Spring time!

OMG.... it has been forever since my last post.  I did end up prego last time.  Looks like one embie survived.  But I lost it shortly there after.  I really don't know what to say.  In speaking to Dr. W we thought this may be my third loss, first one being from a natural cycle.  Now that I have been through 2 confirmed, I thought back to the one cycle where menses was just dreadful... almost unbearable. 

So I took a couple months off.  Went to see the naturopath.  Got some more homeopathic.  Also met with the head cheese at the clinic who I was not impressed with btw.  Arrogant fuck if you ask me.  But he did put me on a new protocol antagonistic with human growth hormone (HGH).  BTW the HGH is 1500.  Don't tell my DH.  He will have a stroke lol. 

So cycle started off great and I responded great.  Probably had 5 follies... better than I expected!  BUT one follie recruited prematurely to almost 19 by day 7 of injects.  Way too quick.  So we cancelled the cycle and when o'natural.  Was a little nerve wracking bc I think I am only just now getting it that these meds we inject ourselves with alter our temps making them somewhat unreliable.

Only just yesterday Fertility Friend showed "O" on last Friday.  Holy cow!  Good thing we BDd.  I'm not putting too much stock into all this but it is promising that FF gave a hard cover line.  It is spring time so maybe that will help.  Regardless I started the progesterone and doxy yesterday just in case.  I did get about a vial and a half of the HGH through this cycle... so you never know.  The kicker is that the mature follie was on the side that was blocked last year.  Dr. G was hopeful the tube would heal itself. I guess we will find out. 

So in the meantime I am keeping myself so busy with wedding stuff.  Had to cut some guests... that was so hard.  Tomorrow I get to meet with the photographer and then meet with a girl to do custom jewelry.  Trying to keep myself on the calm side.  Doing this wedding planning is more fun than obsessing on fertility.  I need to make sure to take my Lexapro too... that helps lol.  I do feel much more at peace.  DH for what ever reason is more supportive.  That is a good thing.  To his defense he has a lot on his plate.  His mom and dad were recently in the hospital.  Work is insane...top it with wedding planning and family planning is a recipe for a disaster.

I promise I will try to be better about keeping up with posts.

Fert Report

Holy cow!  They fertilized!!!!  When the nurse called, I was crying, they were crying.  BOTH fertilized!  I almost can't believe it.  So because of the small number they are saying to transfer on day 3 instead of day 5.  The embies will be safer in me than in a petri dish.  Wow... am I dreaming?  One hurdle down.  Now they just need to survive till tomorrow morning.

Here is my Do Over

So here we are again.  I purposively took some time off from writing.  Just needed a break from it all.  This cycles baseline looked good so I opted to move forward.  I began with an FSH of 15 and a handful of antral follicles.  Fast forward to a couple of weeks to an estrogen level of 2610 (my all time high) and 6 follicles.  Technically 7 but they thought that bonus one was not gonna make it.

Fast forward another couple days to yesterday which was egg retrieval day.  The day started off not very good.  Someone was (read between the lines here) having performance issues because of wanting to be selfish the night before.  So we had to go to the doctors office empty handed.  Fortunately, we have some popsicles :) in the event of an emergency.  So glad I did that freezing thing. But we all know that microwave meals are not nearly as good as fresh out of the garden.  Oye....  So I wake up from surgery to be told they got 2 eggs.  WHAT? ARE YOU KIDDING ME????  I just don't get it.  My E2 was fabulous.  I spoke to one of the nurses later and she told me it was one of a few things:  my age or eggs were lost in the process.  And the E2 could be showing that the eggs they did get were extremely good quality.  What a disappointing and emotional day.  The person I was to count on couldn't step up, nor did the doctors get all those eggs... if there were that many eggs.

So here, this morning I wait for the office to call me.  Probably in an hour or so they will.  Fingers crossed they fertilized.  Fingers, toes and all appendages.  My little spirit voice for which some day I will name, said to me wow this one is so strong and showed a heartbeat that I could feel.  I hope they are right.  Actually as I write this I wonder if it is my mother?  Could be.

Ok.... I will write back shortly!

Nauseous!

So, yesterday was the egg transfer.  Unfortunately only one embryo made it to day 5 but I guess it only takes one right?  Dr. G said the others split cells a couple times and then just pooped out.  I am not sure that bonus egg never fertilized.  So here we are with one.  Talk about survival of the fittest ehhhh? This little one pictured below is a slow grower.  Not the best quality but hey... I am no 20 year old anymore either.  But this it was good enough to transfer.

Dr. G was talking so fast about the grading that I asked him to repeat and I still didn't get all of it.  The embryo is either a 2aa or 2bb.  Something like that.  I tried to do a compare on the below website.

http://www.advancedfertility.com/blastocystimages.htm

This clinic is an excellent source of information.  If you scroll down, our embie looks close to 2bb. I think I was so overwhelmed with emotion yesterday that It was hard for me to decipher anything that was being told to me.  I did have before and after acupuncture and was sent home with some tip sheets for foods to help with implantation.  One which includes pineapple core.

 

It is said the core contains bromelain which acts as an anti-inflammatory agent that also affects the uterus.  The core should be cut into 4 or 5 pieces and one piece should be eaten a day with the first day being the day of transfer.  This also should be eaten on an empty stomach.  So with that in mind I thought I would have some of the meat with my coffee this morning.  I didn't want to do the core till later as with coffee is technically not on an empty stomach.  A few minutes afterwards, horrible nausea sets in.  I tried to remedy it with some toast but that didn't work either.  I can't imagine implantation is happening already but I guess anything is possible.  We did do assisted hatching after all.  I am very tired.  After sitting around all day yesterday and sleeping all night, I am still tired.  So what did I do?  Take a nap lol!

Until next time!  Fingers crossed!

My Personal Egg Carton

So this is interesting.  I went for an egg retrieval on Monday.  Dave was with me.  I was a nervous nelly.  As old age approaches I get scared.  I was scared of that freaky chair in the OR room.  It is a chair with leg stirrups and is so secretive you can't even find a picture of it on the internet lol.  I will try and take a pic of it when I am there next.  It seemed like it took forever for us to get ready.  Lots of tubes had to be hooked up.  Blood pressure needed to be taken every few minutes.  People in and out verifying your identity.  OMG... can you image if there was an identity mix up?  I know it happens but sheesh.  I met the anesthesiologist.  We had a nice conversation but I don't remember his name.  Very pleasant.  My nurse... don't remember her name either but I suppose I could look it up.  Dr. D came in to greet me and say it is perfectly natural to be nervous.  But does he really know what I am nervous about?  I was nervous about the chair but now I am nervous about the eggs.... It's the eggs.  Does he have any idea how nervous I am about the eggs?  You see my personal egg carton is rated at <.16.  For those of you familiar with these numbers, you know that this is not good.  I was also told by a nurse that it is possible I may not have any eggs and the only way to know for sure is to go through IVF.  That was a day filled with drama when she told me that. A story we can save for another day. Needless to say, I verified later with Dr. G that it really is a matter of whether or not the egg can be retrieved.  Semantics I guess, but I like how Dr. G said it instead of the nurse.  So Dr. Anesthesia and I talked about me being in the War of the Worlds movie in Athens. I think we got on that conversation because we talked about location of where we lived.  He then showed me he was giving me antibiotics...not the doxi that I am allergic to (aka vomit on).  Then the nurse asked me to scoot down and lowered the back and we put my legs in those lovely leg stirrups.  Dr. Anesthesia then put the oxygen mask on me and next thing I know the nurse is waking me up, bringing Dave in the room suited up in surgical wear, saying we go 4 eggs.  WHAT?????

Teehee.... I HAVE EGGS?!?!  They are the bottom of the barrel but I have freakin eggs!  I am not dried up yet!!!!

To be continued....

No Turning Back NOW!!!!

Wow.... so here we are Saturday morning... pondering the next couple days events.  What to do with myself?  I most certainly have to clean up the mega dust bunnies I have floating around.  I had this conversation with one of my nurses yesterday.  How neither one of us when we get home from work, want to lift a finger and the weekends we want to relax.  Not that I was ever a clean freak but I have learned that I don't really care to be so uptight about the way my house looks.  Nor am I uptight about a lot of things.  I can't consume my brain with thoughts of being perfect or making sure everything happens perfectly.  I can't be bothered with worrying about saying the right thing to people in fear of hurting their feelings.  I can't be bothered with having unrealistic expectations they only give me anxiety.  I can only live in the here and now and take it as it comes.  I used to get very anxious about keeping up with others and their perfection.  Now thinking about it makes me nuts so I chose to think about myself enjoying where I am at instead of them and their stupid stuff.  I have learned some hard lessons about myself during this journey to have a family.  Maybe this is one of my lessons to be learned.  Perfection and image is not the key...happiness is.  With all that being said, the dust bunnies are still sitting on my floor laughing at me.  I suppose I really should clean up one or two and it is most certainly time to nest.

After the a very anxious week of finding a lump in my breast, many mammograms later and two cyst aspirations later (it ended up being benign by the way... didn't even have to send for biopsy) and worrying about mature follicles, my favorite nurse yesterday gave me some good news.  "You have 3 mature follicles....are you ready for egg retrieval on Monday?"

Holy crap!  we actually made it this far!  What a feat! For some reason I reluctantly said "Yes!" Its exciting and nerve racking all at the same time.  Last night may be the last night of injecting myself with fertility drugs.  Tonight... promptly at 9:00 pm... may be the last time I inject my HCG trigger.  Oye...  We have come this far.  No turning back now!  Two years it has been for us.  One natural year and in January will be a year with CNY.  I have no idea how the retrieval will be on Monday.  I am just very interested to see if they actually get 3 eggs and providing they do, which I am sure they will get something, that they fertilize with ease.  There is no other option really.  I am ok with doing this a couple times, after all I get 3 IVFs.  But there is a really really good chance this could work.  After careful analysis of my bloodwork, and even though I have received a better response in the past, the quality of these pups are showing through and for that I am grateful!

What a journey this is.  I have purposively chose not to publicize my journey until now.  It is kind of a private endeavor where you don't want people constantly asking if you are prego yet and where are you at with treatment and what is going on.  It just adds too much pressure.

I do personally want to thank the girls I have met on my journey.  Ummmm.... lets see, we have NoWhammies..stop!, DenverGrl, Tilly27, Clove35 and Wantour#3. Two of these gals are now prego!  So exciting!  So glad we are in this together ladies... I wouldn't have made it this far without having someone to obsess with!  I know you feel the same as we have had this conversation manytimes.

So FX for Monday!  Let just see what happens... stay tuned!  In the meantime I should clean up at least one or two bunnies... they are getting as big as Zoey!  Um ya.... and for the perfectionists out there... come to my house... I think I will leave a handful of bunnies just for you to gawk at! :)