Things that suck about TTC on our own (that is, without the help of the RE who has given up on us):

1. OPKs. I am close to an LH surge, or maybe I have already surged. Yesterday I took three OPKs. The first, the Answer brand was +, the second, the Target Brand was +, the third, the ClearBlue Easy was -. Normally, I would say two out of three is pretty darned good, but my RE and nurse Joy (really her name) went to great lengths to impress upon me the superiority of the ClearBlue test. Problem is, that test was never close. Upon waking this morning I took the Target brand and it was no longer positive. Argh. Now I'm left wondering whether I caught O or wasted another precious month.

2. Conception Sex. It is bad. Just bad. Foreplay is reduced to "Honey, I think the lines are the same color." Each month I wait in eager anticipation on fertile cm and the LH surge. My chart stands by ready to document the rise in temps that follows ovulation. But. . . I don't want to have sex. Not for fun. Not for conception. Oh. I'll take one for the team on that less than one percent chance that I'll conceive, but there is no joy in Mudville. This is, I think, a cruel infertility trick, an inverse law of need and want--the more you need to have sex, the less you want to have sex.

3. No monitoring. Don't get me wrong. I do not enjoy the condom wrapped ultrasound probe any more than the next girl. However, I like scientific evidence that something is happening in there. I like seeing my follicles grow. Now that I am not being monitored, I have no idea what is going on. Is there a follie? Is it big enough? Has my lining recovered from last month's Clomid challenge? Are there any malicious cysts? How is that fibroid doing?