Thirty One Goodies!

One of my friends, E, mama to Will and Max, is a Thirty One consultant. Thirty One sells really adorable storage, home and bag products, seriously some of the cutest stuff around. I've ordered a few things in the past and just hosted a party for her,  so when I got home yesterday I was greeted by a big box of goodies.

Thus far, I already had:

 

Milou's agility bag, an Organizing Utility Tote in Black Happy Dot. It has fabulous pockets for all her training odds and ends and is super durable. We're really hard on it, it's basically always on the grass or in the mud, and I love that I can just hose it off. I just ordered a pocket tote to go inside so I have a zippered compartment Milou can't get in to.

 

A Keep It Caddy in Turquoise Cross Pop. I use it as a gym bag and its the perfect size, small enough to bring into my gym classes, but big enough to hold all my things. Again, super easy to wash if I get it wet or sweaty. 

A Fresh Market Thermal in Pink Pop Medallion. This is my favorite grocery/party companion now, it keeps everything hot or cold and can fit two 9x13 casserole dishes. I put the bag into the cart, top open, and put my frozen groceries directly into it. I also used it at Thanksgiving to carry two 9x13 trays, one of potatoes and one of spinach, and a pie. It's also awesome for carting around the animals raw food, it's probably one of my most useful Thirty One products. 

This bad boy is a Large Utility Tote in Best Buds. It's probably the most versatile tote out there, it has a frame at the top but is flexible on the bottom so you can flatten it for storage. It's great for holding groceries (Costco anyone?), storing things, it's basically the perfect size. I use mine to keep the closet organized but I could use another couple for my trunk and it would be great for beach stuff or storing other things.

I've been so happy with everything I have so far that I ordered a Super Organizing tote in Organic Poppy, another pocket tote to go inside it, an adorable thermal pouch in their winter owl print, a Casual Cargo Purse in Railroad Denim for my grandma, another Super Organizing Tote in Awesome Blossom to give as a thank you gift and my new favorite, my hostess exclusive, a Suite Success Tote.

This is the ultimate work or diaper bag, it has three compartments including a laptop pocket, and a thermal lined pouch for keeping snacks cool. It's awesome and I can't wait to use it. I think I'll use it for a work bag for now, and then transition it to a gender neutral diaper bag once we had kiddos. Even E said he'd be happy to carry it, and it's got two pockets that would be perfect for bottles. It's really sharp :)

Stealth Cats

Where one goes, the other must surely follow. E brought home a flat of water bottles so Cillian and Zuzu had to investigate immediately. I love their bright eyed faces poking out of the packaging <3 bombing="" br="" can="" cillian="" closely="" if="" look="" photo.="" photo="" s="" see="" stealth="" you="" zuzu="">

 

I wonder if Zuzu knows his back end is sticking out?  He's gotten so huge, at least 4 pounds heavier than Cillian who was 10lbs at last weigh in. He's basically massive.

AZFb Microdeletions and a Hysteroscopy

About a week ago E and I went to his follow up urology appointment and received the terrible news that he has a complete AZFb microdeletion. I've started to post a handful of times, but knowing that information hasn't provided us with the answers we need.

The AZF region is located on the long arm of the Y chromosome and there are three segments, the proximal, central and distal, or A, B and C.  Keeping in mind that these microdeletions are extremely rare, deletions in the B region are the most uncommon and have the worst prognosis. After getting my hands on every AZFb paper I could find, the literature concludes that men with complete AZFb deletions do not produce sperm. Men with C region deletions usually have low but usable counts, but B region deletions are an end of the line sentence.  Although E did have several 0 or near 0 semen analyses, he also had a 10 million, 23 million and 2 million, so he is very clearly producing sperm.

(Source)

 
This leaves us with three possibilities:
- The genetic test was wrong, which is unlikely
- All the semen analyses were wrong, which is unlikely since they were done at 3 different labs
- E is an anomaly about whom they will write papers

We just repeated the genetic test but still need to schedule an appointment with the genetic counselor, and have a more detailed semen analysis done at a fertility clinic. We know if we were able to use E's swimmers that we'd have to select for girls, but I'm sure the counselor will want to go over it with us. That and the likelihood of donor sperm, which we are already prepared for.

For me, I had my Hysteroscopy done today, and while it was worse than I was expecting, it wasn't horrible. After the HSG I was picturing the Hysteroscopy as fairly similar, a little catheter threaded up, a numbing injection this time which I was sure would hurt, but nothing too terrible. Instead, there were at least 8 local anesthetic injections into my cervix and let me tell you they HURT, way more than I was expecting. I could feel those suckers all the way down my butt and thighs and they made me shake all over.

Then came the manual dilation of the cervix. Here I mistakenly assumed that since they'd done all those numbing injections, I wouldn't feel anything. Yeah, that was TOTALLY WRONG. I felt every single second of that and it hurt like a bitch. They ended up having to do it multiple times, including one time after they'd tried to put the camera in and it wouldn't fit. Once the camera was actually in, it wasn't horrible and it was pretty cool to see the inside of my uterus on the screen.

During my saline ultrasound, the doctor had seen a little piece of something could be a polyp but she thought it was more likely to be a bit of dislodged lining. It did it fact turn out to be lining, as I had a thick, fluffy lining, despite the progesterone I'd been taking for two weeks to thin it out, so no surgery necessary. Basically everything was normal, normal size, shape, color, it had perfect blood flow, no endometriosis, no polyps, a great lining, basically nothing physical that would prevent an egg from implanting.

At the end of the procedure, the doctor gave us a little print out of shots of my uterus. It felt like a stand in because we don't have a baby for ultrasound pictures, but we took it home for our records. You can't really see anything, just pink walls and fluffy lining.  It's scintilating.

Behold: My Insides

We also had a good chat with our doctor about possibly going with her clinic, since we have to go outside of Kaiser for IVF. I like that she is already familiar with our case and knows how the Kaiser system works, but we'll have to see if it's a good fit once we've met with the genetic counselor.   

Canopy Cat

Look who figured out how to jump on top of the fish tank. He's oh so clever. Doesn't he look stately posed up there, right before he knocked the fish food off so he could see it roll? Clever boy.