Fumbling Towards Eggstacy

Beta #2

The blood test, and not this post, is belated, as we were visiting family in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Philadelphia for the past week.  After much deliberation about whether to do beta #2 out of town, DH and I decided against it for several reasons -- didn't want to be bummed out around family if it wasn't good , didn't really have a lot of time to spare, and finally, I was sooo tired that any time spent not hanging out with people was spent napping.

So Beta #2 was today, a full week after Beta #1.  HCG is 1586.  I was going to be happy with 1200 or above, since that would be doubling every other day, so I am very, very pleased.  Here's the #s charted:

It's on the high end, so that could mean an early implantation, or twins.  I'm thinking early implantation, but DH is convinced it's twin boys and has already named them.  Men.  Do they all want little duplicates of themselves?  (now I have to be super careful what I say since he read my blog that one time -- hopefully that's not too offensive!  Really I think it's better to not think of all the people who may read your blog so you're not editing as you go along and it's a more authentic representation!).

Anyway, speaking of twin boys, after spending time with my cousin who has 3-year-old twin boys, and his cousin who has 4-year-old and 8-year-old boys, I'm thinking one boy would be plenty to handle.  Plus the twins were premies and have problems because of it-- one has had a bad cough for over a month and my cousin is going crazy trying to figure out what he could be allergic to.  She had gotten all new carpeting before the cough started, and then removed it all in case it was the culprit of an allergy, but the poor little guy is still coughing.

Of course we'd be ecstatic with one or two, boy or girl.  Whatever we are blessed with, God willing, we will treasure.

The ultrasound to see the heartbeat (or heartbeats) is two weeks from tomorrow.  That's the BIG hurdle in my book since in Nov/Dec I had a blighted ovum, which is a sac with no baby in it.  These #s are pretty solid, but even so, I'm not using the P-word until we see a little heart flickering away on a screen.

I was worried on our flights that my body would be under too much stress.  We took a total of five plane trips over the past week, and every time we took off and landed, or encountered turbulence, I sent my belly lots of happy energy. 

On a similar note, I'm worried I made a wrong move at home -- we saw moths in the house and bought a box of mothballs before leaving town, and when we returned, the whole house smelled of mothballs.  I read they emit toxins into the air, so I tried to air out the house as best I could, but being the worry wart that I am, I am spending time far away from where the box sat for a week. 

Also I quit my tennis league in case the heavy impact of playing singles would cause a problem.  Maybe I'm being a big worry-wart, but after 3 years of trying and 3.5 IVFs and too many shots and blood tests and ultrasounds and acupuncture sessions and dollars to count, I'm choosing to be overly cautious.

And here's a piece of trivia.  The due date for a singleton would be tax day, April 15th.  Hopefully the kid won't be a procrastinator in it's adulthood and spend every birthday cramming for the tax man.  If he's anything like his mama, he'll have it's taxes done by February 1st so he can party on his birthday while everyone else is playing accountant.  ;)

Someone asked about symptoms, so here they are:

• Very sleepy -- napping every day
• Cramps that come and go, maybe 10% of the time
• Nauseau that comes and goes, but after every meal I feel a little sick
• Constipation
• Blue veins showing in the chest
• Swollen belly
• Fast heart rate

Pretty normal stuff.  Really when my heart rate picked up after the transfer, I suspected something good was going on, since the only other time that ocurred was when I was pregnant (before miscarrying) last November.

10dp3dt - Beta

And the number is.....97!

I was worried the blog gods didn't want me to share the info, because the last 3 times I wrote this post, my PC (actually 2 different PCs) crashed. Hopefully this time works!

I'd write more but I am soooo sleepy. =) And happy. And ya I know I know it's just one hurdle but still....I'm happy.

Wait

Sarah McLachlan's Wait.  Couldn't find a good video, but the music is still great to read by!

Upfront warning, this is a long one!  I haven't blogged for over a week (other than show-and-tell) so gotta catch up! 

This upcoming Sunday, the CO Bloggers are getting together to see Sex and the City.  I'm bummed that I can't hang out with all these amazing women, as I will be at a friend's wedding  If you happen to be in Denver that day and want to join them, send an e-mail to Lori.  I didn't wait long after the movie's release and went yesterday to a matinee.  It was fantabulous!  

 
The only thing I regret is that I didn't go when I was in Manhattan on Thursday night -- I had a girl's night out that night with work friends, but since one of the women had never been to NYC before, we opted to sightsee, plus we had an early meeting Friday, so a midnight showing would have been hard to manage, BUT it would have been a once-in-a-lifetime blast too.  All over Manhattan, there were groups of women looking more stylish than I ever have in my life.  I noticed lots of women were wearing bright pink stilettos (is that a thing?  Maybe I missed that episode...but I figured, what else could it be for!).  

 

I'm now on Facebook.  I was partially inspired by Mel's post Facebookiquette, and partially inspired by all the younger people at my company who are into social networking.  Send me an e-mail if you want to find me there.

 

I am so not wanting to blog about infertility because it reminds me that my story is not leading to a happy ending as quickly as I wished.  But here goes. 

Our Monday IUI almost didn't happen.  For those of you lucky enough to be uninitiated into the IUI routine, husband arrives at set time to give donation, (or he does it at home and then has to keep it warm on the drive there by placing it in the armpit, an imaginably awkward driving position).  Then wife arrives 90 minutes later for the insemination. 

So, GS was in the RE's office, sample in armpit, and they had him in the waiting room, but apparently the embryologist didn't know he was waiting, so she called me.

Embryologist:  Your husband isn't here, if he's not here soon we'll have to cancel. 

Me:  He should be there by now, he left 40 minutes ago and it's a 10-minute drive.  Maybe something happened on his way there (I'm thinking he got pulled over!).  Isn't there anything you can do to help us out? 

Embryologist transferred me to a nurse. 

Me: Is there anything you can do to help us out?  What if you thaw our frozen sample? 

Nurse:  We have to thaw and process and that takes 90 minutes.  The earlies we would have you in is 1pm. 

Me:  I have to jump on a plane that leaves at 3pm.  Is there any way you can accommodate us any earlier??!  

Nurse:  No.  We have to cancel you. 

Me:  Oh.  (shocked and speechless)

When they finally realized he was there, they sent him home and told him that I said it was OK.  I didn't so much say that. 

GS was pissed and swore we would never ever go back to The Palace for anything, no matter what, after that situation.  After $4K of injectibles and $600 of acupuncture, mind you.  I agreed, but I wasn't in the mood to be upset.  We regrouped.  GS suggested putting the "sample" in a turkey baster and squeezing it in.  Seriously.  I'm like, you're kidding, right?  He said, no.  We settled on trying to do it natural (i.e. no turkey baster), and just then the phone rang.  Another nurse called, apologized profusely, and asked if I could come in at 11.  I said yes. 

When I arrived, the nurse was super nice, super apologetic, and said that the first nurse I'd spoken to didn't realize the situation.  I'm so used to the "wham-bam-thank-you-mam" 3-minute ultrasounds, that I was surprised she was super chatty and took her time to make conversation, reiterate their dedication to helping us get pregnant, and apologize about 20 more times. 

So that was that. 

On the upside, NYC was great.  I went out on the town three nights in a row and <holding head down in shame> gave into peer pressure and had a few drinks.  I justified it by telling myself that the eggs were already created, and until the embies implant, they don't get any nutrients from my blood.  To my credit, I nursed the hell out of my cocktails.  It's all for the best, since I can't hold my liquor anyway.  I made the mistake of saying the word "titty bar" when describing why I liked Denver better than Tampa (as in, I had to pass five titty bars on my way to work every day in Tampa), and the look on my co-workers' faces made me thankful I wasn't drinking more and saying worse.

In NYC, I called Cornell to see if they couldn't squeeze me in that week for a consult.  Since I was there and all.  They could not. 

Tomorrow is my appointment with Dr. Swanson from Conceptions.  It took me four hours on Sunday to gather up all my IF-related medical records and fill out their 20-page new patient forms.

As you can see, I am not considering myself to be in a true 2-week-wait .  If only 1 in 10 of my eggs are good, then with only two mature eggs, my chances are 20% at best.  So I'm better off emotionally just focusing on the next steps.

Fertile Thought #2: My Beta Hell

Join me as I revisit on my last IVF results, dug up from the FertileThoughts message board, and provide commentary:

11/14/07: 

I had a beta yesterday of 59, so I'm being cautiosly optimistic. Progesterone was over 200 ("off the charts") but I still have to keep up the shots. Seems odd but I'm blindly following their advice since so far they've steered me right. 

My prayers to all of you, whether your news is good, bad, or iffy. I'm not a super-churchy person but I think we all need a lot of prayers and love through all of this. I've been trying for years so I know the heartache well, and now I am learning the worry that goes along with a little success also.

11/16/07

My 2nd beta was 87, a 48-hour increase of only 47% from my first of 59. I go for beta #3 on Saturday but at this point I feel hopeless. From what I've read, a slow rising beta from IVF is most likely a blighted ovum and docs can draw this out for weeks, getting more betas, seeing a slow rise, until they finally take you off P2 and you get AF. Damn!

11/19/07

I am experiencing "beta hell." Last Tues, my doc called to congratulate me that I was prego, then Thurs the nurse said it looked like a miscarriage, then Sat. the nurse said the doc thinks it's ectopic, and now today they are saying it's looking good (even though the #s are clearly low). I think they are trying to give me an ulcer, not a baby!   Until I have my ultrasound in 2 weeks, I am going to try withholding any extreme joy or sadness, but I can't withhold worry. If the u/s looks promising, cool, if not, I'm prepared emotionally (ya right). My #s were:
14dpo 59 - (anything over 50 is considered in-the-clear-pregnant for the first beta)
16dpo 86.8 - Increase of 47% - Doubling Time of 82.71 Hours (they want to see a doubling, or at the very least, an increase of 66% -- one theory in these situations is that you had multiples and one passed)
18dpo 130 - Increase of 50% - Doubling Time of 80.52 Hours (maybe I had 4 take originally and 3 passed??)
20dpo 309 - Increase of 138% - Doubling Time of 38.43 Hours (looks great all of a sudden)

4/13/08:  Commentary

The above post was my last on that board.  I was waiting to get out of infertility-purgatory.  There was one more beta after that:

27dpo - 4041 - Doubling Time of 45.49 Hours (continuing to look good)

U/S #1 showed an empty sac.  Doc said to do it again in a week to make sure.  I spent a lot of time on http://www.misdiagnosedmiscarriage.com/ obsessing over whether mine could be a lucky-for-me mistake of an U/S tech.  U/S #2 showed a bigger but still empty sac.  Meanwhile I had terrible 24-7 morning sickness, which I'm going to go out on a limb and say is even more annoying when you know you're suffering for nothing.  After U/S #3, I went ahead with the D&C and immediately felt normal again, on-the-verge-of-puking-wise, thank goodness, although it took a while for my tummy to lose its little bulge, which was probably OHSS.  I didn't post on that board again.  Many of the other women in the Oct 07 IVF group had success and were talking pregnancies, and the rest had become MIA.  There wasn't much else to say.   

So that was my last time.  I'm still unhealed and bitter and numb.  Writing this, I can't muster up the negative emotions that I'm supposed to have. I basically feel nothing, because I won't let myself feel anything.  It's kind of like time is standing still.  I'm almost in denial that all of that effort and hope and money and time and strength led to nothing.  I want to reach back into the past and change the ending of the story instead of mustering up the courage to go through this all again.  It's easier to distract myself with other life activities -- work, personal projects -- than it is to face the truth that the past is unchangable and if I want to move forward I need to summon the strength.

I'm now reading Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" (I read books from both sides!).  He talks about how, before he ran for the US Senate, he ran for Congress in 2000 and was unsuccessful.  He says, "I began to harbor doubts about the path I had chosen; I began feeling the way an actor or athlete must feel when, after years of commitment to a particular dream, after years of waiting tables between auditions or scratching out hits in the minor leagues, he realizes that he's gone just about as far as talent or fortune will take him.  The dream will not happen, and now he faces the choice of accepting this fact like a grown-up and moving on to more sensible pursuit, or refusing the truth and ending up bitter, quarrelsome, and slightly pathetic."

This hit me especially because I have recently become witness to a pro baseball player who also happens to be a tenant of mine, who, after being on injured reserve for over a year, has been officially released by his team and has decided to go back to college.  He very maturely made this decision in a 2-month time span.  The fact that he is over 10 years younger than me doesn't stop me from seeing him as a role model for action in the face of tragedy.

So where I'm going is, I don't want to end up in the second category of folks that Obama describes, who are "bitter, quarrelsome, and slightly pathetic."  I'm not yet at the point of accepting defeat and I'm still considering myself in the fight, but I'm also very aware that the dream may not happen, and if it comes to that, I hope I can "move on to more sensible pursuits."  And, hey, it wasn't the end for the politician, and it may not be the end for me.