Okay, so Den fell down a little yesterday – he was probably feeling pretty overwhelmed with everything too. But I’m happy to report that he’s been very good after the fact. Last night he gave me hugs and kissed away my worried tears. This morning he encouraged me to call the doctor if I have questions, and to postpone things if I want to. He said if I feel uneasy about anything then I need to do something about it. He’s just very supportive. He’s always been like this (about many things, but specifically our fertility journey).

Right now I think the main thing preventing me from making a decision on the clomid/IUI is the fact that we only get 3 paid for. If we had unlimited I think I’d be much more okay with just going ahead and doing it now – what do I have to lose, right? And I think that’s where the RE is coming from as well – like someone pointed out on a forum, in the long run clomid/IUI is pretty cheap. But the fact that we only have 3 tries is making me very very nervous! Like we should plan it out better or something. Make sure we have all our ducks in a row in terms of testing. Oh yes, that’s my obsessive-compulsive side coming out. (And that’s a large part of my anxiety as well… because it didn’t happen “as I expected”. That always throws me into a tailspin. DH has been on pretty strict orders since we started dating that I am always to get lots of forewarning on any plans, and that I severely dislike surprizes. It’s just not pretty to see a grown woman freak out because some plans changed last minute. Just don’t do that to me.)

I guess I just have to keep reminding myself that the odds of the clomid/IUI won’t change, whether we do it next month or the month after. If the HSG shows something really bad it would probably just jump us to IVF faster, which wouldn’t affect the clomid/IUI cycle (or at least it wouldn’t mean we lost anything). There’s really no reason for me to go to injectibles unless clomid doesn’t work for me, because I’m not taking them to induce ovulation; if clomid gets me to release two or three good eggs we don’t want to go any more than that!

So I guess the question comes down to – what do we stand to gain by waiting an extra month? Other than possible peace of mind on my part. I mean what medically. Is there something the bloodwork or HSG could show that would affect the way we approach the medicated cycle? I guess that’s the money question. (And see, this is why I type all this out, even though there’s going to be an aweful lot of words the last two days. This is how I work things out. The true value of my journals is not for communicating with others, that’s a side benefit – the true value, to me, is allowing me to work things out. I think so much better with a keyboard under my fingers. The same is not true of working things out verbally, for me – I need to see it written down.)

Oh, did I mention the possibility of twins? Obviously increasing your eggs released from one to two or three increases your chance of having more than one baby implant. The risk is increased to 7-8%, versus 2% in the rest of the population. That sounds like a small number – better than, say 20%. But 2 in 25? Okay that’s starting to sound a little scarier. I know several people with twins now (or pregnant with twins) – and I think it is an amazing, wonderful miracle. Two of DH’s siblings have identical twins. So I see it in action. Raising two children who are the same age just seems like such a hard thing to do, and I worry about me being able to handle two. Not to mention my worries about carrying two babies to term. But yesterday, when Den and I were walking out to our truck talking about how these chances we’re taking to get pregnant are once-in-a-lifetime, I said even if we do get pregnant with one, say through IVF, we may never get a chance to try for a second if we use up what our insurance allows. I know, I know – let’s worry about the first before we think about the second. But we both really want two kids, and now we’re facing the idea that we might not ever get two – we have to face the possibility that if these tries fail we may not have any. And in that moment I thought, you know, it might be a blessing for us to get two at once.