Five

How far along: 5 Weeks.  

Size of baby: Appleseed! 

Physical symptoms: Sore bewbs and bloat.

Starting Weight: 105lbs.
Total Weight Gain/Loss: Nothing yet. 
  
Maternity clothes: I've been having to do the hair tie trick lately.

Stretch marks: Not yet. 

Sleep: Good still!

Best moment last week:  Noticing more symptoms. 

 

Movement: Not yet! Just some gas. Woohoo  

 

Cravings:  Nothing lately.

Gender: I'm not sure anymore.

Labor signs: Gah, no way.

Belly button: In! That wont be changing for a while.

 

What I miss: Buttoning my pants.

What I am looking forward to: Ultrasound in one week!

Milestones: Everyday I get a little further than previous pregnancies. 

Beta beta beta

11DPO - 17.9
13DPO - 74.9
16DPO - 341

BAM. We are pregnant. I have an ultrasound scheduled for Jan 6. I am so beyond thrilled.

Four

How far along: 4 Weeks. 

Physical symptoms: Mild cramping, feeling fuller after only a couple bites..

Starting Weight: 105lbs.
Total Weight Gain/Loss: Nothing yet. 
  
Maternity clothes: Nope.

Stretch marks: Not yet. 

Sleep: I am waking up way too early for my liking.

Best moment last week:  

 

 

Movement: Not yet!  

 

Cravings:  Hm.. Hibachi Veggies. 

Gender: I think boy. Again. Oh dear!

Labor signs: Gah, no way.

Belly button: In! That wont be changing for a while.

 

What I miss: Sleeping until 7.

What I am looking forward to: Monday's third beta draw and hopefully scheduling an ulrtasound.

Milestones: Making it to 4 weeks. 

Double, double

I got my beta results back today. On

Wednesday they were at
17.9; 3 weeks, 4days.

Today:
74.9; 3w6d.

OMG!! That's a doubling time of 21 hours! I am so beyond thrilled with this. Considering my wondfos weren't turning darker, I was getting very cautious about this pregnancy. Turns out, wondfos just suck. Talking to some ladies I found out that they had the same issue with their wondfos not getting darker.

I probably wont stop testing yet though. I go back in on Monday for a third beta to double check everything is still moving along. I will probably stop after that result.



In other news.. Tonight is the night before my dads wedding. My brother and I are going to dinner with everyone. I suppose it'd be similar to a rehearsal dinner? I'm not too sure. It's at a Mexican restaurant about 45 minutes away. Should be interesting considering my kid has been a crank pot lately. Oye.

MerryFuckingChristmas to me!

Cycle/Month: 22/23. 

What we did: I tried not charting but it didn't work out very well.. We hit -3, -1, O. I started temping just before catching O. Nothing special. No propping hips. No laying for 20 minutes. No special anything. 

Symptoms: I've had the most outrageous symptoms that I never have. Nausea, sore boobs, super bloat.. As well as AF like cramps somewhere around 6-8dpo. My chart is also triphasic. For once it actually means something. 

How I told H: I told him he needed to clean the litter box then stuck a pee stick in his face. We kissed and then he said we're done after this. Hah. We agreed we're not sharing the news until I'm out of first tri. 

Mush: I love the shit out of you people. I've made some awesome friends here and can't wait to see everyone on the tri boards. 

EDD: August 30, 2014. 

If you have any spare t&p's or sticky vibes, we could really use them. Praying to all the gods this bean sticks. 

Pee stick picture: I got suuuuuuper faint lines on a Wondfo, Walmart test, and FRER. Hopefully this works. 

All I do is wait

I'm coming up on the tail end of the 2ww now. Sitting at 10DPO. I have the most outrageous phantom symptoms, it's crazy. Intense nausea if I don't snack all day, heartburn, extreme fatigue.. All sorts of awesome stuff.

I had a temp spike yesterday and it's still up today. I'm not sure if it's for real or just because we had a bad sleep night and I woke up/rolled around a lot. Time will tell..

The most beautiful

This is a picture of the sunset tonight when we left to the mall. Pretty sure it's a sign I've got an angel looking out for me. <3

Relief

I am 1DPO today. I told myself I wasn't going to do OPKs and chart.. I have no will power. I tested w/ an OPK last night and got a positive. I've also been very casually temping though not really logging anything. So I'm pretty positive I ovulated yesterday. Woohoo!

I do think taking the Endometrin last cycle has delayed ovulation for this cycle. I'm CD 26 and just now O'ing. Though, I counted from the day I stopped the E and it would have me at CD18. I have no idea how I should be counting this cycle to be honest. I just don't really know. Either way, I'm starting the 2WW. We had pretty good timing at -3, -1, and O.

I was looking at a potential EDD earlier. It would be August 30th. When I was looking at another site that shows your pregnancy day by day to see when I could potentially be out of first tri and announce, I  realized 16 weeks is on St. Patricks Day. Ironically, with C we found out he was a boy on St. Patricks Day in 2011. I'm not sure why I picked 16 weeks, I'm not even sure we could hold out that long. But that stuck out to me, we could potentially be announcing baby 2.0 on the same day we found out C was a boy. Obviously there is a whoooooole lot of 'if' in this scenario. I have to be pregnant first..

Other than that.. Not much is going on for us at this point.

Werk it out

So I started a 30 Day Squat Challenge recently. Mainly because I didn't believe it would do anything to my butt. I'll be honest.. I have no butt. Period. So I started it with the idea of if it could help my behind a tiny bit, I'd be happy. I will also put it out there that I'm not changing how I eat or doing other exercise other than walking. I don't eat horribly but I definitely don't eat as well as I could. I'm following this schedule, sorta... For the most part I am. I'm doing increments of 5. While I've missed a couple days due to being sick or having a long day, I have seen some results. I've been doing them for 2 weeks now.

Curves

And not the good kind.. I got my xrays back from the Chiro today.. It wasn't very good. I have scoliosis. We suspected it from previous treatment, but it's gotten a lot worse. My neck is straight, I have severe scoliosis and bone spurs. Some of the issues can be fixed but others... Not so much.

Soft kitty, warm kitty

Little ball of fur... Happy kitty, sleepy kitty... Purr purr purr. 

We have a new addition to our family. Her name is Boots. She is a super sweet Domestic Short Hair Calico. She's the cutest. She's 2 months old and so tiny, I love it. 

We also got our Christmas tree up! Though it's only lights on it right now.. This is the first year we actually get to have Christmas in our house, I was so excited about having  tree! Boots is my Christmas present. I'm totally content with not getting anything anyways. 

Tonight we're watching The Polar Express. It's one of my favorite Christmas movies. I'm so happy C is sitting and watching it with me. This is one of the few things he has actually sat for. 

Oh, hi there.

I'm not sure how long it's been since I've posted. I know it's been a while though. I truly have nothing to update on at the moment.

Cycle 21, I should be nearing ovulation. But I have no idea since I took this cycle off temping and using OPKs. I've been having a ton of EWCM lately though. It could be from the increased water intake though.

C is being C.. We're smack dab in the middle of terrible twos. It is insane. The happy, behaved, kind kid I once had.. No longer lives here. He has been replaced with a scheming crazy kid. I wish I had the words to explain just how crazy he is.

Tomorrow, Thanksgiving, we are going over to a family friends' house for dinner. Should be nice, S works so he wont get to join us tomorrow. But we're having a make up Thanksgiving on Saturday.

On Friday we're going to cut down our Christmas tree. I am beyond excited for this. I've never got to cut our tree before, so it's a first for me! The place we're going to also will have bounce houses, free hot cider, pony rides, and I believe hay rides. C is going to have so much fun. I am looking forward to the experience.

Changes

I'm not sure what our plan is as of right now. But I am thinking about trying to do some acupuncture in the near future. I'm also going back to a chiropractor, which is fantastic. I actually have x-rays on Friday to see how bad things are.  I'm hoping that the chiro will maybe help get my body back to 'normal' and maybe in some way help my ute get it's shit together. As well as trying acupuncture.

I just talked to RE and like I thought, he confirmed stopping the progesterone today and I should see a period in the next few days. We'll be NTNP for the next couple of months and we are back on the list for another IUI in Feb. So we have time to decide for sure if we want to try another or if we are done. It's mainly my decision at this point considering the meds I have to take. S is completely on board for whatever I choose.

I think he has come to realize how hard it has been on me recently. We had a date night a couple nights ago and went to see Thor at one of the luxury movie theaters. On the way up there we were talking about everything going on in regards to TTC. He was telling me he would have a chit chat with his little guys to get their shit together and work harder. It was fabulous. Seriously, made me smile. More because he is finally understanding the emotional toll it's taken on me and he is showing much more interest in what we're doing. It really makes me feel better about everything.

In other news.. I went out with a few ladies the other night, our husbands work/have worked together. The morning after sucked balls.  While it was nice to be out without C, I have sort of realized I'm not really cut out to have female friends. This on top of the emotions I've been dealing with from the failed IUI.. I've also come to realize I have really really bad self esteem. I'm very... Concerned with what others think of me and I feel the need to try and please everyone. I also take everything to heart and too personal. I really need to work on myself.

Emptiness

I have nothing. Nothing to report. Nothing in my ute. Nothing.

I talked to the RE office yesterday about my beta draw. It was .1- meaning not pregnant. That was at 13  dpiui. I haven't heard back from RE in regards to the progesterone. For now, I keep taking it though. I'll probably take it through the weekend and stop Monday night. If I don't hear back from them early Monday morning, I'll call again.

I'm not really sure what the plan going forward is. I used to say we'd do as many IUI's as it took. But now.. I just don't know if I can do it again. All the meds, waiting, blood draws, ultrasounds.. I'm not sure I can handle it again. S is supportive of whatever I am wanting to do. Wether it be try another IUI in 3 months or call it quits and NTNP from here out. I have a lot to think about at this point.

Falling

I'm not sure I have much optimism left for this cycle. I'm seeing more spotting and this morning I woke up to some mucky discharge. I'm also having some awesome cramps that are similar to AF style

cramps. I have no idea what the deal is.. I thought the progesterone was supposed to sort of help out with things and help my LP.

I'm not sure what to do at this point. I've sort of lost all hope for IUI. I am really hoping that it's just still too early for a true positive. My expectations of this cycle were pretty high..

Flat lined

Don't have too much of an update today as I'm still just testing out trigger, or just peeing on sticks.

This morning I noticed a little spotting after I POAS on the toilet paper. I would imagine it could be caused by the progesterone suppositories. But if that were the case, wouldn't it have started earlier.. Not when I'm on day 9 of them?

OR!!11!1!

Could it be the elusive implantation bleeding?! LOL. While I would love to believe that, I have been at it long enough to not count on that and know it's likely just from the progesterone.

I've been walking a lot more lately. We have a friend who has a little girl just older than C and she loves to walk like I do! It's so great. We get to walk and the kids get to hang out. So I've been getting a lot of exercise in lately.  Though, on our walk last night.. My tire went flat on the jogger. I'm not sure if there's a hole in the tube or what. But it made for one hard walk back to the car. My right arm got a good work out in!

Outta here!

It's official, my trigger is absolutely gone! Now to wait and see if the lines come back.. 

Fading, fading, almost gone

Trigger is almost gone. Yay! No other updates really, so here's a pee stick picture..

Rough mornings

Today is 6 DPT and 5 DPO.  I am still pushing along with the progesterone. The side effects are seriously nonsense. Horrid gas, buncha zits, bloating.. The list goes on. Not to mention the awesome surprise when I wake up from leaky vag..  I just hope it's all worth it.

This morning I must have been in a serious rush to get to the bathroom to pee because I completely forgot to PIAC for the daily trigger test. When I finally realized this, I had barely a trickle left. It seems it was still enough to get somewhat of an accurate result because I can still see a faint line on the test. I might re-do it with SMU though.

Trickle results

SMU results, barely there faint

With the collection

This whole daylight saving thing sucks. Since we changed the clocks, C has been waking up earlier and earlier.. Yesterday was at 5 am. Today was 5:15am. He even had a 2 hour nap yesterday and we didn't go to bed until almost 9:30. I was really hoping it'd help him sleep later. Obviously I was wrong on that front..  I really hope things change soon. 

Slow and steady

Just a little update on where things are.. I am 2 or 3 DPO. IUI was 4 days ago now.  I started progesterone suppositories on Saturday. Oh. My. God. I hate this. Freakin' leaky vag here. I am really hoping if this cycle ends in a BFP that I can switch from suppositories to an oral progesterone pill. Who knows though.

I'm 4 days past trigger. It's fading pretty nicely. Though this 2WW is already going incredibly slow.

KA-BAM!

1 DPT

Today was a great day. It is 1 DPT and IUI day. I tested this morning to gauge where I'm at and will continue testing out the trigger. I have 49 tests on standby. Actually.. I have more than that. I'm sort of ashamed of the collection I've got going. But I have 49 cheapies. Because you know... 14 wasn't enough to cover for the 2ww.






Now for the moment we've been waiting for.. I have been so incredibly nervous all day for my appt. I'm not sure what I was nervous about, to be honest. S's SA from a while back came back fantastic and there was nothing found on my side... I think I was just nervous for the process? Either way, I had no reason to be nervous.

The nurse to me back and had me undress waist down. Nothing new there.. RE came in and we double checked all of our info and made sure they had the right sperm. :/ I think that's what also had me nervous. What if they got me pregnant with another dudes baby?!?! Anyways.. He gave me S's count.. 104 mil pre-wash. 69 post-wash. AMAZING! He told me they just wanted 10mil. So the 69 from S was fantastic. I was so happy to hear those numbers. It helped ease my mind.

Got myself turkey basted and laid on the table for 15ish minutes. Now.. I know laying there doesn't necessarily help much, but hey.. It can't hurt at this point. Tomorrow night I will start progesterone suppositories and will continue them for at least 2 weeks. Depending on if AF shows or I get a true positive HPT will decide what happens next. If I get a positive, I'll go in for a beta and most likely more progesterone.  If AF... Well, we'll be back on the list for IUI in another couple months.

It's on like donkey kong

Ahh!!! I am so excited. Just got home from my second monitoring appt. It went AMAZING! We were worried about having 4 potential follies which would have benched us. I was really worried about going in and finding out they all grew..

Well! I am pleased to say, we have two beautiful follies! My 14mm follie from Monday is now 16.5 and my 13mm is now 15.3! So, I did another 25iu of Follitism today and will trigger tomorrow morning. We should be looking at, at least, a 20mm and 19mm follie for IUI. Which is fabulous. We are scheduled for IUI on Friday at 2:30pm.

I have no words to explain how happy I am. Last med cycle didn't go as planned and we didn't get this far. It is such a relief to know this is really going to happen.

Here's my pretty follies.

Oh. And my lining is 8.9mm. It's on the lower end of good, it's much better than last time for sure.

Lining- stupid glare :(

Left Ovary

Left Ovary

Right Ovary

Right Ovary

Bazinga

We've had a busy few days.. I'm going to try and go in some sort of order but forgive me if I get off track.

We'll begin with Thursday.  We dropped S off so he can go on his guys Vegas trip. My mom tagged along and after we dropped him off, we went to the outlet shops to walk around. C had a great time walking around and getting to play in some of the water fountains. We left and had dinner at Benihana. My mom and I ordered kids meals and shared with C. It was much cheaper to do that than order two adults meals. We stayed at her house for the whole weekend.

Friday my mom and I took C to the zoo.  He had so much fun running around. He pretty much had free reign to go where he pleased.








Saturday was supposed to be a beach day. Turns out it was an incredibly cold and foggy day. We walked down to the beach and had some lunch then walked home. It was pretty uneventful. My mom and I went to a bar after C went to bed, it was pretty intense people watching. There must have been a ton of Halloween parties going on because the place was filled with people in costume.





Sunday was somewhat of a lazy day. I had to go in and have a blood draw to check hormone levels.  Stupid nurse busted my vein. We took C to a little Halloween carnival where he got to dress up as an elephant and have a pumpkin painted on his face. There was a bounce house he had a blast in as well. He would stay in those things forever if he
 could. We also got  a new stroller. I got a Bob Revolution SE. I am actually pretty excited to start walking/jogging more with it.  We went up to visit some friends while we got S. It was nice to catch up with old friends.

Today.. Had my monitoring appt this afternoon. It was.... Well, it was a date with the dildo cam. I have 4 potential follies. We don't want that many. Right now, we're looking at an 11.3 , 12.4 , 13 , and 14. We dropped my dose to 25iu for today and tomorrow. I'll go back Wednesday morning for another appt and hopefully will be able to trigger shortly after. I am praying one of them dies off so we don't get cancelled. We're wanting at least one to get to 18 or so for trigger. We are hopefully looking at Thursday or Friday for IUI.

Come here my pretty

Here's just a quick little update with some pictures. Hair and a battle wound from the start of injects.

So it begins

Today was day 1 of injects. Again, I was a chicken shit with it. Until I stuck it. And of course I wanted to kick myself for being afraid.  I'll do two more and then go in for blood work on Saturday morning to check levels and see if we need to adjust meds.

The aftermath ((don't mind the crumbs))

Today, I have a hair appointment. I can not wait. I'm getting it highlighted and trimmed. Hopefully getting rid of the roots I have. I am so excited. It's been such a long time since I've had my hair done.

Hit the jackpot

Okay.. Not that kind of jackpot. I wish. Baseline was today and it went well.

Everything checked out and yesterday was the last day of BCP! Praise the lord! We debated between another hybrid cycle and going to just injects. We chose just injects. I am nervous, excited, apprehensive, and ready. The thought of just injects scares me. But at the same time, Clomid didn't give us a great response and thinned my lining. We talked about things and decided just injects shouldn't effect my lining and wont give me the horrid side effects. Yay!




As of right now, the plan is this:

75iu Follitism Wed-Fri.
Check levels Sat. -continue Follitism or u/s-
250iu Ovirel for trigger
IUI
& 100mg Progesterone suppositories after IUI





This go 'round I'll get the pen for Follitism. Should be interesting, this is my first time with it. I am really hoping this is the last time. And we actually get to go forth with IUI. I believe we are hopefully looking at IUI sometime next week. If all goes well.

six

Six days until baseline. I called the office today to see if we could get my appt changed. For whatever reason, the BCP is giving me not to great side effects this go 'round. Dizziness, headaches and nausea.

Unfortunately they couldn't change the appt. The best they could do was give me an even lower dose BCP. Though, I was under the impression what I currently have, IS the lowest dose BCP.

Anyways..

I made some Blueberry Cheesecake Cookies today. I figured while C was napping I should do something productive. So I baked. They are freaking delicious. You can find the recipe here. Everyone should try them.

Hello, Brobee

I got C's Halloween costume in the mail yesterday. Since S had our mail key, I couldn't check it until this morning. I am so excited. C and I opened the box and he was so thrilled to see Brobee.

We pulled it out and got it unwrapped. He just stared at it, he had no idea what was about to happen.

We got him all dressed up and took him into the bathroom to see. He was a tad confused about it but warmed up to it. He was so excited that he was being Brobee.

Panda

Panda always knows how to make things better... Oh and some other random pictures of C from the last couple weeks. 

Mine

S's fortune

The cutest elf hat at the store

Some beach fun! 

Connor's first Clown Cone! 

Twenty

Welp. Like I suspected, CD1 is here. Earlier than I expected. I knew it was coming but was expecting it tomorrow morning. I had cramps earlier this afternoon signaling the arrival.

We are officially onto Cycle 20 and will be starting meds again at the end of the month. Baseline is in 2 weeks and we'll get the official schedule of meds then. In the meantime, BCP for me. Yay! /sarcasm.

For the next couple days I'll be enjoying junk food. I am so excited.

Coming to a stop

No surprise here, my temp went down this morning. I expect AF in the morning. While I am not overly sad about it, it puts us now at an exact 3 year difference age gap. This is not where I ever expected us to be. And I never expected us to have a large age gap.

The more I think about it, the more I end up dwelling on the fact that this is not how I would ever imagined our TTC journey going. I have always imagined having my children close in age.  It's just a new normal I'll have to get used to.






Moving on... Halloween is creeping up! I am so excited! I just ordered C's costume. He is going to be Brobee from Yo Gabba Gabba! He loves it and got so excited when he saw it on the computer screen. Hopefully it doesn't scare him when we get it in the mail and put it on! I've got to get him a trick or treat  bag now. Then stock up on some candy to pass out as well. I wish we were decorating this year, but S works on Halloween so it's sort of not worth it. I am going to start collecting Christmas decorations though so I can decorate for that.

Truckin'

Slowly coming to the end of cycle 19. Today is 10 dpo. My temp is still up, which is fantastic. We'll see, I have 2 more days to go before AF is expected.







Symptoms so far:

- Sore boobs still
-Bloat like no tomorrow
-Super gassy

Typically, my boob soreness has faded out by today. Bloat.. Eh, sometimes it happens, sometime it doesn't. Gas.. Let's just say poor S.

I did test this morning with the temp still up, it was negative. But it's still early and I'm not out yet. I have a little optimism going, it's nice.

A beauty

One of the moms from my BMB with C shared a link to a very beautiful blog post. It is called 15 Lessons Learned from Miscarriage. I'll share the link and if you would like to read, it is there.

Beauty

'Bout time

I called the RE this morning because I still haven't heard back from them to set up baseline. The beginning plan is set. I'll start BCP (again) the day after I start AF. Baseline will be on Oct 21. Seems like so far away. I hate so much how long of a wait between AF and baseline is. It makes me so mad. But it makes sense because they are seeing tons and tons of patients, from all over the west coast.

I'll find out the plan for meds/IUI schedule when I go in. I'm thinking it will most likely look like Clomid either 50mg or 100mg, injects 75 iu either one or two days, then trigger and IUI to follow. I also imagine I'll probably need to do Estrogen to help lining again. Obviously I could be wrong and wont know until we go in.

Tentatively it looks like timing will also work out with S' work schedule. Which is a huge plus. On top of that, because I'm going to have to BCP, it will push things back and S wont have to miss any of his trip for his concert. Which is great for him. And means I wont have to hear him complain about it. So a huge plus for me! ;)



As for this cycle.. Today is 6 DPO. I'm thinking I might be out already. I feel like I'm starting to break out, which is giveaway number 1 for being out. I have no other typical 2ww symptoms either. But hey, maybe different is good?

My concert is TWO days! I am getting more and more excited for it. I also recently ordered new jeans and I'm hoping they'll be here before Saturday.

Wait time starts now

Back in the 2ww. I am 4dpo. We have 8 days to go. Hopefully it doesn't go by too slow. We do have some good stuff coming up so hopefully it keeps me occupied.








In other news.  Potty training sucks. Okay so not really.. More my kid who is potty trained and likes to make me mad sucks. He is usually so good at telling me when he needs to use the bathroom.. As of late. He will stand there and tell me, then just start peeing. :| It is driving me batty and making me want to bring the pull ups back. Almost. It just makes me so mad because he knows what to do, he just chooses not to.

Freaking excited

Nothing TTC related really. But. I am so freaking excited about the upcoming weeks.

My mom and I are going to see Maroon 5... In SIX days!!!11!1!111 I can not flipping wait. You have no idea.

AND. That's not all.

In NINETEEN days....  S, a couple friends and I are going to see Jason Aldean! It's sure to be a good time. I am so excited.

Even more, the end of October, S is going to see a concert with some of his friends in Vegas for a little reunion. October is filling up to be a jam packed month for us! There is so much going on.

Well well well

Hi there. It's been a while. I've had nothing of substance to blog about lately.  But. Because I knew I'd kick myself if I didn't start charting or doing OPKs again; I picked it back up a few days ago. And just in time.

These new Wondfo's suck. With the old ones I could tell right away if it was going to be positive right away. Not these, you have to wait the whole time frame and I've never seen an 'obvious' positive like before. This is the most positive I'll get. FMU. I figured I'd see a positive last night or this morning. So it works. Woohoo.

And. Looking at my poor chart, it looks like my temp is doing the same thing as when I did this last cycle. They went up some and will probably (hopefully) jump more tomorrow and get me some CH's soon.