Period + Vacation = Sucky!

So my cycle is over and a new one has begun. The last one for awhile. I know what you're thinking. "Rose, you've only done 5 cycles of clomid, why are you giving up so easily?" Well the answer is simple, I need a break. I will do this last 5th cycle of clomid and then I will get my break. I know it won't work, but my doctor wants me to try. I have no hope. I have let infertility steal all of my joy. Murgdan over at Conceive this posted this amazing video called Tears and Hope. I watched it three times yesterday and I cried my eyes out. I was crying so hard that it woke my husband up and he came down to check on me. I've let being infertile steal the joy out of my life and I don't want to experience these intense highs and lows every month. I psych myself up with hope at the beginning of each cycle and then I come crashing down with each failure. Each BFN sinks me deeper and deeper into depression and cynicism. So after this 5th cycle fails I can breathe, I can try and focus on the good things that I do have in my life and remember how it feels to be content again. I'm feeling rather ungrateful for my fabulous husband and the fact that I am living in Europe. I have amazing opportunities here and I am not enjoying them like I should.
So I've got a wicked period going on right now and we leave for Amsterdam tomorrow. Bad combo right? I'm excited to explore the city and drink some good beer and just be away from my job for awhile. But mostly I am excited to see my good friend Amy who is meeting us there. I have not seen her in a whole year and I am going to hug her so tight when I see her in two short days. I'm determined to enjoy this trip and make some great memories. I'll catch up with you all when I get back. Ciao!

Add it to the list!

So I work myself up this morning to POAS. Yesterday's was negative (of course) at 9 day post ovulation. I tell myself to prepare because it will most likely be negative. I do my business set it on the sink and stare. And it remains blank. I wasted my first morning urine on a damn defective HPT. Add it to the list of things that suck right now! All you can do is laugh, at least it wasn't negative! Oh well, there is literally nothing I can do right now. I have no symptoms to speak of except increased discharge and some breast tenderness. I am not convinced and I am desperately trying not to get my hopes up. I don't know if we will go into another cycle after this one fails, which sadly I'm sure it will. I feel like I need a break from being sad, from wanting a family so badly and feeling like a failure. Oh well! Life goes on right?

7 Days Post Ovulation and Getting a Little Batty!

I am up early this morning and this week could not go any slower! I'm 7 days post ovulation right now and I have one more week to go, ughh! I am not getting my hopes up this month. My wonderful husband is convinced that this is our month. I'm trying to keep his expectations low, but it's not working. He even told his mom that he thinks this is the month, we haven't really opened up too much to his side of the family about our struggles. I haven't been crying as much this week about all my pregnant friends. However, I still notice that they are both continuously complaining and talking about their pregnancies. Neither one has once said that they were happy to be pregnant. They may be trying to preserve my feelings but I see them both as truly ungrateful. Maybe all of their complaints are some way of trying to make me feel better, like they are trying to remind me that it's miserable being pregnant. Let me just remind them...NOT HELPFUL!

I've been keeping busy with school and planning our upcoming trip. I baked some delicious Rosemary Bread yesterday. I've been running again which is good. Life is good overall and I need to remind myself of that more.
I also now have 2 followers which is exciting for me! Thanks ladies! If anyone ever has any comments bring them on please. I love reading infertility and success after infertility blogs and these ladies have helped me through a lot of dark days. Thanks!

Infertility and friendships.

It is amazing what infertility does to your friendships. Now that two of the people I am closest with are pregnant I feel a tension building with each of them. I am increasingly annoyed by their complaints about the pregnancy. My sister-in-law/BFF, we'll call her S, is now telling her husband who in is in turn telling his brother (my husband) that she thinks I am mad at her because she is pregnant again. Why would I be mad at her? So they wanted another baby, what is so wrong with that? Yeah it seems like inconvenient timing considering their big vow renewal ceremony is coming up but it's their life not mine. Yeah, I'm hurt that it's not me, but it has nothing to do with her. I'm just sick of everyone making it about them. This is our hurt and our struggle and no one ever thinks to see how hard this is on me. No one thinks about who they are talking to, every time they complain about how sick they are or how tired or how they'll deal with two. I don't want to hear it. I would take any of that if it meant that I could possibly have a family someday. But I sit there with a fake smile plastered on my face listening to them bitch about all the challenges and cons of being pregnant. S has not asked me about how I'm feeling or if I'm dealing with everything okay. She hasn't asked me where we are in our cycle. And frankly I don't want to talk with her about it because she doesn't understand and she definitely doesn't care.
See what infertility does? It breeds tension with all the people you need to support you. I still love my nieces and I still ask about the pregnancies, because even though it hurts me I still care. And I am far from perfect, but I feel like I am trying the best I can. I wish someone would make and effort for us, so we wouldn't feel so alone in all of this. At least Sam and I have each other.

I loathe the two week wait...

So I think that I ovulated on Tuesday so I am only one day post ovulation which sucks. How am I going to make it another 13 days?!? I'm trying to keep myself busy but I'm obsessed. I go in waves of being so hopeful for this cycle and feeling like it'll never happen. I had read that 90% of pregnancies that occur with clomid occur within the first 4 cycles. Well this being cycle 4, I kind of have all eggs in this basket. If it doesn't work I'm already thinking that we will need a break. We'll be heading back to the states for 2 weeks at the end of June and I'd rather not be thinking about how or where we can get it on if it happens to fall on our fertile week. We'll be staying with our parents and friends and I'd rather eat and drink and have fun during that time if I can. But it's so hard to say your going to take a break. How can I not think about OPK's and timed intercourse and what point in my cycle I am at? It's virtually impossible. Oh well...we'll cross that bridge if we need to. I like the idea that this cycle would work, I can picture myself being able to tell all of our family in person while we are home. I like the idea of starting the new year with a family of 3! But I know better than to get my hopes up. Any distraction ideas?

2 pink lines...

Yeah baby! +OPK tonight, time to get down to business. Nothing like seeing two pink lines, now if only they could be on the other kind of stick you pee on :) Oh well, at least I'm finally ovulating! We'll see where this month leads.

The Tudors

So because Sam and I live in the middle of nowhere and because our TV choices are severely limited we've been renting a lot of TV on dvd. We got into We.eds and En.tourage while we've been here and we just started watching The T.udors. I LOVE this show! I think the main character looks a lot like my husband which is awesome because I get to drool over the Henry on TV and then I look to my left and what do you know I have my own real life version at my disposal! I think my husband is better looking but don't tell him I said that or he'll get a huge head! You be the judge:

I haven't fully figured out how to arrange the pictures to my liking. The pictures were supposed to be below the test. Help me out ladies!

Clinging to hope...

I had my follie check this AM. I had a meeting yesterday at work around 2pm and worked at 7pm so I decided to stay on base instead of schlepping all the way back home and then back to base again. I got a run in before my meeting, went to my stupid (only 3 of us showed up) meeting, and then proceeded to work a 12 hour night shift. Ahhh, the joys of being active duty navy! My follie check was this morning. My doctor told me to stop by the clinic (downstairs from my unit - score!) after work so I could get home and get some sleep. He forgot about me! I waited an hour and he finally showed up. So now I'm cranky and sleep deprived and unhopeful, what a combo! So today is cycle day 15 and I usually ovulate day 18 or 19 on 100mg of clomid. I had two follies in my left ovary, but they were only 16 and 17mm. Hopefully they'll grow a little more in the next few days, but I'm not excited about these #'s. Last month on day 12 I had an 18 mm follie and ovulated on day 19. How long is this frickin cycle going to last? All I can do is breathe and attempt to remain calm. I just hate that I have to wait for the dreaded two week wait to even start!
Grow follies! Grow!
In other news, only 21 days until Amsterdam and Brussels! Which means 21 days until I see my good friend Amy. Can't wait to relax and drink some Belgian Beers.

Just freakin shoot me already!

I need to be put out of my misery, seriously! What calls for two posts in one day you may ask? How about yet another pregnancy announcement. How many is that in the last two weeks? Three, that's right THREE!!!! This one hurts the worst. My new sister in law (also happens to be my best friend) met my husband's brother at our wedding and got pregnant less than a month later. They have a beautiful little girl that just turned one. She took her IUD out and surprise, surprise she's pregnant again two weeks later. She tells me after talking to me for over an hour and she's been holding on to this secret for a month. When she told me she was pregnant the first time I cried my ass off right in her face. I was scared for her (my brother in law wasn't as responsible then as he is now) and completely devastated for myself. This time I held it together for 20 minutes, congratulated her and her husband and tried to convince myself that I really was happy for her. As soon as I hung up on skype I burst into tears. I am happy for her if this is what she wants, but it hurts me so much. I have a pit in my chest of shear sadness. It astounds me how unfair this process is. How easy it is for them to accidentally get pregnant twice and how impossible it seems for me to ever conceive. I'm humiliated that I've spoken to them about our struggle. And even more humiliated to have to face them at the wedding coming up in June. I'll get through this, but right now it feels better just to let myself feel sad.

Night Shift...ughh!

Sorry I have been missing, not that anyone reads this yet, but maybe someday :) I had a good excuse for being gone, night shift! Anyone who is a nurse knows what I am talking about. In the navy they make you rotate every 2 months from day to night shift. I usually love nights, as I am not a morning person but this weeks transition has been rough. To boot, it was ungodly slow at work this week.
I am in the midst of cycle #4 on clomid and feeling like crap physically and emotionally. I've been torturing myself by looking up the success rates of this cycle and all the crap I've read is not motivating. Blah, Blah, Blah if you don't get pregnant by the third cycle pretty much forget about it. I am so fearful of moving onto other options. Mostly because I'm just not sure there is much else I can do here, and I'm stuck here for the next 2 years! I also really thought that all I would need was a smidge of clomid to get pregnant. And facing the fact that it will take a lot more is really taking it's toll on me.
I did well today dealing with my newly pregnant friend at work. But I definitely flinched when she began complaining about her due date and not being able to head back to the states for Christmas. I understand the inconvenience but AT LEAST YOU ARE PREGNANT!!! I just don't want to hear about it, after everything she went through to get pregnant and everything I continue to go through on a daily basis. It's just plain annoying.
So on top of being irritable, and emotional as hell, I've been having hot flashes like a mad woman. I literally wake up sweating my ass off in the middle of the night, completely drenched. I hope that's a sign that it's working, but I refuse to get my hopes up. My monitoring U/S is Thursday morning on cycle day 15. I've been ovulating on day 18 or 19. We'll see, who knows!