Thursday, June 23, 2011

Shamless Plug - NEED YOUR VOTE!

I have been humbled today.... big time.



I have been nominated, along with 3 other amazing bloggers for the Team RESOLVE Choice Award's Best Blog, which, if I win, will be awarded to me at the RESOLVE Night of Hope in September in NYC. I'm SOOOO humbled and excited and simply can't believe that one of my rantings was powerful enough to rise to the top for this nomination.

And after a somewhat hard week emotionally, this makes me feel like I'm doing something right.

The award is a result of a post I wrote during National Infertility Awareness Week, RESOLVE put an calling out to all infertility bloggers to "Bust a Myth"? Well, I chose to bust a myth about insurance coverage for infertility. And it seems that my post was good enough for this award.

Did you know that one of my dreams is to get up and talk in front of large groups of people about  my journey and share my story to let others know that they are not alone and they CAN get through this, and as hard as it may be, they will survive? And also to educate others on how infertility affects your whole life?

If I win this award, I will get to do just that. One of my dreams could come true :-)

So with that, I will put in my shamless plug and ask you all to please vote for me here, pretty please?? That is, assuming you think my post is the best of the 4 out there. Regardless, please have a look and place your vote. It will be open until July 11th.

And a big thank you goes out to those of you who nominated my blog. I'm just so humbled. That's the best word I can think to describe how this feels.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Nothing Really Much to Say

Sorry for the radio silence lately. It seems like it has been a while since I have posted. And to tell you the truth, I haven't had a lot to say on the infertility front. We are still working out some details on the donor agreement with our lawyer and I'm hoping to be able to share some of those details with you all very soon. But, until it has been finalized I somehow feel that I shouldn't share things... a) because I don't want to jinx it from being accepted by all parties and b) I don't want to say something that could get me into trouble. Therefore... until that is finalized... the radio silence on the cycle will continue.

I've also been a bad blogger friend lately, and for that I deeply apologize, but as you all know, sometimes life just gets in the way. I won't give you the millions of excuses that I could come up with, but I will just say that even if I am not commenting on your blogs, I am keeping up and thinking of you.

OH! and stupid Blogger is being STUPID!  I can comment on your blogs at home on my Mac, but I can't seem to do it at work on my PC... I think it has something to do with the version of Internet Explorer that we have loaded at work and it is MAJORLY pissing me off. So my prime commenting time over lunch has basically been taken away... Ok... so I guess that was ONE excuse :-)

In any event, Tidy and I are heading out to beautiful Rocky Mountain National Park this coming Saturday and I simply can't wait! I finished a major project at work this past Monday and now my mind is on camping, hiking and blissing out in the mountains for a few days.... ah.... I can feel it now...

To that extent, I'll be out of the blogger world for all of next week, but rest assured I will get myself caught right back up when I return at the end of this month. Until then... much love to you all and big hopes that all of our baby dreams come true.... very soon.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Juice-Face

Here are two recent pictures of my first baby, known on this blog as Pog. She lays at the foot of our bed once in a while with this forlorn look on her face, like, would someone PLEASE pay attention to me? She has such a hard life!

I want to squeeze her so hard sometimes that juice squirts from her face... Thus one of her nick names..."Juice-Face"

I took about 15 pictures of her sitting there a few nights ago all pretty similar to these. I wonder how many pictures I would take if I had a human baby???



Wednesday, June 8, 2011

and... WHEREAS,

Has anyone ever read a legal agreement for an donor egg IVF cycle? Or I guess any legal agreement whatsoever? Wow... It's gonna take me 10 times to read through that to wrap my head around it.

We recieved our 12 page contract yesterday from my clinic's lawyers to review. The first two pages are basically one long-ass run on sentence, broken up by the words, 'and' and 'WHEREAS' explaining all of the interested parties and the situation occurring and the intent of the parties. For all you legal people out there, why do you have to write so strange?

So here are some updates, strung together by 'ands and WHEREASs' in honor of the legal agreement we hope to sign soon:
  • I got my period today, so we start birth control. In a perfect world (and we all know how perfect the world really IS...) I could be transferring embryos back into me in about 8 weeks. Let's hope the stars align and we get to that place with this... and
  • WHEREAS, I've decided on a nickname for our Donor. Thanks everyone who gave me their wonderful suggestions. They all were creative, but  my favorite was Dotty (Donor for Tippy and Tidy!!). Thanks Jana!!! I love it... and
  • WHEREAS, So, no time like the present to start using it. Dotty had her psych consult last Friday. Verbally sounds like things went well.  My clinic is now just waiting for the written report from the shrink... and
  • WHEREAS, it looks like I may need to get another infections disease tests done: HIV, Hep, STDs... gotta love all the blood I've given over the past few years, huh? Who knew my veins would be tapped ever few months for  FOUR PLUS YEARS! The last screening we did was July 1st of 2010 and I think the FDA requires it be a year from the date of something... baseline, transfer? I dont' know which, but regardless, it will likely be just expired when we get to that point. Perfect... and
  • WHEREAS, Tidy is done with his teaching gig or for the school year starting FRIDAY! He's SOOO happy and so am I. It means we will get some projects done on the yard soon. Yeah! (Oh, I said we... I mean HE)... and
  • WHEREAS, Tidy and I got "road trip fever" the other day when we were in the car, so I took some vacation time in a few weeks and we are heading west to the Rockies to commune with the nature and good beer (we'll be stopping by some breweries on our way). I can't wait. I'm SOOO craving some mountains and camping and good beer (especially after my cleanse). Good times.

Monday, June 6, 2011

TCM: I Want Success Rates from You Too!

Being the data whore that I am, I crave statistics. I want to know what % of which people get pregnant after x many years of trying and with what diagnosis and with what treatments.

Now, I do know that statistics are fallible but they do, at least, give you some trend and hunch at the best path to take. For example, I do know that after 4 unsuccessful IVF tries with my own body, my chances of success on a subsequent cycle with my own body are less than 5%. However, there was this ONE online friend who tried and tried with her own body and finally got pregnant on IVF #10!!! So there's no reason to let statistics rule your life, but there is reason to at least let them help guide you.

The last few days, I've been revisiting some of my older TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) books and natural fertility methods to gear up for my DE IVF cycle, so I can feel like I've prepped my body in the best way possible. But as I start to revisit these books, I remind myself of all of the hope in there that if I just change my whole life and mindset, I could become pregnant naturally.

And as I revisit these books, I've started to feel let down by myself and by TCM. By myself first because I went in blindly to these methods of TCM and of natural fertility and gave it my all with out even understanding how much they really could help. But then I get mad at TCM, because there really is NO WAY to know exactly how much they DO help. Why can't they publish THEIR success rates? There are just a bunch of stories in these books that make you feel like if you really do change what you eat and how you think and add a few herbs and other things, you too can pop out a baby in no time... Oh, there ARE are a FEW studies in the literature that show how acupuncture does actually help increase IVF rates. But there are no real hard facts or statistics, that show, if you spend a year doing x, y and z in Chinese medical or natropathic traditions, a certain percentage of you will get pregnant.

I feel stupid sometimes as I look back now for spending so much money and time doing acupuncture, cooking herbs, taking yoga classes, seeing this specialist and that specialist, without really reverting to my true nature, of questioning the trends behind it.

But let me state my disclaimer. This is in NO way intended to knock on TCM or the fact that it actually DOES help millions of women/partners get pregnant, and I must fully admit that it has greatly helped me deal with the STRESS of infertility and other issues in my life and I know some of the the changes I have made will stick with me for my life... AND,  I do know it's vitally important to have a healthy lifestyle to help increase or odds at success, BUT, I just feel a bit jaded now, especially when I think back to the naive person I was a few years ago, jumping full force into thinking that we could achieve our own natural pregnancy, because, by gosh, all I needed to do was stick a few needles in me, eliminate a few things in my diet and bend my body in a few ways.

Thanks for letting me vent... man, that felt good.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Cleanse-ing

I did a cleanse just over a year ago to improve my health, and in hopes that I would get pregnant. Yes, that may seem silly to some of you, but that was during my year and a half or so kick of "if I just change everything about my life and go 'au natural' I will get pregnant."  Acupuncture, herbs, meditation, liver-detox-cleanse, Reiki, Yoga, Gluten-Free, Vegan... you name it, I tried it. And it didn't work. And I didn't try it half heartedly, I mean, I was all in!  (There's still a little part of me that feels like I could have tried harder, that type-A, overachieving part of me that needs to learn how to shut the hell up  most of the time)

I still do really enjoy some of the lifestyle changes that I made during that period in my infertility journey and I have stuck with a few of them because they make me happy, but I don't really believe that they will get me pregnant anymore.

Last year, after I did the cleanse I felt proud of myself and that my body was in a good place. I did something good for my body to rid itself of toxins and emotions that I had been clinging to. I had self discipline. I was victorious over my own self-indulgence!

So I made a promise to myself to do it once a year. Some people recommend once a season, but... man, life moves too fast for that. Once a year will do me just fine.

Today, I am in the middle, the hardest day of the cleanse. Today is the day that I am fasting. (Here's a link to my cleanse if you are interested and it's appendix  - yup, an appendix). No food. Only liquids: lemonade (made w/ organic lemons, filterd water, cayenne pepper and local maple syrup), peppermint tea, water, and detox broth (veggie broth made from certain veggies that help to remove toxins from your body). After today, it's easy sailing and I gradually climb back up to my usual diet over the course of a few days. Right now, I'm kind of anxious and really really want to give in. I won't, but I'm just looking forward to tomorrow so I can stuff my fat face again, albeit with fruits and veggies only, but still, that sounds like heaven compared to today. Honestly though, it's not... that.... bad.

Why do I do this? Some of it is self-discipline, and I think at some deep level, I want to have a clean slate with my body for this upcoming DE IVF cycle. I want to feel like I'd done my best at ridding my body of inflammation and toxins from my prior year and have every opportunity for our potential babies (assuming we get to that point in the cycle) to stick. Now, my rational mind KNOWS that no way in hell is a cleanse going to be the thing that either makes or breaks this cycle, but somehow, I just felt like I should do it.

And so, here I sit, salivating for raw veggies, hoping that I will find some peace for the rest of the day and just enjoy the fact that I'm sticking with my choice to do this....