proven otherwise

at least by mother nature. saturday i had some spotting which isn't uncommon during the early phases of pregnancy. but just to be sure all was well, i asked aaron if we should do a home pregnancy test (hpt). it had been 11 days post transfer and technically any hormones in my system should be out by now. his answer was to wait the two days for my blood test. yesterday, i woke up with more spotting and told aaron i WANTED to do a hpt. he agreed to pick one up when he was out running some errands. four hours later when he walked in the door with the test, i was almost positive AF (aunt flo/my period) had arrived. "i don't think i need to take the test anymore." i told him. i did anyways and it came up BFN (big fat negative). very disappointing! i went ahead and headed down to hickory this morning to get the blood test to confirm what i already know. unless i'm some freak who has her period while pregnant this cycle is pretty much a bust. right now i really can't talk or think about it without crying. keeping myself distracted has helped somewhat, but i'll have pangs of disappointment and sorrow. i'm sure it'll pass with time.

i'm already thinking about our next cycle and asking how soon we can start. my nurse said i'll have to wait til after they get my blood results back today to decide what our next step will be. luckily, we decided to participate in the "shared risk" program. basically it's where you pay for two IVF procedures up front and get the third one free. we kinda thought it would take the pressure off if we knew we had three chances to make it work. it also includes three frozen embryo transfers (FET) too but since we didn't have any to freeze with this cycle we'll have to skip and go on to another fresh one.

if this cycle had worked, we would have been paying double the cost for treatment. at least now we'll be getting our money's worth. (yeah, i'm trying to rationalize this failure) also with "shared risk" if after all our attempts have been exhausted and we don't come home with a baby we'll get 70% of our money back. so all will not be lost. i think we'll start looking into other options after this is completely done. but we've still got a little while to go.

before you were born

so here are our little lifeforms. to my surprise when i went in yesterday the doctor recommended we put back both. so i am officially PUPO with twins. aaron has no clue. since he's camping in washington, i have no way to contact him til sunday.

we'll find out the monday after christmas whether this worked for us. til then it's gonna be a long 12 days. actually 13 depending on where i want to go for the blood test. i can make the two hour trip to charlotte on sunday to find out or i can wait an extra day and head the one hour to hickory. either way i've got one day notched off already. tomorrow i'll head up to maryland with the pups to visit with my family. i'm thinking if i keep myself busy, the time will just fly by!

transferring little buddies

yesterday i got the report that out of the seven that had originally fertilized six were still going strong. one little embie had decided it was done growing. little bugger! in addition to the fertility report i also got my transfer time and date. so tomorrow at 12:30p i will be PUPO (pregnant until proven otherwise). 12 days later will be the "otherwise" i'll have a blood test to determine if we are officially preggers. i'll update tomorrow to let everyone know how many we put back. i'll be on bedrest for 24 hours so you might see a flux of posting here, there and everywhere. thanks everyone for your support.

**edit, 12/15/08, 9:15a: they just called and told me they want to push the transfer to tomorrow. ugh! i literally had my coat on and was out the door when the phone rang. they're gonna call back this afternoon with a new time for me. i asked and we're now down to five embies. i really hope waiting another day is a good thing. fingers and toes crossed!

egg hunt

tomorrow's one of the big days as far as IVF is concerned. egg retrieval. let's hope we get some good numbers and excellent quality. fingers crossed. i'll report more afterwards.

the calm

today has been a quiet day at home. probably the last one i'll have for the rest of the year. aaron's with patrick at the football game. although it's been an hour since it ended and i haven't heard from him. i saw that app. state lost so he may be wallowing at a local bar.

i've been commuting to hickory to get monitored while i'm on my stims. tonight will be day 8. i'm somewhat feeling my ovaries growing, but not as much as i had expected. some of the girls in my support group talk about how they are doubled over in pain because their ovaries are humongous. i just feel a twinge here and there and that's pretty much it. i guess i won't complain about not being in pain, i guess my doctor knows what he's doing and is preventing me from overstimulating. anyways, i head down to hickory every other day, get a needle prick and an ultrasound to check my progress. when i went in on wednesday they counted 12 follicles/eggs. a fairly decent number, so i'm told. i think they like to see between 10 and 20 at about 20mm in size by the end of stimulation. tomorrow we head down to charlotte to see my RE and hopefully he'll be able to tell us when everything is going to happen. since everything is "progressing nicely" i'm assuming the egg retrieval will be on tuesday or wednesday. and the transfer will be 5-6 days afterwards. i'll be on bed rest for 2 days after the transfer, i guess to help with implantation. then we have to wait two weeks when we go back in for a blood test to determine if i am with child/children.

i'll let you know tomorrow the "when" of everything. it's just weird to think we're less than a week away now. crazy!

hormone threat level: RED

saturday i started my stims. three shots to the gut every night. 5 units of lupron, 10 units of low dose HCG and 225 units of follistim. basically what the drugs are doing is stimulating the growth of follicles (early eggs) in your ovaries. you normally have one egg mature and gets released in a cycle. with the drugs you're hoping you get between 10-20 of those follies/eggs. so those little ovaries that are currently the size of almonds will be the size of lemons or close to by the time i'm done.

so far i haven't really had too many side effects. cept maybe all the pimples that have decided to plant themselves all over my face. so it's safe to say the hormones they are a raging. that should be an indication to aaron not to push any unnecessary buttons. nah, not really. if you're gonna start a sentence with, "don't get mad when i ask..." yeah, i'm gonna blow-up ten folds. i mean i was so mad that i actually did all my shots myself that night. (up until then he'd done them all.) it was surprising to both of us. after a night to cool off, things are back to normal. i'm still tearing up watching commercials and sobbing when cheering at a basketball game (which was really weird). but as long as there isn't any physical side effects, i won't complain too much.

shot through the heart

well, not exactly, more like abdomen.

this evening i started my lupron injections. it was quick and painless. i let aaron do it since he's the "expert" at administering drugs.

this is exactly how it went down tonight. aaron got home from work, did tae bo, called his patients, took a shower, gave me the shot and then we both went to the app. state basketball game. so here i was, anticipating the worse all day and it was over and done with in a matter of seconds. so, yeah, it was sorta a let down but i guess i really can't complain.

i'll be on lupron for the next week and a half. what does lupron do? basically it prevents your body from ovulating naturally. next will be the stimms.

and so begins our journey.

we are all on drugs

or at least i will be. we have decided to start sooner rather than later. so the past few weeks i've been receiving my medication through the mail. i had to set up delivery times to receive some of the meds and when i talked to the pharmacy they started ranting of this drug and that. what?!? how many drugs are you sending me?!? when my nurse told me what the doctor's protocol for me was going to be, she had only circled 5 meds on the sheet she gave me. so imagine my shock when about ten more were added to the initial five. most are antibiotics, pain meds and valium for retrieval day. i'm already taking a multi-vitamin, folic acid and i just started taking baby aspirin daily. next week i start birth control pills. i know, how ironic? this is basically how it works. you suppress, stimulate, trigger and maintain. i'll explain more as i come to each step. and guess what, i still have more meds coming the week after next. oh joy!

logic vs. emotion

we had a productive appointment yesterday. pretty much got all our ducks in order and are ready to march forward. there are, however, a few questions that need to be answered before we start. first off: when do we start? aaron (logic) wants to start after the holidays, me (emotion) wants to start asap. (l) we've already waited this long, why not wait another two months and get past the hustle and bustle of the holidays? (e) we've already waited this long, another two months will technically mean another four months, there's never going to be a "good time," and i'm so ready to get this started.

question 2: how many embryos do we transfer? when we initially started, the dr. stated they usually don't transfer more than two. so all this time i've had the mindset of two being our number. well yesterday, the dr. suggested transferring one. one? i suppose after getting our test results the dr. is pretty optimistic one will work for us and we don't have to risk putting two in. (l) it makes sense. why initiate a higher risk pregnancy from the get go if you don't have to? (e) i understand there are more complications involved when having twins and i'm willing to do everything in my power to minimize those risks. and yes, i'm fine with doing double the work than if we had a singleton. to me, twins would be a double bonus. one transfer, two babies. pretty much a win, win situation as far as i'm concerned. we both agree that two is what we ultimately want. if we can speed up the process, why not do it?

these are the things we are currently "discussing." although i have a feeling emotion will outweigh logic in the end. we may reach some type of compromise. we'll see.

so what exactly does IVF involve? LOTS OF SHOTS! about three weeks worth. some twice a day. i really don't have a fear of needles. (see tattoos) but using said needles to pump myself full of hormones is a little daunting. just a tad. and brace yourselves for the emotional roller coaster that will be pulling out of this station soon. feel sorry for aaron. unlike the bumper of the internet, he'll being feeling my wrath full-force. hopefully, for his sake, it will be minimal.

i have been scouring the internet for information. med sites, forums and a few blogs. i have found a site that i absolutely love. monica's been documenting their whole IVF process. including videos (which i find extremely helpful), question and answer posts and just her rants and raves in general about baby makin. she's awesome and inspiring. most of her views are quite similar to mine. posts of note: baby dust and don't let infertility ruin your life. having an upbeat attitude seems to be very rare in this community. so i'm glad i found her.

in other news, carpet is being laid in the basement as i type. pics either tonight or tomorrow. woo-hoo!

an unconventional road

rarely do i post anything of significance. maybe i need to rephrase that. the intention of this blog was/is to be a light-hearted update on our day-to-day happenings. to keep family and friends informed of our coming and goings, life here in north carolina, and to showcase my latest creations. that being said.

you spend your whole life trying not to get pregnant and when you're finally ready...nothing. yes, infertility has popped it's ugly head into our lives. months of nothing happening has slowly turned into two years. in june we decided to get tested. four months and many, many tests later our problems are pretty much confirmed. not to go into much detail, we'll be needing medical assistance, i.e. IVF.

it's a definite blow to ones psyche. no matter how strong a person you are, you're never really prepared to hear it's not going to happen, at least not naturally. especially when you KNOW you are meant to be a parent. both of us are staying positive as well as optimistic. i think it's the only way to get through this otherwise.

we have an appointment in charlotte on tuesday to discuss our treatment plan. all our tests will be evaluated and we'll find out when we can get the ball rolling, so to speak.

this post was supposed to be so much longer, i've been contemplating sharing this since we found out. it honestly doesn't bother me to talk about it. i just had to make sure aaron was on board and he gave me the go-ahead last week. no need to walk on eggshells around us. we're tough cookies and we'll get through this, hopefully with a baby or two in the end! thanks everyone for all your love and support! we love you all!