Ovulation Olympics - Last Place

VAIR, VAIR (as Louise Rennison might say) discouraging news on the baby front.

In Ovulation Olympics news, I am dead last.

My RE said on Friday that he has thrown up his hands in despair over my charts. My temperatures were going down instead of UP. Friday's temp, for instance was so low that it didn't register on the chart.

So the advice he gave was to start injectables, which happened to contradict what he'd said at our last appointment, which was to go as high as 250 mg on Clomid (so far, I had been had 100 mg). He said that with the unpredictable ovulation, hostile cm, and a thin uterine lining, we should consider just going straight to injectables.

High cost? Time off work? You bet. He said that the cost would start from $750 per cycle just for the medication, and that I should expect it to rise to around $2000 per cycle, with ultrasounds and all that junk included. Likely, insurance will not cover this cost. Also, he said that I would need to be monitored, so I'd have to come in 3 or 4 days early in the morning to have ultrasounds and blood tests.

So, I need to work next school year in order to pay for all this, yet I can't really hold down a job if I have to miss that much work. That's great. Really great.

Dh had said that we would sell whatever we had to in order to pay for the treatments. Then, he told me yesterday that he doesn't think we can do it because we can't afford it. He prefaced this statement by tentatively bringing up the idea of adoption, because it would be a sure thing.

I don't know how to describe what I feel about this. I want the experience of being pregnant and giving birth, even if it's just once in my life. I want a dark-haired baby who has my partner's lips and my smile. Who loves either dirty projects and shooting gophers or reading novels and writing poetry. Or both. And I do not want an adopted child to feel as though he or she were anything less than a first choice in our lives. I would love to adopt, for sure! But at this point I feel as though a chosen child would be a replacement for the baby we can't have. Does this rambling make sense?

So I don't know what to do. We need to make a decision soon because we need to fit our career plans around this mountain. My career path is bright and shiny, in contrast to the dreariness of the baby mess (I just received a major research grant). Dh is beginning to encourage me to focus on my future, instead. I just don't know.

Where is God amid all of this? He's supposed to be closer than my own breath. But I said to dh that I don't know why I should pray about this anymore - or ask anyone else to do so for me - because God doesn't seem interested. This doesn't mean that I don't believe in God (which was what my dh thought). Just means that I'm looking for him in between breaths.

Waiting.

So, I'm on CD 22 today. I didn't take my temperature this morning, so I don't know yet if I o'd yesterday or not. Probably not.

Doo da doo da doo. *Waiting*

Not sure what to do next. 150 mg of Clomid is the next step, and my RE says he'll go as high as 250 mg. He also said, when I asked, that the next course of treatment involves injectables, which are expensive. No kidding: the quotes I'm seeing range from $1400-$3000 PER CYCLE. Plus gobs of time off work.

So, I am not sure what to do. Dh and I wanted to move out of Winnipeg this summer so that I could get a job in a rural town, but now we're stuck somewhere between the devil and the deep blue sea. In order to afford these meds, I have to work, but with the amount of monitoring that would have to be done with these meds, I can't work because of the number of days I'd have to be away. (It's not like I have a 9-5 job - I can't just make up the time elsewhere.)

What does everyone else do? Where are all the women in Manitoba who are making these decisions, too?

I would know if I'd kept up with arrangements for the home group. I've stalled there. I've been having a hard time with all of this infertility stuff again, so I'm reluctant to talk about it - yet I need to talk about it. I guess I'm just reluctant to talk because unless people have been through IF themselves, they usually say the wrong things. I need to talk about this, though. It's a weird cycle. I am going to have to firm up and continue with making the arrangements. Surely I am not the only one who needs to talk.

It's been awhile...

Just started a new job and it's been taking all my time. In a good way, though.

Saw the specialist last week. He did an ultrasound - it was CD13 - and I saw no developing follies. To say I was frustrated is an understatement. So we have to give it another 2 weeks, then go back to him to see if anything has happened. If not, he'll induce af and we'll start Clomid again, for the fifth round, on a 150 mg dosage.

I asked the doc what the next step is if Clomid doesn't work for me. He says injectables, and that he's hoping we don't have to go that route because it is very expensive. When I attempted to look up the cost on-line, I saw numbers ranging from $400 to $1500 per month. Oh my.

Feeling very discouraged. A woman I know just had a baby and her middle name is Hope. Apparently 'hoping' that she won't have any more kids. That makes me so angry.

At my church, the thread running through recent sermons has been not to feel sorry for yourself. And not to say "It's not fair." I understand why they're saying this, but it is SO HARD not to feel sorry for yourself when there are millions of reminders every day of what you can't have.

Yesterday, one of my friends read something aloud from the P.D. James book Children of Men, and it was about a futuristic world in which women are unable to procreate. She read something about how a woman feels when she can't even do what animals do without thinking. I understood that statement.