Spot September 9, 2008

At 9 am this morning we saw the “spot” on the ultrasound.  It’s in the right place, it is the right size, and that’s about all they can say right now.  The doctor reminded me that they can’t say anything about the viability of the pregnancy at this point.  That makes me worry a little more, but what can I do but wait?  I guess we take it week-by-week now.  They didn’t tell me anything about going forward except that I should stay on the medications I am on now and not change anything.  So, I will try to be patient and keep my mind off all the “what if’s” – good and bad.  My next appointment is next Tuesday to check on the spot’s progress.

It hasn’t even been a week yet since I found out it worked.  It feels like forever ago – probably a product of how much mental energy I have spent over the last several days thinking about it.

I’ve already looked at maternity clothes online, browsed the baby section at Target, looked at the pregnancy books at Borders and bought myself a copy of Fit Pregnancy magazine, figured out my due date (5/15/09) with an on-line calculator, and thought about baby names. 

Time to head to the gym.  Mike gave me a swimming lesson on Sunday, and now I am excited to do some swimming.  I am going to aim for a half hour today (even though just a few weeks ago I was running an hour at a stretch).  It was a hard workout on Sunday!

Shock and Awe September 4, 2008

This morning I started letting myself believe that maybe this round of IVF worked.  By breasts got less sore over the weekend, and then were sore again (was it in my head?).  That was the only “symptom” I had.  But I didn’t want to get my hopes up, because I really didn’t think it was going to work and I didn’t want to get too excited.  Cooking for my client was a great distraction today – the day actually went by pretty fast. 

The doctor’s office called me around 3:45 or so with the first good news I have gotten.  They said that they knew on Tuesday that I was pregnant and they wanted to tell me so bad when I was there this morning.  But they held it until they got the results today, and they said that for the number of days we are post-transfer the numbers look really good.  They all wanted to talk to me - even the embryologist.  They were all so excited too, which was really great.  They are like my friends now since I have spent SO much time up there in the past year. 

Anyway, ever the pragmatist, Mike told me not to get too excited.  But then called back to tell me, so that there isn’t any confusion, that he is really excited and thrilled too. 

I had totally lost hope with this round, so now it is hard to beleive it actually worked.  I could not be happier. 

Next Tuesday we’ll go back to the doctor and be able to see the sack but not a heartbeat – still too early for that.  We are nowhere close to being out of the woods, but at least it is one huge step in the right direction.

Beta #1 September 2, 2008

I recovered from my Saturday meltdown, and my first beta test was this morning.  It took the nurse (who I think is generally great) two stabs and some digging around to get to my vein.  Yikes.  They don’t call with results of this one – it is just the baseline.  My breasts are getting less sore, just like last time… so that doesn’t seem to be good news.  In 48 hours we’ll know the results, and my money is on the likelihood that I will have opened a bottle of wine and consumed (at least) half of it by this time Thursday.  I like my wine.

The registration form for the adoption agency is filled out and sealed in an addressed envelope sitting on my desk.  I bet it will be in the mailbox across the street Friday morning.  In some ways I am excited about pursuing adoption.  But it also makes me a little sad, because that is not originally how I wanted to build a family, and it will definitely take more than 9 months to be complete.  I just feel like I have been waiting so long already.

But, this two week wait has been easier than the others, I think because I really have had very little hope that it will work – very little expectation of possible success.  And I am not looking forward to the emotional low that will come with a negative result – so I am not wishing every second for Thursday to get here sooner.  I am not obsessing that much about will-it-work, won’t-it-work.  I just don’t believe it will.  I am not going to test before I get my results from the RE. 

I am cooking both tomorrow and Thursday.  Hopefully I’ll get the call after I have already left my client’s house, because she (and maybe her inlaws) will be there when I am cooking…

Twiddling my thumbs August 28, 2008

Hum dee hum… Still a week to go before we know the results… Still a week to go until the next possibly-the-worst-day-of-my-life.  I have actually been doing a great job of staying upbeat (though not necessarily optimistic) and keeping my mind off of it, I think thanks in large part to my visitors.  They left this afternoon. 

Much work to be done tomorrow, though, so that should help.  Then a three-day weekend with Mike (mostly with Mike - we have separate plans most of Saturday…) and then cooking all of next week.  Including the day we find out, the day after that, and the day after that.  Could be interesting.  Fortunately for me, my job doesn’t require a whole lot of interaction with other people.

Neat August 27, 2008

My boobs are REALLY sore this time.  I think it started almost as soon as I started the progesterone this time, so I am not reading anything into it.  I don’t remember when they got sore last time, but this seems a little earlier maybe…

My stepmom and my aunt are visiting right now.  They got in yesterday afternoon and are leaving tomorrow afternoon.  I wasn’t sure about the timing of this visit, but since I cancelled all my clients this week, it has actually been a great distraction.  I haven’t been doing the bed-rest thing, but I haven’t been carrying/lifting things or doing anything else strenuous – just walking around the city a bit and driving them around.

Today my aunt declared “I just think it would be so neat if you had twins.”  Yeah, me too lady.  No effing joke.  Actually I don’t think it would be neat, I think it would be an answer to my every prayer (umm, not that I pray).  It would be a total miracle.  It would be the best thing that could possibly happen in these circumstances.  It would mean absolute, spinning-in-circles-in-a-sunny-green-field joy. 

 

No pressure little embryos.

Done August 25, 2008

Well, all four lovely little embryos survived the weekend in the petri dish (is that even where they spend the weekend?).  We transferred all four “not super fantastic” embryos this morning.  I asked what exactly that meant – I guess they grade on a 5-point scale and all four of them were in the 3-range.  So, no great shakes.  But my favorite nurse told me that the lab wouldn’t have recommended transferring them if they didn’t think there was a chance they could make it.  And they were all HLAG positive, meaning that they are all producing the protein needed for implantation.  So that is one question-mark off the table as to why we have not had success yet.  Leaves a lot more though – just one possibility for failure isn’t the culprit.

I think my RE is pretty great, and I trust her, but MAN, she is not gentle with the speculum!  This was the most uncomfortable/painful transfer yet.  She isn’t gentle with the ultrasound wand either, but this was way worse than normal.  She said the embryos are in the exact right place, though, so please little embryos: find a comfy spot, and settle in!

Now for the longest two weeks (really 11 days) of the cycle – nothing to do except take my progesterone suppositories and prenatal vitamins, and wait.  I cancelled all my clients this week, so I can just relax.  At least the physically painful part of the cycle is over.  No more shots, IVs, dildo cams, or specula.  Just two blood draws.  I have a huge bruise on my belly from the shots, another huge bruise on my hand from the IV from retrieval, both of my hips are outrageously sore from the PIO shots, and I feel FAT FAT FAT.  I am ready for all of these things to be gone from my life. 

I think I am done with IVF.  If this round works, I will be over the moon and I promise not to complain about feeling fat anymore.  If it doesn’t work, we are planning on moving on to adoption quickly.  And I will start thinking about another marathon (and maybe qualifying for Boston).  Partly to lose the weight that I gained since we started this process in January and party as a way to prove that I do have control over my body in some way.  Just in the endurance athletics field, not in the reproductive field.  Either way, we are going to take a break from IVF for a while – I am not sure if I will ever come back to it, though we are leaving that option open for the time being. 

In many ways this has been the worst year of my life.  It has certainly been the most depressing, expensive (excluding education), painful (physically and otherwise) rollercoaster I have ever been on.  Yes, there have been good things that have happened this year – my business most especially- but infertility and the drama of IVF overshadows all of it.  It is the determining factor in my life, and I have zero control and no idea how any of this is going to turn out.  All of our decisions – do we buy a place?  where do we buy?  when do we buy?  can we get a dog? where will we go on vacation next year? will we even be able to go on vacation next year? are tied into this totally unkown and unknowable factor that 90% of the population does have control over and many of them take for granted.

I wish I could just take a nap and wake up on September 4, but only if the result is positive.  If not, I’d like to sleep off all the tears and hurt too.

Retrieval August 23, 2008

Retrieval went well yesterday.  They got 11 eggs, 8 were mature and we have 4 embryos up in the lab waiting to be transferred first thing (like 7 am first thing) Monday morning.  I am in pain again like the first round, but it isn’t horrible – the Tylenol with c.oedine is taking care of it.  We have one more embryo than either of the other rounds.  I hope they all keep growing…maybe we can transfer all four.

Just going to relax today, watch some olympics and possibly go to the farmers market as my one and only excursion.  I numbed myself up so good with ice yesterday with the first progesterone shot that I hardly felt it – hopefully we can keep that going for the now twice-a-day shots with the HUGE needle.

Think fertile thoughts!

Chilled Out August 18, 2008

I am feeling pretty chilled out about this cycle.  Way more so than IVF #1 or #2.  With #1 I was scouring the web for information – blogs, bulletin boards, you name it.  I was always looking at my injection schedule and it seemed to take forever to get through the cycle.  Everything was new.

With #2, the stress took a different form – worrying about what I was eating and drinking, doing kegel excercises constantly, acupuncture, massage, anything that would get us to that BFP.  That didn’t work either.

So, with #3, I am not doing any of that stuff (yoga, acupuncture, food stuff) and I am just going about my daily life.  Maybe it helps that I am working more consistently now, or that it is summer so I have more going on anyway, or who knows what.  Maybe I am just not anxious to get to that day two weeks or so from now when I get another BFN – I know how that feels and I am not looking forward to that downhill slide again.  And I am pretty sure it is coming.  I am almost at the end of my injections calendar (tomorrow is the last day, then I get more instructions tomorrow morning…) and it has gone by much more quickly this time.

Today I started filling out the adoption agency registration form.  Might as well have it ready to go.  When this doesn’t work, I plan to send it in to them the next day.  Might as well get started. 

I wonder if I am giving up on this process too soon.  Whether we should try donor eggs or another cycle or a different doctor or something else.  The process itself – the shots, the ultrasounds, the blood draws – hasn’t been horrible.  It’s just the mental energy and disappointment and waiting.  I don’t want to keep trying and trying – banging our heads on the wall – and end up 10 years from now still with no family.  At least if we move on to adoption we can be fairly certain that we will have a family, and maybe a complete one within that time frame.  We can always go back in a couple years and do another cycle if we are feeling up to it - I am only 31, so there is some time left for us.

Nothing good to say – should have said nothing at all July 31, 2008

Today for lunch I ate a bag of Doritos and half a box of Dots candy.  Mmmm.  Healthy lunch.  I can’t seem to stay away from the crap.  I am sure it is a stress-coping mechanism…but I wish I could get back to my healthier-eating patterns. 

Last week was draining, and this week isn’t getting a whole lot better.  Before I headed up to Traverse City (almost two weeks ago now) I had a call from the RE saying they needed to talk to me about the genetic test that we were planning on doing for this cycle.  That Monday I found out that the test is “not available”.  Apparently there is some problem with the technology or something, and they are implying that no doctors are able to do this test at the moment, and even if we pushed this cycle off to November or December it probably still wouldn’t be available. 

So, that means that at the end of this cycle, whether it works or fails, we won’t have any additional information about WHY these embryos are not implanting.  When I found this out, I seriously considered scrapping this cycle and trying to find a new doctor, but that process seemed SO overwhelming – I don’t even know where we would start with finding a new doctor – and long – could set us back 6 months to a year – that I just couldn’t do it. 

So here I am on Day 4 of the Lupron shots once again.  I took my last BCP a couple of hours ago and am waiting for my period over the weekend.

After this snafu, I just didn’t feel like doing anything last week after I did what I had to do (cooking for clients).  I didn’t run a single day, and I just laid on the couch and ate crap and didn’t get anything done.  Then we went back to Michigan this past weekend too for a family reunion, so I didn’t get anything done over the weekend either.  Fortunately I wasn’t cooking Monday or Wednesday this week, so I had those days to catch up on things like accounting and other computer-based things that I had promised to other people. 

This week I forced myself to run on Monday, and I was going to today, but I just don’t feel like it.  I don’t feel like doing much.  I tried to take a nap this afternoon, but got woken up by the phone twice.

Part of why I am so exhausted today, I think, is dealing with this newest client this morning, who has turned out to be a huge challenge.  Not only does he only have certain things that he likes and is on an extremely limited diet anyway due to medical reasons, but he (an 80 year old overweight man) sits in the kitchen while I am cooking with his robe open wide and no underwear on – yes, I horrifyingly saw everything this morning – and watches me work.  It is in no way threatening – he just does not understand that this is unacceptable.  He is something else.  So, I had to e-mail his daughter-in-law who hired me today and see what she can do to improve this situation.  If it doesn’t get a lot better in a hurry, I think I am going to have to fire them as clients.  I can’t work like that.

One of my friends had a baby three weeks ago and I haven’t been able to bring myself to call her.  She gave birth at home (I can’t IMAGINE trusting that your body is going to work the way it is supposed to enough to try that), and seems blissful in her e-mails and pictures.  I feel really bad about it, but I just can’t hear it right now.  I can’t hear it if she is blissfully happy and I can’t hear it if she has complaints.  I just can’t do it.  I hope to god I don’t come out of this horrible period of infertility in two years or five years or ten and have no friends because I can’t bring myself to call them when they have children…

So here I am procrastinating again.  I need to make some reheating labels for next week’s client, then I’ll make some Pad Thai out of a box for us for dinner.  Maybe in the meantime, before Mike gets home, I’ll be motivated enough to cross a couple more things off my growing to-do list…

My temperature May 28, 2008

I’ve been feeling a little funny in the lower-abdominal area all day.  Like my abdomen was a little swollen or something.  I didn’t think too much of it until I was at a meeting this evening and was really warm – totally unlike me.  And I am so tired too.  So, I started putting all this together and figuring I am getting another infection.  There is no sick-time from an employer now.  I would have to cancel and disappoint clients if I had to spend a week in the hospital and then two more weeks recouperating like last August.  It might even be worse than last time because I actually care about what I am doing now.  I was trying to read my body’s signs and figure out if I was going to have to make an emergency call to the doctor tomorrow, or, god forbid, head to the emergency room tonight.  Then I remembered that my temperature might tell me something about what is going on in there.  97.0.  Ah, perfectly normal.  Probably nothing to worry about.  But, wouldn’t that be the worst-case scenario?  (Well, I guess there could be worse, but that would be really bad.)  Maybe it was just warm in the room and I haven’t gotten enough sleep, and who knows what explains the abdominal issue…

Anyway, we have gone right back into our holding pattern before heading into IVF #3.  This is the last one that insurance will pay for, so we are hoping for better luck this time.  However, they aren’t really doing anything differently, so I am not really holding out a ton of hope that we’ll have a different result.  The doctor thinks that it is possible that I have an egg quality issue – possibly all the infections have damaged my eggs/ovaries – so they are going to do pre-implantation genetic testing to see if that is the case and if that will explain why the first two didn’t work.  Although insurance will pay for the meds and the IVF itself, we will be out of pocket for these tests to the tune of about $5k.  That will take a nice chunk out of the money we have set aside in case we do have to do IVF on our own… But at least if it shows that I have a genetic issue then we would know that our next step is to move on to donor eggs, or adoption.  At this point I lean towards donor eggs, but there is a lot to consider, not the least of which is that we have always joked about having red-headed japanese kids – and donor eggs could majorly disrupt that little fantasy.  I guess that is just a symptom of the real issue – of not being genetically related… but as usual this is about a thousand steps further than I need to be here at the end of May.

We’ll do IVF #3 in August – meaning starting the Lupron shots at the end of July.  Totally opposite from last time, that seems a little too quick.  Last time I couldn’t wait to try again – I needed something active to look forward to.  This time I just want off the roller coaster for a little while.  So we decided to wait one extra month (the soonest I would be able to cycle is July) to give me a little breathing room and also so that I don’t have the stress of whether or not I am going to get my period in time to do the next cycle.  Who knows – I could still have that if my body decides to be particularly uncooperative…

I thought for a little while that maybe we would wait until September or October, but our trip to New England, which I am looking forward to so much that I don’t want to change it to accommodate my preferred month for IVF, would conflict with either month for a cycle.  For the September cycle I would be in New England during the time I would have to have my beta tests – which we could work around, but I am not interested in being a total emotional disaster while I am supposed to be enjoying my vacation and my friend’s wedding.  And for the October cycle, we would be in Boston during the time when I would have to be having some monitoring visits.

August isn’t ideal either – that means that I won’t be able to have a glass of wine at the Outstanding in the Field dinner that we are going to for our anniversary, and which I have been looking forward to for months.  I’ll have to take all my drugs with me to a camping trip in Wisconsin – that should be interesting… and just generally – it’s summer in Chicago!  I should be enjoying the best months (the only months) to live in Chicago and not worrying about the shots and the bullshit that goes along with this.  But waiting until November seems a little far away, and also the doctor did not recommend it.  She said that I am still young, but it isn’t going to get any better, and I might as well get on with the next cycle sooner rather than later.  So, August it is. 

Until then, I will concentrate on my business.  I’ve been pretty inspired by a Ladies Who Launch group that I joined, which is proving to be a welcome distraction and hopefully really good for business too.  And I’ll enjoy the weather in Chicago (though not today with a high of 55 at the end of May!), and enjoy being able to run and enjoy the seasonal food and the farmers markets and generally having more flexibility and free time in my life than any of the past three summers.  Tomorrow is my “office” day – I have lots of things on my to-do list, including going to yoga and cooking dinner for friends who are coming over to watch the LOST season finale.  I am making Cajun Oven Fried Chicken, Roasted Potatoes and a Blueberry-Coconut Tart.  Can’t wait for that meal!  (I never thought I would say that about a meal involving potatoes, but I think my tastes may be changing – I have discovered a few ways of preparing potatoes that I actually enjoy.)