It's On Lupron!

Everything looked nice and quiet at this mornings ultrasound, the birth control pills have done their job, and I was cleared to start Lupron! I did my first injection this evening and it was exactly as I had expected, barely worth the stick.

Lupron Kit

This time I'm using a multi-dose vial with no mixing (yay!) so I'll be drawing from the same vial for the next 15 or so days. Like the HGH, the Lupron needs to be stored in the fridge and I'll be injecting with teensy little insulin syringes.

I will be on 10 units of Lupron and birth control pills for the next 5 days and then just Lupron for a couple days after. My period should show up in the couple days after I've stopped the pills, I'll have yet another ultrasound, and then should be allowed to start Estrace with the lower dose of Lupron.

See how tiny? 10 units to start and then down to 5 units.

One step closer to transfer, one step closer to getting this frostie home. I know it's dangerous to get my hopes up but I keep having vivid dreams about this baby being delivered, growing up. I'm already so attached, I don't think I could bare to lose this frostie baby so they had better settle in for the long haul

Happy Holidays 2014

Milou wishes everyone a Happy Holiday!

Here we are, the day before Christmas Eve, and I've been so busy running around that I haven't written about any of the things we've been doing. Assuming everything checks out at my next baseline appointment, today should be my last birth control only day! Come Christmas Eve, I'll be taking my birth control and doing my first Lupron injection ever, since I somehow never had Lupron in my IVF stim protocols. It looks like it will be a miniscule dose, 10 units at first and then down to 5 units, it almost doesn't seem worth the needle stick. I'm sure the injections won't be bad and I'll fall right back into the habit of sticking my belly.

In more festive news, we once again managed to find a magnificently fat Noble fir to be our Jew Tree this year. This baby was over 10 feet with the stand and I actually had to trim the tall top to stand it up. We decked it out per usual in blue and white lights and I seriously considered sticking some IVF ornaments on there, but ultimately didn't want to give anything away to visitors. Once we got it all set up and decorated, my sister posed most artfully like a little mermaid, with Milou in perfect position wearing her scarf. I attempted to pose for a couple photos, trying to minimize my still massive belly but had little luck. Milou's photo bomb is pretty adorable though, she recognizes my iPhone and knows to smile when it's pointed at her.

 

I didn't have much luck on the floor either courtesy of a Cillian photo bomb so I gave it up as a bad job. At least my Harry Potter Daily Prophet leggings were fabulous, I think I might wear them again tomorrow to my appointment. I will probably have one more pre-cycle appointment (read: not included in the base fee, of course) before I start the Estrace. If all goes well, give or take a few days, we should be on track for a January 16th transfer!

Happy Holidays everyone. My dearest wish for this holiday season is that this be the last Hanukkah/Christmas E and I spend without children. Come this time next year, I want to be holding our long awaited Frostie A as a healthy baby. This transfer IS going to work!

Day 6: SIX EMBRYOS Going For Testing!

Both embryos made it! Holy shit! We now have two more hatching blasts to add to our batch, making 6! I can't believe it, after such a crappy cycle and only retrieving two eggs, I never would have dreamed they'd both be strong enough to make it. Taking them to day 6 was definitely the right decision, the embryologist says they look perfect.  We're going to send these 6 samples out for PGD/PGS and hope/pray/wish/cross everything that they're healthy!!

I was planning on putting one embryo right back once we get our results, an early December transfer, but the doctor says I should take a "wash" cycle. Not everyone needs to take a break but most people only take $1800-$4000 in meds for their cycles and do just one. I've been injecting $9200 in hormones two months in a row and he thinks I should have two periods to wash them all out. The first would be the upcoming one, due at the end of this week if I follow last cycle. Then I'd wait a month, have my next period and start the medication for transfer. He's right and it makes sense, I would never rush anything that could compromise an embie's successful implantation, but it's so hard to be patient!

Right now our biopsy samples are probably being packed in liquid nitrogen and readied for their journey to the east coast. I believe they'll be over nighted to Reprogenetics and then as long as all the samples are good, they'll begin testing. We decided to go ahead and add on the aCGH testing for $2250, it seems crazy to go through all this to test for Fragile X, a developmental disability, and then not check for Down Syndrome or other Trisomy problems. I need to confirm whether they run the tests concurrently or consecutively, hopefully we'll have all healthy embryos and it won't matter, but if somehow they're all affected with Fragile X, they should hold off on the aCGH testing. We won't need to go there though, our embryos are going to be strong and healthy and we'll have a healthy baby before we know it.

Day 6: FOUR FROSTIES

We have FOUR frozen embryos!!! FOUR potentially healthy embryos that could grow into four potential babies! The two early blastocysts from yesterday continued to grow beautifully overnight and they were able to biopsy and freeze them this morning.

Original Photo came from here

I am so over the moon! The doctor said I responded so well that you can barely tell I'm a DOR/FXPOI patient :D It took a whoooole lot of meds, but it will be so, so worth it if these embryos are healthy. I need good chromosomes without Fragile X or trisomy problems.

Our breakdown for our first IVF cycle:

• 12 days of BCPs
• 3 days off
• 11.5 days of 600iu Menopur, 0.83mg Omnitrope, 1mg dexamethasone, 5 days of Cetrotide
• Novarel trigger - 10,000 HCG 

 This protocol resulted in:

• 14 follies
• 11 eggs retrieved
• 8 mature eggs fertilized
• 6 embryos
• 4 frozen day 5/6

My mild OHSS symptoms are starting to resolve today as well. I still got up to pee three times last night, but I think the swelling in my abdomen has gone down a little this morning which means the HCG must finally be leaving my system, I didn't test out the trigger since there was no reason but it would have been interesting to see how long it sticks around. Maybe I'll test it out next cycle to see if it really takes 10 days to get rid of it. The horrible acid reflux is also starting to go down, I don't feel like I'm going to throw up stomach acid, which is awesome. I know I got off a lot easier than many people do  so I'm not complaining.

Now, we need to do the whole thing alllll over again. The big question is, do we take a month off or start right back up with this upcoming period? I've been looking into it and research has shown there's a definite synergistic effect in back to back cycles, especially in really low AMH/DOR/Advanced maternal age patients.  The cumulative effect of both cycles ends up being greater than the sum of both cycles - if the med effect from cycle one is 2 and the med effect from cycle two is 2, the cumulative result is 5 instead of 4 in the second cycle. I think that's why Dr. D was leaning that way until I got 4 awesome embryos.

The wild card here would be cysts, last cycle I had the most stubborn follicular cysts on the planet that took two periods and two weeks of birth control to resolve. I don't know if I'll have them again this time since they aspirate the follies during my retrieval, which you'd think would mean no more cysts but who knows. It would definitely make the decision for me though, if I have cysts hanging around on my next CD2 baseline ultrasound, I have to take a cycle off.

Day 5: TWO Frosties!

It's only 11am here but we've already had a crazy, stressful morning. My phone apparently rang at 7am but E and I were both sound asleep and I didn't hear it. Waking up 3 times a night to pee is exhausting -_- Then E's phone rang a minute later, and we woke up just in time to hear the end of the call vibrating on the night stand. Fully awake now, I jumped out of bed and recognized the number as belonging to the ART center currently in possession of our embryos. Our updates come from Dr. D at a different number so it was really unusual to get contacted directly by the lab.

I called them back right away and got a somewhat frantic woman on the phone - apparently they never sent us the correct paperwork to sign for PGD consent! They can't biopsy our embryos without this paperwork, we're holding up the embryos and she was worried we might be on vacation or might not have a scanner or printer and she wouldn't be able to get a hold of us. Ahhhh!

Luckily we do have a printer/scanner and we've been waiting on tenderhooks for embryo updates so there's no way we'd be far from home right now. She emailed me the paperwork straight away and E and I quickly signed and initialed another 20 pages, scanned them in and emailed them back to her. Phew. This was not the start I was hoping for this morning but I'm glad she caught the oversight in time.

Knowing that we now had at least one embryo to biopsy (!!!) I carried my phone around with me all morning until 9:30 rolled around and Dr. D called! He said that out of the 6 embryos at our last update, TWO were now hatching blastocysts that were being biopsied and frozen! YESSS!!! Two more are early blastocysts this morning so baring any problems, they should be ready to biopsy and freeze tomorrow! Ahh!!!  I know we're not supposed to count our embryos before they're hatched, but we have a very real shot of having FOUR embryos on ice to test!

Original Photo came from here

I am so, so excited for these embryos. There's a good chance that our baby could be one of those hatching blasts in the freezer Right Now. Now we need to decide if we should take a month off or start our next IVF cycle straight away with this upcoming period. It should be starting in about a week or so, maybe a little more or less. If there is any benefit at all to doing back to back cycles I am ready to go and I will stick myself with all the needles all over again. Dr. D said my OHSS symptoms, primarily the fluid retention that is causing all the discomfort, should start to go away when the trigger leaves my system which is about 7-10 days after taking it. Today makes 7 days so I should start feeling better in the next 3 days which is awesome. If there's any lingering discomfort, the 12 days of birth control should take care of it and by the time I start stimming again, I should be feeling normal.

I have heard before that there may be some benefit to back to back cycles and Dr. D seems to be leaning in that direction as long as I feel good. If that is the case, we're repeating the same protocol and I'll need to place my next order with IVFMeds.com straight away.

Please send good thoughts to my two little early blasts, they need all the positive vibes/thoughts and prayers they can get to grow up and hatch tomorrow!