BFN

I broke down and POAS but got a BFN! I am not surprised but still really disappointed. I am now trying to decide if I want to cycle again next month or take some time off from officially ttc and focus on the adoption and getting healthy.

At a church function tonight we went around the room to say what we were thankful for during the past year. I started crying when it was my turn (I am such a stupid sap) and told everyone that I am most thankful for D. Everyone at the party knows about my IF struggles and the adoption so hopefully they understood why I was crying!

14.2

My progesterone level is 14.2, which means that I actually ovulated this cycle (they were looking for a 12 or better). We don't know when but its at least something given that its only the 3rd time this year that it has happened. I'll keep my fingers crossed the next few days and if AF does not show by Saturday I'll POAS. Wish me luck!

K

8 Kids and Counting

While C's parents were in town for Thanksgiving, I learned that one of C's cousin's wife is pregnant with her 8th (yes that is eighth) baby. She is going to have 8 kids 9 and under! Only two of them are twins. They can't afford to take care of the ones they have but do not see anything wrong with procreating again. Given that my MIL and grandmother in law know about the adoption, I did let it slip that I thought it was unfair that C and I couldn't have another child but they can have 8 kids that they can't really take care of. They both agreed whole-heartedly so that made me feel a little better.

Other than that, our Thanksgiving was really nice. C's parents and grandmother are so great with D and even though he only gets to see them a few times of the year, he adores them too.

I hope everyone had a nice day.

Update

We do not have any updates on the adoption front. We are still waiting for a match. We did get a call from ANLC about our homestudy. Since we are being marketed to races other than caucasion, we need to have our homestudy updated. I'll call the social worker after Thanksgiving about that. I added a ticker at the bottom of the page to keep track of the time since our profile went live. We are just under 3 months now. Seems like a lot longer.

In the meantime, we are still TTC just in case. This cycle I tried a new drug (for me), Fermara, but I either ovulated early or did not ovulate at all. When I went to the RE for my scan on day 13, my uterine lining was whitish so RE thought maybe I o'ed already. I went today to get a progesterone draw to see for sure. Either way, no IUI for us this cycle. I may or may not try again. This year I have done 4 clomid cycles (and o'd once) and one femara. Last year, I did 4-5 clomid cycles with a different RE (but o'd almost every time). I am getting really tired of taking drugs and suffering through hot flashes, etc. and not even ovulating. It's just so hard to sit back and do nothing but wait for a match. It feels so out of our hands and that is very frustrating.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Two Months and Counting

Our profile has now been up for two months and we still have not heard anything. I obsess over our profile count (although I know that a majority of the hits are other prospective adoptive parents looking at profiles so they can do theirs). I read D a Tarzan book yesterday and was able to use it to explain adoption to him. I am not sure he understood but at least it is a start. How do you explain such a concept to a 4 year old? If anyone has dealt with that, I'd appreciate some advice.



I mentioned in my last post that I was going to Las Vegas for a work trip. I had a great time and discovered that I am actually pretty good at Texas Hold'em. I actually won our work-sponsored tournament and got a nice prize.



I have also discovered that old habits die hard. Even though we are extremely excited about adding to our family through adoption, I still keep track of cm and try to time things right just in case. DH went in our hot tub yesterday and I raised my voice at him about it. Of our three pregnancies, two have been DIY so I still have hope.



We took D to his first college football game this past weekend - SMU vs. Tulane (I went to Tulane for law school). The game was fun but D hit a wall right after half time and didn't really pay attention to the game. I think we'll hold off for another few years before we try that again. We'd love to take him to an LSU game (undergrad for both me and DH). Nothing beats Tiger Stadium on a Saturday night!


I realize that this post is all over the place but I hadn't posted in a while so thought I'd post an update.

Still Waiting

Our profile has been live for about a month now and we havn't heard anything. I knew it would take a while to get a match so I just need to take a deep breath and relax. When it happens it will be the baby meant for us.

In other news, I am going to Vegas next week for a businss trip. I am excited about staying at the Bellagio. I've heard great things about the hotel. C will be a single dad for two nights. I know that he and D will have a great time without me.

Nothing else exciting going on right now.

My Mom

For some reason I have been thinking about my mom a lot more than usual lately. Its been 3 1/2 years since she died and almost 4 years since her diagnosis. I still miss her so much. I am sad that D never got to know her (she was diagnosed with acute leukemia the week D got out of the NICU). There are a few pictures of her holding D from his first Christmas that I show him occasionally but it really sucks that he missed out on that relationship! I really missed her when I had my m/c last year (she flew in and spent a week with me after my first m/c). As we have struggled to have another baby and moved on to adoption, I miss not having her to support us and be there. Other than Chris, I really don't have anyone to talk to about our struggles.

Anyway, I am not sure why I am thinking about her so much but know that she is looking down on us and smiling at D and wishing us the best of luck as we wait for a match.

We are up and running

Our adoption marking website is live! I am so excited to actually be starting the process officially. We actually beat my self-imposed deadline too. I don't love all of the pictures that they chose (we sent them a CD with tons of pictures), but they are ok. I am sure that I will be obsessing over the number of hits we get every month. Now we just have to wait until the mother of our future child finds us. Lets hope that it is sooner rather than later.

Impatient

Its been three weeks today since we e-mailed our marketing material and mailed out our photos for our adoption website. I am really anxious to see the site and get it up and running. It should definitely be ready this week, which is ahead of my personal goal of the end of August. Once it is up and running, we'll be able to log in to see how many hits, etc. we are getting. I hope we don't have to wait too long for a match!

Chemicals in Plastic - Future Infertility Risks

I read this article in the USA Today on Wednesday that has me worried about D and the countless other baby boys that have spent time in the NICU over the last many years. The article talks about the risk of future infertility issues to newborn males that spend time in the NICU due to a hormone-like chemical(DEHP)in plastic. DEHP is used in feeding tubes and other tubing. D spent 7 weeks in the NICU and had A LOT of tubes. I would not wish infertility issues on my worst enemy and pray that D never has to experience it. They are doing a lot more studies on the chemical but in the meantime a lot of hospitals are pledging to move away from using plastic with DEHP.

Nothing New

I do not have much going on right now. I started clo.mid last night (150 mg) and go back to the RE next Friday to see if anything is going on. He still has not given me a good reason as to why my ovary would all of the sudden stop producing follicles. He again mentioned donor eggs. For us adoption is definitely the best choice. We are very excited about having a baby within the next year. We just hope that a birth mother likes us and chooses us once our materials go online.

Saw the RE and Other Musings

I saw the RE on Wed. It was a really short appointment - less than 15 minutes total. We decided that the next step would be to do the clo.mid challenge again to see how my second FSH number looks. When I did the challenge back in Jan., both numbers were fine. Truthfully I am not even sure why I am doing this other than to have a definitive answer as to why my ovary (yes, I only have one working ovary) stopped working out of the blue.

________________________________________________________
C gets his hard cast on his foot today so I will be taking off work this afternoon to bring him to the doctor. We are going to do lunch first so that will be nice.

________________________________________________________
I have been feeling really blue lately - I have no idea why. I can't focus at work and am exhausted when I get home. I don't want to work out and have been eating horribly. Whatever has me in a funk, I hope to shake it soon.

Marketing Materials Submitted and Misc.

Last week we submitted our photos, Dear Birthmother Letter and resume paragraphs. We are no on the "In Progress" part of the ANLC site: http://www.adoptionnetwork.com/waitingfamilies/profile-hold.html?id=6417

Our full profile should be up and running in the next week or so.

___________________________________________________________

I decided to go to one last appointment with my RE. My appt is tomorrow. I just want to know what happended. After always ovulating to all of the sudden not ovulating or even producing follicles is weird to me. I want to make sure there is not something more serious happening.

___________________________________________________________

Today is D's fourth birthday. I can't believe he is 4 already. Where has the time gone. We had his party on Sunday at the town fire station. All of the kids had a great time meeting the firemen and looking at the trucks.

___________________________________________________________

C broke his foot and had surgery last Tuesday. He gets is full cast on Friday. I am exhausted having to do everything that C normally does. Just 8 more weeks and then we'll be back to normal - I hope.

Almost There

We are pretty close to getting our marketing materials finalized. The pictures are burned to a CD and I send C the "final" versions of the Dear Birthmother letter and resume paragraphs for one last review. I am hoping to get them all sent off today since C is having surgery on his foot tomorrow and will be out of pocket for a while.

On a different topic, I am thinking about making a consultation appoitment with my RE to find out his view as to why I all of a sudden stopped ovulating. My FSH level is still below 10 so I do not think it is premature ovarian failure like he initially thought. I am convinced that the cyst that I had back in January damaged my ovary. I am very content with our decision to adopt but a part of me wants to know what is going on with my body. Is that weird?

First Adoption Steps

Once we decided to go the adoption route, we did things very quickly. It was early May when we made the decision (but we had been talking about it since before D was born when we were having troubles getting pg the first time). I did a ton of internet research and we requested more information from a couple of agencies and/or facilitators. Once we chose our facilitator, we immediately started the home study process. Our social worker came out to our house in mid-June and just mailed out our report yesterday - I can't wait to read it. We are currently in the process of writing our Dear Birthmother letter and resume pages and pulling lots of pictures together for our website. I have set a personal goal of having all of that complete by the end of July so we can be up and running on the web by the end of August.

Its been really hard finding pictures of me and C (without D) within the last few years since all of our pictures in the past few years have included D. Hopefully we picked some good ones and the mother of our future baby will like them.

Once we get up and running on the website, we just wait for a match.

K

Introduction

Its been a while since I first started this blog so I guess its time for me to add an introduction. C and I tried for 4 years to get pregnant on our own (with one mc in there). We finally went to an RE and got pregnant with D on our first clomid cycle. D was born born prematurely - at 31 weeks - due to a previously undiagnosed bicornuate uterus. He spent 7 weeks in the NICU but now he is a strong, healthy almost 4 year old. When D was about a year old we starting trying again. I went back to the same RE and thought clomid would do the trick again. Well, we tried 8 clomid cycles total (with 4 IUIs) with no luck.

After that, we took a break for a while and actually got pregnant on our own last year. Unfortunately, I lost that baby at 12 weeks. A few months after that, I found a new RE and thought I'd see what he had to say. I really liked him - he was much more personable and would take the time to actually explain things. On my first clomid cycle with my new RE in Januaray of this year, I had several good follicles on my right side (my left ovary never really developed so I only have one working ovary). After the trigger and IUI, I had excrutiating pain and ended up in the ER diagnosed with a very large cyst. Seems that even though I has several good follicles I did not ovulate that month after all (maybe the cyst prevented ovulation???). It took a few months for the cyst to go away. I have done two other clomid cycles since then and neither of them produced any follicles at all. Doctor thought I was going through pre-mature menopause but my FSH levels are still under 10. I havn't been back to talk to him since I got those test results back.

Does anyone know if it is possilbe that the cyst could have damaged my ovary so I am not longer producing follicles. Thats the only thing I can think of since I had always responded to clomid before.

Last time I saw him (when he thought my FSH would be high), he mentioned donor eggs, however, by that time, C and I had already decided to adopt. I'll post more later about the adoption process so far. I has been a whirlwind already.

K

New at This

I am new at the blogging thing but thought I should start an online journal of our adoption journey. I'll post more of an introduction later.