Patience Pays Off

She surged! Ovulation detected last night and again this morning. She's on her way to RE's as we speak.


A picture of MBW's favorite dog just for smiles and good measure:

Meet Mathilda. MBW found her as an 8 week old puppy in a mud puddle after a rain storm. **

**Update** Insemination complete. She had four good follicles. On the left she had a 32 and a 27. On the right, which they were far less impressed by, she had a 14 and a 13. As per usual, her lining and her mucus looked great.

Fertile thoughts!

Just Icky

What is bound to happen if you routinely leave your phone on a stack of magazines on the back of your toilet?

Oh yeah, it was disgusting. The phone fell in the porcelain goddess at the most inopportune moment.

Lucky for me, a person had the same phone on Ebay for a darn good price.

Funny part was that the person I'm buying the phone from is in Crestview, Florida. The same beautiful place where my mother was in the hospital recently, and where one of my Senior prom dates was from. I know I probably shouldn't be surprised- the area is the location of the largest Air Force base in the world, with thousands of people also landing for tourism- but the redneck riviera keeps presenting itself in my life. I know its in my blood- sugar white sand and gulf air will forever send waves of energy through my spine- but the inland parts, where I was always trying to escape- come on!

Anyway, slightly used Sony Ericsson phone is on its way to me from Cres-tucky, Florida. Thank goodness for Ebay, being able to afford a replacement, and finally learning the lesson that neither magazines nor phones should be on the back of porcelain goddesses.

In TTC news, MBW has not surged and its day 11. We ran out of CBE monitor sticks so will have to rely on the normal OPK's. We're desperately trying to remain patient and not rush off to buy Ovidril. Why spend $75 bucks on something her body can do on its own- though it would be nice to be able to plan the insemination time...

Ohohoh, and celebratory news, our friend Ginny's pregnancy test is still positive! She will be the first from our Cryobank Friends Dallas group to get pregnant!

Weekend Recap

We were lucky enough to have multiple options for our Friday. We were invited by two new friends in our neighborhood to do a gay bar hop in celebration to the restaurant and bar scene in Dallas being newly smoke free. Janet's brother invited us out to dinner at our favorite pizza place- Eno's. Finally, we have a standing Friday potential date with our friends- the family C. We bought our house from the family C and they moved a whole two streets away. They have a great front porch for drinking Mr. C's fabulous concoctions.

After a frustrating week, all I really wanted to do was go home, relax/veg for a couple of hours and enjoy a black dragon, crafted with care by Mr. C and some fabulous conversation and banter. Lucky for me, everyone in the family C was well, so my wish came true. I came home to MBW working in the yard. I offered to make dinner in exchange for not having to work outside (awesome trade, right?) and made some quick and easy grilled salsa chicken sandwiches. We enjoyed our sandwiches, relaxed, and headed over to the C's. One double black dragon and all was well with the world.

Saturday was fairly scheduled, but most things fell through, which was good. In the evening we were to attend the Community in Schools Celebrating Successes event with some people from my office. The dress was "Texas Cocktail" which I had clarified by an event organizer as normal cocktail wear, but you can wear boots and a cowboy hat. Umm, yeah, not so much. MBW was hoping it meant jeans and boots- I truly enjoyed breaking the news. So anyway, we spent most of the day in Northpark Mall finding slacks and shoes for MBW. We were serious power shoppers. I ended up in a dress- the first time in over a year and she in a beautiful sequined top with well fitting trousers. She looked beee-uuuuu-tiful. We had much fun with our friends from work and left the even inspired. CIS does such an amazing job in the local schools and my company is lucky to partner with them.

This morning we slept in- sadly, there are few things I enjoy as much as sleep. MBW's birthday was Wednesday. The family celebration was held at noon in a new restaurant in Addison called Masaryk's. It's owned by family friend Gabe, who catered the brother in law's wedding and is also owner of family favorite, La Margarita, in Irving. The restaurant didn't disappoint! The service was even better than at La Margarita and the interior was lovely.

We came home for a nap- sleep in, take naps- we live the life! Instead of napping, we watched the ever so fabulous Cary Grant in Mister Blandings Builds His Dream House . I'm so glad she loves those old movies and I get the benefit of enjoying them. The dialogue was so witty. When we finally pulled ourselves out of bed, we went for a neighborhood walk and meandered over to the home of our favorite guys' house where our friend L was sipping wine on the front porch. We were invited up for a glass and were sitting around when an unfortunate thing happened. We hear guttural screams of an animal from a nearby street. Being the animal freaks that MBW, L, and I are, we went running for the screams. A poor little pug had been hit buy a car. L went for a towel while we went for the pug. We rushed him to the local ER vet and turned him over. The vet wasn't sure if we was going to make it (mainly due to potential spinal injury), but we will know if he does tomorrow if he's handed over to the city of Dallas. If he makes it, we'll get L's partner involved (he works with a group called Paws in the City) to make sure he gets a good home.

Now I'm off the adrenaline, finished doing some work to prep for tomorrow and am feeling grateful for all the good parts of the weekend.

MBW is on day 9 of her cycle and the monitor has two notches. I'm sure we'll be inseminating this week, so- need all the good mojo we can get. It would be great not to have to go with IVF.

Hope everyone else had a great weekend. I'm celebrating and praying for my friend Ginny who POS and got two pink lines this weekend! She has her in clinic pregnancy test tomorrow- so send her all of your good vibes!

SIRM

MBW's brother and wife are attepting to have a baby via IVF and have stumbled upon a new Doctor/Clinic after a poor experience with CAR.

The new clinic is the Sher Institutes for Reproductive Medicine and they are seeing *I think* Dr. Walid Saleh. In first going through their website, it looks like they are going to be gay/lesbian friendly based on reason five here.

Does anyone out there have experience with SIRM? If you had an experience, how was your patient experience, did you find it to be more or less expensive than other clinics, etc?

The New and/Revised Plan

Alright, so finally, a post related to what this journal was originally created for- TTC'ing!

We're on a new plan of action- or at least a revised plan of action. After two months off, figuring out what we were going to do, dealing with my mother related stuff, our dog stuff, and generally attempting to save money, MBW is on day 3 of her cycle and we are planning on an a triggered clomid IUI this month. We are going to do without formal monitoring as we've never had any issues with follicles not developing or lining thickness- and I swear, I'm not going to freak out on day 11 and spend $233 on a sonogram prior to her insemination.

What if number 9 doesn't work?

We have plans for that too!

After going back and forth, MBW has decided to go forward with an IVF using her own eggs. (Did I mention that there is really nothing more I want in this world than little boy and girl versions of my beautiful wife?!?!) We're still trying to figure out how to pay for it, but she wants to be pregnant by the end of the year or not at all. Disappointing to me, but if I were turning 45 in a few days, I think I would feel the same way.

If IVF with her eggs doesn't work, before the end of the year, we'll try with my eggs- and even if we don't end up trying with them, I think I still want to have embryo's frozen. My fertility will start to decline soon- and I really don't want to face this much time/heartache if there is any way to have an insurance policy if you will.

For IVF with her eggs we will be able to stay with Dr. Wilson at UTSW. For her to have IVF with my eggs, we might have to go to Dr. Le, or we might be able to stay at UTSW depending on if they get their legal documentation in order by then. I would truly love to be able to stay at UTSW and we've gotten so used to the wonderful nursing staff and doctors there- here's to hoping they get their legal stuff in order so I could donate eggs there.

Anyway, just sent an email over to MBW to make sure she had a Clomid script and knew went to start it. Its odd how after two months off, I don't remember when to remind her ;c)