Round Three
Today was my first day back at work after the four week staycation. It was a really rejuvenating time. I wanted to blog more, but the days just merged into each other with plenty of sleeping, reading, viewing (we overdosed on re-watching the L word collection) and exercising.
It was really good to be free from the clinic this month. We did the DIY approach with DDY last week. We did three inseminations timed over a two day period. We felt our timing was spot-on. The spec-o-cam provides such useful and concrete indications and I have been faithfully inputting data into fertility friend. We did the first insemination early on Wednesday evening when my cervix was wide open and there was plenty of fertile cm, by the time we did it my OPK had turned positive also. We did the next one Thursday morning when I had ferning on the fertility lens (I have all the gadgets these days) and my cm was equally abundent and the last one later on Thursday night. The feeling of inseminating at home is so different to the clinic experience. We really created a sacred space. It was pretty magical and it was the first time I felt embodied in the process. In the clinic I always leave my body and focus on lamp above my head rather than what’s happening inside me. Whereas now I am really in my body. My Preparing to Conceive CD has all this stuff about breathing golden light into my ovaries and I have been doing that, not just while listening to the CD but also while at the acupuncturist, in the bath or whenever I have a few moments.
We said to ourselves at the time that even if it hasn’t worked this time, we’ve had a lot of fun doing it, which is more than we can say for the previous attempts. It was really good for our intimacy. But I am hopeful. We both are, of course. But it’s far too early to tell. My nipples felt very slightly sensitive a few days ago and I was incredibly tired on Sunday and needed a long afternoon nap, but at 5DPO I really can’t tell.
I think one of the reasons I have resisted blogging these past few weeks is that I was pretty affected by the BFN that last month offered up, particularly after the few days of hopeful signs. With my parents around it was hard to process my feelings about that. And I felt cautious approaching this attempt, and not quite sure what to say about it. But it’s been a good month for us, whatever the outcome.
Some perspective
We saw this documentary as part of a queer documentary festival that was in town over the weekend. It was so sobering. . . Can you believe this is happening in the world today? Makes me want to throw everything into going and working for Human Rights Watch – what else can be done.. The worst thing was in the film one of the guys said “If only I lived in Afghanistan, my life would be so much bettter.” Not often that you hear a gay man say that.
Be Like Others (74 mins) Tanaz Eshagian, 2008
Farsi with English subtitles
Under Iran’s current fundamentalist laws, homosexuals can be arrested, tortured and even put to death. Changing your gender however, is completely accepted and indeed subsidised by the state. So what do young gay men do when offered the choice between being incarcerated and disowned by their family or living a free life as a woman… they join the long waiting list for gender reassignment surgery. This is a powerful insight into a cultural climate that, whilst providing a service that many genuinely transgendered people would ache for, has created a situation in which homosexuality can be virtually eradicated. This is one of the most thought provoking, confronting films we have shown in queerDOC.
Returned
We’re still on our staycation. We’re half way through, with two more weeks left before returning to work. It’s been wonderful having some space to relax and reflect. The first two weeks involved my parents’ visit and the end of the 2WW. It was hard to have those two things overlap (the original plan was that they wouldn’t, but my late ovulation threw the timing out). I was pretty good about not obsessing during the 2WW and the days leading up to when my period would be due. But then my period did not arrive at 14DPO (a Thursday), or 15 (Friday) or 16 DPO (Saturday) either. My temperature stayed high. I had no PMS type symptoms. Lo and I were starting to get excited. I felt so vindicated by our choices for this cycle, started looking forward to the Wednesday 8 October when we would have returned home, my parents would have left and we would test as planned. That was also my birthday. I had drafted up in my head the post I would write, started thinking about how we could announce it at Christmas, both Lo and I had just started to allow ourselves to get optimistic. But then, on Sunday morning, while we had taken my parents to church, it suddenly arrived. I went to the bathroom hoping that I would not see blood, but alas, we were out of the game again. I felt really sad. And it was so hard managing that in my parents presence without explaining what was going on. It’s hard to know whether it was a late period or very early miscarriage (particularly as we hadn’t tested in the intervening days), but it really got me down. I felt very despondent. This whole ttc journey is so much harder than I expected it will be…
It’s been two cycles and already it’s starting to catch up with us. Even though most of the medical procedures are covered under Medicare, we realised just how much money we’ve spent on all the things that aren’t covered- sperm analysis, deposits and then an annual storage fee we’ve just been hit with – and with two donors that’s all doubled, as well as all the doctor’s appointments. Plus we had to pay quite a bit extra for our second IUI this month (which i still think was worth it because the timing was so good) and then my acupunture, which is wonderful but pricey. And the costs just seem to keep going on. We decided we’d stay at home for our leave because of needing to be around for the timing for inseminations etc, but the reality is also that we just can’t afford a holiday right now!
With DDY in town, and our frozen supplies starting to dwindle, we decided we’ll do just at home DIYs this month and skip the IUI. We figure we’ve got our fertility monitoring techniques perfected, I know I ovulate, and we’re familiar the timing in which that happens. DDY is totally on board with the DIY approach – we’ve got a plan, a jar and syringe at the ready and we’ve blocked out a couple of days in his diary around the time when we expect that ovulation will happen.
We can do without the daily blood tests and ultrasounds that the clinic would subject me to for the week preceding – and we can just take it a bit easier without early morning appointments. I am still seeing my acupuncturist and I have started doing the Preparing to Conceive meditation CD. I am also doing plenty of exercise which is keeping me sane and enjoying the space that not being at work offers up.
If this month is not the month for us, then we’ll go back to the clinic in November, for one final IUI before we pack up here for our move overseas. And we’ve hatched a viable plan for how we’ll go forward in the new year. It’s so complicated, with us in one country, our donors in another, and our medical insurance and good access to fertility services in a third. Lo and I had really good conversations about the way forward – we realised that we will probably need to either compromise on our donor choice, our method, or time-frames (i.e. hold off for three years till we get back). We don’t want to change donors as they feel so right and we want to keep going with this, even if it’s difficult. Waiting three years to start is also not an option. So we may end up travelling back for IVF here in Australia around next Easter time. We’ve looked into it and it’s not too complicated logistically, it’s probably the cheapest option financially – although will still be an expensive exercise – and has good chances. We’ve talked about flying them or us for DIYs, but with my unreliable timing, I think it will just be too difficult to schedule – particularly when we all have work commitments. If we do need to do IVF, I will need to work on my relationship to the drugs (and quit the grapefruit) but I feel prepared to do that given the chances are so high (45 per cent per attempt). But I feel so much more relaxed now that we have a few plans, even though they’re complicated. Here’s hoping they won’t be needed!
