Give me a break

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I've just been taking a much needed break from all things IF related online. Even though this isn't just an IF blog I felt the need to also take a break from it. So many things have happened since the last time I posted, we've been a busy family!

Ashton started soccer in September. He really seemed to enjoy it but isn't great about keeping focused on the game so he has yet to score his first goal. The games will start back up in March so hopefully he'll be better about staying in the game then.

Halloween is always exciting in our house. It's my favorite holiday and Ashton seemed to be just as excited about it this year. He went as "the unknown vampire" this year. Actually the costume was a grim reaper but I let him call it whatever he wanted. We went to a neighborhood in town that actually closes the streets for trick or treating. All of the houses go all out with decorations and Ashton had a blast. We ended up walking about 12 blocks that night!

My 28th birthday came and went without a lot of fanfare. I just figure it's one year closer to being 30. Yippee.

For Thanksgiving we went to my parent's house. A few of my cousins and their kids were there. Ashton had a blast playing with the kids. It was good to see some of our family that we don't see often but our family gatherings have gotten smaller in recent years. My mom's twin sisters both died within the last 4 years and it's made the holidays hard on everyone. We used to have a house full at Thanksgiving and Christmas and even though we still have quite a bit of family it seems somewhat empty now.

As far as TTC goes, I haven't charted since September. The break has been nice but I think I'm going to start charting again when my next cycle starts. My doctor never called back after she left Danny's SA results on my voicemail and we decided that it would be better for us to go ahead and make an appointment with a Reproductive Endocronologist. The RE in town has new patients fill out the paperwork and request their medical records before they will set up an appointment. I got the packet yesterday and have it almost filled out so hopefully we'll be able to get in soon.

Other than that no news to report. I'm hoping to post more frequently now but with overtime looming I might still go MIA occaisionally.

Finally some down time!

I finally have some time to post! Ashton's birthday was Sunday and I spent all of last week getting ready for his party on Saturday. The party went great but it's so tiring getting ready for birthdays. And we finally have some sunshine after almost 10" of rain over 3 days last week. There were all kinds of road closings because of flooding but thankfully our part of town is high enough that it doesn't flood. Now hopefully things will settle down a bit.

As far as TTC, I'm trying to decide if I want to take a charting break this cycle. I have yet to start temping and I'm thinking I'm just going to skip it this cycle. Then next month I'll be starting Christmas time overtime at work (the postal service). I'll be working a lot of 10 and 12 hour days until Christmas and I'm thinking TTC will probably be put on hold for a few months just because it will be so hard to get in BD when I'm coming home at 3 am. So I might not have much TTC news in the next few months but with everything else going on I'm sure I'll still post!

Results

My doctor called Tuesday with the results of Danny's SA. I don't have the details since my doctor always seems to call when I'm at work so I'm just going by what she said in the message she left on my voicemail.

She said that his count was fine but the motility and morphology were both a little low. Danny is diabetic and she said that could have something to do with it but that also the paperwork said that it was 70 minutes between the time the sample was collected and the analysis was done. We live close to the lab so he produced the sample at home and we drove it to the lab. The lab requires appointments and his was for 10:30. He did his thing at 9:50ish and we drove it straight to the lab. Now my doctor wants him to do another SA in a few weeks. I really feel like it was the lab's fault it wasn't done right in the first place and I'm ready to say just forget it and we'll work with the first results. Of course AF also decided to show up yesterday. So I'll wait until I can call my doctor to see if I can actually talk to her about it. I know it takes at least 2 SAs to really determine if there is a problem but I just don't feel like dealing with it right now. I'm thinking about seeing if I can talk Danny into starting some vitamins to help things out just in case it wasn't just because the lab took so long.

Labs and Tests and Blood work, Oh My!

Since my last IF related post I've gone back two more times for blood work and Danny has done his SA. My P4 (progesterone) came back "fine" and my CD 3 blood work was all normal. The CD 3 consisted of FSH, insulin, glucose, and testosterone. Since the lab didn't throw the thyroid panel in with that I got to go back in yesterday to have yet more blood drawn for it. Danny got to produce his sample for the SA at home and we drove it to the lab. Why can't IF testing for women be more fun than a poke in the arm?

I also got the first IF related EOB (explainatin of benefits)in the mail. It was for the claim for the progesterone bloodwork. The claim was denied and the EOB said that I'll owe $54. Now I know that infertility diagnosis and testing is in fact covered by my insurance. I checked our plan booklet before I called to make the first appointment with the doctor. According to the booklet all I should have to pay is "10% of the Plan allowance and any amount over $2,500". So I got online to see if any other claims had been processed and I just hadn't received the paper EOB. For my CD 3 blood work the claim amount was $385 and insurance only paid $24.30 so I owe $239.70.

First thing this morning I called the claims department at the insurance company. I wanted to find out why they weren't paying the 90% that the booklet says is covered. Turns out on the P4 claim the doctors office used a procedure code that isn't current so I need to have them resubmit that claim with a different code. The CD 3 blood work claim was fine but I had to meet our deductible before they would start paying the 90%. According to the customer service rep I talked to the deductible has now been met so all claims filed from now on will just be subject to the coinsurance. Why do inurance companies have to make everything so confusing?

St. Louis Trip

Over the weekend we took a trip to St. Louis! It was the closest thing we've had to a vacation in years. The actual purpose of the trip was to pick up an old car that Danny bought on eBay but I told him since we were going to have to drive 7 hours we might as well have a little bit of fun too. So we got up at 5 am Saturday and were out of the house by 6:15. We stopped once for breakfast and twice for bathroom breaks so we made pretty good time. Our first stop in St. Louis was the car dealership. We wanted to get the car out of the way so we'd have the rest of the day to do whatever. After that was all taken car of we drove to the hotel, checked in and decided to get a little lunch. While researching St. Louis I found out that there were several White Castle's around our hotel so I told Danny we needed to go there so he could experience White Castle burgers (I had White Castle in Ohio 4 years ago). We somehow managed to find a White Castle in a not so great part of town but we decided to eat there anyway. It was definitely an experience but I don't think we'll make a point of driving 7 hours for White Castle again.

After lunch we decided to go check out the home of Bigfoot. No, not the hairy manimal, the monster truck. Ashton loves monster trucks and when I saw the brochure at the hotel I knew we'd have to pay Bigfoot a visit. Unfortunately they lock Bigfoot up at 3 on Saturday and we got there after 4. We were still able to get some pictures though.

Of course no visit to St. Louis is complete without a visit to the Gateway Arch so after visiting Bigfoot we headed downtown. Our visit to the arch consisted of driving by it on all sides, mostly because the Rams were having a home game and all of the parking lots were full or charging $30 for parking. So we decided that we didn't really need to get out of the car to appreciate the arch. We drove around downtown for a little while after that just enjoying the scenary and the nice weather. We drove past the Amheiser Busch brewery and were surprised that you could actually smell beer just driving past the building. Then we got lost in a not so favorable neighborhood.

After finally getting out of the questionable area we decided to go ahead and find the zoo since we planned on going there Sunday morning before we left town. After driving around for awhile we finally found it. By that time we were ready to go relax for awhile so we went back to the hotel and Ashton and I swam while Danny napped. Dinner Saturday night was pretty late but we found a Steak and Shake and decided to give it a try. It was excellent! I'm disappointed that the closest one to us in in Lawrence.

The next morning we got up, had a continental breakfast and headed to the zoo. Ashton loves going to the zoo so that was the highlight of the trip for him. We didn't have time to walk the whole zoo so we decided to ride the train so we would at least see most of the zoo. Ashton also loves trains so riding a train at the zoo was even better than just a trip to the zoo.

When we were done at the zoo we were ready for lunch so we headed to Fitz's. I had found out about Fitz's while browsing some sites about St. Louis and I'm so glad I did. They bottle their own root beer and it was some of the best root beer I've ever had. They had good burgers and fries too. Then after lunch we went back by the hotel to get Danny's new old car and headed home. The drive home seemed to take forever but I think that was mostly because I was in a car with an almost 5-year-old for 7 hours by myself. Needless to say we were all very happy to be home.

My brain is broken

I haven't posted for awhile because I forgot my password. And rather than have a reminder sent I stubbornly thought I could remember it on my own. Nope!

The past week has been pretty boring. I went in for my blood draw for the progesterone check on Wednesday. My doctor called Friday and left a message saying the results were "fine". Good news I guess but I'm actually hoping to find something simple wrong so we can fix it and move on.

AF arrived today so I have to call tomorrow to set up an appointment for the CD 3 bloodwork. I'll have to go in Tuesday for that. I lucked out last week because Ashton was at my parent's house on Wednesday and he didn't have to go with me. He'll be home this week though so I have to take him. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long so he won't get restless.

This weekend has been a bust too. It's rained all weekend so the only thing we got accomplished was registering Ashton for AYSO soccer. Yes, I am officially a soccer mom. I really hope he likes playing because after shelling out $85 to register him he is going to play in every game, whether he ends up liking soccer or not!

Weekend campout

It seems like we never do anything fun on the weekends so last week I decided to come up with a fun family activity. Ashton has been talking about camping but Danny isn't big on being outdoors when it's over 100 degrees so I decided we'd do an indoor campout. I borrowed a tent and sleeping bags from my uncle, we bought hot dogs and stuff to make smores, and rented some movies (I know, not really a camping activity). We set up in the family room Saturday night and watched movies. Ashton and I slept in the tent and he loved it. He keeps asking if we can do it again!