Egg retrieval - success!!!

Just a quick post to update about egg retrieval. Things went great this morning and we got 27 eggs! I can't tell you how excited I am. It's going to work this time!!! I will be pregnant in 2 weeks. We're hoping for a 5 day blast transfer. I think it that case we'll do 2 in me and 1 in R. If we do a 3 day transfer, then we'll have to decide between the 2 and 1 plan and 2 in each of us. Thank you to those of you that replied to my post from yesterday. I also think that we're going to do assisted hatching - anything to up our chances.

It's going to work...but just in case it doesn't

Things are continuing to go well. R is miserable as she has about 30 follicles in all and her E2 level is in the 5000's. Poor thing has been unable to sit upright in a chair for the past 3 days - she's only comfortable laying down or reclining. 30 follies sounds great - that's 10 more than she had last time. But last time they got a bunch of blood out of some of the follies due to her endometriosis and only got 12 eggs. Of those 12 only 6 were mature. So last time 20 follies equaled 6 eggs. We're hoping for better numbers this time around. So far, things look promising.

We triggered last night which is an event all in itself. R is terrified of IM shots. I think that's part of why we did not transfer into her last time - she's afraid of the PIO shots. We were having dinner last night with friends when it was time to trigger. We proceeded on providing quite the show for our friends with R giggling nervously and running away from me with the needle. Who knew that she could run with a belly that looks like she's 4 months pregnant from all those follicles. After about 10 minutes, I was finally able to get her to stand still and stick her. Tonight we start the progesterone shots - that should prove to be interesting.

So I've told you all about my new found positive attitude. How we're convinced it's going to work. Well this week we freaked out because we are convinced that it's going to work. OMG - what if we end up with quads?!?! Who the fuck wants quads?!?! Are we freaking nuts to think about transferring 2 into each of us? Mind you last time we transferred 3 into me and I'm obviously not pregnant with triplets, or even with one baby for that matter. But this time it's going to work. My latest plan is to do 2 into me, since I really want to be pregnant and 1 into R since she doesn't want to be pregnant. Transferring into her is just as an insurance, in case my uterus decides to get rid of the baby again (insert watermelon seed spitting noise). If we had unlimited funds like Brooke Shields, who did 7 IVF's, then we would only transfer into me.

I'm hoping that we get to blasts. If that happens, then I think we'd transfer 1 into each of us or again 2 into me and 1 into her. Our RE said we should do 2 blasts into each of us. Is he fucking nuts??? I'll do that, if he's planning on adopting our 4th child. I don't even want triplets. I just want this to freaking work. I want to do whatever will maximize our chances. Speaking of - anyone have any thoughts on assisted hatching. Our RE said it's up to us if we want to do it. WTH - he's the expert. But he treats me as a colleague and lets me make the decisions. I don't know. All I know is that AH slightly increases the rate of identical twins. Identical twins would be cool, but not if there are 1 or 2 other babies on the way for us.

Now today, I'm thinking about how we put 3 in me last time and none took, so why wouldn't we go for it. Why wouldn't we put in 4 - 2 in each of us? I just don't know what to do. We have a few days to decide. ER is tomorrow, embryo transfer should be either Wednesday or Friday depending if it's a 3 or 5 day transfer. So here's where you come in...HELP, I need your advice.

I suck - but things are well

I've totally sucked about blogging the past week. I've been super busy. In addition to my busy schedule seeing patients in clinic, I also work some evening and weekend urgent care shifts. I had traded some of the urgent care shifts that I had scheduled for the time of projected embryo transfer & bed rest, so that my schedule is free then. Well that means that currently, I'm busy as shit. I also work a weekend job 1 weekend a month to make extra money on the side. My moonlighting job is in a small hick town 1 1/2 hours away. To make matters worse, the internet has been down the last 2 times I've been there. I am feeling so over scheduled and am really looking forward to the bed rest after embryo transfer.

My typical day starts with me getting to work around 8:30 (that's when we don't have a 7am u/s scheduled - this week we had one today, tomorrow, Thursday and then we'll see about Friday). I am pretty much non-stop all day as it's the start of cold and flu season, so as you can image as a pediatrician, I'm really busy. I spend my lunch hour either catching up on charts or attending some sort of meeting (work related of course). Then a fun filled afternoon of seeing patients which ends around 5:30. Assuming I'm not working urgent care that night or I don't have to run off to acupuncture, I then get to complete all my charts for the day and return parent phone calls. On the days that I do work urgent care, I work until 8 and then get to return calls and finish charts afterwards. And finally on the days in which I have to bolt out of the office at 5:30 to make it to acupuncture across town by 6:15, I then get to take my charts home and finish them up before going to bed. It probably doesn't help that I'm an old lady and like to be in bed by 10 - otherwise I'm cranky the next day. Please don't get me wrong, I love my job, but I am currenlty exhausted. So that's my long, 2 paragraph explanation for why I've sucked at blogging. I do hope you'll forgive me. The only reason that I'm able to blog right now is that a family of several kids didn't show up so I have a sudden gap in my schedule. Thank god for the fertile people with multiple kids who flake out on doctors visits - it keeps me blogging!

Things the past week have been going well. I had a therapy appointment that I made last month. I thought I would be really anxious as egg retrieval and embryo transfer approached but I truly am doing very well. I was going to cancel my appointment with my therapist but I was so excited to be able to leave work early as I had already held part of my afternoon schedule that I decided to keep the appointment. So I quickly touched base with my therapist and let her know of our progress and told her I'd be in next month - I'm still keeping the appointment that's scheduled for the day before beta day. I'm thinking I might be anxious then!

R has become with human pin cushion. She insists on doing all the stim meds into her tummy - "so that they're closer to the ovaries". While I have tried explaining to her that it doesn't work that way, R logic is not something that can easily be manipulated. Therefore she does 3 shots per day into her belly and then the lupron into her thigh. Well her method seems to be working great! We had an u/s today - after 8 days of stims - and she has at least 12 follies on each side, all measuring around 12-13mm. Her lining is also looking great at 9mm with a triple stripe. She goes back in 2 days for another u/s.

I am currently still on my lupron and I'm also on estrogen IM shots to build up my lining. I have a lining check tomorrow to see how things are doing in there. My lining has never been a problem so I'm not too worried. In fact, my lining tends to be on the plus size, so I'm hoping it's not too big - last time it was 18 on transfer day.

So there you have it! I'll try to be better about keeping up - promise!

Only a few more days until I get pregnant!!!!!!

Thanksgiving was quite uneventful from a family gathering standpoint. My family, who lives across the country, is currently visiting. We enjoyed quite a feast and have been continuing to dine on yummy leftovers.

From an infertility standpoint, things have been happening. I woke up early Thanksgiving morning to a visit from aunt Flo. (I'm not quite sure why I have to use a cute name like aunt Flo to announce that my period started). R's period also came - which is much more important than mine showing up.

I've also started having hot flashes from lupron. I'm the type of person that's always freezing. I sleep with a goose down comforter in the summer, I have a little heater under my desk at work, I always have a sweatshirt with me.... you get the point. So when I suddenly feel like I'm burning up, rip off my sweater and run outside into the cold, only to still be hot outside - it's just bizarre. I've had several more hot flashes since then - each time I'm at a loss for what to do. I just wait in anguish for the hot flashes to pass and then live in fear that they'll return. I've also been getting headaches from the lupron. Last IVF I was also on lupron and didn't have any major side effects. I had 1 hot flash last time and no headaches. It's just weird how the same drug causes different reactions each time. (I'm a doctor so you think that I would understand these things).

We have an u/s Monday morning and hopefully will get the go ahead for R to start stims on Monday evening.

In 4 weeks, we will be pregnant!!! (Beta right around Christmas).

Responding to my reader

I'm responding to my reader, the one kind soul who left me a comment. For all I know it's my only reader other than R. Thank you - Mama2BandT!

I guess I haven't been very clear on the details of this up coming IVF cycle. Partially that may be to retain some of my anonymity as R also has a blog and it's not an anonymous one. Our situation is a bit different than many, so for some of you avid readers, it won't be too difficult to connect the dots. When I started this blog, I was in a really dark place and wanted a safe space to go off on anyone or anything and not worry about the repercussions of my words. I'm now in a much better place and so I don't think my anonymity is that important anymore - other than to not have my patients or our real life friends identify me. I think it's mostly infertile women who read infertility blogs anyway, so I don't think they'd hold anything against me. (At least not anything that's written while on bcp's, lupron, estrogen, progesterone (PIO) or any other IF drugs).

So here's the story of me (for some reason told in the 3rd person).

Once upon a time in a land far away, there were 2 women who were in love. Although being gay, they were quite conventional in their ways and thus decided to get married before starting a family (or at least have a ceremony with a certificate suitable for framing since the local authorities forbid their kind of marriage). In the weeks leading up the wedding they did all the things that one would do while preparing to start a family... they picked out flowers for the ceremony, they sent out invitations, they had a bridal shower, they researched the sperm banks and picked out a sperm donor, they found a reproductive endocrinologist and made an appointment for the week after the wedding. These women had a master plan. R would get pregnant first since her biological clock was ticking a bit louder. 2-3 years later F would have the second child. Everything seemed picture perfect.

R tried and tried to get pregnant without any luck. She underwent scans and took all sorts of drugs and even had surgery but still, she could not get pregnant. Her only option was IVF but since F was only a resident, that wasn't really an option financially. Besides they had spent all their money on sperm and on paying the RE (who was not very nice and was very expensive). Insurance had not covered a dime because their definition of infertility is sex with a man for a year. And even though some would say that a year of pumping up the ovaries to produce 8 eggs at a time and triggering their release while squirting the sperm directly into the uterus might be a tad bit better than fucking your husband once a month, the insurance company did not see it this way.

F was then promoted to faculty and was able to switch insurances and go to a new RE. The new coverage did not cover IVF but did cover inseminations, so F started trying to get pregnant while R waited for a better job to come around with IVF benefits. Well the gods finally smiled down on this couple because after only 3 months of trying (with injectables b/c F's ovaries don't ever really produce any eggs on their own) F got pregnant. These were wonderful weeks for R and F that were only slightly dampened by F's weekly freak out that something was wrong. So each week F and R went to the RE's office for an ultrasound. The one at 6 weeks was perfect - with a strong heartbeat. Still strong at 7 weeks but bean wasn't growing very well. At 8 weeks the growth was catching up but despite the doctor saying everything looked ok, the heart rate looked slower to F and R. At 9 weeks F freaked out over mild spotting and this time her intuition was correct - bean had died. (The fun story of delivering the perfectly formed fetus while in the men's room of a restaurant will have to be told another time)

2 months later F got a new job and they were finally able to move onto IVF. They decided to put R's embryos into F since F really wanted to be pregnant (more so than R does). 3 perfect embryos were transferred into F. That was followed by 5 days of positive pregnancy tests only to find out that it was just a chemical pregnancy.

So one dead baby and one baby that stuck but didn't grow later, F is feeling a bit gun shy about the abilities of her uterus. Past performances have not gone very well. So this time F is making R participate past the point of egg retrieval. After all, at this point, all the glorious plans of planning out their family have long been lost. So F and R have decided to go for it. They will transfer embryos into both uteruses (is it uteri?) to increase the odds. At some point, you just have to go for it.