Trying to Reisist

I am trying to resist the urge to go buy some tests and pee on a stick (poas) early. I can't decide if seening a BFN now would be less painful because there is still a chance or if it would hurt just as much as usual. This is really the first chance I have ever had for it to be positive. I know its early and unlikely to show anything no matter what, but its hard to resist. If I have to go to the store today, I might have to give in.

5 More Days of Insanity!

I think I'm going crazy. Everytime I feel ANYTHING in the middle portion of my body I get very excited and then worried. Is that a sign of implantation? Is that a bad sign? Am I preggo? Of course I'm not preggo. I don't get preggo. What am I thinking?

I just keep running through the same 10 thoughts. I know this is probably totally normal (at least for those of us living in the land of IF). I have read enough other blogs to know that lots of ladies feel the same. It just seems strange because up til this point its never even been a possibility. I have only ovulated once and that was way late with tiny follies so no chance. I "thought" I had a 2ww with my first round of Clomid, but nope. False positive on my OPK.

So this is so new to me. We have been trying different stuff for so long that it is very surreal to have an actual chance. My hubby keeps poking my belly and telling the embryo that it better grab on or it won't get to go to Disney World. Its very cute. We both keep trying not to think too much about it, but obviously thats not working.

We have a number of things planned between now and Wednesday (aka Beta day). Luckily since we have to do two Betas and they don't do them on Saturdays for some reason, I get to go one day early. Beta #1 is Wednesday and #2 is Friday of next week!

In the mean time we are going to see Cowboys & Aliens (don't judge, I am psyched!). Then on Satuday our friend that is staying with us is going to go camping til Sunday afternoon. I am very excited to have the house to ourselves for a while. I'm thinking romantic dinner and a movie at home. Sunday I'm hoping to go see my friend and her new baby then that afternoon we are going to hang out with some friends. Sunday might be a bit rough depending on how my emotions are that day. The friends we will be visiting have a 6 month old and the other couple who is coming have a 14 month old. So we will be the only ones without a baby. Or if I'm feeling optimistic, without a baby that has a window seat. Thats how my mom always referred to babies in utero.

And on a completely random note, a former parent of one of my kiddos (back when I taught preschool) just came into the bank. She told me about the store that she is taking over. It is a crafty, scrapbooky, consignment store. And then she asked if I wanted to have anything there in consignment! It has been so long since I have done crafty stuff just for the fun of it. But she got me thinking about starting up my polymer clay jewelry that I used to make. I also started playing with wire jewelry techniques. The two work so well together. I may have to pull out my stuff and start working tonight.

Maybe I'll post some stuff soon to get opinions! And now I better get back to work!

4 Frosties!!!

Huge sigh of relief! I am so much more optimistic. Boy, no joke this IF thing is a roller coaster! Now I can go back to watching sappy girly movies.

I also wanted to say that you ladies ROCK!!!! It has been so awesome to know that there are lots of you out there rooting for us! I wish I could send you all lovely gifts, but since I can't (both due to the anonymity of the bloggy world and the fact that we spent ALL of our money on this IVF thing) I will just continue to try to make you all feel as loved as I feel!

So basically THANK YOU!!!

And with that I will leave you with a couple of hopeful pictures.

I'm not sure which one is the one we put in. I'm hoping to talk to the embryologist when I go back next time and find out. The other guy is one of our frosties.

The little white spot inside the gray doughnut is our little embryo inside my uterus!!! Sorry for the crummy picture of a picture. I'll try to scan them and put up a better one later, but the scanner is upstairs and I'm still doing the bed rest thing :)

Transfer

Well we did our transfer. We transferred 1 blast. It was not the highest grade. When he told us I only had two blasts out of 13 fertilized, I was a bit shell shocked. Sunday they said they were all doing good so I was totally floored. We have 4 early blasts that may keep growing and be blasts by freezing time tomorrow. We for sure have the one to freeze and possibly a couple more, but none are great quality.

I am feeling very defeated today. I'm trying to think positive, but its hard. I never have good enough luck to fall on the good side of the odds. The doc said with this blast we have probably a 40% chance with my weight and age factored in. Its not the worst, but we went there thinking it was about a 65% chance.

I'll update tomorrow when we know how many little frosties we will have.

Another RE Visit

We had to head back to the RE's office this morning. Luckily the car is all fixed (my hubby rocks!!). I'm still not enjoying the car. Seat belts are tight on the tummy. The doc had us come back in because I had fluid above my uterus. Thank goodness, the fluid is gone, but during the ultrasound the doc say that yep I am definitely hyper-stimulated. My ovaries are each 9cm x 7cm. I looked up the normal size of an ovary. They are normally only 3cm x 1.5 cm! Mine are more than 3 time the normal size! No wonder I feel like a whale! I have gained 7 pounds since Thursday!!! If anyone has any tips on how to make this go away faster I would love them. I'm drinking lots of Pedialite & Gatorade. I have had my feet propped up (really I have been laying around on the couch with my legs up on the arm). I'm taking Tylenol and walking around regularly.

Because of the hyper-stimulation my RE has me doing Lovenox injections. Lovenox is basically Heparin a blood thinner. Hyper-stimulation apparently can cause clotting. Lovenox burns!

We have no news on the embryos today. They don't mess with them at all today, but tomorrow they will call us just in case we have to do a 3 day transfer. Its unlikely with 13 embryos, but they call just in case.

In other news, we started doing Progesterone in Oil (PIO) injections today. Its not as bad as I figured it would be, but holy crap those needles are big! The hubby keeps redrawing the circles for the injection spots so we make sure its in the right spot.

And on that note, I'm gonna go sit with a heating pad on my HUGE belly. I caught my my profile in the mirror and thought, "Crap, I look preggo!"

Crappiest Day Ever

WARNING! I didn't have a great time with my Egg Retrieval so if you are doing one soon and haven't done it before, you might not want to hear my story. I'm fine and it wasn't too bad, but I don't want to make anyone worry...and with that on to my crappy day.

First the good. We got 15 eggs! Then the crappy. My ovaries are hard to get to so I was in more pain than usual when I woke up. So they gave me some big time pain killers. No one warned me that having a fat belly might mean that ER could be more painful. I could tell that this was an unusual circumstance because they normally only give ibuprofen and the fact that I suddenly had 5 or 6 nurses and both docs hovering around me. After the first dose of pain meds didn't really help much, the doc wanted to do an ultrasound to make sure nothing had gone wrong. So I got up to head to the ultrasound room and the world swam. I made it to the bed and collapsed. the quickly gave me a bowl and some meds for the nausea.

The ultrasound showed everything looking normal. The pain seem to be just from the normal retrieval process and nothing strange was wrong. They helped me back to the recovery room and gave me another dose of meds. I was finally able to sleep. I slept for over two hours and woke up feeling a million times better. After some Gatorade and crackers they said I was good to go home. They have now called me twice to check up on me.

And now for the crappiest part! We live over a hundred miles from the RE's office. On the way home, my car broke down. The water pump needed to be replaced. We were about 15 miles outside of Albuquerque. We had to get towed to a repair shop. We waited 45 minutes for the tow truck. When our Jeep was all loaded up, we got in the tow truck. That was the worst car ride of my life. I had a pillow between me and the seat belt, but every bump was agony. Tow trucks make you feel bumps that you would never have felt in a normal car. It was of course rush hour so the drive took forever (aka an hour and a half to go 20 miles!).

The repair shop confirmed the problem, but couldn't fix it until the next day. The nearest hotel was a long way away. My hubby does most of the work on our cars and new how to change the water pump out. So I stretched out in the car while he worked on it. After a couple of hours and a couple of trips to Auto Zone it started getting dark. I went out to help. I mostly held flash lights and helped position the water pump. We finally got home around midnight. I quickly passed out.

This morning I can tell that I over did it. I feel like I have been hit by a truck! But when the nurse called me this morning she gave me my fertilization report. Of our 15 eggs, 13 fertilized!!! So maybe karma is paying us back for such a crappy day. Keep growing little guys!!!

ICLW PrePost

Hi all of you ICLWers! I am posting this a day ahead just in case I don't feel up to posting tomorrow. Tomorrow (Thursday) at 10:15 am Mountain time I will be having my first egg retrieval for IVF!!! If you are new to my blog feel free to click here to see how this all started. Its been a crazy couple of years and I am hoping we are on the down hill slide!

Hope you all are doing well. I'm going to try to update tomorrow with how many eggs we get. Fingers crossed for lots!!!

Crummy Feelings and House Guests

The trigger shot was not a bad as I expected. The shot itself hurt a bit, but not like I was worried it would. I had my cute smiley faces drawn on my upper butt/lower back area by my nurse. My hubby was super nervous, but tried to play it off. All in all it went well.

I cleaned up the trash (have any of you noticed that all the meds and injections make a TON of trash?) and turned to head back to bed (we triggered at 11:45 pm so I had been alseep for 2 hours already). As I turned, the world swam. I was mid sentance saying something like "Wow, that wasn't too bad...but I do think I'm gonna puke." So I spent a bit sitting on the cool bathroom floor then felt a bit better and went to bed. I'm still feeling off. Not terrible just not right.

And to make all of this more fun, we have a friend staying with us for a month. I said I would never do this again, but he is on a work trip so he will be paying rent. In the end we could get all of our IVF meds paid for by letting him stay. So I will deal, but its gonna be interesting having a house guest during all this nonsense. At least he is entertaining. He has almost no filter between his brain and his mouth so he could say anything at any moment.

Should be an interesting month!

Yay!!

I trigger at 11:45 tonight! Then retrieval is Thursday morning. I just took my last Menopur. Last Ganirelix was last night. I still have LOTS of eggs! I guess we will see how many on Thursday.

And that's all I've got in me today. I feel super crummy. Nauseous and very bloated. Gotta love IF meds!

Am I the Only One?

From time to time in my life, I have this frustrating feeling that I did something wrong. That one decision I made will spiral out of control and ruin everything. It feels like everything is out of place and nothing I can do will fix it. I don't know what brings on this feeling. I don't know how to end it. Crying doesn't help. Watching sad movies doesn't help. Hanging out with friends will help temporarily, but once they are gone the feeling is back. It ends up taking over my brain so much that I am not only questioning my recent decisions. I start wondering if I choose the wrong major in college. I start wondering if I should have gone to a different college. I start wondering if I should have gone to prom instead of going to the out of town art competition. How would my life be different if I had done any of these things differently?

At some point I will realize that all of these decisions led me to my wonderful hubby. At some point I will realize that if I wasn't here I probably would have ended up teaching art at my old high school which used to be good, but the neighborhood has gone way down hill. Last time I was in Texas, a police offices was gunned down in his car for no apparent reason, less than a mile from the school.

But for now, I still feel like something that I can't put my finger on has gone wrong. Maybe this time it has to do with my fear that this IVF cycle will fail. Or the meds and my weepiness today.

Not Today :(

No trigger today. Probably tomorrow. But I have been seeing the other RE in the office since mine is off this weekend (they rotate). It seems like each doc has their own way of doing things and my doc may want to give me an extra day to grow. So I will likely get triggered tomorrow, but won't know for sure til then.

Its funny, in the REs office, the women usually tend to sit quietly and not talk to one another, but when you are there everyday at the same time (8 to 8:30 am) with the same women all week, it seems silly to not talk. Yesterday the four of us who had been in each day started chatting. We discussed the shots and the side effects. Today we talked about how many embryos we would transfer and how we all felt huge with our giant ovaries. I wonder what we will talk about tomorrow? We are all getting close to our trigger time, but I think most of us will still be there tomorrow. Its very interesting to talk to other women doing the same thing that I am.

I know a few women who have had IVF or various other treatments, but all of their kids are at least 5 so I feel quite removed from where they are. It was very cool to talk to people who are in the same place as me. If this doesn't work, I think I may look into one of those support groups or at least find one or two people who I can talk to face to face.

Man I hope this works. I really do not want to do this again. I am seriously thinking about adoption for a second baby.

Retrieval Coming Soon???

I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will get to trigger tomorrow. I'm not sure if I have anymore room in my body for these follies to grow! There are at least 6 on each ovary, but my body likes to hide them so we won't know how many exactly til retrieval. On the left most are around 13 x 14 mm and on the right around 15 x 16 mm. If we don't trigger tomorrow it will be Tuesday. I keep trying to make myself focus on something else, but since I am not at home and I can't go clean my kitchen or organize my closet I'm having trouble.

Oh and have I mentioned that I hate Ganirelix? It burns like a son of a b*$@#!!! At least its only 3 or 4 days, but holy crap it hurts.

Now I'm off to read all of you lovely ladies blogs!

Question

Does anyone else think that it is terribly insensitive for people to bring babies to an RE's office? Yesterday for my monitoring appointment there were two babies and one toddler. Seriously!?!?! If you have been through this battle and know how hard it is to see other peoples babies, why the hell would you do that? This morning only one, but still! Find a f*#@ing babysitter!!!

Okay rant over.

Follie Update

All seems to be well in my ovaries. I still have lots of follies growing (more than ten, but my ovaries like to hide so we aren't sure exactly how many more). They still have me on 150 IU of Follistim and two vials of Menopur. They are sticking with the slow stimulation so that I don't get OHSS (Ovarian Hyper-Stimulation Syndrome). I start the Ganirelix injections tonight. 

Ganirelix is basically the new Lupron but you only take it for 4-5 days so way fewer injections! My RE rarely uses Lupron at all anymore.

I am staying at a hotel near my REs office since the hotel is cheaper than the gas to get from home to the REs office. Its kind of like a mini vacation from my life. I'm laying around watching tv and playing on the internet. When I checked in the girl at the front desk was really excited to check me in. I thought that she must really like her job. Then when I walked into my room, the first thing I saw was a basket with fruit, flowers and a big balloon. My first thought was crap, they put me in the wrong room. I figured the balloon would say congrats or happy birthday. But it said "Thinking of You." The basket was from my lovely sister-in-law! It was the first time I have ever had flowers delivered to me! My hubby has of course given me flowers, but he always gives them to me himself. The basket has tons of tasty snacks great for a hotel stay! Fruits (apples, kiwi, oranges & pears), cheese & crackers, cookies & tea and hot chocolate. The flowers are red-orange potted, gerber daisies.

Thanks honey!!! I'm gonna go eat a kiwi now!

A Few Pictures...

I would really like to put more pictures in my blog, but most of my posts are done at work (shhh don't tell) and my work computer is TERRIBLE! So since I"m posting from home, I will put in a few pictures.

First the IF stuff: My lovely sister-in-law sent me an awesome care package with lots of band-aids for my injections (Winnie the Pooh and Hearts & Stars), a bouncy ball to throw at people who say stupid things (her words), a cool bag for my stuff, cotton pads, really tasty cookies (seriously go get some Milano melts!), Halls for my sore throat from the smoke, and several other things, but this captions is too long :)

All my meds and needles. Its far more depressing to see it all spread out at once. (For some reason the pic would not flip)

Now on to the fur kids: Cali & Branigan. This was one of the first times that she let him get close.

Lola hiding among the shoes.

Branigan with his huge puppy smile.

Branigan with his favorite toy Kiff. Branigan is named for Zapp Branigan from Futurama so his little green friend had to be Kiff.

Last but not least, some fire pics. The fire made the clouds beautiful colors. This was taken from the valley below our town on day 4 or 5 of the fire.

This is one of the views once we were allowed back in time.

Gotta love the fires in the background of the Welcome Home sign!

One of the AWESOME choppers that has been fighting this fire.

This is technically a volcano, just a dormant one. It totally looks like one!

There are 18 choppers working to fight the fire. It is currently 50% contained so they are still working on it!

Another cool view. It was crazy to come home and be able to see the fire. It was literally on all parts of the mountains!

The smoke sucks, but it does some cool things for the sunsets.

Well that is all for now. I'll try to put pictures in at the times that they make sense instead of doing them all at once from now on.

1st Monitoring Ultrasound

E2: 158
Lining: 3.5 (still dealing with AF so that should get better soon)
Follies: 20 (YAY!!!) small. Largest is only 6mm, but its only the 4th day. They think I may be a slow grower, but with my Estrogen level that high they aren't going to up my meds.

I was hoping to have bigger follies, but 20 is nothing to sneeze at so I'm happy. Here's hoping most of them keep growing!

Go follies, Go!!!

Random Thoughts and Meds Side Effects

My mind has been going to lots of different places lately so fair warning: this post will probably be random and jump from one topic to another.

First off side effects. So far not too awful much. Some stomach upset and possible hot flashes. I say possible because it has been in the 90s here and that is much hotter than usual and we do not have air conditioning. Plus it is still smoke from the wildfire so we have to keep our windows closed a lot. So basically its hard to tell if its hot flashes or if its just really hot. The stomach issues could also be due to AF showing up after I had to stop the BCP. Although I usually only have a messed up stomach for the first two days and its usually not this bad.

So all in all, not as bad as I expected so far.

On a totally different side of IF, my hubby and I have a tendency to plan for all of the possible worst case scenarios. We have found that we don't fight if we talk about all of the random possibilities. Plus we have a long drive to the RE so we have lots of time to talk. Lately we have been talking about adoption. I am leaning toward trying to have one baby through IVF and then adopting another. I'm not sure if I am willing to put my mind and body through all of this again. Plus doing all of this when I have a baby to take care of is hard to imagine.

Now granted, I may totally change my mind once I finally get to hold my own baby in my arms, but for now, I am leaning toward one biological babe and one adopted babe. Then I can tell each that we loved them so much that we chose a special way to get each of them.

So being the nutcase that I am, I'm starting to research adoption. I sort of feel like if the IVF doesn't work maybe we should take a break and look at adoption and maybe come back to IVF later.

See I told you I was all over the map today. And to illustrate that fact, I wanted to tell you all about my very strange evening yesterday. We did our usual Sunday afternoon trip to the grocery store to buy all the food for the week. We eat better if we plan the meals ahead and buy it all at once. While at the store we ran into some friends. She is at almost 38 weeks and they have already been to the hospital once with contractions 5 minutes apart, but no dilation. I figured she probably wouldn't want to cook dinner and he doesn't cook much. So we invited them to dinner. We had a pleasant dinner (with her having contractions periodically) and a very tasty dessert (grilled strawberry shortcake). Just after dinner it was time for my evening Menopur injection. She really wanted to watch. I'm not sure why, but she did so the hubby gave me my shot in the belly with both of them watching. She squealed and he shouted "This is the best dinner ever!" It was hilarious. He thought it was the coolest thing and she was kept asking if I was okay, did I need to sit down. I laughed my butt off.

And now one final bit of randomness...I have lots 5 pounds in the past couple of weeks!!! Woohoo!!!

Now I'm off to lunch. Hope my stream of consciousness randomness wasn't too annoying!

We Did It!

This morning we did the first shot of Follistim. Nice and easy. I like the whole pen thing. This evening we get to mix the Menopur which is a bit scary. So now I guess I just sit back and wait for the side effects :) I usually get all of the listed side effects for the meds that I take so that should be fun.

My hubby was so cute! He woke up early and watched a bunch of videos on this specific med and this specific injection. He was so prepared and business-like. It was adorable!

Hope all the rest are just as easy. I'm still worried about the intramuscular ones (I keep hinting to my mom, an RN that the end of July would be a good time to visit) but I'm sure we will manage.

IVF Baseline

Well, all is quiet in my ovaries. So we are good to start shots on Saturday. I am so excited and terrified all at the same time. After the ultrasound, we met with one of the nurses. She went over all of our consents and our medication dosages. Man, the idea of having to mix the meds is a bit scary! What if we do it wrong?

The night before the ultrasound, we watched our injection class video. It was actually a really good set of instructions. At first I was bummed that the class was on dvd, but now I'm glad because I can rewatch it on Saturday when we do our first shots.

After watching the video with the instructions, I immediatly went to YouTube and watched several people do their trigger shots and PIO shots. I'm not worried about the subcutanious shots, its the intramuscular ones that freak me and the hubby out! It seems like most people don't think it hurts too much. So good news there.

I probably should have watched the video earlier in the evening though. Around 5 am I woke up to the smell of smoke so I closed the windows (the wind had changed and the house was starting to smell smokey). I woke up from a terrible dream about injections. In the dream I was having to get shots in terrible places. I was initally annoyed about having to wake up to close the windows, but thank goodness for the smoke. That was a creepy dream!

So to sum it all up, I start shots on Saturday. I go back for another ultrasound next Tuesday, then no ultrasound Wednesday then start daily ultrasounds until the day of my trigger. So there we are. I'm nervous and happy and terrified and thinking about the worst case scenerios. We spent the 2 hour drive home from the RE talking about what we would do if we get no good embryos. What if my eggs are bad. What if...

Too many what ifs...

What I Learned as a Wildfire Evacuee

Hi everyone! Sorry I have been MIA lately. We were finally able to return to our homes on Sunday! So we were gone for a week. It is still REALLY smokey and we can see the fires in the mountains above town. This fire seems unstoppable. It is no longer a danger to our town (unless things go very badly), but it is still blazing a trail north so keep sending prayers and positive thoughts to all the people displaced!

After the evacuation I started putting together a bit of a list of things that will be helpful in preparing for future evacuations (it seems to happen every 10 years or so here since we live on the edge of a forest and the desert). So here is my list of helpful things:

• Make sure that you have your pets vaccination records in the important paperwork that you take with you!!! Some hotels require the records on file if you take a pet inside. Animal shelters (where we are housing our cats currently) prefer shot records, but thankfully they understand the nature of emergency so they let us slide. Even Petsmart wants the records to do grooming! Petco made an exception for us since we are evacuees. Some hotels in Santa Fe were requiring pets to be groomed before they could stay in the hotel.
• Pack a variety of types of clothing (i.e. casual, work, cool weather, warm weather, etc...). I managed to only pack about 3 work shirts so I get to do laundry every 3rd day as long as we are out. Luckily we are staying with friends as this would be extra troublesome in a hotel or shelter.
• Talk to friends about staying with them in emergencies ahead of time. We had to scramble to find a place that we could go with our critters.
• Check with animal shelters to see if they can board your pets if needed. Our kitties DO NOT travel well!!! So we have them boarded with the shelter for free. The Santa Fe shelter is GREAT!!!
• Make sure to pack early. We packed when the evacuations were voluntary. This gave us a lot of time to get the things that we forgot in our initial rush.
• Take or throw out the stuff from your fridge that will go bad or start to smell. I didn't do this. I am really hoping that there is no reason for the power to go out!!! No matter what, the leftovers in the fridge are gonna be NASTY by the time we get back. And take out the trash!!!
• Find out ahead of time what your employer's policy is so that you are not caught off guard when you get called to work the day after you are evacuated.
• Buy lots of eye drops to help combat the smoke.
• Always keep a set of extra vacation fish feeders around just in case. Luckily our fish made it, but they went without food for several days after the algae tabs dissolved.
• Most renters & homeowners insurance plans have a loss of use policy. You may have to pay your deductible, but this policy should cover the cost of hotels if you are forced to leave your home. Most policies also cover smoke damage (luckily we did not have any).

Well that's all I can think of right now. I will do another post shortly about my baseline ultrasound yesterday!

Awards!!!

The lovely Joey from The Childless Mom gave me an award over a month ago. At the time I didn't know of 15 blogs to award. I kept telling myself that I would post about it tomorrow. So thanks Joey! I'm finally passing on the award!

The rules:

A) Grab the award: Done!

B) Link back to the person who gave it to you: Done!

C) Share 10 things about yourself:

1. I am currently living out of a suitcase. We were evacuated from our house due to the largest wildfire in New Mexico's history. Fingers crossed that we get to go home soon!
2. I start injections for my first IVF in 8 days!!!
3. I'm a farm girl at heart.
4. I am in the process of illustrating the children's book that my hubby and I wrote. (I'll post a link once we get it e-published!)
5. I am obsessed with art supplies. I want to own all the different kids!
6. The first thing that I packed when we were evacuated was a suitcase full of quilts that my two grandmas made.
7. I love to read! But I mostly read trashy romance novels.
8. Aside from going to work, I very seldom drive. My hubby ALWAYS drives if we are together and I LOVE that. I hate driving.
9. I love Tex-Mex food!! Living in New Mexico is so strange because instead of spanish rice I get Posole (hominy, yuck!)
10. I am a Diet Dr. Pepper addict.

D) Award 15 recently discovered blogs:

1. MISSION: Fertile Soul
2. Chasing our Stork: Our Journey with Infertility
3. Meier Madness
4. Everyday is a Country Song
5. Let's Conversate About the Irregardless
6. TTC Baby E
7. The Journey to Baby G
8. Someday
9. Wonderfully Ordinary
10. All I Ever Wished For
11. Not Exactly What I Had Planned...
12. A Fine Mess
13. Storm in my Teacup
14. Witty Infertility
15. Banking On It

And yesterday I got another award (all of you bloggy ladies rock!). I will do that one tomorrow and I really will!!!