So last night I started clomid again, and was the proud recipient of a horrendous migraine.  I did not have the migraine.  Rather, the migraine had ME.  It was so bad BeBop had to get up at 2 AM to make me a PB&J, which for some reason actually helped.

It made me think of the last time I had a truly awful migraine, several years ago.  BeBop and I had just had our first heated conversation (read:  fight) about trying to get pregnant.  We were just married a few months prior, and he was shocked – shocked I tell you – to hear my grand scheme to have a baby.  He was a full-time student at the time and I was the sole breadwinner in our family (and THAT whole subject is fodder for another loooong post one day).  He was facing at least another two years of school, and so he didn’t feel it was the right time to get pregnant.  (HA. If we only knew it would take a friggin’ eternity.)

Anyhoo, for some reason my clock was ticking so loudly other people could HEAR it.

Other people:  What is that ticking sound?  TICK TOCK TICK TOCK?

Me:  Cough, clear throat loudly…what ticking?  I don’t hear anything.  Look!  A panther!!

So we had a huge fight about how I was 35 and ready, that everything else would work itself out and how I absolutely, positively HAD to get pregnant NOW. I spoke in capital letters a lot back then. I was, to be truly honest, desperate to have a baby.  I could feel it in my bones, in my marrow even.  It was TIME.

This huge fight lasted most of the night, and I woke up with a terrible headache.  Throughout the day it worsened, and by early afternoon I had to leave work and take to my bed chamber.  (I’ve always wanted to say that!)  But I really did take to my bed chamber, closing the blinds and putting the pillow over my head to block out any light or noise.  I was beyond miserable.

A little while later, BeBop walked in with a huge bouquet of flowers.  I could hardly focus on what he was saying, my head hurt so badly, but he went on to explain that now HE was ready.  Everything would be okay.  We could get pregnant.

Wha?

Turns out, he was as distraught as  I was after our huge fight.  While walking across campus, he saw a card table set up in the quad with a sign saying:  psychic readings.  And for some reason he sat down at the table and plunked down his ten bucks for a reading.  The first thing the psychic asked was:  Do you have kids?

BeBop: Uhhh, no…

Psychic Reader Guy:  Well, you’re gonna, and pretty soon.  I feel a spirit near you, waiting to be born.

Needless to say, BeBop almost fell off the chair at that point. But for some reason, hearing these words made him feel better about having a baby.  So on his way home he bought me flowers to apologize for our fight and to announce that, yes, he too was ready.

Through my migraine haze I was thrilled to hear he was on board with my plan to get knocked up.  Well, thank God for cheap psychics, I thought.

Of course that was like a million years ago and we’re still not pregnant.  So, either the psychic was a total crackpot or this kid is really stubborn and taking her own damn time to be born.

Either way, my head still hurts like a mother.

So my temp dropped and so did my spirits.  The second IUI most definitely did not work.  I am going in for my super fun Day Three Clomid test tomorrow, which is always delightful.  It’s not bad enough that your period came because you’re so totally not pregnant, but just to increase the humiliation, you have to go to the dr. while having said period to be poked and prodded and checked for cysts. 

It’s always about this time that I try to be more hopeful.  At the beginning of a new cycle, as soon as you (sort of) get over the heartbreak of having failed to get pregnant, there is this feeling of starting over — of thinking, maybe this month will be different.

Maybe something good will happen.

Or, How I Put the Blue in Clearblue Easy…

So today is CD 30 and my BBT dropped this morning, so I’m pretty sure the second IUI didn’t work. Plus, despite my intuition screaming "Noooo, don’t do it!" I have taken a couple of HPTs over the last two days. I used to think the regular tests, with the two windows to compare, were hard to take. Every month, hoping against hope, if my period was one day late I’d rush to take a test. And every month, for the last seventeen gajillion months, I have seen that stark white window glaring back at me. The drama queen in me would wail, "the blank white canvas, just so empty, just like my SOUL…" and on and on. But truthfully, that bright white, open space on the stick always did feel like a kick in the teeth.

But that was nothing compared to the harsh reality of the stick that actually spells it out for you.

NOT PREGNANT, it reads.

YOU ARE NOT PREGNANT, IDIOT. WHAT?  YOU ACTUALLY THOUGHT THIS MONTH WOULD BE ANY DIFFERENT? YOU INSUFFERABLE FOOL. (Insert maniacal laugh here.)

Wow. To see those words displayed so prominently just affected me so much more than the clear window.

Over the last two months, I have been more hopeful. I’ve tried to stay positive, repeating my MSGWH mantra: maybe something good will happen. I considered the first IUI our trial run. I wanted to see how I did on the clomid, since it’s been a couple of years since I last took it. And we’d never done an IUI, so I wanted to see how the whole process worked. So, last month was our trial run, which I kept telling myself wouldn’t work. So when it didn’t, I guess I wasn’t that depressed. I had prepared myself for the negative test result.

This month, I started the whole process over again with a renewed sense of optimism. I had to, or I couldn’t face it. BeBop and I kept saying "maybe something good will happen," as a way of tapping into that vein of hope that is so hard to find sometimes.

Knowing that it didn’t work – again – is just exhausting. It’s like gearing up to run a really long race after you just performed poorly in one. (Not that I would know from personal experience. I’m just trying to paint a picture here, people.)

Onward and upward I guess. So begins Month Three…actually, it’s more like Month Forty-three, but who’s counting, right??

blah blah blah…