Christmas ate my life

Sorry for the radio silence. Christmas is a tough time for posting -- there's traveling, and family, and more family, and then I throw a party every December 30th. We're spending New Year's Eve alone at home tonight, as we often do, because we're just flat worn-out.

So, the interesting question at hand was what happened last cycle. Turns out it was a mixed bag: I got my period twelve days after the progesterone draw was taken, so that probably was the real O date, and that's a decent P4 level for that point in my cycle. On the other hand, that means I O'ed on CD 24, which is awfully late in the game, and the ovulation process is long and drawn-out and bodes poorly for things like egg quality. And, well, I got my period, so the cycle was a bust, and that's obviously teh suck.

However, if you happen to find out you're unpregnant on Christmas Day, a shiny new iPhone takes out some of the sting.

So, where to go from here? Well, Dr. Boss's opinion is that I "probably need a little Clomid", so it looks like we're heading back down that path. However, because my husband is a stubborn mule iPhone giver, it won't be this cycle. We're going to monitor me more aggressively this cycle, with temping and OPKs and an ultrasound or two as needed. I'm going to shell out for the new schmancy digital OPKs -- somebody finally got smart and invented ones that have clear indicators rather than making you play the how-dark-is-it-really game. I'm going to ask for an ultrasound when I think I'm starting to peak, and then another if I do the same second-peak thing as last month. After that, assuming I don't actually get knocked up, we'll probably start a Clomid cycle. Maybe it'll even work. Wouldn't that be novel?

I don't know where I'll be this time next year. Will we still be a family of four, or will I have a new baby arrived or on the way? I do know that it'll be OK, though. Admittedly, we only qualify as secondary infertile under a generous definition -- we haven't been at this very long, and we're just getting to jump the queue because I have a medical history. However, I'm already handling it much better this time around, and I think that will continue even if this drags on for a while.

I want very much to get the reproductive show on the road, so that we can either get pregnant or give up and accept that we've done what we could. I don't deal well with uncertainty, and I'm not very patient, and I'm personally pretty dubious that things will work out without medical intervention. I hate to stand around twiddling my thumbs waiting until the requisite time period has passed for us to be declared REALLY infertile. Why not just skip over all the months of failed cycles and start addressing the problems we know to exist? But after that, after we've put as much energy and money and tears into it as we have to spend, I think we can walk away.

Two years ago, I started the IUI cycle that turned into Claire and Katherine. I love them more than life itself, and if they're all I get, that'll be OK. I'll be sad -- I won't lie and say that I'm not already a little sad to be back on this particular horse -- but failing to have a third child is not such a tragedy.