Swollen ovaries and pee sticks

Infertility is funny. Odd funny and sometimes ha-ha funny. But today, it's odd funny.

I really enjoy peeing on sticks these days.

It's funny in the same way that it's funny praying for two lines instead of one is.

The greatest irony of infertility is the realization that you wasted so much money & time on birth control & pregnancy tests for so many years.

I look back and remember all the times just holding my breath, waiting for the 2 minutes to be up and hoping there would only be 1 line. There always was. I breathed a sigh of relief & called myself lucky.

Funny.

Here I am years later- instead of birth control pills, I take folic acid & fertility meds. I take Clomid. It's the beginner fertility drug. It's worked very well for me. Before Clomid my progesterone after ovulation hovered around 6. (should have been more than 10.) After Clomid, it hovers around 30. It's a great drug. Works for lots of people and is pretty cheap. The incidence of multiple pregnancy is low (less than 10% and then only twins - no risk of having a litter.) and the side effects are pretty minimal.


The main side effect I get is swollen ovaries. it's not so bad, really. Just a weird pressure on the outer edges of my pelvis. But let me hit a bump or twist the wrong way- Oh my. It definitely crosses the line into pain. My old RE told me "if your ovaries are talking, you should listen" implying I should take it easy. So I do. It's not so bad.

I find the pain sort of reassuring. In past months after about the 3rd pill, the pain started. This time it didn't set in until after I'd finished all 5. I was actually worried that I DIDN'T hurt.. maybe it wasn't working.


But today it set in. So I'm comforted.

I also peed on a few sticks today. I started with a Clear Blue Easy Fertility Monitor (CBEFM) stick. The CBEFM has let me down on a few occasions, so I followed it up with an Answer brand OPK.

CBEFM says "high", and the OPK was pretty dark, but not quite positive.

The OPK is interesting because it really looks like a pregnancy test. So I had a little daydream that it was a pregnancy test and it was positive. It was a pretty happy 2 minutes. I'm definitely ready to be pregnant again.

Now I just wait for the CBEFM to say "peak" or my OPK to be positive. Then I call my GYN and and the next morning, we do another IUI.

I'm guess it's going to be Tuesday.
If anyone out there is the praying sort, I'd appreciate any positive thoughts & prayers you'd be willing to part with come Tuesday.


--Trish