Ain't no stopping us....

Is it considered obsessive if I make it through three ovulation tests in one day?

Most days of my cycle (anywhere from 21 to 36 days) I get a big blank in the test window of my stick.
cycle day (CD)10, I get suspicious symptoms and test on a whim - faintly positive. CD 11, three slightly stronger positives. I'm torn.  It looks like we're building up to a surge: today is day thirteen and the line is almost there. Cm still says no-go.

Last night, we sat and talked it through.  Today, I'm going to sneakily test at work (yes, I'm a pee-on-a-stick addict at this time of the month) and if cm is more receptive, we're putting in a call and going for it.

See you on the other side :D

Counting Rainbows

So, it turns out that this month wasn't going to be our month.
After waiting on hot coals for what feels like forever, I got up one morning (the day of our city's Pride parade, no less) to a raised basal body temperature (bbt) and signs of fertile mucus (ewcm)

We had by that time given up on the likelihood of my ovulating this month and were planning to meet up with R for the Pride day festivities in town.  Needless to say: if this was going to be it, we would probably have to edit our plans a little.  I took an ovulation test around breakfast and then, being me, I took one after lunch just to be sure - both negative, no matter how hard or how long we stared at them. Not even a maybe-tomorrow shadow of a line.

We were disappointed but we're choosing not to dwell on it. The way we see it, we could be in for a long ride and we can't start getting bogged down before we've even had our first attempt. As it was, we went into town and had a great day and our camera is full of photos (like that one on the bar, for example) that we might not have taken. And it's probably for the best that Felix's due date would not be the same week as my birthday. With birthdays so close together in my family growing up, it always seemed more pleasant to have birthdays spread out over the year.

R was also disappointed, when we told him. He's been living the my-body-is-a-temple diet for weeks now and focusing on the fertility boosting foods we've found from our research.  When I asked him if we could buy him a drink at the festival, he smiled and shook his head. "I'm keeping myself in readiness for the next time," he said.  And whilst we assured him that for the next two weeks at least, he could relax his diet a little, he insisted on keeping to the fertility regimen.  Bless his heart.  We have been so lucky to find such a wonderful man as our donor and future uncle to our child.

So whilst this week has had a little disappointment, our life is still full of rainbows.

Got that Friday Feeling!

As I open my locker and reach for the familiar plastic container, I can feel the curious eyes of my colleagues following each movement.  Despite being considered somewhat of an eccentricity by most of the people I work with, my herb stash still generates a great deal of interest months after I started feeling comfortable bringing it in to work.  For a moment I pause, as if contemplating (it's almost funny, watching them feign interest in yesterday's free-newspaper whilst trying to see what will come out of my little box next) Then, pushing the box aside, I reach further in for what I was after - the jar of cinnamon.

Whilst I am not a qualified medical herbalist, I spent a couple years studying towards that goal at university when I was younger and herbal remedies are usually my first response for my own minor ailments.  There's just a few essentials I like to keep with me including, my preferred digestive, cinnamon.

It's not as a digestive that I'm using it today, though.

In July 2007, Fertility and Sterility published a pilot study in which cinnamon was shown to reduce insulin resistance in women with PCOS as cinnamon increases the effectiveness of insulin. It also slows down the movement of food from the stomach to the small intestine which slows down the breakdown of carbs, increasing absorption, regulating blood sugar and aiding in weight loss. Score!

And why am I pulling out the fertility spices today? Our plans have started moving forward. R's screening passed muster and he's been loading up on fertility foods like oysters, sweet potatoes and pomegranate juice.

Today is day 5 and it's looking good! 

The Sperm in the Equation

It's been a while since I last posted. For a number of reasons, which I wont go into right now, A and I have not yet begun actively trying and we preferred to blog when we actually had something to say. Well, now we are looking at a change in the starting line-up, so here I am again.


When we first started talking about the practicalities of getting pregnant, A mentioned that her relative had volunteered to be a donor shortly after she first came out to him. I had been especially taken with the idea of being able to see that bit of her in our baby. From that point on, our baby talks had always begun the same way: 'if M agrees...'
Around that time, we had also started researching a sperm bank online as a back-up plan.  I wasn't quite sure if the practicalities of ordering from the international distributor was the intimate experience we were hoping for and some part of me had wondered that if by looking we were admitting there would come a time when we would have to reach that compromise; and if so, at what stage we would need to decide that we were ready to do that. It was at this time that we met R.

R very quickly became a close friend of ours when he moved to England from his native Spain last year. So when he came to me one day voicing his concern at my distraction, I was able to trust him enough to confide our hopes of starting a family and my upset at the recent diagnosis of PCO that would make our attempts that little bit more complicated.  I explained my frustration at how the NHS would not subsidise fertility treatment for same-sex couples and how I refused to compromise by continuing as a 'single' woman.  When I told him how much it would cost privately, adding the cost of buying and shipping sperm, and voiced irritation at how much that would eat into our baby-savings when all we really needed was a healthy man to donate his sperm on the understanding that we did not intend him to be a legal parent, R volunteered to be a donor.  Focused on wrestling a heavy delivery cage at the time, I didn't quite register what he had said until I stopped and took a breather.

Thing is, A and I are quite happy about the fact that our current donor is a relative of A's - thus assuring A a biological tie to the baby. So why is this even an issue? Well, to be honest, A just isn't as concerned about donor choice as I am. And the more I have time to think about it, the more I just want to settle down with A and our baby (Felix. An inside joke and the pre-birth name of our future bump) regardless of where he/she came from. As I often say in reference to my step-father, your real parents are the people who raise you. Whoever the donor is, our baby will be just as much A's as mine. So with that in mind, I took a closer look at R.

R is apparently quite attractive, if the reactions of our younger female customers are any indication (I'm a poor judge of male beauty)  He's educated to university level and speaks three languages with a fair degree of fluency. He's interested in history and culture, has a healthy appetite, build and attitude and he's over 5' 5". He meets all of our requirements. Plus, he has dark hair and eyes just like A and his ethnicity is in part similar to A's.  That he lives 30 minutes walk from our flat is also a point to take into serious consideration.

Though it hung in the air between us for a long time after that, nothing more was said about it till last week, when the three of us went out for a drink to mark the temporary break in R's studies.  At the end of the evening, R spoke seriously to the both of us, saying that he had been thinking over the situation we were in for the past few months and researching my condition in order to better understand how he could help.  He asserted that he would still like to be a donor, if we were interested and that he was willing to make whatever commitments we felt were necessary to conceive our baby.  We were touched by his offer and expressed how grateful we were but I still needed to be sure he knew what he was saying - without the alcohol in his system. We agreed to meet for dinner a week later to discuss the possibility further.  During that time, R could research and ask us as many questions as he needed to be comfortable with his decision.

When R turned up for dinner this week, not only had he decided to proceed, he had spent an impressive amount of time and effort researching his responsibilities as a donor, from diet and exercise to lifestyle and potential timetables. He had also attempted to visit a sexual health clinic to discuss getting his 'boys' tested but had missed their opening times. Satisfied about his understanding of this undertaking and his commitment and haven spoken about our vision of his role in our child's life as 'Tio' (uncle) we have decided to proceed with R, working with three donations a cycle once his labs have cleared.

*Waves (potentially) the last glass of wine* To the next step. Cheers!

Happy holidays!

Christmas and new year with the family went well, despite a rough start.

Following an argument with my sister on Christmas eve - and I'm not going to get into that right now - A and I left for Spain feeling disappointed that something had happened to dampen our mood before we'd even reached the airport, for a holiday we'd been planning and looking forward to for months. Still, we had a hot drink at the airport and decided that we were just going to enjoy our holiday and use the time to unwind from the stresses of the last few months instead of brooding.

I admit, I did have to excuse myself the first time I saw A holding the new baby. I'd been fine when her brother and sister-in-law presented little S but the sight of my partner holding her brought tears to my eyes and I had to escape to the bathroom quickly. For the rest of the holiday though, I had no trouble interacting with the baby. I put it down to hormones and a tiring trip out.

And there's good news: our potential kd is now our official kd. We didn't want to say anything earlier in-case we jinxed it but the kd is a relative of A's. I, in particular, am excited about the implications of this. Yes, it means that we likely wont be able to try every cycle, as he lives abroad but the idea that our baby will have both my and A's genes is so wonderful that we are prepared to go longer between attempts. I'm feeling positive about this. I'm choosing to believe that since my pco symptoms are pretty mild, it may be that the metformin will do the trick relatively quickly (yes, I said relatively. I know it will still take a while)

The next steps are meeting with Dr. D to discuss putting me on metformin, arranging well-timed holidays with kd and ... oh yes, the wedding in May :D

All those little things

So here it is. I am officially moved in with A.
It's taken a long time for the last box from storage at my parent's place to make it here but I finally opened it last night. It was the hardest one to open, as this one contained my china baby doll.  I know it's silly to get myself worked up at this - and once we start the tww, it will probably pale in comparison - but fresh on the heels of a family birth announcement, in the week I expect to be ovulating...I had wine with dinner and cookies for breakfast. Screw the diet.

Well, actually the diet has been going rather well. I don't track my weight pound by pound - never have - but people at work have started commenting that I've lost weight. I guess in this way I'm lucky; I seem to have only the mildest form of most of the presenting symptoms of PCO. My weight can usually be managed by cutting back on the indulgences and only a little extra exercise (physical job and all)

We'll be flying to Spain on Christmas eve, to spend time with A's side of the family. I'm not sure how I'll manage being in such close quarters with our newborn niece.  Still, there is an upside to this: we'll be meeting with our potential k.d before Christmas. Hopefully, he'll have an answer for us and we can make arrangements or finalise alternative plans for our first attempt in the new year.

Venting, the lighter alternative to a venti

Had a bit of an 'up and down' week. Mostly down.

Whilst looking for a place of her own, a friend has moved into our flat.  She's paying a little towards rent and utilities and some of that is going into the baby fund but I'm getting frustrated with the changes that are happening because she's around. My folic acid supplement - with it's unmistakeable pregnant woman on the label - is hidden in a cupboard instead of next to the kettle (my first stop of the morning) and I'm taking it at random hours of the day, when she wont walk in - like I'm carrying on some illicit activity. The baby conversations have reduced drastically, as well.  At the start of the week, I was finding it difficult to handle the increasing evidence of a co-worker's pregnancy, and not being able to come home and talk about it the way I wanted to sometimes because J was in the next room was frustrating. I've been looking through blog archives of happy-ending pregnancies, trying to add some positivity to this situation and hopefully pick up some ttc stress relief tips (quite a few out there, btw. Such amazing, positive women)

My colleague miscarried (24 hours before news reached us of our team manager and his wife having their first baby) so emotions are running a little high at work and at home at the moment. Between that and another colleague's injury, there's only been the two of us to cover duty manager shifts in the evenings.  In the last week, I've been covering a lot of late evening shifts at work. Naturally, the store chooses to pile it on this week - from dangerous stairwells with no lighting, to produce delivery arriving twenty minutes before closing on a day when there's no available night-fill crew and I have to lock down completely. My caffeine intake has been higher this week than even when I was studying at uni. 250 mg a day may not sound like much to most people, but in my terms this is a binge.

And the cherry on the cake? A works morning shifts and studies three days a week, so I've seen her for less than an hour each day. I'm really missing her.