Where do you find hope?

Is it a bad sign that your acupuncturist has more hope than you do? Yes, it has been two weeks since the IUI. No, I haven't tested. Honestly, I don't feel the need as I'm not feeling very hopeful this month. I do feel like AF is coming soon, but even before the past few days I didn't have much hope.

Frustration

My RE does not work on weekends. So far it hasn't created any missed opportunities for us. But now I am worried we are going to miss this IUI. Especially since I can't convince my RE to schedule an appointment before this Wednesday for monitoring. This is a problem since I will be on CD 16 by then! When I realized no matter how much I argued for an earlier appointment, she wouldn't budge, I decided on my own to start the clo.mid later than she suggested. Just by one day, so I am doing days 4-8. I haven't heard anyone else taking it days on these days, but she didn't want me to wait until days 5-9 and I didn't feel comfortable starting on day, so this was my compromise. My RE did tell me to take OPKs and to call first thing Monday morning if I had a positive on Sunday or Monday. If I had a positive on Saturday we would just miss our chance. Luckily I had negatives on Saturday. But today I had something very close to a positive OPK. The test line is just slightly less dark than the control line, but they are close. I'm calling it negative now, but am guessing it will be darker later today or tomorrow. So I am calling first thing in the morning for hopefully an IUI tomorrow. This is so frustrating!

In acupuncture news, has anyone ever had a needle bleed when it was taken out? There was a little bit of blood last week in my appointment and now I have a bruise on that spot.

I am still training for my half marathon. Yesterday I walked 10 miles! It was a beautiful and I am just hoping for the same weather on race day. Only two weeks to go.

More randomness

My second acupuncture appointment is done. Today he tried something different and had me lay on my stomach while he put needles in my back. Still very relaxing.

I have two daffodils blooming in my yard! Last fall was my first attempt at planting flowers for spring color. I'm so proud. They look great. The only problem is that I can't figure out why only the bulbs I planted on the right side of the house are sprouting, none on the left side. It's a puzzle to me. I haven't seen any budding on my blueberry bush, so I hope that survived it's first winter in my yard. It was a very cold winter.

Speaking of cold winters, our heating bills have actually gone down due to insulation we put in last fall. Our February bill went down 17%, even though the number of days between readings was 10% higher and the temperature was colder this year. So our investment was well worth it.

Marathon training has not been going so well. My left hip muscle is hurting me. Ugh.

Acupuncture

It's done. I've started down the rabbit hole of eastern medicine. I did feel a little odd during my appointment. Not because the needles or anything, just because I felt like I was doing something different. I almost started laughing when he was putting the needles in, as in a nervous type of laugh where you think, "what the heck am I doing?!"

But in reality it was extremely relaxing. And nothing to be worried about at all. It did not hurt. I barely felt pricks when the needles went in. I stayed nice and toasty with a heat lamp on my feet. Soothing music played in the background as I laid there for 30 minutes or so. All in all, it was nice. I will go back next week.

One odd thing is that he suggested I eat more animal products, such as chicken, eggs, fish, meat, etc. I guess animal protein has been related to uterine lining and is linked to body temperature. It warms you up, which is good because if you are cold, your body conserves heat by taking it from your less vital organs, such as hands, feet, and reproductive system. I had been trying to eat less animal product because it is so hard to find it without buying animals that have been loaded up with hormones. So this might mean more trips to Whole Foods for us.

Now I just need to get through my lap. Thanks for all your feedback. I will definitely ask for full anesthesia if I have a choice.

Weekend

I've had a busy couple of days. Thursday I had my pre-op appointment for the lap. Everything seemed to go fine, but I have a question for all of you. My assumption was always that a lap involved regular (i.e., full) anesthesia. The pre-op nurse practitioner that I spoke with indicated that sometimes they do full anesthesia, but sometimes they just do a regional block. Is that right? Maybe she was just getting her procedures confused. She did say the anesthesiologist would confirm with my doctor what exactly was involved and decide what type of anesthesia was appropriate, but that I might get a choice. I think I want to be out completely. Is that crazy?

We live in a cute older neighborhood. There is a neighborhood association that I am nominally involved in. There is a fundraiser for the neighborhood association that is a home tour of a select group of homes, usually the more impressive homes in the neighborhood. On Friday, we were asked if we would allow our home to be shown. At first I was thinking, umm, you must have the wrong house. Don't get me wrong, we love our house and I do think the parts we have decorated are really nice (our strategy is decorate one room really well at a time, so only half the house is done so far, the rest is functional but not pretty). But I don't think it is something that the whole neighborhood will be impressed by. But it sounds like fun, so we are going to do it. Now I want to hurry up and decorate one more room before then!

Tomorrow afternoon I have my first acupuncture appointment. I guess I would be nervous, except my lap on Wednesday is taking up so much of my nerves that there is no room to be worried about this.

Mind and Body, part 2

The first part of my Mind and Body weekend workshop can be found here. This is the second part.

We did some cognitive restructuring. I found this helpful, but I'm not sure I can describe it accurately for all of you. The idea is that any situation we are in (infertility) is connected to the feelings we have by our thoughts. So the situation of infertility makes us angry, sad, etc by our thoughts. And example might be "I will never be pregnant." The goal is to figure out where those thoughts come from, examine whether they are logical, and whether there is actually any evidence to support those thoughts.

And here is where it gets tricky. Some of the thoughts I have and others have come from the internet. Most of the other people there, including the facilitator, blamed all the IF blogs out there for creating negative thoughts and contributing to our stress and negative feelings. I disagreed with most of what they were saying and when talking to DH about it, he also thought they were missing out on much of the support I get from my fellow bloggers (that would be you!). After thinking about it, I do think that the time I spend on a particular message board is not productive and contributes to my tendency to let IF take over my life. So I need to think about how or whether to decrease my time there. I don't want to lose some of the connections I have with some women there who don't blog, so I'm not sure what to do.

But blogging and, more importantly, participating in the blogging community, is different for me. It has been the biggest contributor to my decreased feelings of loneliness in this journey. I do think there are times when I read the story of a couple who have been trying for seven years or so and wonder if we will find ourselves seven years down the line in the same position as we are now. That makes me depressed and leads to thoughts that I will never get pregnant. But the feeling I get when I get comments is an exquisitely positive feeling. It really is like a hug from someone who has been walking in my shoes.

Being able to write out my thoughts has been a tremendous stress relief and outlet for all my anxieties. I guess I could write in just a journal that is not a blog, but hearing back from all of you that my experiences, thoughts, and feelings are normal makes me feel like I am not here all alone. That I am not some freak. That this is something that is truly difficult and I am not just whining.

So my take-aways from the weekend? I will continue blogging, but maybe scale back on other internet activities. I will find ways to nurture myself every day. I will practice breathing and relaxation exercises. I already had my first acupuncture appointment! Today's visit was just a Q&A, no needles. But I'm going to take the plunge. I will investigate other IF clinics after my lap.

Next few days

We have a busy few days in front of us. This weekend we have a two day integrative health counseling session. It is a group counseling thing for couples with IF. I wanted to do this about 6 months when I first heard of it, but it was not a good time for us. Now they are offering it again and I signed us up. We will see how it goes. I have also been thinking of starting acupuncture at this place, so we will see what type of advice they give.

Monday I go in for the consult for the lap. My RE does not them herself, so I am having a consultation with her partner. What advice do you have this consultation? Are there particular questions I should be asking?