Thyroid Update

I haven’t been sleeping well for several weeks now. Luckily, I haven’t needed to supplement with naps…. Until today.

I had an early morning appointment with my endocrinologist today. She is really wonderful, and is always on time, which I really appreciate. She is young (around my age, 32), and has a small child of her own. As soon as I walked into her office, she must’ve said “I’m so sorry” (for your miscarriage) about 20 times in a row. I thought that she herself was going to cry. She has been rooting for us since about a year ago (half way through our TTC journey), which is when I was first referred to her due to astronomically high cortisol and prolactin levels. After 9 months of regular blood draws, my stupid RE never even caught my unacceptably high TSH levels (between 4-5, when it should be under 2), but she did.

Wow, I can’t believe I’ve been seeing her for a year now. We’ve been trying to make a baby for far too long.

Anyway, she went through my labs from the past couple of draws. My TPO antibodies are within the normal range (to rule out autoimmune thyroid attacking itself), my preconception TSH was 1.12 in July, 0.60 in August, and 0.56 right now (October). She says my thyroid is right on target.

When we transfer again (probably in 6-7 weeks from now), I will increase my Synthroid dose from 25mcg to 50mcg on two days of the week.

In terms of the miscarriage, it wasn’t likely my thyroid that caused it.

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The dogs and I went on our daily walk through the conservation lands, and again, I stumbled on raspberries (which is crazy because I was reminded again by my TCM doctor to eat them, and this is not their growing season).

Here are some pictures:

Wow, I fell asleep while waiting for these photos to load from my iPhone. Two hours later, I’m awake and refreshed!

A Fresh Start or a Quick Finish?

Many things to update you on as I spin away on my stationary bike:

1. Aunt Flo arrived on Sunday, so we were not successful this past IUI.
2. We had our long-awaited appointment with the RE last Wednesday, and he recommended that we try a course of Femara to help accelerate egg development in my follicular phase. He treated me a bit like there was something wrong with my long follicular phase, which irked me. I informed him that research suggests that Asian women genetically tend to have cycles that are longer than Caucasian women. He seemed to not be familiar with this research but agrees that there would likely be some genetic component to it (duh).
3. So I started the Femara on Wednesday, and so far the only side effect I’ve experienced is mild hot flashes in the middle of the night. It doesn’t help that we are in the middle of a heat wave here in the GTA.

Today is day 10 of my cycle, and I went in for blood work and ultrasound early this morning. The results were a bit disappointing. So far, despite the Femara, my follicles are only 12mm. If they don’t get up to about 18mm+ by Monday, they will likely cancel the IUI. I’m really bummed about this, because I know that normally, follies usually grow about 1mm per day, and mine grow even slower than this. The nurse said that they will likely need to increase the dose for next cycle. Hrmph. She’s talking about this one like it’s already failed.

I’m upset, and have been trying to keep my mind off of it, but I just can’t help but wonder if in fact, I am infertile with this stupidly long cycle. I mean really, why is it taking so long for my follicles to develop? Why do they need 12 days more than the average woman’s? And why aren’t they responding to these meds?

We’ll see on Thursday morning if anything has changed. Fingers crossed that these follies grow grow grow!

Showtime!!

Holy shit.

The sperm’s on ice (technically liquid nitrogen), cervical mucus was flowing this morning, and we’ve got a +opk folks!

I felt some cramping all mid-morning and early afternoon, which is all gone now (it’s late evening now), and I’m just waiting for Darling Wife to come home from her course. [Damn that course… ]

I’m hoping we haven’t missed our best chance by waiting for her to get home. I was tempted to grab a mirror and inseminate myself today lol. But she would likely kill me. Plus, how romantic to have her deflower me with a plastic speculum! Just like in the fairy tales!

Anyways, so we wait…

Waiting to O

I’m getting antsy. I’ve got ants in my pants. Wait a minute, that isn’t ants, that’s cervical mucous! No shit Sherlock, I think I might ovulate soon.

Holy crap.

Holy crap.

Holy crap!

I’ve been waiting since Sunday for my cervical mucous, and have been stressing about coordinating the timing of ordering the delivery of sperm with when I’m ovulating and when my family doc’s office hours are. Lemme tell you, it’s been hell trying to keep myself from unraveling.

Darling wife, who is currently taking extra courses to become certified to be a vice-principal, has also been sick with the flu (I’ve infected her with the plague :s) and has been consumed with the business of work/health/gardening, so I’m trying not to burden her with my anxiety- because really, there’s nothing I can do but wait…..

So everyday, I’m discretely peeing on an LH stick at work, and then not-so-discretely again at home in the evening, hoping to catch the beginning of my LH spike.

Sperm’s also going to be shipped to my family doc tomorrow, and if I haven’t gotten a spike by Thursday morning, I will have to drive down there and bring the sperm and insemination kit home to do ourselves, which, I’m totally fine with. I’m pretty confident in my clinical skills (I had to learn how to deliver babies and do gynaecological exams in school after all), and am confident in my darling’s ability to follow orders and execute plans perfectly. She is highly kinaesthetic so I have no doubt that she could rock this insemination.

I’m just curious as to what this kit looks like….

Bought and Paid For

I have the flu. In fact, I have more than the flu. I have some kind of super-mutated-unrelenting-hypervirulent-knock-you-off-your-ass-for-two-weeks flu.

It made me leave our spa day this past weekend dizzy and nauseous.

It made me have to sit out a precious game of ball hockey. (I say precious because I’m so sad to have to give it up once pregnant, that I started counting down the games I might have left… This leaves me at one last game.)

It has made teaching excruciatingly painful, hot (in a bad way), and dealing with students annoying.

I can barely speak, I can barely think, I can barely conduct myself in a safe manner.

Yet….

Yet…. I decide to place possibly one of the most important orders of our future baby’s life.

I bought sperm.

I filled out a form, indicated the donor number and quantity of washed vials, and paid for the sperm that will hopefully make up the other chromosomal halves of this bebe.

We picked this sperm because it was pretty and had a nice chest.

No joke.

Helps that it’s somewhat smart, athletic, comes from a family with good health, and has the same colouring as Darling Wife.

I choose to describe the sperm as it because it’s not him that going to make our baby, it’s DW and myself.

Though, I’m endlessly grateful for all of the men who continue to donate sperm so that loving people such as ourselves can build families too.

Horse Shoes

So here we are. The first cycle of trying.

I haven’t been posting much recently because I’ve been kind of angry. We’ve been put through a bunch of monitoring and testing at the RE clinic, but haven’t been able to get an appointment with the doctor himself to get the ball rolling with the IUI. In fact, they are so busy that we won’t be seeing him until the last week of May, missing nearly 2 perfectly good cycles.

So, fed up and annoyed, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Don’t worry, I didn’t do anything illegal. Heh.

So two weeks ago, I approached my family doctor and laid all the cards out. I confirmed that all of the tests showed I was ovulating normally, and that all of parts were open and clear. I told her that we couldn’t get sperm delivered to our home, and wondered if she would be willing to receive it at the clinic. I also asked if she would impregnate me with an IUI kit that I could buy for ten bucks…..

She said yes!

So right now, I’m on day six of my cycle, and I’m waiting for some of my “early signs” (cervical mucus). As soon as I get that, I’m calling the sperm bank, having them ship the stuff to my family doctors office. Then I just keep peeing on LH sticks until I get a positive, and then call my family doctor to make an appointment to get knocked up the next day!

Sounds like a plan doesn’t it?

Fingers crossed it all goes well.

Fertility Friends Again

Blame it on the B6, or the red raspberry leaf tea, but not on FF.

It seems that my ovulation occurred earlier this past cycle, perhaps due to some of the herbals that I’ve introduced. Previously, I had been o’ing on day 26, and this past month, I ovulated on day 19-20. This was detected via blood draw and confirmed on day 20 with a temperature spike on my BBT.

I am finding all of this very interesting, especially as we are getting closer to actually trying soon!

The Kitchen in My Bathroom

My bathroom is cluttered.

There are bottles everywhere, unlabelled, with strange concoctions in them.

In my shower, I have a glass bottle of “Kombucha”, except that it isn’t really Kombucha, but rather an apple cider vinegar and water mixture. I also have a glass jam jar of coconut oil, and a ziplock protecting my peppermint shampoo bar and my African black soap.

I’ve been making the switch over to simple and pure (lacking in harmful chemicals) beauty and hygiene products for some time now. I’ve done a lot of research on the toxicity of common body care products on ewg.org and have been purging and replacing items with natural or homemade solutions. It’s been fun and I’ve been enjoying not spending a whole lot of money on the expensive things that I used to buy- Aveda products mostly.

Darling Wife finds my slightly OCD behaviour a bit amusing but mostly annoying, I’m sure.

What we need is a bigger bathroom with more storage I think.

One can dream…

Until then, I suppose I’ll try to keep the unlabelled bottles tidier.

We’re Not Friends Anymore

Fertility Friend has been lying to me for the past three months.

She told me CD26, and I believed her. My bloodwork told me otherwise. It told me CD19.

Those two days aren’t even close! It’s not even a white lie.

Fertility un-friend. Tomorrow, I give her a chance to explain herself. We’ll see if my body temp spikes overnight.

Lucky Number Nineteen

I don’t have problems admitting when I’m wrong. Though, it does sting like a B when it’s about something I’ve ranted about.

I’ll give you an example:

For the past 3 cycles, I’ve been charting my BBT, and during each cycle, Fertility Friend (an app) tells me that I’m ovulating on CD26 of my 36 day cycle.

Since we’ve started our monitoring cycle, I’ve been going in every other day to have bloodwork and ultrasound done. This is how it’s gone:

CD3: bw and u/s – unremarkable
CD5: bw and u/s – unremarkable
CD6: sonohysterogram – unremarkable
CD7: bw and u/s – unremarkable
CD9: bw and u/s – told that my follicles were small (9mm)
CD11: bw and u/s – told that my follicles were “slow to grow” (10mm)
CD13: bw and u/s – told that my follicles were runts and they were being difficult (10mm)
CD15: bw and u/s – told that we’d for sure need to be on drugs to help “speed things along”. (14mm)
CD17: bw and u/s – told that my follicles were finally growing (16mm)
CD19: bw and u/s – (19mm follicle) told that I’d have to come in every day until I ovulate. Disappointed, but compliant, I booked every 6:40am appointment this entire week. Afterwards, I went to the car where I had a shitfit over the phone with Darling Wife, and threatened that I might lose will power because this was way too much work. That I felt like a pin cushion / piece of meat / totally violated (transvaginal ultrasound). And that she couldn’t empathize because she doesn’t have to get up almost 45 mins earlier than usual because of the appointments…..

I had a melt down.

Not a “fix my problems for me” meltdown, but rather, a “I’m bitching just to bitch” meltdown. I’ve been having a lot of these lately because I’m so stressed at work.

Anyways, I felt like an ass, because Darling Wife always wanted to be “the one to get pregnant”. But timing-wise and financially, it makes more sense for me to be the host body.

So I get to work after all my venting, teach 2 classes, help students during my lunch, teach another class, attend a staff meeting, clean up some lab chemicals, check my phone when I notice that I have a voice message.

It’s from my monitoring nurse.

She tells me that my lab results came in from today’s bloodwork, and it turns out that I’m starting to ovulate.

O v u l a t e .

But… Today is CD19!?!?!!

Wtf?

Best part is, that she cancelled all of my monitoring appointments, and the next time I go in is next Monday. Yippeee!

Today I felt lucky.

Cycle day 19, I’ve got a 19mm follicle, and it’s gonna break out soon!

Booyah!