Anxiously Waiting

What a historic day today has been! The Supreme Court voted down DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) and now those of us who are fortunate enough to live in states where same sex marriage is legal, will also be recognized by the federal government.
Victory!
Love wins!
Hopefully the good vibes will spread right on through us. Tomorrow we head back to Mayo for our ultrasound to see if my follicles have been hard at work and growing! This will be the beginning of our 2nd round of IUI. Fingers and toes are crossed that all goes well.

Is this all normal?

Greetings empty page. You may not know this, but next to my wife, you will become my new best friend. I plan to use to vent, rant, worry, laugh, cry, and any other one of the million emotions and feelings I seem to have flowing through me. Today, it just so happens to be worry.

I made the gargantuan mistake of watching a show on TLC this morning called "Obese & Expecting."
Worst idea ever.
But I was already crying from my first time of discovering the show "A Baby Story" and I was all woo-wooey and giddy about the prospect of us having our very own bundle of joy. So, back to "Obese & Expecting"...First of all, one of these women weighed less that I do when she first became pregnant. Our RE doctor told me it would be best to get down to 200lbs before trying to get pregnant. Almost a year went by, and I still remained at 240lbs, so we moved forward given the age clock was getting louder. One of the women on the show could not do anything by herself. She couldn't shower, dress, drive, ANYTHING because she was so swollen from retaining water. One of the gals had diabetes and was concerned that the baby was going to be insulin dependent. To top it off several of the women had to have c-sections due to their weight, and it was not pretty. The doctors were very clear that the depth of the fat tissue they had to cut through on obese was women was very high risk and dangerous for the mother as well as the baby. So, as I watched the entire 60 minute program, my mouth gaped open and horrible thoughts began running though my head. Am I even going to be able to get pregnant? Will I have miscarriages like my mom? Are we going to go into so much debt simply TTC? What if the baby has health problems? What if we have multiples?!?

I certainly hope all of this worry and doubt is typical because we have only just begun. We just started round #2, and from many of the other blogs I've read it often takes people a year or more before conceiving. For now, for tonight, I will roll over, kiss my wife, and try to put the worry out of my mind and my faith...I'll put my faith in the process.

Yep, I would say that's pretty accurate today. 

And So We Begin

I intend on going back to edit this with more details once I get the hang of how to do this, but for now I am just going to get out my first entry.

About one month ago my partner J and I began our first round of IUI. Because of my age (37), our doctor felt our best shot would be with Clomid, Ovidrel, and Progesterone. So, after much research and deliberation, we chose our donor with the hopes that his swimmers would help us reach our goal of adding a happy face to our family.
Waiting 2 weeks after insemination to take our first hpt seemed like a lifetime. Every little movement my body made, I was excited and concerned. The first few days, I thought I felt changes in my body--especially the tenderness of my breasts--but after a few days it subsided and I felt it no longer. Because there is only a 30% of success, I remained logical and knew although there was a chance, it was a small chance. On the morning of day 14, at 3am, we took our first test. Much to our surprise the test was positive! Say what?!? Tears of joy ran down both our faces and we immediately began thinking of how our lives were going to change. We couldn't believe how lucky were were! Then about 6 hours later, it dawned on us that we should maybe take another test to be sure--just as a formality. We took the test and a Big Fat Negative (BFN) glared back at us. Out of shock and frustration, we immediately took two more tests which also resulted in a negative. Confused and frustrated, we called our nurse who sent us in for a blood test. We waited on pins and needles the next 12 hours for the results asking questions like, "How could it be positive and then not?" "If it was going to be negative, why couldn't it have just been negative from the start?" "Maybe it is positive...maybe the negative tests were just 'watered down'." We received the blood test results and there were only traces of HCG in my blood which they then concluded our pregnancy was negative.
I stopped taking progesterone and awaited my lady parts to get back in sync. I'm now on Day 3 of my cycle and have started taking Clomid again. Next week we will go in for an ultrasound to see how the follicles are looking.  So for now, it's positive thoughts and lots of hope and faith that what is meant to be, will be.