An introduction

I'm a 37-year old woman, married for almost 6 years, and a mom of a 2.5 year old boy. We dealt with infertility in conceiving him, and we're back in that game again. I had hoped to not have to go down this road again, but always sort of expected that it wouldn't be easy for us to conceive another child.

We tried for almost two years to conceive our son, and got pregnant - amazingly - on our first IUI. That came after a laparascopy to remove some pretty bad endometriosis and open up a blocked tube (that wasn't blocked after all). At the time, I was diagnosed with insulin resistance and PCO (not quite the full PCOS, but most of the associated problems), luteal phase defect, and "weak" ovulation. The funny thing was, I had always been very regular, and despite excruciatingly painful periods, I never had an indication that anything was wrong. But with the surgery, some meds to help my insulin problem, and ovulation induction (tamoxifen + an HCG trigger shot), we got lucky on that first IUI.

Since my son was born, I never went back on birth control, and we figured that if it happened without us really *trying* we'd be thrilled. Of course, it hasn't. About a year ago, we started really trying again - timing intercourse, charting, the whole shebang. That didn't work. Now we've been back at the RE for several months, and we've done three IUI's. The first two of those were on successively larger doses of Clomid, and the most recent cycle was my first with injectibles. I also missed a cycle in there because of a pretty large cyst, that luckily went away on its own.

I'm just about to start my period. Sonofabitch. The cramping and spotting started yesterday at 11dpo, and today my temp is way down and the cramping is getting worse, so I know the end is in sight soon. I'm bummed, cranky, and frankly pissed off. I started this process feeling pretty zen about the whole thing - because, after all, this time around I don't have to worry about whether or not I'll ever get to experience motherhood. I have an amazing son, and I know how lucky we are to have this kid. But this failure - month after month - while different than when I was dealing with primary infertility, it still sucks.