I feel like some pie...

I discovered in counseling that the reason I become a tearful mess more often than I'd like is twofold:
a) I suck at feeling angry. When I get angry, on some level I immediately feel guilty or upset with myself for being angry and there go the waterworks...
or
b) I bottle emotions up to save for later. And then later happens to be at an inconvenient time. Always.

We'll deal with part A next time, but part B is more fun. The answer is pie.

My palate prefers chocolate pie:

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...but my emotional well-being has found that pausing for 30 milliseconds and making a mental pie chart of how I'm feeling throughout the day keeps the tears at bay.
("a pie chart a day keeps the tears away"?)

An example of how I'm feeling right now:
Ok. So clearly nothing too dramatic is going on right now. But in about 10 days when I will probably get my period, my pie charts will look like this:

Put the Lime in the Coconut

As per Dr. Steingold's nervous recommendation when I burst into tears in his office, I've been getting my head examined every two weeks.

Ok. I'm not supposed to use self-depreciating phrases. Even if I think they're funny.
Let's rephrase: I've been going to counseling.

And I think it's actually helping!

Infertility SUCKS. Especially if you are one of those girls: the ones who burst into tears instead of expressing anger, fear, frustration, or sadness. Unfortunately, infertility includes all of those emotions.

I grudgingly agreed to go to counseling with these two goals in mind:
1) Stop crying.
2) Stop hoping so damn much every month.

And while my counselor declined my request for a partial lobotomy, she has given me some REALLY useful tools. I'm going to share some of these with you in future posts so that
a) I remember them and remember to use them,
and
b) They're pretty useful tools for any tough situation.

Dazed and Confused

So.
Supposedly I have lazy ovaries that don't like to do their thing until day 30. And ovulating on day 30 is like trying to bail the Titanic out with a bucket. There's no point. I have MONTHS of documentation that I don't naturally ovulate until day 30.

However! Last cycle, 150mg of Clomid threw the lazy bastards into action and they produced two eggs at day 19! Hurrah!

This month we're "not trying" because we're waiting for Rob's swimmers to recover from the swine flu. So I didn't bother with Clomid or ovulation tests or any of that nonsense.

Somehow taking a break made me more depressed. (Aren't breaks supposed to improve your life?). I think it was just bad timing with Christmas and families and lots of babies... again, not that I don't love those babies - miracle and otherwise- but you know. The angst. Woe is me. ;) I so need to get over myself.

So yesterday evening I encountered some crazy cervical mucus. Crazy. Like stretch 4 inches crazy. Since I knew it was fairly early in this cycle and for me cervical mucus is not a day 19 phenomenon... why not... I took an ovulation test.
And this popped up on the ovulation test screen:

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ok. no it didn't. That was how my brain interpreted this:
And I looked at my current, very neglected and dusty chart and it said: day 19.

What?!?

So I asked my husband-slash-stand-in-reproductive-endocrinologist what he thought. And after I explained the situation 3 times while waving a pee stick at him for emphasis, he had this thought:
"I don't know... maybe last month's Clomid was a chemical bitch-slap and now your ovaries know what to do?"

Maybe. I try not to give them too much credit. We'll see what happens next month.

Hello! (Post #1)

This is a spin-off blog from FiveCamels. I plan on keeping all my infertility adventures here. I felt like I was ambushing my FiveCamels readers with too many infertility posts, when the intention of FiveCamels was to document the happy, fluffy parts of my life (decorating, girly stuff, i-love-marriage, etc.). I kept picturing my readers happily clicking on the FiveCamels link only to be smacked with notes on sperm count and ovaries. Poor readers!

So I'll be moving the previous infertility related posts from FiveCamels over here and when I have future angsty things to write about sperm or eggs... this will be a good outlet. I wonder if that will give me a PG-13 rating? ;)

Big Talk

The other day we had one of those big talks in infertility land.

The:

"How long are we going to keep doing this?"
"How far are we going to go with this?"
"What do we feel comfortable with?"
"Should we think about adoption?"

talk.

We've actually become very good communicators by going through all this. So I guess that's a silver lining. (?)
And at the end of it Rob's summary was: "Ok. Good talk. Go Team!!" (::fistbump::)
I love my husband.

A letter to the immaculate complaint department

To: Holy Spirit
1400 Heaven Way
Heaven, Heaven 29304

From: Sarah
Youknowwhere Drive
Richmond, VA 23235

Dear Holy Spirit,

Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Today, Catholics everywhere are required to go to church and pray about the miracle of Mary's conception. Today, I got my period.

Now I realize that there is probably some ironic humor and a lesson in here somewhere. But next year, could I please get my period on a day I don't have to go to church and pray about miracle babies?

Or, alternatively, could we have a miracle baby? We'll provide the egg and the sperm.

Thank you for everything. Sorry for yelling at you this morning.

Love,
Sarah

Godly

Last night we were very excited to be asked to be godparents to this little man:

(yes, that's a baby. if you squint a bit ;) It's like impressionist art.)

We were asked to be godparents and told the baby's sex in the same phone call. And we grinned and jumped around. It's funny how you can't help but be excited when you find out the sex of any baby:

pregnant person: "It's a boy!"
response: "AWWW!!! YAYYY!!!"

pregnant person: "It's a girl!"
response: "AWWW!!! YAYYY!!!"

really, I guess we're just fans of team baby, be it boy or girl. ;)

After we recovered from the jumping around Rob had this observation:
Rob: "So... this is like the 4th baby that we're godparents to... is there like... a limit to how many babies you can godparent? Is it like... 'always a bridesmaid, never a bride' ?"

Don't worry Rob. I won't make you wear poufy periwinkle. ;)

Stephen & Caroline: we're so happy for you guys, honored to be godparents, and we promise to routinely invoke our godparently right to steal much time with the holding of Mr. Baby.