Welcome, ICLW!

Here we are, in December. Oh what a year. The quick recap for this year: 3 IUI’s, the first turned into an ectopic pregnancy, the second I got pregnant, and I lost my dear baby at 8 ½ weeks, and the third IUI was a BFN. I’m in the middle of the THREE week wait of my first IVF – today is 9 days past 5 day transfer. Beta next Monday. Started the year off as unexplained infertility, have been diagnosed with compound heterozygous for MTHFR and activated Natural Killer cells.

Those are the stats – now the real stuff is I’m not feeling very optimistic about my chances with this IVF. I had a testing fiasco this weekend, and the last test was yesterday, at 13 days past retrieval, 8 days past a 5 day transfer. And they were all negative. The hubs and I got into a big fight about it, and I agreed to not test any more.

I appreciate everyone’s comments about testing. It really is beneficial to hear about other people’s experiences and research. I had a long talk about it with my therapist last night, and then shared your comments and my therapist’s opinion with the hubs last night when I got home. He has such a hard time with sharing his feelings – just like a lot of men out there. He is still very optimistic, and he wants to trust our doctor – if the doctor says we can’t know until this weekend at the earliest, then that’s the way it is. So I told him he could be optimistic, but I didn’t have to be. It’s too hard to have hope, and then have my hopes dashed – that was what was happening with the testing – I was cycling through hope and despair several times a day! Every morning, I’d wake up real early, and think “today could be the day, I could find out I’m pregnant. Oh, what if it’s true, what if I’m pregnant? I really want to find out!” And then I would test, and then it would be negative, and I’d be crushed. And then later in the day, I’d convince myself that it was too early, that maybe tomorrow it will be positive. I can’t do this anymore. With the help of my therapist, I’ve decided that I’m just going to try to accept that this cycle didn’t work. It’s too hard otherwise. And if by some chance I get a beta on Monday that says otherwise, it will just be a wonderful surprise. (By the way, I called the nurse yesterday afternoon and begged for an early beta. They’re closed on Thursday and Friday, and they really believe Wednesday is too early – no more explanation than that.)

Somehow after changing my mindset, I feel better today. I didn’t test, and the hubs hadn’t even hid my tests. And I didn’t really want to test either. I may try to convince the hubs that we should test on Friday morning before he leaves. But I may wait until Monday. We’ll see. For now, I’m sad, and that’s ok too. We have plans for the future – I have nine frozen embryos waiting for me. But somehow I’ll make it through this week, and start really planning for the future next week, whatever future that may be.