CD1 – Back In The Saddle Again

AF showed up bright and early this morning, hooray! So I called my RE – they want me to come in for an office visit tomorrow morning to do an ultrasound and be sure I don’t have leftover follicles from last cycle. (I doubt it – the only ones they found last month were tiny, thanks to that darned early ovulation…) Tonight I go pick up a Clomid refill from the pharmacy, which I’ll start taking on CD3 – Wednesday.

And I have another ultrasound appointment next week on Tuesday to see what follicles result. They wanted me in on CD11, but I have work meetings all day, so CD10 it is. I’m actually glad it’s on the earlier day... I’ll be so, SO disappointed if we miss ovulation again. I know I ovulated on CD7 last cycle, probably because my AF was screwed up and I was so sick – so I’m really hoping that this time we’re back to a nice healthy cycle where everything happens the way it’s supposed to.

Anyway, if this were to be the successful cycle our due date would be in December – which is probably our least desired kiddo birthday time. Murphy’s law, then, says that this attempt is likely to work. :P Oh, and the due date would be just a couple days after Kaitlin’s birthday – so then we’ll have to have unbirthday celebrations for both Kaitlin and kiddo on very separate days so that each of them gets their own day to be celebrated. :P

Gosh, even though we only skipped one cycle it feels like FOREVER since we last got to make a TTC attempt. :P

In the meantime, we picked up our engagement photos last weekend, so I thought I’d share them here. They turned out so cute! I love Kaitlin’s shiny ringlets… it took me like two hours to curl her hair up like that, LOL. It looks so pretty though!

(This one's my favorite)

CD9 – Attack of Life

I haven’t updated in a long while because the last week or so has been completely overwhelming… I was very sick over Valentine’s Day, had to finish an embroidery project, and things got chaotic at work. But here’s where we’re at now:

On Valentine’s Day I talked to the RE and let her know that my spotting had pretty much stopped. She also confirmed that the blood pregnancy test had come back negative. This is one of the oddest periods I’ve ever had… a much lighter flow than usual (it barely even became more than spotting) and such a dark color. Anyway, the RE said we would use Tuesday the 11^th, when the spotting started, as CD1. She put me back on the 100mg/day dose of Clomid for five days, starting on CD4 (Valentine’s.) Though I was sick and miserable, I still went faithfully to the drugstore, picked up my prescription, and took it daily. Yesterday was my last dose. I got a few spots in my vision this morning, but otherwise I feel like I’ve had a lot fewer symptoms from the Clomid this cycle than last time. I’m hoping that doesn’t mean my body’s being less responsive to it…

I have an appointment for an ultrasound on Saturday at 8 AM. I’m going to be using OPKs between now and then just to be sure I don’t get a smiley first – the RE didn’t tell me to do this, but I really don’t want to miss this cycle by not paying attention.  Also, I really, really think that the reason my last period was so odd was because I didn’t have a very good uterine lining last cycle… from what I understand, Clomid does that sometimes. The blood was old and there wasn’t much of it, which makes me think my lining wasn’t thick enough for implantation and it died long before my body was ready to shed it. So I did a little online research and until I go in for the ultrasound I’m going to take a Vitamin E supplement and a baby aspirin every day in addition to my prenatal, to see if this will help thicken my lining up.

I am also going to ask the doctor pretty earnestly for progesterone this time around. I really think my lining died off early and my poor little egg(s) – if fertilized – didn’t have a chance as a result.

I’ve actually had so much other stuff on my plate the last week or so that I haven’t had much time to think about TTC. I’ve been temping in the mornings but my chart is wayyyy messed up because of the fever I had while I was sick. Also, Kaitlin’s dad went into the hospital on Monday after a heart attack, and he’s currently not in great shape, plus things are very stressful for her at work right now, so she’s under a lot of pressure too and hasn’t been having a very good week so far…

On the sunshiny side, though, we did go in to do our vintage-style engagement photos on Monday night. And that was actually a LOT of fun. It took me about an hour and a half to curl Kaitlin’s hair into a ton of doll-like ringlets, and we did our makeup and put on false lashes and I wore a pair of my PinkyParadise contacts for good measure. Then we got to the photo studio, signed in and got to change into shabby-chic lace dresses and 1930’s-style hats and pearls, and go pose for the photographer.

We’re going back on March 3^rd to pick up our large photo (the one that comes with the package we bought) and probably buy the CD of images too so that we can print others out as we wish. I’m really excited to see how they turned out. Kaitlin looked really pretty and I felt super cute (I had this little hat that looked AWESOME with my short hair) so it’s something to look forward to in the midst of all this craziness.

IUI#1 CD20 5DPI - TWW Distractions

Well, today makes us 5DPI. And I have to admit, I still don’t feel very pregnant. If I do have a fertilized egg at this point, it’s most likely floating around in my uterus, thinking about attaching itself, and in the next week or so it would find a good spot, nestle in and implant.

But honestly, I’m not holding my breath. I just don’t feel pregnant at all. Which is not to say I don’t very much hope and wish for it… Over the weekend we had lunch at Panda Express and Kaitlin got the coolest fortune in her cookie:

So I was super excited that maybe the fates were referring to a BFP, even if I’m not really feeling anything. What I wouldn’t give for a little spotting or cramping today, something to indicate implantation. I’m going to wait until tomorrow to start testing out the trigger, since the stash of pregnancy tests I ordered won’t arrive for a little while.

In the meantime, I spent the weekend running errands with Kaitlin and getting started on the SCA embroidery project I’ve been assigned by my SCA Laurel, Duchess Berengaria. We also stopped by the Shane Company and I bought Kaitlin’s wedding band, the one that will go into her e-ring. The rings are now with the ShaneCo jewelers being sized and attached to each other. We went to the Apple store so she could have her iPad with the broken screen replaced, and got super lucky – the kind folks at the store had quoted her a price of $50, then said she actually didn’t qualify and should pay $300. But because they’d quoted her the $50, they honored it… and she was able to get her iPad replaced for a fraction of what she would have had to pay otherwise. This is great because it allows her to save more to have her teeth fixed.

And, I received the stash of little office-decorating supplies I’d ordered from Amazon. So when I got to work today, I replaced my wintery decorations with all the little dollar-store Valentine’s day things I’d picked up – heart-shaped tinsel wreath on the door, heart-shaped candy dish with V-Day chocolates, red table runner, pink rose-shaped scented soap petals, a glass rose, love-themed window clings, etc. I plan to grab a few more hanging things so I can add a couple of them hanging from the ceiling and my cabinets. Oh, and some encouragement-themed magnetic poetry for the side of my filing cabinet. In addition, while at Walmart I picked up that $50 microwave I’ve been eyeing. After work I’ll go get it out of my car and set it up under my desk… then next month, hopefully, I’ll be able to afford the $75 mini fridge and I’ll have a full on lunch station in my office – awesome.

I also repainted my nails, so I’ll put up a photo in the next day or so. This time they’re glitter red with red and white texture flakes… They’re kind of cool. While we were at Walmart, there was a photography group there offering these awesome 12x18 linen-look portraits for $20 plus a $5 sitting fee… so I signed Kaitlin and I up for an appointment at 8 PM on Monday the 17th. Basically the company dresses you up in Victorian-era pearls and lace, and you get a large sepia-colored portrait. Of course they will let you do other poses and you can buy those too, which we probably will… this is going to be our engagement photo session. I love this idea, because it lets us do something a little costumed for our engagement photos. Since our wedding is likely to be costume-esque also, it just seems really appropriate. This will give me the chance, too, to buy some makeup and hairstyling bits for both of us – I want bold eyeliner, false lashes, and to give Kaitlin lots of neat, shiny curls. I’m also going to wear my green PinkyParadise contacts, which will really bring out my eyes. Something exciting to think about while I’m waiting to find out if I’m pregnant… and if I am, it will be like a celebration, and if I’m not, the photoshoot will be somewhat consoling as we gear up for round #2.

Wow, now that I re-read this, it was actually quite an eventful weekend, even if it really felt like I wasn’t getting much done.  This time next week I will be 12DPI, and can start testing in earnest. Hope the week goes by fast!

CD6 - Post-Christmas

Well, Christmas is done – my proposal on Christmas Eve went just as I’d hoped. Kaitlin opened the gift, had a great time trying to figure out the puzzle box (it only took her a few minutes) and was truly surprised and excited to see the ring. YAY!! She keeps staring at it and squeeing over how sparkly it is. ^~ Then we had a houseful of people on Christmas Day – my parents and brothers, my brothers’ girlfriends—one of whom brought her son—and Kaitlin’s dad. The food turned out all right, and we had a good time opening stockings and gifts. Kaitlin got me a gorgeous leather messenger bag for work. I haven’t transferred my purse stuff over to it yet, since I had to go right back to work the day after Christmas, but I’m going to do it this weekend. I love how professional and nice it looks, and it's the perfect size for my ipad or even a laptop.
Kaitlin’s coming down with a cold, though, so she’s coughing and miserable the last couple days. :( So next up: going to a friend’s birthday party this weekend, then our second anniversary is on Monday—but we’re going to wait until New Year’s Day to celebrate since we both have the day off. There’s a party at a friends’ house on New Year’s Eve. And next Friday is our first RE appointment!!! I’m really, really excited. I keep trying to make lists of all the questions I want to ask. I read on a forum somewhere that an R.E. usually makes you sit out the first cycle so they can do tests. I really hope she doesn’t do that, because today is CD6, and I’m likely to ovulate just before the initial appointment. Waiting another entire cycle before we can make an attempt would be SO hard. I do want to ask her what her IUI process is like. Does it include medications? Does it include ultrasounds? Do I call in when I get my first OPK smiley in order to schedule the IUI? I want to show her my charts and ask if she thinks I am ovulating the same day as a smiley, or if she thinks the charts are wrong. I would really like to do ultrasounds in order to be able to tell if that’s the case. Will she do tests on the swimmer sample before the procedure, to verify quality? Should I have the swimmers delivered to my house as usual, or to her office? What kind of tests does she recommend beforehand? While my head is busy swarming with all of that stuff, I am trying to focus on just making it through one day at a time. Today I have some errands to run on my lunch break, including picking up a fresh kit of OPK sticks since the ones I have are all expired. Since Kaitlin’s not feeling very well, I’m planning on spending the weekend resting as much as possible (and doing some post-Christmas cleaning.) You know, I’m really feeling good about the possibilities of next year. I kind of can’t wait for 2014 to get here... :)

Christmas Eve Eve

AF finally, FINALLY showed up yesterday, making my last cycle officially the longest one I've ever recorded, at 29 days. So I'm back to temping daily now, and all set to visit the R.E. next Friday. Our first IUI can't come soon enough for me. If my cycle will go back to its usual 24 days, I should start our first TTC cycle somewhere around January 15th, putting O and an IUI somewhere around January 25th (and due date, if successful, around October 18th.) Kaitlin and I also talked about skipping any cycles that would give us a December due date. Since Kaitlin's birthday, Christmas AND our anniversary all occur in December, I'd really prefer not to make our child share their birthday with all that other stuff. Kaitlin feels pretty strongly about it too, because she grew up with a December birthday and always feels a little bit like her birthday gets overshadowed by the holiday.
What that does mean, though, is that we'll get to try a January and a February cycle, but will likely have to skip March and possibly also April. Maybe we'll get super lucky and it will work on the first try. :P Anyway, today I want to go buy a Christmasy-looking shirt to wear on Christmas day, since I don't actually own anything red, green, OR Christmasy; and also pick up some more OPK tests. Back to the joys of peeing on a stick obsessively, LOL. In the meantime, as Kaitlin pointed out to me this morning, it's Christmas Eve Eve. :P I spent the weekend getting more presents wrapped, figuring out our menu for Christmas dinner, and going grocery shopping - I also made one of the desserts. I work today and a half-day tomorrow, then will spend the second half of the day cleaning the house. Kaitlin's puzzle box did arrive in time - yay!! I spent some time this weekend arranging the ring inside it, locking it up, and wrapping it. Kaitlin's already asked if she can open one present on Christmas Eve. ;) I knew she'd do that... and this year I'm ready for her. I think she'll be really excited. She's actually done a really great job of not mentioning how much she wishes for a ring herself. She made just one little comment, when I was gushing over how pretty my new ring is, that maybe someday she'd get to have one too. :P It's been really hard to play it off and act noncommittal, but I hope I'm pulling it off successfully so that Christmas Eve will be a real surprise. Keeping fingers crossed that it goes smoothly, and she's happy, and I make it the memorable proposal moment that she's always wanted.

CD 28, No AF yet

I did get my ring on Wednesday and have been staring at it nonstop since. It's sooooo pretty. Even my staff at work noticed and asked me about it. I'm going in this afternoon to pick up Kaitlin's ring, which should be out of the jeweler's shop and ready to go... and hopefully the puzzle box will arrive in the mail today so I can get the Christmas Eve plans all wrapped up and ready.
In the meantime, I've hit CD28 with no AF. Grr. If she doesn't show up today, this will officially be the longest cycle I've recorded thus far. It figures, seeing as how this is the first time in two years since I've resumed tracking, that my body would make me wait a little longer to be able to get started. But I guess I should be grateful, and hope that this won't happen during an actual TTC cycle -- because to be three or four days past my usual AF-due-date, thinking that meant I was pregnant, only to have AF show up after all -- would be so frustrating. :P So I will be patient and keep waiting, and hope that AF will behave herself once we're trying in earnest. Is it sad that even though Christmas and our anniversary are coming up, the thing I'm looking forward to most is the RE appointment? Just for fun, I checked a Chinese gender predictor calculator, and learned that if I were to get pregnant in January, baby is predicted to be a boy. Hee~* And baby's birthday would likely be somewhere around October 16th. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high that we'll have success on our first try. I was getting really discouraged after four BFNs last time - patience is definitely not my strong suit. But who knows... maybe we'll get lucky? :)

An Engagement Story

Well I’ve been waiting around for AF to show up, but thus far we’re on CD26 with no sign of her. *sigh* Ah well.
Christmas is coming up, and it’s going to be pretty darned momentous. See, Kaitlin had proposed to me last June, on my birthday. One of the things we’d talked about a while back was that both of us kind of wanted to be proposed to, and I’d told her that each of us should choose a moment to propose to the other, so that we both got the proposal experience. Well, she beat me to it. At dinner on my birthday she had me unwrap my birthday gift, which turned out to be a singing Belle doll from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (this has a backstory – Belle is my favorite Disney character, and a few months after we started dating I’d accompanied Kaitlin on her family’s trip to Disneyland. While we were at the park she commissioned an artist to draw Belle for me. She used the drawing to say “I love you” to me for the first time. We now have it framed on our wall at home…) She had picked out a princess-cut yellow sapphire solitaire, and had it fastened to the doll’s hand. I happened to unwrap the doll’s hand first, so without even opening the entire present I had already noticed the ring. At first I thought it was one of those kid’s toys, you know, the doll that comes with jewelry the child can wear too... but the ring looked pretty darned fancy. Before I could even finish unwrapping the rest I realized Kaitlin was on one knee, asking me to marry her. I was so surprised that I think I actually asked her if she was serious. But I said yes, of course. :) Later on we went back to the Shane Company together so she could show me rings that she liked. Unbeknownst to her, I had actually already special-ordered a ring that I thought was what she wanted – a band she’d pointed out months ago, and I was going to have them add a stone mount and a purple pear-shaped sapphire. She’d always said she didn’t like diamonds, but as we were walking around the store she suddenly said that she really wanted a diamond engagement ring. So after she showed me what she liked (she and I have really opposite taste in jewelry) I went back to the store to cancel my special order and instead put in an order for the one she’d picked out.
This is the design she picked out, though she wants a different band However, as we were walking around, I also asked her a little timidly if she’d mind if I exchanged the ring she’d proposed with and got a diamond ring myself. She let me pick out a design that I really liked, and put it on layaway. I didn’t tell her that I had hers on layaway too, but I did tell her that she’d probably have to wait a bit for her proposal since I’d need to save up for her ring. Well… it has been about six months. She took me back to Shane Company last weekend so that she could make the last payment on my new ring, and I picked out a diamond. I’m going back this afternoon to pick the new ring up – and she doesn’t know this, but I’m also making the last payment on HER ring while I’m there, which means in a few more days I’ll be able to go pick her ring up and give it to her.
This one's mine. It combines the look of an e-ring and a wedding band and I <3 data-blogger-escaped-font="" data-blogger-escaped-it.=""> It’s her turn for a proposal, so here’s the plan: Kaitlin loves puzzles. She also loves presents, and has a really hard time being patient for things like Christmas and her birthday… she’s always asking if she can open presents early. And, she was pretty adamant that she wanted me to have my new ring before Christmas so my family could see it. So I have decided to propose on Christmas Eve, so that she will also have her ring in time for our big Christmas get-together. And, clever person that I am, I’m going to give it to her as a Christmas present that I will oh-so-generously allow her to open on Christmas Eve. To add a little more fun, I bought a handcrafted puzzle box off of Ebay. Once it gets here, I’m going to wrap the ring, put it in the puzzle box, then wrap the puzzle box. When she opens it I’ll tell her she has to figure out how to open the box, and have fun watching her try to get it open (it has a hidden compartment with a key, and a hidden keyhole.) After she gets it open she’ll have to unwrap the present inside… and by the time she gets to the ring box, I’ll do the whole one-knee-pop-the-question thing. Assuming everything goes smoothly, it should be a ton of fun, and I hope she’ll find it romantic!! I’m just waiting for the puzzle box to arrive in the mail. Really, really hoping it gets here on time. I paid extra for shipping to try and make sure, but I’ll be biting my nails until it actually gets here. So, lots of things to keep me distracted while I wait for AF to show up… Really excited for next week!!