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IUI cycle #1 = FAIL.  Le sigh.

Today sucked.  Tomorrow will (hopefully) be better.  And another way to look at this is that it's the beginning of another opportunity.

Please say a prayer for us if you are so inclined.  It's pretty exhausting to have to hold yourself together all day when all you want to do is climb into bed with a bag of cookies and cry.

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Baby's first pictures

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And now, we wait...

Today is a milestone!  We completed our first (and hopefully only) IUI cycle and we've got two weeks to wait and see what happens. Things I've learned over the last two weeks: The Pt. Loma Kaiser pharmacy (one of only two locations where you can pick up fertility meds) pretty much always has a one hour wait.  Bleh. Clomid is cheap, but Chorionic Gonadotropin (the ovulation "trigger shot") is really expensive... at least on my minimal insurance plan. Clomid isn't as scary as everyone makes it out to be.  I had zero side effects. Despite his general squeamishness about guts and blood, Mike was surprisingly calm and collected (dare I say... excited?) about sticking me with a needle at home. IUI is significantly less painful than the HSG procedure. So... here we go.  Commence emotional roller coaster.  Stay tuned, folks!

We've Got Options

Surprise surprise... our last IUI cycle was, again, a big fat negative. So where do we go from here?  In case you've lost count, we're 3 cycles in and stillllll waiting.  Bleh.  Our clinic normally schedules an appointment with our doctor to sort of "regroup" after 3 failed cycles, so that's what we did this week.  We've been presented with a few options, so here's what we're tossing around at the moment: 1. (Simplest) - Continue doing up to 3 more IUI cycles with Clomid, same as we've been doing.  Just because it hasn't worked yet doesn't mean it never will.  This option is the cheapest, easiest, and least risky in terms of the possibility of multiples. 2. (A little more aggressive) - Continue up to 3 more IUI cycles with a drug called Bravelle (similar to Menopur), which is a daily self-injection (or spouse injection as I just don't think I have it in me) that will essentially cause more follicles to mature than Clomid does.  Th...