Playing The Baby Lottery

Today is day 7 of cycle 17 and my first cycle on clomid. Today was my fifth and last day of 50mg a day of clomid. This was prescribed by my RE and there is no monitoring this cycle so just clomid and TI (timed intercourse). The RE's nurse suggested that we have sex starting today through day 18....that is way more sex then either of us can handle at this point. I mean that is the amount of sex we had when we first met each other and while it was fun and exciting and new it was also exhausting, really really exhausting. Now let's add our increased responsibilities, our toddler into the mix and really who wants to have sex for 11 days straight - I don't have enough creative energy left in me to make that desirable. Maybe on vacation, maybe without the toddler or the requirement to be up at 6:30am every.single.day or the the ever present thought in the back of our heads that we are only have sex because someone else told us we should and if we don't, if we miss just one day then maybe we've screwed ourselves for a whole other month. Sounds awesome, right? And I have this, probably irrational but maybe substantial, thought that if the sex isn't good then we have no hope in this crazy baby lottery that we play every month. This is not to say that I don't find sex with my husband enjoyable - it's always enjoyable, but sometimes it's just hurry up and let me get to sleep enjoyable or don't kiss me I already have my retainer in enjoyable. We are not a couple that has sex every day and after Q was born sometimes we weren't even having sex every week. But we have moments - really good, incredible moments  - so the potential for amazing sex is always there and in my head I'm convinced that it takes one of those moments to create a baby. It would have to be an amazing  moment to win the baby lottery, just like it would have to be an amazing moment to win the money lottery. But 11 days of amazing moments just isn't going to happen.

Like every cycle I've spent the days of my period in a gray cloud of sadness. Walking daily through thoughts of never ending disappointment fogging my everyday life. I think this time around was a little more sever then usual, probably thanks to the clomid. It's not anything clinical, but it is a sadness that follows me around for days, where I think this will never happen for us and I hate every pregnant person and secretly judge them and their abilities to be a good parent. But just like every other cycle once my period ends the cloud slowly starts to recede and I feel a bit hopeful again. Infertility certainly is a roller coaster of emotions and for those of us with shorter cycles it's a very fast and bumpy ride. I get my period every three weeks so a fourth of my time I feel defeated and lonely and desperate, but three fourths of the time I feel hope and excitement. I fantasize about what it will feel like when my numbers finally hit and I win the lottery. I think about how it will not only change my life, but the life of my entire (extended) family and how they will feel. Especially now that we've come "out" so to speak about our struggles to conceive. It's an excitement that I feel in the pit of my stomach and it bubbles up and out through all of my extremities. It's a feeling that makes it hard to sit still, hard to work, hard to think of anything other than what it will feel like to be pregnant and to eventually hold that new tiny life. I can feel the joy in every ounce of my being, with the realization that my fantasized feelings are only a fraction of what it will actually feel like. What I do know is that it will be an amazing feeling, but until that point I continue to ride the infertility ride.

So five days of clomid this cycle - my side effects weren't really that bad. Slight head ache in the evenings and a bit of trouble sleeping the last few days, potentially lower lows during my period, but nothing to really complain about. Fingers crossed that clomid is just the lucky charm we need to hit the jackpot this month.

Still Here

And still not pregnant. Currently in the two week wait of my 3rd month since seeing the RE, this is the amount of time we agreed that I would continue to try naturally before moving on to taking to Clomid. Have no faith or thought that this month will be any different then the past 15, so fully expecting to be calling the RE in the near future for the first round of Clomid. Started this cycle on vacation so I'm not tracking at all, which has been kind of nice, no temps, no OPKs, no nothing - so I have no idea, outside of physical signs of ovulation, if we had good timing or not. Have no idea when my period is supposed to begin - guess it'll just be a nice little surprise.

In other news I've been tracking what we've spent so far. After battles with the insurance company I have managed to get some of the tests/consultations covered so this is lower then it could've been, but already not cheap and we haven't even done anything expensive yet: