Socks and BBT

So ages ago I told you I was going to have another go at making socks, well finally, here is the finished product!

It has taken slightly longer then expected thanks mainly to me being distracted by other things and going on holiday. Its not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but it fits and is quite comfy! Now I just have to make the second one, hmmmm, fingers crossed I get it done before Christmas!

Its all very quite in our household at the moment, hubby is off at a conference, in an all inclusive resort in Mallorca (its alright for some!) so I'm all on my lonesome. The plan is to use this time productively, tidy the house, get some craft projects done, but in reality I'll most likely spend the two weeks eating junk food and watching all the trashy tv I can!

On the IF front there's not a lot to report, I've decided to try and do my BBT charting using the not so pleasant way, nothing like a cold thermometer up your hoo ha first thing in the morning! Hopefully I'll get a nicer chart this way so we can get an idea of what's going on in there. I'm also now a week into taking Angus castus, no side effects yet but I know it can take a few cycles to get into your system so we'll wait and see!

Well that's about it for now!

xxx

Not posted in awhile...

Hello lovely people in the internetland!

Well its been quite a long time since my last post, mainly because we've been on holiday! A lovely 3 weeks away which included being a bridesmaid at my best friends wedding! We had an amazing time catching up with family and friends and even managed to fit in a trip to the university hubby is hoping to get a job in next year. Coming home wasn't so much fun though, we were greeted by envelopes from our health insurers and the lab that did some of my blood tests. The envelope from the lab contained a bill for $3100!! I was shocked! And the ones from our insurers contained rejections for the payment of the blood tests and my HSG, and a rejection of an appeal to pay for the HSG. Fun fun fun. After lots of phone calls and emails I've found out our fertility center is working on the HSG costs and putting in all the appeals for us so I don't have to worry about that one and finally today we've managed to get the lab bill reduced by 90%!! Woohoo. So now I'm much less stressed out I will return to regular posts I promise! Oh and in case your wondering, I'm on cd5 today, no relaxed, holiday bfp for us

Crinone!

Yay my Crinone has turned up!!! It wasn't a mistake to order off the cheap pharmacy after all! Ok the box is not in English but the instructions it came with are and it all looks correct! Woohoo!!

14dpo today so waiting for af to turn up in a day or so, this really is the worst bit of the cycle, you just know she's going to turn up but there's always that little bit of you that thinks maybe, just maybe she wont, which then makes me stress at every little twitch or niggle. AHHHHHH

To distract myself I've taken up making socks again, I say again, I've only managed one pair in the last year but then it got hot and I lived in flip flops so what was the point in making socks? Any way, so far about half way though the leg of sock number one, was going to make them knee high but think I might get board before then so they may just be ankle socks, will see how I go!

Why body do you hate me?

I swear at times my body is actively working against me. It knows the plan, knows what it has to do but somehow it still decides to follow its own agenda. I had everything so nicely worked out, AF would come, we'd go to the RE for baseline bloods and ultrasound, then start clomid, do the trigger shot, catch that egg and then go happy on holiday for three weeks and come back with a beautiful bfp. Well that's all gone out the window. My body decided it didn't want to release that egg when it was meant to, no, it wanted to wait another week so today I'm only 12dpo and AF isn't due for another 4 days. So this all now means that we won't be doing clomid this cycle as we can't do the follicle tracking from the other side of the world. grrrrr.

SO next cycle will be another attempt at a natural cycle, like we've had so much success with those in the past! Then September will be a break as hubby is going to a conference which was timed around ovulation but now will be perfectly timed for my fertile week. Great. My chances of being pregnant this year are slowly slipping away from me. At times I think I should just give up. Isn't the sign of insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome? Well that's what I've been doing month after month. The only problem is, I'm just too stubborn to actually give up, I just can't do it. So I will keep going, keep suffering the heartache cycle after cycle until we reach our end goal.    

AMH

I got my final blood test results today :) These last ones were testing genetics, cystic fibrosis, fragile X, and a few others and my AMH (Anti-Müllerian hormone - testing ovarian reserve) levels. All the genetics have come back fine, which is what I thought they would be anyway as there's no family history of any of these problems but I was concerned about my AMH. When we had our first meeting with the RE, he pretty much implied the problem was likely to be me, I'm not sure if that was just because there's so much more that can go wrong on my end or if its easier for them to fix if it is, or I was just feeling quite sensitive! He went into great depth about what would happen if I had a low ovarian reserve, how we could use the eggs of a younger fertile woman, at this point he was making me feel past my best at the ripe old age of 28!! So I prepared myself for a low result, maybe just slightly below average. Heart pounding I opened the link to my blood result and there it was, AMH, 4.5 ng/mL!! Far from low, in fact its considered on the verge of being high!! Below are the rough limits for low, normal and high AMH.

low reserve <1
normal reserve 2- 3
high reserve 4 - 6  

I feel so proud of my eggs, they showed him, I'm not past my best, in fact my eggs should be good to go for years to come!! I have done some reading on high AMH levels, and mine is in line for mild pcos, showing I ovulate most months but not all. It will also mean that I should respond VERY well to ovulation stimms medication, which will put us at a higher risk of multiples, I could deal with twins but triplets or quads are out of the question!!

In other news, I picked up my Clomid from target on Friday and ordered my Crinone gel from the buck a day pharmacy, I really hope this wasn't a mistake and it arrives and is the correct meds!  

Ov and meds

I ovulated woohoo, and almost on time this cycle, only one day late at cd17! So now that's out the way its time to start getting things ready for next cycle (How pessimistic does that sound?!) I'm actually getting quite excited about our first (and hopefully last!) medicated cycle I have really high hopes for it although pricing everything up it better bloody work first time! Here's a break down of the costs:

Monitoring: $500
IUI: $300 (still not sure if we're going to do this bit or not)
Clomid (100mg) $18
Ovidrel: $115
Crinone: $500

Total: $1443 / $1143 (without IUI)

I know its a lot less then if we were doing injectables or IVF but still that's a lot of money. I have found an online pharmacy (buck a day pharmacy) which will do the Crinone for $206 which is a lot cheaper but not sure how much I trust the site, it does get good reviews and has an active facebook page so may take a gamble and try it although they say it takes 2 -3 weeks for the meds to be delivered so may have to order it soon. I really do miss the NHS, never had to worry about the cost of meds or doctors appointments before, if you needed something you could get it easily, sure they can be a bit slow at times but at least its a lot less stressful!!

SA results

We received hubbys SA results today, I must say, they're not as bad as I was expecting. It seems his little swimmers are a little slow and oddly shaped but overall not too bad. I've ordered some fertilaid for men and motilityboost for men to see if we can get his numbers up a bit before next cycle. Hubby took the news pretty well although he hasn't seen the numbers yet as I didn't want him to get upset that only 3% of his swimmers are a normal shape even if 4% is normal. Looking at his current results though I do think we should go ahead and do an IUI next cycle, if we're spending the money on meds and monitoring anyway its not that much extra to do the IUI.

In other news, I've applied for a new job! It's only a temp type thing and only runs until Christmas but would be great to have some extra money to help cover the fertility costs!

Color Pale Yellow    Viscosity Normal  Normal  Volume 3.6 mL  1.5-5 mL    Concentration (Avg) 41.5 Million/mL  >=15 Million/mL    Motility (Avg) 31 % Progressive  >=40%  Agglutination None  None-Minimal  WBC 0  <5/hpf  Progression 2+  2+ to 3+  pH 8.1  7.2-7.8  RBC 0  0/hpf  Normal Morph 3  >=4% (WHO criteria)  Tapering Heads 0    Amorphous Head 92    Midpiece Defect 5    Macrohead 0    Tail Defect 0    Microhead 0    Immature 0    Interpretation Abnormal: Mild Asthenozoospermia