look, a second line

My mucus-filled head has woken me up this morning after only 6 hours of sleep, and I thought I would post some art on my blog:

is this a :
1.  Picasso discovered among the newly found 271 works of art that made the news recently
2.  a new cooking spatula
3.  a shoe horn
4.  my early morning pee stick without which I cannot live, showing a dark enough line to almost take an iphone picture.

The winner gets nothing, but don't let that stop you from playing anyway.

obsessive to the max

I woke up this morning and my first thought was "I wonder if the line is still there".  I checked on the FRER from last night, and sure enough the line had not been a figment of my imagination, it was still there.   Then, I did the first pregnancy test of the day.  It was reassuringly still positive, even more so than last night.  I then went to work, had tea during the morning, about four cups, as I am quite sick with a head cold, and at lunch decided to check again, just in case the line had disappeared.  During the course of the morning, against my better judgement, I phoned both my mom (who was skeptical, given her poor experiences with me and my preg tests) and my obstetrician, who was very happy, and more positive than I am (despite his previous experiences with me and my preg tests).  I had also emailed my IVF doctor, who simply replied to please do my bloodwork when it's time and stop pissing on tests (no he didn't say that, but it was implied).

Anyway, four cups of tea later, my lunch test was very faintly positive, almost hard for me to see the line at all.  I freaked out just a little.  Enough to make me take another one tonight.  This time, I made sure to not drink anything for about four hours before taking it, and the line was definitely the most satisfying I have seen so far, darker than last night, and darker than this morning.  This is a good thing... so far.  My other tests did not get so dark so fast.  Today is day 12 "past ovulation", in fact day 7 post 5 day transfer, so my period would have normally been due in two days, if I were to not be on medication.  I think the lines are appropriate for this time in the cycle, if I remember correctly from the first time I got pregnant, when it was the only normal implantation that I had.

I am battling a sinus infection I think, my head is swimming in mucus.  I have bought this new contraption that I feel the need to share with the world:  it started off as a WATERPIK, which is a machine that pumps a stream of water in between one's teeth, under high pressure, to clean residual plaque.  The waterpik is a fine gadget, but what I found on ebay a while back (and felt the need to own) is a nasal cannula that attaches to the waterpik, for rinsing one's sinuses.  Basically, you put the one end in your nostril, plug up the other one with your hand, and turn the machine on.  It pumps a steady stream of water that comes out through your mouth and your tear ducts.  In fact, I had gobs of mucus come up through my tear ducts this evening, I could not believe that is possible.  I love this machine.  I rinse my sinuses three times a day when I have a cold, and hardly ever need antibiotics anymore.  I used to use a normal sinus bottle before, and that worked just as well, this one is just more interesting to use (more "gadgety").

So, in between peeing on sticks and rinsing mucus from my brain, I have nothing else new to report.  Just waiting, and slowly starting to feel a little more positive.

where's the magnifying lens?

Just as I managed to portray the strong woman whose willpower of steel and patience of diamonds allows her to scoff at the pregnancy tests and say not for me now, I will decide when...I have decided in the spur of the moment to pee on one tiny stick, just one teensy little one...it's so small, it can't harm anybody, right?

I waited, and waited.  Then I started to think my eyes were creating lines again where there weren't any.  I thought I saw the reagent line very faintly.  I showed it to MrH, who adamantly said he did not see it at all. I had just had two cups of tea, and it was not really the morning anymore, and it's only day 11 of embryonic life, so I thought what the heck, let's do another one, a FRER this time (first response, which are more accurate and more expensive), and an obvious but very faint line that even MrH could not deny appeared, within a few seconds.  We both looked at the line, and shrugged.  "I guess it's a positive" I said.  "It's early", MrH cautiously replied.  "I've seen it like this before" (and no pregnancy happened in the end, as the embryo died, was implied).  "It's a line, not a baby." Duh.  I don't know what to make of it.  Given my previously having positives that amount to nothing in a matter of days, I am not getting excited, I am not feeling pregnant, and I am more confused than anything else.  Where is this going?  Is this one going to stick?  All I can say is, it's a good start.  Let's wait and see, and cautiously smile a tiny bit.

If anyone who knows me in real life is reading this blog, then I ask of you to please not congratulate me or anything silly like this, the less we get excited about it in real life, the less memories I have to cry about if I end up with a chemical pregnancy again.

Control freak finally relaxes

I feel like I am regaining some control over this life of mine that is spiraling fast out of my hands.  I have stopped testing.  Just like that, I gave my mind the power to make decisions, and it guided me towards no more testing until just before it is time to do the bloodwork, which is on December 13.  I will make an exception if my mind guides me to test a bit earlier, just so I can start running again and maybe even have sex if it is negative.

I feel that I am taking care of myself with this decision.  If the test is negative, I would still have to continue the progesterone and the estrogen until the bloodwork day, and it is very depressing to keep dripping of endometrin (vaginal progesterone tablets) and ruining my precious underwear all the while knowing that it is for nothing.  Not to mention the sad fact that my period will not arrive until I stop taking the hormones, which will only be on the day when my beta HCG is drawn, Dec. 13.  So, nothing will change anyway.  I have been through this many times before, and I know exactly how depressing it feels to test day after day and to keep getting negatives.  You start each day with a cold punch in the gut, and spend the entire rest of the day drained of energy, dreading the next morning when you know that you will have to test again, because at least there is a chance, and c'mon, how much worse can it get, but it can get worse, and worse, each day, until you are sucked dry and all there is left is sleep.  A depressed, anxious sleep, dreaming of war, and of death, waking up sweaty and remembering the truth, that you have failed again, that August 17, 2011 will not be the due date, but just any other day that you might cringe a little on.

I have been there, done that, a total of sixteen times (the six IVF's and the 10 IUI's) and now I am ready to start focusing on being healthy and happy throughout this whole thing.  I am less careful, and often forget that I am carrying embryos.  I have an occasional cup of diluted coffee (third coffee, third hot water, third soy milk), which I would have never allowed myself before, and I exercise!  Exercising makes me feel like a human being again, like I am taking care of myself not just behaving like a human incubator.  The exercise consists of walking about 5 km on the indoor track, but it feels so good, just to allow myself this little thing, it is hard to describe.  I used to spend the whole two weeks lying in bed after coming home from work, partly from anxiety about the repeated negatives, partly from fear that if I move too much, the embryos will die.  I used to drive myself crazy thinking that the embryos are not taking because of something that I am doing wrong, so I would not allow myself anything, including perfume, body lotion, normal shampoo (I would only use this organic shampoo that has no smell and makes my hair coarse and dry).  I would eat more than usual in an effort to feed the embryos, and hence gain weight in the process, which always makes me more depressed.  I would meditate and visualize the embryos implant.

Now I try to ignore the process as best as I can.  I don't run anymore, and I don't lift weights, but other than that, everything is pretty much the same as always.  I shower with my usual colour safe shampoo from L'Anza, and smooth a wide variety of body creams, face creams and serums, and perfumes on my body, which make my skin soft and make my soul feel pampered.  I eat very little for dinner, and as a consequence I have lost two more pounds this week, for a total of four pounds since I have stopped the SuperFAT (I have six more pounds until I reach my preSuperFAT weight).  I walk for an hour every day.  I am happier since I have started doing these things (and since I have stopped testing) and can go for long periods of time completely forgetting that I am waiting for a result.  Which is the best way to spend these two weeks.

cherry on top

Thank you Tiffany for the wonderful award, it really made my day!  Tiffany blogs about her son who died of SIDS, and her story is so inspirational, as she manages to go on living and still helping others like me with her kindness despite this terrible tragedy.  She gave me this award:

The rules of this award are to introduce the person who gave you the award on your blog, and to send it to five other blogs, leaving comments in the process.  The five awards go to:
1.  MrsSpit
2.  Rebecca
3.  Rachel
4.  Kalialani
5.  Julie
Everyone on this list is an inspiration to me.  I enjoy reading these blogs enormously, as I either laugh or derive strength from them, and thanks to the online community that I have become part of lately, I don't feel as if I am going through these difficult years alone.

depressed and sleepy

The evaporation lines are gone today.  This makes me very sad.  I am reliving my last two IVF's, when I got positives and then fainter and fainter lines, until negatives came out.  It is the way of the embryos that do not survive after a brief attempt at implantation.  I cannot make any judgements this time though, because I never got an actual positive, just evap lines, which can be a fluke.  Also, with two embryos, it is impossible to say what is going on, as one might have attempted implantation and failed, but there is still another one left.  Lastly, I am only on day 8 past ovulation technically (Monday was day 5 past ovulation, with the blastocysts), so still too early for any home pregnancy test to be accurate anyway.

I have decided that all this testing is making me crazy, and I will stop.  I will perhaps start testing again on the weekend, on day 10 or 11.

In the meantime, my house is very depressing.  I am too tired to do anything, too tired to even put my clothes back in the closet, so they are resting on the ironing board.  I haven't unpacked yet, so two large suitcases are waiting for me to empty them.  I don't cope with all this at all.  The progesterone is making me very very tired, and the waiting is making me very very depressed, with the end result of not wanting to get out of bed.  Today I had a bad TMJ inflammation, to the point that I could not eat anything other than pureed foods.  This is because I slept for one hour (took a nap) at lunch without the bite guard.  Bad idea, I now cannot chew, because my teeth no longer overlap properly.

My schedule is something like this:  wake up, feel immensely tired, unable to have coffee because it is not allowed during IVF, then work as best as I can through the morning, go home and take a half hour nap, drag myself back to work and try to survive through the afternoon while yawning every 10 minutes (that upsets my jaw as well BTW), then go back home at 6 pm and fall asleep, often in my work clothes, on the bed.  Wake up at 10 pm, eat something, type my notes (for work) which I did not finish during work day, blog, change into pajamas, brush teeth and apply multiple facial creams, spend 5 min with the bird and the cat, and fall asleep again around midnight, until 8 am.  I sleep a total of 12 hours per day.  I work a total of 9 hours.  I live for the remaining three hours, one of which is spent on hygiene, and the other two on eating and doing more work on the computer at home because despite spending 9 hours at work, with my current mental fog, I don't manage to get everything done, so I need to bring the computer home and finish another hour of typing in bed.

I am pretty sure that this is the progesterone making me so tired, as I am always like this after a transfer, but I know that the waiting is the most tiresome part.

I feel so pathetic.  I am just existing, I hate my life like this.  I cannot do anything, not allowed to exercise, not allowed to diet, and just discovered today that I will need to buy extra large underwear, for my very large butt.  I have never needed extra large underwear in my life.  If I don't get pregnant, I will go on a diet again, and hopefully I can postpone the requirement for new underwear shopping, as I don't feel like buying anything sexy right now, and am afraid I will walk out of the shop with frumpy undies, which is a no-no in my book.  No matter how bad life gets, frumpy underwear is out.

vacuum in my head

Peed on three more sticks today, and am getting some evaporation lines, i.e. faint lines that show up after about five to ten minutes.  I don't think they mean anything, as I have seen them before (heck, I have seen true positives before that did not mean anything, since I still lost the embryos even after they attempted to implant).  The sticks are the only way for me to communicate with the embryos at the moment, so I cherish the faint evap lines, even if I don't hold much hope for them meaning anything.  MrH can't even see them, but I can, under bright lights.

Tonight we made the mistake of letting a Kirby vacuums salesman into our house.  We spent the entire evening praying for his demo to end sooner.  We did buy a Kirby, because the grime in our carpets could use a bit of vacuuming, but heck, he could have done the whole presentation in twenty minutes instead of two hours.  I even told him that he is much more likely to make a sale if he speeds the whole thing up, because I need to get my 16 hours of sleep that I currently require, but although he tried, the poor man just could not skip over any of the important, valuable and priceless Kirby parts and accessories.  Ugghhhh! just shoot me.  Now I have a Kirby, must vacuum.  Except that it is too heavy for me to lift it, so MrH will have the pleasure of vacuuming until I am proven to be nonpregnant, lose the baby, or have a live delivery, whichever may come first.