I think the only thing that is more annoying than having PMS is being annoyed that I am annoyed about having PMS if that makes any sense.  I 'woke up' sweating and with terrible cramps this morning.  I put the words woke up in quotes because I really never fell asleep last night.  I am in a heinous mood and mostly because I know that my period is about to show up 3-4 days from now.  I am annoyed that I am annoyed because it wasn't my intention to get pregnant this cycle so I am not really sure why I am so upset about not being pregnant.  It was an accident that we had sex during my fertile window so why is this bothering me so much?? 

Honestly, if I hadn't found out yet another person is pregnant it might not be bothering me so much.  I tend to compare myself to others and it really bothers me when I perceive myself as falling behind.  I am getting pregnancy lapped by all of my friends.  They are on their second and I can't even have one.  Yes, I know it is irrational and ridiculous, but this is just how I operate.  I am constantly comparing myself to others: Am I as successful?  Am I as healthy?  Am I as pretty?  Is my house as nice?  Do I have as much money?  All of those things I can control to some extent.  This I can't control no matter how hard I try to convince myself that I can.  I get angrier and angrier each time I fail at this. 

It is times like these that I wish that I had a crystal ball to look into to see where I am 2 years from now.  Maybe I will be stuck right in the same place.  Maybe I will have a child.  Maybe I will have been committed to a mental institution.  It actually kind of scares me to think about the future.  All of the "what ifs" and "maybes" frighten me.

So here I am sitting at my desk.  Ready to snap at anyone that tries to cross me or cry if someone says the wrong thing or asks me what is wrong.  I am not a happy camper today and it shows.  Better to keep your distance.  I hope tomorrow will be a better day for me.  PMS please go away!

Today I am 8 dpo and I decided that it would be a good idea to take a pregnancy test.  I have a bunch of Wondfo tests that I got in a bundle w/ opks a few months back so I figured that what a better way to use them then when I am only 8 dpo, only had sex on one day out of my fertile period, my temps haven't been great, and have no symptoms.  Nice work on my part.  I'll spare you the suspense and let you know that it is quite negative even though I think that I have twice hallucinated a line and it has only been 10 minutes since I took the test.  Hello crazy.

Where did all this madness start when I have seemingly been doing so well?  I visited a friend this weekend who is just a little over a month away from giving birth to her second child.  She too, has had a rough road and I am so incredibly happy for her that everything in this pregnancy has gone so well.  She has been a tremendous support to me through all of my heartache.  Visiting her made me think that about the fact that I should also be pregnant right now and we should have been sharing stories about being pregnant.  Instead she got to hear me complain about miscarriage and not being pregnant.  These situations are so tough, but I am glad that I went to see her as we had a fabulous time.  I am actually proud of myself because I think I am able to deal with pregnancy situations better and better.

On Sunday, I was quite productive in the morning.  I had succeeded in planting most of my garden when I stepped on a rusty nail with flip-flops on in the backyard.  The nail went right into my foot/heel.  Since I had not had a tetanus shot in over 10 years, I spent most of my Sunday afternoon in the ER waiting for one.  Of course my first concern was, that even at 6 dpo, I could be (a little bit) pregnant so I was concerned about the shot causing issues.  I told the doctor that I could be pregnant and he immediately wanted to know if I wanted him to give me a pregnancy test.  I spilled about my situation, the Femara, miscarriages, etc.  He let me know that his wife used Clomid to conceive their last child and he told me that he never really understood miscarriage and how it was so heartbreaking until they had gone through it.  He offered the test again and I politely refused.  I know that 6 dpo is way too early for a test.  After I got the shot (which they convinced me was safe and routinely given to preggos), he came over and handed me my discharge papers.  He winked and told me that he was crossing his fingers for me.  That was nice.

Last night I had trouble sleeping.  My stomach was bothering me and I started feeling some lower left pelvic pain, sporadically.  I have had this 2 times before.  Once in the cycle following my chemical pregnancy in which I did not end up being pregnant and once 2-3 days before I got my last BFP.  When I woke up this morning I decided that my stomach was bothering me too much so I stayed home.  I got a text from my friend telling me that she is pregnant.  She has had a rougher road than anyone I know and again, I am so incredibly happy for her.  She deserves this more than anyone after all of her heartache and struggles.  I just feel sorry for myself.  Yes, I said it, I feel sorry for myself.  I know it is wrong, but I just feel like I have toiled with this long enough.  I am ready for a baby.  I have done everything possible.  My husband jokes that if this healthy diet/lifestyle that I am living doesn't provide us a better outcome this time, we are going to start smoking crack.  Yeah, he is being sarcastic, but only to a point.  So I'll leave you with a picture of my abysmally negative pregnancy test.  Oh and one more thing, if you want to get pregnant soon, you should become friends with me.  Everyone around me seems to be having good luck getting a BFP.

I think that any infertile/recurrent miscarrier knows that TTC takes over your life.  It isn't necessarily a conscious thing either.  It sneaks in to all aspects of your day-to-day from when your alarm goes off each morning, to what you do/don't eat/drink, to how you behave around people who sneeze and get pregnant with a healthy baby.  Since my first miscarriage, I have developed serious attention deficit disorder which has started affected my life more than ever before.  I have so much trouble concentrating at work and that amount of work that I get done along with the quality of my output has suffered immensely. 

Here is my typical day:
Alarm goes off at 4:30 AM.
Take temperature.
Do hair/makeup.
Get dressed.
Pack lunch, feed dog/cats, eat breakfast.
Commute to work.
Arrive at work, update Fertility Friend, check message boards, look at my fav TTC blogs, write in my blog.
Talk to my friend who is going through infidelity.
Try to do some work.
Get email notification regarding conversation update on FF, stop to check, get side-tracked and Google something TTC related.
Go to a meeting.
Eat lunch @ desk, chart surf on FF.
Go to meeting.
Try to do some work.
Mind wanders, check FF chart, add stupid data, compare my chart to others.
Try to do some work.
Commute from work.
Get home and check FF.
Work out, shower.
Check FF.
Cook dinner, eat dinner.
Pass out of couch @ 8:30 PM.
Check FF again, look at blogs.
Pass out in bed @ 9:30 PM.

I used to be such a high performer and over-achiever at work and now I feel like I just don't care that much about work right now.  I care about making a sticky baby.  As you can see from above, I have a tough time getting through any part of my day without incorporating some type of TTC activity my mind is constantly wandering off there.  I am unable to stay focused on working and I have a massive project that I am responsible for completing that has high management visibility.  Ugh.  I wish I could find a way to be able to cut all of this out.  I have already given up Facebook and Babycenter in hopes that would help, but I seem to have just found other outlets for my obsessive-compulsive behavior.  I have been debating whether or not to see a counselor for a while.  I am thinking maybe it is almost time to take that road.

Thank you, Femara!  Fertility Friend officially gave me cross-hairs this morning.  I was worried that my disturbed sleep right around O (due to the nightly wildlife activity in my backyard) might have made things difficult to calculate, but I don't even have a dotted line!  FF thinks that I ovulated on cd 17, which is the same day that I had a positive opk.  Normally, I get a positive opk and then O 1-3 days later, so this is also a change from the usual. 

I am actually feeling very good about this cycle.  Not that I will get pregnant, but that my body actually behaved.  I am on track to have a 30-32 day cycle, which is in the realm of normal.  To me, that is amazing!  I am so happy that next month we can "go for it again".  I have a good feeling about the future and I have not felt that since before my first miscarriage. 

FF actually gave me a "good" chance of pregnancy this month with my 1 day slip-up(s).  Knowing that, I have decided that I am not going to do anything differently then I am already doing.  I am not going to take progesterone.  I am not going to stop exercising.  I am going to make a conscious decision NOT to get anxious.  I know that my last loss was a chromosomal abnormality and I am fairly confident that my first loss was the same.  The chemical...I am not sure.  I don't think that me doing anything differently is going to help or hinder me. 

So now I am back to the waiting game and the TWW.  So far no symptoms of any kind, but I am only 3 dpo, so I wouldn't really expect any yet.  FF says my test date is June 3.  Since that is a Sunday, I am going to get blood drawn on June 4.  I can't say that I won't POAS before then, but officially I will know what my deal is then.  I already have another 5 pills of Femara waiting in the wings.  It would be nice to not need them, but if my cycles are going to be around 30 days, I am totally fine with it.  Hoping the next 10 days by go fast!

I will leave you with a song from my favorite music group of all time, Keane.  Their most recent album is amazingly incredible.  I would suggest that you check it out if you have not already.  Oh and buy the deluxe edition.  Most of the songs are so relevant to my life right now, which is probably why I love it so much. 

I know this better than anyone.  I have lost quite a few members of my family in my lifetime.  One of my first experiences with death was losing my Grandpa when I was 7 or 8 years old.  I remember my parents getting a call telling them that something was wrong.  I remember playing in the front yard while my mom and dad went up the street to my grandparents house, thinking that it must be my grandma that was sick.  Apparently my Grandpa had died of a heart attack a few hours earlier while feeding the birds in his backyard.  That was one of his favorite things to do.  Something as simple as that and he died while doing it.  They actually found him with peanuts in his hand on his back patio.

A few years later I lost my Grandma.  She and my Grandpa had always had issues, but she missed him so much and was never the same without him.  After many years of smoking cigarettes, she got lung cancer and had one of her lungs removed.  She was on oxygen 24/7 and had to have a visiting nurse.  Even while on oxygen she still tried to sneak cigarettes and would bribe us kids to sneak them for her.  Then she started losing her memory.  That was terrible.  She didn't remember me or any of my siblings.  One of my last memories of her was having Easter at the hospital where she was.  I have never once in my life smoked a cigarette thanks to her.

In the next few years I started to lose lots of other aunts and uncles.   About seven years ago I lost one of the great Aunts that I had been close with when I was young.  She died suddenly of a suspected brain aneurysm.  I took several days off work to attend the funeral.  I remember how awful the ceremony was.  It was at a funeral home and there weren't very many people or flowers there.  I remember hugging the one grandma that I have left at the cemetary.  It was her sister that had passed.  I remember thinking...this has to be the last person for a while.

Then I got the call from my mom late Friday night telling my that my Dad had died.  Apparently his heart stopped while he was driving home from his soccer game (myocarditis & enlarged heart).  My husband (who was my boyfriend at the time) and I were on our way back from the movie theater.  We had just seen Flight 93.  The events that followed that phone conversation are very fuzzy to me.  I don't remember much from the few weeks that followed.  I remember being at the funeral home and having to hug so many people for so many hours as they streamed through.  I remember trying to hold it together for my little siblings.  I remember seeing my Dad laying there peacefully in the casket.  I remember seeing my Mom, Uncle, and my Grandma completely wrecked.  I didn't know what to do or how to feel.  I just felt numb.

I have lost many other family members in the years that followed.  My husband has been lucky to lose very few.  His Grandma is almost 100.  Having the 3 miscarriages this past year made me realize that life at all stages is so fragile.  I used to associate death with the elderly, but after losing my dad and my babies, I have completely changed my opinion.  Death comes when you are least expecting it and at any age so we need to live each day like it is our last.  You never know when your number is going to come up.  I have to keep reminding myself of that.

Yesterday we received an email at work, saying that one of our co-workers had died of a heart attack on his drive in to work that morning.  I can just imagine he left his family that morning expecting to see them again at the end of the day.  I hope that he at least told his wife that he loved her before he left.

Yup, you guessed it.  Big fat smiley face today!  I confirmed with a Wondfo opk, as well.  Two nice dark lines.  I actually had an almost positive yesterday around 7:30 PM with the Wondfo, so I may O today or tomorrow.  I am currently on cd 17, so even though this isn't the cd 14 smiley that I was hoping for, it is sure a hell of a lot better than a day 25 or 26 smiley.  I'll take it.  So far I am liking Femara.

Predicting my actual ovulation this time might be tricky because last night I did not get a very restful sleep.  This is the worst time of the cycle to not get restful sleep!  My husband and I were awoken by the sounds of screaming animals in our backyard at 2:30 AM (again, we live in the burbs with no rural areas near us).  It was the most horrific blood-curdling noise I may have heard in my life.  It sounded like some animal was getting murdered.  We ran downstairs and turned on the back lights.  Sure enough we saw a fat raccoon running down the tree near our window.  We only saw the one raccoon though, so we are not sure what was maimed or killed.  I am rather scared to go in the backyard now.

Anyways, back to all of this ovulation and TTC talk.  Now I need to make a few decisions:

• Decide if I just go about my business for the next 2 weeks or if I should start taking progesterone in a few days. 
• Decide whether I want to tell Dr. Zhang that I slipped up so that he can appropriately tailor my acupuncture (which I am supposed to have today).

Just a word of warning...this is a TMI post.  I am letting you know up front so you can choose not to read it if you are prudish or faint of heart.  I won't use any graphic terms or descriptions, but this post is about sex.  Fair warning people!

So my husband and I decided after our last miscarriage to wait 2 cycles until trying again, even though my RE said waiting 1 cycle was fine.  Knowing that my cycles are soooooo long, I decided to go on Femara in hopes of shortening my second cycle because we want to get on with things!  After the 3rd miscarriage, neither of us were very interested in "getting it on".  When we first started trying it was a lot of fun not worrying about getting pregnant, but anyone who has been trying to conceive for a while knows that baby-making-sex gets old pretty fast.  After trying so many times and having it not work, sex is pretty much associated with a negative outcome for both of us.  Plus, although they have a time and a place, neither of us are a big fan of condoms.  When you haven't used them in many years and then all of a sudden go back to them it equals issues of all sorts.  I won't get into detail, but let's just say they are uncomfortable for both of us.

In this second cycle, we have both started feeling a little better about things and have been actually feeling like having sex again.  Even though I asked him if we really needed to use a condom each time we did it, he kept me on track and told me that we should stick to our plan and wait.  I begrudgingly agreed.  Nothing like having protected sex when you so desperately want to get pregnant!

Fast forward to today.  I am not sure if it is the Femara or what, but my fertility instincts definitely kicked in.  Even though I got a negative opk this morning, I still feel like I am close to ovulating.  My husband and I got caught up in the moment and decided not to use protection.  Oops.  :-)  I think part of the fact that we shouldn't be "not using protection" made it that more appealing.

MORE TMI.  If I could say that was the only oops for the day I'd be lying.  Ok so the first time we were like, well there is no way that we'll get pregnant off of one try.  If we do, then it was meant to be.  Well I guess we had no excuse in the second round so it really wasn't an oops at all.  I feel like I am in college again!  We both knew very well that we broke our "2 cycle plan" this time and now we are just asking for it.  I can see Dr. Zhang shaking his head at me right now.  For couples that are struggling to light the fire in the bedroom, have someone tell you that you can't have sex for 2 months and see how that works out for you.

So here we are.  Now I guess I may have something to keep me occupied during the 2ww.  Just waiting patiently for that smiley face.