I Heart Needles

I mean, could there be any other explanation for why I love to pay people thousands of dollars to shove needles into me all the time? I bet my RE's office could provide Red Cross Bloodbank-style relief for an entire disaster-stricken country with all the blood I've given them.

Currently, my love affair with needles is back in full swing, however, because I went to the acupuncturist yesterday. I think she put about 728 needles in me as she politely pronounced me a "trainwreck." She even went so far as to suggest that I might want to wait another couple of months to do this cycle until I have my body in a better state of affairs. I didn't mean for my response to come out as a shriek, something in a pitch so high that only dogs and dolphins could hear, when I said, "WHAT?! Don't you know I'm losing about 4,000 eggs each month?!" She and I both know that is a gross exaggeration, but she has the experience and good sense not to argue with me. Instead, she got to work turning me into the Human Pincushion.

Just to recap, I am a huge fan of acupuncture. Four years ago I was a skeptic, but was desperate to try whatever I could to get pregnant (since we'd already tried 16 months of well-timed sex, Clomid, HSG, etc.). After a couple months of acupuncture, I got pregnant with Megan. Fast forward past Megan's birth. We tried for 6 months, then I went to acupuncture again. After a couple of months of treatment, I got pregnant again. That one didn't end so well, but it's certainly no fault of the acupuncture.

Since embarking on the ART escapades of the last year and a half, I remained faithful to my acupuncture treatment schedule. It seems wildly counter-intuitive to think that paying someone to jab dozens of needles into your body would be so relaxing. But it is. Soooooo relaxing. Like a drug. Anyway, after the 1st IVF when I miscarried, I just got pissed.

I was pissed that I was doing all this shit to get pregnant: eating organic, doing relaxation CDs, doing Yoga for Fertility, acupuncture, tons of drugs, meditating, blah blah blah. Yet, all around me, complete knuckleheads were getting knocked up accidentally on a weekly basis. So I got resentful of all the time, effort and money I was pouring into the complimentary items and I stopped.

During the 2nd IVF I did practically nothing. I spent a lot of time with the fertility stone that Lara sent me, and did an awful lot of comfort eating (if you don't believe me, just ask my groaning scale). I had fantasies about the post I was going to write after I got pregnant from the 2nd IVF about how all that shit was unnecessary (for me, at least). Then we had the disaster of IVF #2.

I still kept my head buried in the sand, or actually in the fridge, and started feeling worse and worse. I have been getting terrible headaches, I'm not sleeping well, I'm exhausted all the time, and my stomach is a complete wreck. A couple of weeks ago I decided that I needed to just get this shit under control. So I joined Weight Watchers, started doing my breathing exercises, started eating better (still not exactly great, but much better) and went to acupuncture.

Without a doubt, the 1 acupuncture session I had yesterday made a significant impact. For almost 24 hours now, I've been more relaxed than I remember being in months. I might even go so far as to say that I could see the word "hopeful" on my horizon somewhere. (Pretty gutsy for someone who hasn't even had a baseline scan or started stims.) Whatever the reason, however long it lasts, I'm just thankful for the reprieve.

Cycle Update

Kevin and I had to go give blood this morning to update our Infectious Disease bloodwork. Apparently it's only good for a year. Since over the past year I've been intimate more often with the dildocams and catheters at my RE's office than I have with my own husband, I find it hilarious that they need to check me for STDs. Um, hello, if I have any, then YOU PEOPLE gave them to me! :-)

I'm still trudging through BCPs. My last one is on Friday, so my eval u/s and bw are on Saturday morning. Assuming everything is fine (no cysts, nothing else funky going on), I'll start stims on Monday. For whatever reason, this 3 weeks of BCPs dragged by very, very slowly. I'm not sure if it's because I consider this whole last try to be something akin to a Death March, and that's making everything happen in slooooow motion. Or perhaps it's because I'm so exhausted (physically and emotionally) that I feel like I'm moving through jello most of the time.

But with my rediscovered love of acupuncture, I expect much of this lethargy and general malcontented attitude to dissipate. That sentence had a whole bunch of SAT words in it, huh? See, my mind is sharpening already!