Don't Quit

I found this on Pinterest.. 

The last paragraph is what I needed.. 

The Infertile Mrs.White

3 years...

Infertility has changed me. It changes all women regardless of their age, time length of ttc and no matter how many friends they have, how supportive their family is and how great their husbands are, Infertility changes all of us and there is no escaping it.  

I used to be so naive... 3 years ago when I was reading other fellow infertile's blogs, I remember thinking "Why are they so sad..", "How can they loose hope?", "Why can't they be genuinely happy for others" .. After 2 cycles on clomid I became that bitter, angry person I always read about and finally understood where they came from and truly how hard it can be to be around happy mothers, happy pregnant glowing friends and be genuinely happy for them. It hurts.. daily, not a day goes by that my infertility isn't lurking around the corner.. I can be happy one minute and want to crawl in a dark cave and cry the next. My emotions are always all over the place and half the time I don't recognize myself. It's been 3 years now and it's sad to say but this person has become me. I get so mad at myself for getting worked up about pregnant people around me that I don't even know let alone the ones I do know! I have so much anger inside, so many questions and I'm so sick of being this person. I don't know how to react when friends announce to me their pregnant.. I freeze, I become speechless and tears start running down my face and I can never control it.. This seems to be a re-occurring thing.. no matter if I know the people or not... even watching movies when the girl announces her pregnancy in a cute special way I'm done for the night... and I absolutely hate this!!!! I've always been that really good nice caring friend.. the one my friends could always rely on to be there, to say the right things and to support no matter what the issue was. The past 2.5 years I've been a bad friend.. I've been speechless, I've cried way too much and I've hid from good friends to protect myself.. as much as they say they understand what I must be going threw or feeling they really don't. I love them for trying, I love them for whatever support they were able to give me.. I'm just broken and I don't think this feeling will ever go away.. I've tried so hard to be a better infertile.. to be a positive one, to be able to still slap on a smile for my friends and no matter what be there and support them... but I can't.

I've had a post sitting in my draft for over a week now and I can't get myself to post it... I keep re-reading it and re-working it.. There has been so many pregnancy announcements in the past 2 weeks.. I hurt alot and really deep lately.. it's December.. everyone is celebrating with their families, their loved ones and creating Christmas traditions with their own new little families... something I can only dream of.. I have so many plans for my future family and when I see cute and fun new traditions my close friends have created with their young ones I get so envious, jealous, happy & sad all at once.. I always wanted to be the one with a big family way before my friends.. growing up my friends and family used to always tease me saying how they would always want to go to me when they start their families because they knew how much I was obsessed with the idea of having a big family and start corny traditions with them. Now seeing everyone else go threw all that and I'm still stuck left behind it kills beyond anything.. Especially when I see friends who never wanted kids or weren't ready to be parents and accidentally got pregnant I keep asking myself questions.. "why not me?". Why am I being tested like this.. Why has the past 3 years not been my time and why have I had to watch everyone else get what I've wanted since I was 6 years old.  

The Infertile Mrs.White

Can't go a day..

IUI#3

Our IUI#3 will be in January! Whenever I get my period I call the clinic on day 1 and book the apt for day 3 of my cycle. New year hopefully new start right?! I'm sure hoping so :)

Way overdue update from our Oct 8th followup apt!

Hello everyone,

Alright.. so I finally have something new to report regarding my “What’s Next” fertility treatments. We had our follow-up appointment on the 8^th of October, it was over tele-health witch means over the computer kinda like skype. All we had to do was go to the hospital in our small town on our scheduled day and time and we got to talk to him over a computer. It was pretty neat, despite the run down looking "boardroom" they had for us.. Check out the picture below.

I had booked this appointment the minute I started bleeding 5 days post my IUI (August 5^th) because I wanted to know what went wrong… why I bled so soon and help ease my worries because the whole process leading up to the 2WW period went as planned.. I didn't think I’d have to wait over 2 months.. but I guess I’m used to the wait. 

Anyways back to the appointment, we went in there not really sure what to tell him, what we wanted to do next.. the main thing we wanted to know was WHAT WENT WRONG and how can we make sure it does not happen again.. like really we had such a good cycle and 3 perfect looking follicles, great sperm and then bleeding.. UGH! Last time we saw the Dr we told him we were starting a GOFUNDME  to raise money for IVF and we were hoping to do it the minute we had the funds.. Now realistically we do NOT have the fund for IVF because we did not get the support we had planned on and had to keep dipping in the IVF fund to do the IUI.. I needed 6 300iu Gonal-F pens + a 75iu pen, + Ovidrel + gas to get there and back + days I had to take off work + parking witch is usually between $12-$15. We have been raising money in our page but it hasn’t raised close to enough money yet to help pay for the treatment. Our dilemma is I don’t want to keep wasting months of not doing anything till we raise money because we really have no idea how long that will take and so we had to tell the Dr that IVF is no longer in our "near" future and we have to put it on hold till the funds start rolling in..

The Dr told us that he prefer we not do IVF right away anyways because he says we did not master my dosage yet and he did not feel confident proceeding with IVF till we can get my ovaries/follicles to grow in less time.. (the would grow to the right size but would take around 16-20 days so that means alot more injections and alot more follow ups).

Here’s the info the Doctor gave us:

- IUI#2 looked way better then IUI#1..even if I needed an increase in dosage.
- During my IUI#2 my estrogen got up to around 1994
- My follicles grew to a solid 19 - 16 - 16 witch he says raises a little bit of anxiety..
- Ovulation was good
- No use of progesterone.. not good (should have been given some..)
- My starting Gonal-F dosage should have been higher...
- I am not stimulating well
- progesterone level way too low
- My September 24^th blood work results showed that my thyroid level has gotten better with the med increase. It used to be in the high 4's and is now at 3.2. Still high in my books but Dr said he was going to keep me at the same dosage for now.
Dr gave a bunch of information but most of it I don’t remember as he was talking too fast and mumbling it to himself for me to understand it and write it down.

Dr was like, alright where you can go from here is...

Option 1:
- IUI with Gonal-F starting dose minimum 125 then move on to 150, 5 days in.

Option 2:
- IVF (I then asked him what my chances of success with IVF would be considering my IUI track)

His answer was that his only concern was that I don't have particularly very high progesterone levels.. and said "in theory we would be kicking the shit out of your ovaries" and says I will need alot of medication to get me to ovulate well. He also said I have a reasonable chance that things would work as long as the stimulation part goes well and that they give me enough drugs. Says he would be incline to suggest we do another IUI because he wants to get me to stimulate properly in order to give a much better indication to how to stimulate me for IVF.. how big a dose we need to get to before we see success..

All this being said... 

Our new game plan is do yet another IUI. Doctor’s reasoning for this is that he thinks we still don’t have the right dosage packed down since it took me around 2 weeks to grow my follicles to the right size and we had to keep increasing my gonal-f dosages.. Doctor said my body was “not stimulating well”. Also Dr said the reason I bled so soon was because my progesterone level on the 2^nd half was very low, this meant that my body did not act like it was trying to get pregnant. Apparently my estrogen level was great, he said it reached up to 2000 and I had 3 nice follicles 19, 16, 16. So.. he wants us to try another IUI and throw at it all we got.. this means very high dosages and new meds also adding progesterone to the mix to trick my body in thinking it’s pregnant. 

Instead of using Gonal-F injections, I would use Menopure. I would start my dosage at 125 and go up to 150. I did a little bit of research on this brand/type of injections.. This is the link I found . 

For the progesterone injections I would use Prometrium, 200mg in the AM and 200mg in the PM. This brand of injections is new to me as well so I looked it up and… This is the information I found

This means I am to take 3 injections a day.. and on days where I need to empty a pen I would inject 4 times a day. This fact scares the crap out of me seeing I hate needles and just 1 a day for 16 days was a huge deal for me. (Totally freaking out.. needles HURT like hell, I don’t care what others say, when I injected myself I had good days where it did not hurt as much and bad days where I would hit a weird spot and it would hurt so bad I had to pull the needle out and try again in a different spot). I always injected in the recommended areas so no idea why some areas on some days hurt more then others but it did. The last 3 days of injections were the worst. I was running out of areas to inject myself where I was more certain was “safe” to inject.

So this is it.. our new game plan.. Sorry it took me 2 months to write this post!! It has just been sitting there in my draft as a ruff copy. The pictures below was my husband and I hanging out in the room taking silly pictures after it was all said and done. Wanted to take these for my scrapbook and memories.. What this journey all takes.. and how we cope with it all.

I will make a new post at some point soon with more information on Menopur and Prometrium... like the list of side effects and i'll youtube what the injections look like.. I need to prepare myself for this as I'm extremely nervous!

The Infertile Mr & Mrs White

My new look!!

Here it is!!!

On my trip home, my best friend who is also a really amazing hairdresser gave me a little makeover! 

Here is my BEFORE & AFTER!!!

THEN..... 

The next day my best friend and I went to get BFF TATTOOS!!!! 

It says 19-96 for the year we met and instantly became inseparable and the anchor for "we will never drift apart".. our friendship has gone threw many ups and downs, crazy adventures, she is married with an adorable 3 year old and they have been trying for a second but have had troubles.. I'm starting to think it might be "secondary infertility", really hoping it's not though!.. but no matter what life throws our way we will stick together threw thick and thin and support each other the best way we can.. despite the provinces that separate us since I moved out to Alberta. 

Hahaha.. it hurt so bad, it felt like someone was 

slashing my leg with a knife none stop.. ugh..

It didn't even hurt her! She smiled threw it... trooper!

THEN....

A couple days later I ordered online from Clearly Contacts  a new pair of glasses (finally!!) because mine were over 3 years old and really really scratched. I honestly do not know why I waited so long... I guess because I thought buying glasses online was a weird thing since you don't get to try them on first and I did not buy a pair from the optometrist because they are always so expensive and my work benefits don't cover glasses only my husbands do and I didn't feel like bothering with the insurance over them... Although I still do eventually plan on getting a pair from the eye care place and charge his insurance hihi.. that way I can switch up my look.. Anyways.. I decided to get them online after all because my husbands brother just got a new pair of "nerd" glasses and I loved them on him and so he told me how cheap he bought them for and showed me the website... it's pretty awesome.. you get to take a picture of yourself and then you get to see what all the glasses would look like on you... They ask you to enter the dimensions between your eyes and the width of your face in order to help you choose the right fit! I have to admit the process was actually really fun.. PLUS the shipping is 2 business days so they got to me in no time.. PLUS they fit me like a glove and I absolutely love them and find they complete my new makeover look.. I feel really good about it all! 

Here they are!!!    

The Infertile Mrs.White

Secretly falling apart..

I am on vacation back home "Ontario" from the 6th to the 20th and tonight I'm falling apart :( 

So many of my friends and family have young children and newborns. It's my undoing.. Living so far away from what I knew.. family-co-workers-friends was very hard for me.. It's officially been 20 months since we moved out to Alberta and it's our very first visite back home since. I've been dreaming of going back and hugging my friends and family for months. 

Now that I'm here its strange to say I miss my new home. Never ever did I thought I would feel that way. I guess now I can say we really have created Alberta as our "home" and we really have been working hard towards building our new married life out there with our 2 dogs. Never realized how much I appreciated our daily and life routine. I kinda miss it. I know I'll look back on this post in 6 months and miss Ontario all over again but I think this trip home has done me some good and I see things in a new and positive light. 

Days are flying by so fast!!! Wish they would slow down so I could really soak my time here with friends and family... I want to absorb every minute of it to last us another year or so apart from them. 

The past 2 days my husband has spent his time 3 hours away from where I am to spend time with his family and friends on his own since I wanted to spend some 1 on 1 with my girlfriends for a couple days. Also he went to spend the day today with his bestfriend and his couple month old baby boy. Might I mention this baby boy is like one of the happiest babies I've seen in a long time... Always laughing, smiling and making those adorable cute baby funny noises. He's just overall all sorts of adorable and awesomeness. His parents (husbands bestfriend's wife) always post lots of pictures and videos of this abundness of cuteness all over Facebook.. Pinterest and all that fun stuff.. I've never met the kid yet but I know I'll fall in love with him instantly and I'm scared. I purposely told my husband and encouraged him to go see them while I was with my girlfriends. I don't know if he clued in but I just didn't feel ready to be around that yet. I mean you can see the love between the baby and his parents. The mom is glowing of pure joy and happiness and u can tell how happy and full her heart is with love for her child and husband and it breaks me. I'm so utterly happy for them they deserve all this happiness and for this joy... But for some reason I can't be around it. Every time I see pictures and videos it pulls at my heart and I feel numb.. I feel overcome with so many messed up feelings of envy, rage, sadness... It consumes me and then I get sooo incredibly mad at myself and I feel like I can't talk to anyone about it. I've tried to explain it to my husband weeks ago about not being sure if I'm ready to be around them and being worried I wouldn't know how I'd feel and did not want to ruin my vacation by mopping around being depressed and feeling sorry for myself... He's usually really good at lifting me up when I need it and most of the time knows what to say to get me out of a funk but when it comes to his bestfriend my husband doesn't understand how I feel. He doesn't see it how I see it. Today he sent me a picture of him holding baby boy and omg I was nearly in tears while shopping with my bestfriend. I did not tell her anything about it as I didn't want to hear what she had to say... I know how I feel inside and I just needed to be alone with it. You have no idea how happy my husband looked... His face was literally glowing with love and happiness and he looked so natural holding a baby. Why can't I just be happy for other people?!!! Why do I always have to see things differently. When I see that picture I see what I can't give my husband... I can't give him that level of love and I ache. I can't explain how terribly scared I am that I will never see one of our own child in his arms with that look. Just as I type this im falling apart all over again. 

I'm a mess. I want to be happy for others and I thought I was finally at a hopeful place in my life and that I had learned to accept what I can't control and deal with reality that the world around me keeps moving forward in life while I'm stuck on pause. 

I hurt in levels I didn't know possible and i don't know how to deal with it and I have no one to share it with.. I love my friends but they don't understand it and things they say to try and make me feel better are always the exact thing NOT to say.. So I just know better now... Unless someone is walking in my shoes and living some of the things I live.. 

I've been listening to my family and friends talk about their kids and life as parents and how it's a lot of work and they wonder if they would have waited longer what their lives would be like now and just.. They have really opened up to me about how they feel about their choices to have kids and just a lot of stuff I am not ready to listen to and I guess I'm not strong enough to sit threw and hold my real feelings and thoughts back for... 

I'm way more broken then I thought and I come to realize being provinces away from friends and family starting and growing their families is what's best for me right now and I feel like the worst person even saying it out loud right now. I'm sure my friends would love to have me be a real true friend in their lives to live their new exciting adventures as parents and growing their family and all things being parents comes with and I realized it's ALOT easier for me to be a better friend from a distance. 

If only they all knew and understood what my journey threw infertility has been like for me, my marriage, my sanity, my everything. I am not the same person I was years ago. Infertility really does change a person and I'm sad to say it's not for the best. I really grew as a person and learned a lot about myself, my patience, my emotional state and more. I also learned that I don't know how to be a good friend anyone... Or at least the type of friend my friends need me to be to them. I also realized that they don't know how to be a good friend to me either. It's almost like shutting someone out is easier then trying to understand what their going threw. I have some friends who avoid me because they don't know what else to talk about then their kids and pregnancies with me so they just shut me out thinking that's what I want or something?! 

Infertility ruins people, friendships, marriages, families... 

I want to win my battle.. 

I want my journey to move forward... 

I want to be genuinely happy again... 

I wanna see that look on my husbands face everyday.... 

I want to stop hurting. 

I want to stop fooling myself in thinking I'm strong and hopeful when so many small things make me crumble and ache so deep. 

I want to stop feeling so alone in my feelings and thoughts. 

Did I mention my bestfriend is sleeping.. Snoring actually on a mattress on the floor beside me while I type this... I'm sleeping on a comfy couch.  I've cried as I typed this from start to finish.. Quietly in the dark.. It's 2:45am and I can't shut my brain off... Hoping writing this post helps me empty my head a bit... 

The Sad Infertile Mrs. White 

:(