beta is tomorrow!

Beta # 1 is tomorrow!!

Sibling(s)

As some of you may know, we are home pregnancy test junkies. Nevermind the "don't test at home" instructions the RE's nurse gives us - we start testing immediately. First to see when the trigger is gone and next to see when the 2 lines show up. So yesterday was the first day in which we experienced the latter. There was a very faint line but a line none the less on a FRER (our preferred brand of pee sticks). While we are POAS-aholics, we are very disciplined. We will only test with first morning urine, thus the wait until this morning began.

Well this morning came earlier than expected. R woke up at 3:30am and couldn't hold it anymore. So she tested. And we waited. I do think the 3 minute wait is worse the day after getting a faint line. Was the faint line a fluke? Will the line be gone today? Is this another chemical? Please let there be a line. I know color isn't supposed to matter and a line is a line but please let it be darker today than yesterday. Has it been 3 minutes yet? I want this to work for R so badly. I think I have some internalized (or not so internalized) guilt about me being pregnant and it not being with her egg. Why didn't that work? That would have been the best of both worlds. OMG it's been 3 minutes - turn on the lights and let's take a look.

The line is darker!!! OMG the line is darker and it's only 6dp5dt (11dpo) - shit I hope it's one really strong embryo (like The Boy who also had positive hpts by 10dpo and darker lines each day after) and not twins or triplets.

And now we wait

Today we're officially 3 days post a 5 day transfer (3dp5dt). We ended up transferring 3 "expanding blasts" on Thursday morning. The embryologist, a very serious middle eastern woman who rarely speaks or smiles (all good qualities in someone who spends their time in a lab growing embryos), smiled and said that the embryos looked very good and I quote "it's going to work". I'm hoping we can hold her to it - what do you think? We were also fortunate enough to freeze 9 blasts - our clinic has very strict freezing guidelines, so I know they were good quality blasts. So if we were using the pro-life definition of a baby - you know, the life is created when sperm and egg combine definition, we currently have 16 kids. OMG, we're almost like the D*uggers. Well except for the fact that 12 of our kids are in the nitrogen tanks at the RE's office, 3 embryos are currently in R's uterus and our other child is 27 weeks along in my uterus - so none of our kids are alive yet and they're certainly not all named J names and wearing the same colored shirts with long skirts made from the same fabric as the curtains.

R's house arrest has finally been lifted today. She did 3 days of bed rest following embryo transfer. It was quite the role reversal with me waiting on her hand and foot. R's the one who does the grocery shopping and plans our meals and of course she planned burgers for Friday night. Just so we're clear, that's an R meal - she makes great burgers, she's known for her burgers. I have a few meals I make and burgers isn't one of them. In fact nothing I make is on the grill. Needless to say, making burgers plus a few side items was overwhelming for me. I can save lives and handle several sick patients at a time in the hospital but burgers and manning a grill was just too overwhelming. Luckily I managed not to screw things up and dinner turned out ok but really, why did she decide to have burgers when I was in charge, I'm not quite sure.

I knew R was ready to get out of the house today after being cooped up when she suggested that we go to b*bies R Us. She hates that store. We went there for crib sheets and then to a few other stores looking for decorations for the nursery. Doing a wordly theme is proving to be harder than I thought it would be. We did buy a cool wooden Indian elephant and monkey today. Slowly it's coming together. We also swung by a baby gap outlet - BAD IDEA. OMG, they have adorable stuff. We'll have one well dressed little dude. R is not allowed to go there by herself - it's too easy for her to do way too much damage.

So 1 more week until beta... but really, you know we'll test before then.

Record setting wife

My wife currently holds the clinic record for most number of eggs retrieved. Egg retrieval yesterday went amazingly well. 47 eggs were retrieved - that's right, holy shit 47 eggs. Of course we all know it's quality and not quantity but there's certainly a bit of comfort when you're starting out with 47 eggs. For the love of god, there has to be some good quality ones in there - at least 1 baby. We got the fert report today - of those 47 eggs, 30 were mature and 24 fertilized. That's more fertilized embryos with this IVF than with IVF #1 and #2 combined (5 fertilized in IVF #1 and 17 in IVF #2). We're hopefully looking at a 5 day transfer - we'll get the call on Tuesday telling us how many are still growing strong and that will be the deciding factor between a day 3 and a day 5 transfer.

In the meantime, I've been taking care of my wife. R's got some OHSS but not as bad as expected considering her E2 level in the 7000's and her 47 eggs. She's most comfortable reclining on the couch and I'm busy making sure she's eating plenty of protein and drinking gatorade to help the symptoms from getting worse. I also went on a bit of a cleaning frenzy today - my first bit of nesting I guess. I'm talking on my hands and knees scrubbing the bathrooms while wearing a mask so as to not inhale fumes. I even took apart part of the shower door to clean the under surface of it.

Ahh, now time for the fun stuff - time to go stick R with the giant PIO needle. Unlike her, I don't have giggle fits when I stick her. Despite icing first, R usually yells - which I hate. She kind of screams the entire time until I get the needle out. I feel horrible for hurting her but I hope I get to do it for the next 10 weeks!

Double digit days and double digit follies

I'm 26 weeks today. Every week from here on out is another week that the boy grows and his organs mature. Time however seems to be going by so slowly. In the beginning it seemed like the weeks flew by but since hitting 20 weeks, time has slowed to a crawl. Not that I mind so much as I'm trying to enjoy every minute of being pregnant but then there's the part of me who wants to meet the boy already. Yesterday I moved into double digits -as in only 99 days to go until my due date! It's crazy to think that I've been pregnant already for 26 weeks (or 24 weeks if you count it from the day of insemination).

The other double digit reference refers to my wife, the hen. Once again she's busy making eggs. At her most recent follie check she had about 30 follies. It looks like ER will be on Saturday. Really, all I want is a baby - I don' t care how many follies we get, I just want her to be able to achieve her dream and have a bio baby. I feel guilty for being able to achieve my dream of being pregnant. I wish so badly that I was pregnant with one of her embryos which would have fulfilled both our dreams at once. Unfortunately her embryos did not like my uterus. Hopefully this batch of embryos will take a liking to her uterus.

It does feel weird not to be partaking in IVF #3. For IVF #1 we put her embies into me and for IVF #2 we put her embies into both of us. So for both of those, I was on lupron and then IM shots of estrogen (which is also in oil) in addition to the PIO shots. I do draw up her meds every night and she does stick me with my heparin (I ran out of room on the front and sides of my thighs so now she sticks the fatty areas in the backs of my thighs since I can't reach around back there) but it's not the same. We're no longer both undressing in the RE's office. I used to stand with the beautiful blue drape covering my naked girl parts while she was wanded and then we'd quickly swap places on the table so that our RE didn't go see another patient in between our wanding sessions. Now it seems so uncomplicated - just one of us going through the process. The nurses don't even get confused by which meds go to which person, now it's just one of us. Obviously I'm grateful to be pregnant and not to have to go through IVF #3 - it just feels strange to have R doing it all by herself this time.

The Boy at 24w6d

Here are some pictures from today's u/s... yes, he's still a boy as the first picture confirms!

giggling like a 13 y/o girl

My readership has totally dropped off - probably because I don't blog very often and probably because I've crossed over from the land of infertility and IVF into the land of the pregnant women. My belly continues to grow - I can still see my feet but I can't see my girl parts anymore. I have run out of room on my thighs for my heparin shots so I've started reaching around to the fattier areas on the backs of my thighs. Reaching around is getting harder to do so I've been having R give me my shots. Tonight just after she put the needle in the skin, R began to have a giggle attack. Her whole body shook as if she was having a seizure... a seizure while holding the needle that was sticking in me, the one that I really couldn't reach around and grab. It took her forever to push the plunger down. She felt horrible about it but the worse she felt and the more she tried to stop laughing, the more she continued to laugh. I have no idea what she was laughing about but needless to say, I wasn't laughing.

In other news - I should have more pictures of the boy tomorrow. I have an u/s scheduled for tomorrow so I'll update the blog with pictures tomorrow afternoon.

R has also started IVF #3. She started stims today and will have her first follie check on Sat. I'll keep you posted on that as well.

We've reached kitten stage!

We've made it to 24 weeks!!! The viability milestone. Not that in any way I want our boy to make his appearance at 24 weeks but still, this is a huge milestone. During residency I did plenty of rotations in the NICU and took care of plenty of 24 weekers (even some 23 1/2 weekers). I took R into the NICU several times to show her the babies. She always thought the micro preemies looked like kittens - we'll we're now at kitten stage!

In other news, I think the boy has shifted some again and I finally felt him more again today. He gave me a huge kick today while I was in the middle of talking to a patient's mom. It made me totally lose my train of thought. I had to apologize and tell the mom I had just been kicked. Luckily, that's the joy of pediatrics - the mom was totally amused and we all got a good laugh out it.

For those of you that commented on my yoga post - several of you mentioned having pregnancy yoga DVDs. Any recommendations? I went to Bor*ders yesterday looking for a pregnancy yoga DVD since I won't be able to make it to the yoga class every Saturday (I work some weekends). I found one DVD - it was much cheaper than the rest. I read the back - it said "Do you want flatter abs?" WTF - this is a pregnancy yoga DVD. No for once in my life I don't want flatter abs. I'm loving my huge round belly. It's the one time in my life that I love my body - and that includes my new found ass. I've never had a butt. Even though I'm half hispanic, I have no JLo inheritance. That is until now - I now have a butt. I'm not sure where it came from and I don't particularly want it to stay. I can't wear my old pants with the bel*la band b/c of my thighs and butt. I didn't even know my thighs and butt had gotten bigger until I just tried on a pair of pants - holy shit. (BTW - I don't want the pregnancy yoga DVD for weight loss - I'm not worried about that until after the boy is born. I want it to help with breathing and relaxing).