Better late than never?!?!

FINALLY got my period and finally can get back to planning and structuring my life.  Bad news is the transfer date changed (not surprising, but still disappointing.)  So I have to tell my boss that my FTO day I asked for is now changing.  He is going to think I'm a freak.  For the retrieval my date changed several times, and I haven't told him what I'm going through, so he just must think I'm a psycho flake. 

Transfer date is now set for Monday, September 19.  The other bad part of that is now I have to take two days off instead of one, so I will have to have bed rest Monday and Tuesday. 

I will officially be old on the transfer date - 28.  I am starting to feel like 30 is coming faster than a freight train, and to me if I don't have a baby by the time I'm 30 I will lose it.  I know women have babies later and later in life now, but that doesn't make me feel better.  I just need to see my future self with a baby and know that it will work out.  It's this whole unknown that is just so darn depressing.  Not knowing whether or not I will get a biological child right now has put me in a dark place, and if I could just find out that yes, I will have a biological child, it would make all of this heartache a little more bearable. 

So now countdown to the FET is on!  T minus 22 days.  Wednesday begins estrogen patches and Lovenox along with the Lupron. 

Small World

I was getting my hair done yesterday and my hair stylist told me that an old coworker of mine when I used to work at the hair salon in high school and college just went through IVF with Schoolcraft as well.  The girl is a year older than me.  When I got home I messaged her on FB and told her that Camie told me she was pregnant, then I told her a little bit about what I was going through.  It's always hard to know how open someone is willing to be about their infertility because it is still such a taboo subject in society, so I thought by telling her about me it might open the door up or she could choose not to respond.  She wrote back pretty quickly and said that she went through IVF with Dr. Schoolcraft a few months ago.  She also hyperstimulated and had to do a freeze all (hmm, pattern?)  She got 27 eggs and 5 of them made it to blast, which was upsetting to her as well.  She implant two embryos - well they both took and one of them split, so she has triplets.  Her split embryo was momo meaning they shared a sack and it was going to be very dangerous for her and the babies to continue with the pregnancy, so she did a reduction down to one.  She's now 8 weeks along with one healthy baby.  Gosh, I can't imagine being in that situation, that would be such a hard decision to make, and I really feel for her.  Anyway, it was nice to find someone going through the same crap that I am, it often feels so lonely.  I wouldn't wish this on anyone, but at the same time, it's nice to know I'm not alone, there are other people my age dealing with infertility, it's just such a quiet subject.  It makes me want to go up and shout it off the mountain tops and see how many others come out of the woodwork. 

In other news, I'm now a week late, still not pregnant, so I will follow up with CCRM tomorrow and see what's going on.  Busy week at work coming up - golf tournament for work that I'm volunteering at tomorrow; meanwhile I have a lot of deadlines at work and just not enough hours in the day.  Throw in acupuncture, unpredictable body, and it should be an eventful week. 

But I'm always punctual!

One thing my body has graced me with through all of this fertility battle is having a normal cycle.  Well as of today I am 2 days late.  All I want to do is get this in motion.  I don't want my transfer date to change, I want to PLAN, that's what I do best, and my body is having none of that.

Before you ask, yes, I took a pregnancy test, and of course it was negative.  You'd think after so many doctors telling us we won't get preggers naturally that I would stop checking, hoping, daydreaming.  But alas, the words Dr. Schoolcraft said to us stuck in my head that many couples get pregnant the month after IVF, something to do with all the meds resetting their body or something.  So I had that hope...argh.  Well the meds seem to have messed my body up even more (if that's possible.)  The amount I have spent on pregnancy tests the last two years could have bought me a nice new purse (or Louboutins!)  Hindsight is always 20-20 :) 

Needles & Relaxation?

Yesterday I started back up with my acupuncture which I will now get twice a week until the transfer to work on my uterine lining. I hadn't seen Heidi since the retrieval, so she had to be caught up on everything with the embryos. It surprised me how emotional I got talking about it even a month later. I think I try to protect myself by thinking of the worst case scenario, but really I'm so emotional thinking that it really needs to work - it has to work. So acupuncture twice a week, Lupron once a day, and I'll start my Lovenox injections in about a week when I start all of the hormones. Still a lot less needles than for the retrieval, but a lot more than I'd like :)

My parents came to visit with Heidi while I was there since they go to her for acupuncture when they need it, so they surprised me there and took me to Pappa Deaux for dinner where we met up with Bri.

One Month Til FET

One month from today should be my FET (frozen embryo transfer) if everything stays on schedule.  I went to CCRM yesterday to get my P4 levels checked (progesterone) and make sure I ovulated.  My number came back at 4.5 and it should be above 5.  My nurse left a message on my machine so I wasn't able to ask her about it, so I emailed her back after researching on Google about it.  She said that the target is 5, but she talked to Dr. Schoolcraft about it and he said that was fine and I should start my Lupron injections.  I had asked if we should wait another month for the number to raise (maybe it was off from all the shots last month, who knows!) but Annie said everything was a go and I should start the injections.  So last night began my 10 units of Lupron again.  Thankfully that's the smallest needle, but I realized how PTSD I am from the experience I thought I had already blocked from my mind, the smell of the alcohol made me sick, and the thought of doing more shots was almost too much to bear.  At the time I got into such a routine not thinking about it because what choice did I have and of course it would be worth it to get a baby or two out of the deal.  I never thought I'd have to go through it again. 

So here I am now, praying I won't have to go through THIS process again.  I will be on Lupron until I start my next period, then a few days into that cycle I will cut the Lupron dose in half, start my estrogen patches and progesterone suppositories, and start the Lovenox.  I begin acupuncture again on Friday, twice a week through the transfer.  I have started drinking caffeine again this last month, so that needs to quit as well to get that lining nice and thick before the transfer. 

The other day I realized that even though I'm super excited for the transfer, part of me is dreading it.  Dreading it because that frozen embryo right now is my hope...it may not be a huge hope, but it's the only hope I have right now of a baby, and after the transfer if God forbid it doesn't work, I've lost that hope and am left with nothing.  As long as baby embryo is frozen I have my hope of a baby. 

I started researching Conceptions again last week.  This is all very premature because God willing, we won't need them, but I am making a Plan B (not the Plan B medication, quite the opposite - hahaha.  For those of you living in a cave, Plan B medication is the morning after pill!)  My Plan B involves having a plan in place if this doesn't work.  Part of the plan is that Brian and I have a long weekend in early October that we have promised each other if things go awry, we are going to go on a long weekend somewhere fun.  The other part of Plan B for me is needing to know that we will do IVF again in a few months, beg, borrow, or steal.  Conceptions, I have found with my research, is about $5,000 cheaper than CCRM and they bill insurance first, and you just pay what insurance won't, which is also helpful.  However, their success rates just aren't as good.  The newest data out there is from 2009 (I don't know why they're so behind, it's almost 2012 people!) and in 2009 in my age group, CCRM had a 63% chance of having a live birth (bringing home a healthy baby from the hospital) and Conceptions had a 54% success rate.  9% is pretty high, but I have decided we will at least regroup with Dr. Swanson over at Conceptions who I did my IUI's with and see what his recommendation would be.  And that is my Plan B.  Sometimes my mind starts wandering to Plan C and I just can't go there, not right now! 

Random thoughts of the day

I have gotten very into reading books about IVF.  Reading about other people going through the same thing I'm going through is comforting, it makes this very lonely process feel just a little less lonely. 

I just finished a mini-book called The Baby Chase: An Adventure in Fertility by Holly Finn.  Holly is the girl who wrote that Wall Street Journal article I shared earlier in the week and she goes to Dr. Schoolcraft, or as she calls him, Doc S.  One of my favorite quotes from her book is: "IVF brings you to your knees and dares you stagger to your feet again.  It forces you, even as you steel yourself for more shots and setbacks, to remember the gentleness in you and the true reason you want to bring another human into this world."  Another good quote is "The longing for a child isn't diluted when having one becomes a struggle.  The desire stays as strong as it was.  It's you who becomes weaker, like a fish wearing itself out on the line."  Those are both really powerful and struck a chord with me.  Sometimes it's hard to put into words what you're feeling, so it's comforting when you find someone who has been able to do that. 

Last good takeaway from the book is something I've been struggling with lately: "In the end, infertility can make you feel less human.  As cultivated as we are, we hold on to deep-rooted dogma that our worth is tied to how well, and how much, we reproduce.  I've seen women and men shrink like salted slugs during IVF treatment.  The whole process makes you feel unlovable.  But don't we know that the number of children you have has no correlation to how appealing you are?"  As my pants have gotten tighter from all of the hormones, the lack of being able to exercise the past month, and whatever muscle I had has turned to lumpy fat, I try to remind myself of that.  Brian often suggests I go to the gym to walk on a treadmill to stay active - to me that is code for you have lost your appeal, please hit the gym and firm up.  I'm sure that's not what he means, he means well, but in my hormone induced state, that's how I interpret it.  Really praying for strength the next few months, and courage to keep going.  It will be worth it. 

Wall Street Journal article on Infertility

My mom found this article that mentions one woman's journey with Dr. Schoolcraft.  It is really well written so I wanted to share. 

A few things she said in the article really hit a chord with me.  When she said people are quick to say that you should adopt and how they are quick to forget that basic human need to reproduce miniature versions of themselves. I really relate to that - I am so sick of people saying that we should adopt because they know so and so, and when they went to adopt they got pregnant magically because the stress was gone.  Maybe one day we'll get there, but at this point, I can't give up on wanting to see what our biological children would look like, act like, and be like.  A few weeks ago my mom gave me some baby pictures she found of me when cleaning up the house.  I often look at those pictures and get teary because when she gave them to me she said "that's what your baby will look like!"  I pray I get to see that one day.