Blog Challenge Day 30: IF Blogs I Love

There are a lot of great infertility blogs.  Some of my favorites are:

Murky Mercurial

Misadventures of Premature Ovarian Failure

Salt in the Womb

And so many more.  I need to update the blogs I love list in my right sidebar, but it's a good place to look if you want to read the stories of some amazing women.

Blog Challenge Day 29: Bucket List

I have never really put much thought into an official bucket list, so it took me longer than it probably should have to come up with this short list.

1. Travel anywhere outside of the United States.
2. See the Northern Lights.
3. Meet my internet friends in person.
4. Have a baby. (Hopefully. Or add a baby/child to our family through whatever means end up working for us.)
5. Be debt-free.

I'm sure if I spent a lot of time thinking about it, I could come up with a lot more exciting things, but off the top of my head, these are things I'd like to do or experience before I kick the bucket.

Blog Challenge Day 28: Advocacy in Daily Life

I think it's pretty important to use all of the knowledge I've gained from our experiences to help educate people about infertility etiquette and ART processes.  Whenever the topic comes up, I do my best to share any information that may be helpful and try to correct any misinformation.  I'm not always effective when I share information, and I know it is 100% because of my approach.  While I want people to have correct information, I don't want to come across as snobbish about things, so I'm usually pretty casual in my approach.  When asked about when embryos will be implanted, I usually respond with "the embryos will be transferred on x date."  By being gentle and subtle with my corrections, I feel like it's less condescending while still providing the correct term.  I'm sure there are better ways to approach grass-roots, low level advocacy, but so far, I'm pretty satisfied with my current amount of involvement.  In the future, I'd like to become more involved in different events.

Blog Challenge Day 27: My Favorite Outfit

I forgot to take a picture of my favorite outfit, but I didn't wear it today., so ... that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.  I probably should have wore it today, I felt really crappy and bloated, and my favorite outfit would have made me feel a little more human.  My feel-good outfit is pretty much my everyday uniform - yoga pants, a tank top, and a soft t-shirt (poor husband).  When I feel like making it a little more special, I have a lightweight off the shoulder sweater that I love.  It's nice and loose in the tummy area so it hides the bloat but still looks cute.  I'll try to upload a photo of my favorite outfits tomorrow :).

Blog Challenge Day 26: IF Invention and IVF Update

One of my infertility pet peeves, which I surprisingly forgot to include in my ranty pet peeve post, is when people, especially people who should know better, say implanting embryos instead of transferring.  This common misconception about the IVF process is the inspiration for an invention that I think would revolutionize the IVF process.  That invention is the technology that will allow RE's to actually implant the embryos into the uterus.  Science is getting close with the production of EmbryoGlue, a compound that is supposed to make embryos more sticky to increase chances of implantation.  Maybe in the future, implanting embryos will be a possibility.


*****IVF Update:  I didn't realize it had been so long since I last updated (last update was 9/5, after my surgery).  Tonight was my 8th night of stims, and I've had 3 monitoring appointments.  So far, I've been responding pretty well, and my original dowse of 5 units of Lupron, 75 units of Menopur, and 125 units of Follistim have remained unchanged.  Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the number of follicles and their growth.  Lefty is being a problem child, as usual, and not producing as many follicles (and most of the ones that are there are smaller), but my RE is very satisfied with how things are going so far, and she's the expert, so I'm just trying to go with the flow.  I have abother monitoring appointment on Sunday, and hopefully then I'll find out my trigger and retrieval dates.  I can't believe we're getting so close the the finis line of this cycle.  Today was the first day that I felt uncomfortable in my abdominal region - maybe the bloat wasn't as noticable until now because of my extra blubber layers.  I'm planning on taking things pretty easy this weekend to help with the discomfort.

Blog Challenge Day 25: Best Advice

There are so many great sources of advice for couples who are newly diagnosed with infertility as well as etiquette suggestions for the friends and family of couples with infertility.  Unfortunately, not all family and friends follow those guidelines, so this is my open letter to them.  (I know I'm not adding anything new with this letter, just reiterating the excellent points made by others.)

Dear Family and Friends of Infertiles,

Infertility is a really sensitive subject, and unless the couple in question implicitly tells you they want to talk about it, it's best to keep quiet.  A simple "I'm thinking about you, and I'm here for you if you want to talk" is just fine, but try not to take it any further unless you're invited to do so.  Advice and platitudes aren't helpful - we (infertiles) understand they're well intentioned, but we guarantee we've heard it before, and it's not helpful.  In fact, it's annoying.  The anecdotes about a friend's cousin's best friend who had success after doing x, y, and z is lovely, but it doesn't apply to every situation.  Basically, what it boils down to is:  if you're not a Reproductive Endocrinologist, please don't give medical advice.  We wouldn't be paying a specialist thousands of dollars if there was a cheaper or simpler way to do things.  At this point, it's pretty much guaranteed that we've tried it.  Again, we appreciate the good intentions, but we don't need anecdotes.  We need support and a shoulder to lean on (and this does not mean pity!).

Thank you for trying to understand this delicate situation.

Blog Challenge Day 24: New IF Acronym

The trying to conceive and infertility communities have so many acronyms it sometimes seems like a secret code or a foreign language.  The last thing we need is more acronyms, but but I thought it would be fun anyway.  And then I couldn't think of an original acronym to save my life.  There is one that I've seen online that really resonated with me - IVFML.  Perfect for those times when things don't go exactly as planned during an IVF cycle.  It also kind of speaks to the fact that IVF completely takes over your life - IVF is my life.  Mercurial came up with a couple of amazing acronyms of her own as well.