Fertility Friend is not being much of a friend...

You know this whole tracking temp thing is a bit useless if it doesn't tell you when you ovulate! Everything has been fine on the chart. Still tracking temps as the days go by and then all of a sudden, today's temp changed the entire chart from saying Sheila ovulated on day 18 to day 20! We didn't do anymore insems after day 19, so now I'm a little mad/confused at the damn thing.

I posted on the GLBT fertility forum that I'm on about this jump and someone said they had a theory and for me to "delete" the high temp on day 16 and put today's back in and see what happens and it still said O'd on day 20. GRRRR I'm still waiting for them to get back to me on said theory.

Something else to ramble about...
Sunday Sheila's family came over [read: invited themselves] for dinner. Let me explain so when Sheila reads this she doesn't fly off the handle...Saturday morning we both get a text from her mother asking if we can have dinner at our house. We, meaning Sheila, text her back and said sorry we don't have any food or money to buy food. So her mom said they'd bring us money to buy food, so they could come over Sunday for dinner. We weren't even going to go to her house Sunday because we don't even have money for gas. I remembered that I had a bunch of chicken legs from the Ranch Market and I figured I'll grill them and if they don't like it, oh well. End of convo for a little while. During the day we went to a wedding reception, we picked up our sample on the way home, and did our insem after we got home. Probably 10mins after we're done, Sheila's hips are propped up and everything is marinating inside, she gets a text that her parents are on the way over with money for us! We're like Oh.My.God we can't have them just come over and be like well Sheila's busy, thanks for the money, see ya later, bye bye! She hurried and text them and told them we weren't home and to come in an hour. Luckily they got it before they were here! PHEW! How embarrassing that would've been...HA! They got here, chatted and gave her money, and then left just to turn around and make the long journey back out to us again the next day.

So, Sunday they get here and I guess her mom asked her if we started trying yet as they were walking into the house and she said yes. Then everyone was like so are you pregnant yet and yadda yadda. Sheila tells them we won't find out for like 2 weeks. It kind of strikes me odd that the people that came to dinner that day, all have had children, and you'd think they would know about ovulation, proper length of time before a pregnancy test, and all that jazz, but I was wrong.

After running around like a crazy person I finally get the dinner made and put on the table. We sit down and then everyone is looking at me and then onto Sheila. It was the awkwardness of if we were going to say prayer or not. I don't do prayers. I will sit and bow my head out of respect if someone else is doing one, but me personally, not happening. Sheila looks at them and says, eat. Her mom looks all sad and Sheila says, well do you want to do a prayer then and she's like no it's your house you do what you want. So we eat and I think I got told 4 times that the chicken was really good by her mom in a 10 min time frame. OK thanks. Got it. She then said, it must be good he's already had two of them while pointing back at Sheila's dad with her thumb. He never even looked at me or anything the entire time he was here just played on his phone. Not a huge surprise since that's how he is at the grandparent's house too. We played Guitar Hero for a little bit and they got ready to leave. Everyone gets up and says they're goodbyes and her dad walks right past me and hugs Sheila 2 feet in front of me and does the I love you sign right in her face and leaves without looking back. I've come to terms that he's going to always hate my guts and even more so, now that we're going to bring a child into this "disgusting life" we live. You can't win them all, right? It just makes me feel like a piece of shit.

We're not going to dinner this Sunday. Sheila says we've seen them 3 weeks in a row, it's time for a break. Fine with me. It's a holiday weekend after all. That being said, I hope everyone has a safe and eventful weekend, if I don't post anything else before then. :)

-Amity

Fingers crossed

This frustrating cycle has come to a close. We inseminated 2 more times this weekend and watched Sheila's body temperature go up and down A LOT during the month (pic below) and still Fertility Friend hadn't showed any ovulation. I was getting discouraged that something crazy happened this month and she never popped her egg. That is until we put in this morning's temp and voila! the red lines finally showed up!

OK so let me explain this little guy right over <~*~here. The blue dots are Sheila's temperature that she gets on her basal thermometer every morning at 5am. The blue lines just connect the days. The dashed line means she forgot to take her temp that day. The date is at the top this one is June's. The day part on the bottom is the day of her cycle. Day 1 is the first day the red lady comes. CM under the Day is for Cervical Mucus which is secreted from the cervix everyday and gets yuckier as you get closer to ovulation. When you're closer to ovulation, it has the same consistency and nutrients as semen, so the swimmers can live longer (up to 5 days) inside of the cervix waiting for the egg. Some of the boxes are green meaning that it's "go time". haha. The X's under them are the days we inseminated and the + and - were for the ovulation predictor pee stick things. The red lines on the graph are the average temperature (horizontal line) and the switch in hormone from estrogen to progesterone (vertical line). Where they intersect is your ovulation day meaning the 24 hours the egg is released for fertilization. It is also your lowest body temperature reading for the entire month. According to this chart, we nailed it right on the head, so hopefully this little follicle will attach itself within the next few days and stick!

We're not overly concerned with the whole peeing on a stick thing in 2 weeks. We'll just see if the red lady comes back to visit again and if she does then it's on to try number 2!

I've really done my research! I guess that's what I get for having SO much time off!

-Amity

Finally...

the real time has come!

OVULATION!

I posted a similar picture on Facebook this morning that just said, "Hello." and people were posting with kind words of congrats and blessings. Apparently those are the ones who don't read this blog. :P Anyway, moments of truth within these next couple of days. Temp dropped only .03 degrees lower than the current lowest temp, so she might actually being popping that egg today. We'll know tomorrow if temp goes back up.

Dear universe...make this time be the right one, so we can stop torturing our donor! Thank you. :D

 

Day 2...err yesterday

First, shout out to all the babycenter ladies reading our blog!! :P HAHA I'm a weirdo!

Anyways, I didn't update this blog yesterday because I was seconds from throwing up. I didn't make her laugh this time! WORSE!! I got the stuff on me!!!! I was being SO careful and when I was pulling the syringe out of the condom, a little bit of overflow was there on my finger. I yelled out GROSS and I even said the F word. I hardly ever say the F word!

I wore Sheila's new DBacks hat during the insem because she kept telling me I looked cute in it. This time went a lot more smoother I think. I'm a fast learner. We had everything set up better to keep her hips elevated than the day before. I also just inseminated (nothing fun before hand). I think that's why it came out when she laughed. No spillage (except on me) and everything stayed in! Now for the sad part...she hasn't even ovulated yet! She was supposed to yesterday according to the charts and temp, but the little egg got stage fright, and stayed away. Her temp went back up this morning (higher than it has this whole cycle, but not by much), so I guess her body didn't want to help us out this month. We're going to skip tonight and wait to see what the test strip says when she gets home and her temp tomorrow. Hopefully it's just a weird long cycle. Who knows..?

I think both of our bodies are feeling some sort of weirdness because I am really late on my monthly gift. It came for about an hour and then gone! Very weird for me to be having any issues. Watch, now that I said something, it'll come full force.

-Amity

I took pix to document this moment in our lives...what can I say, I like taking pix! They're not bad. I promise.

Sheila after the first try and me telling her to stop laughing...

 

Me in the DBacks hat putting on my game face before the incident...

Sheila chillin with her bear after the 2nd try...

 

THE END

Well a small update to say...

as of 8:30pm Sheila was inseminated! Didn't get the smiley face on the ovulation stick yet, but she should hopefully ovulate tomorrow and we'll insem again tomorrow and do things a little different. I learn quickly from my mistakes. Note to anyone that will be trying to conceive..after that stuff is in there..do not make your partner laugh..there's a good chance it will come out...EWWY!! (TMI I know, but this is my blog to share everything)

Funny thing before hand...Sheila had the sample keeping it warm and she's like OK come do this. Well, right before we got it, I was setting up Guitar Hero so the intro music to the game was playing and I said OK, I need to stop this game because I don't want to inseminate you to Michael Jackson singing "Beat It". We laughed and then I turned it off.

-Amity

We know how these ladies feel!!

There's this show called, "The Real L Word". It's pretty fake in the way a lesbian's life is, but there's a couple on there who is trying to start their family. They had a sit down dinner with a few of their guy friends after their other guy friend backed out, and this is what happened...

Detach Yourself

Copy and paste this if that doesn't work.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUvpJhMDOLU&feature=BFa&list=SL&index=16

-Amity

Getting to be about that time...

So, Sheila wrote a letter to her family about how she felt they were treating us and to let them officially know our baby plans. They read it and comprehended most of it, so hopefully they'll be better. We hadn't seen them in 2 weeks to let them sort of get over the letter and any bad thought and/or feelings about the last part which stated we were going to try to expand our family. It didn't say how soon or anything like that..just that we were. Out of them all, her mom told her that her dad took it the worst. Was expected. My biggest fear/concern was them being overly friendly and loving (fake), which was sort of happened this last Sunday. Her dad was standing at the door and hugged her when we walked in and was smiling, still didn't wave or anything to me (which is fine) because at least he was finally showing her some sort of affection and not alienating her. Her mom was right after him, hugging us, and throwing her arms up and saying YAY loudly in excitement like we were the greatest things since sliced bread. Josh hugged us right after them, but he always does, so that wasn't out of the ordinary, then came the grandparents. They usually hug us too, so it wasn't that big of a surprise. It was like a parade of people, full of excitement that we were there. That hadn't happened in a while. It was all kind of overbearing (for me anyway). Nothing was really brought up about our impeding plans, just the small mention of what we could name the kid if it were a girl. Believe me, it's not happening! Anyway, dinner as a whole was OK, it was just the awkward overly happy moments that took place as we stepped foot into the house. Hopefully it continues to move forward and be less weird.
In other news.....If all our charting is correct, we should be doing our first insemination this weekend/early week. Gotta get in touch with our donor and hash over the details. I think I want to insem more than one day just to be sure, but it all depends on him. Most of the other women I've been talking to and learning from usually insem the night before and the day of ovulation. They also don't usually have a known donor at their expense. I'm just nervous that I won't do it right and it'll be my fault if she doesn't get knocked up. We didn't get the Cystic Fibrosis (CF) or Cytomegalovirus (CMV)testing done because it was ridiculous how expensive it was! $800 just for the CF test alone!! We learned later that they can test for all of that after you're pregnant and it won't cost you an arm and a leg. We wanted to test before because they can cause birth issues, but I guess we'll see. Keep your fingers, toes, arms, legs, whatever you've got to cross and send lots of baby dust our way!! (been on the fertility boards a little too much..) Hopefully this process will go by quickly and we won't have to repeat this for months and months and months. I'll update probably later in the week on the experience of all that will have happened.

-Amity