Fumbling Towards Eggstacy

7 Week Ultrasound

Today was the day we've been waiting for -- needless to say I've been geeking about this appointment  big time, because last time I got pregnant and got to this point, there was no baby after all.  I was quiet all the way to the doc's office, preparing mentally for the same result. 

Well now I can stop geeking.  Very lucky for us, today there was....a baby!  He/she measured at 6 weeks 6 days and the tech said that's fine.  I stared in disbelief.  DH was there, and he kept saying, "NOW can you be happy?"  I said, not until I know the heart rate.  It was 122. I said, "NOW I can be happy!" =) 

Afterwards, we talked to Dr. Swanson.  We told him how happy we were with his care, especially after all we had been through at other clinics. DH told him we wanted to get a little statue made of him for our house.  LOL. 

We went to breakfast to celebrate.  I've been in shock actually -- after YEARS AND YEARS of trying, it finally worked.  I have to rearrange a lot of files in my brain -- the files on donor eggs and adoption can now be put way in the back of the drawer.  The files on what to buy and how to prepare can now be opened.  I feel safe enough to even use the P word.  I think.  DH made me say it out loud a few times -- "I'm pregnant and I'm having a baby in April."  It didn't feel natural to say.  God how infertility fucks up the brain.

I've read that after seeing the heartbeat, miscarriage chances go down to anywhere from 4 - 16%, depending what you read and if they take into consideration age and past failures. 

Oh yeah -- we had a vanishing twin.  It had a yolk sac but it measured less than 6 weeks so it won't have a chance to develop into a baby.  I don't feel sad about it because, after all, I've had dozens of little embies not make it over the years.  Maybe all that practice with loss has made me numb.  But one little flashing light on the screen is what I wanted, and I got exactly what I wanted.

I haven't blogged for a long time -- actually I drafted some posts but they all focused so much on puking and I just couldn't share that loveliness with you all.  These days, it's hard to think of much other than “I’m going to puke!” and “what should I eat?” and "when can I sleep next?"  I'm managing to have an appetite for eggs and dairy but not much else.  Perhaps I’m gestating a baby cow or a baby chicken instead of a baby human.  Wouldn’t that be a shocker in the delivery room.  I forced myself to eat chicken a few times, but I felt like a one-year-old at the dinner table -- took a bite, made a face, thought about spitting it out, sat there for a few minutes while looking at the remaining food in disdain, started the cycle over again.

My first OB appointment is next Wednesday.  I want an elective c-section but apparently they are not too popular in Denver.  Guess it's all the natural thinking.  In Florida they were pretty common.  I want a baby but don't want to actually go through childbirth.  Call me crazy.  Well if anyone knows of a doc who absolutely will or won't do it, pls let me know.  For now I'm set to go to a practice that works out of Lutheran Hospital because we're looking to buy a house near Golden before the birth.

Next on my to-do list is to send thank-you's to all the people who helped me get this far.  So that goes for all of my readers as well -- THANK YOU VERY MUCH for all of your wonderful support and comments, they helped me so so much and gave me strength.  Your kind words are very much appreciated.

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.

6dp3dt -- Dream and Weight and HCG

OK so I had a dream I did a HPT last night.  First I saw the base line.  Then next to it, a pink line, then next to that, a blue line.  I didn't know what the blue line meant, but I was thinking (in my dream) that it meant negative, and I was trying to figure out if the negative and positive canceled each other out.  I was confused and then I woke up.

Weight-wise my body is doing bizarre things.  I normally weigh around 120 at 5'4."  <Fighting urge to go into long rant and history about weight and my preferred weight and why it sucks to get old because it's hard to lose weight and how I can't eat carbs like I used to...but let's not go there.>  Anyhoo...when I was taking DHEA, and then HGH, my weight spiked to 128.  <OK we'll go there just a tad: I haven't weighed that much since five years ago when I was in a relationship that was going nowhere and was unsure about what to do with my life.>  But that was emotional eating.  This was not -- this was drugs doing funky things to my body.  I was not thrilled about it, but in the spirit of TTC, I didn't let myself get too worked up about it.  (Other than being pissed I got rid of all of my "fat clothes" in the hopes I'd never need them again -- mental note to never do that again.)  Since Saturday, which was Transfer Day, my weight has come back to a more normal 122.  I have been nauseous but have been careful to eat enough calories (even dipped into Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey last night), so it's not from lack of eating.  It's just bizarre. 

Also and maybe related, my heart rate has been around 80.  I have a blood pressure cuff at home so I've been testing it.  It's normally around 50.  I'm thinking the HGH boosters that I'm taking are telling my body to make more blood.  I can't find anyone on the Internet that has these same two things during their 2ww -- high heart rate and weight loss.  Which I guess makes me a freak of nature.  So if anyone has heard of anyone having these (esp. the heart rate), please let me know. 

Motivated by the urge to know when I can test, I did an estimate of when the HCG should leave my system, and it seems that there will be a bit left at my beta on Tuesday.  HCG has a half-life of 24 hours, so half the dosage leaves your body every day. To figure out what's left, you halve the amount every day, as in:  if you took 10,000 on Friday, you would have 5000 in your system Saturday, 2500 Sunday, and so on.  Here's my calculation.
MON – 10,000
TUES – 5000
WED – 2,500
THURS – 1,250
FRI – 625 + 1000 BOOSTER = 1626
SAT – 312.5 + 500 + 1000 BOOSTER = 1812.5
SUN – 156 + 250 + 500 = 906
MON – 78 + 125 + 250 = 453
TUES – 39 X+ 62.5 + 250 + 1000 BOOSTER = 1226.5
WED – 19.5 + 31 + 62.5 + 500 = 613
THURS – 10 + 15.5 + 31 + 250 = 307.5
FRI – 5 + 8 + 15.5 + 125 = 154
SAT – 2.5 + 4 + 8 + 62.5 = 72
SUN – 1 + 2 + 4 + 31 = 38
MON – 0 + 1 + 2 + 15.5 = 18.5
TUES - 0 + 0 + 1 + 8 = 9

No HPTs for me now.  Unless it's just to play pretend.  Which admittedly would be fun, but brings to mind that story of Elizabeth Smart, that girl that was kidnapped in Utah six years ago, and her female captor that carried around a baby doll like it was her baby. 

4dp3dt

First off, thanks sooo much to everyone who has stopped by my blog and offered me support this cycle, whether it be via comment or just positive vibes.  It is uplifting to get your kind and motivating comments, every single one has brightened my day.  And yes that sounds totally cheesy but it's true.

It's too early in the game to have any juicy news to pass along.  So here's the non-juicy news.  Since Transfer Day, I've been sleeping 12-15 hours a day.  Once I realized the progesterone is making me very sleeepy (it took until yesterday to make the connection, you'd think by now I'd have this stuff figured out), I decided to move the shots to right before bedtime so as to maximize my waking time and not feel like a complete lazy-ass.  As for any bodily feelings, I felt minor cramping up until yesterday.  I kind of wish the cramping would return, it makes me think something's going on in there.  As for weight, I lost 3.5 pounds since Saturday.  I'm sure it's water, but that's a testament to how much water was stored in my belly during stimms I suppose.  My belly has been non-stop nauseous.  We got a big dry-ice-filled box of Ben and Jerry's from my sister-in-law today to thank us for playing camp counselors for a week and I can't even get motivated to dip a spoon in.  (Get this flavor - "Imagine Whirled Peace" -- a tribute to John Lenin made up of carmel ice cream and fudge peace signs and toffee).

I am a BAD bed rest babe - on the good side, I didn't do anything stressful.  But against doctor's orders, I decided it was within the realm of bodily care to walk, so I've been walking an hour a day.  Walking has actually made me feel human again after all the nap-induced fuzz-brain.  But other than walking my dogs, and, oh yeah, a quick trip to the store to buy pineapple, my ass has been pretty much glued to a sofa.  Luckily I work from home, so I can keep working from the sofa.  If you happen to be a long-time-reader (which in the case of this blog is Feb), you may know that part of the reason I even took a job working from home (within my employer of 8 years, that is) is for all of this IF stuff.  It's a hell of a lot easier to do IVF when not doing the daily commute and sneaking into bathrooms and sneaking out for frequent doctor appointments.  And I know, I did the sneaking the first time 'round.

So anyway, back to this cycle.  My brain is fucking with me, of course.  It goes back and forth between two main themes:

#1 -- There's only a 10% chance this worked, so don't expect it to work.  If it does, that's great, but if it doesn't, don't freak.  You're older and your eggs are older, it's not a criticism, it's just a fact.

#2 - If you think positive and imagine the little embies becoming blasts and hatching and implanting, and send them love and pray to God (I'm a bad Catholic, not being a frequent pray-er, but the prayers have picked up significantly lately), then all the positive thinking and prayer are sure to have some impact.

Then there's the paranoia:

#1.1 -- It will be a bummer to have to tell people yet again that it didn't work.  People don't want to hear about failures.  It will be something you take to your death bed, that this didn't work, that you never got to leave a legacy in the form of a genetically related human.  People don't just get over this.

#2.1 -- What if you're wasting positive thinking energy by talking to and praying about embies that arrested development days ago?  That's borderline kooky.  Talking to nothing.  But then again, if time doesn't exist in heaven, then maybe a prayer today can help embies from 3 days ago. 

And then there's the emotionally-intelligent me:

#1.2 -- if it doesn't work, at least I will have given it the ol' college try.  Three tries is respectable.  And walking away from the table before you're down too far is a smart thing to do.  Plus, it will be a massive relief actually to have my life back.  No more shots or doctor visits.  Freedom from TTC.

#2.2 -- [well success doesn't require too much emotional intelligence, right?  It seems to be needed where success is lacking.]

OK I'm a big geek because I just put my thoughts in outline numbers. 

Doc has me on luteal HCG -- where I shoot it up every 3 days, last day being Friday -- so it doesn't make sense to do a HPT until probably Sunday (8dp3dt) at the earliest.  Probably for the best - I'm not a good bargain shopper, so at $10 a pop, that should save me $50.

Speaking of drugs, I convinced DH to take the remaining growth hormone, seeing as I had $200 worth of it left over.  His first reaction was "I hate needles."  I screamed, "you wimp!  I've had about a thousand shots in the last year, and you don't even want ONE!?!"  Eventually he gave in and let me give him a belly shot.  It was weird doing it to someone else.  He had the same effect from the drug that I had -- kind of wired, and insomnia.  Oh the ways we have fun in our household these days.  =)

IVF #3 - Transfer Day

Today was transfer day -- doc transferred 3 8-cell embies.  Seeing as I'm on bed rest and already bored, this is going to be a detailed post.  If you want the reader's digest version, well... the first sentence which you already read sums it all up.

I showed up at 9 a.m., and it was very quiet, nobody around that I could see, so I first went to do my blood draw.  Then thank goodness on my way out, I ran into my acupuncturist who was there to meet me.  She took me in a back room where I chugged my 32 ounces of water and lay down on the table for my 25-minute pre-transfer session.  There was no music, and I forgot my iPod, so I sat there in silence and tried to think positive.

It wasn't easy because yesterday I had gotten the "day 2" call from the embroyolgist who gave his report:  1 more fertilized, which brought the total up to 7 of 8.  Of the 6 that were fertilized by Thursday, 1 was "acceptable", 1 was "almost acceptable", and the other four were "behind."  I didn't want to blog it because I felt embarassed at the not-so-impressive results.  When I called my acupuncturist with the transfer time, it felt pointless to even ask her to show up with me -- what if that one "acceptable" didn't even make it to day 3???   I was bummed out most of the day.  Almost to the point of being a cranky ass bitch but not quite.  I did a little internet research on donors.  I found a donor site where you don't have to register in order to search a database with photos, and I picked out a woman who kind of sort of looked like me.  Well OK she was prettier than me.  And taller.  I looked into the cost of it ($20 - 30K min, out of pocket).  That helped me feel a little better, even though we don't have cash for it yet.  But it kept me from feeling totally helpless and hopeless. 

After the pre-transfer acupuncture, the embryologist met with me.  He showed me pictures.  I'd scan the emby pics for your viewing enjoyment, but for some reason, can't get the scanner to work, so maybe later.  He had two embryo pics.  The first one showed three 8-cell blobs, one of which had 10% fragmentation, the other two which had 15%.  Not perfect, but compared to my very low expectations, it sounded perfect enough to me!  And, compared to last time, when I had one 8-cell, 2 7-cells, and 1 6-cell, all of which were about 25% fragmented, this was good news.  His next picture showed the four other embies -- of those, 3 were 6- to 8-celled with a lot of fragmentation, and one (the one that fertilized a day late) was a 5-cell with no visible fragmentation.

He recommended transferring 2 or 3 of the 8-cells, and none of the others.  I asked if transfering the 5-cell would increase the chances, and he said no, but he's hoping it'll make it to freeze.  He gave me pregnancy rates for transferring 1, 2, or 3 (I think it was like 25%, 48%, and 60% -- which I'm sure wasn't taking into account fragmentation or past IVF failures, but it's not like I expect him to be a walking Google).  It was hard for me to just leave the 4 he didn't recommend putting back, especially at this juncture where I truly think this will be my last IVF ever with my own eggs.  I was tempted to say "just throw them all in for the hell of it" because it seems like it wouldn't hurt anything (I mean, really, who actually has seven take, especially a 37-yo with multiple failures and DOR!!).  But in the end I took his advice and asked to have the 3 8-cells transferred.

There was no Valium this time.  Probably for the best since I'd be driving myself home.  DH was (still is) rock climbing.  Which is fine, he's ADHD and probably would have driven me nuts, especially as I was trying to relax during the needle portions of the mornng.

Nurse asked me to undress and sit on the table so she could check my bladder to make sure it was full enough.  She said I could empty it a bit (thank god, I was scared I was going to leak during the procedure).  She gave me a Dixie cup and said I could pee out two cups worth, but I only peed out 1.5 cups worth just to be safe.

Back on the table, the nurse gave me a blankie since I complained it was cold, which I would have normally kept my mouth shut about in an effort to be polite, however my acupuncturist made a big point of telling me to keep warm at all times.  I was even wearing a long-sleeved fleece top.  Doc came in (not the doc I was expecting, but that's OK) and had no problem whatsoever with the transfer.  Good hands??  My other two transfers were both problematic, requiring reloads and a bit of finagling.  I saw the catheter on the U/S screen. 

After loading the embies into my uterus, he passed the empty catheter back to the embryologist, who took it back in the lab to reload it, this time with semen.  This particular clinic saves semen from DH and puts it in after the embies to mimic the environment of real sex.  There's a possibility that the semen triggers the uterus to get ready to accept embryos, and although nothing is proven, the clinic figures it can't hurt.  I like these guys, they seem to be doing as much as they can.

After that, they leaned be back at about 30 degrees and had me stay in that position, alone in the room, for 10 minutes.  Good idea...no clinic had ever done that before, yet I had done it many times after bms.

My acupuncturist re-punctured me and for a second time I sat needled in silence.  Before leaving the room, she told me to breath deeply and open my heart.  I spent time in my head thinking of any negativity I felt toward any person and tried to heal it with love and forgiveness.  I also told my little embabies "welcome to my belly", and I envisioned what my body would look like in Sept, Oct, Nov, etc, all the way up until birth-day, when I pictured having a little baby on my chest in a hospital.

Normally I wouldn't do this because it feels like a form of torment to want something that I can't have.  But for the sake of positive thinking and sending good vibrations from my mind to all my other body cells and to my little embabies, it seemed like the right thing to do.

Conceptions recommends five days -- FIVE!! -- of bed rest.  I'm already wanting to escape from the couch!

Fertilization Report & Police Pics

Of 10 retrieved, 8 were mature and 6 fertilized.  I'm in this weird mental place where I'm neither happy nor disappointed.  I will either have a baby or no baby.  DH said, what do you think is going to happen?  I said, I just don't have a hunch, it's an odd frame of mind.  He has a good feeling this time around though.

Here's some pics from the Police concert Tuesday night at Red Rocks.  Sting has a beard now and they played for just under 2 hours.  The crowd was mostly 30s-40s-50s. 

Eggs Retrieved

My ER was today, with 10 eggs retrieved.  Not bad considering that on our last try at IVF#3, in March, I never made it to ER due to two leading follices, and cycle was converted to an IUI.  This time around, I was officially acepted by my new RE as an IUI patient with the option to convert to IVF if I had at least 4 follies, due to my "poor history," so I trumped the 4-follie criterion.

I had a 6:30 a.m. conference call for work, and then woke up DH at 7:30 a.m.  He was up til 2 a.m. last night chatting with his niece and nephew after we all went to see the Police at Red Rocks (great show!), and needless to say, was not too excited to be awakened.  Of course I think, why does he have to be a grump when we're trying to make a baby.  But then I figure, it's not like he was up late drinking -- he was up late being a very cool uncle to two teenagers who love him to death.  And anyway, he cheered up once we got to the doc.  Being a health care worker himself, he always goes out of his way to make the health care workers smile because he knows what it's like to be in their shoes.

Things were quite a bit different at Conceptions compared with CCRM.  At Conceptions today, I was the only ER patient of the day.  When I had my last ER -- with CCRM back in November 07 -- I was the 12th, and last, patient of the day and was wheeled out to my car in the dark.  Seems like the fact that they have only my eggies to focus on today is a good thing.

Tomorrow we'll get the fertilization report, and on Friday (day 2) the embryologist will be able to tell us if it's a 3-day or 5-day transfer.  At that point (day 2), the embies should be at the 2- or 4- cell stage.  Should be interesting to see what embryo quality is since last time we had high fragmentation.  With 4 straight months of 2x/week acupuncture, and HGH, I'm hoping for better quality.  The criteria for day 3 versus day 5 transfer is that, if > 4 look good on day 2, then they plan a day 5 transfer.  I prefer a day 3 regardless of what they look like on day 2, but I'll wait to see what they look like before putting my foot down.  No sense being adamant now about going against their preferred ways of doing things if I'll only have a few good ones anyway.

I'm happy that on transfer day, the embryologist is going to have a full size pic of every embryo for us to look at.  I've never got to see pictures before.  My first embryologist, in Tampa, said that taking pictures was bad for the embryos.  The current embryologist says that's not the case.

Not much to do now other than send those little embies happy thoughts.