IUI #2...

...Well, yesterday was day 1 and I contacted my nurse to get this ball rolling again.  She's having me come in for monitoring on August 3rd and, hopefully, do the IUI the following day.

I think Bill is really excited again.  When he noticed that my cycle had started he made sure to remind me to e-mail the doctors office and let them know so we can get the IUI scheduled.  My cousin just had her baby a few weeks ago and I think it got his paternal clock ticking even louder.  I just turned 31 yesterday and he'll be 38 in two weeks so we really do need to get busy, so to speak.  

On an unrelated note, I passed my nursing boards and am now, officially, a registered nurse!  I'm hoping that now that the stress of nursing school and boards is over, we'll be successful with this next cycle.  I'm hopeful that this will be our time, but I'm remaining cautiously optimistic.  

Back again....

...in that place where it seems like this will never happen for us.  I had my beta this morning and although I haven't gotten the results, I'm 99% sure it's negative.  I started cramping on Monday, caved in and tested Monday evening and Tuesday morning (both negative) and my temp dropped this morning.  My RN said they would call before 1:00 this afternoon.  

The worst part of this is that for those first 1.5 - 2 years that we were trying, I was convinced it was me.  Then we found out that our problems lies on his end.  Now with two failed FETs and one failed IUI, it's me again.  My body is the one that isn't working.  I wonder if it would be better to know that it never would than to keep hoping that our outcome would change?  

Nursing school pinning is this evening and I'm going to try and focus on the success of that rather than the failure of this.  I just wish I new The Plan...

What a day...

...Most exciting news of today...I PASSED MY FINAL!!!  I've officially passed nursing school!!  The sense of relief that I feel right now is indescribable!!

In baby news...I had my IUI this morning and compared to my previous FETs this was a walk in the park.  Our post wash count was 7 million which the doctor said was good.  I've read mixed opinions about that on different websites, but if the doctor said it's good then that's what I'm going to go with.  Bill wasn't able to go with me today (one of the set backs of being a small business owner), but Mom went with me and I think it meant a lot to her to be there.  We were in and out in 20 minutes and the painless procedure only took 5 minutes.  I think that trigger shot is causing a lot of twinges, cramps and overall weirdness in my uterine region so it'll be hard to decipher those from pregnancy symptoms if this ends up being successful.

I've decided to completely turn this over to God.  I realize that I would have to test everyday to see when the trigger was out of my system and then wait for a "real" positive.  All of that is a lot of headache that I don't want to put myself through.  If this is meant to be, it will be and if not we'll regroup and move on.  I go for my beta on the 29th which is the day of my nursing school pinning so, hopefully that will be another great day to remember!

So tomorrow it is...

...Busy, busy, busy day today!!  I had my appointment this morning for blood work and ultrasound at 7:00, then on to school for my grand rounds presentation, then to pick up Dad, then to Fairfax to pick up what Bill has been referring to as "his little sailors" (get it, semen...seamen...sailors...), then to drop them off in Annapolis, then home to study for my final!

The alarm went off at 4:40 for me to take my temperature and it was still at baseline so no ovulation yet.  I took an OPK this morning that came up positive so I had an LH surge.  The ultrasound showed one "beautiful" 21mm follicle on my right ovary.  My nurse had me set up my appointment for Wednesday, but called after the blood work came back to tell me to move it up to Tuesday.  I did my trigger shot at 8:15 and I'm hitting the hay early.  So tomorrow it is!!  I haven't even bought any tests yet because I think I'm going to turn this one over to God in every sense of the words.  Part of me wants to prepare myself for a negative, but the other part of me just wants to have faith in Him and trust His plan.  Who knows if I'll cave next week, but for now that's where I am with it.  Leaving it all in His hands!

We just saved a ton of money...

...I got an email yesterday from our cryobank saying that they now offer local pick up.  We purchased sperm from Cryogenic Laboratories, Inc, which is based out of Minnesota, but they were bought by Fairfax Cryobank which is only about an hour away.  I called CLI yesterday to ask if there was any way to ship our entire storage supply to Fairfax so we could have it available for local pick up.  The wonderful customer service representative that I dealt with said that she was pretty sure they could but she would double check and call me back today to confirm.  She called and said that not only would they be able to do it, but they would do it for free!!  So all 12 vials of our sperm are en route to Fairfax for storage.  This saves us about $190 in shipping costs per cycle!

I have my blood work and ultrasound on Monday, my final presentation at school, and then I'm going to pick my daddy up and we're going to ride down there and "pick up the grandkids" as he says.  We'll drop them off at the doctors office on the way home and we'll be all set for Tuesday morning if they trigger me Monday night.  I know it's probably weird that I'm taking my dad to pick up sperm, but my parents have been so insanely supportive through all this and I like to make them a part of the process when I can.  Bill will take me down for the actual IUI so I figured it'd be nice to have dad help run this little errand.

We're getting so close and I'm really, really trying not to get my hopes.  It's not working out well!

Moving right along...

I just got home from my final day of clinical for nursing school!!  I take my final on Tuesday and then I'm officially finished!!...this degree anyway!  ;)  I can't tell you what a huge weight that will be off my shoulders when I'm finally done and can start my career!  

In baby-making news, I ovulated late last month which kinda messed up my plans for moving forward with my June cycle so we decided to go for it in May...AAAHHH!!!  May...Like next week May!!  My RE usually has patients come in on day 12 for US and blood work, but I explained to my nurse that I'd been temping and OPKing and I'm usually ovulating around day 16-19.  She said she'll bring me in on day 14 (Monday) and check things out and we'll go from there.  I'm off all next week with plans of going to the beach Thursday through Sunday so it's looking to be a busy week! 

On the home front, we've started to pack up the house to move.  Bill's grandfather passed away suddenly in April and his parents have no intentions of selling his house.  They've offered to let us live there while we sell ours and begin building our new dream home.  This is such an extraordinarily generous offer and while it'll be a little inconvenient for a while, it will save us THOUSANDS in the long run.  We've started working with a builder and are putting our feelers out for a lender who can do a construction-mortgage loan.  

All that being said, these next few weeks/months are going to be busy, busy, busy!!  Graduating from nursing school, moving forward with IUI plans, starting the residency at my hospital, and hopefully, breaking ground on our forever home!!  Oh, and did I mention that I signed up for summer classes for my bachelor's program??  I've redefined crazy!

It's real now...

I just got off  the phone with the sperm bank and we now have 12 vials in storage.  I feel like I'm going to puke.  It's actually happening.  For some reason, this choice was much harder than choosing embryos and I'm not quite sure why.  I really struggled with the anonymity of our donor, but he was just so perfect in every other aspect and I kept coming back to him so I'm hoping that was divine intervention.  

I went to the RE yesterday for day 3 blood work and ultrasound and they also drew my genetic testing labs and sent them off.  The tech who did my ultrasound said that my ovaries are "beautiful".  I can't tell you how many compliments I've gotten on my reproductive organs and I'm always at a loss for words and end up saying "um, thanks?".  I really need to come up with a witty retort seeing as how I, apparently, have some exceptional baby-making parts!  

I got a call yesterday afternoon that all my hormone levels were good and they said I could call by the end of the week to find out about the other results.  The genetic testing is run by a company called Counsyl and I won't have results from that for about two weeks.  I spoke to the nurse yesterday and she said there wasn't anything stopping me from ordering the sperm now so I went ahead and called.  They offered a "CLI Club" which cost $195, but gave us $100 off of our order and 2 free vials.  They also offer a buy back program so if we don't need all the vials that we've purchased, we can sell them back to the sperm bank at 50% of the purchase price.  All in all, I'm excited.  Extremely nervous, but excited.