Infertility Update September and October 2015

Hi everyone! It's been a while since I've posted an update about our baby-making situation. So here's what we've been up to...

We took our trip to Mexico with my family at the end of September. We really had an awesome vacation! I'm going to do a separate post about Mexico, so once I do that, I'll let you all know. Since getting back from Mexico, I have been swamped with work for my two graduate school classes, and Lee has been busy with work and various projects around the house. The good news is, I only have 6 more weeks of school before I get a 4 week break from school... and after this semester, I will only have 2/5 of my MBA left to earn! Whoop whoop!!

Lee and I had originally planned to give IVF a try once we had taken all of the vacations we had planned for this year. Mexico was the last trip we planned to take, so we were thinking we would start this process sometime in October. During my last blog post, I mentioned that I was having second thoughts about IVF, and just really wasn't sure that it was the next step we should take. I prayed for guidance, and currently, we just don't feel called to start IVF. We aren't saying, "never", we're simply saying, "Not right now."

Fertility treatments are exhausting mentally, physically, emotionally, etc. After doing 6 IUIs back to back earlier this year, we just don't feel ready to try IVF. The thought of starting all of those hormones and doctors appointments is overwhelming... and to say it feels overwhelming is actually an understatement. After taking all of those hormones earlier this year, I still don't feel that I am 100% back to my normal self (I still have hot flashes, etc. which I never had prior to starting fertility treatments). IVF would require even more medication than the IUI's, and besides the medication, there are lots of ups and downs with the whole process. We're just not ready to go through all of that again.

So what now?! Well, quite some time ago, a girlfriend of mine mentioned that she had a few friends who use various natural family planning (NFP) methods, and she was considering stopping her birth control and trying something more natural. When she had mentioned it I really didn't think much of it, because we were trying to get pregnant so I figured any type of birth control was irrelevant to us...But then a few months later a friend of a friend messaged me on Facebook and said that he and his wife had been reading my blog and they felt called to share some NFP information with me. I kind of blew it off because once again, I just really didn't think there's any way it could help me get pregnant.

After Lee and I decided that we just don't feel like IVF is the best choice for us right now, I looked into Natural Family Planning, and happened to find a doctor in the area who really encourages it. So I called him, and he really wasn't taking new patients for his family practice, but he is taking new OB patients. Well, he is not an OBGYN, just an OB, and obviously I'm not in the market for an OB doctor right now, but I explained the situation, and he said he would be happy to meet with me. So I met with him and went into detail about mine and Lee's experience, my cycles, our 6 IUIs, etc. and he said given our circumstances, he thinks we could potentially benefit from trying NFP. Of course he can't guarantee it working for us anymore than our fertility doctor could guarantee our IUIs, but Lee and I figure it's worth a try.

Natural Family Planning (NFP) is a way to track your cycle and know how to identify fertile times. This method can be used to both achieve and avoid pregnancy without taking birth control pills. Here is the site I initially looked at before calling our new doctor.

Our new doctor referred me to a woman in town who teaches all about NFP. Lee and I are using the Creighton Model, and to summarize it very briefly, its a way of charting and tracking my cycle to learn to identify fertile and not fertile times, based on various biological markers. So I met with this woman and she went over the basics, and now I am charting my cycle, and meeting with her every two weeks to learn more about the process and talk about my charting progress. After charting two full cycles, then I'll go back to the doctor and he'll look at my charts to try to try to determining if I really am ovulating on my own, etc.

This whole process is pretty new to me, as I've only been charting for like 3 weeks, so I'm not going to go into much detail just yet. But check back at the end of November, and I'll fill you in a little more on how its working for us. The main bummer with switching our plan from IVF to NVP is more waiting. The waiting part is really tough... that's never going to change. Lee and I have been trying to start our family for 22 months... 22 times we have tried, and have not gotten pregnant. At this point, we figure the benefits of conceiving on our own far out weigh the disadvantage of waiting a few more months for our miracle, and for that reason, we are willing to give this a try. If it doesn't work for us, we will re-consider IVF. For now, I'm learning a lot, and it's nice not to have the added stress of fertility treatments.


Side note: If you search the Creighton Model, you probably won't find much information about how to actually track your cycle... you'll mostly find research explaining why families are successful with using this model. The woman who is teaching me to track my cycle explained that for people to use this method, doctors really prefer that they get training like I am, so that the tracking is done successfully. Otherwise, people may try it, but not use this method accurately, and then not get the results they want, and that would give NFP a bad name. This method has been proven to be extremely accurate when used correctly. Most of the time when people use this method, if they get opposite results its due to an error in their charting.

Queso Spinach Dip

Queso Spinach Dip... My sister-in-law made this dip on the 4th of July and it was so yummy! I have tweaked it a bit to make it my own, and now I make it all the time. This week I am making it to take to work for food day. Here's how I make it:

Ingredients 

1 block Velveeta (2lb.)

1- 8 oz. block cream cheese
1/2 cup milk (add more or less depending how thick you like your dip)

1- 16 oz. jar salsa, choose the brand and heat level that you like 

1- 10 oz. box frozen chopped spinach (If I can't find a 10 oz. box, I have bought the 1 lb. bag before and just used about half. A few more or less oz. of spinach won't make or break your dip.)

Start by cutting your Velveeta into chunks and put them in the Crock Pot. Do the same for your cream cheese. Dump your salsa and milk on top of your chunked cheeses. Take the paper wrapping off of your frozen spinach, but leave it in the cardboard box. Place the box of spinach on a plate and microwave for 2 minutes. Flip the box over and microwave for 2 more minutes. Next you need to drain your spinach. To do so, take the box out of the microwave and squeeze it over a sink to get all of the excess water out. (You may need to wait a minute or 2 to do this if your box is hot like mine normally is.) Once your spinach is drained, add it to your Crock Pot. Let your mixture cook on low for about an hour, stirring occasionally. After an hour, mix ingredients thoroughly and turn your heat setting to warm. If you leave your dip in the Crock Pot for several hours, it may thicken up. Add milk as needed to get to your preferred consistency. Serve with tortilla chips and enjoy!  

Friday Favorites 9/25/15

Today I'm linking up with the Momfessionals blog, A Little Bit of Everything blog, and Grace and Love blog to blog about some Friday Favorites!

ONE

My favorite things from this week include this new bag! I bought it a few weeks ago at Target, and I'm thinking it will be the perfect carry-on bag for our upcoming trip to Mexico. You can see it online here.


TWO


Toasted. Coconut. Oreos. Let that sink in for a second... YUM! I found these at our local grocery store this week and they are SO GOOD! I bought them with the intent to make some type of dessert creation using them, but I may just have to save that idea for next time, because this package of Oreos is going to be gone before too long!

Toasted Coconut Oreos





THREE

The Fall Festival is coming up soon here in my town, and I am so so excited for it. It always falls the first full week of October and it is HUGE. Lots and lots of food booths, games, rides, parades, etc. The main thing that I get excited about is the food (duh!). Some booths have normal festival foods such as corn dogs, funnel cakes, tenderloins, etc., but other booths have unique things like brain sandwiches, chicken fried bacon, and burgers that have donuts for a bun. Lee and I always go together a couple of times, and usually a group of girlfriends and I pick a night to get together and go as well: Fall, fried food, and friends... what more could I possibly ask for?

I couldn't find our pic from last year, but this one is from 2 years ago.
Some gfs and I waiting in line...probably for something fried :)





FOUR

Beach time!!

This is not a beach picture I took.. Its just one I found on Google, but I'm so excited to go on vacation! Before too long I'll be laying by the beach with a drink in my hand, and no work or homework in sight, and I just. can't. wait. We are going to Cancun to celebrate my brother's wedding, and most of my family is going, so it's going to be such a fun trip.


FIVE

Last, but not least.... Pumpkin Spice Cake Ball. I made these last week and they were so yummy! I made a whole batch of cake balls, but I only dipped about 10 of them in chocolate. The rest I put in the freezer, and will whip them out and dip them in chocolate next time I'm needing to throw together a quick dessert. You can find the recipe here.

Pumpkin Spice Oreos

Pumpkin Spice Cake Balls

Pumpkin Spice Cake Balls.... Yum!

This week, it is officially fall! Yay! As far as the weather goes, fall is my favorite season. Not only does fall bring cool weather and pretty colored leaves... It also brings pumpkin everything... Pumpkin flavored coffee, pumpkin spice Oreos, and pumpkin spice cake balls! Yep!! I went there. Usually strawberry and lemon are my two favorite flavors of cake balls to make, but now pumpkin is right up there with them. Here's how I made them:

Ingredients

1 loaf pumpkin bread*
3/4 can cream cheese icing
1 bag Ghirardelli White Chocolate Wafers
Pumpkin Pie Spice
Wax Paper

*I bought a Libby's brand box that made two loaves of pumpkin bread... I baked them both. Kept 1 a sliced it for breakfast all week, and used the other for the cake balls. You can use a break mix like I did, use your favorite homemade recipe, or just buy a loaf of soft pumpkin bread!

Pumpkin Pie Spice is a mixture of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice.

If you baked your pumpkin bread like I did, let it cool before using it. I baked my bread about 2 days in advance just to split up the work. Start by crumbling your bread up in a large mixing bowl. Once your bread is crumbled with no large chunks, add in about 1/2 of your icing and mix it all up. This will make your bread & icing mixture kind of gooey. Start by adding 1/2 of the icing can and mix it all up. You want your cake and icing to stick together and easily old into a ball shape, but you don't want it to be too gooey that it won't stay in a ball. So start with 1/2 of the can and add more if you need it. I used about 3/4 of an icing can.

Pumpkin Bread and icing mixture... messy but yummy!

Next, roll your cake and icing mixture into balls. Just a tad smaller than a ping pong ball. Once you have your balls formed, put them in a container and freeze them for about an hour.

Here's what my cake balls looked like after being frozen.

During about the last 5 minutes that your cake balls are freezing, melt your chocolate on about 30% power in a shallow bowl. I like to start by only melting about 1/4 of the chocolate at a time, that way the chocolate doesn't harden up on me before I have a chance to dip all of my cake balls.

Now that your chocolate is melted, remove your cake balls from the freezer. Stab them one at a time with a tooth pick, and dip in chocolate until covered. shake off any loose chocolate, and set your chocolate covered cake ball on a cookie sheet covered with wax paper. Before your chocolate dries onto the cake ball, sprinkle with just a tad of pumpkin pie spice. Let the chocolate harden on your cake balls, and then enjoy! This recipe will make about 30-35 cake balls.

Once my cake balls have all been dipped in chocolate, and the chocolate has dried, I like to keep mine in the fridge bc it keeps them a little more firm. They can be enjoyed cold or at room temperature, whichever you prefer.

Finished product! You could even put your cake ball on a sucker stick and make Pumpkin Spice Cake Pops!

Infertility Update- August 2015

Hi friends! I hope you all have had great summers! Lee and I certainly have. We've been busy these past couple of months!

June and July were busy for us! You can read about what we did during those months here and here.

August slowed down just a bit. At the beginning of the month, we went to Kansas City and enjoyed a weekend get away and saw Kenny Chesney and Jason Aldean in concert. We celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary, and spent some time deep cleaning our house and getting ready for school to start back up.

As far as our infertility situation goes, we finished our 6th Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) cycle in June. All 6 of them were big fat negatives. We decided a break from all of the drugs, hormones, needles, and appointments. July was our first full month with no treatments. It was so nice. We were busy every weekend that month, and it was just really awesome to not have to miss work, rush home from weekend trips to go to appointments, give shots, or anything like that. I also had about a 31 day cycle, so that was really encouraging too! That was my first cycle of 2015 that hadn't been controlled by doctors and drugs, and it made me so happy to be somewhat regular.

Then August rolled around, and my body decided to be difficult again. This month my cycle was about 40 days long. So this means I'm back to irregular ovulation, which was our main reason for seeking fertility treatments in the first place.

We decided previously that after 6 IUIs, there's really no point in doing anymore... time to move on to something else. Next we plan to try In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), but we decided to put that on hold until after summer is over, and we are back from the trips we have planned. Lee nor I had never been to a destination wedding before 2015, but it just so happens this year we are going to 2! We already went to one in FL in July, and are planning to attend another in Mexico this fall. Once we get back from Mexico, we plan to call Dr. G and get the IVF process started.

Thinking about IVF has really had me going back and forth lately. Somedays I just really want to get started NOW because I want to get pregnant and experience all that goes along with it NOW. I so badly just want to be able to talk about baby names and have a real reason for doing so... I want to finally have a reason to clean out our extra bedroom and paint it and buy baby furniture and watch my belly grow, and talk about how Lee is going to be the most adorable daddy EVER. (Side note: Seriously... There's just no way God created and man so sweet, genuine, and patient and didn't intend for him to be a father.) I'm impatient and I want all of that to happen right now! The thought of all of this happening makes me really look forward to starting IVF.

Other days I think, "Why in the world would we even consider doing IVF?! What kind of crazy person does that to themselves??" After 6 emotional, painful, heartbreaking IUIs, why would I want to do that to myself again, at an even more intense level? More hormones, LOTS more needles to the stomach, more appointments, more money... what part of that sounds enjoyable? What if it fails? To think that we could do all of this yet again, and still not end up pregnant is so intimidating. Think of it this way: If you saved up and went to the dealership to buy a car, and they told you that you must pay first, and there's about a 70% chance you'll leave with one car. There's a small chance you could even leave with 2 or 3 cars, but there's a 30% chance that you'll leave with nothing... would you buy from that dealership?! No way! That's kinda how I feel with IVF. I'm excited because the success rate is much higher than IUI, but there's still a chance we could leave with nothing, and that is SO SCARY! Of course the thought of getting pregnant and having a precious baby to hold is motivating, but its easy to let past failures get in the way of thinking it could happen.

So as you can tell, even the waiting process can sometimes be a roller coaster. Ask me one day and I'll tell you we are ready and IVF is our next step, no doubt. Ask me another day and I might say that I'm so nervous about it, and i just really don't know if we should start fertility treatment again. Medically, it just makes sense that we try IVF if we want to get pregnant, but its not a 100% guarantee, and that can be scary.

After we had our last IUI, I really just hoped that we could be one of those crazy stories where our fertility treatments fail, but all the meds helped regulate my cycle, and we get pregnant on our own. Clearly, that is not our current situation.

My friend Elisha reminded me last month at The Nest*, that God can change your circumstances in an instant. Doctors can try all they want, but life can only be created when God is ready. He doesn't need a regular cycle, he doesn't need the perfect size follicles before the IUI, he doesn't need any of it. He is bigger than all of that, and he can (and will) create life at the perfect time, whether that be naturally or with the help of fertility treatment. I'm trying so hard to remind myself of this.

Overall, no fertility treatments this summer has been a nice break for Lee and I, and we have enjoyed our time together traveling and spending time with friends and family. Although we have this infertility roller coaster going on, we are trucking along! We know we have so much to be thankful for, and we know that God has a plan for us. Sometimes its just hard to figure out what that plan might be, especially for impatient people like me!

So for now we are putting up fall decor and buying everything pumpkin  enjoying these last few days of summer, planning and packing for our trip to Mexico, and after that, I guess we'll call Dr. G and get this ball rolling.  If any of you are interested in praying for us, we would love that you pray specifically for guidance. We would love for God to give us some guidance in deciding if IVF really is the next best step for us. In the meantime, if there is anything we can be praying about for you, please let us know!

*Side note: Any of my friends living in the Southern Illinois area should definitely reach out to Elisha from Waiting for Baby Bird, and talk to her about attending her faith based support group. She hosts it once a month, so it's not a huge time commitment, and its so so enjoyable! I have been going for several months now, and really love the ladies I've met in this group! Nothing beats good food, an encouraging message, and some girl time with women who totally relate to the struggle of infertility.