bump #23: recovering and moving on

*** We are celebrating our 5 year anniversary this weekend... check out pics here ***

Ok, so day 2 after hysteroscopy was harder. The bleeding mostly stopped, but the cramps got worse. It will be two weeks before the doctor calls with results from the biopsy but most polyps are benign so we aren't too worried. I have been recovering on the couch with a delicious box of chocolates courtesy of MIL and had a lot of snuggle time with my sweet puppy (she's 2 and a half, but tiny so she'll always be my pup!) She is coincidentally in heat right now, so we are sort of commiserating together...

Chocolate makes everything better, (or vanilla for maddie bear)

I am only slightly embarassed to admit that it took me 2 days to realize that I still had those surgery snap things stuck on me. I'm still not exactly sure what they were for, but when I went to get in the shower and noticed them I thought "oh my gosh, I've turned into a robot... cool."

So I expect to be fully recovered by tomorrow (our 5 year anniversary!) and then on Monday we make the 2 day drive to California/Alaska to visit our families for about a month. (Yes, we are always on vacation :) Perfect timing because that gives me just enough time to finish this month's pack of birth control pills and hopefully get back on a normal cycle schedule so that we can start trying to conceive naturally in 6 to 8 weeks (doctor recommends to wait at least a month to let my system heal). That puts us at August-September. We might consider IUI again in October or November. Maybe. No surprise that I'm not eager to inflict anymore pain on my body!

Here's the deal:

As fun as getting all of these procedures done has been (gag) and the overwhelming excitement followed by underwhelming disappointment of a failed IUI, we are going to take a little time off from the infertility center and doctors and try to make a baby au naturale for a while.  Assuming those polyps were the main cause of our inability to get pregnant (apparently the big one "papa polyp" was really big and in the worst spot possible for embryo implantation),

Hopefully the worst is over.
Hopefully bump #24 (or even 25 or 26, I'm willing to be flexible) is finally the real baby bump. Hopefully there will be no more surgeries and no more things other than babies taking up space in my uterus.

Yes we are hopeful, but we are also realistic.

Realistically there could be a whole other plethora of problems preventing pregnancy. The more books I read the more I am convinced that I have a whole laundry list of ailments. So we will continue praying for wisdom and what steps to take next, we will trust that God knows better than we do and is already taking care of everything, I will stop reading books that freak me out (or at least skip over some parts), and we will enjoy an entire month of being surrounded by family and friends that love and support us (and some of the littler ones even help curb our desire to be parents one stinky diaper and tantrum at a time, bless their hearts!)

It's the middle of the year and thus far 2012 has been mostly a let-down. I like to dwell on the positives, but this year has been tough for that. In the whole analogy of "cup half full or half empty" I gotta say irrelevant: my cup is shattered into a million pieces right now and the water is spilled all over the floor. But the year is only half over and still has a chance at redeeming itself. Hopefully 2012 will be the year that started out awful and turned awesome.

Hopefully.