Good News...Sorta

I went to the doctor on Tuesday. I had to take a half day off school because her only open appointment all week was at 1:40 on Tuesday. Oh well I got an afternoon off I suppose.

So the whole point behind my appointment was that I was not pregnant after my first round of Clomid. After getting into the room the lady told me to undress. I told her I'm not here for a regular appointment an she said I know but she will do an exam for a clomid check. They should tell people that when you make your appointment. You have to prepare for those kind of things!

So after talking with the doctor and after she looked at all my blood work and test results she said everything points 100% to PCOS and she is confident tha I will get pregnant.

Other good news is that I started my period on my own on day 34! That means for the first time in my life (that I wasn't on birth control) my period was less than 35 days. My doctor says tha is a great sign that things a progressing and working the way they should.

She isn't 100% sure that I ovulated in my last period so she doubled my clomid dosage. The whole process this time will be quicker because I don't have to take the prometrium because I starte my period on my own so the whole process will only be a month instead of two! Woo Hoo!

Clomid Take Two

In a previous post I mentioned the I am taking clomid. Clomid is the first line of fertility treatment that most women do but it's not as simple as just taking a pill. First off I am already taking 3 pills everyday. I take levintroxin for my thyroid (every woman on my moms side of the family has a thyroid condition) every morning and I have to take it at least 20 mins before I eat breakfast or I get sick. If I take it too late in the morning it makes me tired. It took a while to figure out the perfect timing. I also take 1000 mg of glumetza (two 500 mg pills). I take the glumetza at night sometime between dinner and bed because it gives me an upset stomach. Glumetza is the fourth insulin medicine I have been on. It makes me the least sick of all.

Let me explain how clomid works. It is a nuero-blocker (pretty sure I spelled that wrong and not really even sure if that is a word) tha blocks the signal to your brain that tells you how much estrogen is in your body. By doing this your body produces more estrogen and in turns makes your ovaries ovulate.

The whole clomid process take any where from a month to two months roughly depending on your body. My fertility issues stem from PCOS so I don't have regular periods. Because of this I have to take Prometrium for ten days. At some point in those ten days or within two weeks after I take pill number 10 my period will start. That day counts as cycle day number 1. On cycle days number 5-9 I take a Clomid bill. Clomid cause your body to ovulate. On days 10-19 Jason and I "bond" every other day (Janelle and I termed it bonding because talking about sex in public is unacceptable and Janelle is my sound board for this whole process). After 10 days of "bonding" I take a pregnancy on day 25 and day 30.

Today is day 31 and I am not pregnant. I'll call my doctor on Monday and we will start the process all over again.

Jason and I have been trying for just over two years now and then has been the worst month of this whole process. Before this it was a crap shoot and we knew. We knew that I might get pregnant but we weren't expecting anything. This time it was different. This time we had a strong reason to believe that it might work. Last night was the first time in a long time that I have cried about this. I think I have been numb to my infertility but this process just threw it all in my face.

From my research clomid works in about 30% of people that take it but my doctor says it works really well in PCOS cases. Clomid causes some nasty side effects or so I have been told. The side effects are a lot like menopause. Due to this you always start out with a low dosage and they increase it as you go. Jason and Inhave discovered another side effect and it's not so much from clomid but just from trying to have a baby. Being forced to "bond" on a schedule is really hard. Jason's schedule makes things really hard. It is emotionally trying on a relationship.

So on Monday I will ca my doctor, make an appointment and we will take another shot at this.

Biggest Loser

So at the beginning of the semester my school started biggest loser. Rules are you pay $25 to join and then a $1 for every pound you gain.

Last year we did the same thing. I lost 12 lbs and kept it off. I don't expect to win because I won't go on some crazy diet. After the first week the person in the first place lost over 7.5% of her body weight. That's crazy! Anyways after the first week I lost 3 lbs which comes out to 1.29% lost. Like I said I don't expect to win but I have someone looking over my shoulder at my weight loss so it is some motivation.

I started by counting calories but I HATE that. I want to eat when I hungry so I am going to try doing it without counting calories and see how it works. I know what is healthy and what isn't. to help with to process I started kickboxing classes. I am actually really enjoying the class.

I was doing real well until this weekend. I had a meeting out of town and I am still trying to figure out how to eat healthy while I am out of town. We have also been dealing with some fertility stuff that hasn't been good news (more on that later) so I have been having a pitty party the last few days and not eating the best.

Here's to my goal weight loss of 40lbs

And Baby Makes Three...Someday

I mentioned in my last post that Jason and I had been trying for two years now to conceive. It's been a long and hard road for us. This is something that I never imagined I would have to deal with. It all started around Christmas time in 2009. Jason and I made the decision to stop preventing it. That is I got off my birth control but we didn't put in any extra effort to getting pregnant. It didn't take long for me to figure out something was wrong. After two months of no period I went to see a doctor. Turns out I have a condition called PCOS.

PCOS is the most common cause of infertility. It occurs mainly in women that are overweight (another reason to shed the extra pounds). What happens is my eggs never mature therefore I never ovulate. Since I never ovulate my periods are very sporadic. My body doesn't know what it needs to do. About two years ago I started to process with the doctors (I'm on doctor number three now).

The first doctor gave me meds to kinda restart my body. Her thinking was that I had been on birth control for five years that my body might need a reminder. That worked for about two months. At that point the doctor ran some test and determined that I had a low thyroid level and PCOS. I went on medication for both. The medication for PCOS in an insulin medicine. Not sure why but they say it works. The most common medicine is Metformin.

Not long after my diagnosis I got sick with H. Pylori which is a nasty bacterial infection in your stomach. After battling that for about a month I was over taking medicine and we took a break from trying. At some point in all of this my doctor left her practice and Jason and I moved to Katy.

When we moved I decided to find another doctor. She put me back on the insulin medicine. With her I tried four different medications before I found one that didn't make me so sick t was hard to function. Of course it happened to be the one that doesn't have a generic version. After six months of no success she upped my dosage to 1000 mg a day. To put it into perspective my aunt who is borderline diabetic takes 2 mg a day. So needless to say I take a lot. I was not real happy with what. H doctor was doing and I felt like if we waited six months again then Jason and I might give up so I switched doctors again.

Doctor number 3 delivered my god son and I really liked her bedside manner. When I met with her she already had a plan and I liked that! She told me that two years of medication was too long to have waited before we tried something new. It was really nice to have a doctor that was willing to try something and who was able to explain what was actually wrong with me in a way that I could understand. She also had me have a test done an HSG. I will spare you the details on exactly what they did but it was the most painful thing I have ever done in my life. Essentially they flushed all my lady organs out and took pictures to make sure everything is how it is suppose to be.

Our current fertility treatments started in December. I am taking Clomid which hopefully will get my body to ovulate. We are in the process of round one. You can do up to six rounds of clomid. If it doesn't work after six rounds they move onto to other things. We will see what happens with this. My doctor is confident that it will work. She told us not to get our hopes up on the first round but she doesn't see any reason why it won't work after that.

The whole process has been hard for us. A lot of the people around us are getting pregnant and I couldn't be happier for them but it just makes it even harder on us. I know I take it harder then Jason because I am the reason we haven't had a baby yet. He is very supportive and I couldn't have gone through all of this without him. He has a very positive attitude and I try my hardest to stay positive to.

Someday Jason and I will add to our family...hopefully that someday is soon.

Let's give this another shot...

Lets try this again….

This will be the 4th time or so that I have tried to start a blog. I always start it with good intentions but I think I get side tracked with my crazy busy life and easily forget about it. With the new year I decided to make some changes in my life. I don’t like to call the resolutions. I have never really been one to make new year’s resolutions. I am not sure what it is about the new year that makes people want to start fresh. What changes between December 31st and Jan 1st? I would think resolutions are better made on your birthday…you are getting a year older and presumably a year smarter and more mature.
With the end of 2011 came a big change for Jason and I. In October we were forced to move out of or rental home because it was being foreclosed on. WTH!!! Crazy right? Well out much better for us. We had to live with my parents for a month while we searched for a house. On a side note…all of this happened during football season which meant I had to pack the house and house search without Jason. It was pretty stressful but it all worked out in the end. We got a beautiful house in our price range that is only a little over a year old and has all of the upgrades. Life seems much easier now that we have our own house. I am not sure what the difference is between and the rental house but we both seem to be sleeping better and are in better moods. I will post pictures and more about the house later.
I have two goals this year…I don’t like to call them resolutions because those never seem to work out. These are really life style changes. What many people don’t know if that Jason and I have been trying to have a baby for about 2 years now. In December we started fertility treatments. My doctor is confident they will work. We shall see. I will post more about our journey and the fertility treatments later. So my first goal for the year is to get pregnant. I know there isn’t a whole like I can do about it. It will either happen or it won’t but Jason and I are doing everything we can to help the medicine along. My second goal for the year is to lose weight and not just a few pounds a significant amount…not all this year per say but I do want to make a big dent. Now if we achieve goal 1 then goal 2 will be hindered but I am ok with that.
Hopefully this blog with give me an outlet for all of my thoughts and a place to keep me honest on my weight loss goals. Hopefully I can keep it updated!