Pregnant until proven otherwise!

I am pleased to announce that I now have 2 beautiful embryos cooking away in my uterus! We sadly did not make it to a 5 day transfer. I received the call yesterday morning that 6 of our 8 embies were considered poor quality for various reasons, but I did have one absolutely perfect 8 celled embryo that was considered excellent quality and one 8 celled good quality embie to transfer. Basically what this all means is that I have an egg quality problem which wouldn't have been discovered if we hadn't done IVF. I'm just hoping and praying that I have some good eggs and these two are great ones! They gave us pictures of our little embies and it was so cool! I hope that I'll be able to show our future children their very first portraits! I'll scan them in and post them as soon as we get our scanner hooked back up. The staff at the clinic yesterday all were very optimistic and said that pregnancies happen all the time in these situations, so we're very hopeful. The embryologist explained that because we already knew which ones were the best, there was no reason to wait until day 5 to narrow it down and that I'm a much better incubator than the lab.

As soon as I got the call yesterday morning at 8:30, I raced off to acupuncture and she gave me an extra long treatment which really helped to relax me for the transfer. Even the nurse commented that my blood pressure was low so I must not be too nervous! Oh, the nurse was pregnant, and I of course was thinking oh great, I get stuck with the pregnant nurse at a fertility clinic, but it turns out that she had to do IVF and is now expecting twin boys! That made it me feel much better. When she was telling me about what will happen with the progesterone shots and stuff, I knew that she really knew what she was talking about. The transfer itself was a peice of cake. I had to get in the surgical gown again and had to wear my hair net, and Brad had to put on a bunny suit thing that the Dr wore with the hair net and shoe covers and they wheeled me in to the procedure room. The room is attached to the lab, so my Dr inserted the catheder first and then when it was in and ready, he called out the embryologist that he was ready so they rushed the embryos that were in a little syringe in to the room and Dr. D inserted them into my uterus. The embryologist then had to the take the syringe to the microscope to make sure that both embies came out. The whole thing took about 5-10 min! My mom who was waiting in our room couldn't believe that we were already back! I then had to lay flat with my feet elevated for an hour to allow the liquid medium that the embies were in to absorb into my body so they could stick to my lining. Apparently my lining is very sticky and they will hopefully stay just where Dr. D put them. They will not begin to actually implant for at least 3 more days. Now I'm on bed rest for 24 hours - I'm almost done, thank goodness!

Thank you to everyone who reads this blog and for all the thoughts and prayers that you have sent our way! We appreciate it more than you know!

Lightning, gas and other stuff

We had some really bad storms here on Tuesday night and guess what? Our house was struck by lightning! It was about 10 PM and we were getting ready to go to bed when we heard this LOUD boom and suddenly all our stuff started going crazy, our alarm started going off, our stereo receiver died (fortunately the TV did not) and our phones died. We're pretty sure that the speakers in our ceiling are dead too. That's bad enough, right? Well, yesterday I get home from work and walk in and smelled overwhelming gas fumes. I of course freaked out and opened all the windows and figured out that it was coming from our attic. So, we called the gas company and the guy confirmed that we had a major leak in our attic so he turned off the gas and said, call a plumber. He said that it's fairly common for lightning strikes to blow holes in gas pipes if you have a certain type of pipe which we apparently have. We were so lucky that nothing happened and that Dexter was OK, how scary! So, now we have no hot water until this gets fixed. Brad is trying to get a plumber to come out today and hopefully it will be a one day job. If not, we'll be staying at a hotel tonight! This is the last thing I want to deal with right now. Oh well. Fortunately, our home owners will cover it, but our deductible is high enough. Blah.

In IVF news, as I mentioned yesterday, we will not receive an update on our little embies today :(. They're all by their lonesome in their little petri dish in the lab. Soon they'll have a nice comfy home for the next 9 months in their mama! I "get to" start my PIO (progesterone in oil) shots tonight! I will actually be shooting sesame oil into me (with progesterone of course), wierd, huh? These are nightly shots in the butt with a gigantic 3 inch needle because it has to reach the muscle. I have two circles drawn in permanent marker on my butt for targets - it's very attractive! Brad was refreshing my circles last night because they had started to fade from when the nurse drew them on this weekend and he drew a smiley face on my hiney - silly boy! The circles are so we get it in the right place because if you don't get it in the right spot, you may hit the sciatic nerve or hit a big vessel, which wouldn't be cool. I'm skeered!! My mom is coming into town tonight for the big transfer so she can give me my first shot. She doesn't mind doing that stuff at all, and I know Brad doesn't particularly enjoy giving me shots. I'm going to try to learn to do it myself by twisting my body around. Lots of women manage just fine on their own, so after a few practice runs this week, hopefully I'll work up the courage to do it myself!

It's Octuplets!

We have successfully conceived octuplets! 8 of our eggs fertilized normally and the other 4 all either fertilized abnormally or were empty cells. I'm pretty happy with the report and I hope we have 2 good ones left to transfer! I don't know yet if we will have a 3 or 5 day transfer. Apparently the lab has a policy that says if you have less than 10 normally fertilized eggs they will tentatively schedule a 3 day transfer, but I didn't understand that this was a tentative thing when the embryologist told me that we had a time for the transfer on Friday at noon. I had a minor freak out wondering if this meant that there was something wrong with our embryos and she has such a thick accent that there was a slight communication problem there. So, I called Dr. D's office and they called the embryologist and confirmed that it was just tentative so I wouldn't be caught off guard if it is a last minute decision on Friday to proceed with the transfer. Whew! There is still a pretty decent chance that the transfer will be Sunday. The decision will be made on Friday morning and will be based on how many embies look good at that point. If we have only 2-3, then they will go ahead and do the transfer because I'm a better incubater than the petri dish, but if we have more, then we will probably go out to a 5 day to help ensure that we put the best quality embies back as possible.

I'm sending tons of prayers and positive vibes to our little embies cooking in the lab!

Just an update - I just spoke with another embryologist who apologized for the confusion earlier. I guess the girl that called me this morning is still training which explains a whole lot! I had the feeling that she was as confused as I was. Now, I have a much better understanding of what is going to happen. They will not check the embies tomorrow because they feel that the less they have to take them out of the incubators, the better, so I will not receive a call tomorrow - ACK!! We'll just keep sending those positive vibes their way! They will check them relatively early Friday morning and I'll get a call before 9 AM with the news on transfer day. How am I going to make it through these next couple days?!

A Dozen Eggs!

We had a dozen eggs retrieved this morning! We're very happy and so were the Dr's and nurses. I got home and crashed and just woke up. I'm feeling ok except for feeling really bloated and pretty crampy. I'm trying to drink plenty of fluids! I'm a little groggy still so I'll cut it short for now and update tomorrow when we find out how many fertilized!!

Trigger shot? Check!!

I triggered last night! Woohoo!! That means that my egg retrieval is 36 hours later, and that translates to 8 AM tomorrow (Tues) morning!! My appointment went well yesterday morning and now I have 10 definitely mature follicles with maybe a couple more borderline ones. I'm so excited!! I hope my little eggies are good quality ones!

Sorry, I didn't update sooner, but we decided to put in laminate wood floors in our office/Dexter's (the kitty) room this weekend so we had the computer unhooked most of the weekend. What a job! I wasn't expecting it to be quite this difficult but we had a good time anyway. It's been a while since we've done a big home improvement project like this. My whole body hurts but it was perfect for keeping my mind on things other than IVF and I slept better last night than I've slept in a long time! The floors look great by the way!

Follie Check #3

Steve (the sonographer), the probe and I are becoming very close! Well as of this morning, I had 9 follies that are definitely ready to go, but the doctor has decided that he wants to let it go one more day to see if we can get these 2 smaller guys that are hanging out at 12.5 mm to catch up. He's cut my dose in half for tonight. I hope it works! This means that I'll definately trigger tomorrow night with egg retrieval on Tuesday, which will put the embryo transfer at either Sunday or maybe Friday if we have to do a 3 day transfer for some reason - 5 day is what we're shooting for. I'm getting so excited and so nervous at the same time!!

Follie check #2

Well, my check went fine, not quite what I was hoping for, but I think it was ok. I have 11 follicles ranging from 11-16 (10 of those are 11-14), so they're all growing at about the same rate which is very good. I also have a handful of follies that are at 10 and under that probably won't make it, but my doc may still retrieve them because they do typically retrieve all the eggs even if they know that they probably won't be mature. I was hoping to have 15 good eggs, but I don't want to sound greedy because I know there are plenty of women who have far less follicles than I have and go on to have successful pregnancies. Anyway, I'm trying really hard not to get stressed!! Not such an easy feat! I had bloodwork again today and I'll find out my dosage for tonight and tomorrow night this afternoon, and I go back on Saturday for another check. The nurse did think that I might be ready to trigger on Sat which would be great! We'll see!

Wednesday's update

I don't have much to report today, so this will be brief. The nurse called last night and said that my E2 levels looked great and Dr. D wanted to keep me on the same dose. She had to leave a message so I didn't get to ask her the number, not that it would mean all that much to me at this stage of the game, but I'm a gather as much info as possible kinda gal. Anyway, we're set for my second follie check tomorrow morning at 8:30! I'll update again as soon as I get back.

In an effort to try to stay as relaxed as possible, I'm really pulling out all the stops. I have weekly acu treatments that I've talked about several times. I also had a massage on Saturday which was something that my sweet hubby insisted on because he's so worried about me being overly stressed out. It was wonderful by the way! I also ordered a meditation CD specifically for IVF. It has different meditations for each phase of your cycle with the first track being the stim phase. I've tried to do it for two nights now and I keep falling asleep! It is very relaxing but I can never make it past the breathing part to get to the more important visualization part. My goal is to stay awake tonight!

Stay tuned for tomorrow's update!

Ok, so I guess I don't I need to worry about hyper-stimming

I had my first follie check this morning and I guess things are looking good? I don't know for sure though and I'm just a bundle of nerves about it!! I had 13 measurable follies, with 5 on the left measuring 8-11 and 8 on the right measuring 7-13. I just don't know what to think about those little ones...will they catch up? I don't know, ahhhhh!!! A mature follicle size is generally about 16mm and up, oh by the way those measurements I mentioned above are mm also, so we'll probably stim until as many of those little ones get to a mature or almost mature size, without overmaturing the bigger ones. It's a fine balance. So, they are testing my blood estradiol (E2) level as we speak and then they'll call me this afternoon to let me know if we need to adjust my dose at all. I guess that higher dose of Lupron that they kept me on is really doing it's job, perhaps too well? Anyway, as the title of this entry says, OHSS is really not a concern anymore because that usually only happens when women have like 25+ follies. I just need to keep reminding myself that it's quality over quantity...

Oh yeah, feel free to post comments directly to my blog if you want! I've gotten e-mails from people on it which is also fine. No obligation, just letting ya know it can be done :).

So far so good...

Well, my stims seem to be going fine so far. Of course I have no idea how my body is reacting to them but I can feel some action down there so hopefully well! It is quite a long procedure preparing for these shots. I have to mix powders and water and have all these little vials, three different syringes, different sized needles, etc. It's like my own little lab! My belly is already looking a bit like a pincushion and I officially have my first bruise but it's a small price to pay for our own little miracle! My appointment is at 8:30 tomorrow (Tues) morning and I'll post as soon I get back!

Have I mentioned how much I love acupuncture??

Yes? Well, let me mention it again! I went today at lunch and as usual feel so relaxed and zen. It's truly amazing the change that this has made to my mental state. The stability of my emotions has made a complete 180. Before I started going the first time around, I was an emotional wreck, crying all the time, and just a complete ball of stress, but eventually started feeling much better. Then, I took a break from acu for about 4-6 months and I definitely saw myself reverting back to my "old" self. I've now been back on the wagon a little over 2 months now and it takes some time to really start feeling the effects, but I can say that for the past month, I've definitely been reaping the benefits. I can't imagine how much more stressed out I would be during this IVF process than I already am without it!

The benefits of acu and the herbs; however, are not all stress related. It can help to improve egg quality, regulate hormones and can help improve circulation which is very important in pregnancy. You want to have plenty of bloodflow to the uterus. So, according to Dr. L, my wonderful acu, I have a Yin (or Yang, I can't remember!) and Qi (pronounced Chi) deficiency, which basically amounts to poor circulation. She looks at my tongue every week and apparently guages how things are working based on the color. Mine is usually too pale but always improves with a few treatments. Studies have shown that having acu right before embryo transfer can also improve your chances if a successful cycle. It can really relax the uterus and apparently make it more "receptive" to an embie. My RE isn't really a believer in it, but that's ok because I have really seen benefits in my everyday life regardless of whether it really and truly helps with fertility. I asked him what he thought about it way back when I first started with him and said that I'd heard that it was very relaxing and his comment was, well, I guess it can't hurt, but it's hard to believe that having needles stuck all over your body would be relaxing but whatever floats your boat. I'm so glad that I went with my gut!

I also love my acu doctor, Dr. L. She is an MD in China and is a women's health/fertility specialist. She knows as much about Western infertility treatments as she does Eastern, so I can always bounce things off of her, like dosages and such. Today, she confirmed for me that she thought my dosages were good, which made me feel better. We also talked about the bloat and fluid retention that comes with a lot of follicles and OHSS, and she said that her patients very rarely have trouble or discomfort from it, even when their ovaries are huge, so whatever magic she does, must work! I hope I'm one of those lucky ones!

Anyway, because I was feeling so good from my treatment today, I decided it was time to dedicate a whole entry to the greatness that is acupuncture!

We're ready to go!!

I had my suppression check today and everything looks GREAT!!! That means that I get to start my stims tomorrow night!! WooHoo!! I can't even explain how exciting it is to finally be getting started!!

So, what we were looking for today were calm and quiet ovaries, a thin uterine lining and a sufficiently low estrogen blood level, and I met all those qualifications, thank goodness! When your ovaries are dormant like that, you have what are called antral follicles which are basically tiny little follicles that are all waiting to grow. In an unmedicated cycle, only one of those will actually grow large enough to ovulate but on a medicated and especially an IVF cycle, you want to try to encourage all of those antral follies to grow large enough to contain a mature egg. Well, we could see about 15 antral follies which is fantastic!! There are usually some that are hiding so I could certainly wind up with more than 15 eggs.

I also got my dosages today - I'm to continue with the same dosage of Lupron each night and take 200iu of Follistim and one vial (75iu) of Menopur, so that means 3 shots per night, awesome! It seems kind of high (for my IUI cycles I was on 100iu of Follistim) and that does make me a bit nervous but I have to remember that I'm much more suppressed than I ever was on the IUI cycles and I'm still taking a lot of Lupron which will help to keep things in check. I go for my first checkup on Tuesday morning - wish me luck!!

Still waiting...

I couldn't think of a creative title for this blog entry because it's just going to be a general update on what's been going on with me which isn't a whole lot in the IVF world. I'm still shooting up with Lupron and I go for my suppression check on Thursday morning - FINALLY!! I should be really suppressed after being on Lupron for 18 days so I'm not really worried about my body doing something stupid and delaying my cycle even more. I should be finding out my dosages on Thursday too! I'm very anxious to get that info because I'm of course worried about hyper stimming based on my history with my IUI cycles. Every cycle, I heard, "Wow, you make a LOT of follicles!" - not such a great thing with IUI, but it is a good thing with IVF, you just don't want to make so many that you develop OHSS (ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome) and wind up in the hospital having fluid drained from your abdomen. This is the stuff that keeps me awake at night! I think that this extra time on Lupron should help in that area. Anyway, at our consult which seems like a hundred years ago, Dr. D told me that I would be on a moderate to low dose, whatever that means.

Yesterday, I had an appointment for my annual exam with a new OB/Gyn. My old Dr was very nice and all, but there were quite a few cons with her practice, like she was on her own, so it would be possible that some stranger would deliver my baby, I never waited less than an hour in her waiting room for appts, the hospital where I would deliver, though a good one, is about 20 min away from our house, and I wasn't a huge fan of her nurses, so I decided to make a change. My new Dr's practice is 3 women who all graduated from med school the year after my brother in law which means that they are all only about 2 years older than me - I'm feeling so old!! My new doc, Dr. K, is super nice and friendly and she seems much more personable than Dr. S ever was. They are located in the newish hospital that is literally 2 miles from my house! Oh and they have a level III NICU which though I hope it won't, could come in handy. I think it was a good move.

I did have a rude awakening at my appt - on the scale. Ugh, not a pretty sight. I would like to blame the weight gain on my meds, which yeah, they might be partially at fault, but really I know the reason is my emotional eating. I've put on the weight gradually over these 2 1/2 years of TTC, with the bulk of the gain happening post miscarriage. I bought a few pairs of "fat pants" when I was pregnant as transition pants for that period before you need maternity clothes, and now even those pants are feeling snug. When I'm feeling sorry for myself or are just stressed out (happens quite a bit lately), I will rationalize it by saying that I deserve it. I do pretty well with my meals, but it's the snacking that is killing me - darn you deli downstairs!! I have developed a very bad habit lately of treating myself several afternoons a week with some fattening snack, like chocolate, or those frighteningly orange cracker and peanut butter sandwiches (I love those things!). Because I WILL get pregnant this cycle (how's that for positive thinking?), I guess it's too late to do anything about it now!

Since when are Dr's allowed to take time off???!!!

Just kidding!! (Sort of) Anyway, I got a very distressing call from the nurse at my RE's office today. Apparently, Dr. D informed them this morning that he is going to be out of town April 17-20, which means that my cycle gets pushed back a week :(. I'm not too pleased about this development, but I'm finally starting to calm down. I was supposed to go this Thursday for my suppression check and start stims on Sunday evening, but now I don't go until next Thursday, the 12th and will hopefully start stims on the 13th - trying not to think about the fact that it will be Friday the 13th - I'm not a superstitious person, but still. I liked an Easter Sunday start much better, you know, rebirth/fresh start. We're now looking at an estimated egg retrieval somewhere around the week of April 22. This also means that I have to take my Lupron shots for an extra week which isn't terrible, but remember what I said about having no side effects? Scratch that, the night sweats started this weekend, fun fun! So, Dr D. better have a darn good reason for scheduling this time off at the last minute and that doesn't include a relaxing trip to a tropical location or Vegas or you fill in the blank ;-)! I'll be on tan patrol next time I see him. Seriously though, I'm sure that it's a scheduling nightmare because I can only imagine the number of cycles/surgeries that have been impacted by this. Thank goodness I'm having a pedicure today after work! I need it!

On a more positive note - my wonderful hubby arrived home safely on Friday afternoon! He was of course exhausted but he got back in the swing of things pretty quickly. We had a very busy weekend of hard labor in the yard and I'm paying for it today, let me tell ya! It's worth it though because everything sure looks pretty!