Wednesday Randoms On Friday

- My smoothies have tasted really yucky over the last few days. What's the deal taste buds?
- We are heading north for the weekend with my sister, brother in law, and her friend. I'm mostly excited to go but I'm seriously dreading leaving my Henners. Here's the thing, we are leaving Saturday afternoon and coming home Monday evening. That is not a long time away from him at all and it bothered me so much that I couldn't fall asleep the other night. I. Am. Nuts.
- I laughed at this until I was in tears last night. It is so J.

- School's out for summer!
- My other sister, brother in law and their two little boys are camping in our backyard this weekend which I think is really cute. We have a pretty large backyard, a fire pit, lots of trees behind us, and live in a little country town. So it does seem like a camping spot and I can definitely see that happening with our future kids, if they will ever exist.
- Please, please, please don't start my period over the weekend Body, PLEASE! Let me enjoy swimming!
- I love a freshly cut lawn.
- I have a weird lady parts ache that is frighteningly similar to what I felt when I had a kidney stone a few years ago. I dislike that.
- I woke up at 3:00am this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. I finally started to slip back into sleep around 6am, just as J woke up to workout and in doing so he turned on the light in the bedroom,  tossed weights around in the basement, and did his classic weight lifting grunts. Great, thanks. To top it all off a thunder storm rolled through so this little face jumped up to the bed and wouldn't leave me alone. He also threw in a few whines to make sure I knew he meant business.

- I do not understand how people wear white pants. How do they keep them clean all day?!

I'm Cranky

Well, I guess tomorrow will be Random Thursday because I am just not having a good day today and have a lot to rant about (yeah, this is going to be a long one). I'm sad. I'm 7dpo right now and I am cramping like crazy. Those burny, spreading down my legs cramps that make it obvious that my period is on the way. What makes it even worse is that I think it will be early, right in time for our little cottage getaway weekend. Awesome. My temp dropped again this morning as well so I officially have no hope.

I'm still waiting to hear back from the clinic after my referral was sent in about 3 weeks ago. I'm wondering if they just don't want to see me yet since I am just shy of a year of trying but I would think that they would at least call me and not just ignore the referral. Without knowing how long the wait is to get an appointment, I was hoping that I would be able to book at date and assumed that it would be after the year mark. I am going to give them a call next week, right as we start our 12th cycle and are ever so close to the one year mark.

This morning as I was getting ready for our run, I sat there and just broke down. Why is this so hard? Why can't I do something that I am physically and genetically made to do? Why do I have to fight for everything that I want? When will it be my turn to be happy? I don't understand why this is happening to me.

I am a religious person. I grew up going to church every single week, and still do. Not only do we go to church every week, but J and I both serve in the church every week by teaching other peoples children. I have always lived my life in accordance to the standards of our church, even when I didn't really want to. We pray multiple times a day, we pray every day for a baby, every single day for the past year and still nothing. For the first time in my life, I can't help but roll my eyes when someone talks about how God answers prayers, or that God is mindful of my struggles, or that He will not give me a trial that I cannot handle and overcome, or even that He will comfort me when I need it. For the first time, I am mad at God. I feel alone and not very loved. I feel like I'm struggling with my faith and I'm not sure how to fix it. My natural reaction to figuring things out would be to pray about it but I am seriously lacking the faith that anything will come of any more pleas. I guess I'll just keep on keeping on for now.

It seems that there has been a lot of baby talk around me over the last few days. My neighbour is about to have a baby so my Facebook feed is always full of impatient complaints, declarations of how awesome it is to be a mother, complaints about how awful being 9 months pregnant is, etc. There's also a few people on my Facebook that have a kid and talk about when they will have another. "I'm going to do some stupid activity that I foolishly think everyone on my Facebook cares about on this date, so I guess I will have to wait until the next month to have another baby". Or "We are going to have 7 kids! Better get going on our next baby!" and what drives me nuts is that it will probably work out that way for them. They want to have a baby so...novel idea here....they have a baby! Why won't that work for me? Maybe I need to post on Facebook about the inner workings of my uterus. Maybe they are on to something here. Maybe over sharing, and being self absorbed and immature is the cure to all infertility.

I learned through my sister in law that a girl from church is dealing with infertility and is actually getting treatment from the same clinic I'm wanting to go to. She has been at it for quite a bit longer than we have, as many unfortunately are, and my heart just breaks for her. We are a few weeks away from the year mark, we don't know what the problem is yet, we still have hope that with treatment we will get our baby. I cannot even express how sorry I am for people who even with treatment and procedures still struggle. If I feel as terrible and scared as I do at this point in our journey, I can't imagine how people who are dealing with so much more feel.

Ok, I feel a little bit better. And even though I had an awesome run this morning, I'm loving the weight loss and the shape my body is taking, and I'm not missing evening snacks at all as much as I thought, I am having a massive bowl of ice cream tonight while I watch trashy reality tv.

Oh The Two Week Wait

I ovulated a few days earlier than usual which would usually be exciting but now I am due to start my period on the last day of our little lake getaway weekend. Boo. Fingers crossed that there is a baby in there so that a period won't ruin the weekend! I'm 5 dpo right now and have been having period like cramps, so not only am I pretty sure there's no baby, I'm pretty sure that my LP will be short. Ugh. Still waiting to hear from the clinic and I'm getting impatient. But to make things better, it is almost summer vacation time and I bought a new dress today.

Random Wednesday Again

- I am going to really try to write on here with some more consistency or it will turn into Random Wednesday every post.
- We bought an iPad to replace J's old computer. We kinda love it...a lot...a lot a lot.
- I'm pretty sure I'm ovulating today, 4 days earlier than usual. Yesterday I got the most beautiful positive opk. It was like a super model of opks, perfection. We did this cycle up a little differently, somewhat because I wasn't expecting to ovulate this early. We will only end up with o - 1, o and likely o + 1. That's a big difference from what we usually do (basically at least every other day from about cd8 - cd 15, then every day until I get a temp rise). So it would be really nice if in previous months we were depleting his supply and maybe this month will be different. I'm happy that we have done something different this cycle and it is giving me a tiny bit of hope. Swim little Michael Phelps! Swim!                   
                  
                 
- School is almost out. I am excited to be able to get out and run nice and early and still be able to walk Henry early before it's too hot and before the trail is too crowded
- Hot dogs are so good.
- My neighbour is about to have her baby any day now. That makes me sad for me. I have a suspicion that she started trying to get pregnant when she did because she figured out that we were trying. Originally she posted all over Facebook that they were going to start trying for their second in about 6 months (because posting your unprotected sex plans on Facebook is completely normal apparently). She found out we were trying (by ambushing J and saying that I had told her we were trying, even though I didn't tell her. J assumed that I did tell her and confirmed that we were. I hate her.) and a month later she told me she was pregnant. About 2 months ago she complained to me saying that she was so disappointed that I wasn't pregnant yet because she was really hoping that we would be "knocked up at the same time". Ugh.
- My cousin is getting married in a few weeks and I am really excited to go to her wedding. I have no idea what to wear though so I am going shopping today to see if I can find a fabulous dress.
- I hate toothpaste commercials.

Random Wednesday

- Soft oatmeal raisin cookies are the love of my life.
- I have a nasty cold but I still ran this morning. I am proud of myself!
- A smiling lab is a magical thing. Henry looks like this for his entire walk, every time.

- We went to the doctor yesterday to get our referral and I cried in her office. I'm pathetic.
- Kindergarteners are crazy by mid June.
- I have 17 skirts and I actually wear all of them.
- I got a new thermometer and it takes much longer to read my temp. I have fallen back to sleep twice with it in my mouth.
- We are redoing our front porch. I am excited
- I got an iphone (for free). I feel so cool that I finally have a phone that actually works.
- I was irrationally bothered yesterday when the doctor kept telling my things about trying to get pregnant that I already knew.
- I love getting a wedding ring tan on my finger.
- Our 2 year anniversary is coming up. I usually have a plan for something special for J well in advance for any celebration. This year...nothing.
- I have to stop myself from making this whole blog just about how awesome Henry is. I see a post dedicated to my puppy coming very soon.
- I went to the dollar store to pick up some OPKs after work. I bought about 7 of them and the girl at the check out said "Well, I hope you get the answer you're hoping for." I bit my tongue and didn't school her about the difference between OPKs and pregnancy tests.
- When I was researching local fertility clinics I came across one and the picture on their "Get a Referral" page had a picture of a woman, very happily sitting at her computer with a huge smile on her face. I thought to myself that no one who is looking at that referral page is looking that happy as they do it. Clearly they are ugly crying.
                                         

And Here We Are

Well, it has been a rough week or so and I have cried a lot. Last Sunday after I tested I came to terms that this was, yet again, not our month. For the first time, J took it hard too. I decided that it was time to talk to my sister about what has been going on. She used to work at a fertility clinic and I needed to know what to do next. She knew exactly what I wanted to talk to her about and she was hoping that I hadn't been trying as long as we have been and/or that I was calculating my ovulation incorrectly. So, when I told her that we had been trying for 10 months and my 11th cycle was minutes away from starting, and I have been using OPKs and temping, obviously she couldn't give me any tips. After a long tearful chat we decided that now is the time to get things moving. J is going to have a SA as soon as possible and I will get a referral to a clinic and set up an appointment when this cycle is done.

I'm scared of what we have ahead of us. I'm worried about what we will find out when we go through testing but my fingers are crossed that we will get some answers and start to come up with a plan. I hope that this cycle might be our lucky one and we won't have to go through with anything, even though that idea seems so silly to me now. No one, other than my sister, knows what is going on with us. I think we will be telling my parents soon though. I'm really close to them and I thought that if my daughter was dealing with something like this, I would want to know. I think it will feel good to let it out and talk to people about it. I've found it hard to keep it to myself and will welcome the support that others will give.