Clomid Cycle One = Fail

Progesterone (suppositories) are one of the meanest tricks I’ve encountered lately. My body and my brain have spent the past week entangled in a rather epic battle. My brain told my body that the side effects of progesterone mimic those of pregnancy and I was probably just feeling those side effects (not because Dr. D warned me of this, mind you, but because I googled it as usual). My body told my brain “Shut up. Listen, I’ve been pregnant twice before – I know exactly how it feels and this is it.” Yesterday, as you’ve gathered from the title of this post, when I finally took a pregnancy test, my brain won. Despite the breast tenderness. Despite the fatigue. Despite the consistently higher-than-usual body temperature. Despite the fact that I’ve been waking up to pee in the middle of the night. Despite the moodiness.

I’ve been on Clomid before. When I was (seemingly) misdiagnosed with PCOS, our first RE prescribed it to straighten out my cycles and I got pregnant in the second month. Last time, my Clomid prescription was pretty casual: wait for your period, start taking Clomid on cycle day five (for five days), have sex every other day around the time you expect to ovulate, wait to get your period again; if you get your period, repeat the process and if you don’t, take a pregnancy test. Pretty simple. And it worked.

This time, Clomid and “timed intercourse” are much more complicated:

• Come in between 7:30 am and 8:30 am on day 2-5 of your period to start Clomid (this involves a blood test to make sure you’re not pregnant among other things and an ultrasound to see how things look)
• If you don’t hear from the doctor’s office later that day to tell you there’s a problem with your bloodwork, take the first pill that evening (regardless of what cycle day it is)
• Take Clomid for 5 days
• On cycle day 11(ish), come in between 7:30 am and 8:30 am for an ultrasound and receive instructions for when to test for ovulation, when to have sex, and when to start progesterone
• Test for ovulation as directed and when you don’t get a positive (because you have never gotten a positive result with an ovulation predictor kit), give yourself (or make your husband give you) a $99 shot of Ovidrel to force ovulation
• Have sex as directed
• Start progesterone as directed
• Wait 14 days
• Don’t test for pregnancy too early, because the Ovidrel shot will cause a false positive (learn this on the Internet, because doctor doesn’t warn you)
• Don’t wait around for your period, because you won’t get it while you’re on progesterone (again, thanks to the Internet)
• Take a pregnancy test; if negative, start over

And did I mention that our RE’s office is two hours away? And that whole “come in between 7:30 am and 8:30 am” thing is not at all flexible? Yep. That sums up my past month. And now apparently we’re getting ready to do it all again. If I don’t get pregnant after three months of this, we’ll move on to IUI. And I’m exhausted. And I don’t really trust the process. We know I ovulate. I’ve been pregnant twice and I’ve never gotten a positive result on an OPK. Why do I need to take the Ovidrel shot? I feel like it might be screwing with things that seem to work on their own, no matter what the doctor says.

Thank you, Stirrup Queens, for describing exactly how I feel here.

Here we are, not pregnant again. Afraid of being pregnant, because my pregnancies (so far) don’t last. Even more afraid of not getting pregnant. I’ll take recurrent pregnancy loss or I’ll take infertility; I’m really fucking sick of the combination.