I.V.Effed: No Sex, No Lies, and No Videotape

My nurse was super, over-the-top reassuring when I called her (um, 2.5 times) yesterday afternoon with my concerns.  She told me my estrogen and progesterone were really great, and that my numbers look fine, and they are not at all concerned and therefore I shouldn’t be either.  However, she did offer to put me on for another beta tomorrow…and I accepted.  Better to get the info before the weekend to know if I should really be a nervous nellie over the weekend, or if I can at least breathe easier.  I haven’t been obsessing as much as I expected to…but of course, I’ve been obsessing enough (insert smiley face here).  I can’t decide if I want to answer the call tomorrow or just let it go to voicemail when the nurse calls…I can already imagine my heartrate as I see the number on my phone.  Please oh please, let tomorrow be a good answer.  Saturday:  anniversary of twin miscarriage.  Would like to wake up on that day with some sort of positive information in my heart to help me through it…

And we hope to be home in an electrically-powered abode by tomorrow sometime…

2 Comments | In: March | | #

Not my lucky day.  Today’s beta was 502.  From 303 on Monday.  I am not pleased.  I am terrified.  The nurse sounded all sunshine and roses, telling me it is fine, they look for 60% increase, mine was 66%…blah blah.  But it seems like MOST people do indeed double.  I go back Monday for more bloodwork, then an ultrasound next Thursday afternoon.  It is only Wednesday.  Monday is very very far away.  So…

I called and left a message for the nurse asking if I can come Friday for blood instead of waiting until Monday.  We’ll see what she says.  I just don’t think I can wait that long and not lose my freaking mind.  If the news is better or the same on Friday, I can rest easy over the weekend.  If it’s not, I can be rightfully concerned.  But better than being concerned the whole way through if there is a chance I don’t need to be.

Hoping for power by Thursday night…but right now, that’s the least of my worries.

Now here is the part where everyone writes nice reassuring comments about their own experiences, how 48 hours isnt the be-all-end-all of doubling time, how under 72 hours is just as fine…that’s what I’m needing right now.  Please…

12 Comments | In: March | | #

Seriously.  Go ahead.  Delete me from your blogroll.  Cut my story out of your life.  Throw something at me.  Call me names behind my back.  Point fingers.  And say “I told you so.”  Because I am indeed pregnant.  Today, at 12dp3dt my beta was 303. 

Will it make you hate me less if I tell you I will still SWEAR on something really really important that I knew last weekend it didnt work?  (T says no, I didnt know…I thought I knew…)  But the signs were the SAME they were every other cycle.  Every other failed cycle.  Cycle one, cycle three, cycle 3.5 cycle four…all the same signs.  And every time, I tried to listen to people tell me I was wrong, it wasn’t over…and I was NOT EVER WRONG.  NOT. EVER.  So if you say you’ll never believe anything I have to say again…that’s fine.  But I believed it.  I KNEW it. I always longed to be this person but I never was.  I can certainly be a drama queen, but in this instance, I swear, I was not being one.  I was being true.

Will it make you hate me less if I tell you we lost power in the Unnamed Hurricane that slammed the Northeast…leaving us without power or heat since Saturday…and likely through the end of this week?  Giant trees are lying in neighbor’s upstairs bedrooms.  Cars are smashed in.  Roads are practically impassible.  We gave up after 24 hours of freezingness and just checked into a hotel yesterday.  Along with a whole lot of other people.

Will it make you hate me less when I tell you I am SCARED SHITLESS right now?  Because I find I am already checking my due date.  I am already thinking…is it one, two or three little guys in there?  I am already fretting about if it is either of the latter two.  I am already thinking of names.  I am JUMPING THE GUN LIKE NOBODYS BUSINESS and I can’t stop it.  I just never thought this would happen.  I still am not sure that it has.  But it was 303.  Wow.  Ides of March…

15 Comments | In: March | | #

I’m trying to go through my days like nothing is really different, and also to keep hope alive just a little bit.  But I don’t know if that is better or if it’s worse…telling myself there’s a .5% chance I’m wrong…when I KNOW in my heart I’m not wrong at all.  Yesterday I was able to talk so matter of factly about the failure to both my mom and a friend–I didn’t well up even once.  Yet this morning, as I thought about having to wake up P tomorrow and Friday for luteal bloodwork, and then again next Monday–it made me cry.  Going through the motions, pretending like this isn’t over–it’s a lot to handle.  I feel so isolated in my emotions right now, not letting anyone see what’s happening.  T and I still haven’t talked about it all, and I foolishly asked him this morning before he left if he could bring it up when he felt comfortable doing so–and we could discuss where we go from here.  Of course, he told me that he assumed since I was so definitive in my “this is it” comments this past weekend, that there was no room for discussion.  And then next thing I know, he’s running out the door, and I’m crying at the dining room table, sorting adoption papers.  I want to yell at him, of COURSE there is room for discussion.  I don’t want this to be over.  But I want him to be happy.  And I want us to be happy.  My mom pointed out that he and I had a very short time in our marriage/relationship to just BE–to be happy, to be carefree, to just enjoy everything.  We moved from one fairly large and encompassing health issue to infertility, and as a couple, have weathered more shit than most couples our age–hell, most couples.  I forget what my husband is like when he’s truly happy.  I forget what I’m like when I’m truly happy.  The year I was pregnant and the first year of P’s life were the happiest I can remember in recent (fiveish?) years.  I just want to help us find our footing again.  And I don’t know how to do that.  I know he only wants the same for me and for us as well, but I don’t know how we get there together right now.

I just can’t believe this didn’t work.  I’m 32.  I respond perfectly well to fertility drugs.  My lining always looks great.  I even had two make it to freeze this past cycle.  I sit around and do close to nothing for two days following the transfer.  But I can’t get pregnant.  I can’t get what other people can get through conventional means, through iui, through one (or two! or three! or four!) IVFs.  If we meet with Dr. D again, what would he say?  That my eggs are bad, to try to donor eggs? That I should try again?  That he has another idea that might work?  For god’s sake, I just want to be WRONG one time.  One time, I want to be proven WRONG for thinking the cycle was over, or doubting a new protocol.  I’ve already changed the dream of having had all my children already by this point in my life.  I’ve already changed the dream of having three or four children.  And now I have to change this one?  I don’t give a shit if I sound wimpy or whiny right now.  I feel so hurt and let down by the path my life has taken (do I need to give a sidenote– that I love my husband, I love my son, we have a lovely home, security, overall health…?).

I just want a hug from my mom right now.  I want to be sixteen years old, lying on my bed crying, my head in her lap as she strokes my hair and softly tells me it will all be okay.  Back when the problems of teenage angst seemed so insurmountable.  If only I could have seen into the future.  If only I could have seen where my life would lead.   Would I have cried more or less back then?

You know what else is hard?  When you realize that everyone else is going on with their lives right now as if our world didn’t just come crashing down.  They’re laying in their beds still, or getting dressed for work, or kissing their children, rubbing their pregnant bellies, hugging their husband.  They’re singing along to a song on the radio in their cars, or making breakfast or updating their facebook status (right now, facebook is not my friend.  just saying).  Perhaps the few who know are even hugging each other in gratitude that their life isn’t our life.  It is so hard to comprehend the normalcy of others’ lives, when my own feels upside-down right now.  And while I comprehend that this is not the worst thing to ever happen to a human being, right now, I only seem to selfishly care about myself.

Oh.  And next week marks the one year anniversary since we lost our twin pregnancy last year.  another year.  gone.  This is why I need to get off this hurt wagon of self pity and self-loathing.  I need to stop measuring my life in terms of failed cycles, failed pregnancies, an empty womb.  I need to find a way to move on.  But I just think I need to grieve for a while still.

4 Comments | In: March | | #

And, it’s end-game for us. 

Right on time, my pre-period cramping has arrived, exactly a week before scheduled arrival.  Just like every month.  Clockwork.  Taking no time out for the possibility of any of my three perfect embryos implanting.

This was likely the last one for a long, long while–if ever again.  I need to focus on my husband, and making a happy marriage, and my son…instead of spending all the time, money and energy on the HOPE of something.  Infertility has caused a lot of things to happen that shouldn’t have…and now I need to make those things right.  If it’s for a year, or many years, or a lifetime…time will tell, I guess.  I am just so so sorry for my dear husband and sweet son, whom I could not give another family member to.  They don’t deserve  this.  I will regret this god awful flaw of mine for a long while.

Some dreams aren’t meant to be realized, I guess.  I can only hope (when this is behind me…you know, after a week more of emotionally-insulting shots of oil in my ass) that I am able to find new dreams, and pursue those with the same heart and determination I pursued this one.

 I ask you all for your prayers that I can fix what needs fixing in my life, and move past this hole in my heart.  I love you so much, my darling babies I will never ever know.  Your momma loves you so so much.

6 Comments | In: March | | #

So.  We already know I was told the other day that it might be a day 3 or a day 5 (and I never did receive any clarification about this on days 1 or 2).  This morning, around 11, I received a call from the nurse to tell me the embryologist thought my embryos looked beautiful and wanted to grow them to day 5.  I asked if this was per my Dr (recall: part of his change in protocol was to transfer on day 3, because our day fives have been less than successful).  She said that this info was coming directly from the embryologist, and not from my doctor (who, apparently, had not chimed in on the issue as of yet).  The nurse said that I could always  call my doctor, and if he said I should indeed be transferring today, then he should call the lab and get me on the schedule (I did feel like an eejit for even asking this, based on the tone of her response…).

Fast forward an hour–I’m crying on the phone with T, wondering why my dr didn’t call to talk about any of this in person, feeling very uninformed and unhappy.  Why the change in protocol?  Why the change of something he was so certain he wanted to do?  And why not INFORM me of it?  T, of course, is telling me to relax, have faith in the program and the doctors, they all communicate, they all know what they’re doing…blahblahblah.  I was losing it– the thought of doing ANOTHER day five transfer of two nice looking embryos was making me really really…frustrated.  (Sidebar: I had placed a call to Dr’s service soon after talking to the nurse and was waiting to hear back.  Had also cancelled my father-in-laws trip up here, since we wouldn’t need him to watch P until Friday now).

An hour after the first call to the doctor, I called again, re-explained my story, and as I was giving my info, there here was, calling through on the call waiting.  And guess friggin what (doesn’t take a genius if you read the title of the post)–he said yes, I want you to transfer today.  After a verrrry quick apology about the miscommunication, he told me he would rather I transfer today (to quote: I prefer it 60/40), and I should get in to the lab shortly.  Yes.  I should be transferring.  Today.  Shortly.

Mmmmmmmmmmmkay.  While I wanted to bask in my I Told You So moment with T, I was also freaking a bit since a)I don’t live very close to the clinic, b)no one was around to watch P as we cancelled my FILs trip (and he lives three hours away) c)I wasnt packed for the hotel I’m now typing from and d)how was I going to get to the clinic that I don’t live very close to in time?????!!!  I did manage to get things together, T jumped in his car from midtown and was home in 45 minutes, I made an express train into the city, and though  I arrived later than my scheduled 3pm (again with the threes!), the waiting room was a repeat of Sunday, running behind, with all the same faces–my Retrieval Buds.  (And I made a friend!  I’ve been doing this forever and have never made an IF friend on the spot.  I always sit and look down.  But we exchanged info and everything…you know, so we can have playdates in a year.  She was also the name-band I was wearing for a few hours the other day, so perhaps that eased the IF-Waiting-Room-Tension.  What’s WITH all the silence?  We’re all there, naked under our gowns with those grippy socks, reading and staring around.  We should be talking!  Discussing our business!  Reaching out!  Instead…well, I usually just judge people while also making up their background stories…)

CAN YOU IMAGINE IF I WAS NOT AN ANAL NUTJOB AND DID NOT CALL TO CHECK WITH THE DOCTOR ABOUT THE TRANSFER?  NO ONE was picking up this error anywhere?   No one was like, Oh…Cfirstname Lastname…we almost effed her with the wrong bracelet, we’d better make sure we have all the right info when we call for her transfer…But nooooooooooo.

So.  I pat myself on my back for my analness.  I love my worrywart self so so much right now.  And I am happy to report, I have three 8-celled embryos floating around my uterus.  The others were all at 6 or 7 cells and they’ll grow them until Friday and freeze anything freeze-worthy.

Honestly, people.  I’m praying this is my cycle–The Cycle of Folly (Get it? Folly? Follie? heh heh heh…) is The One.

Get cozy my sweet little embryos.  Please make me so happy and hang around until Thanksgiving…I want so much to have something extra extra extra special to be thankful for this 2010…..

3 Comments | In: March | | #

That’s how many eggos I have sitting in a dish in a lab, hopefully getting their little selves fertilized.  I’m definitely pleased with the number–can’t go wrong with double digits. 

Today was a LOT of waiting….caught a 6:15 train to be in by 7:30, but was not actually on the table until 11:30 or so.  A LOT of waiting.  And of course…power went out again at home after the sitter arrived:  T left much later than I did (he didnt need to give his business until 9:30, which should have been a sign that it would be a long morning–still don’t know why they needed us all there at the same time!) and then he left when he was done to rescue our sitter from the cold, unpowered house.  I finished my book, looked around a million times at the people I “met” yesterday morning in pre-op (I always like to guess/make up their stories) and flipped through the pretentious pile of New Yorker magazines the waiting room is stocked with.  Not an US Weekly or even a Newsweek to be found.  Who wants to be cultured while sitting there for four hours?  Give me the gossip rags, tyvm…

Oh.  And they gave me someone else’s ID bracelet upon check-in.  After about an hour, I was sitting there, looking at it absentmindedly, thinking how weird it was that they put a nurse’s name and the dr’s name, but not my name…and then I thought it was weird they put the hurse’s birthday…(I was tired, okay?)  Turns out they had printed two of someone else’s.  Her husband and I joked about how rich we could have been if I had missed the mistake.  Pissed, but rich.

Will hear tomorrow about fert rates.  Tick tock, tick tock…

UPDATE: Not worthy of its own post…but received call today that all 11 were mature, and 10 fert normally and naturally(ummm…naturally?  ha.)  While this sounds like amazingness, I have always had a pretty swell fert rate.  It’s how they look later on…and the fact that they don’t want to hang out in my utes for 9 months that is the problem.  Nurse said it will be either day 3 or 5…which perplexed me, for I thought my Dr wanted to return to “what worked” when I got preg with P–and that was a day 3.  Also, thought he specifically said that cocultured embryos were only transferred on day 3.  Bueller?  Anyone?  Me, I’ll do what he recs…but I’m so hesitant to just transfer two.  We have been doing two over and over and over and over…….and nothing.  We find out Wed morning if we go in Wed, or if it is Fri.  Nothing like waiting til the last minute!

4 Comments | In: February 10 | | #

Where to start?  Yesterday we lost power here.  It happened early afternoon, and when I called the electric company, I was told the problem was noted and would likely be fixed by 8pm today (Saturday).  No power=no heat (and of course, no tv…) so I decided last night that we would all schlep over to a hotel if it wasn’t on by late evening.  Without power I couldn’t look up local hotels, so while on the phone with my dad, the IVF nurse called and left a message saying to discontinue all meds and take the Hcg at midnight.

I think I dropped the phone.  Wthedgehog?  Last I knew, my follicles were too small and I had at least another day of stims.  Also, at this point, I hadn’t yet given all my blood for the coculture.  And of course, the message was left after office hours, so I placed a call to the service, only to be told I’d be called back between 730 and 8pm.  Fast forward through packing for three by candlelight (while one lies face down on the rug, screaming bloody murder for some reason I can’t even remember now.) and we are at the hotel, it’s 8:45 and I haven’t yet heard from the doctor.  So I call back.  Play up the no-power thing.  And someone calls back in less than 15 minutes.  Apparently, it is fine to give the blood with the hcg…and the doctor was also able to help me understand why I triggered so early–it seems my E2 was plateauing a bit, and the worst that can happen is an E2 that dips down, so instead of risking that, they had me trigger.  This morning at my preop ultrasound, he told me that Corn.ell triggers patients much earlier than other places–they usually trigger between 16 and 18.  My largest this morning had grown from about 16.5 to 18, so that was reassuring.

Trigger shot: 12am.  Bat Mitzvah ending in our hotel: 12am.  Lots and lots of happy people swarming our halls, talking in outdoor voices until about 1.  5:08, cue alarm clock, so the three of us could get in the car by 5:30 and get down to the clinic for 6:30 start. 

(Lots of time somehow passes between leaving the clinic at 7:45 and 1230pm…though all I rememeber is a stop home to pick up bathing suits for a swim in the hotel pool with P, swimming in the hotel pool with P, and then cleaning up P after I let him eat his lunch naked on a towel in the hotel room.  Nudity +applesauce+spoon=a very fruity lower half.)

Got a call from a neighbor who had just stopped home to let us know her power was back on.  We packed up our junk, got in the car, and headed home.  Stopped off at our favorite deli for lunch.  As soon as we shut the door behind us, the power goes out.  We are cursed, I am thinking.  After about a minute, the lights come back on…and so does the radio.  And who do you think is singing to me right then?  Yep.  You guessed it. 

(So I start to cry a bit.  I take P next door to look around the card store instead of standing there crying my eyes out…and wouldn’t you know.  Playing there too.)

I said to T–either this past week has been God’s way of telling us to keep fighting for this–or God’s way of telling us to let it go.  Still not sure which it is…

1 Comment | In: February 10 | | #

We have at LEAST two feet of snow on the ground.  Perhaps more.  I have never missed California as much as I do right now!  This morning T shoveled the driveway, telling me I could “make my own decision” about my own shoveling, since I forgot the ask the doctor when he requested that I ask (read:  he doesn’t think I should shovel.  You know– A few lifts of the shovel could knock all the eggs out and they’d be lying there in a pile after snaking down my velour pantleg and over the top of my boot…).  This drives me eff-ing crazy.  But whatever.  So I cleaned off the car and got P ready to go.  We left around 8:30 to drive the 25 minutes to the burb clinic (couldnt go to the city–my car suucks in snow, and besides, there were hour-long delays on our train line due to fallen trees).  So.  Made it there in an hour, family in tow.  It seems I am close to trigger, but not quite there yet.  My biggest one today was 16.5.  Lining was 11.2, I think (yesterday, it was over 12.  When I asked why the change…he said it all depends on the dr that measured it, but that he was very precise.  Ha)  Again, I find that Corn.ell does some different stuff when it comes to measuring.  They really only scout around up there for the biggest ones, and then kind of include the others in a giant +10 grouping.  I’m not sold on the fact that it’s trigger tomorrow…16.5 seems a bit small still, wondering if they’ll push to Sunday night.

I’ll find out in a few hours what happens tonight, but I’m guessing same dose (187.5/150/ganirelix), with a trip into the city tomorrow morning, to get the last tubs of blood drawn for the co-culture as well as the regular bw/us.  E2 yesterday was 1005, the day before it was 725 or something, and the day before that, in the mid-five-hundreds.  Guessing today it is about 1219 (approximately…).

Also…had a minor meltdown after reading the new SART data for 2008, and saw that my old clinic had a 10% greater success rate for peeps in my age group than my current one.  Thanks a bazillion to my bud Ginger who talked my crazed, hormonal self through my doubts.  We’re at the best place for us right now.  That’s all there is to it.

On the drive home today I said to T, Wouldn’t it just be so great if this one worked?  Because you kind of lose sight of the end-game while going through it all, especially after this many times.  As T says, it’s like we plan to have our lives really suck for a few weeks at a time, and perhaps, just maybe, there is something good that happens when it is over.  I can’t even begin to really imagine what that would be like right now…

No Comments | In: February 10 | | #

How is that Monday was only two days ago?  It feels like a year ago.  Or at the very least, four days ago.  This morning I went up to the burbs to have the ultrasound and the bw, leaving P with my friend at 7:15.  Thank you a million K (if you know, I ever let you know I write this.  lol).  The weather was nasty and apparently will be getting nastier.  Why oh why didn’t I get new tires before this winter began?  Crimeny.  So the tech said I was not close to ready–the follicles were measuring around 12mm.  Umkay.  So they were between 10 and 11 on Monday, and now are just at 12?  On Monday afternoon they dropped my Gonal dose from 450 to 300, and then yesterday dropped it further to 225.  So that would explain the slow growth.  But why, I ask?  I mean, if he was confident on Monday that I would be likely retrieving this weekend…why slow things down?  Is there something about the EPP that I don’t know about?  I am NOT on target for retrieving this weekend–I put my money on Monday.  T will be away on business Mon and Tues, so we have a nice tray o sperm into the freezer to use if/when necessary (if only it were that easy—instead it is 850 bucks.  I swear…why couldn’t we just chuck it in a ziploc and put it next to the tortelloni soup in my own freezer for a few days?)

So why the slow growth?  My stomach has no more roooooooooom (said in an extremely annoying whiny, whiny voice) for three shots a night for the next three to five more nights!  I guess I will find out in a few hours when they call…

(as for Miley…I’m driving home in the slush, mad as heck for feeling duped about my follicle growth and triggering potential, just feeling fed up, feeling like I’m just going through the motions for something unattainable, feeling tired, feeling uuuugly…and then I hit one of the five presets, and There.She.Was.  Reminding me to climb up the friggin mountain.  It did help with the perspective, I admit.  So again.  I write about it.)

1 Comment | In: February 10 | | #