Pills, Shots and Transfers, Oh My!

I have a new schedule!

I'm kind of getting used to feeling like myself again which is bitter sweet but a nice break. I spoke to the nurse this morning and I have my protocol for the FET (frozen embryo transfer).

The big day is expected to be July 1st (which seems like forever from now!). I'm taking it with a grain of salt this time around after how things went down last cycle. It's exciting but I'm just thinking "I'll believe it when I see it". ;)

So now we know that the end of May and all of June is full of birth control, then Lupron shots (the ones that made me miserable but luckily these will be all at night), estrogen pills and the dreaded progesterone shots - I got out of these last month but not this time - they are the big needles that go in the love handle area.
 :(

The good news is, the doctor's appointments are much fewer, one morning with lab work, one morning with sonogram and then the transfer itself. Not bad at all!

We are in full "distract ourselves" mode. We created an entire flower bed in our back yard this weekend and we have the sunburns and sore muscles to prove it!

Next weekend: art projects and books (hopefully) and then I am in San Francisco all next week for a conference which will be a good way to get an entire week to go by pretty quick.

That's all I've got for now...

Precious Ice Cubes

I'm not sure where to start... honestly I don't quite know how I even feel right now.

Out of 38 eggs, 4 embryos made it to the freezer.

I'm going to poorly attempt to convey the mix of emotions going through my head about all of this.

Phase 1: Sad and Pissed
I'm not going to lie, when they called today and gave us the final number my first instinct was to just weep... so weep I did, and I called my mommy and wept some more.

How do you only get 4 from 38?? What hell did I just put my body through to only get 4??

Phase 2: Guilty and Grateful
I then felt bad about being sad. I'm active on an online forum full of men and women who would be overjoyed to just have even 1 fair quality embryo.

I am without a doubt grateful for all 4 of my precious little ice cube babies (who were rated very highly and they are very optimistic about them). I'm also grateful that we probably won't have "leftover" embryos to have to struggle with what to do with. Even if they all take, 4 kids is not an unreasonable number of kids to raise (33 was - I'm not interested in beating out the Duggars).

Now: Scared
I am a wreck... I'm scared out of my mind. And you know what? I think it's ok. I'm allowed to not always feel strong. It's ok that I'm not a pillar of faith and hope and joy every day of this journey.

My body has been put through a pretty taxing thing. I'm also on estrogen and progesterone which makes me even more emotional than usual (please pray extra for poor Derek).

The thing that is getting to me the most is that I was hoping for a better insurance policy... I've never been pregnant; I have no idea if I'll have miscarriages or if these embryos will like my uterus at all. Or what if they don't survive the thaw? If the number was higher, I think it wouldn't feel like so much pressure. But at least it's not just 1 or 2... or none.

To be continued:
This blog is pretty much the cliff hanger finale of season one of "The Stunkards Try to Have a Baby".

The next few weeks will be pretty uneventful. They have me on progesterone and estrogen until the 21st and then this month will finish out. Next month they want me on a full 21 day cycle of birth control and then we will finally be able to start the FET (frozen embyro transfer).

At the end of the day, there is still hope. FETs have better odds and I have a good 6 weeks(ish) to get my body and mind back into fighting condition.

So until next season I'll leave you with my favorite verse from the most worn out page in my bible which I know I will have on repeat for the next few weeks (Jonah 2:1):

In my distress I called to the Lord,

    and he answered me.

From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,

    and you listened to my cry.

What a week!

Before I get to the exciting bits, I'll back up and recap the craziness of this week.

Monday: Sono and bloodwork plus finding out the doc doesn't want us to transfer this cycle and that we have another 6 weeks or so before we can. Plus- last night of stimming shots (yay for belly bruises going away!).

Tuesday: Last sono and bloodwork. Egg retrieval scheduled and Lupron trigger shot #1. Unfortunately, I had a horrible side effect with the Lupron. It made me incredibly dizzy to the point where I felt like I'd pass out every time I stood up.

Wednesday: Lupron shot #2 at 7 am. Proceeded to be absolutely miserable the whole day at work due to the dizziness. I was also very uncomfortable due to the now mature, massive load of eggs in my belly. I had to tell Derek to stop making me laugh because it hurt too much.

Thursday: Up at 5:15 after not really sleeping the night before. We stayed in the hotel next to the hospital so that we could be there bright and early which worked out nicely. We anticipated getting about 20 or so eggs and ended up getting 38 (I got an updated number this morning).

The good news is, after everyone telling me how miserable I'd be after the egg retrieval (they even gave me a vicodin prescription), I haven't even needed a tylenol. I just feel super bloated and like I've done a few too many situps. I'd say menstrual cramps are worse than this. I'm actually more comfortable now than I was the day before the egg retrieval.

Friday: We got our first report card this morning and we have embryos :)

I think we've decided to keep the number to ourselves for now. We still have a long way to go as far as them growing and splitting as expected but we're confident that we should have enough to create our family.

We'll get our next report card on Sunday to see how many make it to the next level of development.

Thank you so much for your prayers! We still have a long road before us but this week we jumped quite a few hurdles! :)

Mixed Bag of Emotions

It's probably due to the insane amount of hormones in my system but I am a mixed bag of emotions right now.

I apologize if you're expecting any kind of inspirational quotes or scriptures but that's a different blog for a different day. If there's anyone reading this that may go through IVF in the future, I'm not doing them any good if I turn this blog into a fluff piece.

It's hard. It's full of curve balls and unknown.

On the one hand, I am majorly bummed that this month and June are out of the cards for us to get pregnant. It's a freakin bummer and we were so excited. It may seem little but infertility is a constant fight against getting your hopes up. We had finally let a little hope creep in to have it snatched up. We had dared to dream "hey we might be pregnant in a few days".

On the other hand, it seems like this may just be working out the way it needs to. They mentioned that my progesterone levels are already rising which with the route we are now going isn't a big deal but if we were still doing the transfer this month, it could have been a problem.

The priority is to get as good of odds as we can and a healthy pregnancy.

They were worried about me this morning and how we took the news about not doing the transfer. Apparently a lot of couples throw fits and really push the doctor into doing the transfer anyway.

This doesn't make any sense to me. If a fertility doc is telling me "if we get you pregnant right now, it could land you in the hospital or with a loss"... that's a disappointing decision but a no brainer.

Plus, we've waited this long, what's 6 more weeks if it means a healthy mommy and baby?

It is official that the egg retrieval is going to be bright and early Thursday morning. In all, I should only be under anesthesia for about 30 minutes which is nothing compared to previous surgeries I've had so not too worried about that. They expect to get between 10-20 eggs but we should know Thursday afternoon.

By Friday we'll know if any and how many eggs fertilized. This is the next worry on my heart that could use some prayers. Just please pray that the two sides play nice together and we have some healthy embryos to freeze.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

So... I got some news this morning. I'm not going to call it bad but it is a bit disappointing.

The short version: It's pretty much decided we won't be getting pregnant this cycle.

The long version: What I've been worried about since the first sono is basically coming to fruition. They are almost certain that if I don't have OHSS (over-stimulation) after the retrieval, they are pretty certain a pregnancy would trigger it.

My estrogen levels are through the roof and I just have a whole bunch of eggs.

In the end, this is a good problem to have in that they are hopeful we will have A LOT of eggs to work with and hopefully make as many high quality, wonderful embryos as they can.

So this is what will most likely happen:

• Continue meds tonight
• Go in tomorrow for another sono and bloodwork to confirm we're ready to go
• If it looks good, we'll do the trigger shot tomorrow night and the egg retrieval Thursday morning.
• From there, they will still do the monitoring routine for 6 days and let us know how things are progressing in the lab. 
• If our embryos look bad and they don't have many or think they will survive a freeze then they may decide to do the transfer anyway so that this whole round isn't a bust. 
• If the embryos are good quality and plentiful then they will freeze all that they can. 

After that, we wait out the end of this cycle. When the next one begins, I'm back on birth control, followed by Lupron to prep my body to receive the thawed embryos (1 or 2 only). It should be an easier cycle in that there's less monitoring and drugs. 

He also said that in their current studies, they were having better pregnancy rates with frozen cycles versus fresh. Recently out of 20 women they tested this process with, 18 are pregnant. So he's confident that my odds of pregnancy are even higher going this route. He also said that this may be how they do all IVF cycles in the future if the stats stay as high as they are. 

So that's where we're at. Still hopeful but will need to have a bit more time and patience. 

Over Achieving Ovaries

So far, I have completed 4 nights of the 2-shot a night routine. I am so over it... I'm not halfway through and I am sore, tired, running out of belly fat to poke, etc. 

I am, however, getting pretty confident at giving myself shots. I had to do them without Derek last night and I did ok (still prefer to have my cheerleader there though).

It's not horrible but it's not comfortable. It just is what it is I guess. It's what we have to do to get there.

This morning I had my first sono and bloodwork since starting stims and they shed some light on why I may be feeling pretty sore already (not to mention weird butterfly like sensations in my belly). 

40 FOLLICLES!!! 20 on each side. Holy crap that's a lot! 

Just to give you perspective- their goal is to retrieve 10-12 next week. 

This is definitely good news in the sense that a) I am responding to meds and b) I have plenty of eggs in there it seems.

It is also pretty scary. They have to make sure this number goes a bit down before retrieval or I run the risk of being over stimulated (basically my body would be on hyperdrive and could result in a very miserable early pregnancy). If this happens, we'd still do the retrieval but would have to give my body a cycle off to chill out before they transfer any embryos back in.

Honestly, if having to wait one more month is our worst case scenario then we are truly blessed. 

So far, all of our tests are going great! Still no real sign of why we can't do this on our own but who knows...

I get upgraded to 3 shots a night starting tomorrow so that they prevent me from ovulating on my own. Monitoring appointments are set for Saturday, Monday and Tuesday so I'll have more updates from there. 

I asked my nurse if she had to guess when the retrieval would be and she said it's still too early to tell but probably next Wednesday or Thursday.  

Keep prayin and I'll just keep on poking myself with needles!