Kicking myself in gear

When I was a kid, I could eat anything I wanted and never gain an ounce. I was a twig, and I had no idea that those habits were leading me to future struggle.

Puberty hit, and with istated darted getting curves. By the time I was 14, I was a B cup, and wore a size 6/8 in pants to accommodate my “childbearing hips”, but I was active in soccer and walking all over the place since I couldn’t drive and stayed in decent shape.

In high school, I started to gainweight, but it was nothing that bad. By the time I graduated, I was about 15lbs over mideally weight, and my undiagnosed PCOS and Endo were starting to rear their ugly heads. After a summer on my own, I got engaged that fall and started a campaign to lose 30ish lbs before my wedding a year later. It was the first time in my life that I had to work at my weight. I started weight watchers, and worked out the dorm gym when I could. My college campus was on a hill, with the dorms at top and most my classbottom the bottom. I walked back and forth at least twice a day. I worked 10 miles from school, and while I took the bus and train to and from work, there was still a mile or more to walk between all those things. The summer after that year, I worked for a mega store, in the meat and dairy department. I did some serious heavy lifting, and a lot of walking and running from home to work and back, since my brother wrecked our car the first week of summer and I didn’t want to purchase a vehicle since I was moving overseas at the end of summer.

The day came for my wedding, and I’d lost over 40 lbs. I rocked my dress, and for the first time in my life I felt comfortable in a bikini. But shortly after, the cycle of doom started. I’d done a 3 month cycle of bcp in order to avoid my period for the wedding, and to see if it would help with my unofficially diagnosed endo. We moved to Italy, and I stopped the bcp after having a reaction to it, only 7 weeks in.

By our one year anniversary, I had regained the majority of the weight I had lost for the wedding. I was eating decently, exercising, but struggling with major depression and PCOS issues. That was about the time I was officially diagnosed.

The last 5 years have been the same struggle. Lose weight, gain it back, pregnancy , pregnancy loss. Move somewhere, make friends, friends leave, depression, happy, it’s all the roller coaster.

Last year when we started treatments, I had lost 20 lbs and had probably gained several pounds of muscle. It’s been a pretty shitty year and a downward spiral, including a gain of every pound I had lost and then a few extra.

I have six months where I am not allowing myself to talk about TTC. those months are going to be used to kick my ass into gear. I started back on my hated workouts today in addition to running, and am working on cleaning up my eating habits as well.

Ive always wanted to be fit when pregnant, and while 6 months work probably won’t get me to my goal, it will get me a lot closer than I am now. I don’t intend to post exact numbers, but I might post pictures after I hit my first goal.

 

Anyone else out there trying to stay fit or get fit while doing the whole TTC thing? Any interest in a weekly fitness roundup? Or challenges? I’d love to hear from you guys with advice!

Not the ICLW intro I’d expected to make

It’s time for another ICLW, and to be honest I had forgotten I had signed up this month. When I signed up at the end of last month, I was sure I was going to be pregnant this month, not recovering from another loss.

Here’s the deal:

I’m T1BG, married for 5+ years, TTC for about the same amount of time. Dealing with PCOS, ENDO, LPD, MFI, and RPL. I’ve had 3 back to back miscarriages in the last year doing donor sperm IUI’s, and we are now on hold due to a move and waiting on a consult with a new RE in our new location. We’ve lost more babies than we ever thought we’d conceive, and are struggling with continuing along this journey.

Right now, we’re leaning towards doing one IVF cycle next year, but who knows where we will be. I’ve promised my husband that as of July 1, there will be ZERO talk of TTC in our house until 2013. Yeah, that’s 6 months of no baby talk. We’ve not gone that long since we started dating. But after all the years of this journey, the heartbreak and pain, we need 6 months off to regroup, to try and recover from these losses and to truly think about what we want for our future. I’ll be focusing more on the weightloss and fitness aspect of my journey against PCOS for that time, and hope to not chase all of you away.

BF…..

This is the post I have been dreading writing for a week now. Actually, since this cycle began. Because I knew, no matter what, it wasn’t going to be an easy post to write.

If this cycle ended in a BFP, it wasn’t going to be a post of excitement. It was going to be a post of nerves, because we’ve done the BFP thing…and it’s not worked out yet.

If this cycle ended in a BFN, it was going to be a post of sadness, because this was our one and only shot this year.

Instead, this post gets to be one of anger.

You see, this cycle didn’t end in a BFN. But it didn’t end in a BFP either.

To explain, I’d been testing out the trigger daily from the time of the IUI. I was watching the lines get lighter, then at 7DPO, I thought I was hallucinating. The line was darker than the day before. I immediately freaked out, and asked a few friends to look at the tests and see if I was imagining things. I wasn’t. Shit. I really started freaking out. I’d not been surprised by the fact that it was positive, but more so by the fact that it was positive so early. I had tons of symptoms of pregnancy, and my gut told me that I was pregnant.

Tests continued to get darker for a few days, and then my worst nightmare occurred. The lines stopped getting darker. They started getting lighter, and then became a BFN. My symptoms decreased, and AF showed a few days ‘late’. This period has been horrible, and just like my last miscarriage.

My beta came back at a 4, indicating that I had been pregnant but no longer was. My RE has no answers for me as to why this happened, but I’m mostly angry. I’ve long since known and been diagnosed with LPD, and been told that it was probable that I would need progesterone support in order to sustain a pregnancy. I was put on progesterone with my pregnancy last spring, and they were considering it with last fall’s loss as well but the second beta did not double so they refused to put me on progesterone. I asked about it again when we started this time and was told that it wasn’t necessary until AFTER I had two betas that doubled properly. Even though I requested a progesterone check sooner and asked to start it at 3DPO, my RE’s office refused, saying it was not their policy to start progesterone early on for non-IVF patients unless they had at least 3 documented losses that were due to low progesterone.

I can understand that it’s not blanket policy to start patients on progesterone early, but I have a documented history of luteal phase problems. This is in my chart from even before this RE, and is something I have brought up multiple times. I’m willing to pay the costs out of pocket- why is this office against listening to me? I know now that in the future, I will INSIST on being able to start progesterone at no later than 3DPO, because I’d rather deal with the nasty side effects and the added cost rather than another loss.

So now we wait once more. We can’t cycle again this year due to our move and having to get situated with new doctors. So maybe 2013 will be our year. Or maybe 2013 will be the year we decide we can’t bear the heartbreak any further and move on to a child free life.

Limbo.

I’m not a fan of the 2ww, but I don’t think anyone is. After the trigger shot, now I’m just stuck waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

You see, while my RE schedules my beta for 18DPO, if you have known progesterone issues, you can get a beta done any time after 11 days post trigger if doing a single shot, and 7 days after your last booster if doing multiple shots. Tomorrow is 12 days past trigger.

Theoretically, I could go in for a beta tomorrow, but at only 11 dpo, if I am indeed pregnant, my numbers are most likely to be very very low, and possibly even not high enough to count. That would mean going in for a repeat on wednesday, and another on friday most likely. Or, I could wait until 14DPO(thursday), and go in then. That would mean a repeat on the weekend, which is really sucky because the office closes early. I mean, I could wait until my scheduled beta a WEEK from monday, but really, who is going to wait that long for a beta?

The thing is, I’m lost. I don’t know what to do. Theoretically, I could get a BFP tomorrow. I could get a BFN, but still not be out. However, no matter what I decide to do, as soon as I pee on that stick, I’ll be in worry mode. I’ve not had good odds with pregnancy. I can handle a BFN, and it being a BFN from the start. It sucks, but I’ve seen enough of those over the years to just suck it up and move on. But a BFP terrifies me, because it brings with it a little glimpse of hope, and when that hope is yanked away, I can never get it back.

So for now, I wait. I’ve got at least one more day before I can know any answers. After that, who knows.

Angry

(this post has been written and edited several times over the last few years, over different blogs and even private journals. however, it still fits and here is the latest incarnation of it. please note that these are my experiences, and not necessarily facts in every case. your case should be discussed with your doctor.)

I am so angry at our situation that I cannot even begin to express my feelings properly. I’m angry that we can’t just TTC like normal people thanks to the fact that my husband had a vasectomy years ago, and the reversal was not very successful.

Long story short- X and his girlfriend found out his senior year of high school that she was pregnant.  They got married, and moved into his parents basement after he graduated. Shortly after, their first child was born. 5 months later, X joined the military, wanting what was best for his family. Right after he finished basic training and technical schooling, his wife found out she was pregnant again. Their second was born just shy of two years after their first. X was 20, his wife 19. She was done, and when the baby was 5 months old, told X that he needed to get a vasectomy or their marriage was over because she didn’t want any more children. What makes me angriest in this story is what comes next- A worried X, trying to save his marriage, went and saw his doctor. Two days later, he had a vasectomy done at TWENTY years old. With no counseling. No warnings about the odds of reversals being successful. NADA.

There’s a lot more that happens in there, but a year later, after coming home from deployment, his marriage was completely over. Even more happened after that, but the kicker is this. You see, stupid ex has now had another child. She was able to go on and have more kids at 23, because she hadn’t gotten fixed.

X eventually met me, and since we wanted to have kids together, had his vasectomy reversed. Our surgeon let us know that due to the time that had passed since his initial surgery and the type that had been done(not just clips, but cut, burn, and clips), our odds of the surgery being successful were slim. Even if it did succeed, we’d be looking at 18 months or so before things scarred back over. We went ahead with the surgery knowing the odds, but hoping for once we’d be lucky.

Obviously, we’ve not been so lucky. We had a few good months of great counts post surgery, and then dismal ever since. Things have not scarred completely back over, but they are bad enough that every RE has told us they’d do TESE if we do IVF to get sperm. Other than that, our only option would be to try a second reversal, going straight to the testes and bypassing the originally cut completely, but the odds are not likely for it to work very well.We haven’t talked closely to a urologist about this in a while since we decided to go the donor sperm route.

This isn’t the only story I’ve heard in our years in the military about doctors who hand out vasectomys like bandaids. I’ve heard of so many that allow patients to have them done with no counseling, at a young age and without good reason. Our local military facility has recently adopted the rule of 30 years of age or 3+ children, along with two counseling sessions required for the procedure to take place. I’m glad that these guidelines are finally being put in place so that someone else might be spared going through what we have had to deal with.

Some words of advice for those who are considering a vasectomy with the thought of a possible reversal someday:

Vasectomy is a very easy surgery. You’ll be tender for a few days, and have a few followups to ensure your count is clear, but that’s it. A reversal is MUCH more intense. 4 weeks of no sex, usually 1-2 weeks out of work, several followups to ensure your count is back, and a potential time factor. The closer to the initial procedure the reversal is done, the better the odds of success. After 5 years, your odds start to go down drastically. Post reversal, there can be scarring that forms that is painful and requires further surgeries as well. Antibodies can form, causing further complications, and the quality can have gone down due to lack of functionality over the years.

If you think you are done, but are not 1000% sure, get an IUD, use condoms, use BCP, anything other than having surgery performed with the option of reversing it years later. Most insurance companies will NOT cover the reversal, so that is an additional expense to consider, and they can get quite pricy. I really strongly recommend doing something temporary for at least one year, if not two to five years to be SURE you are done before you take that final step, because it seems like more and more people are regretting this decision each year.