Cycle Games

I had mentioned previously that Drew and I have decided that we are ready to expand our family again, and add another child.  If you remember, we still have two frozen embryos waiting patiently for us.  We started trying on our own right around Annelise's first birthday.  I knew that I didn't want to get pregnant before she was a year old, and I honestly wasn't even really ready to think about it until around then.  Plus, the nurse practitioner at my OB's office said that it was best to give my body a year of time to heal.  And, if we're continuing on all the reasons why I really wanted to wait, it was important to me to breastfeed for at least a year and I didn't want to compromise that by getting pregnant again.

I have been charting my cycles since the beginning of the year, and I am beyond frustrated with my body at this point.  I'm not going super crazy charting like I did when I first started charting back in 2010.  Then, I tracked my temperature, used OPKs, and tried to make a note of my CM.  This time, I'm keeping an eye on my CM, and if the mood strikes me, I'll occasionally test an OPK.  Some months get more OPK action than others.  Mainly, I'm frustrated with the length of each cycle.  I keep bouncing around from 26 days to 30 days to 36 days back to 28 days, and everything in between!

This cycle?  26 days!  I never even felt a cramp or like I was going to get my period at all.  It just showed up out of the blue, completely ruining the plans that I had to go to the beach.  Like all, "Hey, let me ruin your life one more time".

How the heck can I expect to make a baby, if I can't even make a semi-educated guess as to when I'm going to ovulate?  And with a 26 day cycle, something is seriously messed up in the ovulation department.  Either I'm ovulating super early, or my luteal phase is all sorts of messed up.  If it's my luteal phase, that leads to a whole other level of problems that need to be addressed.

I keep wondering if I should call my RE and talk to him about my super wonky cycles.  I had a consultation with him back in June about getting the ball rolling on our next frozen transfer.  He told me that since it's been more than 18 months since I've been there, we have to redo all of our initial blood work, and I have to have a Saline Infusion Sonogram (SIS) done.  That is done to check my uterus for any polyps, parts of placenta that might be leftover, or any other crap that may have surfaced since my last pregnancy that would be bad news for a new pregnancy.  I'm not stoked about having to do all of that over again, but I can't argue.  And, I'm pretty sure that if I call him and talk to him about my cycles, that he's just going to say that there's nothing he can do without doing blood work first.

Drew and I have a high deductible insurance plan, so rather than having to pay the deductible twice, assuming that the thaw and transfer is successful, we just planned on waiting until January to start all of the testing.  Hence, us trying on our own.  I really don't put my hopes too high on it, because it didn't work for us for the year and a half that we tried before doing IVF.  But, I still pray about it.  And, I guess that I'm lying when I say that I don't get my hopes up too high, because I still cry every month when my period arrives, just like before.  Ahhhh, nothing like infertility to make you feel broken and worthless.

But, there is a small bit of good news in all of this.  I have been relatively pain free since my periods have returned after giving birth.  I consistently take pain meds in the morning and before bed for the first couple of days, and I always have the heating pad close by in case I start to feel bad.  But, it has been managed very well, and I haven't felt too hindered by it.  I do notice that they are usually pretty heavy, and that's also related to the endometriosis.  It's definitely a relief to not have the pain that I used to experience.