I am on day 4 of birth control pills and so far so good. 10 more days to go! I don't have any nausea or anything physically debilitating. But I am definitely more bitchy than usual and am very moody and hormonal. To be expected I guess - hubby hasn't been enjoying it though;P I just don't remember being like this when I was on the pill years ago - seemed to be more of a mood stabilizer. I also stepped on the scale yesterday and saw that I gained 1.5 lbs just within the last couple days. And so it begins. I have been working out and eating the same amount that I usually do so there is no explanation other than side effects from the pill. I'll just deal with it I guess. I'd rather not put on too much weight until stims start. I can workout up to the end of the month when I start stimming, so hopefully I can keep the weight gain from the pill in check. I gained about 10 lbs during my last IVF cycle (both while I was down-regulating with Lupron and while I was stimming) and it would be nice to gain only about half of that this time. But as a side note, the weight I put on wasn't really "real" weight. Granted, I was eating like crap and not exercising but I'm pretty sure that it was mostly bloating and water weight because it was fairly easy to loose once I was off the meds. Despite that though, weight is weight whether it's water weight or not and it was beginning to be a problem finding clothes to wear to work without looking like I was popping out of them! I may have to wear lounge pants to work instead of regular pants if it gets worse than last time. I would go out and buy some preggo pants (LOL!) but that just seems too premature and I would jinx myself! So I'll just stick with the lounge pants as my backup for now. Or I could go through my parents attic and find some of my old clothes from the early 90s. Leggings and big sweaters seem to be making a comeback. Perfect attire for bloated women!
I am seeing my therapist tonight. My hubby and I went to see her around the beginning of December when I was really struggling with our first negative cycle. We really liked her, gave us some good suggestions for dealing with the grief, but she was expensive. So we decided to try a therapist who was in network. We found just 1 therapist who dealt with infertility issues and we met with her around mid-December. Unfortunately she was pretty unhelpful. Especially glaring was that she kept bringing up her personal struggles with infertility as well. I'm not too familiar with how therapy sessions are supposed to go, but I'm pretty sure that issues the therapist has are not appropriate to discuss with the patient! I think she was just trying to sympathize with me and illustrate to my hubby that it was normal to feel what I was feeling, but it didn't come off that way to me at least. My hubby was pretty good at directing the conversation when it got to be too focused on the therapist's issues - but if it had just been myself, I'm not sure I wouldn't have stepped in to the counseling role. Anyway, so today I am going back to the original therapist - just myself - and want to discuss some things. I feel like I have dealt with the negative cycle, have accepted it, have gotten closure, and am ready to move on. I was tempted to cancel my appointment and declare myself healed, but I'm not so sure. I don't want negativity to be a part of this next cycle and I can see it becoming a problem if it rears it's ugly head. Sure there are things we are doing differently this time - biggest one being the switch in REs along with some other smaller changes like taking up regular meditation and blogging about my thoughts - but still, want to keep the paranoia at bay. I don't think she will spoon-feed me any answers but just talking about my fears with a professional I think will help me find solutions or ways to cope.
Now that we are standing on the threshold of another IVF cycle, there are so many fears that are running through my head that I wasn't thinking about back in October when we were about to begin our first cycle. We were blindly optimistic - never considering the possibility of the cycle failing, not having embryos to freeze, producing bad quality eggs, etc. Similar to the initial infertility diagnosis, I had delusions of grandeur and never thought that anything like that would happen to us. Negative cycles happen to other people. Not us! My eggs are superstars and they can survive anything. I really don't think there was anything wrong with our naivety and I think that's what our mindset had to be to proceed with the cycle but now that we know how it feels when an IVF cycle goes wrong, it's scary to think about it happening again. Especially now that the stakes are higher and we don't really have a 'plan B'. This cycle may be the determining factor on whether or not I have bad eggs. The FSH and AMH tests that were done indicate otherwise, but the only definitive test for egg quality is IVF. If I produce bad eggs again, that may force us down a road that could include donor eggs, embryo adoption, or conventional adoption - all super expensive, not covered under insurance, and have a whole host of new legal, ethical, & moral issues that we would have to work through. But even if I produce better quality eggs, there are countless other things that could go wrong. After this cycle we will have spent our yearly max for infertility from our insurance. I don't know if we'd want to shell out $9000 of our own money to try a 3rd time. We could wait until 2014 when insurance rolls over again, but that's another long year of waiting. UGH! I feel my blood pressure rising and I am getting WAY too ahead of myself, going places that I just don't need to go yet! So, that's why I'm going to the therapist today to try to shut my head up. I try to take my own advice, put it all in God's hands and let go. But it is just so damn HARD to do in reality...especially when you are incredibly hormonal!
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