Over Acheiver

There go my ovaries again, showing off and stuff. I had one 17x20 on the right and one 18x22 on the left. WTF!!! Letrozole isn't supposed to have a risk of multiples! I'm riding high on my hopeful and optimistic ultrasound. This is the good part of the month, the time when anything could happen. When I start thinking, "Why not me?" Best part of the day was that 20 minutes after my appt. my wonderful husband called to ask "How did that thing go?" He doesn't show it much but he cares :) I was happy to tell him the good news and he promptly said "That's great, but don't get your hopes up." He's protecting me. Send some good vibes my way....only three chances left after this cycle and then I'm benched, FOR A YEAR! It's now or never right?

In honor of distraction.

I've been keeping busy for two reasons. #1 My BFF Naomi just left the island of Sicily for good on Saturday morning. This sucks for me because at least 75% of my free time was spent hanging out, working out, or chatting on the phone with her. I'm gonna miss that girl! #2 It's cycle day 13, I'm about to ovulate, and I'm sick of thinking about failed cycles, hopeful cycles, and everything in between.

This is my buddy Naomi on her last night here :(

So to keep busy and distract myself I did A LOT this weekend, which was a long one because of president's day. I finished a huge group project for my finance and economics of health care class. Thank God too, because that sucker was looming over my head for the last 7 weeks and isn't due until March 10th. Plenty of time for fixing it up with my group, but at least my part is DONE!!!! Yeah!
I also started quilting, and I must say I'm a little obsessed. I've been watching one of my new friends here start a new quilt and she was teaching me little by little. I bought all my own materials and started out on my very first lap quilt. I bought a ton of blue, green, brown, gray colors on line and had them shipped to me. I borrowed a sewing machine from a friend, bought all the cutting and sewing supplies and I was on my way.
I spent about 2 hours yesterday ironing all my fabrics after I washed them. Then I cut them all. I learned how to use the sewing machine with a little help from my friend. After all that you couldn't stop me. I was on fire. I cut everything, pieced it all together and now I just have to figure out how to arrange my squares. Quilting is so much fun. I couldn't ask for a better distraction. I posted some pictures below so you can see the progression.

Making Decisions.

As I said in my last post I've been thinking....a lot. Mostly about Navy career. I've felt a lot of pressure to stay in the Navy, especially over the last 4 months of this new administrative job that I have. I could do it. I could stay in, finish up my masters degree, finish up a second masters degree, sit in an office, make a lot of money, move around the world, play the game, possibly lose my husband and probably never be in one place long enough to get the help we need to have a child. PHEW!(that was a long run-on, sorry!) But I'm not going to. I'm going to be true to myself and what Sam and I are hopeful for. It sure sounds like a lot of fun to move around every three years, but it's not. Parts of it are, but no one tells you about the sucky stuff. The broken and stolen personal items, the living without your stuff for two months because it's "in transit", the fact that your husband can't find a job that pays more than $10 and hour because of bullshit labor laws, the loneliness that lasts about a year every time you move, saying goodbye to good friends every couple of months because it's their turn to move. Don't get me wrong the Navy has been good to me but it might be my turn to move on. I always thought I would get out when I was done with my time, but they sucked me in with promises of retirement benefits, $, and promotions. I'm ashamed to say that it all looked pretty attractive for awhile.
But Sam and I have talked. I will attempt to get orders back to my old duty station in VA, and then I will be done. We want a house to make memories in. We want a family. We want lifelong friends that we will see on a regular basis. I'm already half way to my MSN anyways. Who needs two masters degrees? There are so many other things that matter to me besides money and power. I need to remember that.

In other news, cycle day 10. Ultrasound on Tuesday. Hopefully I don't ovulate before then. I have little faith, but I hope that this is our cycle. I always hope.

I've been thinking....

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. Thinking about Navy career, finishing grad school, life, death, marriage, and how in the hell we are ever going to build a family. I want so badly to be optimistic about letrozole. I want to just believe that we are meant to be parents and that we've waited long enough, it has to be our turn. But then I remember that life is not fair. Things don't always happen just because you want them bad enough, or you deserve them. I've had a long history of life not being fair. I can choose to dwell on these things- my infertility, my broken family, my father's death-or I can choose to be grateful for the beautiful things that I have in my life.
Sam and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before but we were married twice. We eloped on Feb 12th of 2007 in Charlottesville, VA at a beautiful little B&B. We didn't have the money for a big wedding yet and our parents wanted us to get married at home. Sam's mom was away in Iraq for the whole year coming up, so we snuck off and had a quiet little wedding alone, just the two of us. We were just babies when I look back. Sam was only 23 and I was 25. But we knew we wanted to be together and we knew we couldn't wait. I wouldn't change it for anything. We had our big wedding in May 2008 when we could afford it. We didn't tell many people that we were already married so we got the best of both words. A big party with all of our family and friends and a small intimate ceremony with just the two of us.
I am so proud of the man my husband has become and he is the best thing in my life. Sam is far from perfect ( and so am I!) but he has proven through and through that he is the calm, stable, consistent, and easy going one in our relationship. I need to remember this and be more grateful.
I guess I've just been focusing on my inability to give Sam a child. Feeling sorry for myself, letting myself slip into complete negativity. Time to turn over a new leaf and see the good side of things. Gotta start somewhere right?

Cycle Day 2

When is this shit gonna be over? Seriously! I'm cycle day 2, yet another bust of a cycle, yet another tear shed. I start my letrozole tomorrow. So I can be disappointed again in another 30 days. At least it's something to make the time pass, right? I feel so close to just screaming out loud "I CANNOT HAVE CHILDREN". I'm sick of people asking me if I'm pregnant or if we're going to have kids. I'm sick of hating every pregnant woman I see. I'm sick of wondering if they "deserve" this pregnancy. I'm sick of people telling me I should be grateful for what I have. I'm not grateful. I'm feeling rather ungrateful. I'm feeling downright resentful.
I'm just a big ole ball of negativity today folks, so sorry! I had a fantastic time in Germany. The Packers won the superbowl (GO PACK! I'm from Wisconsin). I just finished my homework for the week. I'm caught up at work. I should be feeling good....but I don't. I feel sad, empty, like a big fat failure. If someone has a reason to smile please tell me so I can join in :(

Goodbyes and Shocks to the System

Good morning blog world. Hope everyone is doing well. I'm doing okay...still pretty hopeless about this cycle. Even though I was on a higher dose of Femara I ovulated later than I did the last time, cycle day 17. WTF? I told my Dr and he said "Rose, I don't know why, you're an enigma!" I don't want to be an enigma! I just want to know why my body will not do what I ask of it! So I am currently cycle day 22. Feeling nothing special and just trying to get this cycle over to start my Femara again. I cannot build this cycle up because I cannot emotionally handle another failure. So I give up before I even get a chance to fail.
I'm gearing up for a hard goodbye in about 2 weeks. My best friend N, a friend I met here in Sicily and have been joined at the hip with for almost a year, is leaving to go back to the states with her husband to their next duty station. I cannot imagine life here without her. I'm dreading a week filled with tears, she leaves on the 17th. We still have a fun trip to Germany planned for next week. Can't wait to make some more fun memories with her.
N gave me a pretty good shock to my system on Thursday. She is one of my two friends that doesn't have any children. She is happily married and wants children but was waiting because they weren't ready and her husband is deployable. Well her husband expressed to her that he got his deployment schedule and the she should remove her IUD so they can start trying. She was caught off guard too and excited and she called me to tell me and then asked me to come down to the ER to hold her hand while one of the Dr's took out her IUD (5 minutes after her husband had called her and told her she should take it out). She was totally sensitive and asked me if I was okay with this, and told me she wanted us to be pregnant together. I really appreciate that she thought of me. I know she gets how hard this is for me. But it still stirred up my feelings of jealousy and self pity. In my mind I have her pregnant already, leaving me behind like every other friend that has started their families. She has all kinds of questions for me about trying to conceive and she is so excited she just wants to talk about it. It just hurts that I have lost that excitement, that it is replaced by negativity and cynicism. It hurts that everyone gets to move forward, so quickly and for free. I am jealous that her husband really wants to have children and is excited for the next adventure in their lives. Sam told me last week that he has only been going through with the TTC to make me happy and that he could do without children. I feel like crap. I'm a bad friend. I'm a bad wife. I'm feeling like a bad person. Uggghhh!

Midcycle and devoid of any hope!

This cycle sucks for me already. My doctor upped my dose of Femara to 5mg each day, days 3-9. I have not had any side effects but I also did not have any ultrasound because my Dr is on vacation. Now I am cycle day 14, I have no idea what's going on inside my lil' ovaries, I am out of ovulation tests (I ordered some but they haven't gotten here yet), I've been slacking on temping, and I'm just overall feeling defeated. I don't want to be negative but there is little for me to be positive about this cycle. If this cycle bombs I have no one to blame but myself. I'm working hard to tell myself not to care, but rarely am I actually successful. I hope everyone else is keeping their spirits up out there in the blog world. I'm praying for all the people I follow. Your success will keep me hopeful!
In order to cheer myself up a bit and focus on the positive.....I will post about Florence. I was able to travel to Florence for New Years Eve with a couple of my really good friends. My friend Naomi and her husband, Stacy (another nurse from here) and my good friend Amy from my last command flew up to meet us. Amy is on a deployment in Africa and was able to sneak away for 4 days of fun. And man...did we have fun. We drank way too much champagne, ate fantastic food, and saw all the sights. There was an awful hour and a half on New Years Eve, where I drank way too much and picked a horrible fight with my poor husband. I am ashamed of myself for acting that way, I should have known better that to drink so much when I had been feeling so out of control and tearful for the weeks leading up to that day. Thankfully I have learned my lesson and my hubby forgave me. It was truly embarrassing to lose my shit like that in front of all my friends. Thankfully they forgave me too! So here are some great pictures from our trip. The best part of all the traveling we have done is the beautiful pictures that I have collected. I have enjoyed learning to use our camera and making scrapbooks of the pictures after each trip. Enjoy!