24 Weeks: Babies and Branches

This week is week 24 which means we've officially hit viability! It's a huge milestone and thus far baby looks wonderful. We got a peak at them on Thursday and even though I'm still down a pound, baby is growing in leaps and bounds. At 24 weeks exactly, they measured 25+1 and a whopping 1lb 11oz. Their measurements could be consistently off at each appointment but we do have a family history of large babies so I wouldn't be surprised if baby was just big.

I'm starting to feel them a lot in the morning and evening but still not consistently enough to get a kick count. On the ultrasound they were sort of transverse breach with their feet to my right, the opposite of where they were the day before judging by the solid kicks I felt on the left.  We could see them kicking hard with both feet but I couldn't feel a thing. I think they need to be head down, feet up or have their feet in front of them for me to feel the most movement.

The house is still keeping us crazy busy scheduling contractors and repairs, but as of last weekend we have an unexpected new baby to add to the mix. Last Saturday, after working on the house all day, I was running through a drive through for some food when I looked to my left and saw a tiny black kitten sitting next to the road attempting to eat a stick. The restaurant was busy and there were lots of cars in line but no one did anything or got out of their cars to get the kitty.

I asked my mom to get out and grab her but she darted underneath a bush next to the restaurant dumpster. Obviously I couldn't leave without her so I ordered a drumstick, pulled my car around and lured her out with the chicken. It was much easier than it should have been, she was starving, flea anemic and obviously malnourished, living in a hole under the bush, eating leaves and sticks and whatever wrappers fell out of the dumpster. When I scruffed her to pull her out of the hole, she didn't even pull away or try to bite and scratch me. I think we got to her just in time.

I gave her a dish soap flea bath and we got her into the vet on Sunday morning. Thankfully, she tested negative for FIV (feline aids) and FeLV (feline leukemia) which were the big, contagious baddies we were worried about. She was pegged at 8 weeks max and about 2 pounds, though I'm not sure how much of that weight was worms. She definitely had a tapeworm and most likely roundworms too so we wormed her for everything just in case, did some blood work and got her supplements, flea meds, fluids and antibiotics for a little infection.  Essentially, we chose to pay her medical bills instead of replacing our super gross dishwasher. I think it's a worthy sacrifice.

It's amazing to see what a difference a week has made. Her legs are steadier, she's gained some weight and she's starting to show more spunk and playfulness. She's the sweetest feral kitten I've ever rescued and E has started to talk about her growing up with the baby instead of finding her a good home as was our original plan. We're still keeping her separate for now, but our jealous kitties are starting to come around slowly and I'm sure it wont be long before they accept her into their routine.

In the meantime, it feels like we are finally making some headway on the house. The walls have all been washed to remove any third hand smoke and primed with special primer. Both toilets and the hot water heater have been replaced and the laundry plumbing and broken pipe under the house are next. The electrical is underway and while we were originally just going to ground the outlets, we decided to go ahead and rewire them completely while we have the wall open. It was giving off some funny voltage readings and since we have to make the holes anyway, this is definitely the time to update the electrical.

We're also making major progress outside. We ripped out all the dead bushes that the termite tenting killed, removed the vines that were eating our deck and just scheduled some tree removal and trimming. We have a really cool old Sycamore in our backyard that I was hoping to hang a baby swing from but it turns out the tree is on it's last leg. The arborist didn't know what killed it, but said we definitely had to take it out, it's not salvageable and the branches rip right off. It's disappointing but not unexpected. The wild card here was our Maple tree in the front. It looks happy, green and healthy, but has apparently been compromised by something that got inside the trunk. Unlike the Sycamore which has really deep roots and dies slowly, the Maple looks great until it falls on your house. This one we weren't expecting so we're going to try cutting back the large tree branch near the house and hope that the whole tree isn't rotten on the inside.

The Financial Fuckery Begins

One of the main complaints I've heard about the IVF process is a distinct lack of communication between the actual IVF staff and the financial department. The financial departments of IVF clinics all over the country get slammed for poor billing practices involving incorrect numbers, screwed up payments and noticeably poor communication. Knowing this going in, I spoke extensively with the financial department for each lab/clinic we're working with and quadruple checked my numbers to try and head off any potential problems. I made a valiant effort but apparently it wasn't enough.

When I got home from work this evening around 8:15pm, I found this letter waiting for me from ART, the surgical center in my clinic.

Um, No.

As you can see, there are several mistakes. For starters, it lists my ICSI fee as being for a third cycle - this is only my second. I actually owe them $150 more than the bill says here.

Secondly, they want $3950 for aCGH testing. This is so far off that it's crazy. We did in fact decide to add aCGH testing on, but we're paying Reprogenetics directly and the fee is only $2,250. That's no where near 4 grand and there's no way I'm paying that to ART. All of our dealings with Reprogenetics have been direct, there's no reason SCRC/ART should have any part in fee collecting for them.

Their third and final strike is the $1650 for embryo biopsy. Here the number is correct, but we've already paid it. Before signing up with SCRC, I confirmed over and over again that the fee for embryo biopsy was once due once when purchasing their two cycle plan. As I've already paid them their $1650 when we did our first cycle, we will not be paying it again.

I'm hoping these were innocent mistakes but I admit it really cheeses me off. I went over this with all the different financial departments - SCRC, ART and Reprogenetics and I was so hoping we wouldn't get slammed with the usual financial fuckery. When our first cycle got billed correctly I thought we'd avoided any pitfalls but it looks like I got ahead of myself.  I left a voicemail for my financial contact at ART since it was way after business hours and I sent an email to my financial contact at Reprogenetics.

Your clinic and labs hold all the cards when you're doing IVF - they literally have your embryos, your potential children, the lab has my probe, and SCRC has over $20,000 of our dollars so it's not exactly like we can stamp our feet and refuse to pay if they won't fix the problem. With any luck, I'll get two satisfactory answers tomorrow correcting this estimate because there's no way I can give them another $6,600.