Doing a little happy dance!

I OVULATED!!! Woohoo!! I am so excited --- this is a great first step in the right direction. :) I called the nurse this morning to see if they had gotten my lab results back from my Wednesday cycle day 21 blood draw and she told me my progesterone level came back at 10.7 which means I ovulated this cycle! I know it may sound silly to be so excited about ovulation (I mean, it's a natural part of the cycle after all...) but it's not normal for me so the fact that it's happening is huge. You can't get pregnant without producing and releasing a viable egg so just the fact that it happened this month is huge for me.

The doc told us when we met with him on January 14 that the femara would hopefully help me ovulate (check!) which would bring me up to a "normal" chance of achieving pregnancy. In other words, just because I was on a fertility med to help me ovulate doesn't mean I have an increased likelihood of getting pregnant. I am now in the running though, which is awesome! The average couple has a 20% chance of pregnancy each month, so the average couple will most likely achieve pregnancy in 5 months time (approximately).

Of course, I still have those pesky cysts hanging around my ovaries secreting estrogen and potentially messing with my cycle lengths but we're hoping that my nutrition plan in conjunction with the femara will help combat the level in which my cysts negatively affect our odds of conceiving.

Let's put it this way --- we are cautiously optimistic that these next 5 months will be successful for us. We have gotten this far before and further (I ovulated on clomid and with metformin during the 8 months we were actively trying with our first fertility doctor in 2009) so we know better than to be "sold" on the outcome of this progesterone test. But, I'd be lying if I didn't admit we are encouraged. Our hope is to avoid having to do any ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology) such as IUI's (intrauterine inseminations) or, as a last resort down the road, IVF (in-vitro insemination procedures).

For those of you who don't know, we did two IUI's in 2009 and were getting ready for our 3rd attempt when I found out I needed open heart surgery. The doctors were stumped as to why I hadn't conceived during the first two IUI attempts, given all of the facts: I was ovulating, my uterine lining was perfect, my eggs were viable, I didn't have any tubal blockages, my hormone levels were controlled, and Jason's sperm was fantastic. Technically speaking, we "should" have conceived...but we didn't. We had a chemical pregnancy which resulted in an early loss in June of 2009 (almost too early to count...the average woman would just have assumed it was a wonky period but since I was being so closely monitored, I knew better). However, Jason and I now truly believe that we were just not meant to be parents at that time and as it turned out, it was an immense blessing in disguise that we didn't get what we so desperately wanted. My heart was in no condition to handle the blood flow increase that comes with pregnancy and the likelihood of something bad happening to me, the fetus or both were high. We just didn't know it.

So now that I am healthy and on the right track, we are hopeful that everything will fall in to place --- and our dream of becoming parents will no longer be just a dream.

Fingers crossed! :)