Here comes the Clomid

Looks like we will be on Clomid this cycle. Apparently the Sugar Busters diet is not a magical “cure” after all seeing as though this is CD1 (Cycle Day 1). :) Even though I of course did not want to see CD1, it is actually a really good day for it to happen. 1) The office will be closed tomorrow through the weekend and I need to talk to the nurse so she can call in the prescription, 2) We still have some flexible spending money left from this year so I will be able to pay for the Clomid out of this years flexible spending. So, even though I didn’t want to be here, the Lord is still orchestrating it all!! I called my nurse first thing this morning and still have not heard back. I called AGAIN a few minutes ago and the receptionist said the nurse has been busy all morning and should be doing call backs soon. Makes me nervous though because the office closes at 11:30 today. How quickly I forget…what did I just type… “The Lord is orchestrating it all”…so I guess I need not be nervous that she won’t call me back today. THE LORD IS IN CONTROL. Man, that’s a heard lesson to learn.

WOW…Hello, Lord. AS I was typing that above sentence my phone rang with my nurse on the line!! How crazy is that?? The Lord amazes me all of the time. Reassuring me that He has not left me and is still behind all of this. The nurse is calling in my Clomid prescription as we speak and I will start it on Saturday with an ultrasound scheduled for the 11th in Dothan to monitor progress. At that point we will be able to decide what should happen next – when we should do the trigger shot, etc.

So, all of you Clomid experts, what should I be expecting? Any weird side effects I should know about?

I also made an appointment for Barry to get another semen analysis this coming Monday in Mobile. We should have those results by the time I have my ultrasound on the 11th so we will know what route to take.

Yea for the next (and hopefully last) phase of this journey!

Thanks and Status Update

Thanks for everyone's comments the other day! I know I say it all the time, but it is such a blessing to have both people who have experienced infertility and those who are close to me to be praying for us and encouraging us! I really enjoyed hearing everyone's thoughts on the infertility treatment matter and Barry and I had some good discussion around them.

I talked to my doctor last week and he is recommending Clomid starting with this next cycle. (I mean hopefully/prayerfully there will not be a next cycle, but you know...as a back up plan :). ) He wants Barry to go ahead and as soon as possible do another semen analysis to check on that status. Their clinic in Mobile does something different when analyzing things...so he wants us to come on down to Mobile again for this. We will probably do that right after the first of the year because Barry used up every single hour of vacation time this year. I guess that's what you get for going to Hawaii, going on a cruise and taking MANY long weekend trips in the same year... :) After we get the results of his semen analysis the doctor will decide whether to recommend just the Clomid or Clomid with injectables and the IUI.

So the plan at this point is to call the office on cycle day 1 to get the Clomid and to get the semen analysis as soon as we can. The doctor was really excited to hear that we had been doing the Sugar Busters diet and taking the Juice Plus+ supplements. Hopefully those things will help so much that like I said, there will be no calling his office on cycle day 1!!

I hope everyone has a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

I want to do the Lord’s will

But it is so hard to know what the Lord’s will is!!!  I talked with the nurse at my RE’s office and she said that every single hormone level came back normal.  Boo on normal hormone levels…I mean, it would be great to have normal hormone levels if that was allowing us to get pregnant, but that obviously has not been working for us, so normal hormone levels are not my friend.  I would much rather something be off a little so we know what to do…now the only thing to do is to try and “fix” stuff when the Dr. doesn’t even know what to “fix”. 

The nurse said that he reviewed my lab results and is recommending we start on Clomid.  We have a phone consultation with him this Thursday (really cool that we can do a phone consultation since he is so far away!) so we can discuss everything with him.  But at least I know what he is thinking before talking to him so we have time to think and pray about it ourselves.

Fertility treatments are something that I have struggled with from the very beginning.  I have such mixed opinions of them.  OBVIOUSLY they can work and give infertile couples the chance to have biological children that they would not be able to have without those treatments.  And I don’t have a moral argument against most of the treatments.  My issue is that if God can make a virgin pregnant than He can make me pregnant without fertility treatments if it is His will for me to be pregnant.  Thinking about it this way it seems like infertility treatments are taking matters into our own hands and not waiting for the Lord to provide.

HOWEVER, if I was diagnosed with cancer I would not just wait around for the Lord to cure me.  I would have radiation, chemotherapy, and whatever else that the Dr. recommended – things that the medical world has discovered to help cancer patients.  I do believe that the Lord has allowed advances in technology so that we do have options when faced with illness.  So in that light, it makes my argument against just waiting for the Lord shaky. He CAN work THROUGH medical treatments to accomplish His will… If He has allowed advances in the medical field of infertility, why not try them as long as they are in line with scripture?

My next thought on infertility treatments is when do you stop.  Hopefully the first month you try a new treatment you will get pregnant, but this is not at all a guarantee.  There are people (many of you out there) that have been doing infertility treatment for YEARS without success.  At what point are we not being good stewards of our money when we spend thousands of dollars on infertility treatments when that money could have gone towards adopting a child that doesn’t have a mommy and a daddy?  Once you get started with some form of infertility treatment, if that doesn’t work you move on to something stronger and then if that doesn’t work you move on again and soon it has been years and you have spent thousands of dollars.  But if you don’t TRY some of these treatments and you don’t get pregnant on your own will you regret not trying?  I definitely think I would…

Please don’t interpret ANY of this as accusatory, I am just trying to get my thoughts out and work through these issues for the Williams family.  I believe that every couple is different and that the Lord has different plans for each one of us.  So the conclusions that we come to are going to be different than the next couple.

But another thing to complicate matters is -- I WANT A BABY!  Right now I feel fine with starting Clomid but is that my flesh speaking or is the Lord giving me a peace about it because it is His will?  Infertility causes us to be so vulnerable and our flesh could easily do a lot of the decision making.  But how do I KNOW the Lord wants me to start Clomid and that’s not my flesh?  What if He wants me to wait just one more month…What is He wants to show His power by getting us pregnant without treatment?  I know that regardless of what infertility treatments one might be on, ONLY ONE CAN CREATE LIFE!  Only the Lord can create life, regardless of IUI, medications, IVF, etc.  So I know that if we start infertility treatments and it is not the Lord’s will for us to get pregnant that way, then we won’t get pregnant that way.  I really would like for the Lord to tell us what to do through some flashing neon signs right about now.  That would be great…

Sorry for the incredibly long post, I just needed to get some things off my chest and help me process everything.  I am sure most of you out there who have been faced with this issue have had some of these same thoughts too.  It is definitely something to work through, pray through and figure out what the Lord’s will is for each individual. 

SOOOO, right now we are praying about what the Lord wants us to do!! 

Boo to no sugar

I looooove sugar. I have always known that I love sweets, but most of the time I would rather have seconds of the meal than dessert. So I just didn’t really think about the implications of the SugarBusters diet when the RE recommended it to us. I figured it would be sad giving up sweets, bread, etc. but didn’t REALLY think about it. Oh my goodness! Everything that tastes good in this world has sugar in it…you have to really read labels because sugar in some form is added to almost everything.

On this diet you can eat 3 servings of starchy carbohydrates a day – either brown rice, 1/2 sweet potato, oatmeal, whole wheat bread, whole wheat pasta, etc. These items have to have 3 grams of sugar or less in them though, so lots of label reading. You can have 3 servings of fruit a day –anything but pineapple, raisins, watermelon and bananas. LOTS of veggies – not no corn or potatoes. No white flour, corn meal, etc. And of course no added sugar. Added sugar is in salad dressings, seasonings, dried fruit, canned soups, yogurt, sandwich meats, condiments, coffee creamer, etc. This is the hardest part of the diet for me.

Those are the basics…you can find more info at the SugarBusters website if you are interested. Here is an article talking about the correlation between high blood sugar and infertility. It is on a Diabetes website but the logic behind it applies across the board. I am sure there are many more articles out there but I haven't gotten the chance to look. It is enough for me to know that the RE and my OBGYN have both explained the correlation between sugar and infertility and recommend the diet.

It really is difficult but we are eating SO healthily because of it! I was talking to my friend Emily about it and she was saying to think about how healthy I will be WHEN we do get pregnant! There couldn’t be a better way to bring a baby into the world, you know? So it is totally worth it and I AM NOT complaining! At least it is giving me SOMETHING to do that MAY help improve our chances at conceiving. It is sure worth a shot! AND a bonus - I have lost a good 5-7 pounds since we have started just a little over a week ago! Yea!

The Bahamas

I am finally getting around to blogging about our Thanksgiving!  For the past 3 years Barry and I have not gone to Birmingham to visit with family on Thanksgiving, we have done our own thing.  One year we went to the beach, the next we went to Disney World and this year…a cruise to the Bahamas!  Well, the Bahamas was not our original destination, but that is where we went!  Don’t get me wrong, at all, we LOVE our family, and we see them other times in the year.  But Thanksgiving has become our little tradition of vacationing somewhere.

The cruise was SUPPOSED to take us to Jamaica and the Grand Cayman Islands, but about 12 hours before the cruise left we got a recorded message saying that the propulsion system was messed up on our boat and they were changing our ports of call!!  WHAT!?!  I understand that boats have problems…but changing destinations on us and compensating us with $50?!?!  Not exactly the compensation I am looking for.  And Carnival has been less than helpful at compensating us with anything additional to that $50.  So, even though the cruise itself was amazing, we had friendly staff and no other problems, I would not recommend Carnival!  We were less than thrilled about this little change here, but we tried to keep telling ourselves, it is still vacation, it is still vacation.  We ended up going to Half Moon Cay (a private island owned by Carnival) and Nassau. 

We left out of Miami and got to spend some time with some good friends of ours!  Here we are at a yummy Cuban restaurant.

 

On the boat in Miami, ready to sail!

On Half Moon Cay we went parasailing and snorkeling.  The parasailing was fun – very relaxing, not the adrenaline rush that one might think it is.  I had done it before, but never in the Bahamas!  The snorkeling was awful…I thought I was going to die.  Long story that I won’t bore you with, but I will N-E-V-E-R go snorkeling in the middle of the ocean again.

 

In Nassau we went to Atlantis!  That was fun!  We see the commercials all of the time and have talked about going on a future vacation, we just didn’t realize it would be THIS vacation.  :)  It is awesome though.  A great resort with a water park (there is one water slide that you are in an enclosed clear tube and you go through a shark pool!) , a million swimming pools, aquariums with sharks, dolphins, sting rays, etc all over the park…we will definitely go back one day for an entire Atlantis vacation. 

My favorite part of the cruise, OK maybe not my favorite but one of them, was the towel animals on our bed each night.  This was the best part for me on our honeymoon too!  OK, not the best part…after all it was my honeymoon. :)

He was my favorite…Roll Tide…we even took a “How to make towel animals class” AND bought the book.  So if any of you ever come stay at our house you will be greeted by this little guy!  :)

There are a million more pics I could post, but that is all you will get.  :)  It was a great vacation though, very relaxing.  So nice to turn off our phones, not mess with email, facebook or work.  Just to spend stress free time together!  It was a breath of fresh air and a great change of pace from the stressors of TTC!  Ahhhh…

This is sad us after we got back to Miami and the cruise was over…

More poking and prodding

Alrighty, so we had our RE appointment yesterday. We liked the doctor and are so glad we went!  He did a very thorough job reviewing all of our files and medical records with us, gave us a short reproductive 201 tutorial (201 because it was definitely not what you learned in Sex Ed), talked to us about general "how to live healthier and improve your fertility odds", did some blood work and an ultrasound.  We were there, with the doctor almost the whole time, for over 2 hours. Pretty impressive to me that they spent that kind of time with us.

The Dr talked to us about environmental substances called hormonal disruptors, such as BPA, that can negatively affect fertility.  Some of the hormonal disruptors are found in plastic bottles, canned foods, cosmetics, pesticides, etc.  They are everywhere around us!  He said the best thing to do to combat these harmful substances is to 1) try to avoid them and 2)to get your daily recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables. For this he gave us a print out AND wrote us a doctors note for Fruit Plus+. It is this vitamin type of thing that is basically all of your fruits and veggies in pill form.  Check out the link.  I still plan on doing my own research before we buy it (I think he said it ends up being $40 per person per month), but it sounds pretty cool.  It wouldn’t hurt anything to take them (except maybe the pocketbook) and could only make us healthier!

He also recommended that I try to lose about 5-9 pounds. He said that any extra weight somehow can have a negative effect on fertility. AND he suggested that I try to cut down on all refined sugars because refined sugar also can negatively  effect fertility. Again, here I want to do some more research, but everything that he said makes sense.  He explained the effect on fertility, but he was throwing a lot of info at us, so it was not all absorbed.  :)  Boo...I love pasta and bread and rice and flour and sweet tea and....but if he really thinks it could help...

Then he did the vaginal ultrasound and the uterine lining looked good, no cysts, but he found 14 follicles on one ovary and 17 follicles on the other ovary. Normal is between 5-10. I don't exactly understand why more is bad...seems like the more the better but apparently not. He said that this could be an indication of polycystic ovarian syndrome.

Sooo, we did blood work looking at LH, FSH, testosterone, prolactin, and a couple other things.  I also went this morning to get a fasting glucose and insulin test along with a prenatal panel.

I am really glad that we are doing all this blood work and hopefully going to figure out what is going on!

A pretty cool thing...I started my period day before yesterday, which is obviously not cool, but I figured what awful time to have this appointment. But apparently it was perfect!  He said he likes to get that vaginal ultrasound and the blood work done on day 2-4 of the cycle. And it was day 2!  Which, being almost 4 hours away from the doctor, it was amazing that we came on the perfect day. God totally orchestrated that!  He's pretty cool that way. :)

“Trust His Heart” by Babbie Mason

All things work for our good
Though sometimes we don't see how they could
Struggles that break our hearts in two
Sometimes blind us to the truth
Our Father knows what’s best for us
His ways are not our own
So when your pathway grows dim
And you just don't see Him
Remember you're never alone

God is too wise to be mistaken
God is too good to be unkind
So when you don't understand
When you don't see His plan
When you can't trace His hand
Trust His heart
Trust His heart

He sees the master plan
And He holds our future in His hand
So don't live as those who have no hope
All our hope is found in Him
We see the present clearly
But He sees the first and the last
And like a tapestry
He's weaving you and me
To someday be just like Him

God is too wise to be mistaken
God is too good to be unkind
So when you don't understand
When you don't see His plan
When you can't trace His hand
Trust His heart, Trust His heart

He alone is faithful and true
He alone knows what is best for you

God is too wise to be mistaken
God is too good to be unkind
So when you don't understand
When you don't see His plan
When you can't trace His hand
Trust His heart
Trust His heart

When you don't understand
When you don't see His plan
When you can't trace His hand
Trust His heart
Trust His heart

Waiting

I ran across this article today as I was catching up on my 90+ emails that had piled up since being out of the office for over a week (will blog about our vacation as soon as I get a chance).  I thought I would share…it is an article about what adoptive moms would have done differently in the waiting period between deciding to adopt and the rush of filling out paperwork and the placement of their children.  I know several of you are in the filling out paperwork stage so maybe this will help…I also think several of the things in the article apply to the “waiting” stage of infertility too.

http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/articles.php?aid=1246

One of the best tips I think is to “focus on living for the day, not for the future.”  So often our thoughts are consumed with the future, with the “what if’s” but we just need to focus on the here and now.  "Do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." MATTHEW 6:34  Only God knows what our future holds so why try to figure it out on our own?  We need to focus on enjoying life and finding the joy in it, even while living in the unknown.