hopefulandhungry

Who doesn’t love cake?! Before I dive into the darker side of infertility, I thought I would share a super easy, super yummy cake recipe. After all, I’ve been needing cake when life isn’t all rainbows and unicorns.

I love homemade cake and buttercream frosting, but sometimes I just love good old boxed rainbow chip cupcakes with canned rainbow chip frosting to match. This recipe isn’t organic, gluten-free, non-dairy or healthy, but it’s tasty and easy.

My cousin shared this recipe with me when they were up visiting from Hawaii and it can be customized to whatever flavor variation you desire. I, of course, opted for the “never go wrong” rainbow chip.

Rainbow Chip Bundt Cake

Ingredients:

-1 box cake mix (I used Rainbow Chip, but you can use vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, the options are endless)
-2 small instant pudding boxes (I used vanilla, but my cousin made us pistachio bundt cake using pistachio pudding, again, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination)
-4 eggs
-1/2 cup warm water
-1/2 cup oil
-1 cup sour cream

Mix everything by hand in a large bowl, pour into a greased bundt pan and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. If you want to make cupcakes, bake at 350 degrees for about 18 minutes.

Let cool and invert onto a large plate. Cut and serve.

This cake is so moist and holds up well if you don’t share and finish it in a day. Or even if you don’t share!

Onto our fertility news……definitely not rainbows in this part of our world.

I’m currently on Day 21 of my first cycle coming off of IVF #3. I took 5 doses of 5 mg of letrozole starting on Day 3 of my cycle and have been testing with OPKs since Day 10. I haven’t had a positive OPK yet. I’ve also had 3 ultrasounds, a baseline on Day 3 and two follow up follicular dynamic ultrasounds on Day 12 and Day 16, both of those ultrasounds did not show a dominant follicle emerging. I bled for about a week after my last dose of letrozole, not a heavy bleed, just red blood every time I went to the bathroom. I have yet another ultrasound tomorrow, Day 22, but am not holding my breath for a dominant follicle. I don’t think I’m going to ovulate this cycle and I don’t think I’ll be able to have the endometrial biopsy this cycle that we were anticipating to do in order to gather more information. My body is so out-of-whack, I don’t know what to expect at all anytime soon.

We are currently collecting more information about the adoption process. Today we met with a very sweet couple who we were put in touch with through mutual friends. They have 2 adopted children, ages 7 and 3 1/2, both adopted through an agency here in Washington state. The agency they used focuses on domestic open adoptions. They were very open about their process and luckily, each of their adoptions went quite smoothly. They were/are very involved with the birthmothers leading up to the birth of their children and continue to maintain pretty regular contact with the birthmothers.

We are still in the baby stages (no pun intended) of the adoption process, but we agreed that the involvement with the birthmothers that this couple has had is probably more than we would envision for ourselves. It’s hard to say because we aren’t in that position yet, but at this point, it’s hard to wrap our heads around the idea.

We have a consultation with our RE this coming Friday, so hopefully we’ll be able to determine what sort of plan is going to happen for FET #2 (aka our last round under the Attain program). Thank you to those of you who have shared information about immunity related issues. I do think this is likely my issue, but it may not realistically be possible for us to travel out of state to pursue a clinic/doctor who focuses on immune issues. It’s not that it’s not our desire to still have a pregnancy of our own, but we don’t know how much more we can handle emotionally, financially and logistically. This is our thoughts for today, who knows what tomorrow may bring.

I feel very blessed and lucky to have the life that I have, there is just one very important piece missing and I hope to get that missing piece somehow, someway…..