Freedom!

Thank you to everyone for your comments on my last couple posts. I continue to be amazed by this blogging community.

One of the other things I talked about last week with my new RE is lifestyle and specifically three of my loves - coffee, alcohol and exercise. I breathed a sigh of relief when she said everything is fine in moderation.

I know it should be easy for me to give up my morning latte and my evening glass of wine, but it's not. I've given them up for a few weeks or a few months here and there over the last few years. And, I'd be happy to do it again if I knew it would work...or I thought it would work...or someone told me it would work. But, when I'm years into this battle and the timeline seems infinite, giving up these little pleasures just stresses me out. And, in my heart, I really don't believe they are the problem. So, I'm glad I got the green light to continue to enjoy these small comforts. HOWEVER, I think I'll always feel a little bit of guilt, no matter how many people tell me it's ok. I can't win either way!

As for exercise, she said that working out regularly is fine. She even encouraged me to do some non-impact exercise during an IVF cycle! So, I've started running more again in addition to the yoga I've been doing recently. I'm planning to do a triathlon and marathon in the fall...not really moderate, but if I get to that point and I'm still not pregnant, I'm going to need a release. For now, I'm just excited to be able to "pick up the pace" a bit. One of my pet peeves is that several of our friends that know about our IF struggles, have told me or DH that I need to work out less. They inevitably have some story about someone they know that gave up exercise and got pregnant...blah, blah, blah. Needless to say, this always pisses me off because they know nothing about our specific situation and usually very little about IF in general. I have never had problem getting my period or ovulating. I am really health and balanced. And, exercise is a huge stress-reliever for me. Not to mention that the conception of my last pregnancy (natural cycle), occurred the weekend I did the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon! Can you tell I'm defensive about this topic?

Anyway, I'm just glad that, as I go into these next cycles, I don't have to change my lifestyle significantly.

In other news, we went on the ski trip from hell this weekend. DH and I were planning to go to Tahoe for both days but then he decided we should only go Saturday because he wanted to devote his energy to the NFL playoffs. He is a HUGE Vikings fan (ugh...tough loss). Anyway, we decided to just go up Saturday. We have a small car and the weather was stormy so we decided to take a "ski bus". I figured we could sleep on the bus and it could plow through the bad weather. Oh, how wrong I was. We left at 4am and by 7:30am we were about an hour from the resort. The bus put on chains and that took an hour. Shouldn't a ski bus be faster than that? Then, we started slipping with the chains and the highway patrol made us pull over until they gave us the green light....which happened over 3 hours later. We were literally sitting on the side of the road for HOURS. We finally arrived at the ski resort after 1pm and made it to the lift by 2pm. I admit that the 2 hours of skiing were excellent, but then it was time to turn around and go home. 14 hours of driving and 2 hours of skiing. Never, never again. Oh well.

Next step on the fertility front....saline sonogram of my uterus sometime in the next week. Can't wait for that....