10 Weeks - Bumpin'

I know some women get through early pregnancy without showing, but apparently I am not one of them. I don't know how much of it is Endometrin bloating, or normal pregnancy bloating, all my organs being squished upwards, or just my body being thrilled to finally be pregnant. Either way, my belly has just exploded.

Bam! Baby Bump :)

Granted, I was pretty bloated from the Endometrin before the transfer, and as you can also see, I've put on some major poundage since starting the whole infertility process. But I can't suck this in and I'm pretty sure that bloating is supposed to change day by day and morning to evening, mine doesn't go down, just consistently gets bigger. This baby clearly doesn't want to stay incognito.

Our plan was to wait until after the anatomy scan to begin announcing our pregnancy but with my belly this big at only 10 weeks, who knows what I'll look like at 20 weeks. E is convinced I'm going to be the size of a house and I think he might be right. I don't mind being big already, I love having visual proof that baby is doing what they're supposed to in there, but it is making for some awkward looks from people. Everyone has been too polite to ask anything outright but this little bean is pretty noticable.

As far as the rest of pregnancy is going, my nausea is letting up a bit for which I am so, so grateful. I haven't thrown up in a week now and the constant queasy feeling is ebbing. Unfortunately, in it's place, the heartburn is coming back with a vengeance so tums are my permanent best friend.

Our next opportunity to check in on bean isn't until just before 12 weeks, so in the meantime I'm trying to remind myself that everything is okay, my belly is clearly growing so bean must be growing, even if I can't see them on ultrasound every week.

Day 4: Wishing, Hoping, Itching

Today is day 4 of our embryo's growth and following the traditional protocol, we did not get an update. I'm choosing to take this as a good sign since I'm fairly sure they would have let us know if something happened to our embie babies today. One of the women in my online PGD support group also had two embryos growing at the same time as mine and she lost both of them on day 4. I'm so crushed for her and am now even more worried for our two, this is such a big jump for them to make.

I'm hoping that our next update will be tomorrow, but there's a chance we won't hear from Dr. D until Monday. Last cycle we had 2 embryos biopsied day 5 and 2 biopsied day 6 so these two could be ready on either day. My nerves seriously hope they're healthy and ready for biopsy/freeze tomorrow because I can't take much more of this waiting.

In other news, I haven't been reporting too much on recovery but I'm doing okay. I had so few eggs that I didn't get OHSS this time and only needed some Advil/Tylenol for the first couple days. I've taken an odd one here or there for a hormone headache and some muscle aches as everything returns to normal but overall it's been a pretty uneventful recovery. They didn't even need to give me Fentanyl after the retrieval, just two Tylenol and a hot blanket on my belly. Mostly I'm just exhausted, like can't keep myself awake tired, have to pee all the time and am still crazy bloated. I've been sustaining myself on a diet of Matzo Ball soup (thank you E for repeatedly playing delivery man) and Gatorade/Electrolyte water and feel like I have the flu.

Cillian takes advantage of my exhaustion and bloated pillow belly to get in a good nap

My most obnoxious complaint is probably the bruise on my hand from my IV. The nurse, who was quite experienced and really nice, had to try twice to get my IV in. She tried first on my right hand, which is usually my good one, numbed it up with lidocaine and popped in the IV needle. The needle went in correctly but she was right up against a valve so the catheter couldn't go into the vein. She tried to apply some gentle pressure to open it and then tried to float the catheter in but neither worked. She ended up taking it out and going for my left hand, where she repeated the process and the IV catheter went right in. That site doesn't hurt at all and didn't bruise but my right hand has this nasty, deep bruise that has been surprisingly painful. It was really bad the first day, definitely worse than my sore ovaries, and the bruise is still there and still tender today.

My other big complaint is that somehow, the hivey rash has returned to my stomach. This leads me to believe that I had two separate rashes last time - hives on my belly from the medication, and an allergic rash to E's shaving cream on my bikini line. They were there at the same time so I assumed they were connected but apparently not. The new rash is pretty close to where the old one was on my belly, a little lower, and has to be related to the hormone injections. Just like previous flare up, it itches like a bitch and I have to keep compressing Yin Care, slathering on Cortisone cream and pouring on Benadryl.  Maybe it's related to falling or rising hormone levels or a reaction to the HCG (please don't let this happen when I'm pregnant!) but whatever it is, I really wish it would take a hike.

The Rash Strikes Back!

Just one more day to get through. One more day and then we can move on to testing, find out that all our embryos are magically healthy and perfect and we can start putting them back where they belong. If we're able to do a successful FET in early December we could be bringing home one of these fighter embryos as a baby at the end of August. I hope, I hope, I hope, come on embryos, you can do it. 

Zonked Out

Today I am completely and totally zonked out. I think I felt okay for the first couple hours of the day but since then I've been exhausted. My head and eyes feel so heavy, I feel like I could sleep the whole day away and still be tired.

Although the medication dosages have been exactly the same, I'm definitely getting side effects earlier with this second cycle of IVF.  With the first, it was probably a good week of stims before I felt any different than a slightly poked version of normal. This time, it only took about 2 days for me to start getting heartburn and bloating and now that we're on day 6, I'm so, so tired.  An exhausted, half asleep lump who looks like they swallowed a fat, firm balloon.

I'm so thrown off that I was actually late for my shot this evening. Since starting the IVF process, I've been vigilant about keeping on top of my injections. My alarm goes off at 9am/pm, I immediately grab supplies and prep my shots, and they're done by 9:30am/pm. This evening, I managed to get everything wrong. I was so tired I could barely stay awake so I took Milou for a nice walk in the finally cool, fall air. I came back at 8:40pm, thinking about my shot with a solid 20 minutes to spare, and then got distracted by a phone call from E.

E was on his way home from work and was hungry. I checked the fridges and cabinets but we didn't have anything that could be easily prepared for dinner. I then had the wonderful idea to give my sister L a ride home from her restaurant and bring home Japanese food. Sounds good right? Delicious food, no prep, easy peasy! Except somewhere in there I'd completely forgotten about my shot.  And then my evening shot event was somehow deleted from my calendar, which means no alarm. Whoops.

I was sitting outside L's restaurant, listening to my Harry Potter audio book for the 5 millionth time, when I looked down at my clock and saw 9:30pm. It took a few minutes to click

...huh, it's 9:32, hope she gets out soon, I'm hungry....9:37...huh...FUCK!

I freaked out a bit, called E who reminded me not to freak out, and then shortly thereafter my sister got off work. I zoomed home as fast as I could, skipped getting the delicious froyo I was planning to buy,  prepped the shot and finally got it done by about 10:05, half an hour late. My beef was stone cold by the time I got to it and I'm still upset with myself and completely exhausted again.

How could I forget for even a second that nothing is normal when you're doing IVF -_- Everything runs on such a strict schedule and here I am acting like I can go do whatever I feel like. Blah. I'm going to go sleep now so I don't accidentally miss my morning shot and next appointment.

I Can Wear Pants Again!

Yes! I woke up this morning and the water retention in my abdomen has gone down enough that I can wear pants with buttons again! At the height of the water retention it was really firm like I had swallowed a balloon and was about to explode. It's now much more squishy, like my regular belly chub, and it seems to be going down in sections. My lower abdomen is now squishier than my upper abdomen which looks a little weird but when it comes with pants with buttons I'll take it. I don't have a problem with wearing yoga pants every day but it's nice to have other options.

It's been a full week since the retrieval and I'm feeling pretty good. I don't need any painkillers, have no immediate appointments scheduled so I'm basically just siting around waiting for my period to show up. She always shows up when I don't want to see her but when I need her so I can get a move on with next cycle, she's nowhere to be found. It's still early, my luteal phase is on the short side at 11-12 days and it's only been 8 if you count retrieval day as ovulation. Le sigh, another exercise in patience.

One symptom that is sticking around and took me forever to figure out is the metallic taste in my mouth. I just had my teeth cleaned, I have no cavities or fillings, I'm brushing like 3 times a day, flossing and using mouth wash and it still tastes like I've been sucking on coins. This one didn't show up until a couple days ago and it's been driving me nuts ever since. It finally clicked for me that a metallic taste is a pregnancy symptom, which means its the HCG trigger. Damn that thing, still screwing with me over a week later.

In the meantime, I decided to celebrate my pants fitting by making them tight again with an absolutely delicious apple crumble with french vanilla ice cream. Oh man.  I used this base recipe because it's easy and delicious and then made a couple tweaks.

Their pretty photo

My version involved the following changes:

Ingredients: 

• 10 cups all-purpose apples, peeled, cored and sliced - about 8 apples for me. I only had Galas and a couple Fujis but would prefer Granny Smiths.
• 1 cup white sugar - I didn't use sour apples so I cut this down to 2/3
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon - doubled this to 2 teaspoons
• 1/2 cup water - halved this to 1/4
• Add 1 tsp Vanilla
• Add 1 tsp Nutmeg 

• 1 cup quick-cooking oats - doubled to 2, Bob's steel cut oats
• 1 cup all-purpose flour - doubled
• 1 cup packed brown sugar - doubled
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder - doubled
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda - doubled
• 1/2 cup butter, melted - doubled
• Add 1 tsp Cinnamon 

Directions:

1.	Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degree C).
2.	Place the sliced apples in a 9x13 inch pan. Mix the white sugar, 1 tablespoon flour and ground cinnamon together, and sprinkle over apples. Pour water evenly over all. - I tossed the apples in the sugar mixture to evenly coat them
3.	Combine the oats, 1 cup flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda and melted butter together. Crumble evenly over the apple mixture.
4.	Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for about 45 minutes. - Mine needed about 50-55 min

Yumbly Crumbly. Notice the caramely filling

The topping comes out extra crunchy and delicious while the apples are soft and cinnamony. You can throw it together pretty easily with things you already have in the house and it is absolutely delicious topped with vanilla ice cream. The only issue is I'm going to need to hit the gym asap if I keep cooking and eating like this and I'm not supposed to go for another week. Oy.

Day 4: Acupuncture and Patience

Today, I'm finding it difficult to be patient. We don't get an update on our embryos and I know they're in the most difficult phase of growth where many embryos are often lost. Last we heard, four were doing very well with 7-8 nice, even blastomeres (cells) and two were growing nicely but a little slower with only 6 nice, even blastomeres.

On day 4, we need those embryos to be in the Morula stage, the last phase before they grow into blastocysts, form the blastocoel (fluid filled cavity) and start differentiating cells. Today, and possibly tomorrow if they're slow growers, they should have between 10 and 30 cells.  They might even have begun compacting like the embryo below, which is where the cells start squishing together like the embryo below.

Nice quality Morula

Hopefully they'll make it through the morula stage and grow into nice blastocysts tomorrow. If they're not quite there yet it's still okay as long as they're progressing. They'll be allowed to grow to day 6 when plenty of embryos are frozen and I probably won't sleep until we get the call. As blastocysts, they should be dividing into the inner cell mass (ICM), the Trophectoderm (TE) and the blastocoel (fluid cavity), which gets bigger as the embryo expands.

Nice Blastocyst

We need good cell differentiation to get a clean biopsy of the embryos for PGD. They need to sneak some cells out of the TE on the side there, the cells that will become the placenta, so we can test the fetal DNA for abnormalities.

Since there's nothing I can do to help my embryos grow, my distraction for today was a much needed acupuncture appointment. I haven't been since my retrieval and it's supposed to really help with recovery and the symptoms of OHSS. I laid down on the table, S took one look at my belly and said "Oh boy, you're definitely hyper stimulated". Clearly other people think I look 6 months pregnant too.

I already knew that I probably had OHSS but it's still a bummer to have it confirmed by a nurse. I also woke up sore this morning, my hamstrings and back felt like I'd worked out, and S said it's because of all the fluid I'm retaining. The fluid is responsible for my bloat, my repeated peeing, the heart burn and now the muscle soreness. Oh the joys of IVF.

Dr. D's nurse also called today to ask us about aCGH testing for our embryos and to see how I'm doing. I told her we'd probably base our decision for chromosome testing on the number of embryos we get, our lab doesn't really need an answer until they have all of our biopsy samples but as long as we get a good amount from each cycle I think we'll probably go ahead and add it on. If we only end up with a couple of embryos from each cycle, I'm not sure if it's worth doing, but if we get six lovely frosties each time I'd say it's worth the extra $2500.

As for next cycle and the crazy bloating, she said Dr. D usually takes a "flush" cycle in between IVF cycles to allow all the hormones to flush out of your system. It would also give me a good amount of time to order my meds from IVFMeds.com so I wouldn't be doing things so last minute. She made a note for Dr. D to chat with me about it tomorrow when he calls with our embryo update, so I'll probably be holding my breath until the phone rings tomorrow morning. I so, so hope our six embryos are doing well, I worked so hard for them and I won't be able to relax until they're safely biopsied and frozen.

Day 2: Recovery

Thus far I think I've been pretty lucky with my recovery. I'm still good with just a couple Tylenol or Advil every 4-6 hours and if I don't take it, there's only a minor ache of discomfort. I never really had any bleeding, nausea, constipation, or serious pain. I know every egg retrieval is different and I don't want to jinx it for next cycle, but I hope I can get off this easy next time. Maybe it's my reward for having such a shot heavy stim cycle :)

The two symptoms I am experiencing at the moment are two I could definitely do without. For starters, I'm still super, super bloated and uncomfortable with a belly the size of a watermelon. Possibly even more bloated now than on retrieval day.  I haven't tried to wear my jeans yet but I doubt they'd button comfortably right now, even my loose jeans would cut right across my ovaries. This is probably still mild OHSS so I've just got to grin and bear it and hope it goes down.

In the same category, my grapefruit sized ovaries must be pushing on all sorts of things because I'm getting awful heart burn. No matter what I eat or how I sit, I have the worst acid indigestion. This is another one of those things you just have to wait out, so I'm popping Gaviscon like candy and hoping that it passes quickly. I just ran through my last bottle so getting more is first on my list of things to do tomorrow.

My secret weapon

For anyone else getting ready for an egg retrieval, I absolutely think that the crazy amount of water I've been drinking has played a big role in why I've felt okay. I drank 100-150oz the day before the retrieval and another 100-150oz the day of. I've been drinking at least 100oz a day since and despite the anesthesia, it's probably physically impossible to be constipated with that much water in your system. I know a lot of clinics push laxatives after a retrieval but I prefer to avoid that stuff if I can. In this case, I think the water is a pretty viable alternative. Plus, peeing every 10 minutes, while also tied to OHSS, helps clear the extra hormones out of your system which should mean less bloat and misery. I'm still sleeping with my feet up on a pile of pillows as well, which is supposed to help all the excess fluid drain.

The acupuncture has probably also played a roll. Even the regular treatments that just keep all your energy and such flowing normally can really help with clearing out your system. The surgery center was a little weird about herbs so I stopped drinking my herbs a couple days before the retrieval and I just started back up again today with my acupuncturist's blessing.

The embryologists try not to bother the embryos on days 2 and 4 so I sadly didn't get an update on my embies growth today. They should be growing and dividing with at least 4 cells so that they can reach 6-8 cells tomorrow. I'm on pins and needles waiting for tomorrows phone call and I'm hoping and praying that all six are still growing well.

 

Original Photo came from here

ETA: I totally forgot to talk about boobs! My boobs are SO SORE. They feel awful if I'm not wearing a bra, which luckily is almost never since they're on the gigantic side and I never go braless. This is probably from all the hormones too and just another thing I have to wait out :(

 

Getting Ready For My First Egg Retrieval!

According to this mornings blood draw, the HCG trigger was properly absorbed and I'm good to go for a Monday morning retrieval! I'm so excited/nervous/bloated/sore/tender that I don't know what to do with myself. Time seems to be crawling and flying by at the same time and I still can't button the jeans that were falling off my ass a week ago.

I never understood what people meant when they talked about sore ovaries and IVF bloating until now. I guess I never made enough eggs in my previous cycles for my ovaries to swell up like balloons but they're definitely there now. I'm not concerned about serious OHSS (Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome), it's definitely a mild case, but I look like I'm at least 6 months pregnant, it hurts to bend over and my lower back is tender too. I'm also peeing like crazy since I need to keep guzzling water to ward off OHSS. 

Mild OHSS usually comes with the following, per Mayo Clinic:

• Mild to moderate abdominal pain that may come and go - Check!
• Abdominal bloating or increased waist size - Check!
• Nausea - Check!
• Vomiting - No, thank goodness!
• Diarrhea - No, but I'd take it over the projected constipation O_O
• Tenderness in the area of your ovaries - Check!

Things don't get dicey until the pain and nausea/vomitting turn severe, you get dizzy and you start packing on 10lbs per day. While I probably look like I've gained 10lbs per day,  I'm definitely still in the normal-mild category. I'm ready to get these eggs out though so we can make some beautiful embryos!

Our trigger for this cycle was Novarel, which contains 10,000 units of HCG, way more than the 1,000 units in my last trigger, Ovidrel. Just think of the positive pregnancy tests I could get with this much HCG running through my system!

Stock photo since I used mine last night

I'm unclear as to why the manufacturer felt the need to include such a huge bottle of diluent. Even splitting it into multiple doses, I can't imagine any circumstance that would require 30mls of liquid. Since I was taking the whole dose, I used just 1cc of liquid with the powder and injected it into my belly at exactly 10:45pm.

Like the Menopur, this one is definitely a stinger. It burned going in and unlike my other injections, has had a lasting effect. My skin is red, hot, and tender even 18 hours later and I can't stand anything touching it.  Major ouchies.

I try to avoid posting photos of my bare flab, especially crazy bloated bare flab, in public places but I figured it was better to be honest about the reaction so other people know what to expect. The photo ended up washed out, but my reaction is red/purple, streaky, raised and hurts like a bitch. But again, it's unfortunately normal.

Since my retrieval is only hours away, I'm trying to get everything ready tonight. You're supposed to drink large quantities of sport drinks like Gatorade or Powerade, but since I'm not super into those, I'm going for PH water and other electrolyte infused waters. They're supposed to help flush the hormones out of your system so the OHSS symptoms don't get worse and go away quicker. You also have to watch out for super constipation from the anesthesia which I'm really, really hoping to avoid. That sounds like the last thing you'd want when you have tons of needle holes in your lady bits and ovaries.  I'm hoping tons of regular water, PH water, watermelon and soup are enough to ward off that unpleasant side effect.

I'm also prepping soft, stretchy clothes to wear tomorrow since my jeans feel awful and tight. I've got my lucky panties, rainbow cheetah print trimmed in hot pink lace that I've worn to all my IUIs and I'm thinking of upping the ante with new blue, puffer fish toe socks with googly eyes and pink glitter shoes. Now that's a lot of good luck :)

Since I'm still crazy hungry despite the incredible bloat, I think E and I are going to get some meaty take out for dinner. I'm craving steak like nobody's business and once midnight comes I'm cut off from food and water. 

Please send all the positive vibes, thoughts, prayers, and energy you can muster my way tomorrow morning. I've got everything crossed for these follicles to contain healthy, mature eggs that fertilize perfectly and turn into healthy, viable, Fragile X free embryos. I know that's a tall order but come on follies, I know you can do it! We need some healthy blasts!