ICLW

Hello to everyone from ICLW. It's been a LONG time since I participated but I have a very good excuse.

Meet Hazel, our IVF miracle who was born on August 10 after a four year battle with infertility. You can see more of our IF history in the tab up top.

I'm a SAHM to our beautiful little girl and loving every minute of it. We practice attachment parenting and are a co-sleeping, exclusively breastfeeding, cloth diapering, baby wearing family. We are also an Army family and relocated from the Seattle area to SE Alabama (cue banjos) in October. We miss the Pacific Northwest dearly and are hoping to go back there eventually.

We would like more children some day but we aren't quite sure if we want to go down the road  of treatments again. For now, we're just soaking up every moment of baby that we can.

Thanks for stopping by!

November IComLeavWe

Hi everyone, I'm Megan, I'm 27 and this is my second IComLeavWe.  I'm married to a wonderful man name Mike, who is a soldier in the United States Army.  We're college sweethearts and have been married for 7.5 years.  I'm pretty sure that I was born in the wrong era as I love big band music and to bake and sew. You won't see this girl wearing pearls though--I prefer my sleeve of tattoos and a band t-shirt.

We've been TTC since February 2008, with a one year forced break from October 2008-2009 while my husband was on his second tour to Iraq. Our military insurance has a rule that you must be TTC for 12 consecutive months before they will refer you to a specialist so we were not able to see a RE until September 2010.  To say the care we received at the military infertility clinic was substandard would be putting it mildly and so last month we switched to a civilian RE. Before we switched, however, we completed six total medicated cycles and four IUIs--all negative obviously.  I have endometriosis and the lesions/scarring has caused my left ovary to fuse to my pelvic wall at such an angle that it has caused a partial blockage in my left fallopian tube. We chose to move on to IVF and I am on day 6 of stims.  In the past week I have had 24 injections and 4 blood draws.  Today I'll be having my 5th blood draw as well as an ultrasound to check the number and size of the follicles that are growing--hopefully it's a good number!

We are living in the beautiful Pacific Northwest and absolutely love it here. It is the perfect place for myself, a self proclaimed left-minded liberal, to be and no one looks at me funny when I ask for vegetarian and vegan options. We really enjoy traveling around the state and experiencing all the opportunities this area has to offer and we especially enjoy all the great brews that the PacNW has to offer!  We're beer snobs.  What really makes this duty station great is that my brother is only an hour away--when we lived at Fort Drum, NY our closest family was 10+ hours away, so this is a definite perk. My brother and sister-in-law are actually going through IVF right now as well (MFI--azoospermia) and she is only a few days ahead of me in her cycle.  It's going to be a hormone fest at our Vegan Thanksgiving! I am sure the boys, ahem men, will be consuming copious amounts of beer. It'll be sparkling cider for SIL and I!

Well, that's about it I guess.   I am looking forward to discovering some new infertility blogs--I often spend my mornings/evenings sipping a cuppa and glancing through my Reader. Thanks for checking out my blog! Happy IComLeaveWe!

My First ICLW

Hello fellow infertility bloggers! Welcome to my little corner of the internet. This is my first time participating in International Comment Leaving Week and I'm looking forward to connect with other bloggers in similar situations!

A little bit about me:

My name is Megan and I'm a 27 year old tattooed vegetarian. I am an Army Wife living in the Seattle area and a small business making various items from upcycled military uniforms.  I also have an Etsy shop with items specifically geared toward children of ART. I love baking, old movies, all things rockabilly and sewing. I grew up as the baby of five and have always dreamed of having a big family of my own.  My husband, Mike, is 30 and works in Army Aviation. He's a tattooed punk rocker, a Star Wars geek (my influence!) and loves to work on his Mustang. I met Mike on my very first day of college where he played football and I played volleyball.  We are beer snobs.

Scarves up Seattle Sounders!

We have four fur kids, two cats named Figaro and Quidditch and two dog named Zero and Bailey--all rescues. We love Notre Dame football and I have recently become a huge Seattle Sounders fan! We celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary this year with a trip to England, a trip we will never forget and full of memories we will always cherish. Infertility is hard but dealing with infertility AND Uncle Sam is especially hard since we always have to work around the Army's schedule.

Mike and I on our 7th Anniversary at Buckingham Palace

We began TTC in February of 2008. By August of that year, I knew something was wrong. I was charting, ovulating and having regular cycles but I still wasn't getting pregnant.  At my annual pap smear, my doctor told me that I was young and just needed to relax, that I "knew" too much about reproduction and that it would happen in time. Mike deployed to Iraq for the second time in October of 2008 so TTC was put on hold for a year.  He came home in October 2009 and we moved from Fort Drum, NY to Fort Lewis, WA in March 2010. In May 2010, I sought a referral to see an infertility specialist and was denied--we hadn't been TTC for 12 consecutive months.  In September of last year, I was finally seen at the Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility clinic on post. We received the diagnosis of unexplained infertility.

In the past year I have had a HSG, hysteroscopy, numerous blood tests, more ultrasounds than I can count, four rounds of Clomid, two rounds of Femara, four failed IUIs and a laparoscopy that revealed Endometriosis, left ovary adhesions and a partially blocked left fallopian tube (finally a diganosis!) . We're at the point where we're ready to move to IVF but aren't sure if we want to stay with the Army clinic, mostly due to the substandard care we're received and the extremely long IVF waiting list. We have our first consultation with a civilian clinic next week to get a second opinion and discuss other avenues for IVF.  We are on our 35th month of trying to conceive.

Thanks for stopping by. I know how isolating infertility can be and I often take comfort in reading the stories of women in situations like mine.  I look forward to "meeting" some new bloggers and sharing our journey with you.