My Sweet Mother

I had such an amazing weekend in Hilton Head. It was exactly what I needed! George and I got there late on Friday evening. My parents had already been there for a few hours and we all sat up until after one in the morning talking! (And my parents aren't usually up past ten-thirty, hehe.) The rest of the weekend was so incredibly relaxing. We walked on the beach. Walked to the top of the lighthouse. Went shopping (omg, I bought the most amazing purple leather jacket!). Then had dinner outside on the patio of a great seafood restaurant on the water. Great company. Amazing conversations. I felt so loved and supported, full of positive energy and hope.

I'm pretty sure my Mom is just about the sweetest person on the planet, also. She brought me three things for my IVF shots table and survival kit.

First, a pink baby blanket her grandmother made for me when I was a baby. I slept with it and snuggled in it when I was tiny. It's beautiful and perfect! And did I mention pink? Hehe. Maybe it will be good luck and bring us twin girls, lol. Of course I will be more than thrilled with a boy or a girl, but I have always wanted a little girl, so we'll see! My husband had this crazy-vivid dream the other night that we had twin boys, though, and he's often very intuitive! I would be happy with twin boys!

Second, she brought my cabbage patch kid from when I was a little girl! I used to carry this doll around everywhere, haha. Mom went up into the attic to find it. She's still wearing a dress my own grandmother made for her. And she still has lipstick smeared all over her face, lol. I remember putting that on her.

And finally, she brought me this small round box. Inside, it is filled with small wrapped presents. One for each day of shots. How sweet is that? I wasn't expecting it, but I know it will put a huge smile on my face during the tough times. I was so incredibly touched by the gifts she brought. I don't even know what's in the box, but it's not even so much what's in the wrapped gifts as the thought she put into it and the time she spent putting it all together. It means the world to me and lets me know I have all the support in the world.

I can't believe I'm only 5 days away from starting shots! I will go in early on Thursday morning for a blood test to make sure I'm not pregnant. It's really just a formality to make sure I don't have my meds delivered and paid for, then realize I don't need IVF! In the back of my mind, I know it's a possibility, but at the same time, I know it's a super slim chance and probably not worth really thinking about. I'm full speed ahead with IVF and fully intending to start meds this weekend.

I really hope and pray that AF comes on time and doesn't mess with me by coming late. I'm so ready to get started. Have I said that already? Haha. It's so true. I feel so good right now. I feel positive and very hopeful. I know the craziness will probably come soon and the roller coaster of emotions will take me from high to low on a daily basis, but I'm hoping for a big high at the end of this to make it all worth it.

Hilton Head!

In just a couple of hours, we'll be on the road! We're heading down to Hilton Head Island, SC to spend the weekend with my parents. I haven't seen them since May and I was really feeling like I just needed some time with people who love and support me. It's an 8 hour drive or so down to visit them in Georgia, so we're compromising and meeting in between. We have a lovely 2BR condo on the beach for the weekend, and even though it will be a short trip, it makes my heart happy.

We don't have any big plans other than just shopping and hanging out on the beach and spending time together. That's the best thing about spending time with family you love and enjoy being around. You don't really need anything planned in particular. Even if we just sat in the condo the whole time talking, I would be fine with that!

Today I was thinking, how cool will it be when we're going to visit my parents with our little baby? It's going to be awesome. My parents are so incredibly good with children. My mom is just one of those people that everyone's kids love. She's a natural! So I know my babies will love her so so much, and the same with my dad. I can't wait to see them someday with my child. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. I pray it's sooner rather than later.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! When I get back on Sunday night, I'll be only 6 days away from starting stims. Holy crap, this is really happening!

Hope and Fear

I keep going back and forth between these two primary emotions. Hope and Fear. Right now, as the cycle approaches, I'm feeling more hope than anything else. Excitement, too. There's very little fear, which is a little bit strange. I have been feeling so much fear for months. Lots of anxiety about how this will all turn out. But suddenly, there's a peacefulness coming over me. I feel ready and calm.

How long do you think it will last? Haha. I'm hoping I can hold on to this sense of calm at least through the weekend. Once shots begin next weekend, I have a feeling the fear will come back in full force. The monitoring appointments are going to be tough. It's the not knowing. It's the fact that every time you go in to the doctor, something could have gone wrong and everything you hoped for could disappear. A cycle could be canceled at any moment. You just never know.

I'm wondering if there's any way I can hold on to this peacefulness throughout the cycle. I'm going to try my best. I can't believe how fast time is moving now. I'm down to only 9 days left. I hope AF shows on time and doesn't torture me with being late.

Indulgence

Last night, I decided to indulge in a little comfort clothing for my IVF cycle. I'm expecting to be bloated, crampy, and generally not feeling like going out a whole lot in the next month. But that doesn't mean I can't at least try to wear comfy clothes, right? Hehe. So, that's the logic I used when I took my debit card to the victoria's secret online store last night.

I am pretty much addicted to Victoria's Secret Yoga pants. I LOVE them. They fit me perfectly (and in Medium, haha, which is also good). I have them in purple, orange, green, and black, but the black are my favorites. I love that you can choose from 4 different inseam lengths so they are never too short or too long. Unfortunately, I wear them to the gym so much they kind of wear out by my thighs and get faded out because I wash them so often. So, I went last night and they were having a SALE on their yoga pants. Only 2/$50. Eek! I bought four pairs, LOL. I got two plain black ones and then two pairs of their foldover pants - one in pink and black and one in blue and black. I can't wait to get them in!

I also indulged in a pair of their pillowtalk Tank pajamas. It's a tank top set with these super soft pj bottoms. My mom bought me some for Christmas a couple years ago and they are the most amazing pj pants in the history of pj pants. Seriously. I heart them. But they are expensive. $50 for just one pair. Still, I deserve it right? They are super cute, too. I got these that have ANGEL on the tank and the black pants with white polka dots. I might live in them during bedrest, haha. I'll be thinking about the little angel that will hopefully come into our lives next July!

Only 10 days left until the big day, and I feel like time is finally moving faster. After months of waiting for this, it's awesome to finally see these dates moving right along.

I feel a little bit guilty for spending nearly $180 last night on nothing but yoga pants and pjs, lol. But at the same time, I know they will all be super comfy things to wear during this process and having something new will be nice for me. Of course, with the expense that is IVF in general, I suppose I need to start looking for cheaper ways to indulge myself :).

11 Days

After all this waiting, I am excited to see the days ticking by. Only 11 days until stims begin. In the meantime, I have been trying to keep myself occupied. I definitely feel like I am on a short fuse lately. I am having to be careful to keep my stress to a minimum so that nothing can get under my skin. In order to stay calm, I've been cleaning out the future baby's room. It's been cathartic for me to get the clutter out of that room and make space for a beautiful new nursery.

Most of the room has been filled with crafting supplies like scrapbooking paper, jewelry making beads and tools, sewing materials and so on. I have a friend who has recently started teaching elementary school art at a local private Christian school. They don't have a lot of money for supplies, so I have decided to donate most of my crafting materials, markers, colored pencils and papers to her classroom. It makes me feel good, helps others, and cleans out the room at the same time. Win, Win, Win :).

This weekend, my husband and I are going to Hilton Head, SC to spend the weekend with my parents. It's too far of a drive to go all the way to George where they live for the weekend, so we decided to meet about halfway. We've rented a very cute 2 BR condo on the beach for two nights, and I'm really looking forward to it. It will be nice to see them before shots get started and feel their love and support. Once we get back, it will be only a matter of a few days before everything gets under way.

To be honest, I'm getting very excited! This is the single best shot I've ever had at getting pregnant. 60% chance. I just keep repeating it in my head, over and over. More chance of being pregnant than of not being pregnant at the end of this cycle. My prayers right now are for a good, healthy cycle with mature eggs and some healthy embryos. I hope that we are able to get two really good blasts for 5-day transfer and then a few healthy embryos for freezing, just in case. I'm excited for the possibilities and very hopeful that the next month and a half will be full of joy and great outcomes.

What if?

Lately, it's the 'what if's that have my brain spinning at night. Truth be told, I have always been a 'what if' kind of person. It's one of my greatest flaws. I am always thinking forward to the future and trying to figure out all of the worst possible scenarios. Don't get me wrong, I also think about the good things and the positive possibilities. It's just that part of me feels like I'd rather be emotionally prepared for the bad things. There's a small comfort in at least knowing the worst case. As long as I know what might happen, it won't completely blindside me, right?

Only life doesn't exactly work that way. There's always some hidden danger you weren't expecting. On top of that, sometimes when the worst things happen, it doesn't matter that you knew they were possible. Sometimes the bad things still knock us on our butts, regardless of whether we thought we were prepared for them or not. Some things hurt so badly, there's no possible way to prepare. 11 years ago, I had the worst thing happen to me when I was on a trip to Europe. Did I know it was a possibility? Yes, I guess there was some part of me that knew something like that could happen to a woman traveling alone in a foreign country. But I never really thought it would happen. So when it did, I wasn't prepared. Tomorrow, it will be 11 years since it happened, and I'm still not over it. I don't know that I will ever be over it.

In that instance, it didn't matter that somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew it was a possibility. Nothing could have prepared me for the emotional impact of that one single event. So why do I keep doing this to myself? Why do I keep borrowing trouble? If it doesn't truly make the bad things easier to digest, why do I spend weeks, even months, worrying about the what if's? What if I don't get pregnant with IVF? What if we can't afford to try again? What if I miscarry? What if my heart breaks over and over again?

The answer to all those questions is the same. If any of those things happen, terrible as they may be, I will grieve. I will be sad, angry, upset, yes, even heart-broken. But I will survive it. Just like I've been surviving for the past 11 years. It will hurt, but I will find a way to be strong. I will move past it, and someday, I will become a mother. I hope that it will happen sooner rather than later, but life is full of what ifs and unknowns and that will never change. So for now, I'm going to try to put those what if questions and worst-case scenarios to the side and choose instead to try something new. Hope.

CD20 Ultrasound and Progesterone Bloodwork

A few weeks ago, George and I went in to our clinic for our education class. When the nurse gave me my protocol, she mentioned birth control pills. I know they don't typically prescribe bcp, so I asked about it. She said Dr. T was thinking I don't have a true natural ovulation and therefore do not truly shed my lining with each period. In order to get a good start to the IVF cycle, he wanted me on 14 days of bcp to stimulate a good AF.

Instead of just sitting back and letting them tell me things I didn't feel were true, I actually spoke up (which is a big deal for me in a situation like this.) I told the nurse that I thought I was actually ovulating on my own. I asked her if it would make a difference one way or the other and she said she needed to ask Dr. T. When the verdict came back, she said that yes, it would make a difference. If I'm ovulating on my own, the bcp would be a bad idea as it would mess with my natural cycle. So, in compromise, we decided to do a u/s and progesterone check near the time I thought I was ovulating to see if it looked like I was going to ovulate on my own.

Today is CD20. I got a near-positive OPK yesterday and the day before along with some twinges on my left side. I also have EWCM (egg-white cervical mucus), so I was pretty sure I knew what we were going to see today, but I still had my doubts. I kept thinking, what if I haven't even been ovulating the past six months like I thought I was?

I still have to wait for the results of the progesterone test, but there was no doubt what was going on with my ovaries! My right side was quiet, but on my left side, I had a big 22mm follicle. Definitely looks like I'm ovulating on my own! This is such good news for me, because a year ago when they did this, there was absolutely no activity. That's why I went on Clomid in the first place. Now, because of the lifestyle changes I've made with diet and exercise, along with the metformin and vitamins, I'm actually ovulating on my own. I looked at that big follie and thought, "Wow, I did that! I made that happen." It was pretty exciting to see.

Unfortunately, ovulation has not equated to pregnancy. I'm not sure of the reasons behind that. Maybe the outer shell of the egg is too hard, which often happens with PCOS, and the sperm just can't get in there. If that's the issue, the embryologist will bypass that step with ICSI (where they actually inject the sperm into the egg with a tiny needle). I pray it's not an implantation issue or a problem with the overall quality of my eggs. We'll know more once the embryologist gets hold of them next month.

Anyway, I'm going to have to wait until this afternoon to know officially, but I am pretty sure this means no birth control pills for me, which makes me a happy girl. I should be on track for AF to arrive around October 7th, which means my baseline u/s, blood draw and stims will all be starting CD2, October 8th! That's only 15 days away! I'll update later with official word, but it looks like a natural cycle for me this cycle, and I honestly couldn't be happier. It just goes to show that with PCOS, sometimes changing diet and adding exercise really can make a difference. All this hard work has not been in vain.

*UPDATE* - Seems I spoke a little too soon. Carla called me around 2:30 to say that my progesterone levels were nearly 0. Basically, what that means is that even though I have a mature egg that is ready to pop out, my hormones are not giving it the go-ahead. When that happens, the egg ages and deteriorates and in the end, if it does come out, it's not good anymore and my lining doesn't totally shed with AF. BCP would be bad because since I already have a big follie, the bcp wouldn't get rid of it and it would still be there in 2 weeks and I wouldn't be able to start stims, so it's definitely good I went in to have this all checked.


Still, this explains why I'm not getting pregnant naturally. In order to solve the issue, I went back in this afternoon and got an HCG trigger shot. Basically, that forces the egg to ovulate. I don't want to get my hopes up and think that maybe we could end up pregnant on our own, but it is a possibility. They want me to come in for a blood test in about 12 days to make sure I'm not pregnant before I order my meds for IVF! I should still be right on track for AF to arrive on October 7th and stims to begin on the 8th, but man, wouldn't that be amazing if I got pregnant? I know, I know, stop dreaming, right? Haha.

Forgiveness

Infertility is such an internal struggle. I worry that I'm being too emotional and everyone is looking at me like I'm weak or insane. I beat myself up for feeling so scared all the time. I stress out about not being able to relax (ha! go figure THAT one out!). I'm being incredibly selfish right now with my time and my emotions. I feel ashamed of my problems getting pregnant, and then ashamed again of not being stronger throughout this process. These are the bad emotions that haunt me. Stress. Worry. Shame.

Then, when I confide in other people about how I'm feeling, I often get comments like: "Relax! I have a friend who stressed out and then when she finally just gave up and stopped stressing about it, BAM, she was pregnant!" or "What's going on with Sarra? Oh, I figured she was just being emotional again." or "It's not always all about you." And let me tell you, those comments? Not helpful. I already know all those things. I already beat myself up enough about those things, but until you're standing in my shoes, you don't understand how difficult it is to relax. And you know what else? I'm allowed to be emotional right now. Don't try to invalidate my feelings, because that only makes me feel shame.

The bad emotions and thoughts aren't the only ones, though. Just because I say I'm worried or scared doesn't mean that's ALL I am. I'm also incredibly hopeful. I'm so thankful for insurance and great doctors and even the miracle of science that is IVF. It blows my mind that they can take the egg and sperm and create embryos in a lab. I daydream about what it will be like to be pregnant. I shop online for things I want to put in the nursery. I browse maternity clothing stores online for what I might want to buy and what might look cute on me. I linger in the baby section at Target, dreaming about my baby. Trust me, there are a lot of great emotions too. It's just that sometimes the worry is more helpful to talk about. Blogs are like therapy, you know? It helps to just get it out there and know you aren't alone.

Plus, there's a fear that if I talk about all the hope and all my dreams, then I don't get pregnant, I will look like a fool. Crazy, huh? But honest. 

So, I'll just have to ask forgiveness for now. Forgiveness from those friends who think I'm being selfish and emotional. Forgiveness from God for being so self-centered and not having a strong enough faith to believe that this will all work out okay. Forgiveness from my husband for all the tears and late night conversations (although I know he'll say there's nothing to forgive). I have to learn, also, to forgive myself. I have to forgive my own body for not doing what it's supposed to do as a woman. I have to understand that it's not my fault. I want to forgive myself for not working harder on my book right now and for choosing, instead, to take some time off so I can handle the stress, worry, fear, hope that is coursing through me. And I need to forgive the people who say those incredibly insensitive things to me. They don't mean to hurt me, I'm sure. They just don't understand.

Today, I will close my eyes and sit with my chin raised toward the sky, and let forgiveness wash over me. 

Pre-Nesting

I guess you can't technically call it nesting until you're pregnant, right? But I have this feeling of wanting to pre-nest. I never thought it would be so hard to get real work done at this point, but this is where I find myself. I am having the hardest time being creative. When I sit down to work on my book, nothing good comes out. The words don't feel or sound like me. Instead of trying to force it, I'm taking a break. I'll go back to writing my book when I feel inspired and it can be less of a chore. So what else can I do with my time? I need something to keep my mind and hands busy.

So I think I am going to clean. I'm talking about a really good, down on my hands and knees scrubbing kind of clean. Besides, the future baby's room is kind of a mess. Right now, it's a hodge-podge of a room. It's my closet (because there's no room for my clothes in our bedroom, lol), it's the room where the dog sleeps and eats and generally lives, and it's the place where all my crafting projects went to die. Seriously, all my scrapbooking, stamping, beading, whatever projects and supplies are ALL in that room. And I never use them anymore. Once I hit the ground running with my writing, I simply lost interest in all that other stuff. I still want to scrapbook, but I want to do it digitally instead. I don't really have a need for half the things in that room, to be honest. It's time to purge.

My plan is to set some sheets out in the living room downstairs and slowly carry all my crafting stuff down there and sort through it. I know a few friends who would love to have some of the stamps and beads and papers. Hey, if any of you ladies in the blogosphere love to scrapbook or stamp and want to see what I have, you're more than welcome to it! I can post a picture next week or something if anyone is interested. I also want to go through all my clothes and shoes and purge things that are too big now that I've lost some weight or stuff that I just don't wear. There's a donation center close to our house that is always in need of things that are in good shape. I really want to clean out the clutter in the baby's room and maybe steam clean the carpets and get it looking fresh and ready.

Most of the rest of the house is clean already, but everything could always use a good dusting and scrub down. It might feel really good to start our IVF journey with a super clean house. A clean space just feels good, you know? And I tend to collect clutter in little piles. Books, for example, are the worst! I have so many stacks of books! I just need to organize and purge. Soon, we'll be making room for baby clothes and a stroller and a bouncy seat and toys, right?

Tomorrow I'll start my little pre-nesting session. I'm going to load up my iPod with some great playlists that I can sing to and set up my iHome somewhere downstairs where I can blast it, haha. It will be like my own free version of therapy and stress relief.

Oh and just as a news update - I got a near-positive OPK today and some definite fertile CM, so I think the acupuncture might be leading to a slightly earlier O for me this month. I called my nurse and she moved my u/s and progesterone draw to this Friday. This is just for the doctor to see if I'm truly ovulating on my own or not. If they get a good high progesterone of 2 or more and I have a dominant follicle that looks promising, they will just let me O on my own and wait for AF to start. If not, they'll prescribe birth control to force a really good AF that will reset my lining really well for the IVF cycle. Either way, I should still be on track for stims to start by October 8th or so. I really don't want to be on bcp, but if I do need them, I'm secretly hoping he'll just prescribe 7-10 days, which would have me starting stims even earlier! I'm ready!

My Shots Table

I was reading Amanda's blog, Our Fertility Journey, and found this great post on her IVF setup. I immediately fell in love with the idea. Stims and shots are going to be going on in some fashion for at least 4 weeks, so why not make the area where you'll have your meds and shots look nice and be a place of encouragement and love? It's a brilliant idea, really, and one I am promptly going to steal :).

We have decided to set up our shots table (for lack of better phrase) in the kitchen. Since some of the medicine like Follistim has to be in the fridge, we figured it was the best place. We also have one of my old desks in there anyway where we currently just have some odds and ends placed. I'm going to clear the desk off this week and set up a nice little station where we can do our nightly shots. I say 'we' because I'm making George do all of the injections. Partly because I want him to feel like he's a part of it all, and partly because I think it will be easier  if he does them so I don't have to psych myself up for it. Besides, George actually does have some medicine he'll have to take, haha. He'll be on an antibiotic starting the same day I start stims, all the way up to the day of retrieval.

So, what should I put on my table? I already purchased these super cute little Hello Kitty baby socks. (If I haven't already told you, I'm sort of addicted to Hello Kitty and saw these 6-9 mo. socks at Target and couldn't resist! It's my first official baby purchase! If I have a boy, I'll have to give them away, though, haha. I won't torture my son by making him wear HK, hahahaha.)

I am going to put our wedding photo on the table too. Also, I bought a small black frame and I am looking for a really good quote or Bible verse to go inside. Any suggestions would be appreciated! Hmm.. what else? Oh, I have a beautiful crystal vase, so I plan to put fresh flowers in there and replace them about halfway through the cycle. Maybe new flowers after the ER to celebrate our new embies! I might put a really yummy smelling candle on the table that we can light.

Oh, and my husband's contribution to the shots table?? He loaded the LMFAO song "Shots" to my iPod and we are going to put my iHome on the table and play it while he gives me shots, lol. /sigh. He's crazy, but I love him. If you don't know the song, it's NOT about IVF shots, haha. It's about alcohol and has nothing whatsoever to do with babies, but it's upbeat and it makes me laugh when he sings it to me, so Shots it is!

I'm going to put some time and thought and love into creating this little space where I will get my nightly shots. I also want to organize my meds in a nice container or something, but until I get them delivered, I don't really know what I'll need, so that will have to wait a couple of weeks. I have about 19 days until shots begin, which seems like forever, but I hope will fly by so we can get this show on the road!

Patience

Right now is a time for great patience and understanding. I have to find a way to be patient with the process. I ended up leaving my beach trip early last week because I simply couldn't focus. What I expected to be a wonderful week to unwind and write so many words that I would get ahead with my book, turned out instead to be an emotional breakdown. I realized too late that this is a really bad time to be away from my husband. I also realized that I need to give myself some slack. Expecting myself to be able to write an entire novel while dealing with this process is just not realistic. And beating myself up over not writing fast enough isn't helping.

I need to forgive myself and be patient with myself. Writing is not going to come as fast and easy as normal. And you know what? That's okay. The world will not end just because I didn't finish a book. Yes, it means less money and it means slowing my career down a little bit, but it's temporary. This won't last forever. Soon, I will be pregnant and all this anxiety and fear will be gone. Okay, okay, so I know that's not entirely true. Pregnancy comes with its own set of worries and fears, but for now, I just have to GET pregnant, lol.

I also need to be patient with the people in my life. There are so many people who don't really understand what this feels like. They don't know the financial and emotional investment involved. Most of the women in my life got pregnant for free, without a care in the world. They simply don't get it. So for me to hope or expect that those women would have sympathy and understanding for me right now is slightly unrealistic. Instead of being upset or feeling ashamed or defeated, I need to just be patient and maybe stay close to home for a while. Maybe stop spending much time with the people who don't understand and instead spend my time with my husband and friends that ARE sympathetic.

I have just over 2 weeks before stims begin. For some reason, I thought I would be able to work and concentrate and live my normal life all the way up to the moment shots began. I didn't expect to be this emotional and nervous with 2 weeks still to go. My therapist calls it 'anticipatory stress', which is just exactly what it sounds like. Anticipating something to such an extreme that it's causing me stress. I wasn't expecting it, but it's here. All I can do is deal with it as it comes and try to be patient with myself. I am going to do my best.

Thank you to everyone for all the sweet comments and helpful suggestions. You mean so much to me!

Good News, Bad News

Infertility is such a rollercoaster. I know I've said it before, but I have to say it again. It feels like good news and bad news go hand in hand sometimes. One thing starts to look up, something bad lurks just behind it. Today, I heard back from the specialty pharmacy that my meds had been ordered. Unfortunately, they are out of the medrol, but she said I can get a prescription from my doctor and fill that with a normal local pharmacy. I won't even tell you all the details of the run around I had to go through to get information on pricing. Let me just say that it was ridiculous. Apparently, they don't really want to tell you what it will cost until they have your credit card in hand. Just take my word for it when I say it was not a fun afternoon.

Finally, though, I spoke to someone who had a heart and was able to place a "test claim" and bring up the cost of my meds. Because of the type of insurance we have, we don't have a choice when it comes to the pharmacy we use. We HAVE to use our insurance's specialty pharmacy, end of story. So, she went through all the meds and came back to say that the entire order would be somewhere around $280. Yay! Great news, right? I mean, it's amazing news. I had pretty much budgeted that we would owe around $1000 at least for the meds, so for it to be under three hundred bucks is pretty freaking fantastic.

Then comes the bad news. She says that after this order, however, our fertility coverage will be exhausted and any future injectible cycles will be out of pocket 100%. My heart sank. I've seen so many blogs where people have three IVF cycles covered, so I was surprised to hear that we only get one. Well, a lifetime fertility max of $3600 apparently. And we exhausted it with this one cycle. It felt like she added a hundred pound weight to my chest.

I am not in any way complaining about this cycle. I completely understand how lucky we are to have most of this cycle covered through insurance. We're incredibly blessed. I know that there are people who don't have any coverage at all, so I'm not trying to be disrespectful. But we've already used up so much of our fertility coverage. We already knew we were cutting it close with this cycle for our primary fertility coverage, so we knew that if we needed a second cycle, it was going to be expensive. Now, to hear that our medication coverage is also gone from now on? It's just putting so much pressure on me. I'm already feeling a ton of pressure to be healthy and to get this book written. Now, I feel this enormous pressure to get a BFP.

I realize how ridiculous that sounds. I can't control whether I get pregnant this cycle or not. Logically, I know that. But now I keep thinking that if this cycle doesn't work, it could be as long as a year before we can afford to try again. Then, that also pushes our dreams of a bigger house further down another few years because of the money. I am trying to find ways to manage this stress and just be okay with it and understand that things will turn out exactly how they are supposed to, but that's easier said that done. I'm so grateful this cycle is going to be inexpensive for us, but so incredibly terrified that it won't work.