Today's results

I have 6 measurable on the right now (one more than yesterday) and still 7 on the left. My coordinator still says I am doing really good. I will monitor again in the morning. She said I would probably take my trigger shot tmrw and be ready for retrieval on Friday. 

So my eggs have a few more days to grow! 

We really are enjoying ourselves!  We have been lounging by the pool, saw a movie, did a little shopping. Now we are on our way to my friend Aubrey's house to visit with her and her little boy, Nate! I am excited, I haven't seen her in a while. 

I'm still not nervous yet. I know I probably will be in the next day or two. But like I said the only thing to be nervous about is how many good eggs we can get and how many grow into our future babies! 

I have been having crazy dreams and night sweats from the medicine but other than that I feel fine! Thanks for reading and praying! 

Yay!

Just a quick post from my phone...

We just got amazing news! I am responding excellent to the medications. I had 5 measurable follicles on the right and 7 on the left! So from Friday to Monday I went from 2 to 12! I really feel like I am on top of the world! 

My blood levels were good too! My estradiol jumped way up to 717. Joan said that was excellent. 

So now I am monitoring every morning until it is time for retrieval! 

Results

My results were good. I had one measurable follicle on the right that was 1.0 cm. (Measurable is anything above 1 cm.) And there were 6 others that were less than 1 cm. I had one measurable on the left at 1.4 cm. And 12 that were less than 1 cm! Yay! Hopefully some of those smaller ones will catch up by Monday! 

She also gave me my hormone levels:

Estradiol 174

LH 10.5

FSH 11.6

Progesterone 0.8 

I need to do some research on just what all this means. She said they were all within normal range. So I am happy! The only thing is she said they wanted to test these again on Sunday. Since they weren't able to get blood at my local hospital on Monday, they had nothing to compare these results to. So we are going back up one day earlier than we planned but that's ok. 

We are both so excited at this point! We feel so blessed at this point in the journey! I will post again on Sunday. 

Monitoring

Yesterday we met with Dr.Derosa. He is super nice and we feel like we are in the best hands. He has been doing this procedure for 19 years. I told him that on Monday I had 7 follicles. He said "wow and you're young." He said that if I had 7 follicles he would probably be able to get anywhere from zero to four eggs out. Not every follicle will have an egg in it. We knew that going into this there would be a possibility that they could get zero eggs. It's hard to hear but it is what it is. We won't know until we try!

We went to the Cardinals game last night. They bet the Diamondbacks 12 - 8! We had 5 home runs! Shelby Miller pitched. We got to see him get his first hit since in the majors and the next at bat he hit a home run, awesome! We didn't get any balls hit in our section like I was hoping, next time!

Ain't he cute?! He came down with his dad after we sat down. When he walked by he said "dad I thought you said when you bought our tickets that we would be close." Ha he didn't want to sit in the 3rd row, he wanted to sit in the 1st row! I told Ryan that will be our kid. He said ya if he's like his momma. :)

This morning I had my ultrasound and blood work. The u/s tech started on the right, the side that has less follicles. I asked when she moved to the left if there were still only two. And she said that she only measured one (they have to be a certain size to measure) but that she counted 6! Yay! She said she counted 12 on the left! So hopefully that means the meds are working and that I will have a chance at more than zero to 4! We are so excited, more than ever! My blood work went good too, only one stick! Everyone we have encountered at St Louis (both St Luke's and Mercy Hospitals) have been beyond sweet and so quick! 

I haven't heard back from the doctor's office with my official results yet but I will make a quick post when I do. Thanks for all your prayers and support! We love y'all! 

It's getting exciting!!!

Today is my last day at work until after my retrieval! Tomorrow morning we are off to St. Louis to meet with the OB that will be doing my egg retrieval. Then Friday morning I will have my 2nd monitoring ultrasound and blood work.

I had the first monitoring on Monday. My doctor said the ultrasound of my follicle size was right where it should be. I still only had 2 follicles in my right ovary and 5 in my left. I was hoping for more this time but I guess it's better than less. They were tiny, which they are supposed to be in the beginning of a cycle. Then hopefully they grow real big!

The blood work Monday wasn't so great! I got stuck 6 times by 4 different people, almost fainted, spent an hour in the blood lab drinking juice, sitting in front of a fan and having warm towels wrapped around my arms before the supervisor of the lab finally got some (not much) blood from the top of my hand. She told me it was enough to do my hormone panels but not to test for the HIV, Hepatitis, Rubella, etc. Which I was fine with, I knew I could do it in St. Louis on Friday. But then later that day the nurse from Dr. Silber's office called and said the lab told her they didn't have enough blood to run the hormone panel. Dr. S said it was okay, we would just wait and see what my levels were on Friday. But man all that for nothing! Oh well! The lady who finally got my blood said that it was probably because I was so cold. My already extremely tiny veins were hiding. Yup I was freezing at 7:30 when I first walked in and by the time I got to the blood lab it was 9:00, so ya I was froze to the bone by then! Oh well.... just a tiny bump in the road. I can handle tiny bumps! :)

I am not really nervous yet, mainly just excited! However, I do admit this week a little anxiety has started to creep in a bit. The "what if's" have tried to ruin my day a couple of times. But I am really doing pretty good at stomping them out. I can tell Ryan is getting excited too. I am certain he worries too but I don't think he is ever gonna let me see that. He is always so positive! Last night I told him that I was starting to get anxious and of course he asked about what. Ha. I said "I don't know, like what if we don't get any eggs, what if we get some but none fertilize, what if some do fertilize but they all die, what if everything goes smooth and I get pregnant in the Fall like planned but then I miscarry." His reply "Baby we knew going into this that it wouldn't be 100%, we don't know until we try." Yup he's right! Then he said something along the lines of we have to think positive and take one day at a time. Which I really honestly feel like I have been and I really do have to pat myself on the back for that! Because after we left our first consultation with Dr. S, the whole way home I thought to myself how am I ever gonna do this without stressing, worrying and panicking the entire time. That was April 5th, two months ago! So I think I have done pretty darn good, I made it a whole two months before I let the "what if's" start creeping in. It's strange really because that is not my personality at all. I feel like I have done so much better than I thought I ever could.

And don't get me wrong I am still positive about next week. I think when you are doing IVF you almost have to be, otherwise you wouldn't get through it! That and pray and trust in God and his plan. I know this plan was designed for us. I know that we can handle this. I know that it has grown my faith, our marriage, our awareness of our health and is preparing us to be amazing and grateful parents.

Anyway back to my schedule, we should be coming home Friday after my monitoring appt. We will then have to be back to St. Louis Monday morning for monitoring again. We will do blood work and ultrasound at least every other day until the doctor says it is time to get my eggs! EEK, exciting! It's okay if you think I am crazy for being excited about being put under and letting a doctor stick a needle into my ovaries. No I am not worried about that, only about what he says when I wake up! Since people have had questions about how that process is done (I think they have trouble wrapping their minds around it) I have included a picture. The doctor will use an ultrasound probe to guide the needle into each follicle and extract the fluid inside which also contains the egg. (I wish my ovaries looked like this! Mine are no where near that full!)

After they get the eggs out they will inject each one with sperm. Like this

 



Then they will be put in a dish and monitored each day by an embryologist. The goal is for each of the eggs to fertilize. Even though they place the sperm into the egg, that doesn't ensure that it will fertilize and turn into an embryo. But I am praying like crazy they all do! They will know by the next day how many have fertilized. On the second and third day they check to see how good the embryos are growing. The prayer then becomes that by day 3 all of the embryos look like the 8 or 10 cell embryo in the picture below. Those babies are a thing of IVF beauty! Hopefully if everything goes well we will get to see pictures just like these of our future babies. :) :) :)

I will try to make a quick post after each monitoring appt to keep everyone updated on how things are going. Thank you to all of you who have been praying thus far! Now is the time we need your prayers more than ever, prayers for good egg quality that turn into excellent embryos!

Four Years of Wedded Bliss!

Today is our 4th Anniversary! I feel so blessed! God blessed me so much when he put Ryan in my life! Those of you who really know him know that I am not just going on about him because it's our anniversary and I am feeling mushy or something. Ha. He is a great person, friend, son, husband and teacher! I know without a shadow of doubt, with every cell in my body that he will be one of those AMAZING fathers too! And I am so very proud to be his wife!

He did really good!! This is the first time he has ever bought Jadeite for me. I have been collecting for a while now. I have always wanted one of these milk pitchers. They are one of the more rare objects in the collection. He told me he had told one of the teachers he is close to at school that I collect Jadeite a while back. She said her mom had some that she may want to sell. Mrs. K said that her mom was almost in tears when she let it go. But Mrs. K told her that it should go to someone who collects, that I would appreciate it more than any of them. She told her we would have it for 50 years because we were young! I sure hope so! It will be taken extra care of!

 

And some pics from the best day of my life (so far)...

 

 

 

Come on June!!

So things are going along pretty smoothly. I only have 7 more days of taking birth control!

I have completely quit caffeine now! It was hard but only for about a week.

I have also decided to change the way I eat. I am trying to eat lots of protein and really limit processed foods. It has been hard. I do like meat, eggs, cheese, etc. But I also like bread and junk food! I have been doing better than I thought I could. A study showed women that got at least 25% of their calories from protein had a much higher success rate while undergoing IVF. So I thought I better give it a shot and try, try, try!

So the schedule is still the same:

Birth control through May 28th
Have a period
Ultrasound, blood work @ Mtn. Home and begin Clomid on June 3rd
Follistim shots June 5th, 7th and 9th
Appt with Dr. DeRosa @ St. Louis June 6th (Cardinals game that night! Woohoo!)
Ultrasound, blood work June 7th @ St. Louis
Then probably sent home and told to come back Monday for ultrasound & blood work
Will for sure have an ultrasound & blood work every other day that week, if not everyday until egg retrieval

And for the best news we have received in quite a long while........ looks like insurance is gonna PAY!!! We are so excited. I am trying not to get too excited because I know how things can change so quickly on this infertility roller coaster. But I do feel like shouting it on a rooftop somewhere! THANK YOU GOD!! Thank you for my job that provides insurance. Thank you that I live in Arkansas, one of the states that has laws for infertility coverage. Thank you that those laws apply to my policy.

I am getting so excited about the whole process! No nerves yet. The only thing to be nervous about is egg count and egg quality and then embryo quality. But I haven't started obsessing about that yet. No point!

Kolette and I have started planning Rayleen's shower! It's gonna be super cute! I am excited to have a side project. It still seems a little unreal that she is having a baby. But I cannot wait for the little stinker to get here! She's gonna be soooo spoiled and have the best aunts ever!

Mother's Day Tree

Here's the tree I got on Mother's Day. I ended up going with a red bud. It will have pretty pink blooms in the spring and has heart shaped leaves. :) I planted it close to our driveway, that way it is always there to great us as soon as we turn in. My mom said it is a tree to remember. I am so glad she encouraged me to get one. At first I thought 1} it will die in my yard (not because I wouldn't take care of it but my grandpa's sneaky cow, Carrot gets out anytime she wants) & 2} something else to mow around. Ha. But now that it is there it looks so much better, that spot needed something!

Our target date is less than a month away now! EXCITING!

A little bit of humor.... and Mother's Day!

As I pulled up my MSN homepage and scrolled to the bottom I saw this article. {Read it before you read below if you want what I wrote to make more sense to you. You will have to click through each of the 20 slides}

http://now.msn.com/mommyjacking-when-moms-hijack-your-facebook-feed
 It was titled "20 Moms who should stop posting. NOW" and had a Facebook photo. So it intrigued me. It gave me a good laugh. Yup there are clueless people every where!

Facebook is sometimes a real downer and even hurtful to us infertile gals. Pregnant women complaining about being fat, sick, etc. Moms complaining about their children doing this or that or even having a cold. I realize the 'my child is sick, has a cold, strep' and so on is just them expressing their concern for their children. (I will insert if there is a serious post about a serious medical problem, I do always feel sympathy for the family and pray for them!)

I don't use Facebook as an outlet to inform the public about or complain about my infertility either. That is what the blog is for, so that those close to me can keep updated in this aspect of my life. :) I have never been one to express every thought, worry or action that happens in my day on Facebook. I like to post exciting things, things that make me happy. I like seeing posts from people that are excited or proud of their children, pets, jobs, vacations, family members, favorite teams, etc. Every now and then I will see a post that says something along the lines of how blessed they are when talking about their child(ren). Those are the ones that really make me smile, because they are blessed! And for them to acknowledge that gives me hope. Hope that someday I will be posting about how blessed we are for our child(ren). And sometimes I want to tell some of the moms (or soon-to-be) on Facebook how blessed they are. Just simply type a comment on their negative or complaining statuses, "You are so blessed!" and nothing else. But I don't! Instead I either block their posts from my news feed or de-friend them.

This is one of the many blogs I follow, wrote by a fellow infertile gal. It was a good post of what to do and not to do on Mother's Day.

http://ourmisconception.blogspot.com/2013/05/no-womb-for-mothers-day-this-year.html

I am being honest, I have been dreading Mother's Day. I know I shouldn't and as it gets closer it gets better. I am actually getting more excited about it. (Like everything with me the dreading is usually always worse than the actual event.) After all, I am a mother and I can celebrate that! I still have my mother in my life and both of my grandmothers and Ryan's mom and step mom and I can celebrate that! Thank You Lord for making me a mother to a child that is in your care and thank you for giving me so many wonderful women in my life!

After reading "Hannah's Hope" my mom suggested we plant a tree for our baby (her first grand baby) in Heaven. At first I was a little hesitant. I thought that would just drag up feelings that I felt I had a good grip on. She asked again the other day if I had thought about it and I said "Ya, maybe, we will see". I got to thinking over the weekend (as I was having anxious thoughts about the upcoming weekend) that if I were going to plant a tree that would be a good weekend to do it. It always takes me a while to process things when it comes to 'our struggle'. I have to weigh it all in my head for a while before I can make a decision, little or big. Anyway yesterday I told my mom we could do it on Sunday! That is the plan as of now. Go to town with my mom, get a tree and come home and plant it! Of course Ryan will be digging the hole! His mom is also coming up this weekend and we will spend all day Saturday with her. We are going to look at houses for her and her husband, so that will keep us busy! It is going to be a good weekend after all! All that worry for nothing.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY TO ALL OF YOU READING!! Thanks for reading and praying! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!



{Not trying to offend anyone by this post, if you are offended please kindly find something else to read in the future.}  

Update... not much to tell

It's been a while since my last post. Mostly because there hasn't been much to tell. I finally started my cycle and have a day by day plan now!

I started my first birth control pill yesterday and will stay on them until May 28th.

On June 3rd I will begin Clomid and stay on it until I am told to stop.

I will give myself three injections of Follistim on June 5th, 7th and 9th.

My first monitoring appointment, which includes an ultrasound and blood work to measure my follicles and check hormone levels, is June 3rd. The first monitoring appointment I can do at the local hospital.

My second monitoring will be in St. Louis on June 7th. I was told to make an appointment with my assigned OB, Dr. DeRosa. He will be the doctor doing my retrieval. I tried to get it the same day as the monitoring appt, but he isn't in town that day. So I scheduled to meet with him the day before. Which works out just fine! We will have to be in St. Louis extremely early on the 7th, so we can go up the day before meet with the OB and stay the night. AND the Cardinals are playing that night! I already bought our tickets! {EXCITED!!} We will also both have our HIV and hepatitis tests one of these two days.

After that I am not sure, it turns into a day by day basis. My scheduled transfer date is still June 14th but this could vary 1 - 2 days before or after. It all depends on how well my follicles respond to the medications.

Last week I called the insurance coordinator at St. Luke's Hospital (where all the magic will happen). I gave her my insurance information and told her that my policy does cover infertility but I didn't know if I would meet the qualifications or not. I was told a while back by a Blue Cross customer service rep that "two years of unexplained infertility" starts when you first see a doctor about your infertility. I have been so confused by that statement. Because a doctor doesn't normally want to see you for infertility until you meet the definition of infertility which is trying for 12 months without success. So does that mean that I have to try for 12 months on my own and then for another 2 years with the assistance of a doctor? So confusing! That doesn't even make sense, two years of infertility is two years to me! Anyway, she said she would get in contact with my insurance company and let me know at the beginning of this week. I know I shouldn't worry about it, because it will be what it will be. I cannot change it. But again the wait to know is torture. It doesn't matter what the answer is. We are going forward with our plan either way. But if we could actually get some help from insurance that would be such an amazing blessing!

I started a savings account about a year after we married. I told Ryan it was our future home fund. I wanted to save up money for when we built a house and I wanted new furniture or upgrades that weren't in our budget. No most people probably don't think like this. If you know me well enough you know I am a planner and like to prepare. Thank you Lord for making me that way! I am more than happy to spend that money on creating a family than on the material things I intended it for! (He knew what he was doing, I didn't). We have enough money saved up to pay for two, back to back retrievals. I am not trying to be greedy with my money when I say that I hope insurance will help out. Because I am not trying to keep my money, instead I am thinking "ok what if we go through the first two and they are not successful, then we have no savings left?" Which would put more stress on the situation. Not that that would be the end of the journey. Because it wouldn't. We would continue on.

It sure was nice to have a break from the craziness and emotions for a month but I am excited to get started! Yesterday as I took my first birth control pill I moved one step closer! I am looking forward to the next step. June 14th is 39 days away! Some days I still can't believe this is happening!

 

My chalkboard :)