What brought me to today.

It occured to me that not a lot of people know what brought me here. I have been on the T-TTC board of The Nest since it's conception over a year ago, before then I lingered on BOTB as resident expert, to guide the noobs whom as soon as the posted with questions about cervical mucus would then announce their BFP - like it was easy. I witnessed more births of noob babies then I would like to count. I think a few people lapped me with #2 as well.

I have been doing this since January of 2003. Although some people would say I was doing this since I got married, we stopped birth control on our honeymoon after all. I would like to say that I don't really count those days, if it worked I would have counted it, but since it didn't why tack on even more months of coming up empty handed? So bare with me, this might get long - hard to jam 5 (okay 6) years of history into just a few paragraphs...

So in January 2003 I logged into the internet and searched TTC. What came up was info about charting, OPKs, cervical mucus, handy little calenders. Wow so much stuff I never even knew about. The art of making a baby was actually studied. People didn't just have sex and get pregnant? Maybe I was doing it wrong these last few months???

So the first thing I tried was the calendar thing. I plugged in my cycle length and got the date of when to have sex. Pretty easy right? So I made sure to seduce Scott on those nights. 1-2-3 months pass, nothing. Hmm okay how about that chart thing. I join http://www.fertilityfriend.com/ I start temping, but I don't want Scott to know I had become obsessed so get out of bed in the morning go to the bathroom and then temp. Until my chart showed no clear ovulation signs from doing it wrong for three months... Then I read the instructions - oh. Hmm, maybe it is time to tell Scott I am obsessed. So then we attempt to do it the right way for the next 6 months. I get a clear shift, cd 12 - sometimes cycle day 14, sometimes cd 10? CD 10??? The calender never told me to have sex on cd 10! I was timing it way to late for those few months. That's it - that is why I am not getting pregnant! EUREKA! So we start having sex on cd8 and keep going until cd 16... surely 7 nights of sex in a row would work? Nope...

That brings us close to 2004. We get the call from Scott's dad - he is selling the apartment building. You see, we had a cozy little deal, Scott's dad owned a 15 unit building. We lived there rent free in exchange for maintaining it. We got to save money to buy a house eventually and his dad didn't have to worry about the building. Cool deal! Until it ended sooner then we would have liked it to.

So we need to look for a house. In a very HCOL area with only about 20k down... hmm. Should we go condo? Scotts dad says no, condos are not a good investment in an area that is jam packed with condos. Look for single family. We do, to discover we will never find a home we could afford. Then we decide fixer upper is the way to go. So we look and look until we find a home, which over all have great structure although the insides were from the 50's with pepto bismol walls. We buy it! And we do about 6 months of renovations. I stop charting, we stop timing sex and we concentrate on remodeling our home.

That brings us to the end of 2005 and starting up the baby making process again. I try for 6 more month and throw OPKs in the mix. Then make an appointment with my Dr. in 2006. The Dr discovers I have hypothyroidism... and I get an irregular PAP. So I go on meds to regulate my thyroid. I also end up having a coloscopy and then a LEEP - no sex for 3 months to heal. After the 3 months my thyroid is still wacked and we keep upping meds until something takes. Finally at the start of 2007 we found the dose. I decide to try on my own again. I would give it 6 months and if still nothing we would break down and see an RE.

Six months past, bringing me to November of 2007 and a call to an RE. More tests and the "unexplained" diagnosis. My Dr. wants to be agressive since I am 36 and we head straight to IUI with injectable. We would do three and then move onto IVF before I turn 37....

My 37th birthday is in November, I have blown out so many candles and made the wish for a baby. I really am hoping that this November the wish will be that the baby in my belly will grow nice and strong!