Baby Q #2

I can't wait to be pregnant again!

I love thinking about having baby #2. Most of you know that Landon took us almost 2 years to have.  So... here we are trying for #2. We took 5 months to do a lower dose fertility drug with my regular OB and once we weren't successful we have returned to UVA fertility center. Here we are, starting our 2nd month with shots and an intrauterine insemination. I have my fingers crossed that this one will be one! It took 4 iui's to get Landon, but I'm hoping it won't be as difficult this time :) All prayers are welcome!

Getting in the Groove

Well January is offically underway and so are my New Year's Goals. Another goal for the New Year is to create small goals each day. The last two days I have been back to work for 10 and 11 hour days to get ready for the new semester. Tomorrow our students are back and I'm responsible for their schedules, the teachers schedules, lunch schedules, failures, etc. So it's been an undertaking. It's been difficult to complete my small goals for each day since I don't have many waking hours at home to complete them. I actually haven't completed today's yet!
Yesterday my goal was to go through all of my board on Pintrest for recipes. I'm making a list of all of the dinners I want to make along with their recipes so I can start making new stuff for dinner!

Check out my lunch box!

Today my goal is to pack my lunch for tomorrow. Hopefully this will help me in more ways than one! By saving money from eating out or school lunch- and I can control my calories a little better.
I also have a cute lunch box and I love to carry it! I always get lots of compliments on it :) You can get one too at www.myinitials-inc.com/BrittanyQ

Our appointment went great at UVA! Today was my last day on Femera and tomorrow I'll give myself the injection of Bravelle. We go back on Sunday to do an ultrasound to see if we have any big follicles!

Resolutions, babies, houses

One of my New Years Resolutions is to blog more! Seeing as how my last post was last January.... Christmas is over and we had a blast with my now one year old! Kids make Christmas come alive again. But now it's back to work!

On Friday we go back to UVA to see Dr. Williams, we like to call him Dr. Ken because he looks like a Ken doll hehe We tried to get pregnant for over a year after I was diagnosed with PCOS- we went through 2 fertility doctors before we found Dr. Williams- our third and final doctor. He was amazing! Our second doctor didn't have good bedside manor and was content being very slow in our process. We were ready to get pregnant then! We had been trying before I was diagnosed with PCOS. Dr. Ken listened to us and said, "You have been on this mediciation long enough, it's not working. Let's try something else." It was like angels were singing! Our very first month on the new medication and we were pregnant with Landon! So here we are almost 2 years later going back to see Dr. Ken, hoping for the same amazing results!!!

On top of holidays, baby making, keeping up with a one year- we are trying to sell our house and buy a new one! We had been looking at the larger city close to us, mainly because our friends are there and I needed to be closer to shopping. We live in an extremely rural area. My husband is a teacher/coach at the local high school and I am a counselor in the next rural area one town over. We have now started considering moving into the town that I work in. It's also rural but in a larger area. We would be about the same distance away from the larger city as we are now. But I would be closer to work- I am currently driving an hour to and then an hour home each day. So if anyone needs a house, check out ours! It comes with land too!

Pregnant Dreams

For you ladies that have been pregnant, you have to know what I'm talking about. For those you getting ready to get pregnant or sometime in the future will be pregnant, listen up. There are many "side effects" to pregnancy that you don't know about until you are here my friends. Some of them are great! For instance, my hair is growing at a rapid pace, and we all remember when I donated my hair for locks of love over a year ago, I'm begging it to grow!! There is a great book I highly suggest to you, Jenny McCarthy's book, Belly Laughs. Entertaining and true!! Don't tell, but Daniel has even read the whole book! lol
So one of the symptoms that I didn't know existed were these crazy dreams. Sometimes horrific and sometimes just plain odd dreams. I have read that it's homorone and anxiety related. I guess if you blend a horomonal woman with anxiety about birth, pregnancy, stretch marks, etc... you get crazy pregnant dreams! Did all you math whizzes catch that?
Last night I was trying out for highschool cheerleader again, at a different highschool. I think I made them up in my dream, our mascot was the wild cat. haha I giggle at myself just thinking about it. In my dream, I had to make up a cheer for tryouts and I think it was getting pretty good until the coach (who looked like a beauty queen) asked me how old I was and I said, "uhhh 25." Which by the way in real life I'm 26, so did I lie in my dream or was I confused.... also weird.
A few nights ago I was a nurse, which at best I have some first aid skills you need a bandage I can stick that on, you need some perxoide to wash out a wound I can pour, you need your ankle wrapped with an ace bandage... that's taking it a little too far. I'll probably cut your circulation off. So me being a nurse is quite the stretch, but in my dream I was and damn good at it. I even wore a nurse hat and outfit from like the 1960's or a sexy Halloween costume. Anyway I was treating this girl that was probably 2 who was addicted to heroine. That was awful. I was trying to break her of this habit and her drug dealers were trying to hurt me and this little girl was crazy. It was sooo weird. I think I dreamed this because they keep showing on access hollywood about that little boy who smoke 2 packs of cigrettes a day in some foregin country.
http://www.parentdish.com/2010/05/26/boy-2-smokes-two-packs-a-day/
Which if I talk about that long, this post will turn into a rant or a rave. On to the next dream.
Last week I delievered my own child. That's right I did it myself. First I'm cheerleader, then I'm a nurse, now I'm a doctor. Good news is that labor and delivery didn't hurt, I guess I got the epidural? The nurses were standing around my bed watching my push and I reached down and literally pulled the baby out. Yes I know you are probably grimacing about now, but a dream is a dream and delievery will actually be far more gross than that. So for everyone who will be pregnant in the future prepare to dream crazy shit.

HSG

Today I had a hystosonogram. This procedure is very typical for PCOS infertility treatment. I was really nervous about this before I went. The hystosonogram is basically the doctor takes a speculum into the cervix. Then a catheter is placed into the uterus and a saline solution is then pushed through. The doctor then takes a trans vaginal ultrasound to look at the uterus. The main thing they are looking for are polyps, fibroid, or tumors. It also looks for blocked tubes and scar tissue.
The procedure was painful and uncomfortable, but not as bad as I expected. (I also took 600 mg of ibuprofen to help too lol) It was actually very quick too... and the best news of all was that everything turned out ok. He said that my uterus looked very normal and clear of anything abnormal. Great news!
This cycle is the first cycle that I will be taking a trigger shot and an iui. Trying to stay positive and hoping this will be it! I want the journey of trying to conceive to be over. I want to move on to the journey of pregnancy.
month11
cycle 5 on clomid 100mg
HSG-clear!
overdril shot
iui

Reproducing

Another topic that takes up a lot of space in my brain and thinking time is getting pregnant, which if I was blogging true to my thoughts would be daily. The month before I got married my OBGYN and I had little talk. She knew that marriage was in my direct future and she asked me if we were talking about having children. I said yes, but it was still a year or so off before we were trying... she suggested that I discontinue birth control, since I had been on it since I was 15 for irregular cycles, to help. Once I stopped birth control she said it could be 3 months for it to get out of my system and another 3 months to become regular in my cycles, then I could use protection until we were ready to start trying and I would be able to time everything more precisely and it would be easier to get pregnant. So I listened to this advice, June 2008 I took my last birth control pill. Then I didn't have a period...months came and went... Since I had just graduated with my Masters my OB was a campus doctor, now that I was a grown up, married, and with a real job, I needed to find a new OB.
Finally in November of 2008 I felt like something was wrong, it had been nearly 6 months! I started calling local OBGYNs. (One doctor's wait list time for new patients couldn't get me in until MARCH!) I finally found one and she was able to take me in 3 weeks. At the end of November I had my first appointment. After a battery of tests, she quickly diagnosed me with PCOS, Polycycstic Ovarian Syndrome. This diagnosis was not a shock to me, my sister has also been diagnosed; and if this wasn't such a new diagnosis I believe that my mother and grandmother would have also been diagnosed. I was started on medication and finally started my next cycle. The doctor and I talked, she said that getting pregnant would be hard and possibly a long process. She couldn't guarantee that wouldn't be pregnant within a month of starting the medication, but she also couldn't guarantee that I would ever be pregnant. My original thought of waiting a year or so to get pregnant, turned into immediately trying. Another emotionally draining experience.
Fast forward to September 2009 and here I sit, I'm no further along than I was a year ago. I do see a specialist in Roanoke now and I have had two cycles on my own in the last year and 3 months. Which means I have technically only had two opportunities to get pregnant in the last year and 3 months. One of those cycles was this past one. Tomorrow morning, yes a Saturday, the doctor has called me in to run some tests at 7:30. I live over an hour from Roanoke... so my Saturday is starting early. From what I gather from his nurse, I will now be coming in to the doctor's office 3x a cycle, for shots, ultrasounds, tests, etc...
I am nervous, frustrated, heartbroken, and confused.
My whole life I was told, and believed, that if you work hard enough you can have anything, be anything, and do anything. Does this mean I'm not working hard enough at this?