February

February 2016 our lives will change forever!

After five long years of infertility we are overjoyed to finally become a family of three. Today we saw our little one and got to hear the heartbeat. It was the most incredible sound I've ever heard.

The love I already feel for this little one is unreal.

IVF Update

Obviously I suck at keeping my blog updated! We are roughly have way through our first IVF cycle, and I'm still in denial this is actually happening. I see the bruises and certainly feel the PIO shots, but it's still hasn't completely sunk in.

Let me recap the last week. I ended up doing stims for 9 days. My body has always been slow at responding, so I wasn't surprised I ended up on stims for a few days longer.

Thursday, May 14th we got the go ahead to stop stims, and that I would be triggering that night. I was so excited! The trigger shot SUCKED. In the past I used Ovidrel for my trigger shots, but our current Dr. doesn't like it. This time I used Novarel. The extra fun part was that since it's an intramuscular injection my Dr. prefers for you to do it in your upper arm. It's super awesome fun.

Saturday, May 16th we went in for our egg retrieval! WOOHOO! We got there at 9am, went back and started signing paper work and my IV got going. Our nurse was amazing. I love her and want to be BFF's with her. She also works as a labor & delivery nurse and we hit it off talking about home birth and all sorts of fun things. Travis probably wanted to run at this point. Around 10am they took me back and the good meds started flowing. When I woke up my first question (or so I thought) was "how many did we get"? Travis said the Dr. hadn't come in yet, but literally 30 seconds later he pulled back the curtain. He told us everything went great and he got 11 mature eggs and 2 more he thought would mature in time. I was thrilled. After he left I asked Travis if I was saying inappropriate things again upon coming out of anesthesia, and he confirmed that I did. Oops! Apparently I just asked them to use different sperm, of someone talk, dark and handsome. It was the anesthesia talking!!

After the retrieval we went home, I ate a huge lunch as I was starving and then slept most of the day. I had plenty of cramping and just overall soreness. The heating pad did not leave my side, hell, it still hasn't five days later. PIO shots started this evening. I've never had to do PIO shots before, and I was dreading it as I've heard the horror stories. I had Travis do the first shot, and it wasn't as terrible as I had imagined. The shot itself isn't bad, it's the knots in your back after that suck. Hence the heating pad still being part of my nightly routine.

Sunday, May 17th we got a fertilization update. One of the eggs did not mature, so going into fertilization we had 12 eggs. Of the 12, all 12 fertilized! That was a huge relief and so exciting to hear.

Tuesday, May 18th we got our next "update" phone call. They didn't call until 5:45pm and I was freaking out. We ended up losing one embryo after fertilization. As of yesterday morning the report showed the following:

(1) 4 cell embryo (1) 5 cell embryo (1) 6 cell embryo (3) 7 cell embryos (3) 8 cell embryos (1) 9 cell embryo (1) 10 cell embryo.

They told me 2 were rated good, 7 were rated okay, and 2 were rated poor. Hoping the okay one's perk up and move into the good rating.

Providing our embryo's continue to develop, my embryo transfer will be tomorrow morning.

Praying we have 2 embryo's to transfer, and if we had some to freeze I will be over the moon.

I will keep you updated on tomorrow's progress.

Thanks for all the love and support.

Protocol

Thank you for the sweet comments and encouragement! It's nice to know there are a few people still reading. I wanted to get my protocol written down so if need be, I can refer to it again at some point. I also think it's fascinating to see how different everyone's protocol is.

04/12 - 04/27 Birth Control
04/12 - 04/27  Baby Asprin
04/24 - 05-11  Lupron
04/24 - 05/11 Dexamethasone
05/05 - 05/10  Follistim
05/05 -  05/11 Lovenox
05/05 - 05/11 Folic Acid
05/07 - 05/10 Menopur
05/08 Intralipid Infusion

As of right now, I'm feeling pretty good. Lupron has brought on lots of hot flashes, which are always fun. You could also say I am slightly emotional these days.I was not prepared for the extreme exhaustion I would be feeling. I cannot get enough sleep at night, and I could go for at least 2 naps a day. I'm ready to have some energy back.

Tomorrow I go in for a baseline ultrasound and blood work. Hoping everything is normal and we are ready to go.

The Start of Something New

Hello! It's been a while, hasn't it? My how life has changed since my last post. To quickly sum up the last 16 months we moved to Nevada (never saw that coming), supported my sister during the birth of my first niece, and added another amazing dog to our family. And we are still on our journey to creating our family.

When I last blogged we had announced we had made the decision to adopt. We spent almost a year meeting with adoption agencies, fundraising money, and trying to to find the right agency for us. Just when we thought we had found the right agency, T was presented with a job opportunity in Nevada. We felt it was in the best interest of our family and his career to take the opportunity. We moved and quickly realized we could not use the agency we had intended back in CA because of some of the laws here. So we started looking for agencies here. Needless to say, it's beyond slim pickings. We either met with the agency and knew it wasn't right or we simply could not afford the agencies fee's. I started looking at fertility clinics here and quickly came across one that caught my eye.

I called to make an appointment to meet with the Dr, and was informed his next available consultation was 4 months away. I snatched up the appointment. We got lucky and received a call 2 months later informing us he had a cancellation and would we like the appointment. Hell yes we did. We met with him, and instantly felt this was where we were supposed to be. He spent an hour with us on our first visit, going over all our history and previous attempts at pregnancy. He gave us his personal cell phone number and told us to call him if we ever needed anything. We left feeling on top of the world, and that this was the reason the opportunity to move here came about. Because believe me, moving to Nevada was NEVER on our radar.

All this to say, our first IVF cycle is starting soon. Very soon. I start Lupron tomorrow morning! I am excited. I have such a sense of peace and calm right now. Two things I have never felt during our previous cycles. I truly feel we are where we were supposed to be all along. Looking back, things have (or haven't) worked out because if it had it probably would have never led us here.

The reason for my sudden return to the blog is because I want to document this journey. Even if nobody is reading this, I want to have it all here to look at and remember all the details of this new adventure.