a full year

It's New Year's, again.  Still no baby, but this time we have the promise of our first fertility treatment only a few weeks away.

Our friends who hosted last year were going to host again this year.  It's kinda their thing.  This year, though, was a blizzard.  We quickly got ready at home, with our outfits picked out a few days before and hustled down town.  Listening to doctor's orders, we hardly drank while we were there.  But we noticed, not too many people did.  We must be getting older, because for the first time in years, we all woke up the next morning bright eyed and bushy tailed.  

I wish I could say that I wasn't thinking about our situation while we were supposed to be having fun, but I was.  It is impossible not to think about it.  

Two weeks later, we are ready for IUI.  The first step is to get my levels checked with blood work and ultrasound. When they tell me everything is perfect, it is then time to start clomid.  This is a medication that causes your egg follicles to grow faster than the average woman.  After 5 days, I go back in for an ultrasound to make sure they are at the right size, and they were.  Ryan had a quick trip to Philadelphia but would be back by the weekend.  I convinced my sister to come over to give me my trigger shot - a small injection of ovidrel into my stomach. This caused me to ovulate on command so that 24 hours later, I would be in prime condition to conceive. 

Luckily, our procedure day fell on a weekend so there was no need to take time off work.  The actual procedure was a piece of cake.  Similar to an annual exam.  After about 15 minutes in the exam room, we were ready to hit the road... to wait... again. 

The next week or so was agony.  I was immediately put on Progesterone (the hormone your body gives off in the earliest stages of pregnancy).  The three days following my IUI procedure, I slept about 12-14 hours per night.  I tracked everything that could possibly be a symptom.  If you googled early pregnancy symptoms, I guarantee I had every single one you found - real or fabricated.  Five days post IUI, I went back in for bloodwork to make sure that my hormone levels were where they needed to be.  

My nurse called me back at 10am. Whoa. This was either very good or very bad news cause she usually called me around 2pm.  I could tell immediately that it was good.  She told me that my progesterone needs to be around 20 and mine was 38.5 - SO good!  Her squeals made me so excited!  I told her I was sleeping a lot and she screeched.   Now I was supposed to wait another week before I could go back in for a blood pregnancy test...