Major things that I hope to accomplish between now and the end of 2010, roughly in the order in which I'd like to do them:
1. Get pregnant.
2. Get a job.
3. Defend thesis.
4. Write thesis.
5. Graduate.
6. Travel to visit S's parents.
7. Start new job.
8. Buy new house.
9. Sell old house.
Some of these things need to happen in order:
Both thesis-related tasks need to happen before I can graduate.
I need to graduate before I can start a new job.
I need to start a job before I can buy a new house.
I need to buy a new house before I can sell my old house.
Thus, the general order is: (thesis stuff) --> (job stuff) --> (house stuff)
with the caveat that I should be looking for a new job sooner rather than later, so that part should really overlap the thesis stuff.
The trip to visit S's parents is likely going to happen over the summer, regardless of the state of the other things, but I'd prefer if it were after I defend my thesis but before I start a new job. We haven't seen S's parents since LL's birthday, which was almost 7 months ago, and that's waaaay too long between grandparent visits. If I had my way, LL would see each of his grandparents 3-4 times a year (preferably twice at our place and once at each of their places, with a fourth visit for each set of grandparents left as a wildcard). We hit that goal during LL's first year, but we're not on target to pull it off during year two, and that makes me sad. Admittedly, it hasn't been our fault; S's parents have had to cancel two separate planned trips because of S's dad's bad health (not horrible, nothing life-threatening, just annoying and persistent). But, if they can't travel to us, then we should get off our butts and go see them.
The first task on the list, getting pregnant, has no prerequisites or dependencies, but you know, I'd like for it to happen as soon as possible. Not that I have a whole lot of control over it. The obvious follow-up goal, giving birth to a baby, has been left off the list because it is no longer possible to do that in a healthy way during 2010. Sigh.
On the plus side, we actually have a viable cycle this month, so at least it's theoretically possible to achieve a pregnancy. My follicle scan this morning showed one follicle measuring at 18, so we did the trigger shot and have an IUI tomorrow morning. Woo hoo! I really don't think that I could have handled a third canceled cycle in a row, and this one wasn't looking that promising earlier in the week. (Today is cycle day 18; my body is slooooow these days at maturing eggs.) But, my right ovary came through in the end, so now we just wait.
Not helping: our entire household is sick. LL started it last Friday, when I got a mid-day call from daycare informing me that he woke up from his nap with a fever, cough, runny nose, lethargy, you name it. By Sunday evening, I was sick, too. S followed Monday morning. Since LL's fever was still going strong yesterday, we finally took him to the doctor, who diagnosed double ear infection, so he is now on his first ever course of antibiotics. S has turned the corner and is starting to feel better, but I'm still feeling more ill each day, and I feel so unbelievably awful that it's kind of hard to believe that I haven't hit bottom yet. Fun times.
I'm going to be home from work tomorrow yet again, after the IUI, then back on track with work next week, I hope.
Nine major life-changing goals, 8.5 months. A girl has to dream.
Showing posts with label clomid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clomid. Show all posts
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Mountains and Follicles and Passover, Oh My!
We are back from our long weekend away with friends, and it was fantastic. Just what I needed.
We had eight adults and four toddlers, and we rented a five-bedroom cabin in the mountains. LL loved having all the people around, and he loved sledding and playing outside in the snow. (For comparison: two of the other kids screamed bloody murder every time we went outside, and the third one took half an hour to get used to the weather every single time we went out. While the other children were fairly miserable in the cold weather and thin air, LL ran circles around them and kept trying to hand them snowballs. The other kids spent a lot of time inside the cabin.) One of my friends is hyper-organized, and thanks to all of her pre-planning, all of the logistics went smoothly. We all drove to the cabin more or less together, we stopped together for lunch, we stopped again to play at a park to give the kids a break, we checked into the cabin without a hitch, we each brought a small collection of groceries such that all of our meals were planned and ready to go... it was wonderful.
I was most worried about whether LL would sleep in the cabin, since he usually doesn't sleep well in a pack'n'play, but it actually wasn't too bad. He went to sleep well each night. He then woke up around 1am, and we just brought him into bed with us and he went back to sleep (after flopping around for a bit). In the past, whenever we've attempted to co-sleep, none of the three of us got much sleep. I don't know if all the heavy playing wore LL out, or if he's just older and more adaptable, but this weekend it wasn't so bad. And the cabin was a bit cold at night, so I actually appreciated the hot little body in footie pajamas that insisted on sleeping on top of me.
Best of all, since we were all staying in the same cabin, we weren't constantly needing to leave in order to get kids home to nap or eat or whatever. We all got some adults-only time each day during naptime, and again at night after the kiddos were all asleep. And we traded off subsets of adults playing with all the kids, so we each got a fair amount of time during the day to put our feet up, have a drink, and chat with other adults. Heavenly.
And now... back to reality. I had another follicle scan, which showed that my one and only little follicle had been reabsorbed back into my ovary. It didn't grow, it didn't shrink, it definitely didn't release an egg (if it had, the corpus luteum would have been visible on the ultrasound). Instead, it just faded away. Since I'm already at cycle day 20+, Dr. M gave me a progesterone shot to quickly end the cycle, so we can move on to the next one. We're going to try one more cycle with 200mg of clomid.
In the mean time, I need to turn my attention to more pressing matters. Like the fact that my entire family is arriving for Passover in less than two weeks, and I have done none of my normal pre-holiday prep. Passover seders for 30 people don't just plan themselves. Also, I'm theoretically graduating in less than 90 days, and my thesis isn't going to write itself.
We had eight adults and four toddlers, and we rented a five-bedroom cabin in the mountains. LL loved having all the people around, and he loved sledding and playing outside in the snow. (For comparison: two of the other kids screamed bloody murder every time we went outside, and the third one took half an hour to get used to the weather every single time we went out. While the other children were fairly miserable in the cold weather and thin air, LL ran circles around them and kept trying to hand them snowballs. The other kids spent a lot of time inside the cabin.) One of my friends is hyper-organized, and thanks to all of her pre-planning, all of the logistics went smoothly. We all drove to the cabin more or less together, we stopped together for lunch, we stopped again to play at a park to give the kids a break, we checked into the cabin without a hitch, we each brought a small collection of groceries such that all of our meals were planned and ready to go... it was wonderful.
I was most worried about whether LL would sleep in the cabin, since he usually doesn't sleep well in a pack'n'play, but it actually wasn't too bad. He went to sleep well each night. He then woke up around 1am, and we just brought him into bed with us and he went back to sleep (after flopping around for a bit). In the past, whenever we've attempted to co-sleep, none of the three of us got much sleep. I don't know if all the heavy playing wore LL out, or if he's just older and more adaptable, but this weekend it wasn't so bad. And the cabin was a bit cold at night, so I actually appreciated the hot little body in footie pajamas that insisted on sleeping on top of me.
Best of all, since we were all staying in the same cabin, we weren't constantly needing to leave in order to get kids home to nap or eat or whatever. We all got some adults-only time each day during naptime, and again at night after the kiddos were all asleep. And we traded off subsets of adults playing with all the kids, so we each got a fair amount of time during the day to put our feet up, have a drink, and chat with other adults. Heavenly.
And now... back to reality. I had another follicle scan, which showed that my one and only little follicle had been reabsorbed back into my ovary. It didn't grow, it didn't shrink, it definitely didn't release an egg (if it had, the corpus luteum would have been visible on the ultrasound). Instead, it just faded away. Since I'm already at cycle day 20+, Dr. M gave me a progesterone shot to quickly end the cycle, so we can move on to the next one. We're going to try one more cycle with 200mg of clomid.
In the mean time, I need to turn my attention to more pressing matters. Like the fact that my entire family is arriving for Passover in less than two weeks, and I have done none of my normal pre-holiday prep. Passover seders for 30 people don't just plan themselves. Also, I'm theoretically graduating in less than 90 days, and my thesis isn't going to write itself.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Double Fail
My one and only follicle on Tuesday measured in at 14mm, below the minimum 18mm needed to proceed with an IUI. They typically grow 1-2mm per day, so we gave it three days and came back today to check again. Know how big it was today? 14mm.
Stupid follicle. Stupid lazy ovary. Did I mention how much this sucks?
So, two possibilities. Either I actually ovulated yesterday, and the follicle grew really fast and then shrank again (unlikely, but Dr. M held it out there as a possibility) or the follicle just isn't growing (probably a bad egg). (And now I want to go rent The Bad Seed.) (My mind works in weird ways.) I'm going back for another ultrasound on Tuesday so that he can check whether it has grown (unlikely), shrunk (also unlikely), or just stayed approximately the same (that's where my money is). Based on how it looks, we'll figure out where to go next. Dr. M thinks that I could probably do one more clomid cycle, at the same dosage, based on the belief that everybody has bad cycles sometimes. He also mentioned maybe trying a cycle or two of femara instead, to see if I respond better. Or perhaps it's just time to move on to injectibles.
My hesitation with injectibles, by the way, isn't a fear of needles. S is scared of needles, but I'm not. I know that S won't be able to help me with injections, but I think that I'll be able to handle it myself just fine. I am a little annoyed with the added expense, but our insurance isn't too bad. My bigger concern is that I'll need to switch doctors. Dr. M is my ob/gyn; he's not an RE, though he does handle a lot of fertility patients for his practice. I've never doubted that I was in good hands with him, and I like him a lot. He helped us to have LL, in only three cycles. But, his office is not equipped to do the extra monitoring that's necessary with injectibles. They have too many patients to be able to handle all the extra monitoring appointments, and too few people with the expertise to make the little day-to-day adjustments that are common with injectibles. So Dr. M will be referring me elsewhere if we need to try a completely different treatment.
My biggest concern with injectibles is all that extra monitoring, especially since the appointments would have to be at a doctors office that is much further away. More frequent appointments that are far from both my home and my office? Not exactly what I want to be doing while finishing my thesis and looking for a job. If that's what it takes, then I'll do it. But I was hoping not to have to. Given today's news, though, it looks like that's where we're heading.
On the bright side (yeah, I'm stretching here to find a bright side), since we won't be doing an IUI tomorrow morning, we'll be able to leave on-time for our trip, so no need to come up with an excuse to tell our friends. I had a good one all figured out, too....
Stupid follicle. Stupid lazy ovary. Did I mention how much this sucks?
So, two possibilities. Either I actually ovulated yesterday, and the follicle grew really fast and then shrank again (unlikely, but Dr. M held it out there as a possibility) or the follicle just isn't growing (probably a bad egg). (And now I want to go rent The Bad Seed.) (My mind works in weird ways.) I'm going back for another ultrasound on Tuesday so that he can check whether it has grown (unlikely), shrunk (also unlikely), or just stayed approximately the same (that's where my money is). Based on how it looks, we'll figure out where to go next. Dr. M thinks that I could probably do one more clomid cycle, at the same dosage, based on the belief that everybody has bad cycles sometimes. He also mentioned maybe trying a cycle or two of femara instead, to see if I respond better. Or perhaps it's just time to move on to injectibles.
My hesitation with injectibles, by the way, isn't a fear of needles. S is scared of needles, but I'm not. I know that S won't be able to help me with injections, but I think that I'll be able to handle it myself just fine. I am a little annoyed with the added expense, but our insurance isn't too bad. My bigger concern is that I'll need to switch doctors. Dr. M is my ob/gyn; he's not an RE, though he does handle a lot of fertility patients for his practice. I've never doubted that I was in good hands with him, and I like him a lot. He helped us to have LL, in only three cycles. But, his office is not equipped to do the extra monitoring that's necessary with injectibles. They have too many patients to be able to handle all the extra monitoring appointments, and too few people with the expertise to make the little day-to-day adjustments that are common with injectibles. So Dr. M will be referring me elsewhere if we need to try a completely different treatment.
My biggest concern with injectibles is all that extra monitoring, especially since the appointments would have to be at a doctors office that is much further away. More frequent appointments that are far from both my home and my office? Not exactly what I want to be doing while finishing my thesis and looking for a job. If that's what it takes, then I'll do it. But I was hoping not to have to. Given today's news, though, it looks like that's where we're heading.
On the bright side (yeah, I'm stretching here to find a bright side), since we won't be doing an IUI tomorrow morning, we'll be able to leave on-time for our trip, so no need to come up with an excuse to tell our friends. I had a good one all figured out, too....
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Under Pressure
You may recall that, way back in January, I attempted a clomid cycle, but my ovaries didn't produce a single mature egg follicle. Were you wondering about all the silence on the fertility topic since then? That silence was the sound of me waiting for that stupid canceled cycle to just end already. I took progesterone pills, I waited, I waited some more, I got a progesterone shot, I waited, I waited some more... and my body finally decided to move on. Weeks and weeks of wasted time. (Along with lots and lots of wasted negative home pregnancy tests -- hope springs eternal, eh?) I finally started a new cycle, this time with 200 mg of clomid. Follicle scan was this morning. The result: only one follicle, not yet mature (only 14mm). We're giving it a few more days and coming back for another scan on Friday, we'll hopefully be able to trigger then, and then we'll do the IUI Saturday morning.
For the last two months, we've been planning a weekend away with three other families, and we're all supposed to be leaving Saturday morning. We were planning to caravan to our rented cabin all together, but the IUI Saturday morning means that we're going to have to leave about an hour after everyone else. And we can't tell them why, because none of our friends know that we've started fertility treatments again. Suggestions on what lie we can tell them to minimize questions are appreciated, because I'm kind of at a loss. Also, I get really nauseous for several days after trigger shots, so the car ride should be a ton of fun.
Thanks to last cycle's ridiculous length, we have a lot of added stress for this cycle, too. S's sister, H, recently got engaged. Her wedding is next March, in a different state. We would hate to miss her wedding because I'm too pregnant to travel. We would also hate to miss her wedding because we have a baby who is too young to travel. (Basically: we don't want to miss her wedding.) I know people whose siblings missed their wedding because of pregnancies, and I think it sucks. You only get married once, and you're usually able to give people an entire year or more of advance warning; is it really too much to ask for your one and only sibling to be available on that day? When I got engaged, I knew that my brother, M, was about to start trying for another baby (yep, he told me when they were going to start trying, which I think is a little icky), and I explicitly asked him to wait a few months so that they wouldn't have to miss the wedding. And they were totally okay with that. (My brother and sister-in-law are very very good at getting pregnant. They didn't want to be in the third trimester during my wedding, so they waited three months, and were 5+ months along at the wedding. I'm unbelievably jealous that they could time it however they liked.) Maybe it was selfish on my part to ask them to wait, but I wanted them to be at my wedding!
Now S and I are in a similar situation with H's wedding. And I haven't changed my thinking on this topic: even with the fertility problems, I think that it would be selfish of us to knowingly try to get pregnant at a time when we would have to miss the wedding if we succeeded.
We figure we'll be okay to travel with a new baby when he or she is about two months old. Our first airplane ride with LL was when he was a little over two months old, and it worked out just fine. Earlier than that would be a problem: our pediatrician doesn't recommend airplanes before six weeks, and it took me a full eight weeks to recover from my c-section anyway. In order to have a two-month-old at the time of the wedding, the baby would need to be born by early January, which requires a cycle that starts in early April of this year. Which is just a few weeks from now. If this cycle fails, and the next one starts on time, a pregnancy from that cycle would be due around New Year's, which would cutting it close but still okay. If this cycle goes long like the last one did, we'll have missed our window of opportunity. I don't think that I could fly in my third trimester while also taking care of a toddler, so I wouldn't want to be any more than 6 months pregnant next March. Which means not trying again until September.
So basically: we have this one cycle. Maybe maybe we have time for one more. After that, we will have to take a five month hiatus before we try again.
After today's mediocre follicle scan, S has already started to lobby for us to just continue trying regardless of the timing. My body's lackluster response to this high dose of medication is likely evidence that my fertility has noticeably declined in just the last two years, and it's not like I was super fertile before. He thinks that we'd be foolish to wait for five months, fearing that it will just get harder and harder to get pregnant, and waiting might mean that it never happens. Which is kind of hard to argue with, you know? But I don't know. I think that planning to miss H's wedding is kind of cruel. Especially since she has her heart set on LL being the ring bearer, which she excitedly talks about every single time we talk to her.
No pressure on this cycle or anything, eh?
For the last two months, we've been planning a weekend away with three other families, and we're all supposed to be leaving Saturday morning. We were planning to caravan to our rented cabin all together, but the IUI Saturday morning means that we're going to have to leave about an hour after everyone else. And we can't tell them why, because none of our friends know that we've started fertility treatments again. Suggestions on what lie we can tell them to minimize questions are appreciated, because I'm kind of at a loss. Also, I get really nauseous for several days after trigger shots, so the car ride should be a ton of fun.
Thanks to last cycle's ridiculous length, we have a lot of added stress for this cycle, too. S's sister, H, recently got engaged. Her wedding is next March, in a different state. We would hate to miss her wedding because I'm too pregnant to travel. We would also hate to miss her wedding because we have a baby who is too young to travel. (Basically: we don't want to miss her wedding.) I know people whose siblings missed their wedding because of pregnancies, and I think it sucks. You only get married once, and you're usually able to give people an entire year or more of advance warning; is it really too much to ask for your one and only sibling to be available on that day? When I got engaged, I knew that my brother, M, was about to start trying for another baby (yep, he told me when they were going to start trying, which I think is a little icky), and I explicitly asked him to wait a few months so that they wouldn't have to miss the wedding. And they were totally okay with that. (My brother and sister-in-law are very very good at getting pregnant. They didn't want to be in the third trimester during my wedding, so they waited three months, and were 5+ months along at the wedding. I'm unbelievably jealous that they could time it however they liked.) Maybe it was selfish on my part to ask them to wait, but I wanted them to be at my wedding!
Now S and I are in a similar situation with H's wedding. And I haven't changed my thinking on this topic: even with the fertility problems, I think that it would be selfish of us to knowingly try to get pregnant at a time when we would have to miss the wedding if we succeeded.
We figure we'll be okay to travel with a new baby when he or she is about two months old. Our first airplane ride with LL was when he was a little over two months old, and it worked out just fine. Earlier than that would be a problem: our pediatrician doesn't recommend airplanes before six weeks, and it took me a full eight weeks to recover from my c-section anyway. In order to have a two-month-old at the time of the wedding, the baby would need to be born by early January, which requires a cycle that starts in early April of this year. Which is just a few weeks from now. If this cycle fails, and the next one starts on time, a pregnancy from that cycle would be due around New Year's, which would cutting it close but still okay. If this cycle goes long like the last one did, we'll have missed our window of opportunity. I don't think that I could fly in my third trimester while also taking care of a toddler, so I wouldn't want to be any more than 6 months pregnant next March. Which means not trying again until September.
So basically: we have this one cycle. Maybe maybe we have time for one more. After that, we will have to take a five month hiatus before we try again.
After today's mediocre follicle scan, S has already started to lobby for us to just continue trying regardless of the timing. My body's lackluster response to this high dose of medication is likely evidence that my fertility has noticeably declined in just the last two years, and it's not like I was super fertile before. He thinks that we'd be foolish to wait for five months, fearing that it will just get harder and harder to get pregnant, and waiting might mean that it never happens. Which is kind of hard to argue with, you know? But I don't know. I think that planning to miss H's wedding is kind of cruel. Especially since she has her heart set on LL being the ring bearer, which she excitedly talks about every single time we talk to her.
No pressure on this cycle or anything, eh?
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Fail
First, a brief overview of my fertility treatments the first time around:
1. More than two years of trying on our own. My cycles are really wonky.
2. 50 mg of clomid. My body doesn't even notice. No follicles worth mentioning. Cycle canceled.
3. 100 mg of clomid. Maximum dose recommended by the pharmaceutical company. My ovaries have a tepid response, one little borderline follicle that needs an extra week to mature.
4. 150 mg of clomid. My body nearly explodes from all that excess estrogen, but my ovaries produce exactly one mature follicle. This is known as "exactly the response we want!" Yay! The result: LL (nine months later).
So, now we want a second kid. The obvious place to start: 150 mg of clomid.
The response we expect: another textbook response, with one mature follicle.
The response that I secretly both hoped and feared: having been through a successful pregnancy and months of breast feeding, my body has been kicked around enough that it recognizes how it's supposed to react to hormones, and totally overreacts to the gigantic excess of estrogen from such a high dose of clomid, thereby producing so many follicles that I am both pleased (because my body is doing the right thing) and a little ticked off (because we have to cancel this cycle, since I have no desire to become an octomom).
The response that actually happened, as discovered during yesterday's follicle scan: no follicles worth mentioning. Cycle canceled because, you know, you need eggs to get pregnant.
Next cycle, we're moving to 200 mg of clomid, which is a frighteningly high dose. If I don't manage to produce any mature follicles at that dose, we'll need to move on to injectibles. Damn it.
Somehow, I had prepared myself for too many follicles, and I had prepared myself for not actually getting pregnant, but I hadn't prepared myself for not responding to the meds. Really didn't see this coming.
1. More than two years of trying on our own. My cycles are really wonky.
2. 50 mg of clomid. My body doesn't even notice. No follicles worth mentioning. Cycle canceled.
3. 100 mg of clomid. Maximum dose recommended by the pharmaceutical company. My ovaries have a tepid response, one little borderline follicle that needs an extra week to mature.
4. 150 mg of clomid. My body nearly explodes from all that excess estrogen, but my ovaries produce exactly one mature follicle. This is known as "exactly the response we want!" Yay! The result: LL (nine months later).
So, now we want a second kid. The obvious place to start: 150 mg of clomid.
The response we expect: another textbook response, with one mature follicle.
The response that I secretly both hoped and feared: having been through a successful pregnancy and months of breast feeding, my body has been kicked around enough that it recognizes how it's supposed to react to hormones, and totally overreacts to the gigantic excess of estrogen from such a high dose of clomid, thereby producing so many follicles that I am both pleased (because my body is doing the right thing) and a little ticked off (because we have to cancel this cycle, since I have no desire to become an octomom).
The response that actually happened, as discovered during yesterday's follicle scan: no follicles worth mentioning. Cycle canceled because, you know, you need eggs to get pregnant.
Next cycle, we're moving to 200 mg of clomid, which is a frighteningly high dose. If I don't manage to produce any mature follicles at that dose, we'll need to move on to injectibles. Damn it.
Somehow, I had prepared myself for too many follicles, and I had prepared myself for not actually getting pregnant, but I hadn't prepared myself for not responding to the meds. Really didn't see this coming.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Project Status
Hey, did I mention that I started a round of clomid last weekend? No? Hmmm, interesting.
This cycle feels very weird to me. The last time I did this whole fertility treatment thing, it was my life. I got no work done, I was focused on every little twinge, I thought about little else. This time is ... different. Today is Cycle Day 11, and I've barely noticed. Lots of factors are keeping me from obsessing quite so much this time, including: (1) secondary infertility is a different sort of beast, at least for me; (2) side effects have been very mild this time around, which is actually making me a bit nervous about whether the medication is actually working; (3) it's hard to dwell on chemically-induced exhaustion when you're chasing a toddler; and (4) I'm much more busy at work right now than I was last time, so focusing on treatments really isn't an option.
The shocking lack of side effects is surprising, and an actual physical difference from last time. I've had a few hot flashes and a persistent headache for the last week, and I'm a bit light-headed, but other than that... nothing. No crying. No screaming at S. No forgetfulness. I feel amazingly close to normal. (Okay, the headache has sucked. But sadly, a week-long headache still fits into the "normal" category for me.) But the other differences are all about circumstance. Part of me is thinking gosh, if I had been busier at work last time, maybe getting pregnant the first time around wouldn't have sucked so much! But I know that's not true. I'm sure that people experience secondary infertility in different ways, but for me, there isn't the same desperation that I was feeling with primary infertility. There's less uncertainty, in a weird way, possibly because it just feels ... familiar. I'm more content to just go through the process without emotionally living and dying with the outcomes.
At least, that's how I'm blithely feeling on Day 11 of this year's very first medicated cycle.
I'm sure I'll be feeling very different with a boatload of failed cycles under my belt. And I actually have a lot more to say about secondary infertility compared to primary infertility, but in some ways, I don't feel like I've earned the right to talk about it yet. Or, to be perfectly honest, perhaps I should put it this way: I'd probably be an idiot to talk about it when I'm still so new to secondary infertility.
Anyway, whatever the reason, the fact of the matter is that I'm obsessing more about work than I am about getting pregnant. Things keeping me up at night right now:
1. I have had several rounds of interviews with a local company, but I haven't heard from them at all since before the holidays. I'm too chicken to send them an email and find out what's going on. Afraid of rejection much? Instead I'm just going to continue to mope about feeling unloved.
2. I submitted all of my tenure-track assistant professor applications. Now I wait. And wait and wait and wait. Typical numbers that I've been hearing for my field this year: each tenure-track job opening is getting approximately 500 candidates, for which they will interview 5 candidates, and make an offer to one. That's only a 1% chance of even getting an interview, much less an actual job offer. I'm really not loving those odds.
3. I have a conference paper due this week. I will need to submit it the day after my follicle check, possibly on the day that I'll be having an IUI, if all goes well. Now that I have a complete first draft of the paper, which I have sent out to my coauthors for review, I'm feeling remarkably calm about this. Even though I have received zero feedback from my coauthors.
4. On Saturday, LL learned how to open doors. My life is forever changed.
This cycle feels very weird to me. The last time I did this whole fertility treatment thing, it was my life. I got no work done, I was focused on every little twinge, I thought about little else. This time is ... different. Today is Cycle Day 11, and I've barely noticed. Lots of factors are keeping me from obsessing quite so much this time, including: (1) secondary infertility is a different sort of beast, at least for me; (2) side effects have been very mild this time around, which is actually making me a bit nervous about whether the medication is actually working; (3) it's hard to dwell on chemically-induced exhaustion when you're chasing a toddler; and (4) I'm much more busy at work right now than I was last time, so focusing on treatments really isn't an option.
The shocking lack of side effects is surprising, and an actual physical difference from last time. I've had a few hot flashes and a persistent headache for the last week, and I'm a bit light-headed, but other than that... nothing. No crying. No screaming at S. No forgetfulness. I feel amazingly close to normal. (Okay, the headache has sucked. But sadly, a week-long headache still fits into the "normal" category for me.) But the other differences are all about circumstance. Part of me is thinking gosh, if I had been busier at work last time, maybe getting pregnant the first time around wouldn't have sucked so much! But I know that's not true. I'm sure that people experience secondary infertility in different ways, but for me, there isn't the same desperation that I was feeling with primary infertility. There's less uncertainty, in a weird way, possibly because it just feels ... familiar. I'm more content to just go through the process without emotionally living and dying with the outcomes.
At least, that's how I'm blithely feeling on Day 11 of this year's very first medicated cycle.
I'm sure I'll be feeling very different with a boatload of failed cycles under my belt. And I actually have a lot more to say about secondary infertility compared to primary infertility, but in some ways, I don't feel like I've earned the right to talk about it yet. Or, to be perfectly honest, perhaps I should put it this way: I'd probably be an idiot to talk about it when I'm still so new to secondary infertility.
Anyway, whatever the reason, the fact of the matter is that I'm obsessing more about work than I am about getting pregnant. Things keeping me up at night right now:
1. I have had several rounds of interviews with a local company, but I haven't heard from them at all since before the holidays. I'm too chicken to send them an email and find out what's going on. Afraid of rejection much? Instead I'm just going to continue to mope about feeling unloved.
2. I submitted all of my tenure-track assistant professor applications. Now I wait. And wait and wait and wait. Typical numbers that I've been hearing for my field this year: each tenure-track job opening is getting approximately 500 candidates, for which they will interview 5 candidates, and make an offer to one. That's only a 1% chance of even getting an interview, much less an actual job offer. I'm really not loving those odds.
3. I have a conference paper due this week. I will need to submit it the day after my follicle check, possibly on the day that I'll be having an IUI, if all goes well. Now that I have a complete first draft of the paper, which I have sent out to my coauthors for review, I'm feeling remarkably calm about this. Even though I have received zero feedback from my coauthors.
4. On Saturday, LL learned how to open doors. My life is forever changed.
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