Infertility specialist

Two weeks ago, I met with the infertility specialist that came highly recommended by my neighbor and wonderful friend Shei'la. I just LOVE this man! He came and fetched me from the waiting room himself and spent 2 hours talking to and examining me. Because of my age, he's not going to fool around here. Next cycle I'll be on Clomid to help me ovulate. And since Clomid can thicken everything up, he will do intrauterine insemination to make sure only the strongest swimmers are in the pool. He will try that for 4 cycles, then move on to the next strongest fertility drug if I'm not pregnant by then. He claims a 25% success rate per month and is optimistic that I'll be pregnant by the 4th cycle (which would be January).

Steve was none too happy about the IUI but is willing to do whatever it takes. At the consult appt, Doc wanted to do another semenanalysis since it'd been 2 yrs since the last one. He also wanted to freeze some of the sample so as to take some of the pressure off Steve having to produce a sample on demand whenever I happen to ovulate. And there begins the small fiasco...

Doc had said we could drop off the sample in the Lancaster office (which is right on our way to work), just to make an appointment and make sure to mention that some is to be frozen. After Doc was finished with me, I went to the nurse for a blood test and some pamphlets, etc. Nothing else was ever said about the sample appointment.

When I called to make the appointment, I was informed that freezing is only done in the York office (which is about 35-45 minutes in the opposite direction from home). Well, beings that we're willing to do just about anything it takes to get pregnant again, I took the York appointment and figured we'd just have to figure a way to get the sample there. When I dropped off the sample this morning (making myself 15 minutes for work), I mentioned that Doc wanted some of it to be frozen. They got the lab manager to talk to me. She said "Oh. Freezing requires bloodwork to be done beforehand, an 8 page consent form to be filled out (in case something happened to Steve while they were still in possession of his sample), and a $175 (or whatever number she said) fee that insurance doesn't cover." I told her that there'd been some serious miscommunication on this issue; first about the location, now the fee, paperwork, and bloodwork. So, I made an executive decision and told them not to freeze any, to just do the analysis. AGH! If I'd known all that, we could've just dropped the sample in the Lancaster office in the first place!!!!!!! I guess I still love them even now that I know what I know. I will just have to ask more questions in the future. I just hate when somebody has me by the short and curlies.

So far, today is day 26 of this cycle. Soon I should be ready to start the next cycle.

Another one bites the dust

We've been trying to get pregnant again for 8, make that 9, months now. I was actually hopeful that this might be the month; the 2 yr anniversary of getting pregnant with Stefanie. I was 8 days late (on a 28 day cycle, which my body never follows). I took a home pregnancy test on Tuesday (negative) and again Thursday (another negative). I felt a wave of nausea on Wednesday evening, the kind that only comes from progesterone poisoning. I suppose it was just wishful nausea though. I had an emotional meltdown last night as I was putting Stefanie to bed. I suppose I knew in my heart that this was not the month. I had also been thinking about the saying that God does not give us more than we can handle. So maybe it's God's plan not to give us a second blessing because he knows I can't handle it? I hope it's just that now is not the time He has planned for us. I felt so ready to give up on this dream of having a second child.

We have the infertility doctor appointment set for Sept 13. I guess we can decide what we want to pursue after we see what Dr Filer has to say. We'd discussed adoption when we were having trouble conceiving before Stefanie. My dear friend next door has been on the adoption waiting list for 6 months now and told me they were to expect a 9month to 1year wait for an infant. I'm just not sure how I feel at this point, except incredibly sad and disappointed.

There is no need for further home pregnancy tests this month...good old Aunt Flo showed up this morning. At least I know now. That means I can go do the bloodwork tomorrow for the FSH and TSH.

How much crap can one person cram into one day? Ah, that's a whole Blog unto itself.

Recovery

My sweet Ellie Belly is doing much much better now. She was even trying to play with Precious and I hate to break it up, but don't want her to re-injure herself. I still give her doggy massages in the morning to loosen up those stiff muscles, but haven't given her any meds for the past 2 days. Thanks for everyone's concern!

DUH

OK - still learning how this thing works...here is Ellie's picture that was supposed to be included in the last post.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v373/terri65/100_0488.jpg

Ellie has a blown disc in her neck, just below where her collar rests. Apparently it's a common problem for dobermans. Her whole shoulder area is in massive spasm and there is a pinched nerve affecting her left front leg. Our wonderful vet, Margot says she should recover just fine with bed rest, limited activity for a few weeks, and lots of serious strong medicines. She's on Vicadin and Valium every 4-6 hours. So far, 4 hours seems to be too long for her stand it. Margot gave me permission to give her more meds as needed. Poor baby girl! The confusion she was experiencing was supposedly from the extreme pain, and not knowing where it was coming from or why she was having it.

She had a very rough night last night, probably from the car ride to and from the vet and from the examination. She awoke at 2 am for her scheduled dose, but woke me again less than 2 hrs later crying pretty hard. All I could think to do was massage her spasming shoulders, so that's what I did for the next 2-1/2 hours until the alarm clock went off. She seems more comfortable resting on the recliner rather than in her own bed, so I'll let her sleep there tonight if she wants. She'll probably want to be upstairs with the rest of the family though.

We are supposed to keep Stefanie and Precious away from Ellie until she's feeling better, to avoid any incidents of somebody hurting somebody else. Stefanie grabbed Ellie's back leg before I could get there. What a good girl! She didn't even growl. She just sort of moaned. I guess she could see that I was coming to her rescue.

Unfortunately, I know what kind of pain Ellie is in. I doubt I've had it that severely for quite some time, probably not since I first injured my back in 1990. It makes me feel all the more empathetic to my sweet Ellie Bean! We're all hoping she will be back to her old self very soon!

MIA

I've not dropped off the face of the earth....just needed an emotional break for a bit after getting all that Daddy stuff out.

Plus I'm busy stuffing envelopes for the charity I support (Doberman Pinscher Rescue of PA - www.dprpa.org ) And my older dobie, sweet Ellie Bean, Ellie Belly, Ellie Ellie Oxen Free!, is acting very strangely since Sunday. She's confused, doesn't walk in a straight line, puked Tuesday night, and is favoring her front left paw now. I'm so afraid she had a mini-stroke. Her appointment is tonight at 4. Hopefully it's just an inner ear infection. Update tomorrow I hope.

Daddy - The Final Chapter

I hadn't heard from nor tried to contact Daddy since July 04.

In February 05, my cousin, Donna (Mom's sister's daughter), died. She'd been a drug addict most of her life. It seemed to me that she was turning her life around late in 2004. Then she received a cash settlement for some traffic accident she'd been in. Now she had money. I guess the temptation was just too much for her. She and her common law husband got a hotel room and did a bunch of crystal meth. She locked herself in the bathroom and started mainlining it. He said he tried to revive her but she died on the way to the hospital. My poor aunt...this was her 2nd (and last) child she had to bury (the first was stillborn).

You're probably wondering where Daddy fits into this sadness.... There are still 4 cemetary plots in the family cemetary that are titled in joint name. My mom wanted to give one of these plots to my aunt for my cousin. Mom couldn't legally do this without Daddy's signature. So it fell to me to contact him about this. His phone number was disconnected. The email I sent him was returned as undeliverable. We drove past his trailer and it was empty. His car was no longer in the driveway. I got Mom to call that same cousin of his to see what they knew. They told Mom "Oh yes, they moved back to California a couple of months ago!" Well that just burns my bottom! Yet again, he moved and neglected to tell me. I am still supposed to get his phone number from his sister, my Aunt Jean, and call him about switching the plot deeds. I'm not calmed down enough to do that just yet. Besides Aunt Jean just had a battle with breast cancer. I don't want to start talking to her about Daddy while she's not feeling well. I really wish I didn't have to even contact him about the plot deeds. I just want to be SO DONE with him.

The End. (?)

Daddy - Part 3

Sometime in my 9th or 10th grade year of high school, Daddy and Barbara disappeared. Rumour had it that they'd moved to California. He didn't tell me, my sister, or my mom he was leaving. And of course then the pittens he was giving for child support stopped too. If we weren't struggling before that, we sure started struggling then! I had been babysitting for my dear friend Wendy since 7th grade, but now those earnings had to go towards buying my own school clothes and supplies and such.

We didn't hear from Daddy again until right before my graduation. He called and said he'd try to make it home for the ceremony. I knew by then not to hold my breath for that event! I got a few more phone calls from him sporadically over the next 3 or 4 years. Then I joined the Air Force (not to follow in his footsteps) and still heard from him sporadically at best. I was almost always the one to initiate contact.

When I called to tell him I had orders to Panama, he suddenly tried to act like he's my dad or something. He kept trying to tell me I wasn't going to like it in Panama. I said "Ya know what? You don't know that!" We chitty-chatted the rest of the phone call and I didn't hear from him again until he came home to visit my Grandma (his mom) in 1997. I took my neice Sarah to see him - this was the first time he'd ever even acknowledged Sarah, who was 5 at the time. He and Barbara were cooking dinner for Grandma the next night and invited me over to join them. I told them I could come but not til after 6 pm since I worked til 5 in the city. That was fine at the time. The next night, I called as soon as I got home, around 5:50 and they said, "Oh, we've already eaten. Dinner is over." Well! HMPH!

He moved again, in 1999 I think, and I got the birthday card I'd sent him returned by the Post Office. So I didn't hear from him again until Grandma died in February of 2000 and he came home for the funeral. They gave us a wedding gift (we got married in 1998), took us out to dinner, and promised to try harder to keep in touch. We got an Easter card (who sends Easter cards??), then nothing again! I pretty much gave up on him at this point.

Then in the summer of 2002, I saw my Aunt Jean (daddy's sister) at a yard sale. She said he'd moved again and said for me to call her for the new address. I said I'd wait until I had news to tell him to get the address (we were trying to get pregnant at that point).

We did get pregnant finally in August 2003, but I really had no ambition to contact him again. Then in September 2003, my mom ran into a cousin of Daddy's (also a friend of hers) who told her that Daddy was now back in Lancaster County! The phone number the cousin shared with me was incorrect. The cousin told Daddy that I was trying to contact him and gave him my phone number. Still, I heard nothing..... Then the new phone books came out and I looked him up. There he was, plain as day...Ken and Barbara Bailey. The address listed shocked me. I practically drove past his house every day on my way to work!!! Eventually I got up the nerve to call him. I told him I had heard he was back in town and saw his phone number in the new book and wanted to call to share some news with him. He said "I thought you already knew I was back for a couple months now?" (insert eye-roll here) I said "Yes, but Tom gave me the wrong phone number and I had to wait for the phone book to come out to find you" (mentally screaming "why the flock didn't you call ME you SOB???") Anyway, I told him we'd moved into a 4 bedroom house (he last saw us when we had a 3 bedroom townhouse). He wanted to know what we needed with all that room? I said "Well one of the rooms is going to have to be a nursery soon because we're having a baby - you're second grandchild" He said "That's nice, but aren't you almost 40?" (mentally screaming "you should flocking well KNOW how old I am you SOB!!") I said sweetly "Yes, I'm 39 now and will be 40 when the baby is born". Chitty chatty chitty chatty, blah blah blah. I had 2 or 3 other phone calls from him during my pregnancy. I called him 2 or 3 times too. Things seemed to be going ok.

In May, when Stefanie was born, Daddy came to see us in the hospital. There was a tear in his eye when I handed her to him and said "Here ya go Pappy". He just looked at her for the longest time. Barbara kept saying how she wished they lived closer so she could just spoil Stefanie rotten (she doesn't drive) and how much she misses her great-granddaughter in California (they'd been babysitting her before they came back here). She was just gushing.....

And then the silence returned. I called and left 4 or 5 messages and emailed Daddy twice about Stefanie's Christening Ceremony in July. Nothing... No acknowledgement, no "sorry but we're waxing our floor that day", nothing. I didn't even try again for months.

more next time....

Daddy - Part 2 (miniature version)

The first day of eighth grade was positively humilitating for me but I didn't know it until a weeks later. I went to the wrong homeroom (an error on the list posted in the lobby) and this girl Terry Baker said in a sly, mocking tone "Your dad is Ken Bailey, isn't he? I know him" Turns out, her mother was "the other woman", Barbara. Terry continued to torture me throughout that school year, threatening to beat me up if I didn't stop walking past her house on my way home from school, etc etc. On a side note, I was quite shocked about 7 years ago to run into Terry and see that she actually turned out to be a decently nice person.

A Long Time Ago - Daddy, part 1

So many people who've heard my "story" tell me I should write a book. So maybe this is the beginning of that project. It'll probably be all kinds of out-of-order but I have to write it down as things come to me.

My daddy is an emotionally unavailable selfish lost soul. He was raised by his single mother with his 2 half-sisters, with no male roll-model in his life. He told me stories of his childhood...things like sleeping on the playground in the summer, then stealing milk from people's milk boxes (way back when they still did home delivery). He joined the Air Force as an aircraft electrician. He was ORDERED to write a letter to my grandma after she contacted his first sgt. complaining that she'd not heard a peep from him since he enlisted. He wrote "Dear Mom. I am fine. Signed, Ken" or something to that effect.

When he came home from the Air Force, he met and married my mom. She got pregnant with my brother, Kenny, within a year or so of being married. My brother died at the age of 6 weeks from viral pneumonia. Personally I think my dad checked out, emotionally, from our family at his death. After 2 more years of trying, I was born, then my sister about 2 yrs later. At least daddy made some sort of a feeble attempt to be my dad. He didn't even try with my sister.

He was a milkman (ironic, huh?). The running joke was always that we are the milkman's kids. He would get up and go to work around 3 am, come home and sleep til supper, eat, then go up to the firehouse, where he was a volunteer fireman, and hang out. Sometime after we'd be in bed, he'd come home and sleep again til it was time for work. Saturday's were our best bet of seeing him, but most of the time, he was working a parttime job, or helping some buddy, or hanging at the fire house. Sunday's were reserved strictly for golfing.

The only real emotion I ever saw from my daddy was when my maternal grandmother died in 1974. He picked us up from school on our way home for lunch and his voice cracked when he told us the news that she'd died in her sleep.

In 1978, he left us for another woman... Barbara. I tried to like her, really I did. It's just not possible!

Time to go! more on Daddy next time....

Today's ramblings...

The OB/GYN appointment went as expected...we reviewed the things I already know from the first time trying to get pregnant. He scheduled the usual tests (FSH, TSH, and Progesterone blood serum). If the tests are all good, I'll just go straight to the infertility specialist...a different one this time. Last time we went to Dr Dodson at Hershey Med Center. Nothing wrong with him except his location. Dr Philer has an office in Lancaster now and also now participates in my health plan, so he's our choice this time, if need be. The first 2 tests, FSH and TSH will be tomorrow (Saturday) since AF was kind enough to show up yesterday. the Pbs test will be Aug 16 (day 20).

There seem to be no residual effects of the hormonal meltdown from last post. I feel totally normal and happy again.

Stefanie is at my mom's today. Mom called to share a very funny story this morning. Stefanie turned on my mom's very loud vacuum cleaner (she loves to push buttons). Well it scared the living crap outta her so she ran to hug the first thing she could find....mom's freestanding air conditioner! So after mom rescued her from the air conditioner, she was holding on for dear life for quite awhile - 2 handsful of hair, cheek to cheek.

Maybe more later.... depends on how the day goes

At last, it's LATER

I have some time right now, while I'm waiting for it to be time to go to my OB-GYN appointment. I'm hoping that this turns into my first prenatal appointment rather than the "we've been trying to conceive for 6 months now and can't get pregnant again" appointment, as it is currently set up. I don't blame my eggs for not wanting to come out. They're old and tired. It must be so cozy for them to stay inside the ovaries. I did have one brave egg emerge in 2003, thank God!

Stefanie has been SO funny lately. I just love watching her walk/toddle around. She's gotten into a routine of grabbing her tiny little purse, throwing her play keys inside, putting the purse on her shoulder, then heading for the door. Sometimes, she even waves bye-bye at the door. Last night, she tucked one of the dog's bones under her arm and was running back and forth between her room and our room. It was hilarious. I thanked God for the moment, because I certainly needed the laugh right then.

For some reason, hormones and circumstances hit me very very hard Saturday. I guess it had a lot to do with Steve "picking" alot lately. He gets this horrible habit from his ex-step-dad. He seems to think he's being funny and I think it's one of his ways of trying to communicate things he's uncomfortable saying out loud and directly. He'll make a comment about the "jungle" of a back yard, when he really means that he'd prefer to have all little shrubs and mulch rather than the variety of plants, shrubs, flowers, etc I've decided to grow. Actually, most of the plants are things my mom decided I should have, but that's a whole different issue to be addressed in another posting.

Steve's mother, Gloria, who watches Stefanie for us while we work, is a piece of work too, and deserves a whole posting of her own. But I digress.... Gloria had lived with us for about 2 months earlier this year, while she was between residences due to the breakup of her marriage. She was great during this time in helping with the cooking and cleaning. Towards the end of her stay she was getting a bit too much into our business and it was definately time for her to get her own place. Anyway, she left us her Swiffer Wet Jet because it was "so much easier and nicer than how you were washing this floor". First of all, GRRRR. Second of all, maybe it is easier but I don't think I took the whole suggestion well. So, not only did she leave the Swiffer behind when she moved out, then she buys us the pads and solution for it. Well, I haven't cleaned the kitchen floor since she brought the supplies to us (I know - yuck, but we've been sick, busy, etc). This past Friday, she's bugging about the Swiffer, because she's getting tired of cleaning her apartment's kitchen floor with a sponge. Can you see my eye-roll from there? I told her to go ahead and take it to clean her floor, but NO! She insists on leaving it for us to try.

I'm on day #28 of this month's cycle, so I'm sure hormones are peaking. Add to that, Steve's picking, Gloria's bugging, my mom's normal self, the normal self-doubt's I have about my own parenting skills and sadness about not being a stay-at-home mom. Add a 14 month old and 2 dogs' whining and barking. Result...hormonal induced meltdown. The tears started while I was getting Stefanie ready for bed. I got composure back when I went downstairs to spend the rest of the evening with Steve. When I got in the shower before bed, it ALL broke loose. I even felt suicidal for a time. I simply could not stop crying. As the hot water started running out, I got most of my composure back again. But Steve knows me too well to get away with that. He asked the inevitable question...what's wrong? That always turns the water works back on for me. I confessed to him that I felt totally inadequate. He asked if he causes that. I said sometimes. That sometimes I don't know how he can stay with me when he hates so many things about me (the garden, the tupperware, the mild clutter in the house). I could see the hurt in his eyes as he realized he was responsible for at least some of the tears on his shoulder. I hated myself for hurting him but knew it had to be said to keep from letting myself get hurt further.

Crap - outta time again. Will post more on this tomorrow. Don't worry though. I feel good today. No more tears or feelings of utter hopelessness.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away

Despite the title of my blog, this will not be all about Star Wars. It will be about me and my life. This is just a start. I'll add more later.