Meds question for everyone!

My good friend K is having a quandary, and she is asking for your expertise!

 

She is trying to get post-ovulation bleeding under control.  She has had her normal 7dpo progesterone checked, and it was 20 something.  She has tried taking prometrium orally (prescribed by her obgyn), but it did not fix the bleeding at all.  Recently she went to her RE, and her RE suggested that she try Endometrim during the LP.  K goes to order the prescription and it was $360 A MONTH!!!

 

She called her RE and asked for prometrium suppositories instead, and her RE said that she does not prescribe those, as prometrium was formaulated to take orally (which I have never heard, but of course I do not know everything...but my RE is in love with prometrium suppositories!), while Endometrim was specifically made to be a suppository. 

 

I wondered if the RE wouldn't mind paying K's $360 a month bill  ;-)  Haha.

 

ANYWAY, if you have taken Endometrim or Prometrium, please weigh in.  Do you know why your RE prescribed either?  Have you read that one is better than the other?  Have you been on each of them at one time or another and have opinions about one or the other's effectiveness?

 

Thanks for giving us your experiences!!

An Open Letter

Dear God,
I have half a mind to be pissed at You. (The other half is firmly entrenched in the camp that You know some amazing joyful better-than-I-can-imagine plans that will be perfect and then all this crap will all be worth it and that you know my heartache and want to comfort me and even Jesus cried....) But seriously. The first half of mind thinks that's a bunch of baloney.

I am fine with not being pregnant. I have never seen a positive test, so I don't even know what I'm missing, so being not pregnant is the norm for me. But, if You are not going to work some cosmic miracle with me to get a baby inside, please stop leading me IN THE 2WW, NO LESS, to Scriptures that tell me that You make the barren woman a mother, and as old generations pass, new ones come about. Because that is just awful for my already shattered broken dying heart. Because then, when I test and see one pathetic line, I get angry at myself for believing and hoping that somehow that was your communication to me. I feel like an idiot for trusting in Your Word about all this infertility garbage. Because Your Word never says, "The barren woman kept getting strung along until she had a hysterectomy so she wouldnt have to deal with that crap anymore" or "I will take the desire of motherhood out of your heart so you can get on with your life". All it says is that the barren woman will be a joyful mother, and that seems like quite the empty promise to me.

And, since we have prayed to have hearts for adoption, and you have not placed that with us EITHER, am I supposed to pray to have you take away my desire for motherhood? Am I really supposed to be 100% happy with my admittedly phenominal husband and precious dogs? While, in the meantime, You bless crack addicts and people who leave their kids running amuck without supervision and all my friends and family with babies that they didn't even try for and all my bloggy friends with treatment babies that I dreamt of? Or, ooh, maybe they tried 4 WHOLE months and then You decided their weary hearts had had enough, and boom, a baby ends up in their house? How do You suppose I deal with that while I'm wanting to be a mom, and I am FAILING?

I really thought you and Grandpa would be an amazing team up there. But it looks like nothing has changed for me down here. Except that one half of my brain has become so fed up with this infertility awfulness that it's become pissed at You, much to the chagrin to the other half of my brain. Because I can't go on trying forever. At some point, this has to stop. I always thought it would be with the birth of our baby, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe it will be with the birth of my sister's baby, you know, the month after whenever they decide they want to try.

So anyway, thanks for nothing.... in the baby department. (My "other half brain" made me write that qualifier as it is quivering in its shoes that God will strike me down for being so obnoxious.) Can't wait to see what grand bunch of zero happens next month, too.

Sincerely,
A

Does this work?

Wow, I miss having a laptop. My phone works okay for typing, but it's much easier/faster to type on a full-size keyboard!

And I apologize to all of you because commenting from my phone is pretty time-involved, so (shrug), I haven't been doing much at all of that since Thursday. I still read your blogs though! Shout-out to Mission:Motherhood on the surprise BFP that we all wish would happen to us.

This 2ww has been the looooooooooongest one in a long time, and darned if I'm still just 11dpo. I mean, in a perfect world this 2ww will continue till, oh, May or so, but I'm skeptical. I have pretty much ZERO syptoms (other than the ones that of course are never actually symptoms), except continuing to be bloated. I am going to be pretty pissed if I start a new cycle and find out that I just got fat all of a sudden.

Operation wheatgrass is going really well, actually. When mixed with juice, I actually put a few ice cubes in there and sip it like a regular drink! (I tried it with water one more time and it was equally as bad as the first time.) I actually have found myself looking forward to my two glasses per day, if you can believe it. (Relative to getting in two servings of the tablets.) It must be doing something good if my body is asking for it!

I hope all the changes that we've been trying to make towards more natural/organic living will pay off with conception of a healthy baby. I know that tons of people eat big macs every day, with nary a vegetable, and have 8 kids, but I feel really good about making the healthy changes we have made in our diet and products we use in our home. Whenever we get a new laptop, I'm going to celebrate by doing a giveaway of one of my new favorites!

notes

so yesterday as i was innocently writing an email, our laptop decided to crash. :-(

good thing i have this phone!

you will be relieved to know that when mixing my wheatgrass powder with v8 fusion, it is pretty much normally drinkable! i know, you couldnt sleep last night worrying about how that was going!

***

ever since my grandpa passed away, i have been really bad at keeping in touch with my irl friends. it is a super busy time for me at work, and having two dogs is no lazy thing, and it's not even like i have a ton of friends, but i really want to be better at keeping in touch. how do you do it? are you a phone or letter or email person? i think at this point i'd consider myself an email person, but that is probably somewhat unsocial of me...

***

(complaint ahead) yesterday some kid in our neighborhood was revving his dumb sooped up car engine over and over for like half an hour, and it really made our dogs crazy. this morning, bert was still preoccupied with pacing around the yard listening for the engine noise. he wouldnt even play with banana!! i want to wring that kid's neck and add an ever lovin muffler to his loser mobile!! mr. a says i should lighten up. ugh.

***

i am 8dpo and SO bloated. have been ever since ovulation actually. i am tired of my favorite shorts not fitting. body, are we pregnant? if not, a heads up would be great because i could really do without the progesterone supposotories for the next week...

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Choking no more

Guess what? If you mix the wheatgrass powder with 8oz of sweet tea, it smells like chocolate milk!

HA!!

I think a side effect of wheatgrass might be delusion. I promise it smelled like chocolate milk! And I did several big gulps instead of trying to "drink" it. Worked muuuuuch better :) I hope I didn't cancel out the effects of the wheatgrass with the sweet tea. I fully intend to get myself some V8 Fusion (my favorite juice) to mix it with for real....

As long as another side effect of wheatgrass is a healthy baby, I'll gladly do this twice a day!!!

Choke!

So, you may remember that I'm taking wheatgrass to try to naturally balance my body/magically cure my infertility/add nutrients/make great eggies.

And up until now, I'd been taking the tablets- SEVEN per serving, and I tried to do two servings per day! I am not a bad pill-swallower, so it wasn't a big deal, although they don't exactly taste like cherry baby aspirin!!!

And lo and behold, I finished my jar! So I had to get another jar. Because, although I didn't conceive the first month taking the wheatgrass, my friend was taking it three months before she conceived. So I better keep this going. Can't hurt- I need more dark greens in my diet anyway!

But this time I wanted to get the powder, because I hear it is easier for your system to absorb and not as processed. So I ordered this bad boy, and went to make up my first glass of the stuff this morning.

Wow.

Talk about the tablets and going to eat some grass out of your front yard. That is nothing! Why don't you make a grass puree?! Ha! I took my first swig and thought, how in the dickens am I going to ever drink a glass of this twice a day?! My second swig was followed by near upchuck. Honestly. I think my problem was that I was drinking too slowly. My next few swigs were kind of like big gulps- right down the hatch, and I finished the glass. Whew. Time to go back to my fake (herbal) coffee (which I am also trying, to avoid the caffeine- so far my favorite flavor is hazlenut, big surprise)!

I am going to have to get some amazing juice or something to mix with this stuff. Water is bearable, but barely.

I definitely want to continue taking it- there are alot of health benefits, infertility aside. I think making smoothies and masking the wheatgrass therein is going to be too much effort on my part (says the girl who works at home). I mean, I'd have to drag out the blender, make sure I have enough fruit and milk on hand for two a day, blah blah blah. Plus it says that ideally you should take it by itself to allow your body to absorb all of it instead of competing with other foods.

Here's hoping I don't choke on my next glass, too!

Speaking of havens...

I love to cook. Like, looooooove to cook. And since Mr. A is building us a new coffee table (in progress picture below), he's been working really hard in the garage each night and not really finishing whatever stage until like 9pm. So it's been alot of sandwiches and wraps and hot dogs for us lately. (But did I tell you that I found hot dogs made of non-hormoned cows in the natural food section? Natural hot dogs, haha! Is that an oxymoron?)



But I decided on Saturday that we should have a proper meal, and we'd had cabbage rolls (two leaves of cabbage stuffed with ground meat, rice, onions, peppers, and garlic) after my grandpa's funeral, which Mr. A loved, so I gave them a try! They are a traditional slovak food- here they are all wrapped up in the dutch oven:



Also traditional is mashed potatoes, but those are not Mr. A's favorites (I know, I can't believe it either), so I made potato latkes instead. Also my first time making those, and I am going to have to make them again!!! The best part is that we had some left over for breakfast Sunday!! Here is Mr. A's plate (with a slice of my whole wheat bread):



Of course no nice dinner can be without a dessert, so I made a mixed berry pie, using OUR raspberries and organic blueberries and strawberries. As we were eating it, we were both wondering why I hadn't made this pie before, it was DELISH!!


I am so glad I can cook yummy things for us to eat, that aren't all pre-packaged and preservative-laden. I think it contributes to making our home whole and healthy and happy. While I know cooking can be laborious for some, it is very relaxing to me- I put on a movie or the tv or the radio and just go to town with my recipes! Throwing dinner parties was always one of my favorite things, before all (and by "all", I mean our few) friends went off and had kids. Need to have the neighbors over or something- I am dying to host a bunch of people again!!

Take a vacation

Mr. A's mom has been mildly supportive of us in our quest to have a baby. And by "mildly" I mean that she does not constantly ask us how it's going or complain that she is grandchild-less, but she also is the queen of anecdotal pregnancy stories after beginning the adoption process, or after just relaxing, or after taking a vacation.

She stayed with us a few nights ago, and just as she was getting into her car, she (again) remarked to me, "You should have him take you on a vacation."

And by vacation she means going somewhere with a plane involved and several nights in a fancy hotel room.

By nature, me and Mr. A do not have the travel bug in the slightest. We would rather surround ourselves in our home with our pups and nice things (including all the amazing natural cleaning/shampoo/soap products I've been buying lately- upcoming post, so stay tuned!!) here than spend tons of cash going here and there. And in general, we would just rather save our money. Nothing against people who do love to travel (e.g., my sister and her husband), but it's just not a priority for us.

Case in point, when we spent almost a week with my family recently following my grandfather's death, it came up in conversation that it was kind of a vacation for us. I swear we caught my globe-trotting sister's mouth hanging open for a few seconds.

They go to Paris and eat in fancy cafe's, and we go to the northeast and eat barbeque on my uncle's patio.

But even if we did have the travel bug, the money and energy and time spent on trying to have a little one would most likely obviate many of our planned destinations (so I'm sort of glad we could care less). We could have gone on a couple fancy vacations with the amount of money we spent on IUI's and IVF's. We could have made that reservation for a lake house following our (failed) IVF if only we had the energy and passion to make any kind of decision after that heartache. We could feel less worried about scheduling time off far in advance if we could be sure our baby would be born in a certain month, instead of contstantly shifting the month that he'll be born.

All of that being said, I know it's important to give yourself (ourselves) a break from the day-to-day sometimes. I guess we are lucky in that our home is really our haven for us. There is nothing like falling asleep on the couch at 9:15pm after a great dinner, with all the dishes washed and the counters cleaned, and the floors swiffered, and two pups somehow curled up with each other in the one armchair. No matter where we are, that is our peace. And you don't need a vacation from peace, do you?

Maybe someday we'll have the totally expendable funds and time and passion to commit to a "real" vacation. For now, our vacation starts each night at 6pm. All aboard :)

Sometimes I wish...

...that I was a mennonite.

I am having a really great day. It is unbelievably beautiful outside- not a cloud in the sky and about 75F and wonderfully breezy. Our dogs are such precious healing to my broken childless heart. I used my reusable shopping bags on my errands- I feel so fancy! And I went to pick up the cheese, lunchmeat, bulk items, eggs, and other meat (bacon, beef, sausage, chicken) from our mennonite place.

And as great of a day as I'm having, the mennonite (woman's) life (in my area) looks so grand (from my perspective).

First of all, I don't think mennonites struggle with infertility. Number one reason to be one! Haha! (Edited to add that I'm sure some do struggle with it, and hopefully our community will be supportive to them if they find us!, but just like alot of the quiv.erfull families, it seems like they all need a bus to get around!) But their lifestyle seems so satisfyingly simple. They work in the cheese shop in their feminine skirts and tops. They restock the freezers with fresh chickens and eggs. Even though they don't wear makeup, natural beauty is obviously valued in their communities. They assist their husbands in the bake shop. Or they stay at home with their several children who are all cute as buttons in their equally-simple-but-inspiring clothes. And hang out their cute clothes on picturesque clotheslines surrounded by lavender....

Okay, fine, I know that there are plenty of mennonite women who go to college and have more modern jobs, and that is really great, too. But when I go to get our things from their shops in my area, the ones who do the simple tasks always look so happy and content. I am thankful for all my education and my job and the modern bells and whistles I use all the time, but I think it would be very peaceful to take on such a simple role. (As you can tell, I am definitely not a woman who is preoccupied with busting through any proverbial glas.s ceiling...I think I would be very content to live in a simpler world with specific gender roles.)

I'd love to hear from any mennonite readers (I mean no offense by oversimplifying your life!)! And for everyone else, who do you sometimes wish you could be? (Aside from MOTHERS!!!)

Detached from IF?

Lately I've been feeling somewhat detached from IF, in good ways and bad.

I used to love taking people off my praying for a baby list and adding them to my baby bump/parent list, because I would be moving on like them someday, too. But lately I look at all those blessed women and just sigh with heavy apathy that we have nothing in common. Like I can't even identify with what they post about now. And maybe it's my fault because I haven't been a commenting wizard on their posts, but it feels like they don't have anything in common anymore with me, either.

In some ways, I count this (that I don't feel the need to vicariously live through moms and incessantly dream of when I will be in their shoes- that I have accepted that that is not my life) as a good thing because to me it indicates that pregnancy/motherhood is not occupying my life anymore. My life is full with a great husband, awesome dogs, wonderful sisters and brother, and many other blessings.

But in alot of other ways, I count it is a bad/sad thing. Because it means that I still have not gotten it through my thick head (raise your hand if your mom used that phrase when you were a teenager!) to truly get over what I don't have and embrace feet-first the joys that everyone else is experiencing. I mean, if I could do this, I wouldn't feel so left out by people who have babies anymore than I feel left out by people who have black Range R.overs (my dream car). Because, let's face it, it feels like we are just as likely to become pregnant with a healthy baby as to have a Ran.ge Rover dropped in front of our house. And it's not like I would slink away to 4 aisles over in Ta.rget if I saw a Rang.e Rover owner....

We're of course still "trying"- peak reading today, in fact- and now that my grandpa is in heaven everyone and their mother tell me stories that they got pregnant after their relative passed away. But that seems too good to be true, doesn't it?

Because even though we're trying on our own, the other way I feel detached is from all my IVF buddies who have gone on to several more IVF's, while we sit at one failure. Truthfully, it's not like we would try another IVF right now- we don't have the money, and I'm not sure we want to devote the energy/emotion to all the monitoring, etc. But all things relative, they are moving forward, too, and I'm not. Just like the moms.

But just like I mentioned above, I have this weird sense of apathy to being left behind in that way, too. Like, I'm interested in what they're going through but it seems so foreign and far away and apart from my reality that I can't really even muster an emotion about it. Well, technically, when I think of all the time and energy and GAS that I spent going 80 miles round trip every other day to the RE the better part of last year, I am pretty shocked. That's an emotion, right?

I don't think I'll ever detach completely. I still pray for all my bloggy buddies in their disappointments, heartache, and celebrations. I will still take clomid and use my monitor and take progesterone after ovulation, but when I go see my obgyn in mid-October and he suggests an IUI, I can guarantee you that we'll decline, because {dare I say it} I don't know if we care that much to go through all that again at this point. Which is saying aLOT because of course having a baby is practically the only thing that's missing in our lives (except, also, a black Ran.ge Rover), so obviously we care alot about it!

I hope I didn't offend anyone by spilling my guts to you about how I have a hard time identifying lately. It's a very weird place to be- of course I wish I wasn't on the bench without a child, but for all practical purposes, my bench is a pretty happy place to be, and I don't really think I'll be moving for a while.

I don't know how many of you will identify with my not indentifying....

Back from laying grandpa to rest

It's tough to even know what to write. We are home safely- and the dogs are home from boarding, the happiest we've ever seen Banana after we picked her up. We think it's because she went there with her brother this time :) Good thing our kids love each other so much :)

The week was very good. Emotionally-draining, but good. Our whole family was there with each other to celebrate and remember grandpa. His wife, his 6 kids, their spouses, and 11 grandchildren. We played lots of cards (one of his favorite hobbies) and drank manhattans (his favorite drink) and sang "You are my Sunshine" (his favorite song). We all cried (it was interesting and somewhat surprising the different times it hit some of us), and we all laughed. Mr. A and two other pall bearers wore argyle socks (his favorite socks- but he used to wear them pulled to his knees with plaid shorts!). We reminded each other of how proud he was of each of us, and how much he loved each of us. We were amazed at how many people came to the visiting hours to support us- it is such a testament to how many people my grandpa influenced in his life.

One of the hardest parts for me was watching my grandma. Sure, she has early Alzhe.imer's, but she sure as anything knows that she just lost her husband and best friend of 57 years. Whenever I would glance over and see her standing by his casket (open for the visitation), crying and holding onto his hand, I just about lost it. I mean, even though he was sick, she could hold his hand one day and then, not the next. I think maybe for her it will be even harder to grieve because I don't think she understood how sick he was before he passed away, so although the rest of us have been sort of "preparing", I think she is more blindsided in some ways. We were sitting on their back porch swing the day before the funeral and I remarked what a beautiful day it was. She teared up and said, "yes, but he isn't here to enjoy it."

What could I even say? I can't even imagine how lost I would feel without Mr. A, after 5 years of marriage, not even after their 57!

I told her that I believe that he can see the beautiful day- that all his days are beautiful now- and that he asked God to make this day beautiful for her to enjoy it. She just held tight to my hand.

The funeral was beautiful, too. We were all crying by the end, even though we all know that Grandpa wouldn't want us to be sad. He has a very peaceful place to rest- shade tree and all. I'm sure God already has him busy doing fix-it jobs in heaven- painting the pearly gates or something- just like he loved those types of things when he was here.

He will surely be missed, but I know he will be cheering us on from his recliner in heaven. With his bowl of peanuts. As he sports some argyle socks. And after he has talked to God about sending one of them baby things to us...