IUI cycle #4

My cysts from last IUI (May) have cleared up so I've got the green light for another IUI cycle. Today is day 2 and my baseline scan looked good this morning. The medication on this cycle will be just like in May. I'll take Femara for 5 days (start tomorrow & finish on Wed). Then I'll start Follistim injections on Wed night and keep that up until doc says stop. I'll have another scan next Sat (7/21). Each cycle can vary a bit, but last time I had my IUI on day 16. So I expect IUI to be around 7/27.

Tatooine

May the force be with you.

I'm not really going to write about Star Wars on my fertilty blog, but thought Tatooine was a good title for this entry. Tatooine is the home planet of Anakin & Luke Skywalker (and Princess Leia) and I've always thought it was a funny name for a planet. You'd think everyone on the planet would be covered in tattoos. (Yes I'm a dork, and I'm ok with that).

Which brings me to my subject, my new tattoo. Yep, for those of you that didn't know, I got a tattoo. I've had a lot of people ask me why. Why now (at 28 years old)? Why that? Why there? (Esp. family) I don't promise to answer all of those questions now (maybe not ever), but I will talk about it a little.

It is my first & only. It's a small tattoo but readily visible. It's about an inch wide decorative eternity symbol in all black. (And I'm going to go back to get it touched up a little). I got it on June 16th at Monkey Ink in Garner and Jack went with me. Yes, it hurt, but not that bad. After all the needles & pain with IUI/IVF, this was not a big deal plus it only took about 2 minutes.

Some may think that both the timing & the design are random. But they'd be wrong. I've wanted a tattoo for many years but various things stopped me (money, design, not wanting it to show in my wedding dress one day, etc). I saw this design several months ago and thought it would make a good tattoo so I kept it in mind. The cysts that I had on my ovaries made this month a good time (can't get a tattoo while you are pregnant or think you are). The more I thought about the design, the more I thought the symbol could mean a lot to me. (Plus it looks cool). I'm not going to go into what it means to me, but I will say it's related to where I am in my life and in my illness (yes infertility is an illness). So it very much is not random.

I don't expect everyone to understand, approve, or like it. And that's ok. I got the tattoo for me. And I put it on my wrist because that is where I liked it.

HPT negative

What a week... it's been one thing after another! My hard drive at work crashed while I was supposed to be doing my job plus being a backup for someone else, had tons of family events all week including a graduation to attend and another negative home preg. test. Yesterday was 14 days after IUI so I had taken a test first thing in the morning. RN said to stop taking the progesterone and that would allow me to start a cycle.

Before the day was out, I started another cycle. Unfortunately, when I got to the doctor today, he found a few large cysts. They are nothing to worry about, just remnants from the IUI cycle. Actually, with PCOS, I have cysts all the time, but these were particularly large (he measured them .. but I wasn't paying attention to what size they were). The problem is that with these large cysts, he would be unable to monitor me through another cycle as there would be no way to tell if I was developing mature follicles or still just had the cysts.

So we have to take a month off again. You'd think I'd be happy for a break.. with all we've been doing, it doesn't seem like we've had many breaks. But in the last 6 months, we've only had the two cycles of medicine, one IVF and one IUI. So I really am not thrilled with yet another delay. But, it is what it is. Of course, just like my previous two doctors, he said that it's still possible to get pregnant while off the medicine. But, it is not very likely. So, again this blog will be quiet for a few weeks.