I threw away a perfectly good egg (even though starving children in Africa would be grateful to have it)

Today I am 10dpo, and it means absolutely nothing, as I am on a break cycle. I knew that I would be very close to ovulation when I got back from vacation, so I decided to sit this cycle out instead of worrying through my entire trip: “Will I ovulate early and miss it? Or will the stress of travel delay my ovulation? Will I have time to get boy juice for insem? Should I take meds this cycle or not, in case all of the previous things happen?” So, I decided beforehand to screw it all, and just have a good time.

Of course, it didn’t really turn out that simple. I ended up ovulating on Easter Sunday; how’s that for irony? The ultimate Judeo-Christian day of renewal and hope, and that’s when I ovulated. On a break cycle. With no hope at all of being pregnant. So for about four days, all I did was beat myself up for not trying this cycle… even though it would have been practically impossible. I couldn’t help but think that an Easter Sunday ovulation was a SIGN, and I had missed my chance.

Isn’t it amazing how pathetic infertility can make you? I mean, I might be all Pollyanna bright when it comes to dealing with other people’s pregnancies, but believe me, when it comes to my own failures and treatments, I am the most depressing and pessimistic Debbie Downer ever.

“Sure, a superstitious (or desperate!) person could think that ovulation on Easter might be a good sign for conception to occur, but with my luck, I probably would have gotten a semen sample contaminated with a flesh-eating virus that would have destroyed my entire reproductive tract.”

MWWHAAAA-WHAAAAA!

I have my next RE consult next Wednesday, where we’ll discuss lovely things such as cervical mucous, ultrasounds, and hcg trigger shots. Honestly, though, I’m just about at a point in my treatment that I’m seriously thinking about seeing if my ob-gyn can do these things. Financially, this is about as “high tech” as I can go, and for those in the know, this ain’t nuthin’. But I absolutely, positively cannot move on to IVF, so I’m going to give this route a try for a while: minimal stim during follicular phase with femara, u/s to track follicular growth, then hcg trigger before insem.

Thing is, many ob-gyns can handle this level of treatment. And I’m about 95% sure that the costs would be less through an ob-gyn than through an RE. It seems like each and everything that goes through an RE’s office gets stamped “Infertility”, which is an automatic denial by most insurance companies, including my own. But ob-gyns tend to code things based on your underlying problems, which in my case is “PCOS”, which is more likely to be at least partially covered by insurance.

I just don’t know. Some days I just want to throw in the towel and say fuck it, I’m done. Then that insidious whisper always starts. “Don’t give up yet, this next cycle might be the one. C’mon, you know you wanna try again.” I swear, being infertile is like doing drugs: you start off just wanting a quick “fix”. But that one fix isn’t enough, and things get more complicated and expensive. Then one day, you discover that you’re addicted, and can’t figure out how to stop.

Maybe I’ll end up on a street corner somewhere, waving at passing cars and yelling out, “I’ll give you head for IVF money!”