Bye bye vials

I just filled out the form to sell back our two remaining vials of donor sperm. I'm not sure I mentioned this, but we got a call from the cryobank saying that at new genetic test had become reliable and they've started testing all the vials. Of course, our donor was one of the few that tested positive. I'm not exactly sure what the test is for, but it's a recessive gene that, if both biological parents carry it (like Cystic Fibrosis) and the kid gets it, it's a horrible muscle wasting disease like Muscular Dystrophy and it can lead to death in children at around 2 years of age.

Why do I feel like it figures that the donor we chose would have this? This is the donor I had the miscarriage with. I don't know if I carry that gene -- most likely I don't -- but still. Weird.

Anyway, the cryobank offered to exchange the vials for a new donor, but we really are never doing to do more inseminations, so we're hoping to just sell it back. At a loss. A 50% loss. They only pay you 50% of what you paid for it. Of course. It's a freaking racket. But any way.

Bye bye vials.

All's Quiet

I finished my three adoption books. I think I learned a lot from them. I gave Secret Thoughts to my mother to read because I thought it would help her understand better. My brother and SIL never said much about L's adoption and how she or they would approach the issues that might come up. They didn't educate us much about adoption. It was never a secret or something shameful. It just was.

Now that we're approaching becoming adoptive parents, we're taking a very different stance. We want to tell everybody all about it. Once an actual baby comes home things will shift, but we want to educate first. I think some of the differences between our situations is that they choose adoption after they had been matched -- it was a parent initiated adoption. They never went into a waiting pool so the situation was very different.

Anyway, if you haven't read The Kid by Dan Savage, I can't recommend it enough. Though there are some differences in the situation as they are a gay couple and didn't deal with infertility in the same way most of us have, he is sensitive to the concept of infertility, and he really speaks to openness in adoption and the implications of raising a child genetically related to someone else.

The most insightful part to me is when they take The Kid home and how it affects his birth mother as well as how it affects Dan and Terry. It is incredibly moving, and it really encapsulates all of the difficulties that are part of the adoptive process. To enter into adoption with eyes wide open is incredibly important, and it helped me to share their story and do just that. Along with the birth mothers I heard from a couple weeks ago at our Adoption Agency meeting and this book, I feel like I am preparing myself for what adoption will truly be like.

So, I'm still feeling contemplative about all of this. Doing a lot of thinking and not a lot of doing. Not much else is going on. The weather is getting cold, the leaves are turning, and I'm thinking about life.

Oh, and I think T and I have decided to sell our two vials of donor sperm back to the cryobank. I don't think we're going to do any more dIUIs.

And if the Routan commercials with Brooke Shields piss you off as much as they piss me off, complain to them by clicking on Contact Us at the bottom of this page. I told them that I now hate the Volkswagen brand since they started these commercials -- and I used to own one.

Vacation != miracle

So, having the good vacation s.ex didn't make us a baby. AF is here and how.

Not that I expected it to. I didn't. I'm still not tracking my cycles, though the EWCM is always obvious. And I know that the right things happened at around the right time. But apparently being in a good mood and feeling relaxed doesn't actually help. People just say it does.

And despite my past few PMS-y and sad posts, I've been doing quite well. Turns out that caffeine agrees with me. (Yay coffee!) And generally speaking I've been in a pretty good mood.

But despite the old bitch's arrival, I'm still feeling pretty okay. We've decided (well, mostly I've decided and T has agreed) that we're not going to be doing a dIUI next cycle either. I've been too happy to put myself through another cycle. I need to just let go and relax as I've been. We still have the 2 more vials, but we still have another year of storage. We have a year to make a full decision.

Our S.ex Offender Registry info came back to us. Happily, neither of us is a s.ex offender. Yay!

Have a wedding to go to tomorrow. I'm not a big fan of weddings, but it is what it is. I'll know a bunch of people there, so it shouldn't be too bad. The weather is okay today and I think T and I are going to go eat tips and drink beer and watch the Sox game.

Things are okay.

Independence Day

Yesterday was Baby S's second birthday. I asked E&R for a referral letter for our adoption. I also found out that E had her third miscarriage and D&C last week. That really sucks. I feel so bad for her. I knew she would get pregnant again before we had a baby, and I'm so, so sorry that she had to have another miscarriage. It's so unfair and it really, really sucks. But I'm also jealous that she was able to even get pregnant. Which is kind of silly, I suppose. She has suffered so much loss too, but she has never endured any ART and has had a live birth. Still it really sucks to have to endure so many losses. I know her son and the lack of ART is no comfort to her in this situation. A loss is a loss no matter what. It's a horrible place to be in. That being said, I'm selfishly kind of sad that they're trying again, though we had discussed it before and I knew it was coming. I thought I would be completely distraught on S's second birthday being still childless with no hope on the horizon yet. I was certain I'd be pregnant, at least by donor sperm by now. And here they are trying for #2. And failing. And having losses as we've had losses. But also having had some success. The whole thing just fucks me up and puts me in a weird place. I hate that everything about all of this stuff makes me unhappy. But it does. I'm not sure how I'm going to take E's second pregnancy. During the first one I was sure I would be pregnant at some point, if in some non-traditional manner. This time I don't have any hope for a healthy pregnancy. I could probably cope okay if we had a baby, but being childless through another pregnancy will probably really hurt.

Yesterday I was so happy and felt so lucky. My name got chosen at random to be let out of work with pay early. As I work in a call center, that is a rare occasion indeed. I never win anything out of luck. Ever. Yes, several people were chosen, but still I was convinced that this was a sign that things were going to go well for us this year and that things were looking up. But now I'm back in a dark and gloomy place.

Hopefully tonights fireworks will make me feel a bit better. I absolutely adore fireworks.

I'll leave you with some more pictures of our trip.

Badlands National Park, South Dakota.


Me on Jackalope. Wall Drug, SD. (Ignore my fat rolls, please.)


Devil's Tower, WY.

Yellowstone National Park, WY

Leaving

Tomorrow is my last day of work before leaving. I have so much crap to do and I don't know when I'm going to do it. I'm going to try to leave work early tomorrow so I can do things. Tonight we each have plans with friends and will not get anything done. Oy!

T still hasn't finished his autobiography and I am requiring we mail it in on Friday. I have no idea how he's going to finish it. I am very upset about it right now, but he still says he'll get it done. We cannot talk about it without him getting frustrated, and we can talk about anything. We never argue or even get that annoyed with each other, so it feels so weird to have this albatross around our necks. I want him to finish it so we can just mail the damn thing in and get that part over with. We still have a bunch more big hurdles before the waiting just starts.

I have decided to give up giving up stuff. I'm drinking caffeine. I'm drinking alcohol. I've stopped my prenatal. Yes, we have two more vials of donor sperm, but I'm just sick of doing things that indicate I have some sort of hope. I have no hope. I will never get pregnant and have a child. It's just not in the cards for us. If a miracle happened, I'll start taking precautions then. Worse things have happened. Fuck it.

I'm trying to not stress. Our vacation should hopefully be relaxing. But I'm not quite there yet.

I probably won't blog from the road, so I'll not be back until after July 1. I'm sure nobody cares, really, but I just wanted to put it out there.

Have a great couple of weeks.

a lot

We did a deep, deep clean of our house. It's kind of disconcerting, but it's definitely wonderful.

I start my new job tomorrow. Eeep!

I wrote this long, long explanation of my journey for Mel, and because I spent so much time on it I feel compelled to put it up here. So here it is. I didn't proofread this, so forgive my errors.

And remember, it's long.


We have been down multiple paths in our quest to be parents. I
believe that each step we have taken has been a logical progression,
but each step was agonizing.

We started out charting and having timed intercourse. I got pregnant.
I lost the pregnancies. After losing two pregnancies we were tested
to look for a reason and my husband was diagnosed with a balanced
translocation. The OB that called me with these results told me not
to worry about it too much. There was this really great procedure
called PGD that they could perform along with IVF and she was sure I
would be back seeing her in the summer (the diagnosis was in April)
with my happy and healthy pregnancy. That was two years ago. While I
am sure that news of my husband's translocation was a difficult one to
give, I am extremely resentful of this woman to give me such a happy
prognosis and to give me hope that things would go smoothly for us.
It did not prepare me in any way for the agony that was ahead of us.

I didn't want to do IVF. I hated the idea. Looking back now, that
seems extraordinarily silly, but that's where I was at the time. I
just wanted to make our baby the old fashioned way. We are lucky
enough to live in a mandated state, so while we were applying for
insurance coverage we tried the old fashioned way one more time and
needless to say we got pregnant and had a third miscarriage. I knew
that I would have to move on after our third loss. I was angry and I
was resistant, but I was also impatient and I wanted to do what would
give us the best chance. My husband was loathe to see me go through
another miscarriage. He hated the emotional trauma it caused me. It
hurt him to see me hurt. So IVF with PGD it was.

We did IVF with PGD three times. Even though I was able to get
pregnant pretty easily, I was an extremely poor responder to
medication. Our first IVF only produced 2 eggs. Without a
chromosomal disorder, you can hope for a miracle with 2 eggs that one
or both might fertilize and one or both might be strong and become a
baby. But when a balanced translocation is involved, only
approximately one in 8 fertilized eggs will be healthy after PGD, so
we knew it was hopeless. We went ahead with the PGD anyway and had no
embryo transfer. There was no explanation as to why I responded so
poorly. My FSH wasn't extraordinarily high. No one knew.

I clearly needed a new protocol to get more eggs. I was immediately
put on a poor responder protocol. This went smoothly without
questioning. There are poor responder protocols that work better for
some women. Everybody responds to the medications differently. We
did an antagonist protocol. This time we got 4 eggs. All fertilized,
3 made it to biopsy and none were healthy. We again had no embryo
transfer.

While 4 eggs was better, it clearly wasn't enough. I was ready to not
do IVF anymore. I knew it was futile -- I do not produce enough eggs.
The procedures are incredibly invasive and I didn't think there was a
snowball's chance in hell that this would work for us. My husband was
not ready to give up, though. He felt like it was his only chance at
having a biological child. How could I not give this chance to him?
I was very skeptical, but I had to do this last cycle for my husband.

We decided to go with a different poor responder protocol. This also
went smoothly without questioning. We simply needed more eggs if this
was to work for us. We would try anything at this point. Microdose
Lupron it was. We got 5 eggs. 3 fertilized and made it to biopsy.
One of the biopsied cells had no nucleus so its result was
inconclusive. We got a call in the car as we were driving to the
transfer. We fully expected for this transfer to be cancelled, but
there it was. An undiagnosed embryo. Should we transfer it? My
husband and I talked it over during the 10 minutes left of our drive
to the clinic. This was agony. What do we do? Risk another
miscarriage? But how could we not transfer it? What if that was our
embryo? We discussed things with the doctor once we got there. He
said it was up to us, but he saw no reason not to take the risk. What
if? So after agonizing over the decision and marveling over our bad
luck, we transferred. I didn't get pregnant.

We were out of insurance. We felt IVF was futile. I seemed to get
pregnant easily enough, but my husband's sperm was the X factor. So,
we decided to try donor sperm. We agonized over finding a donor.
Nobody was good enough because nobody was my husband. We knew we had
to choose whether personality or looks were more important. We
decided on personality. My husband wanted a computer geek donor
because my husband is a computer geek. We found a few. We read. We
discussed. We disagreed. We slept on it. We only found a couple of
appropriate donors. We whittled it down to a few. We chose. We
slept on it again. I woke up crying -- this was not the right donor
for us. I had a bad feeling about him. I didn't want to use him. My
husband said it was okay, that we didn't need to choose that donor.
We didn't know how we could find a new one because it had been nearly
impossible to find the one I decided I didn't like.

We started our search again. We expanded our criteria a little. We
found someone else. He fit. He was on the skinny side, but otherwise
he fit. We decided. I didn't cry. We slept on it. We ordered 4
vials.

We did 4 IUIs. The first one was natural. The second through fourth
we used Clomid and a trigger shot. We didn't want to risk the timing.
Donor sperm is expensive. Luckily insurance paid for the IUIs. I
didn't get pregnant.

I wasn't getting pregnant now. We thought it might be the donor. We
decided to switch donors on both our decision and our RE's advice. We
thought it would be smart. This wasn't a hard decision. Finding a
new donor was much easier this time around. I guess we were used to
the idea that the donor wasn't my husband and we were more open to
certain differences. We still needed to find a geeky guy who was good
at math. It would be nice to find someone who was a big guy like my
husband is. But we were okay with other differences. So we chose and
it was easier. We bought 4 vials again.

Our 5th IUI with Clomid and a trigger shot worked. I had taken an hpt
and it was negative on day 13, so I was sure it would be a negative.
My beta was 13. I was shocked. Second beta was 88. It more than
doubled. Third beta was 168. Not looking good. Fourth beta was 144.
It was time for my fourth miscarriage.

Now that the translocation factor had been removed, we were afraid
that there might be a female factor reason for this miscarriage. We
knew it just could be because miscarriages happen and it could be bad
luck. I'm 35. Miscarriages happen in women 35 and over pretty
frequently. But I demanded more testing and my RE agreed. We need to
make sure there's nothing going on on my end. I had the testing done
and I will get the results this week.

We are tired. We feel like we have tried everything without success.
We want to be parents. We want this whole thing to be over. I am
tired of cycling. I am just tired. We needed to start thinking about
adoption. Since my husband let go of his genetic connection a year
ago, this was not difficult for him. It was slightly more difficult
for me. I feel a little bit like it's less the genetic connection and
more about never being pregnant long enough to have a child. And I'm
afraid of not being able to choose the biology. At least with donor
gametes you get to choose the biology on some level. But I don't want
to cycle. I want a sure thing, and that's what adoption is.

We went to seminars. We are adjusting to the idea. We think we will
utilize adoption to grow our family. It is a difficult decision, but
it is one we feel is inevitable. We are still adjusting to this idea.
We are still working through this decision. But we know we will move
forward with it.

We own three more vials of donor sperm. They cost us about $1500. If
my testing comes back normal, we will use them. We may use
injectables again for a couple of cycles if our RE thinks it's
appropriate. Since I got pregnant with the Clomid last time around,
I'm not sure right now. We will consider doing IVF one more time with
donor sperm. We are unsure whether we want to do this or not. We are
still deciding. Yes, we are tired, but we need to make sure we have
done everything we can. We do not want to leave any 'what if's'
behind. We need to do everything we can.

We are still in an unstable place with these final decisions, but we
know we have no choice. Even though the choices are limitless, it
feels like the next step is prescribed. But we are close to getting
off this train and to enter an entirely new one.

The worst part of leaving ART behind and entering the adoption
rollercoaster is that you don't really get new relief. It can still
be years before you get a baby. You just leave one form of torture to
endure another.

But what can we do? We want to be parents.

Oprah

I am going to blog about the Oprah show today where they discuss donor conceived children.

The pediatrician at the beginning of the show had a really good attitude about sperm donation. The second donor, not quite so much. He is enjoying playing "father" to his "children." But he's not horrible.

The donor conceived children's stories were.... mostly unhappy. It seemed like they were either children of SMCs or from a long time ago when donation wasn't open. In my opinion, these children are the ones most likely to feel angry about their conceptions.

I see another donor who has the good attitude. I will talk if a donor conceived child if he or she wants, but I'm not going to force myself on a child.

One dc woman does have a dad. She calls her donor Dad and her father Dad. She thinks of herself as having two fathers. This is making me feel pretty ambivalent.

Granted the reasons for conception are different, but I imagine an adopted child would feel similarly about his or her biological parents. I understand the curiosity and the need to meet the donor. I believe in open donors. Our current donor isn't open, but isn't open for the right reason. And has a family member that is donor conceived and I think if we express an interest down the road, I think he would understand.

The pediatrician's wife is also a pediatrician. I like them. They're good. They understand the idea of donor conception well. They don't over condemn, and they don't idealize.

This part is about donor siblings meeting. They are both only children of SMCs. I totally understand these people and why they have a need to meet each other.

So the siblings are talking about a void in their lives being conceived this way. That she, as an only child, was amazed at being able to look into someone else's face and see herself. Well, we have lost this, too. And donor sperm is how we are trying to allow ourselves to have a child, even if that child can't see himself in my husbands face, or we can't see my husband's face in our children.

All I want to say is, the hurt goes both ways, folks.

The pediatrician talked about regulation of the industry. It needs to be regulated better. No argument from me. He also talked about being paid for donation -- how blood donors are not paid (Is that 100% true? They used to get paid.) so why should sperm donors. This is something I think about, too. And I know that other countries do not allow payment for donating gametes. It's a valid point to bring up, though I am not expressing an opinion about that one.

Why were all the dc children women, except for the male reunion sibling? And why aren't egg donors discussed?

They leave with info about the DSR.

All and all, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. The choice of dc people was not quite as diverse as I would have hoped. It would have been nice if they had an adult who, while certainly curious about the donor, doesn't think of the donor as a father and thinks of his or her FATHER as his or her father. I know they exist. I have emailed a couple of them. I have a friend who was donor conceived and didn't find out until she was an adult who feels that way.

But all and all, it could definitely have been worse.

New day, New donor

Blood test is out of the way. We are on to a new donor.

We weren't as picky this time around. We still believe that personality is more important that looks, but this donor is a big guy, just like my T is a big guy. He is strong in math, just like my sweetie is. He reported that he is stubborn, and my dear T has a stubborn streak, himself. He has at least one reported pregnancy, which our last donor did not. He had a family member who suffered from infertility and has a niece who was born via a donor, and that's when he decided to donate himself. He is not an open donor, but we are just going to live with that. His reason for not being open was that the parents that raise the child are the baby's real parents, and he doesn't think he should get involved. I can respect that. Though, if this works out and we would contact him one day, I hope he would be amenable.

Choosing was easier and much faster than I had anticipated. Our last stab at it was long and painful. I guess it's easier the second time around. We bought 4 vials.

I am still planning on using injectables. I'm terrified of multiples, but that feels sort of silly. I really don't want to have multiples. I know a lot of women think twins are great, but I don't. If I ended up with twins, I'd be okay with it, even though it wouldn't be my first choice. But I am completely and utterly terrified of more than that. I guess I shouldn't worry about it since I'm such a poor responder to injectables anyway.

Here's hoping that this guy works.

Nothing doing

I'm already feeling myself up to see if my b00bs are sore. It's only 5dpIUI.

Of course I think they might be a little sore. Of course I think I feel things in my uterus. I feel these things every time. If you look back at my blog, you'll see I'm convinced I'm pregnant every single cycle. Even when I'm not. Sometimes even after I start bleeding.

Right now, I'm hoping to wait until Tuesday before I POAS.

We've starting thinking about adoption. I still like the idea of using a donated embryo, but being very pro-choice (even after all of the crap I've been through) and I just can't stand the idea of giving money to an anti-choice organization. I have barely done any research, but I am hopeful that some of the organizations are about making families and not about 'saving babies.' Anyway, we are looking into domestic adoption. I'm not ready to start pursuing it yet, but I feel like we need to start thinking about it. If not for our first child, then maybe for our second. And maybe for both. And maybe not. I just hate how uncertain everything is. It's all so ambiguous.

I feel like our entire situation is ambiguous. Nothing has been decided for us. We don't have to use donor sperm. We could try on our own and possibly get pregnant. People with balanced translocations do it all the time. Granted, they have tons of miscarriages, but they have children, too. So, we could try on our own. We thought the donor thing would be faster. But I know T grieves the loss of passing on his genes. And though I have been pregnant three times from having s3x, I just can't seem to get pregnant from these dIUIs. At least not so far. Maybe my fertility has become quite compromised in the last year or so. We don't know. We have every possibility in front of us. I realize that everybody going through this has choices to make, but sometimes things are decided for you. I feel like nothing has been decided for us. It's all just up to us and what we think we want to do. We have to guess at what will be the best (and quickest) thing for us.

T is in a bad way. He's just so sad again. Almost despondent, really. I'm not sure what causes his ups and downs. Talking about adoption in therapy made me cry. Maybe that was part of it. He's just been sad for the past few days aside from that, though. Last night he asked what if having a baby doesn't make things better for us. He's worried that our sadness will stay around no matter what. We've been sad our entire married lives. I got pregnant for the first time one month after we were married. I miscarried at 5 weeks. We've been struggling ever since. He just can't imagine that once we have a baby we will feel better. He feels like we've put all our eggs in one basket (so to speak). He's afraid that having a baby won't fix that ache he has in his heart. I told him I really thought it would be better, but I can't promise that. I don't really know for sure. I imagine it is true. I can't imagine that things won't be better once we finally get a baby some day. Other things will move in to bring us troubles -- things will never be perfect. But I think they will be better. I wish I could get him to believe that. I really don't think he does. It makes me so sad to know how sad he is. I'm still trying to not be too sad. It's not working as well as it did last cycle.

It's all just too much.

Weekend and stick peeing

I peed on an OPK today. I did it at work so it wouldn't be so early in the morning. It wasn't that clear. I think it was negative, but I wasn't 100% sure. I think this is the difference between first morning urine and not first morning urine. I was going to pee on another one, but I decided to just do first morning urine tomorrow. And if I have a temp spike tomorrow morning, I can just have my IUI tomorrow, no big deal. The timing would still be fine. I have the sperm in the garage, so we are all set.

So, T and I have decided we have begun to utter sentences we never imagined we would utter. "I have the sperm in the garage," is definitely one of those sentences. How many people have said this? "Rachel has to go pick up our sperm tomorrow," is something else T has said -- and then thought about it, and then is amazed at the things that come out of his mouth. It's so weird. We imagine that we are the first people in all of human history to say these things. If you don't laugh, you'll end up crying.

I'm hopeful the IUI will happen this weekend. If not, it should be by early next week. I hope it's the weekend, though. Then I won't have to take time off work. But there's nothing I can do about it. It happens when it happens.

I keep trying to imagine a scenario where this IUI works and I get pregnant. I know I hope and I pray and I freak out about being pregnant, but I am at this point where I can't imagine that it might be so. How could this possibly work? I can only think about what will be next. Will we do another Cl0mid round? When we run out of vials from this donor, will we try to find a new one? Will I start monitoring? It doesn't even occur to me that we may not have to do this again. I mean, I want it to work. I hope it works. I pray it works. I do not want to do this again. But I can't imagine that it will work and we won't have to make another decison.

Sad today

The other receptionist had to cover for someone on a different floor, so I had to sit at the front desk with the pregnant woman all day. She's due in exactly one month from today, so there is a ton of baby talk with her. It's all people talk to her about. It wasn't bad for most of the day, but I find myself feeling sad. She keeps saying how she's ready and how she wishes the baby would come soon. From that, I can totally tell she's a non IF-er. An IF-er would be paranoid about giving birth before 37 weeks, and would want to keep the baby in for as long as possible to decrease risks. She's ready now, at barely 36. From what I can tell, she's been married for less time than T and I have been. She keeps talking about how much the baby is moving and how he's pressing on her ribs. It's just hard to listen to over and over.

And yesterday T got a picture of the boss's new baby. And the boss responded to T's well wishes, referring to him as 'Uncle T,' which is nice, but poor T's response to me was, "I'm tired of always being Uncle T.' It makes me so sad.

I'm picking up our vial of sperm on Friday. If things are fast, we'll have an IUI on Sunday, but I bet ovulation will be delayed again. Not a huge deal, I just like when it falls on a weekend and we don't have to interfere with work. But it is what it is. Nothing I can do about it.

I feel like I have been more relaxed lately, but I also wonder if it's just that I've become so numb that it feels like I'm relaxed. Our house is a complete disaster, and I just don't have the energy to clean up. I can barely get any chores around the house done at all. I can simply go to work and knit.

Speaking of knitting, no one has signed up for my knitting class so far, so there is a chance that it might be canceled after all of that. I was looking forward to teaching a little again, so that is a disappointment as well. Though, I always knew there was a chance that it would be canceled. It's just that I turned down jobs to keep those afternoons free, and it may have been for naught.

Tonight the Red Sox have their first playoff game. We will watch, but I'm honestly not that excited about the playoffs. I feel like that's another sign of my numbness. I'm a pretty huge Sox fan ordinarily. Of course, maybe it's because they've played like crap lately. Who knows.

I'm trying to hold my chin up (I hate that phrase) and I just can't tell if I am or not. I'm probably not, but I'm crazy enough to convince myself that I'm doing better. Maybe I should stop thinking about it and just clean the fucking kitchen.

Again, a negative

I had my beta today. As expected, I am not pregnant again. The results turned around in less than an hour and a half, which was pretty impressive. I wasn't expecting the call until later today. This nurse seemed less hesitant than others to give me the bad news. I sometimes wonder if some nurses put off the negatives until the end of their phone calls and others try to get them out of the way first before calling people with updates and positives.

I have to set up another phone call with the RE. I have to decide whether to do 2 IUIs next cycle. Honestly, I'm hesitant to do so. I think I'd rather change the timing of my OPKs. I'm going to start taking them between early afternoon and early evening, and then just schedule the IUI for the next day that way. Or, maybe I'll take 2 OPKs per day -- one in the morning and one in early evening. That way I know know what's going on and schedule accordingly. The OPKs seem to work for me, and using twice as many is still much, much cheaper than using 2 vials of donor sperm.

I don't even know where I am emotionally right now. I have been sad for the past few days, but I don't feel really sad right this second. I guess I'm feeling numb. I can't believe how my IF resume is growing. 3 m/c, 3 failed IVF w/PGD, 2 failed dIUI. All of this has happened in two years. It really boggles my mind.

T and I are starting to talk about donor embryos. We're definitely not there yet, but my way of coping is thinking about next steps. We do have several steps before we get there, but I want to find out what those options are like, how much it costs, how/if we're able to have some choice in the embryo selection and things like that. Before we really get to embryo adoption, we will definitely do more dIUIs with both more Cl0mid and injectibles and we will also look at changing donors and trying again before moving on, so we have a while before we get there. I'm just really losing patience with this process.

I called the temp agency and told them I couldn't go back to that job. I lied about the reason, and the woman didn't sound very pleased with me, but screw that. I needed to get the hell out of there. I know it was the right thing for me to do. So I'll have to call for other jobs tomorrow.

Sometimes I wonder when I'll wake up from this nightmare.

I think I need to start doing yoga or something. Allie Domar says that depression can affect fertility. I'm starting to wonder if I'm the reason I'm not getting pregnant.

Sperm Wednesday

I picked up the sperm today. The container was much smaller this time, which I liked. T is feeling sad. I think picking up the sperm and doing the IUI make him sad. I wish there were something I could do to make him feel better, but I don't think there is. I tell him I love him, and I give him a good hug, but that's all I can do. I really can't make this any better for him.

My temp job is insane. I work for a woman in an unpaid position as president of a condo association. Now, it is a huge condo association, but still. Anyway, the reason this woman needs an 'office assistant' is because she doesn't know how to read or send email. It's a hot.mail account. So, she writes out the emails long hand, reads them to me, and I type them into hot.mail and send them. Then I print out a copy for her.

Needless to say, this doesn't take very long. And I only need to do it about 10 times a day. So, most of the day I sit and surf the web. The woman I work for told me that was fine.

It's just so stupid and inefficient! No wonder it takes her so much time to do all this stupid work. She does it twice or three times! What a waste of money for the condo association. But that's not my problem, so I am just trying to keep my mouth shut. Not my forte.

Anyway, still getting negative OPKs. No cm, but I'm chalking it up to Cl0mid. Not sure what's going on.