Cutting All Ties

So for those of you who follow my blog, you might remember my friend who got pregnant during the time I was miscarrying. She had been diagnosed with PCOS back when she was a teenager and had been on BCPs ever since. I said she wasn’t a ‘true infertile’ because she had never gone through infertility with her husband but only had the possibility because of her condition. It's not true infertility when you are told you have PCOS as a teenager and then get pregnant on the first try. She never went through months of failed cycles and treatments. Just jumped in the sack on a chance that she was ovulating and *BAM* pregnant.

I had remained supportive of her even though we chose not to go to Chic.ago for NYE with them as it was too soon after our loss. But apparently she has harbored some strange issue with me and it finally came out last week.

I had planned a dinner out with her because I needed to talk to her about an issue I was having regarding a pattern with her behavior in a public setting. She is one of those people who live in an environment of conflict. Everywhere she goes she creates conflict although she is completely oblivious of it and can’t see that maybe she is actually the problem and not everyone else. There is no filter on her tongue so she says whatever she feels regardless of how it might affect another person. (Actually that is a direct quote from her lips!)

I knew that this might be a difficult discussion because she ‘fights dirty.’ I’ve learned this through her sharing about fights she has with her spouse. And this is not one-on-one conversations with me. She will talk in a large group of people about fights that they have where she will slam, lock and barricade doors or throw his cloths out of the window etc. And the thing that bothers me the most is that she says it with pride, like she is proud that she behaves this way. She is so degrading to her husband in these conversations that people have asked Hammer and I if their marriage is O.K. Which I suppose makes sense because the last fight they got into was about the “That’s what she said joke” where she balled him out in front of all of his friends for saying it and then later she told me they fought over it where she eventually exclaimed that she did not want to be married to him. All over a stupid joke. And of course she shared that story with anyone who was within earshot.

So why am I going into detail about this? Because this is the subject I had to talk to her about. The fact that she is sharing details of her marriage in a non-constructive format in a large public setting and it’s making some people uncomfortable. I totally support sharing issues with people you are seeking input, guidance or counsel from but this is different. She is almost taking pleasure in sharing her stories because I think she likes the ‘shock factor.’ I’ve called her out a couple of times in the middle of her stories to ask if she really behaved that way and caught her in blatant exaggerations which leads me to believe that she’s really just doing most of the talking for the response that she gets from others – still wrong!

So since I was approached a number of times by other people along with having our own concerns I decided that it was time to talk. I kept the conversation strictly to people being made to feel uncomfortable about her non-constructive speech in a group setting. That way I wouldn’t be overstepping my bounds. And that’s when she dropped the unforgivable bomb.

In a statement totally unrelated to what we were talking about she said the following:

“You know I thought that you and I would be on this infertility journey together but I’ve realized now that I am pregnant that we have nothing in common.”

I remember it like it just happened. I will never forget it. Hammer even questioned if maybe I misunderstood her. Oh no. Believe me. I remember ever single word; every inflection in her voice. It was the cruelest thing anyone has ever said to me.

And she said it just to be cruel. Just to cut me at my deepest most vulnerable point. She said it to get the upper hand in the conversation. But it didn’t work. I think I handled it gracefully. I simply ignored it and kept on addressing the real issue at hand. To have addressed it would have derailed the conversation and given her control but I would not let her have her victory. I could tell by the look on her face that she was floundering, her tactic hadn’t worked and she was still stuck having to face the original conversation that brought us there.

When I got into my car and was heading home I just started bawling. I have never met someone so intentionally mean but yet with no remorse for the consequences of her actions. I knew at that moment that she had cause irreparable damage. Our friendship was over. But at the same time I realized what she said was true but just not regarding the fact that she is now pregnant. We really do not have anything in common because I now see who she truly is and I don’t want someone like that in my life. She is intentionally mean, caustic, and bitter. I found out later that this is not the first time someone has talked to her about her behavior before but because she does not feel any conviction from the Lord to change, she hasn’t. That confuses me. I have had people talk to me saying that I was too blunt and it bothered them. I didn’t feel conviction over it but because it had hurt someone, out of respect for them I made an effort to be more sensitive. You don’t need conviction to change; you just need some decency and a dose of respect for other fellow human beings. Seriously, that has to be the most pathetic excuse for poor behavior.

The sad thing is that it might affect Hammer’s relationship with her husband. They were friends first and ‘us wives’ were just introduced. Other than being friends for the sake of Hammer, I have no reason to continue on. Fortunately Hammer is 100% supportive of my decision to cut my ties with her. He has even defended me in a recent conversation between himself and her husband regarding the issue. It was interesting to hear it from his perspective because, not surprisingly, she left out a few things – like the evil statement! And when Hammer set the record straight and told her husband about it he was livid with his wife and totally shocked that she would say something like that to me. (Apparently infertility is a personal issue for her husband as well because his sister had to do IVF) So I don’t think this issue is over quite yet but at least for me I have no desire to reconcile with her. Do you blame me?

And swino-o was it's name-o!

What? You thought the swi.ne fl.u was gone? Not so! Apparently it's alive and well in a small town in the NW region of my state. I was fortunate enough to visit there for an audit and come across it. On a good note I had been smart and got the vaccine in January just in case one of the petri dishes, I mean kiddos, in a clinic passed it on to me. Good thing.

If you have the vaccine it makes the respiratory part much more mild but the GI part, not so much. Imagine if you will not being able to breathe through your nostrils and then having a sudden urge to be sick, act on that urge and loose all ability to breathe because:
A) said nose is plugged
B) mouth is occupied with 'other things'

I almost blacked out twice from lack of oxygen. I don't think I've ever been so sick that I had to take a full week off of work until now. Hammer, on the other hand, is so hopped up on vitamins and wheat grass he hasn't even had a sniffle all season. I'm actually really grateful though because one high fever would set him back far worse than if I had one. But it does mean that we're out this cycle for trying naturally.

I even worked my butt off to get home from that infested clinic early so that I would be home when I ovulated. And I did, and we did..."it," but after the week I've had it would be a miracle if anything survived down there. Oh well. On a good note tomorrow is Spring! And I'm almost ready to come out of swine-o hibernation so I can enjoy it. And that means April is almost here and then May and then...IVF #3!

Fast or Slow, I Can't Decide

I happened to look at the IVF countdown and was hit with a mix of emotions. First came shock that in almost 2 months we will be starting our 3rd and final cycle. How did time move by so quickly? And then I started thinking about what all has to happen in between now and that cycle and it seems like forever away. How can I have two wholly different emotions over the same amount of time? I'm excited to try again but scared because it's our last time. I want more time to try naturally but am frustrated that natural is still not working and want to get to IVF. Oh if you all could read my mind right now you all would be totally confused too, I'm sure. I think overall I'm afraid to hope and scared that we could have a repeat of last time but excited for the opportunity to try...yep, still confused. *sigh*

Free

Mid-January Hammer and I decided to join a church plant that split off of our church. It was an intentional church plant that was sent out to reach young adults in their late twenties and thirties. We were really excited about the opportunity and God has really been blessing the church. Our opening Sunday we had 450 people! We are creating a great community of people which is a void that had been lacking at our old church.

For the lent season our church decided to do a bible study series called Free. They had everyone in the church divide up by the day of the week they were available to meet. This is a great way for everyone to meet more people in the church and develop an even deeper community. There was a bit of pre-meeting workbook preparation. As I went through it I realized that the underlying theme of what was preventing true spiritual freedom for me right now was the fact that I was not living my ultimate dream of being a mom and that it made me feel a bit that God was being unfair with me. I told Hammer that I had decided to do two different responses; one for me about our infertility and one that I felt comfortable sharing with the group. I was very clear with Hammer that I wasn't going to be sharing our trial with a group of strangers.

But God must have had a different idea. One of the couples who offered up their home for the group meeting shared that she needed freedom from worry after having suffered from three miscarriages. Afterward I felt strongly compelled to speak to her and thank her for sharing such a difficult and personal trial. And when I did, I found myself tearing up and thanking her for being brave and sharing something that I couldn't. She instantly understood and gave me a huge hug. We ended up staying after everyone else had left to talk to the couple and each share a bit of our infertility trials. Oh the irony that I wanted to remain in my safe, secure space and instead God brought someone into my life to help me live a little bit more free from my burden of infertility.

Beautiful Blogger Award

I was honored to receive this award from three amazing IF bloggers, two of which have been blessed with their miracles: Mandy @ Oh, baby!, Waiting (private blog), and Nicole @ Anonymous Infertility Confessions (private blog). Thank you soooo much ladies!

The award comes with the following rules:
1) Thank the person(s) who nominated you for this award
2) Copy the award and place it in your blog
3) Link to the person(s) who nominated you for this award
4) Tell us 7 interesting things about you
5) Nominate 7 bloggers and link to their blogs

7 Fun Facts About Mrs. Hammer

1) I met Mr. Hammer while living in Colorado for a summer. We both went out there for a church summer leadership program from our respective campus churches. Amazingly we were both from the same state. We had to travel almost 1,500 miles to find each other but I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

2) I sing back up vocals at our church. In fact that is how Mr. Hammer and I got to really know each other. He is a drummer and we would hang out during rehearsals when we were in Colorado during our summer church service. Being in our church band is one of the fun things we continue to do as a couple.

3) I grew up with monkeys as pets. Well to clarify, my dad is a vet who specializes in primates. He worked with our local zoo to help raise a species of endangered tamarin monkeys whose mother's had abandoned them. We had to raise them in our home because of the constant care that these little guys needed. These baby monkeys literally fit in the palm of your hand and we had to feed them with an eye dropper. Once they reached about a year old they had to be returned to the zoo but there would eventually be another set of babies that needed our care. What I didn't realize at the time was that my dad was the first person to successfully hand raise tamarins. Super cool!

4) One of my favorite sweet treats is fudge. I LOVE it.

5) One of my favorite places is Mack.inac Island where I can indulge in said fudge.

6) I'm one of those girls that enjoys playing video games. And not the silly games that are on the Wii [hence we don't own a Wii] but I don't care for the first person shooter games. (Since I don't know too many women who like video games I'm not sure if you know what I'm referring too so I won't go on).

7) One of the hardest vices I've had to give up has been caffeine but this coming August (if I can hold out) I will be one year free of it. I'm actually really proud of myself but I have to admit I've been tempted on occasion.

And now for the nominees:

Andrea @ Life, Love & Pursuit of our Fairytale

JB @ Of Cabbages and Kings

Hillary @ Making Me Mom

Astrid @ Babymaking 101

Shannon @ Faith Hope and Love

osuraj @ Anything's Possible

Allison @ Bouncing Baby Buckeye

Finally

I've been on edge waiting for our phone call on my AMH levels. Because of which I've been mildly panicking that they were disastrously low. I have good reason to think so based upon how difficult I am to stim. Our prayer was that the reason for the poor stimming is that the long lupron cycle was just not for us...and our prayers were heard. Our testing is based upon ng/ml so we were looking to be over 1.0 which is normal and I was 1.3 ng/ml, I'll take it! So hopefully that means our lupron flare will be the one to produce lots of little eggies for future babies.

For those who are not familiar with AMH here is a link to it's description and the range my lab uses below:

High (often PCOS) Over 3.0 ng/ml
Normal Over 1.0 ng/ml
Low Normal Range 0.7 - 0.9 ng/ml
Low 0.3 - 0.6 ng/ml
Very Low Less than 0.3 ng/ml

**Next up - long over due blog awards!

Revisions

I think the weight of our most recent diagnosis has finally hit both Hammer and I. It was a delayed response because it came right in the middle of loosing Hammer’s dad. It’s to be expected I suppose. Both of us have begun to feel down and defeated every time we think about that 48%. It seems insurmountable. And now we are still awaiting the results of my recent AMH test. This is the test that will really tell us how many eggs are left in my ‘baskets.’ My FSH is fine so my egg quality is fine but I’m such a hard stimmer and lefty has low antral follicle counts so they are wondering if I may have diminished ovarian reserves. I have to admit I’m really worried.

Our first IVF I was on the long lupron cycle and 225 units of Bravelle a day. We were almost cancelled but managed to get 6 mature eggs of which only 3 fertilized.

Our second IVF was long lupron again on 300 units of Bravelle + 75 units of Luveris. I had 11 follicles and 9 eggs were collected, 8 were mature eggs, and 7 fertilized.

We’re not getting vast improvements in the egg making department here. My only hope is that my AMH is fine and that the real issue is that I’m just not a good candidate for the long lupron protocol. We could really use some good news here. But I’m feeling a bit defeated and have found myself wondering if we should just drop everything and head to adoption, the sure thing, right? But it’s not a settled feeling, there is no peace in that decision, so we push forward.

Our third and final IVF will be a lupron flare protocol with 375 units of Bravelle + 75 units of Luveris. This is the max you can give a person AND it's a short cycle ~2-3 weeks which I like...a lot.

Hammer is starting to really struggle with the fact that, per his words, “it’s his fault” regardless of the fact that I’ve told him I’ve always known but that it didn’t matter, this is OUR trial and we are doing this TOGETHER and that if given the chance I would marry him all over again even knowing we would go through this. He is my soul mate, the one whom God intended for me,, there is not a doubt in my mind. I think that over the course of this journey he has really held it together while I have been a roller coaster since, as you all know, women are put through the majority of the procedures, drugs etc. I think this is his moment where he needs to grieve but it just kills me to see him struggle because I know full well what he is feeling. But it does not help that this comes on the tails of losing his dad and the fact that we both have always known for years he would never see his grandchildren and now it has come true.

And now we’ve come to the end of the line, last chance IVF. Go big or go home. So to pick us up and give us some hope I resumed my research on IVF/ICSI and DNA fragmentation. It was actually very encouraging. In one article showed that for men who did not meet ICSI criteria (Hammer) and were treated with antioxidants for 2 months, there was an increase in pregnancy rate that went from 6.9% to 48.2%. And that ICSI actually had a more negative outcome. Two other articles supported this outcome. So we are leaning towards not doing ICS because it is believed that the zona of the egg and good ole’ Mother Nature herself may be the best selector of healthy sperm in our case. We are, however, going to ask about assisted hatching which is used in couples who have had several failed IVF cycles, like us.

Hammer’s vitamin regime has been revised to the following (amount increase in parenthesis):

-Vitamin C 1000 mg (+800 mg)
-Vitamin E 800 IU (+400 IU)
-L Acetyl-Carnitine 1 gram
-L Carnitine 1 gram (morning and evening)
-Pycogenol 100 mg
-Co Q-10 75 mg

In addition to vitamins we will both begin drinking antioxidant smoothies:

1 oz acai juice
1oz pomegranate juice
1oz frozen wheat grass
½ cup organic blueberries
½ cup organic orange and/or pineapple juice
½ cup organic yogurt
2 tbsp raw honey

Hopefully this will be an even bigger antioxidant booster. We will also be ensuring that Hammer eats 2-3 dinner salads that contain organic mixed greens. Our chiropractor has an antioxidant screening test that Hammer will have done to get a baseline and then subsequent checks to see if his levels are improving. I’m posting all of this for those women out there who may have or may be interested in testing for sperm DNA fragmentation but then receive little to no guidance from their RE’s about how to treat it. Mainly because that is what we are experiencing but thankfully as a dietitian and background in research I know enough to find out how to treat it. My hope is that I can pass this on to anyone else out there who may need it. If those of you who are reading have any questions I will be more than happy to answer them as there is not a lot of information out there and it’s a controversial topic.