mm and 19mm, making them around 25mm and 23mm when they release on Monday. My lining was already great at 8.4mm, so we're looking good.

I'm nervous of course, but extremely grateful for another try. Now is the "busy" part of the cycle, so I'll update again next week when the waiting begins!

Moving ahead

I've been superbusy lately, so I've barely had time to myself.

Last Thursday, I had an u/s and my cyst was completely gone. Stopped BCPs, started bleeding profusely on Sunday morning, started Femara on Monday, and took my last Femara pills this morning...I'm still spotting which is pissing me off, but we'll see what happens. I'm just hoping my body responds...I've definitely had a couple of hot flashes, I'm sluggish, but I didn't have the headaches that I've had before (I know, what a dumb bunny to complain about a lack of side effects with fertility meds). Anyway...midcycle scan is next Thursday (my mom's b-day) so we'll see what happens...trying my best not to think about it.

Other than that, all is well. I've been frustrated lately with pregnant women, but what else is new. One of my co-workers had her baby last week. I went and saw her at the hospital and went by her house this weekend to see the baby...he was beautiful and holding him just made me ache that much more for this. My other pregnant co-worker had her big ultrasound this week, it's a boy, she's barely showing and very, very skinny, I swear I just want to hold her down and feed her. And then there are other friends I know who drink occasionally while pregnant or exercise way too hard, and while I know that's "okay" with some doctors, it just hurts me that I can't get it right being so careful.

I'll just never understand how some people keep getting pregnant over and over again while here I am, doing every freaking thing I can, and I lose them over and over again...I've given up trying to make sense of it all, but it still hurts...

All I can do is keep trying...

History Lesson

We went to visit my family this weekend, and I ran across some very old pictures. Some of my baby pictures, some pictures of when my mom was a kid, and pictures of my grandmother and grandfather in their twenties.

It was so amazing to see those pictures. I plan to put them all in an album the next time I visit, and we're making plans to slowly scan them all in and send them out to other family members (lots of my great aunts/uncles are also in the pics and I'm sure their kids and grandkids would like them as well). My grandfather was unbelievably handsome! He was still good-looking at 70, but I had no idea what he looked like closer to our age. My grandmother was apparently very fashionable, I couldn't get over some of her outfits (and the HATS!). And my mother was absolutely gorgeous as a teenager. I really had no idea. This long lean thing with the biggest smile...I don't think my grandmother had ever shown me those pictures.

Looking back at those pictures was a bit of a history lesson...things I'd known but forgotten. My grandmother was one of 5 living children, having lost 2 brothers at a young age. There were some pictures of them as children, and it looked like they lived in one of those camps where all of the houses looked the same and faced each other...I can't describe it so I'll have to post the pictures once they're scanned. They started out with so very little...but they looked so happy. My grandmother never finished high school, although by her own account (and by all of the pictures...LOL!) she had no shortage of social life. I swear she was posing with a different boy in every picture. The pictures of her and her 2 sisters were awesome...just 3 girls in pretty dresses headed to a dance. Then slowly you start to see each of their three husbands come into the picture. On a fertility note, I've always found it interesting that all 3 sisters only had one child a piece...something unheard of in those days...all 3 tried for more to my understanding...makes you wonder.

Anyway, my grandma had my mom in her early 20s. My mom had me right before she turned 17. In my direct line, I was the first to graduate high school, the first to graduate college, obviously going to be the first to get a PhD. I'm certainly not ashamed of where my family started, but it's just interesting to look back and see all of the opportunities that I have that they never did. What's more amazing to me is that I was raised knowing that I would go to college and go on to some sort of post-graduate education. My grandparents and parents never expected anything less of me.

So as I sat there with that box of pictures, I suddenly felt very proud...proud of my grandparents for toughing it out, proud of my mom for keeping me and doing what was best for me, proud to have had all of them in my life, and proud of myself for taking my family a step further in my generation.

I can only hope that I will have the chance to produce another generation...and that they'll do even greater things.