Advice and prayers needed

Soon we'll be taking K, who is two months old today, to Hawaii for my brother's wedding.  Thankfully it's a direct flight, but it's about 8 hours long.  K likes to be moving and rarely sleeps more than 30-45 minutes except at night.  She also likes to scream when she's tired or hungry.  Even though she's flying as a lap child, they are supposed to have a bassinet that connects to the bulkhead by our seats and we'll be bringing her carseat in case there's room.  I know I need to feed her on take off and landing.  Any other advice?  I really hope she doesn't scream and cry too much; I don't want the other paasengers to hate us.

One out of six

You've probably heard the statistic that one of every six couples in the US is infertile, and my cousins and I are a perfect example. I have 5 cousins (on my dad's side) that have children (most have two and are younger than me) and had them without any real infertility problems (the longest it took any of them to get pregnant was 10 months). On our vacation, we visited them and we were asked by five different relatives when we were having children (I've only shared our IF problems with one cousin). We had fun hanging out with their kids and D held my cousin's 7 month old for 45 minutes (very cute), but it was hard to see what we don't have (especially since almost all are blondes...like D and I).

The weather was not ideal on our vacation (cool and rainy which is not great for swimming and other water activities). It was great to see my family that I hadn't see in 2 or 3 years. We drove the 30+ hours straight through, so that was tiring.

I did ovulate during our vacation on CD 17, and I'm P+8. However, I started bleeding/spotting today. I started the nutrition plan yesterday from Fertility, Cycles, and Nutrition by Marilyn Shannon. I'm hoping that it'll at least get me in healthy shape for after my surgery. I'll get into more detail and let you know how it goes later.

Better ETA

Update: The lady who does scheduling at PPVI is out until next Monday, so I'll have to call while on vacation. Frustrating.

I still haven't found my diamond, but I did get the claim put in for replacing it. My grandma is doing alright, not great but she's at home with home care (I think). I had Friday off, so I was able to rest after a stressful week. We are going on vacation soon to see my relatives on my dad's side, so I'm looking for to that since it also involves lots of swimming and D and I both love the water.

One of our friends was at our house with his almost 2-year-old. The little boy loves D, and D is so cute with him. I got a little sad watching them because I want him to be able to do that with our child (plus the little boy is blond...just like D and I). Our friend even brought up that he can't wait until we have kids. One issue is that our house is not childproofed in anyway, so we had a lot of times where we were have to grab or move stuff so that he wouldn't get into it.

I call PPVI tomorrow to get my surgery scheduled. I'll post and put the date in my sidebar.

D's BF's Wedding, etc.

I'm on day 8, and I (as of know) seem to have finished spotting yesterday. That's definitely an improvement for me. It would be nice if this coming weekend (or by our anniversary next Tuesday), I had fertile CM but I'm not going to hold my breath since my body likes to throw curveballs. I'm finally at my maintance dose for T3 and only have to do temps and pulses once a week instead of every day.

I hope everyone had a great July 4. We had a very low key day and just hung out at home.

D's best friend's wedding was a lot of fun, but there was a lot of baby/pregnancy talk. They are some of the later people to get married and they went to a strong Catholic college so most married people had one or more kids. One of the bridesmaids was about 8 months pregnant. I did get to see my IRL IF friend who is starting to look into adoption for her second child (tried 4 years for first and have been trying 4 years for second). I also got to see my brother who's a religious, and he and some friends prayed with me about IF.

SA results

D's SA results were good, so the issue isn't MFI. The experience was not so good, but I'm not getting into details. At least it's done.

I'm still just spotting/light bleeding. I just want to start a new cycle. I'm on CD 43 without a confirmed ovulation.

We are going to STL for his best friend's wedding next week. I'm looking for to it a lot, especially since one of my brothers will be there and I haven't seen him since November. We'll be there from Wednesday to Sunday. My youngest brother is stopping (with a couple friends) by Sunday night on his way back from working at a church camp in GA.

P+8 and other stuff

This is the first time in a few months (and only three or four times in the last year) where (as of yet) I have gotten to O/P+8 without spotting/bleeding. Dr. Hilger put D and I on a 3 week antibiotics course which we start on P+1. I can't be sure, but it would be nice if it was stopping whatever is causing the crazy bleeding.

The antibiotics give me a stomachache and they give me a bad taste in my mouth, but it's worth it if it moves us closer to conceiving.

D and I went to NJ for his cousin's wedding last weekend. It was fun and we got to see all his family who we only see about twice a year. We are actually going to send a letter to his grandma, and ask her to pray for us with regard to infertility.

S (the 3-year-old girl I nanny for) punch me in the face today. I'm hoping that her parents can deal with her in a way that will reduce that kind of behavior.

Good Friday, CD 1...Cycle #19

It looks like today is the start of Cycle #19 (although it's hard to know what's really CD 1 with the crazy bleeding that I have start around 3DPO/just after Peak).  I'm getting frustrated again at the lack of progress we seem to be making.  I'll be doing the Symptom Checklist and Temperature Assessment for the T3 study this month.  Even if the T3 is an issue, I'm pretty sure that it's not what's causing my bleeding.  Since nothing else seems to be hormonely wrong with me, there has to be some sort of structural problem causing it, right?  My surgery won't be until December, which is still 8 months away.  If there is a problem, it might not even be fixed then depending on how serious it is.  I hate the fact that we are going to hit the two-year mark without know the cause of the bleeding (which has to be at least part of the the cause of the infertility).  

D and I had a pretty good time in Las Vegas.  It was kind of tiring though and D is not good about calling it a night around the friends we went with.  I was kind of hopeful when the bleeding/spotting stopped for almost a day, but it started right back up again.  D actually managed to win almost $200, so that was cool.  All the food we ate was great.  I think D had a good 27th birthday.

One of the hardest things to do is remember that my suffering is minor compared to Christ's and to many other people's.  The other thing I have to remember is that without the suffering of Good Friday, there's no joyful resurrection on Easter Sunday.  One day I will receive the joyous gift that God has prepared for me, but it may not be the gift that I hope it is.

3 DPO

Just a quick update. It looks like I oed on CD 16 (compared to the CD21 I had been having). The last three cycles have been CD 15, CD 19, and CD 16. Our timing was decent. I'm hoping that my b/w result will be back before the start of the next cycle.

D and I are going to Las Vegas for his birthday, and we leave on Wednesday so I won't be posting or reading then. We'll be back Sunday evening. I've been really bad about commenting, and I'll try to get better when I get back.

I had my third blood draw today. I'm on CD 10, and I just stopped bleeding/spotting (as of now) earlier today. I guess it's good that if I'm not always going to o on CD 15, that I have what is a more common cycle for me when I have my bloodwork. It'll probably (hopefully) be a normal CD 21 o. It would really suck to go past CD 30 without oing, that would be a lot of blood draws (I'll already have 14 if I o on CD 21).

We didn't really do much for Valentine's Day. D was help a friend most of the day and then we got tickets to go to Vegas for D's birthday with the friends. Their anniversary is the same weekend as D's birthday in early April. I've never been to Vegas, but everyone else has.

I've felt a bit off emotional for the past week or so. I'm not sure why, but I'm getting extra frustrated with D and he's getting annoyed with me.

Getting ready to go on vacation

D and I are getting ready to drive to upstate NY for his sister's wedding. We leave tomorrow and we'll be gone for a little over a week so we have a lot to prepare before we go (hence the lack of updates this week). I'll have my computer while we're traveling, so I should be able to post a few times.

The good news (or at least what it looks like now) is that the second FP/bleeding seems to have ended. It would be really nice to not have to deal with that especially since we'll be driving for a couple days. I doubt that I'll be oing next Wednesday, but it would be nice. It's more likely that I'll be oing 2 weeks from Saturday.