So ready for our frostie baby

This time tomorrow, I will be Officially Pregnant (until proven otherwise). There will be an actual, live embryo getting cozy in my uterus, settling in for the next 40ish weeks. After almost three years of trying, I am so excited and so ready that I feel like I might burst.

My pre-transfer protocol began this morning with the last of my Z-Pack, my estrace, aspirin and vitamins. I ran the last of the errands I'm going to be allowed to run for the next 4 days and then had a wonderful, relaxing acupuncture session to increase the blood flow to my uterus. Although she forgot to tell me the day before, my acupuncturist S also recommends a massage the day before transfer to completely relax the muscles. This sounded wonderful of course, who doesn't love a massage, but they usually require a bit more advanced notice than 20 minutes to book.

So, after leaving acupuncture, I called my mother in law to see if she could get me in for a massage at her regular place. Most of the places near me require at least a days notice but her place is unusually  flexible. To my great delight, they were able to squeeze us both in at a moments notice and I spent a glorious hour getting rubbed and stroked by a deceptively strong little woman. I hadn't realized I was in need of a massage until she dug her elbows into my shoulders and pressed the small of my back. Holy Ow. After being waved out of the massage clinic, hair all over the place and a tiny Thai woman telling me something about my face (perhaps that I needed water?) we capped off the evening with some delicious Italian food.

The next step begins tomorrow at 8am when I take the first of two Naproxen, along with my usual estrace and aspirin. I skip the Endometrin until after the transfer, so I'll probably bring that to the appointment with me. I follow that up with breakfast and at least a liter of water between 9 and 9:30am to ensure that I have a super full bladder for the transfer. The fuller my bladder is, the more it presses my uterus into an optimal position. Finally, we check in at 10am for our 10:30 transfer and I get to bring our little embryo home.

Everything is lining up perfectly. E and I are so ready for this frostie to be our baby. This IS going to be our baby.

Progester-Woah!

I went in for my progesterone draw this morning, fingers crossed that my progesterone decided to climb, at least a little. We had to go in early since the lab closes by 9:30am on Saturdays and I was moving extra slowly from the lingering shadow of a migraine. I had a feeling some head aches would be forthcoming from the hormones I started yesterday and they certainly didn't disappoint. After this many medicated cycles, it's pretty much a guarantee that high estrogen and progesterone will give me at least one migraine within the first 12 hours.

Still, I made it there in time and was finished with the draw in just a few minutes. I had gotten home, put in a new Endometrin and changed my pad (ew - I got lucky yesterday with a clean pad but last nights pill pretty much dissolved and fell out this morning. GROSS) and started prepping breakfast when the phone rang with results.

By today, they're looking for your progesterone to be 8 or above. Since mine was only 1.5 when they were looking for 2.0, I was a little worried it might still be low but all that anxiety, and the chocolate bunny head I ate, were for nothing! The nurse immediately said my progesterone looks great and told me my level was 15 today! This officially clears us for our Tuesday transfer and we're now just waiting on the lab to assign us our official time. Only 3 days to go until our frostie is home!

Gratuitous photo of Milou that a fellow agility student took today. Look at my lady rocking that tire :)

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!

Medicated FET

I just got the list of things we'll need to get done before our medicated FET can begin. I was hoping we wouldn't need to get to everything on the list before I can even start birth control but no such luck.

First up:

• Get financial clearance, this means calling their financial manager and getting her approval to go ahead with the FET. I'm waiting for a call back from her on Monday. On the subject of money, Reprogenetics never asked us for payment for adding on PGS to our PGD testing, even though I called them and tried to give them my credit card at least 8 times. Maybe they tried to bill my insurance for the PGS as well as the PGD since we had an abnormal embryo? I don't know but I hope it doesn't hold us up. I'm prepared for the clinic's financial person to bring it up just in case and I'm expecting them to send a bill any day.

 Next on the list:

• Get yet another infectious disease panel. I had a huge panel run when we started infertility testing that I had transferred over to the clinic before we started IVF.  Apparently it is now out of date; it needs to be done within a year and since mine is technically from last August, I need a new one. I really don't want to pay a ton out of pocket for it at the clinic so I'm going to see if I can get my OB-GYN to order it. 

Third one isn't so bad:

• Go in person with E to sign consent forms for thaw and transfer. It would have been nice if we could sign and email the forms but to do that we'd need to have them notarized which is just as inconvenient and not going to happen. Instead, I just need to find a time we can both go in to take care of it. 

And finally, progress!

• Order all the meds! They're thinking BCPs, Lupron, Estrace, Progesterone in oil (not sesame!), HCG, baby asprin, Endometrin, Z pack, Medrol, and Naproxen. They also offer Valium but I'm going to pass on that since I'm not a nervous wreck. It's really for patients who can't relax for the procedure but having been through two IUIs (I've been told an IVF transfer feels just like an IUI, basically painless) a HSG and a Hysteroscopy without meds I'm quite sure I don't need it.

My one gripe is I actually had to call and request the list myself, because I need to be super psycho prepared for this stuff in advance, and I kind of wish they would have taken the initiative to send it sooner. If all this needs to be done before I start medication and I was told to "call on the first day of my period", leaving 2-3 days before I'd need to be on medication, I'm not sure how I was supposed to get this done in that time frame. I'm probably starting to PMS a bit since my period is right around the corner but it's rubbing me the wrong way a bit - shouldn't they be more on top of getting me this information? I'm now waiting on a second email from the nurse as well, giving me the details about which tests they want me to ask my OB-GYN to run. It makes me wonder if they think I'll probably get bumped for the holidays so there's no rush :/  

I really hope not, I'm so ready to get this embie back home where they belong! I am going to make this baby to stick through sheer force of will and the sooner I get them back into my body, the better.

Christmas Delays?!?!

Originally, I was planning on putting an embryo back straight away after this IVF cycle. I psyched myself all up for a November transfer and told myself I'd have good news for the holidays. I was ready to go, let's get this embryo toasty warm in my uterus!

Then, Dr. D put the kibosh on that. He said I've been injecting waaay too much medication into my body, two months in a row, and that wouldn't make for the most ideal environment for our embryo. Damn. He suggested that we take a wash cycle, wait for the drugs to really leave my system and start fresh with a nice, fresh cycle. Okay, I don't love the idea of waiting yet another month, but I would never do anything to jeopardize the success of my frosties so I got on board. One wash cycle to get everything out and THEN we'd thaw out a frostie and put it back.

With a regular cycle, it's pretty easy to plan when things should be happening. With this period showing up right on time I was pretty much positive that we'd be doing our transfer shortly after Christmas, probably sometime around the 28th if Dr. D really planned on transferring on CD 17. I've heard some people transfer later, closer to CD 20 or 22 but Dr. D said CD 17 so that's what I went with. I psyched myself up again for a Christmas transfer told myself I'd have wonderful news around January 9th. A September baby would be wonderful, right before the holidays really started to pick up.

I was reading through my IVF support group, reminding myself to practice patience when I read about some clinics closing for the holidays and delaying treatments. This should have been obvious, of course they'd want to go on holiday, but my clinic couldn't be closing because I'm transferring right after Christmas, right?  Right??

Nooooooo!!!

I got on the phone to Dr. D's nurse and asked them about their Christmas schedule. Bam, my worst fears were confirmed. They usually close for two weeks spanning the end of December to the beginning of January. Fuck. Right over when I was supposed to be doing my transfer. Double Fuck.

I explained to the nurse that I was supposed to be transferring over that time period and wasn't expecting my period to start until December 12th. She elaborated that the ART center closes completely for those two weeks but there's still a crew on the clinic side. The last day for most things is December 18th and there are only certain days after that where they can perform specific procedures. This is probably for those people who need to stim longer than expected and need their retrieval done over those two weeks, not for people who are looking to transfer a frozen embryo that's perfectly happy waiting on ice.

She told me to call with the first day of my period and we would see how things look then but it looks like we'll be delayed yet another month. I was just getting used to the idea of taking one month off and now we have to take two. I told my acupuncturist S how disappointed I was and she said that success rates are lower around Christmas because people are stressed out so I wouldn't want to transfer then anyway, but I'm pretty sure she was just trying to make me feel better. I don't see out of town family members or deal with a lot of family drama over Christmas so I'm fairly certain that my chances wouldn't be any lower just because it's the holidays.  My frostie certainly doesn't know it's Christmas.

All I want for Christmas is a batch of healthy embryos! One in my belly and the rest on ice.

If we have to wait two months, we won't get to transfer until the end of January, probably around the 25th. This means that I would potentially be getting good (because I refuse to believe otherwise) news on my birthday. It would be a wonderful birthday gift but I'm so anxious to get an embryo back where it belongs. This process takes so long and every month more feels like forever.

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!