Two Miracles to Come

My New Blog

2010-05-13T22:29:00.003-04:00

As promised, here is my new blog: Foibles of a New Parent

Drop by and have a read!

The End of an Era

2010-05-02T17:18:00.003-04:00

After much contemplation and thought, I have decided to bring this blog to an end. Every time I see the name of this blog, I think to myself "My miracles HAVE come...I'm not waiting anymore". This blog was also something that I did to get through the years of infertility that we suffered. It's a blog about trying to get pregnant and what happens when you finally do.

While infertility has left us scarred for life, I feel that we have had the privilege of moving on with certain aspects of our lives. I still believe that I am infertile...7 years of trying with not one natural pregnancy during that time and a heck of a lot of intervention to become pregnant in the end does not a fertile woman make. I realize though that the things that concern me these days are different and I want to make a clean break from this blog, respecting what it was and is to those who find comfort in my words about the time that I walked through the valley of IF.

I have crossed over to "the other side", but I have not forgotten. Therefore, I want a different place in which to discuss matters that concern me now, respecting that this space was somewhere that I found comfort when I was in treatment and actively cycling.

As I'm sure you have noticed, it has taken me a long time to post my final post about my birth story and I think a large part of my reluctance to do so was that it represented an end to that part of my life ridiculous as it sounds. Those 7 years were among the most painful, most difficult and trying years of my life so it seems absurd that I have a hard time letting that all go. I think that part of it is that after 7 years, I know lots about being infertile and not much about being a parent. For the longest time, IF was who I was and it was such a huge part of what I did on a daily basis.

I'm not that person anymore.

I have grown. I am different. I still bear the scars that IF has etched in my life.

I have not forgotten.

So, in light of those revelations, I will be ending this blog. I am going to create another space and will post details once I have created it.

Thank you a million times over to everyone who has hung in with me and offered me such love and support through all of this. I would not have made it without you all. I hope you join me as I take my first tentative steps down another of life's pathways but I understand if you do not.

It's hard to fathom but all of you, many of whom I have never met and probably never will, are so near and dear to my heart and I am so grateful to have felt your loving cyber hugs and support.

May I be able to pay it forward a hundredfold.

Birth Story - The FINAL Installment

2010-04-17T20:47:00.008-04:00

Hellloooooo....anyone out there?

Can't blame you all for dropping off because this has been the longest, most drawn out story ever BUT...

...I'm going to finish off my birth story.

Yes, really. Thank you for hanging in there and being patient. There is an end. It is in sight. More thoughts on that later...

Onto the birth story...

So there I am, lying on the table, children delivered and waiting for the placentas to magically slide out and for this to all be over. After all, I just pushed two human beings out of my woohoo - it couldn't get any harder than that could it? At this point, things seemed to slow down or stall a bit. The doctor was massaging my abdomen and she kept massaging.....and massaging.....and massaging. I finally asked her whether the placentas had been delivered and she told me that they had not yet detached and that it was taking a bit longer than it should. She went on massaging and then, after some more time had passed, she told me that they were going to have to manually remove them. Back up the woohoo she went and started basically tearing the placentas away from the uterine wall and let me tell you, that was when I fully realized that my epidural had worn off. I said before that could feel everything going on down there when the kids were being born but the actual birth part took place pretty quickly so I didn't have too much of a choice but to bear with it and then it was over, or so I thought. When the placentas were being removed, it *HURT* and I was in so much pain that I asked the doctor to stop and when she didn't, I finally ended up yelling at her "DOCTOR - PLEASE STOP!!" That finally got her attention and the anesthesiologist was paged to top up my epidural. My screaming also alerted my DH that someone wasn't quite right in the OR. It was pure bliss when the top up for the epidural took effect and when they handed me the button that allows me to self-administer additional doses, I hit that button five times in a row immediately. There was no chance that I was going to live through it wearing off again!

At this point, they continued to manually remove the placentas. They were using ultrasound to ensure that they got all of the pieces. Then they then moved on to stitch up the episiotomy. It was sometime around now that I began to realize that something was not right because the doctor, when asked to describe the bleeding, replied that it was "still brisk" despite there being multiple bandages being pressed to the site of the wound and applied with pressure. I remember seeing a sodden bandage soaked through with blood and thinking to myself "that must be my blood" but not really realizing how bad it was. My DH told me later that he remembers seeing a bucket with the placentas in it coming into one of the rooms where the girls were being checked out and it being filled with blood. We had agreed ahead of time that my doula would stay with me during the delivery of the placentas and he would go with the girls so this was his first clue that something wasn't right with me in the OR.

I had begin to shake uncontrollably like a leaf and nothing I could do could stop the tremors. My whole body was just shaking and shaking and I was wondering if I was beginning to go into shock. I asked the doctors if this was "normal" and was told that this was a common side effect of having an epidural. Hmmm. No one ever told me that so for those of you are pregnant and who may still be reading and considering having an epidural during your labour - beware that your epidural may give you an intense case of the shakes.

I guess at this point I had lost too much blood because the doctor started calling for blood products - 4 units to be exact. Due to the heavy bleeding, they decided to do a D&C to ensure that they removed any remaining pieces of the placenta that may have still been stuck to the uterine wall. I never knew I could have a D&C as part of giving birth but there you have it. They also cleared the OR so my DH and my doula had to wait outside.

According to the post operative report, at this point I became "hypotensive" which means that I had abnormally low blood pressure. They were unable to get a reading from using the blood pressure cuff - you know, the one where they inflate and cut off your circulation and then somehow take your blood pressure by holding a stethoscope to your arm. So, the anesthesiology team then started to try to put in an ART line. This is akin to an IV in that they are trying to slide a very thin flexible tube right into the artery that runs in your arm. They tried for a half hour to get this line in, shifting back and forth between my right arm and my left arm. I was pricked over and over again and I remember being very vocal and cranky about it, proclaiming loudly "OUCH!" every time they tried to get that thing into my artery. The next day, I had a good look at my arms and I had no less than a dozen scabs on *each* arm where they had tried to get the ART line in and my forearms were completely black and blue on the underside from my wrist right to my elbow. I appreciate how difficult it is to put one of this ART lines in because the circumstances that merit one also mean that the patient likely has collapsed arteries making it extremely difficult to slide the tube into the artery without puncturing it. However, it was intensely unpleasant from a patient's perspective.

A second D&C was performed because of ongoing bleeding and the doctors were able to confirm that there was nothing left in the uterus. The anesthesiology team were finally successful in placing this ART line and the blasted pricking stopped. Blood work became a breeze after this because there is a valve as part of the whole ART line setup that allows you to tap into the artery and draw blood at anytime. One small positive to all the pain of having one put in! I also was thinking to myself that it was so ironic that in one arm they were giving me a blood transfusion and from the other arm, they had to repeatedly draw blood to check the levels of everything. I still wasn't stable at this point and continue to bleed and I fully realized that things were not going well because the anesthesiologists were being continually paged and they answered the pages by saying they were dealing with an emergency in the OR...to which I realized in a haze that the emergency they were referring to was ME!

To stop the bleeding, the doctors placed a balloon inside of my uterus and inflated it with saline so that the outward pressure would hopefully come into contact with the site of the hemorrhage and stop the bleeding. Thankfully, it worked because if it hadn't, the other options to stop the bleeding were to 1) place shuts in the arteries leading to the uterus and cut off the blood supply or 2) do a hysterectomy. Yes, you read right...a hysterectomy was the last option that was presented. I thankfully did not know about any of this but these options...maybe they were discussed with me but I have no recollection of that conversation...but these were discussed in detail with my DH who was anxiously waiting outside.

My condition was finally pronounced stable. Caitlyn was born at 7:04pm and by the time I was stabilized, it was 11:40pm.

The list of medications given to me is pretty impressive too:

Phenyleprine
Hemabate
Ergot
Pentaspan
Granisetron
Metoclopramide
Furosemide
Labetalol
Morphine
Metoprolol
Adenosine
Nitro

Total blood products given - 9 units of blood, 7 units of fresh frozen plasma and 5 units of platelets. They estimated that I lost over 3 litres of blood.

Yikes.

Wow.

That was close.

The key thing is that I am okay now.

As I sit here and type this, I look at the beautiful faces of my girls and feel that everything I went through was worth it to get to where we are now. It was a hard slough after their birth, but I made it and I'm fine now and I am still in possession of my uterus (!). I have an entirely new perspective on childbirth now but women go through it all the time and we get through. We make it thanks to medical technology these days and the teams of dedicated doctors & nurses who are on call for our deliveries. I am so glad we decided to choose the hospital that we did because it was their knowledge and expertise that saved me in the end. I am sure that the care that I would have received at a more local hospital would have been good as well but I am not sure I would still be in possession of my uterus and I may have ended up being transferred downtown to this hospital anyway when things took a turn for the worse. When we chose the hospital that we did, we chose it for the girls and the excellent NICU they had. Little did I know that I would also need their expertise in dealing with difficult birth situations.

So there you have it, not quite in a nutshell, but my birth story in as much detail as I can remember it.

The end.

Photos!

2010-04-07T19:26:00.003-04:00

For those of you who are still hanging in there with me even with my excruciatingly long and drawn out birth story, here is a little peace offering...photos of my girls! These were taken a week or so ago and they have definitely put on weight and chubbed up a bit. Victoria weighed in at the doctor's office today at 7lbs 9oz and Caitlyn topped the scales at 8lbs 1oz. They're both doing well!

Victoria:

Caitlyn:

Two sisters hanging out together having some tummy time:

Victoria's closeup:

Caitlyn's closeup:

Enjoy!!

Birth Story Part III

2010-04-03T04:51:00.008-04:00

When the anesthesiologist showed up, I asked that I only be given enough to take the discomfort away but I would still like to feel the urge to push when the time came. He only administered half the regular dose which sounded fine to me but this decision would come back to haunt me later. It was about 10am by this point of the morning and with the contractions faded into oblivion by the epidural, I decided that now would be a good time to get some sleep and some rest. I can't imagine going through hours and hours of labour only to be exhausted and then have to push a baby (or two!) out at the end so the epidural was a good decision for me.

The worst part about having the epidural put in was the local freezing that they administered to numb the area. Like all of the needles we have experienced over the years, this was no different - pinching sensation with a sharp sting and then when the actual epidural was put in, you can feel what is going on but there is no pain associated with it. The epidural itself is a flexible tube that they then proceeded to tape to my back to ensure that it didn't move. I think my entire back was covered in adhesive to ensure that it didn't move with the tube fed over my left shoulder and then attached to a self-administering button that I could press at will to "top up" if I felt the need.

The doctors came back and kept checking on me throughout the rest of the morning and at 2pm they did one final internal exam and announced that I was ready to start pushing. Now a side note about internal exams and not to scare those of you who have not yet had one or haven't gone into labour...internal exams can be very uncomfortable and can be even painful. They put a glove on their hand, some lubricant on two fingers and then those are inserted into your vagina where they feel for the cervix. When you're not in labour, the cervix should be high and closed. During an internal exam when your cervix is high, it really feels like they're trying to reach for your tonsils by way of your vagina. Truly. My first clue that internal exams were not fun was when I was in triage and the woman in the room next to me had an internal exam and yelled through the whole thing.

One of the nurses asked me if I wanted to "practice" pushing. Having never done it, I thought that this would be a good thing so she coached me through what to do. You're lying flat on your back and you need to get into a frog like position...you bend your knees and grab behind them with your hands and then lift your upper back, all the while pushing down with your abdominal muscles like you're trying to pass the biggest poo of your life. You do this for one long breath and then you exhale and inhale again quickly and then push again during the same contraction. I have never felt my face go so red and I felt like my head was going to explode at some points. Who knows if I ever got the pushing technique right because I proceeded to push for 4 hours (at my own request...I'm kind of stubborn that way) and little Victoria just wouldn't come out.

I have never pushed so hard in my life. I have never tried so hard in my life to do something and it was disheartening when the doctor would tell me that I needed to push even *harder* than I already was. I thought I was pushing pretty damn hard but the baby wasn't moving down so maybe I wasn't getting the technique or doing it properly. My doula helped me to advocate for myself at that point and we got to try different techniques...we tried squatting and we tried another technique where we wrapped my doula around the waist in a sheet and I pulled the sheet towards me while my doula braced herself and pulled against me instead of pushing. Same muscles were used in that technique, just a different way of engaging them. Still no change. At this point, it was about 5:30 and the doctor decided that it was time that the babies arrived. They were not in distress at all, it was just time.

I was wheeled into the OR at that point and I pushed a few more times there but still no change. Then we decided to use the vacuum and things began to happen pretty quickly then. They had to fit the vacuum in and when she was trying to work it in past my perineum, I noticed that what she was doing was pretty uncomfortable for me. Then I got an episiotomy and I definitely felt the "snip". Those should have been my first clues that my epidural was wearing off or was not strong enough for what they were about to do. I was asked to push again while they used the vacuum to help Victoria along and with the first push, I felt her head come out (finally). With the second push, I felt the rest of her body come out. I thought I heard her cry but she was whisked away almost immediately but a nurse did stop and show her to me very briefly from a few feet away.

The next thing that I remember was that my water broke - little Caitlyn was ready to make her appearance into the world and her sac ruptured after Victoria was born. There was a huge gush of liquid that went on for a few seconds and I just soaked the gown of the doctor standing at the foot of the bed. Now Caitlyn had been head down all along but with Victoria being gone from the uterus, she flipped around and became breech. All the doctor said she was that a foot was sticking out. I will be forever grateful to the doctor that was on duty that night because normally, this would have meant a c-section for Caitlyn as the breech position is not one that doctors like to deliver vaginally. However, I had told the doctor several times that I wanted to avoid a c-section if at all medically possible if there was no danger to the kids. So at first, the resident tried to reach up and grab Caitlyn but she couldn't get a good hold of her. Than, the doctor in charge reached up and grabbed her and with one or two pushes from me, out she came doing the splits! Caitlyn was taken away immediately as she did not come out crying so they wanted to examine her so I didn't even see her.

During all of this, I am realizing more and more that I can feel just about everything going on down there, not just pressure. When someone puts their entire hand, not just 2 fingers, up your uterus, it feels pretty uncomfortable. Like you're being really, really stretched in a not so nice way and that is no small feat for someone who is 8 months pregnant! I thought that the hard part was over at this point because the kids had been born and it was my misunderstanding that the placentas would just slip out and deliver themselves. Boy was I wrong.

Birth Story Part 2 of ??

2010-03-11T23:56:00.005-05:00

I think my DH's response to my question was "Huh? What? Are you serious?". Thankfully, at 2am in the morning, there is no traffic on the highway going downtown so it was only a matter of him getting up, getting dressed and then driving to the hospital. In the meantime, the nurse got a wheelchair for me and I was transferred to the labour and delivery side of the floor.

Finally...underway. And no induction required either!

I was checked into this tiny little labour room where I was promptly strapped down with fetal heart monitors and another monitor to record and measure contractions. I wasn't in too much discomfort yet but I was beginning to appreciate why epidurals were created in the first place and why women ask for them. My contractions were not yet painful but the pressure was becoming more and more intense and I had to focus more on breathing my way through them vs. chatting with my nurse.

At 3am, my DH arrived and joined me in labour and delivery. At this point we were transferred to another much larger labour room where we called our doula and waited for her arrival. At some point, I was checked again by the resident to see how far along I had progressed. I was now 3-4 cm dialated and almost fully effaced. For my first time, labour was progressing along really nicely and I was dilating at a good rate of about 1cm per hour. I did a quick mental calculation and determined that I would be 10cm dilated by about noon - a good ways away from 5am in the morning but you know what, the time went by pretty quickly.

Since I was attached to the monitors, I couldn't get up and move around freely but I asked to be taken off the monitors for at least a few minutes at a time so I could sit on a birthing ball or at least move around and relieve the aches of lying in bed in the same position for hours. The contractions continued to intensify and started getting painful. My goal all along was to make it into active labour before getting an epidural, that being 5-6cm dilated, since the hospital's strong recommendation was to have an epidural in the case of twins given the high incidences of medical intervention. By 9am, I was finding it really hard to breathe my way through the contractions. Interestingly enough, when I froze up and held my breath as it is so instinctive to do when in pain, the contractions felt even more painful and unbearable. However, when I focussed on taking slow, deep breaths like I would in meditation and hypnosis, the contractions were definitely more bearable.

Once it was confirmed that I was in active labour, I asked for the epidural. I was incredibly nervous about having it put in as the idea of having someone poking around in my spinal column just seemed so dangerous. Words like "paralysis" kept on floating around in my mind and were exacerbated by the full disclosure discussion the anesthesiologist had with me before he proceeded (i.e. all of the risks associated with the procedure). With my DH kneeling infront of me and my hands on his shoulders, I hunched over and waited for the epidural to be put in. We got to the critical part of the procedure where the doctor says "Now don't move under any circumstances" and I looked my DH in his eyes for support. Quite funny - at that exact moment, my DH's surgical mask that was hooked on over his ears, dislodged from one side and slowly swung open across his face. I could see in his eyes that he was thinking about fixing the mask but then I said to him "Do not move. Do NOT move." So we both stayed frozen in place and the epidural was put in and everything faded into wonderful numbness.

Photos and Birth Story - Part 1 of ??

2010-03-01T19:08:00.007-05:00

Time is not my friend these days and I have been wanting to share my birth story with all of you along with some photos of the girls and I have decided to do a few minutes here and there and get down what I can in that time as opposed to nothing at all.

First of all, here are photos of my precious miracles:

Victoria:

Caitlyn:

I blog anonymously and for those of you who wonder what we look like, we have received the comment over and over again from friends and family that Victoria is a Mini Me DH and Caitlyn is a Mini Me Kayjay. :)

Onto the birth story...

As I had blogged before, that fateful Friday morning, I woke up and felt different. I had a low back ache and I felt crampy in my lower abdomen. Before, any back pain that I had was mid to upper back and due completely to how I was carrying the twins but this time, the ache was definitely lower down. These feelings persisted throughout the day but it subsided during the afternoon and then returned with increasing persistence in the evening hours. My DH and I were talking on the phone that evening and by mutual consent, we decided not to put off running some errands until the next morning "just in case". I still didn't know if this was labour or not but we wanted to be somewhat prepared just in case.

By 10pm that evening, I was definitely feeling uncomfortable. Every time I tried to lie down, I felt like my uterus was hanging by a thread and the effort it took to lie on one side or another made me feel like my belly was going to snap free from that tenuous little thread. So, I sat upright at the side of my bed and wondered if this was labour because other than being a little uncomfortable, I wasn't in any real pain. I also found that if I got up and walked around slowly, the feelings with abate a little. However, there was still something telling me that something wasn't right and I finally called the nurse at around 11:30pm. She thought at first it was false labour because if you can alleviate the "pain" simply by shifting positions, than what I was feeling weren't true contractions.

I lasted until about 1:30pm at which time I called the nurse again and had her page the on call resident. Something just wasn't right and I was beginning to feel more and more uncomfortable with each passing hour. I was having very irregular contractions at that point, some lasting a few minutes to others lasting a few seconds in no set intervals. The sensation of a contraction is much like period pains except for worse...kind of like a bearing down sensation that involves your lower abdomen and culminates into intense pressure "down there".

The resident came and checked me out and did an internal exam to determine whether or not I was in labour. Remember - with my ruptured membrane, internal exams are avoided as much as possible because the risk of infection increases with each exam. I wanted to be sure that I thought in my own mind that I was in labour before I took the chance of increasing infection.

I was already 2-3 cm dilated and effacement of my cervix (thinning of the membrane) was already well underway. I was officially in labour and not a day too soon - the girls waited until they were 34 weeks exactly before deciding that it was time to make their appearance into the world.

I called my DH at 2am and asked him the question I have been waiting 7 long years to ask - "Are you ready to meet the girls honey?"

To be continued...

Our Two Miracles Have Arrived!!!!!!!!!

2010-02-11T21:06:00.002-05:00

Saturday February 6th at 7:01pm, Victoria made her appearance into the world followed closely by her sister Caitlyn at 7:05pm. No c-section was required although a vacuum was used to help Victoria along. Caitlyn decided not to remain head down and turned breech and was born doing the splits!

Mom had complications post delivery with hemorrhaging (details to come in a subsequent post) but has recovered and is now resting at home. Babies graduated from the NICU after just 2 days and are trying to stabilize their weight and jaundice in the Level II Nursery.

Mom and babies are doing well!

Feeling Crampy...

2010-02-05T08:14:00.003-05:00

Yes, you read the title right. I woke up this morning with a mild low back ache and a crampy feeling in my lower uterus area. I constantly feel like I have to go to the bathroom (not in a UTI kind of way) as in there is downward pressure there. I don't think I am having contractions, but I know that low back pain and crampy feelings can be the first signs of labour. My discharge this morning was pinkish so of course I was wondering what "bloody show" looked like - was that was I was seeing in the toilet?

How do I feel about it? Nervous...tinged with a little excitement. I had butterflies when I realized this morning what I was feeling. I do want to meet our girls but at the risk of repeating myself over and over again, I just want to take them as close to term as possible. I had high hopes of taking them another 2 weeks but given the way I'm feeling right now, I'm not sure.

So here's a list of silly labour related questions that I was hesitant to put out there but will now just for the fun of it. You don't have to answer as some are really personal but I'm just curious:

1. How did you groom yourself "down there"?
2. Did you bother shaving your legs?
3. Did any of you worry about having a BM while pushing or did enough time pass so you didn't have to worry about having one?
4. Can I really be in labour given the silly questions I'm asking above??

So I wait...33w6d today.

NICU, pPROM & Maternity Photos

2010-02-01T08:25:00.005-05:00

Where to start...lots to blog about today.

Maternity Photos

We had our maternity photos taken yesterday and for a brief time, I got to really revel in the pregnancy and just enjoy being pregnant without all of the worry over the past few weeks. The photos captured the pregnancy and all of our joy and anticipation about the girls; thankfully, it did not capture any of the worry and heartache around the subchorionic hematoma, the bleeding or the pPROM (more on that later). I thought to myself that this is what it feels is like to be "normal" and to enjoy "normal" activities that most pregnant women get to enjoy.

I only got to see a few shots right at the end but she will be posting them in a gallery in the next week for me to look at. She promised to air brush away all of my keloid scars for the final prints but will only retouch one or two in the online gallery so I can see and decide how much air brushing we want. I am excited to see them and am grateful that I was able to have them taken to document this period of our lives.

pPROM & The NICU

I have discovered that there is a name for what has happened to me - pPROM stands for pre-term premature rupture of the membranes. It happens in just 1% - 2% of all pregnancies and accounts for about 35% of all pre-term deliveries. There is no known cause (although plenty of speculation regarding inflammation and infection being the culprits) and your chances of having a recurrence of pPROM in a subsequent pregnancy is about 35%.

We also had a tour of the NICU over the weekend and I have to say that I was a little shocked by what we saw. Imagining it is completely different than actually seeing the reality of a NICU. So many teeny tiny babies that look so frail and fragile, all covered in wires and hooked up to all sort of machines. We wanted to tour the NICU prior to delivery to prepare ourselves for what seems to be inevitable at this point. No matter how long my girls stay inside, it looks like there is no way around a stay in the NICU.

I had hoped that the closer to term I got, the less time and the lower the likelihood that they would need special attention in the NICU. I know they will receive excellent care and I know that they are in good hands; this is why we chose this doctor and this hospital. However, I can't escape this feeling that I've already let my girls down by not providing them with a safe place to grow for 9 months. I had my 3rd ultrasound today since being admitted and it revealed even lower levels of fluid for poor little Lefty, the lowest levels yet.

After everything that we went through with IF, I was going to do everything in my power to have the best pregnancy ever. I was going to take good care of them, provide them with all of the nutrients that they needed to grow to be healthy and strong...I was determined to give them the best start in life. Instead, I find myself struggling with the idea that little Lefty is now exposed to the risk of infection and she's squished because she doesn't have a lot of amniotic fluid surrounding her to protect her. Little Lefty is also not able to practice her breathing very well (babies practice their breathing and develop their lungs by inhaling and exhaling the amniotic fluid) and will likely need to be on a ventilator for a while. She will also be put immediately on a course of antibiotics to kill any bacteria she may have been exposed to.

It's all very scary.

I was also reading stories of parents whose kids stayed in the NICU and it was interesting to read because much like you need to mourn the things that IF will rob you of, having a preemie robs you of many of the normal things you would think you get to experience. I likely will not be able to hold my girls right after they are born; we won't be able to share that skin-to-skin contact that they say is so important in the time right after birth, I won't be able to nurse them or comfort them when they cry and I won't be able to take them home with me.

I feel helpless.

Sure, there are a lot of things that the doctors and nurses will be able to do for them, but what will *I* be able to do for them as their mother? Worry? Got that down pat...

For now, the doctors still believe that the girls will benefit from more time inside so I trust them and am trying to keep them in as long as possible. I am also upping my intake of water more than ever to try and help Lefty replenish her amniotic fluid as the doctors did tell me that the levels of fluid could fluctuate.

33w2d and counting...

A Visit From My OB (Finally!)

2010-01-30T10:56:00.003-05:00

I finally got to see and speak with my OB yesterday late in the day. He was all dressed up in scrubs so I take it he was between patients at the hospital and took a few minutes to come and see me. He reassured me that he had been monitoring my progress remotely and that he was very happy that we had gotten another 2 weeks gestation after the rupture.

In terms of my burning questions, the number one question was how long was he going to let me go with a ruptured membrane. If you recall, the first doctor I spoke to said a maximum of 34 weeks, the second doctor I spoke with said a minimum of 34 weeks...I just wanted to know where he fell on this 34-37 week continuum because we are talking about a 3 week difference after all. He told me that the longest he would let me go would be 35 weeks and if I didn't go into labour on my own by that point, he would induce by 36 weeks. I asked him if I was doing well and the babies were doing well if we could take it day by day after 36 weeks instead of inducing. He told me that he didn't feel that the risk of going longer would be beneficial because if I were to get an infection at that point, the risk of brain damage to the baby whose sack ruptured was greater than the benefits of remaining in utero. Okay - he had me there...as soon as he said "greater risk of brain damage" I instantly felt more comfortable about induction should it become necessary.

I guess my concerns around being induced is what if these two girls aren't ready to come out and they induce me even though they haven't dropped and my cervix is still long, tight and closed? To me, to be induced under those circumstances sounds like it may result in a long and hard labour during which the babies go into distress and then I'll end up having to have an emergency c-section, something I really want to avoid. I voiced this concern to my doctor and he stated that in his opinion, I would go into labour naturally before then. He also then went on to say that the only reason why he thinks I have been able to carry for so long is because I have ruptured and therefore released some of the pressure in my uterus!! He explained that the bigger my uterus grows, other "receptors" begin to get triggered that will prompt my body to prepare for and go into labour on its own. After all, this is my first close to term pregnancy so nothing has been stretched before and I am basically carrying the equivalent of one 7lb 9oz baby (at last check, weight estimates were 3lbs 14oz & 3lbs 11oz) which is a pretty decent size given I am normally 5' 3" and 130lbs.

At the 35 week mark, it will be Valentine's Day weekend; 36 weeks would put us around February 20th. I hope that I make it that far because I want to minimize the amount of time the girls need to spend in the NICU. During my OB's visit, the Neonatologist also popped in and advised me that no matter when my girls are born (anytime between 33 - 36 weeks), she believes that they will require time in the NICU.

I continue to wonder whether I will know that my body is preparing to go into labour. May women report that they feel that the baby has dropped and they start feeling all sorts of pelvic pressure. A lot of other women report feeling nothing. I am trying to listen to what my body is telling me but at each point when something has happened (subchorionic bleeding, bleeding in 3rd trimester and then the membrane rupture), I have felt perfectly fine and there has been no indication that something out of the ordinary was going to happen. My belly area remains pretty firm most of the time (many nurses have told me that I am "all baby") and my abdominal muscles continue to feel very stretched, almost like I can't stand up straight without pulling something.

Other than that, not much else going on here. Nice and boring, just the way I want it for now! I'm still enjoying the sunshine and the privacy of my own room. We have hired and met with our doula of choice this past week and tomorrow (Sunday), I will be having maternity photos taken at the hospital. That's all for now.

Moved to a Private Room

2010-01-28T10:17:00.002-05:00

I'm tired of sounding like a Drama Queen or a Negative Nelly and really, at this point, I am so happy to be in a private room (I was in a semi-private room before). The situation and circumstances that got me here...well, not so great. However, silver lining and positivity first though - I'm in a private room for now!

Our health coverage is only for semi-private rooms and the cost difference between semi and private rooms is $100 per day which would be all OOP for us. I figured if I was here for 4 weeks, that would be at least $2,800, money I would much rather spend on a vacation somewhere with my DH and the kids, not on a hospital room.

Up to now, I've had a wonderful roommate until 2 nights ago when she had a c-section. I know the hospital is a 24 hour operation but she left the room at around dinnertime and the cleaning staff didn't come in until after midnight to clean her side of the room. They turned on all the lights, made lots of noise...hard to ignore that kind of commotion three feet away. Then, they actually checked someone in at 2am in the morning and that new person just had a c-section herself. Now my understanding is that, as a rule, they don't mix pregnant women with women who have had babies but they were so full that they didn't have a choice since they were out of beds. This new roommate was awful. She and her DH stayed in the room, made all sorts of noise moving in and banging into my bed among other things, conversed in normal tones and turned on the TV and left it on all night. Then, the next morning, she was making phone calls at full volume at 7:45am and even turned up the volume on the TV. By this point, having only had a few hours of sleep (and after my bleeding episode the previous night), I was completely irritated and annoyed. I barely got any sleep at all and I was tired and cranky.

I did feel sorry for her because hers was an emergency c-section and her son was just 1lb 9oz and 4 months pre-mature so he will have a long stay in the NICU (neo-natal intensive care unit). However, that doesn't give her the right to be so inconsiderate of others. We are all in the hospital for a reason. I just kept to myself for the morning, hoping and praying that someone was going to be discharged and she would be moved out of the room. By midday, I was starting to feel guilty about feeling so cranky and anti-social and I almost went over to introduce myself but I kept on hearing her DH coughing and then I heard her Mother say that she herself was not feeling well (scratchy throat - feels a cold coming on). Kept the curtains closed. After all, the doctors keep telling me that the biggest risk for the girls and I was the risk of infection and the last thing I want to pick up is a cold.

Early afternoon, a nurse came by to tell me that I was being put into isolation because my roommate was experiencing symptoms of nausea, diarrhea and vomiting (can we say Norwalk?). By being in the same room as her, she had potentially exposed me to any virus or bacteria she herself may have had. I know she did not deliberately do this and that the hospital was full but man was I steamed and my first priority was get away from her as I needed to makes sure I remained infection and virus free. Both of us were then isolated (separately) and that is how I ended up moving into a private room temporarily. Needless to say, I had the best sleep of my life last night and I feel much better this morning.

I'm not sure how long I'll be in a private room as a person from Infectious Disease Control just came in this morning and cleared me so I will likely be moved back into a semi-private room when one becomes available. It was good while it lasted but I could do without any more of those scares. So, grateful for the private room (and the window!) but hoping not to be exposed to any more awful roommates. My DH is also bringing me some ear plugs tonight so hopefully it won't matter how awful they are in the future.

Deja Vu - Bleeding...again

2010-01-26T08:32:00.006-05:00

**Warning - this is one of those TMI kind of posts where a lot of bodily functions are discussed**

Last night at around 10pm, I was going about my business and getting ready to go to bed. I am still leaking amniotic fluid and I have described the sensation before as being like having a heavy period. Often, I'll feel nothing, especially if I'm sitting still or lying down; then, when I move, all of a sudden there is a huge gush of fluid. I noticed last night that the flow seemed to be a little heavier so I went to the bathroom to change my pad and I saw what I thought was a moderate amount of bright red blood. Bright red blood is never a good sign.

I immediately paged my nurse. She came down and one of the first things she told me was that bleeding, even bright red blood, was common among women who had ruptured membranes. Their treatment wouldn't vary in that they would continue to monitor the babies and ensure that they were not in distress and check with me for any other signs of pre-term labour (i.e. contractions, back aches, heavier bleeding). She put both babies on the monitor and thankfully, their heart rates were normal and they seemed to be pretty happy as I could still feel them squirming around. My nurse was great though and said that she understood that I would worry but if there was anything that she could do to alleviate some of the worry (i.e. put the babies on the monitor more frequently) she would be happy to come back sooner. I asked her to wake me up at 2am to do another check to make sure that the babies were doing okay.

Before she left, she also checked out my pad and reassured me that, although it looked like a lot of blood, it was also mixed in with amniotic fluid so it makes it look like more than it actually is. In her opinion, it wasn't a lot of blood.

At 2am, true to her word, she came back and put the babies on the monitor again and they were doing okay. She also asked to see my next pad to see how much bleeding there was and the bleeding had already started to taper off but the pad was still stained with bright red blood. Again, she reassured me that since it was mixed in with amniotic fluid, it looked worse than it actually was. She left and then I went to the bathroom only have a huge blood clot come out and fall into the toilet. Having never seen a mucous plug and the loss of one's mucous plug potentially being a sign of pre-term labour, I was immediately concerned that this was what I was looking at and I paged her to come back again. I cannot even begin to tell you how awesome this nurse was - she knew I was worried about it and so she went and got a glove and fished the clot out of the toilet to prove to me that it was just that - a blood clot and not a mucous plug.

I tried to get some sleep and she came back at 6am to do another check. By this time, the bleeding had stopped and I was leaking only amniotic fluid again. It's so strange to go from moderate bleeding with blood clots to nothing at all. The thing that confuses me the most is that I can't use how I feel as a gauge of how things are going. Usually, when something is wrong, you just know and somehow you can tell but each time something has happened (the 1st trimester subchorionic hematoma, the spotting, the rupture, bleeding), I have felt fine. I haven't felt bad at all and then something happens and I can't help but wonder if I somehow caused it. A question I will ask the doctors today during rounds.

So it seems like things have gone back to status quo for now but again, another warning that things can change on a dime. My DH told me this morning that he packed himself a bag now that he's going to leave in the car at all times so if he does need to come down, he's already ready. I'm glad that one of us is ready!

First Week Down

2010-01-23T12:15:00.002-05:00

I'm still in the hospital and I am still pregnant.

I am officially past the 1 week mark and today post rupture and I learned some statistics that I am glad I didn't know before. My nurse was telling me that of the women who have ruptured membranes, 50% will go into labour within 24-48 hours of the rupture. Another 30% will go into labour within the first week. Only 20% make it past the 1 week mark and have a good chance of staying pregnant for a longer period. My prospects are looking good at this point and I will stay here as long as I possibly can so my girls can grow as much as possible.

I haven't seen my own OB yet but the doctors here that do daily care of the antenatal patients spoke with him about me and he very clearly conveyed that he would like me to stay pregnant for at least another 2 weeks. I am 32 weeks today and from what I was told, it sounds like 34 weeks is the minimum amount of time rather than the maximum. Of course, I need to speak with him directly, but it appears that if 34 weeks is the minimum, hopefully if everything stays status quo he will let me carry to 35 and maybe even 36 weeks. We shall see but everyone, cross your fingers for me.

Part of being in the hospital is the close monitoring they are doing. My vital signs are checked every four hours and includes a temperature check, blood pressure check and heart rate. My temperatures have always been normal but my blood pressure and heart rates are on the high side. My blood pressure was pretty high at 140/80 when I checked in but I put that down to stress. With a conscious effort to breathe deeply and do some meditation/hypnosis, I can sometimes bring my heart rate down to 120/80 if not lower. My heart rate though has remained stubbornly high at 120 bpm. Normal heart rates for women are between 60-90 bpm. Of course, I consulted with Dr. Google and there were several sites that said that for pregnant women, especially those carrying twins, 120 bpm was not uncommon so I am reassured. They ran an EKG yesterday and a CBC just to make sure there was no underlying infection and to my knowledge, everything has come back normal.

My two girls are also doing well and like to squirm around when they're trying to check their heart rates (also every 4 hours). Now that I have all sorts of time on my hands, I've noticed that little Lefty usually gets the hiccups every day but little Righty hasn't had the hiccups yet. Their movements are also changing - before, they had lots of room to move about in and I would feel a lot of quick pokes. Now, I feel movement more akin to entire limbs being dragged across my abdomen. I have yet to see the actual limb (some women say that they see hands and feet) but the movements are slower and my entire abdomen will shift so that I'm lopsided. It's kind of neat to watch!

Today a few of my friends trekked down to my house to give DH some help organizing and putting together the nursery. This was what was supposed to happen last week before the rupture and I am so grateful to have such wonderful friends who are willing to chip in and help out like this. The upstairs was in a state of disaster as 3 rooms are in a state of flux with the painting of the nursery. My DH moved a dresser into the nursery last night and was putting away the girls' laundry so the conversion from study to nursery has officially begun. I ordered some decor items from Lambs & Ivy which came in this week and I am excited to put the decals up and really make the nursery look girly girly.

We booked a doula this week and I even found someone to do maternity photos in the hospital so it has been productive - well, as much as it can be via telephone & internet. Other than that, I am trying to take advantage of this time and rest and really take it easy to give me the best shot of making it as close to term as possible. A very heartfelt thank you to everyone who has posted comments and offered support to me during this stressful time. It is truly appreciated and has kept me sane.

Update From the Hospital and Thoughts On Becoming A Parent

2010-01-19T12:52:00.009-05:00

The high risk obstetrical team makes rounds every day and checks in on all of the patients here. Today, I asked the question regarding how likely it would be that I would be able to carry the girls to term (i.e. 37 weeks for twins). Right now I am 31w2d. The doctor making rounds that day advised me that in cases such as mine with a ruptured membrane, they usually don't like to go beyond 34 weeks as their belief is that the risk of infection at that point outweighs the benefits of carrying longer. So if I'm lucky, I will carry for another 3 weeks at most. My regular OB (who also runs a high risk practice) will come in to discuss with me what we are going to do but I have yet to see him on rounds. I was also told that it is not just the first 48 hours that matter after a rupture - it is the first week after a rupture when most women will go into labour. If I make it past this Friday, than I have a good shot of carrying for a little longer.

The thought of delivering a 34 weeks frightens me. I'm not sure why and I've been trying to figure out what it is that I find so scary. Random thoughts are:

I'm afraid that the health of my little girls will be compromised at such early gestation and they may have to spend an extended amount of time in the NICU
there may be long-term effects on the health of my girls being born so early
I'm scared about actually becoming a parent & I feel some days very woefully inadequate and unprepared
I'm scared about the pain of labour and what may happen (i.e. epidural, emergency c-section) and my ability to make good choices under stressful circumstances
this is likely the only time in my life that I will be pregnant and I feel that if I don't carry to term, that means that I didn't do a good job of having a healthy pregnancy

When I look back on Friday, the one thing that struck me is the unshakable feeling that the girls were not supposed to arrive that day - it was just too early. I was envisioning the worst where we would lose one or both of them and that it was all spiraling out of our control. I have since been reassured many times that their prognosis even at 31 weeks is excellent and survival rates are in the range of 90% and above but you never know what could happen and I was just so afraid. To short change them 6 weeks in utero seemed like such a long time during which they would have learned valuable lessons such as breathing and sucking (two of the last skills they learn in utero before being born). In addition, with our roots in IF, you know all too well the feeling of not falling into the majority and I can't help but to look at the "what if" of falling in the 10% as opposed to the 90%.

I wasn't clear as well if there would be long-term implications of being born so early. They were going to be so teeny tiny and at last check, they were hovering around 3.5lbs each which seemed so big at the time but so small if they were born right then and there. I was thinking that 3.5lbs was a great start if they were going to double their weight by 37 weeks but as an actual birth weight, I would like to see them in the 5lb range at least. However, that being said, I have since heard stories and have been greatly encouraged by all of you sharing your stories about your preemies (thanks Andrea!) that have more than made it and have done really well. I just want to make sure they get the best possible start in this world.

After everything that IF put us through, I thought that I was more than ready to become a parent but the closer that day comes, the more I realize that it's something that stresses me out. You see, I think of our little girls as these beautiful blank slates and it is up to my DH and I to teach them what they need to know. They're so innocent. We all start out with the best intentions but there are so many dysfunctional families out there...how do we know we're not going to turn into one of those? At what point are good intentions not enough? I have had several nightmares here and there throughout my pregnancy from which I have woken up in tears that tell me that this is something that is weighing on my subconscious. What kind of family will we be able to create for these two precious girls? Don't get me wrong - I think my DH is going to make a wonderful father and I hope that we will be able to raise our girls so that they are happy and secure in the knowledge that they are wanted and loved. I just worry that something may be lost in the execution of our good intentions, that's all.

Labour and delivery is also a big unknown for me. We're trying to hire a doula (labour coach) since both girls are still presenting head down and I am very hopeful that we will be able to delivery vaginally rather than through c-section (and avoid all of the issues with keloid scarring). I'm hoping that a doula will allay my fears and be able to provide us with information as we need it through the birthing process. For some reason, I am also not comfortable with having an epidural - just the thought of having someone poking around in my spine gives me the shivers. However, at my hospital, it is standard protocol for someone having multiples to have an epidural in the event that medical intervention may become necessary. I will also be giving birth in the OR rather than a birthing room for the same reason - just in case medical intervention becomes necessary. I know that this is a natural process and that it happens all the time but it has never happened to me so I wonder what it is going to be like when it eventually does happen.

Anyway, that's what has been rattling around in my brain today. See what happens when I have too much time on my hands?

Admitted to the Hospital

2010-01-17T15:54:00.003-05:00

Before I get into the gory details, I have been admitted to the hospital and I am still pregnant...for now. This is not related to the spotting that I had last week but something new. Read on...

Friday night at 6:30pm, I felt a little gush of what I thought was a little heavier than usual discharge. Well, I soaked through the pantyliner and then rushed upstairs to consult the pregnancy "bible" and to put on another pantyliner. Was I leaking amniotic fluid? How does one tell? I had just started eating dinner as I waited for my DH to return from work so I sat back down and started eating again...only to feel a few stronger gushes of fluid. I went and sat on the toilet at which point a few big gushes came out. Then it hit me...this was just way too much fluid to be a leak. Did my water just break???

I was freaking out. We were nowhere near being ready for the babies to come. They were just 1 day shy of 31 weeks and while the prognosis is excellent at this point, it would still be best for them to stay inside for a few more weeks. I have always kept my eye on the end goal of 37 weeks if not 38 weeks and I couldn't fathom having them so early. I was crying uncontrollably at this point, panicking that we would lose one or both of them and really feeling that this was not the right time for them to arrive.

My DH walked in the door and I immediately told him that we needed to go to the hospital as my water had broken. Not the first thing he expected to hear arriving home from work. I was terrified that this meant that we would be delivering that night - once your water breaks, I thought you immediately went into hard labour and that there was no turning back. Thankfully, I would learn that this assumption was wrong.

We arrived at triage where the nurses and doctors calmly checked me out. I was still gushing fluid at this point, the same sort of thing like when you have a period. Nothing comes out until you move and then whoosh - out it all comes. The good thing was that the fluid was always clear because if one of the babies was in distress, it may have passed its stool into the amniotic fluid and then it would no longer be clear and I would probably have been rushed into an emergency c-section at that point. Clear fluid was a good sign.

After a quick ultrasound, it was determined that the membrane hadn't fully ruptured but there was a tear somewhere and that was where the leak was coming from. The sack that tore was little Righty's sack - she's the one that likes to wedge herself right on top of my ribs and her sack was always a little bigger than Lefty's. Lefty's sack was still intact and there was still a good amount of fluid around both. I received the steroid injections to help mature their lungs just in case they did decide to make an early appearance into this world and then I was admitted.

I'll be in the hospital for the duration of my pregnancy. I was told that if I were to go into pre-term labour, it would likely be within the first 24-48 hours after the rupture and after that time, the risk drops off. We're 2 1/2 hours away from he 48 hour mark after which I will breathe much easier. I have not be confined to strict bed rest so I can get up and walk around the floor, which I do at a very slow pace. Every little twinge, every little twang, every little muscle ache or soreness I examine in minute detail to try and figure out whether or not it was a contraction or just a Braxton Hicks or round ligament pains.

I just want my babies to be okay and although they have an excellent prognosis being born at 31 weeks, it didn't feel like the right time for them to arrive. Somehow it feels too early. I am still hoping to carry them for another 6 weeks but every additional day we are grateful for. Please girls, stay inside for a little while longer okay?

Back to the Hospital

2010-01-07T21:26:00.002-05:00

It's Thursday and 4 days after I first started spotting.

It hasn't stopped.

After a quick consult with the nurse at my doctor's office on the phone, we decided to trek back downtown and have it looked at again. I've been resting and trying my best to do "modified rest" but the spotting has continued. Granted, it is still dark brown in colour so it isn't bright red, profuse or anything like that. I still don't have any other symptoms of pre-term labour (thank goodness) but I honestly thought it would have stopped by now.

Once I got to the hospital, they strapped on the fetal heart monitors and little Lefty and Righty were moving around like crazy, trying to reassure Mom and Dad that things were okay. They did another internal exam and concluded that the bleeding was still coming from inside the uterus rather than the cervix itself but they weren't concerned because of the colour and the lack of other pre-term labour symptoms.

We were sent home.

I still worry about making mountains out of molehills but after everything we've been through, I want to make sure that my babies stay inside for as long as possible to give them the best possible chance when they finally do arrive in this world. It did strike both my DH and I that the kids could arrive at any moment. That realization was a real eye opener. Time is getting short!

So I'm back at home on modified rest. I hope this spotting stops soon!

Scary Day But Things are OK Now

2010-01-04T18:03:00.005-05:00

So I woke up this morning, fully intent on getting up and going to work for my last four days. It is year-end for the company I contract for and we mutually agreed to extend my contract until the end of this week. They have been very good to me and the extension in my contract is the only reason why I now qualify for Employment Insurance benefits.

I have to admit that I still check the TP every time I go to the bathroom, especially after I had all of the bleeding early on from the subchorionic hematoma. Things have been all clear for the past 4 months. Well, this morning at 6:30am, I wiped and found some blood.

OMG.

I wiped again, just to make sure I wasn't seeing things but yep, there was some blood on the TP.

Inhale. Exhale.

I called my DH up from the downstairs and showed him (honestly, we share everything) - what to do? I called triage at our hospital and the nurse asked me a few questions to try to figure out what was going on.

Nurse: "What colour is the blood?"
Me: "Dark brown"

Nurse: "Have you bled through a pad?"
Me: "No - there is nothing on the pantyliner but when I wipe, there is blood"

We go through a few more questions regarding symptoms of pre-term labour like whether I am experiencing any back pain (no), any contractions (no), leaking fluids (no), any cramping (no).

Nurse: "Wait until your doctor's office opens up and see what they say. They'll likely tell you to come in and have it checked out as any bleeding should be followed up with and then come into triage."

My DH and I live in a suburb of Toronto and we decided to go down right away rather than waiting for the doctor's office to open up. It's a traffic thing - if you don't get moving ahead of the rush, you get stuck for a long time and we decided that since it was a high probability that we would be told to go into the hospital, we should get moving ASAP.

Once we got there, we checked in with our doctor's office and was told to go to the hospital so it was a good thing we got a jump on the traffic and left when we did. We checked in through admissions and then went upstairs to triage. By then, I went to the bathroom to discover that there was not a trace of any of the bleeding. Good that the bleeding stopped but bad because I always wonder if I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill and it doesn't help that you can't show the doctor what is going on. I was strapped to two fetal heart monitors and something else to monitor uterine activity and then we waited. The one comfort was that the two babies were moving around like crazy, so much so that my belly was rippling away, and their HBs were right where they should have been, around 150 bpm.

11:30am came and I was up to go to the bathroom and discovered that the bleeding had resumed. Again, nothing on the pantyliner but something on the tissue when I wiped. The resident came in and did an internal exam and saw what I saw so it was good in that we could actually talk about what brought us into the hospital that day. She confirmed that the bleeding was coming from inside the uterus and not from the cervix itself. The doctor came in afterwards and did an ultrasound and both babies were doing fine and showing no signs of stress. His theory is that the bleeding is old blood due to the colour and that there is a tiny placental abruption. In layman's terms, this means that he thinks that the placenta has torn away from the wall of the uterus a little bit. If it was something that was severe and required immediate attention, I would be bleeding profusely and the colour would be bright red. He reviewed with me the signs of pre-term labour and reminded me that this was the number one concern for people carrying multiples. He also told me that I have been having some contractions and I didn't even know it!

He asked me if I was still working and I said that I was and that this was my last week and he said to me "Well, you're done now!" I was pretty surprised but he really wants me to rest more and not work at all. I haven't been confined to bed rest but I was told to rest more and take it easy from here on out.

Wow.

I was reminded again today as to how things can turn on a dime and one second you're fine and going about your business and the next thing you're in triage, having an internal and discussing bleeding. Life can change in a second and I am reminded about how fragile things are. I didn't have a fall, bump into anything, slip and land funny...I don't even think I've done anything strenuous over the last few weeks. However, I guess I need to redefine my definition of "strenuous" because I have been tired lately with all of the Christmas activities. They're fun but they're also tiring.

I'm okay. Lefty and Righty are okay. I'm resting at home. I let my boss know that I wouldn't be able to help them this week after all and that I would be returning my laptop to them. When I was in triage waiting to be seen, 37 weeks seemed to be a LONG way away from my 29w2d. Hopefully, with these changes, we'll have a shot at making it that far.

A New Post (Finally)

2009-12-27T10:56:00.012-05:00

I've been absent for a while and I know it and I have no excuse other than I've been tired and caught up in the whole Christmas rush. Things have been fine with us but I'm running out of steam really fast these days (not complaining) and not able to do as much as I did before. I would rather spend what little coherent time I do have offering support and keeping up with what's going on with some of the other blogs I have been following. Rushing around to do the normal Christmas things and shopping and trying to get ready for Righty and Lefty (my DH's nicknames for the two girls) has kept me very busy this year. I was so far behind that I didn't have time to put up the tree or decorate like I normally do (gasp) and I definitely didn't get any baking done except for a few batches of biscotti.

I will be glad when work winds down for me - only 4 more working days to go! It has gotten really difficult for me to sit down all day and by the early afternoon I am just squirming around in my chair and standing or squatting to continue working. I have definitely popped but people still say I look small for carrying twins. Since I have been very lax in posting belly pics, here are the latest ones, the first one at 24 weeks and the second one taken just this past weekend at 28 weeks.

24 Weeks:

28 Weeks:

The girls have definitely been making their presence known which is a comfort. Righty tends to sit high on my right side and likes to wedge her butt and her two little legs right on top of my ribs which can be very uncomfortable at times. We confirmed this during my last ultrasound done on Christmas eve and she even turned her head to look right at the u/s wand as if to say "What? I'm comfy here!" I can always tell when she's trying to creep back into that little pocket of space because the area gets rock hard and I get sharp pains that radiate sometimes as far as my back. Ouch! She usually moves after a little while though and if it's really painful I try to encourage her to move down a little by gently massaging her in a downward motion. Lefty is sitting much lower down and we were told that she would be the first one born if I did give birth vaginally. My left side bulges more than my right side so it makes sense that she is sitting down there. Right now, Lefty is quieter than Righty but I do feel them both moving about and kicking and it changes from week to week which one is the more active one of the two. Both girls continue to be head down which I am very grateful for because that is the best possible position for me to attempt a vaginal birth.

I just found out that my doctor will not let me go past 38 weeks and if I haven't gone into labour on my own, he will induce me. He believes that the increased risk of going to 40 weeks is not worth the incremental growth they will have in the last 2 weeks of gestation so I will be holding my two little girls in my arms by the end of the first week of March! Very exciting but kind of terrifying. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the kind of parent I want to be and hoping that I won't mess them up with all of my good intentions. I've had a lot of family stuff swirling around me lately but that is a topic for another post some other time.

I also just found out that I am a tad bit hypothyroid (or hyperthyroid?). My last two blood tests revealed slightly lower than normal TSH and T4 values. My TSH was 0.32 and the acceptable range is 0.4 - 3.8. My T4 was 11 and the acceptable range is 12 - 21. The only record I have of this being tested was back in 2007 and at that time, my TSH was 1.2 and while normal, this is still on the low side. I wonder if this contributed to our IF? I am booked to see a specialist on Jan 13th so I will find out if this is anything I should be concerned with but the nurse at my OB's office told me that she's seen results like this many times before and they always choose not to treat it. Something to file in the back of my mind for the future I guess.

We haven't yet set up the nursery and that is causing me some concern because we are down to the final 10 weeks. A few rooms have to rotate in my house to achieve this. The study needs to move into the guest bedroom, the guest bedroom needs to be moved into the room that is currently holding all of the baby stuff (too small for a nursery) and then we can set up the nursery. We still have grandiose plans to paint and decorate but we'll see how far we get. We've started picking up some clothing, diapers and we bought our infant car seats as well so at least we can bring them home from the hospital if they arrive earlier than planned.

Right now, I feel pretty good other than being extremely tired. I'm hoping to hang on for the full 38 weeks but we'll see. I started seeing a chiropractor to help me with my back pain and that seems help but I am sore after the deep tissue manipulations he did. One weird pregnancy symptom that I have is that the area right at the top of my abdomen is numb. The doctor tells me that this is normal and is due to the nerves being so stretched but it's a strange sensation, almost like someone gave me a shot of freezing there like when you get a tooth pulled. It's all good and normal (or so I've been told). One more weird pregnancy related thing and probably TMI but my nipples are really big. They're so big that if I don't wear a heavily padded bra or if I don't add a nursing pad to some of my other bras, it looks like I'm high beaming everyone. The funny things you learn about your body while pregnant!

I'm off to take a nap - will blog again soon (I swear!).

A Rough Weekend

2009-11-22T21:26:00.003-05:00

Mrs. Last Chance IVF needs your hugs and support right now. I truly hope that she has a late implanter there or that her beta doubles like it should and continues an upward trend...but you don't know at this stage. She's been through a lot and I know you will send her some love. This journey is so hard with tons of pot holes to make you fall down and not want to get up...so please, help me to pick up a friend and to hold her up when she needs it the most.

It's Confirmed - We're Having Two Girls!

2009-11-09T13:40:00.008-05:00

Last week we saw our OB who was able to confirm for us from the u/s results that the microarray was correct in the genders and we are having two little girls! It really didn't matter what we have and at the risk of sounding trite, we just want them to be healthy. Without further ado - here are the u/s photos that were taken, one of each girl:

They each have two arms, 10 fingers, two legs, 10 toes...their hearts and all major organs were working. We are very thankful.

One of them is 13.6cm and the other is a little bigger at 15.4cm. I actually pulled out a ruler to see how big that was and I can't believe they're both that big already! Although, that's still pretty tiny for a whole person.

I have started feeling more kicking from both sides. Now that I know what it feels like I pay closer attention to those sensations. My DH has taken to calling them "Lefty" and "Righty" and just this past weekend, Righty was kicking the hardest yet (which still only feels like a little tapping from the inside) and my DH was able to feel that when he put his hands on my belly. That was such a wonderful experience for us - my face just split into the biggest grin, which was mirrored on my DH's face when he felt her kicking.

I've started to loosen my death grip on my nausea medication and have weaned down one pill a day so I'm now taking 3 pills instead of 4. I've noticed the difference in that I find my gag reflex is getting more sensitive and things are starting to bother me again. However, I'm still doing okay and will hopefully be able to wean off another pill next week.

We've really started to tell our friends now and that has been such a thrill for us to share the news and receive the congratulations. Many of our friends no longer live in the same city as we do so we never see them outside of the occasional visit so they wouldn't know until we told them. It is truly wonderful to hear the excitement and joy in their voices when we tell them and allows us to lose a little of our fear and celebrate as well.

Other than that, we're starting to compile a list of all the stuff we need to get before the babies arrive. I'm 21 weeks now and really, we only have about 4 months to go and we have to be prepared if they arrive early. We've been very fortunate not to have any pre-term labour or contractions and I seem to be doing well except for the occasional ache in my hips so I'm very hopeful that I will make it to the 40 week mark...at least at this point I am!

I haven't been a very frequent blogger of late but I wanted to make sure that I asked all of you who could, to send special wishes and warm thoughts to someone I'm going to call Mrs. LastChanceIVF. Her transfer is coming up this Wednesday, which is Remembrance Day here in Canada. Remembrance Day honours war veterans and although we have not fought personally in any of the World Wars or the Gulf War or the war in Afghanistan or any othre war for that matter, we have fought our own very personal wars these past few years. As you can probably tell from her moniker, this is her last IVF and I want to send her as much positivity and good wishes that I can. If you have a few minutes, think of her and wish her well.

No results yet!

2009-10-30T08:20:00.003-04:00

For those of you who are keeping track, yes, we did have our 20 week u/s Wednesday but here in Canada, there are signs up everywhere that clearly state that "The ultrasonographer is NOT allowed to release the results of the ultrasound and that INCLUDES the sex of the baby". I was asking very nonchalant questions, prodding gently to see how much my ultrasonographer would reveal and she was pretty tight lipped. So, we have to wait to confirm that we are having two little girls until the doctor's visit this coming Tuesday.

The ultrasonographer did take a few minutes at the end of the scan to show both my DH and some shots of the kids. It was such a relief to see them both there...moving arond, each with her own head, arms, legs, heart, feet...they looked beautiful. One of them cracked me up - she stretched her jaws into this wide yawn right as we were looking at her as if to say "Mommy! Stop keeping us up! We want to sleep! Tell her to stop jiggling us around!" It really made me realize that there are two little people inside me with their own individual personalities. Wow.

All I was told that one twin had a HB of 157 and the other HB was 145, both totally normal heart rates and looking good. I don't know if they were measuring on target in terms of size and growth as she didn't share that info with me. I think I caught glimpses of their hearts pumping away and they looked pretty normal to me, the untrained eye. Both babies are head down which is good news for me since I want to try to avoid a c-section given my issues with keloid scars. If the babies were sideways, that would mean a definite c-section unless they somehow shifted between now and then. In any case, both head down is good news for us!

I'll scan in the two u/s pictures later this weekend as we are away visiting relatives in another city. I did get two really nice side profile shots that actually look like babies...even I can identify the heads! Have a great weekend everyone and thanks for following along.

Ultrasounds Make Me Nervous & First Belly Shots

2009-10-25T15:14:00.007-04:00

This coming Wednesday is our big 20 week anatomical scan and I am already starting to freak out a little. In hindsight, I haven't slept well the night before our other planned u/s and I seem to recall that I start feeling more nauseated right before as well.

See, I can logically explain what is going on...controlling it is another matter entirely. What I think is happening is that I worry about what we are/are not going to see. My oh so powerful subconcious mind is clinging to the nausea, making it stronger than the medication, just so I have some sort of "proof" that I am still pregnant. I haven't thrown up again yet but I am struggling again with meat and some meals just aren't going down as well anymore. My mild gagging has also come back but overall, I am still doing better than I was off medication but I am completely convinced that it's the worry about the upcoming u/s that has me nauseated again.

Some of the crazy questions I think are:

Are both of them still in there?

Did one of them disappear?

Do they both have heartbeats?

Are they still growing okay?

Is one growing faster than the other and making the other one starve?

Is that just discharge or am I leaking amniontic fluid?

Two nights ago I had a little mini freak out on the phone with my BFF (who is used to my craziness and talked me down quite calmly and rationally). I read in that What to Expect book (terrible, awful book) about people already starting to feel movement at the 18 week mark and since I am 19 weeks and haven't felt a thing, that got me concerned that I wasn't really carrying around babies but just two little figments of my imagination. I am not that big yet (still) and another pregnant coworker who is just 1 week ahead of me and expecting a singleton is *bigger* than I am. I know - it's not a competition but I can't help but compare and use it as a guideline as to how I'm doing. After all, I'm pretty sure she got pregnant the "normal way" whereas I didn't so I need to constantly reassure myself that my pregnancy is "normal" in its own way.

I also still have the amazing disapearing/reappearing belly. In the morning, there isn't much to look at. Some days I even convince myself that it's almost flat! At night however, after my 6 meals, my belly does seem to pop out more. You be the judge of that:

This shot was taken this morning...(19w1d)

...and this one was taken this evening after dinner...

My DH laughed...he doesn't think there is much of a difference but I think there is. Sigh - must remember not to blog while having a surge of pregnancy hormones.

Thank you to everyone who commented about the "leakiness"...makes me feel a little more like everyone else. No one else ever mentioned anything about this issue so I was really feeling like it was just me! I didn't see it referenced anywhere in the aforementioned awful resource book either and I started to think that if it's not there, than it must not be that common at all but you all proved me wrong! Yay fellow bloggers!

This Tuesday night we also start our prenatal classes at the hospital. We were wait listed for a special prenatal class for people expecting multiples and then finally got in so it will be really interesting to hear what they have to say and to meet some other people. I am going to be hard pressed not to compare tummy sizes with others around the same gestational age so I keep reminding myself that this is not a competition!

I have also bravely made my first foray into Babies R Us to start the research on the kind of stroller that we want to get and all the gear that you need to transport babies around these days. Man this stuff is expensive!! We also belong to a buyer's club and will be able to take advantage of the ability to buy without a retail markup so we are going to make good use of our membership this year. I was quite surprised how heavy some of the strollers were and I ran into another woman with twins who said that most infant strollers can't be taken with you when flying as most airlines will not allow them since they're too big/bulky/heavy. All good stuff to know but there is definitely more research to do before we buy. Besides, it still feels too early.

Anyway, that's about it for me now. Three days to go until the u/s...

Embarassing Question

2009-10-23T15:05:00.003-04:00

So I've talked about many, very personal things on this blog - uteruses, sperm, therapy, etc. but I'm kind of embarassed about this next thing. However, curiousity has gotten the better of me and I'm going throw this question out there and see what comes back.

So here it is.

Has anyone ever lost a little bladder control when sneezing/coughing/throwing up? I never had this problem pre-pregnancy but it seems to be something I have to watch out for these days. In the split second before I sneeze/cough/throw up I have to remember to clench my muscles down there or else I just lose it...a tiny bit. I thought this was supposed to happen *after* the babies are born, not before! Either that or I guess I just have very weak Keigel muscles.

I seem to be carrying very low too so I don't know if it's just the way that everything is positioned...maybe the babies are sitting directly on top of my bladder and the weight is making me leakier than normal???

Anyone else?

Preparing My Furbaby

2009-10-17T20:00:00.003-04:00

As many of you know, I am a dog lover and my furbaby Daisy has been a light in my life during these very long and trying 7 years it took to get to this point. She never judged me for not wanting to be social and was always willing to curl up for a good snuggle. On days where I had personal pity parties and would just lie on the floor crying, she would let me go for a few minutes and then start barking at me to get up and not feel so sorry for myself - after all, I had my wonderful DH and her right?

My DH and I have been talking a lot about how we are going to help her to adjust to the new situation. I know she will come to love our two little girls but there will be an adjustment period and we want to help her through that as much as we can. Once she discovers that they will share food with her, she will be their devoted slave forever.

Actually, we started getting her ready as soon as we got her as a puppy. We constantly touched her paws, grabbed her fur and pulled her tail, all gently of course but we did it just the same to make sure that we desensitized her to the sensation just in case a small child did it to her one day. She's very tolerant of us and she just looks at us like we're crazy and she's doing us a favour by "letting" us have our way. Have I mentioned that she is the best dog ever?

We are also looking into buying a 2nd family car, most likely an SUV and we want to do it in advance of the birth so that we can get her used to sitting in the back - the very back...you know, the hatch back part of the SUV. Right now, she sits behind us and stretches out across the bench - she's never had to share the space so why would she start now? We don't want her to associate being demoted to the back area with the kids so we need to do this far in advance and reward her so she associates good things with sitting so far back there. She was pretty funny the first time we put her in the back of my parents' SUV - she kept on poking her head over the back seats, a little confused, looking at us as if to say "Mommy - why am I so far away? How on earth are you going to feed me cookies from all the way up there?"

We also found this great website which sells a 12 minute soundtrack of all the sounds a baby makes from laughing to screaming. Check it out:

The news article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/and-baby-makes-four/article1270252/

The website where you can get the soundtrack: http://www.dogmeetbaby.com/

My DH was pretty funny and remarked that Daisy wasn't going to be the only one who needed to listen to this recording to become used to the sounds a baby would make!! It will do our family a world of good!

Many people have offered to take Daisy off our hands since they assume that we will be too busy with the girls but there is no way that we would give her up. She is a part of our family just like I am, my DH is and our two little girls.

We will all have to adjust but we are doing everything we can to make that adjustment easier. In my eyes, it is no different than asking a first born child to adjust to the idea of siblings. At first, they will be wary and maybe a little jealous of one another but they will soon become friends. We will still get her outside for her daily walks, run around with her and spend time being silly with her just like we are now. We need to make sure that we praise her when the babies are around (again, positive association with the two new screaming bundles) and make sure that we don't ignore her needs. We have an awesome dog walker who loves Daisy as much as we do and she has already volunteered to help us when the babies arrive so that will also ease the transition.

If anyone else has any good tips on how to make the adjustment, I would love to hear them!

Feelings of Disbelief Still Invade My Thoughts

2009-10-13T16:52:00.008-04:00

I can't help it. I am still in disbelief that this actually happening for us. I am over 17 weeks along now and every day I still wonder if I will see blood on my underwear or have a late term loss. I've read the stories and so have many of you - people have lost their twins in the 2nd trimester so it's not exactly improbable. Things are just more complicated when there are two floating around inside. Do these thoughts and feelings ever go away?

I still try hard to support my IVF buddies who are still fighting in the trenches and I keep up with their stories because I want to know how they're doing and how they're holding up. My heart aches with every valley they hit and it lifts when they reach the peaks. Keeping up with their stories and reading the boards at IVFC reminds me how lucky we are to have these kids are and how deeply and truly grateful I am for them...but I also can't help but reflect how fragile our situation can be.

Everyone keeps asking whether or not we've started shopping and I keep saying no...it seems too early to start yet really, we only have about 4.5 months to go so we really should start picking things up. I have also told my family and friends that I do not want a baby shower. There's that disbelief again. Chinese tradition is that we wait until the baby is 1 month old and then we have a big party to introduce the baby to society. Now I'm not usually that traditional, but in this case, it doesn't seem to be a bad thing to wait until they're actually here. Again, it's that feeling of not wanting to count chickens (or babies) until they're hatched (born).

When I'm shopping for maternity clothes, I catch myself asking about return policies and thinking about if I could still wear certain items even if I weren't pregnant - what is wrong with me?? IVF robs us of so many things and I can't help but think about the "what if". It sure would be nice to float along on a sea of pregnancy hormones, blissfully ignorant of the things that could go wrong, secure in the knowledge that you could get pregnant "just like that" again if you had to.

Part of me wonders if this is somehow connected to my early childhood learnings, that life is just darn hard. Maybe I'm making this pregnancy out to be hard for no reason...I've often wondered if my need to make this hard is tied to my inability to give up the nausea. I seem to cling to the nausea, not wanting to give it up as it provides constant reassurance that there is something going on down there. Maybe I'll be able to give it up when I really start showing.

Anyhoo...enough heavy stuff.

In terms of how I'm feeling, the medication has virtually eliminated my nausea. I still stuggle to eat meat (to which everyone keeps reminding me how vegetarians give birth to healthy children all the time) and I do get occasional twinges of nausea here and there but I am doing a lot better than I was. My lower abdomen is really firm too - I tenderly press a little here and there and wonder when I will feel an aswering push from the other side. It's still a little early to feel movement but I am waiting for that day when I can feel what is going on inside.

I may not be putting on too much weight but I am certainly retaining water and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. How do I know about the retaining water thing? Simple - I've had to grease my ring finger every day to get my engagement/wedding rings on and off. My hands feel kind of swollen in the mornings too and my shoes have begun to get a little tight. I figure I will eventually have to stop wearing my rings but I just love them and not wearing them is really strange for me. A small sacrifice to make though.

Feeling full is a completely different sensation too. My stomach has migrated north and when I feel full now, it's a feeling of being stretched tight across the lower ribcage area rather than deep in the abdomen.

I've been negotiating to extend my contract by a month or two just to make sure I have enough hours to qualify for maternity leave benefits. I think they may have some work for me but I haven't gotten the details nor have I gotten the official word. It's hopeful though that I will be able to get the mat leave benefits so that's good. I break into a sweat thinking about how our expenses will be changing with the coming of the twins so any money is a good thing.

Finally, I leave you with a photo of the sweetest things. My friend, L, stopped over on her way to London, UK and gave the babies their first gift. I'm okay that it's before they're actually here and she specifically asked me if it would be okay (and yes, I did squash the feeling of disbelief that accompanied the question) . I don't see her that often and it is so sweet of her to want to give us something so I thought "why not?" Maybe this will make it a little more real for us. It was just too sweet and yes, they're handmade and soft as buttercream frosting:

The pink one (and yes, that's a teeny tiny bow on top of the hat!):

The purple one (the hat is laid flat so you can check out the bow!):

Thanks L - this is what my babies will be wearing for the 1 month party!

Sue - This Post is For YOU!

2009-10-05T21:50:00.003-04:00

I wanted to make sure I answered your question about the weight gain and I have to clarify that I am referencing a book written by Dr. Barbara Luke and her research pertains to twins, triplets & quad pregnancies. I should have been more clear when I wrote my prior post so I apologize for any confusion or worry I may have caused you - not my intention at all.

Anyway, here goes with what she says pertaining to multiple gestations. She says that the pattern of weight gain matters and that weight gain up to 28 weeks has the greatest influence on growth rate. I guess her research on twin pregnancies has shown her that weight gain before 28 weeks is correlated to weight gain after 28 weeks - the more you put on prior to 28 weeks the more you can put on after 28 weeks, or so I understand it. She also makes the point that the babies takes up more and more room as the pregnancy progresses so your stomach is squished leaving less room for food. Also, she thinks that the increased appetite at the beginning is to facilitate fat stores that will also help to provide nutrition to the babies later on when you can't eat as much.

Reference: "When You're Expecting Twins, Triplets or Quads" by Dr. Bar.ba.ra Lu.k.e & Ta.mar.a Eb.er.lei.n, copyright 2004, HarperCollins, pg 59-60.

That being said though, I have to take what she says with a grain of salt. I was so sick in the 1st trimester and unable to eat...her weight gain goal for someone like me (first pregnancy, from IVF, twins) at the 16 week point is something like 30 lbs!!! BTW, I just noticed another chart on page 60 where she says that the optimal weight gain for a singleton pregnancy by the 20 week mark is 12 lbs - you've gained 10 so you're really close!

Anyway, that's what I was talking about in my other post. Sorry again for any worry!

Coming up on 16 Weeks!!

2009-10-01T14:48:00.006-04:00

This Saturday I will be 16 weeks along and I still have a hard time believing that I am actually pregnant. I don't look that different and I am constantly turning sideways in front of a mirror to check my profile and then flattening my shirt against my stomach area to see how big the bump is. My DH keeps reassuring me that there is definitely a bump but really, if you didn't know, there isn't much to see at this point. I think I'm just looking a little chunky around the middle but that's it.

I'm still taking the Diclectin. I asked my OB how I would know when to stop and was told that I should continue taking it for a few weeks and be symptom free before I even think about starting to wean off of it. It's interesting - a lot of the people that I've told that I have terrible nausea are pretty judgemental about the medication. I get asked really silly questions like "Are you sure it's safe?" or "Is it really necessary to take that?". Duh - no, I'm not sure it's safe and I got it in a back alley somewhere rather than through a doctor's prescription. Of course, ideally I would not be taking any medication at all but there comes a point where you have to decide what's best. There I was, 3 1/2 months pregnant, getting more nauseated with each passing day and getting to the point where even liquids were coming back up and I was -5lbs from my pre-pregnancy weight...I have to get some nutrition to the kids somehow.

A lot of people assume that a twin pregnancy is exactly the same as a singleton pregnancy except you end up with 2 babies instead of 1 - not true. I was given a stern talking to by my OB when I met him - we are at increased risk for pre-term labour, gestational diabetes, hypertension and a whole host of other pregnancy issues. I am even more concerned about putting on weight and eating properly because I am likely not going to see the full 40 week gestation period so time is very precious. Studies have shown that putting on weight in the first 1/2 of your pregnancy influences how much you put on in the 2nd half of your pregnancy and it also affects the final birth weight of your babies. I will ideally carry until 37 weeks but who knows if I'll even make it to that point and how I'll be feeling. Hope for the best and a nice long gestation period but I have to be realistic too. So, I'm trying to eat healthy, eat constantly and drink tons of water too in the hope that it will help.

I'm pretty excited to be winding down work in another 4 weeks. I was off this week but will go back next week for the remainder of October. I was looking at our Employment Insurance ("EI") benefits (this is a government program in Canada that, among other things, provides for maternity leave benefits. We are all required to pay into this and the deductions are taken off each pay) and whether I would qualify or not and I am so close to getting benefits. Basically, I have to have worked 600 insurable hours in the 52 weeks prior to the start of my leave in order for me to qualify for benefits. I am estimating that I will have worked about 500 hours at the end of my contract so I would only need another 15 days of work. So close yet so far! Either I try to find another contract or see if they'll extend my contract at the company I'm with right now. We'll have to see what happens. It would just stink if I didn't qualify after having paid into this fund for over 15 years!

I finally finished a course I've been taking over the last year which was a huge weight off my shoulders. It's a self-study course, one that I chose to take because to maintain my accounting designation, I have to do a certain number of professional development hours every year. I wrote the exam on Tuesday (open book, multiple choice) and failed the first time (boo!) but then wrote it again right away and passed the second time! Yay! No more studying!

Other than that, I'm feeling much better these days and eating normally. The medication has really helped me to function more normally. I have an appointment tomorrow with my OB's dietician and I've been faithfully writing down everything that I've been eating since Monday. My OB refers everyone expecting twins to see the dietician since I apparently have "very specific dietary needs" in his words. It will be interesting to hear what the dietician has to say about my eating habits. Two weeks ago she would have had a LOT to say about what I was eating (essentially, nothing!).

To Sherry, who posted a while back with a question about why I went gluten free...here's why I did it. I do not have any symptoms of having celiac disease...I've always eaten bread and flour and have had no adverse effects that I knew of. At the time, I was about 5 years into this whole IF journey, frustrated with conventional medicine and decided to try to deal with it "naturally" in addition to cycling. I attended a mind-body fertility course and part of the program included some guest speakers. One speaker was a naturopath and one of the things she suggested was to go gluten free because even though you may not have any signs or symptoms of suffering from celiac disease, you may still have it. How frustrating is that?? I thought to myself, "well, I've tried everything else...what would it hurt to do this as well??" so I did go gluten free just to see. I don't know if it made a difference or not but I was not only gluten free but dairy free and sugar free as much as possible. The whole approach was to try to maintain a balanced sugar level in your blood stream, or so the thought process went. I have to say though that I started eating gluten again after getting pregnant because the nausea was so bad all I wanted were soda crackers. I hope that answers your question.

That's it for me for now...I'll let you all know what the dietician said about my eating habits after tomorrow!

Update Slacking

2009-09-21T19:28:00.006-04:00

Yes, I have been slacking lately. Put it down to nausea, tiredness and work. Not complaining - those are just the facts. To post a very quick update, I'm going to post in bullet points to make it faster. Here goes.

we came out of the closet to our family and some friends! The reaction of my MIL was absolutely fantastic and made up for my disappointment over the reaction from my own parents. She said that no matter what, she would be here to help us and that if she had to, she would hire someone to help at her restaurant while she took care of us. Nothing is going to stop her from coming!! She's the best. My own sister started screaming in excitement when I told her that we were expecting - I wasn't quite sure how she was going to react as I know she is quietly struggling with secondary IF herself and I know how hard "announcements" can be.
worked like crazy last week - I normally work in an office 15 minutes from my home as I am not crazy about commuting but last week I had to drive out to a smaller city which meant a 3 hour round trip each day for 3 days in a row.
commuting 3 hours/day for 3 days triggered an extreme nausea attack on my birthday (boo!) so I spent it leaned over a toilet
broke down and started taking the anti-nausea drug called Diclectin. This drug is only available in Canada and is made up of a combination of vitamin B6 and something else which is essentially an antihistamine. I threw up my first dose but have been able to keep subsequent doses down so I am slowly beginning to feel better. Side effects are dizziness and tiredness.
I wanted so much to control my nausea through more natural means but I am not putting on weight still and am at -5lbs to my pre-pregnancy weight which is starting to worry me. So, I started taking the medication. The thing too about Diclectin is that you have to take it continuously in order for it to be effective so it's not as if you can just pop a pill here and there as required.
shopped for the very first time in a maternity store - yikes!! What an experience that was!! We have substantially less selection here in Canada, the main store being Thyme Maternity and their stuff, while nice, is pretty pricey considering you're going to wear it for a few months. Still, I enjoyed the experience although I don't look yet like I belong. They had a specially shaped pillow you could put into your maternity pants so you could see how they would fit when you're bigger and WOW was it ever strange to see what I will look like in a few months!! However, it helped me to have a visual picture of what I will look like as I have never been able to picture that before in my mind.
started planning purchases for the babies - we're looking into strollers, rocking chairs and car seats and my DH is looking into getting a snow blower. We have to start car shopping too and will likely get out test driving this weekend
still worry about telling people although I am not over 14 weeks along. Still scared about m/c
had some weird spotting - a dark yellow, light caramel colour, definitely not red. Not sure if this is from the bleed we had during weeks 5-7 but will mention to the doctor tomorrow
had what I think are round ligament pains - these are like menstrual cramps and are caused by the stretching of your uterus and the ligaments that hold it in place. Mine were dull and achy in nature and lasted for several hours at a time accompanied by low back pain. Did it worry me - you betcha it did! They're gone today but it was bothering me Friday and Saturday for most of each day off and on.

That's it for now - a quickie!

The Post About My Parents

2009-09-05T10:22:00.009-04:00

Last weekend, we went over to my parents' house for dinner and to finally tell them our big news. They were pretty surprised to say the least but happy over the news. What has been bothering me is this - my parents have booked a trip and will be away from Feb 28th to March 21st. My singleton due date is March 21st but with twins, I could very easily deliver anytime in the month leading up to my due date. My parents will be away for the last three weeks before my due date which means that there is a very strong possibility that they will not be here for their birth.

Early on in our IF journey, we chose not to tell any of our parents about our decisions concerning our treatment. They all knew that we were having trouble - we were among the first to get married and years later, no children even though we have always said that we wanted kids. I also didn't want to suffer judgement from my Mom about the treatment choices we were making - she never would have agreed with the drugs that I ended up taking, the injections and definitely not the amount of money we've spent. She is of the mind set that fertility drugs = cancer but I have always said that she was never faced with the situation that I have been faced with. They know we've been to see doctors and every kind of practitioner under the sun but they don't know all of the gory details. They don't know we've done 6 IUIs. They don't know we've done 6 IVFs and they definitely don't know the real reason why we've made 4 trips to Denver in the last 12 months.

What they do know is that we have always wanted kids. I for one have always said waaaay back when I was young and naive and thought that you could simply choose to have the number of children you wanted, that I wanted to have 5 children. Yep - 5. Everyone else was saying things like 2 or 3 but I wanted 5. My parents also know that we have been trying for 7 years and last year we miscarried. They know this has been a very bumpy road for us and something not easily achieved. They know that this is something I have dreamed about since I was a little girl and that this means the world to me. I have never wanted a high powered career...but I have always wanted kids. They know this.

What upsets me is that knowing what they know, they are still choosing to go on this trip. To me, this is kind of one of those once in a lifetime events that you assume your parents are going to be at. Kind of like your wedding y'know? I thought that when I finally gave birth, they would be there, at the hospital with us to celebrate this event...but instead, they're going to be thousands of miles away. This trip on the other hand is one that runs many times every year and they would have the opportunity to go another time if they cancelled this time. We don't have a big family, just my sister and I and our two kids will be grandchildren #2 and #3 for them so it's not as if they have lots of grandchildren being born all the time. I just can't get rid of this feeling of being let down.

I've contemplated saying something to my parents but the thing is that I think my Mom would want to cancel the trip but my Dad would still want to go and this would cause a big rift between them. They both seem to have accepted that they can't get the $ back for the airfare so they've no choice but to go. I understand that this is not an insignificant amount of money to lose and I don't mean to sound flippant about it but I was still hoping that somehow they would rearrange things so that they would be here.

I should also mention that my sister, when she had her son, she specifically requested that no family visit her in the first month. They live 4 hours drive away from me and my parents so it's not like we could just drop in so we all respected her wishes and stayed away. My Mom just assumed that I would want the same thing but the difference is that my parents and I live just 5 minutes apart from one another and with two kids, I want all the help I can get!!

I am trying to accept that I cannot make choices for other people and I cannot control other peoples' actions and I need to keep focussed on what is important to us. My DH and I will celebrate this event ourselves and my BFF has already told me that nothing is going to stop her from coming to see me in the hospital. My in laws will probably come down ASAP so it will probably be okay that my parents are not there so we stagger the grandparents visits. It just makes me sad that my parents are not going to be there.

The other thing that happened when we told my parents is that my Mom keeps on trying to reassure herself that we didn't take fertility drugs. A little background information here. My Mom is a strong believer in natural remedies. About 15-20 years ago, my Dad was diagnosed with a very bad heart murmur caused by a leaky valve. His cardiologist told him that the murmur was so loud it was listening to the engine of a locomotive train. My Dad was told that eventually, he would have to have open heart surgery to repair the damage and this completely freaked out my Mom. She spent a lot of time researching and talking to people, trying to find another way to deal with this rather than having to resort to surgery. Through supplementation with something called Barley Green and an assortment of other herbal remedies, two years after his diagnosis, my Dad's cardiologist said that he could barely hear the murmur. No more leaky valve if you can believe it. Since then, my Mom believes very firmly that anything can be fixed with the right diet, exercise and supplements.

As soon as we told my parents that we were having twins, the first question out of her mouth was "Did you take fertility drugs? Because you know that always results in more than one". This really seems to matter to her. She has asked us a few times if we did or not and I always reply the same way, that yes, we had help but it's hard to say what the magic combination was in the end because we have tried everything. I am not ashamed that we did IVF but I do not want others to judge our choices. I have asked my Mom in the past to keep things to herself but she still talks about my issues with her friends under the guise that she is asking for a daughter of a "friend" of hers. Yeah, right - like her friends can't figure out that she's asking for her own daughter who has been married for 9 years and still has no kids. This is nobody else's business but ours. Is it too much to ask that the focus be put onto what is important here? We're having two babies! My parents are going to have two more beautiful grandchildren! Isn't that enough?

So, that is what has been weighing on my mind of late. I know that my DH and I are so excited about the kids and we are really looking forward to their birth in 2010. If they're born before Feb 14th, they'll be born in the Year of the Ox just like me! If they're born after Feb 14th, they'll be born in the year of the Tiger. We will celebrate and we are enjoy everying single second. Focus on what's important right?

Graduation Day & The Big Reveal

2009-09-02T20:17:00.004-04:00

I've been slacking I admit. I owe a few big updates so here goes.

Last Friday, I officially graduated from CCRM. I had my blood drawn for the very last time at my local clinic (the very first IF clinic I ever went to 6 long years ago), gave out Thank You cards and gifts to the nurses who had helped me along the way and then waited for the last phone call from my nurse at CCRM. My Estrogen was still off the charts and my progesterone was still way higher than it needed to be. My nurse and I spoke, she congratulated us and I said some very heartfelt "thank yous" to her. Last few times I was in Denver, I had written her a few cards and given her a few gifts since I knew I would not have the opportunity to pass something along to her in person at a later date.

I think in today's world, there are so many instances where people hear about the bad rather than the good and I wanted to make sure that I took the time to thank all the people who helped us along the way. The nurses at CCRM, the nurses at MFC, my TCM doctor and acupuncturist, the drugstore that offers a program for IVF patients that sells the meds without a markup, my family doctor who wrote out all of my scripts from CCRM without a word, my hypnotherapist, my therapist, the TCM doctor in Denver who did my acupuncture while I was cycling...there are so many people who helped us along the way and made Graduation Day possible. There are many who have refused to help us along the way but there were enough people who agreed to help us that made today possible.

And of course, there are all of you, my tangible yet intangible support system of fellow bloggers, fellow IVFers, fellow IFs, fellow CCRMers. There has been so much that I have learned from all of you and your combined insights have prompted me to ask better questions and to demand better treatment. I am so grateful to have found you all and all of your comments, support and words of encouragement have picked me up on some of my darkest days and spoke to my heart when it felt like most people around me couldn't hear me. If I haven't said this before, I am so thankful for all of you and I would hug you all and shower you with the gratitutde in my heart if I could. I only hope that I offer the same support to others that you all have given to me. YOU made a difference to me and for that I say a very sincere and heart felt "THANKS!!".

This coming Saturday, I will be 12 weeks. We are three days away from making it past the scary first trimester. I have to admit that everytime I go to the washroom, I check my underwear to make sure that I am still pregnant. Of course, there is the constant presence of the morning sickness to serve as a reminder that hormones are still high so logically speaking, something must still be going on down there to be generating all of those hormones right?

This past week, we finally started telling people the news. We started with my parents as they are leaving on Friday on a trip for 3 weeks and I just couldn't wait until they got back to tell them. I hope that I will be showing by that point and putting on some decent weight so it would have been a real shock to them to come home to a pregnant me. My parents were pretty surprised when we told them - after all, we have been married the longest and are the only ones without children. I think they had given up on us ever making "the announcement". More to talk about here with this reveal (there's a strong chance they will not be here for the birth and a lot of prying questions about how we got pregnant) but I'll save that for another post.

My second reveal was to my boss and her boss at work. We have a busy time coming up and there was a request for me to be out at an offsite location over an hour away for 8:30am which was not going to happen given my intense morning sickness. It was so strange to tell people - in a good way of course - but kind of scary since I am not yet technically out of the first trimester. I had to tell them so we could make other arrangements. I guess this gets easier and easier and it will once I begin to really show. Right now I'm just a little chubby :).

Symptom wise, I'm hoping that the nausea will disappear on Saturday right at the 12 week mark but just in case it doesn't, I am going to the doctor's tomorrow to get a prescription for the Zofran. I've had some pretty rough days but then I've had some okay days as well. I have a little paunch going on that is pretty small in the morning and then grows to a decent size by the end of the day but nothing too noticeable yet. I think because my uterus is tipped backwards, when I eat during the day, it pushes the uterus out. I have a disappearing/reappearing belly! I'm still at a net loss of 4 pounds and I really need to start putting on the weight. I am nauseated every morning, my sense of smell is really acute (poor DH has had to eat dinner by himself many nights) and by dinnertime, I am nauseated again or have no appetite. Meat still needs to be hidden so I can eat it. However, all these symptoms are good things because it confirms that something is still going on.

Three more days and counting!

The Week in Review

2009-08-23T09:35:00.007-04:00

I am 10w1 day today and this is the furthest I've ever made it. Every week is another milestone...well, every day is another milestone really.

The nausea has continued to come with a fierceness some days but then it's not so bad other days. It's hard to know what kind of day it's going to be - I can wake up feeling just fine and by the time I make it downstairs to eat breakfast, I will have a full on nausea attack making every single bite very hard. Did you know how big an apple can grow to when your stomach is rolling?! Of course, I have my trusty side kick with me (Daisy) who is more than willing to eat the scraps! Meat is still a no-go for the most part unless it is hidden very well under piles of breading or a bun. Gluten free is right out the window. I've also been having talks with the two little ones, asking them to please tell me what they want to eat because I'm just trying to feed the two of them. Last night, they got me out of bed at 10pm because my stomach started to rumble since I skipped my 9pm snack in favour of going to bed early. It was a clear message - eat a snack now or we're going to wake you up at 4am to go eat!!!

We had an ultrasound on Friday and we got to see the babies again which was a relief. We haven't seen them since our last u/s at 7 weeks and I do wonder if they're both still there and doing okay, especially since my nutrition isn't that great some days. One baby measured exactly 10 weeks with a hb of 164 and the other one was at 9w6d with a hb of 175. Both normal. Both there. Both doing okay. The u/s tech had a hard time getting a good look at one of the babies because they were moving around and "playing" according to her - how cool is that? They're already moving around and playing with each other! I hope that this means they're going to be the best of friends. I felt very much like Rachael on Friends when she was looking at an u/s picture of Emma and couldn't see the baby...I was pointing at the picture, asking if I was looking at the head and the u/s tech said "No, that's the bum. This is the head"! Same thing with the other baby lol. So without further ado, here are our babies' first picture:

I cut my hair too for donation to Pantene Beautiful Lengths, the charitable program that makes wigs for women who suffer from cancer. This is the second time I've done it and I've been growing my hair for a year and finally just barely had the 8" required, so I chopped it all off. I haven't felt like a contributing member of society for the last 7 years to be honest with you admist all this IF business and by doing this, I feel like I am contributing back to society in a small way. Anyone can do it - no special skills required. You just have to be willing to care for your hair while it grows. My hair is now so short (she cut the ponytails and my first thought was "OMG I look like a boy") but my DH was so sweet and told me that my hair now looks like Rihanna's. Mine is definitely not as cool as her hair but it was totally sweet of DH to tell me that.

And speaking of DH, can I just say how awesome he has been since I have gotten pregnant? He is the best, most awesome guy and he has treated me like nothing short of a queen. Some examples of why he is such a great guy and why he is going to make such a great Dad:

I have not picked up dog poop for 5 weeks
He has completely taken over cooking and making meals
He will often make me two or three things at meal times to try and tempt my palate and won't cringe when I turn down option after option
He packs my lunch every day when I go to work
He's taken over cleaning the house and anything chemical related so I don't get exposed - this even translated to him removing the nail polish on my toes because he didn't want me to be touching the nail polish remover :)
He carries anything heavy for me...well, really, he will carry anything for me, even my purse
He's always there to give me a hug, rub my back and tell me that everything is going to be okay, especially when I'm not feeling that great
He drives me everywhere I need to go to make sure I am not getting too tired

I could go on, but he is just the most wonderful man and we are so very lucky to have him in our lives. Thanks honey - you're the BEST!!

Speaking of how wonderful my DH is, I am going to leave you all with a funny story of something that happened this past week. I was watching re-runs of one of my favourite shows, How I Met Your Mother, and the last 5 minutes of the episode I was watching reduced me to tears. Not just tears mind you...the sobbing, hands on my face kind of crying that my DH hear from upstairs. He came flying down the stairs, pulled up a chair right next to mine and asked me what was wrong and why I was crying so hard. I just pointed to the TV screen and managed to choke out "Lilly....and Marshall....." He took one look at the TV and burst out laughing - I laughed too because I knew how ridiculous it was that I was crying over the episode but then I started crying again. Hormones eh? [For those of you HIMYM fans, it is the episode where Marshall isn't going to meet Lilly at the airport but then decides to in the end and brings along a marching band that plays "Auld Lang Syne" so they can re-do New Year's even properly - once the first few notes of the song started playing I was blubbering away!]

I have my first u/s with my new OB on Sept 8th so we'll be looking forward to seeing the babies then.

Morning Sickness - 1; Me - 0

2009-08-14T10:03:00.004-04:00

**Warning: this post talks alot about nausea, morning sickness and vomiting so if you have a strong gag reflex or are not feeling so great yourself, you may want to skip it!**

Wednesday this week I lost my battle with morning sickness and I threw up for the first time. I've been saying all along that I've felt fine and that I just have a strong gag reflex but this week, that gagging has turned into full on nausea. I haven't been able to eat dinner for the past few days as my nausea seems to be the worst at night. I've also found that my stomach seems to have shrunk to the size of an orange and I can eat only about half as much as I could in the past. Frequent small meals has turned into a continual stream of food all day, eaten one tiny bite at a time as that is all I can manage without getting even more naseated.

I absolutely cannot stomach meat - I had some beautiful roasted pork tenderloin and as soon as I put the bite into my mouth, I felt my stomach clench and all the contents in my stomach started to rise up from the very bottom and go all the way up to the base of my throat. Needless to say, I did not swallow that bite or anything for a while thereafter!

I am finding that the strangest foods are sitting well with me and my favourite foods are not. I am a total meat eater and this meat aversion is weird to say the least. I don't particularly like fish (all those tiny bones) but that seems to sit well with me so this is one of the only proteins I can get down aside from lactose free dairy and soy.

I have weaned further of my meds so I am actually feeling a bit better today so I'm hoping that my hormones are staying high but not crazy high like they were last week. It will be interesting to see what the levels come back at today. I am still grateful for the nausea though and I am by no means complaining - it's confirmation that there is something going on down there.

I've lost a few pounds from my inability to eat and not eating any meat so I'm down about 4lbs from my pre-pregnancy weight. I'm reading Dr. Luke's book and by this point, she's saying that I should have gained about 9lbs - HA! Fat chance of that happening when I can't even keep down my breakfast! It's such a shift in mind set too - we're so conditioned into thinking about eating low calorie, low fat, low carb foods and now all of a sudden it's the exact opposite. It's okay to drink the higher fat milk and eat the full fat cheese!

At the height of my nausea 2 nights ago after the AM barfing incident, I was so hungry but extremely nauseated that I was getting sooo frustrated. This was also the night of the pork tenderloin that I spit out. I literally put my hands over my face and cried from sheer frustration. [Can someone say HORMONES?] My DH and I talked about it what to eat again and we decided to go with a gluten light kind of diet and I would get to chew on a few soda crackers on nights like that. Perhaps even a few dry pieces of bread to help with the nausea. I have long suspected that I do not have celiac nor a sensitivity to wheat but after avoiding it for so long, I was really hesitant to out and out eat gluten. Our goal was to hang on until at least the end of the 1st trimester but I just couldn't do it.

No spotting or bleeding this week - yay!

Our continued quest to find an OB has finally resulted in a referral. I'm just waiting to hear back about when our first appointment is going to be. I couldn't get into the high risk practice at the hospital in Toronto and was referred to their low-risk practice instead. I'm okay with that because if anything happens, at least we are at a hospital that has neo-natal intensive care facilities and they do have an entire team of specialists that we can be referred to if required. A funny aside - my first RE here has been super nice to me and I couldn't figure out why...until her receptionist called and asked if I had chosen an OB yet and if we were going to use her!! Ahhh...it all makes sense now, why she has continued to let me use her clinic for b/w and u/s and has agreed to fax the results to CCRM. Luckily, we have valid reasons for wanting to go downtown but it was very enlightening to realize why she was being so nice!

I think we're still in a bit of disbelief about what is going on. We haven't had an u/s in 2 weeks so I have started to wonder what's going on down there. We're going to rent a doppler but will likely wait a little while longer. Only 3 more weeks to go until we're out of the 1st trimester and hopefully we can begin to breathe a little easier. Until then, no rash, no spotting...everything is good!

Bleeding has stopped!

2009-08-08T14:21:00.007-04:00

The spotting/bleeding finally stopped on Wednesday this week. Phew! However, that doesn't stop me from checking every time I go to the bathroom. I have been so careful not to twist or lift anything heavy. I still had some spotting last weekend and on Tuesday, I went into my old clinic to get some b/w done and begged and pleaded for a second u/s. We saw the babies again and they were measuring right where they should have been - 7w3d so everything is looking good so far. I still have not gotten an u/s picture but I figured that they made a special accomodation to get me in for an u/s and I'm not even a patient there anymore so I'll take the u/s and get the picture later.

Did you know that you're not supposed to do acupuncture in the 1st trimester? I told my nurse I was continuing to do acupuncture and she asked me to stop b/c it could exacerbate the bleeding! I didn't know that - I figured it was good pre so it must be good post too so that the kiddos are getting enough nutrients and everything else they need from me. My issue is blood stagnation as well so I figure it can't be a bad thing to keep everything moving. My TCM is very careful in that she doesn't do any abdominal points and she is not stimulating me at all...just keeping the channels open and everything moving. I'm still going to go, but maybe every 2 weeks instead of once a week.

In terms of how I'm feeling, I am 8w1d today and my body is still figuring things out. I'm not nauseated but I have an extremely sensitive gag reflex. Food is sitting a bit high with me. Smells are bothering me a lot. I guess there's not a lot of room down there where my stomach used to be and my uterus is pushing everything around. I feel like my food sits around lung level, between the bottom of my lungs and the base of my throat. Week 6 saw me completely unable to eat meat. Even the thought of putting meat into my mouth was enough to make me gag. That is so strange for me because I am a complete meat eater but it completely turns me off right now.

Week 7 saw the gagging abate a tiny bit but it's still there. We were walking through the grocery store yesterday and I swung a little too close to the fresh meat counter and promptly gagged so I had to scuttled away quickly to hide in the pharmaceutical section. I know it's important to eat protein but I've had to look to other non-meat sources. I actually was able to get a little meat down yesterday but I had to hide it under a layer of vegetables and condiments. I actually broke out into a Joey Tribbiani "meat sweat" and my face was covered in fine prespiration when I was done but I got it down and I feel better for having had the protein. I dislike the whey protein shakes because they always upset my stomach (I think whey is a form of dairy and I'm lactose intolerant) so I've been drinking my lactose free milk, eating my lactose free yogurt and chowing down on the tofu.

My DH is so cute when I have one of my little gagging spells. He says that it's the twins' way of saying hello and has even gone as far as to say in a very high falsetto "Hi Mommy!" when I start gagging, coughing and turning green. I have to laugh when he does it! I don't mind the gagging, honestly - it confirms that there is still something going on down there so every gag is a little reassurance in my books!

I'm still searching for an OB/GYN who specializes in high risk pregnancies. The first one my family doctor referred me to was highly recommended but she wouldn't see me until 20 weeks which I think is way too far into the pregnancy, especially since there is more than one involved here. She is also not affiliated with a hospital that has a neo-natal intensive care unit since the hospital is not downtown Toronto, so we ended up rejecting that referral. The second doctor we were recommended to actually got more lousy reviews than good reviews so we nixed her as well. The third doctor we tried was full and not accepting any more patients. So, we are now trying to get in with the guru of all high risk pregnancies here in Toronto but I haven't heard yet if he will take us or not. We shall see but I need to find someone soon so we can do the 10-11 week check. Who knew that finding an OB would be this hard?

I've been sleeping A LOT lately too. I'm a 7 hours a night kind of girl and even if I napped in the past, I would feel terrible for the rest of the day and then only sleep a little at night. In comparison, for the past few days, I've been napping for about 3 hours in the afternoon and then heading to bed by 8pm to sleep until 7am the next morning. Crazy! I know they say that the exertion your body is going through is akin to climbing a very, very tall mountain but I have never slept so much in my life! I also get tired very easily so a quick trip to the grocery store is all I can handle...no more running multiple errands in one shot.

It's so interesting to watch all of these changes and to be aware of them as we progress along. My body is definitely changing. We've also started to wean off the meds (yay!) and my E2 is still >2000 and my P4 is >50 so things are looking good. No bleeding, weaning off the meds, hungry and tired most of the time...it's all good!

A Little More Scary Bleeding

2009-07-31T10:03:00.004-04:00

**Warning - this is definitely a TMI kind of post with lots of bodily functions discussed in detail**

Wednesday night I had a very scary episode of bleeding. If I thought the little spotting was bad enough on the weekend to send us to the emergency, this was out and out bleeding. Frightening.

I went to go pick up my DH at work Wednesday night and went to pee right before I left. Nothing on the pantyliner. When I got back 45 minutes later, my pantyliner was about 50% soaked with bright red blood. I even noticed a drop or two in the toilet water. We called CCRM right away and they put me on bed rest for the rest of the day plus the next day and prescribed me an antibiotic (eurythromicin?). The nurse told me that if there is a tear (which they did see on Saturday's u/s pictures), there is now risk of infection so they want to make sure that they've covered off that possibility. I also made the nurse tell me and then repeat twice that the bleeding is normal, especially with twins. It's still so freaky though - one moment you're fine and the next moment you've got blood all over your underwear. I don't even get menstrual flow that heavy on a good cycle!

The one good thing is that I haven't noticed any cramping at all which is the only thing that I find reassuring. The bleeding started and stopped pretty quickly but I've continued to spot in varying shades of pink/bright red/brown. I've also had a lot of vaginal discharge from the high levels of E2 so every time I feel that there is moisture, I rush to the bathroom to look since I can't tell anymore what it is - blood or discharge? I'm back to obsessively checking the toilet paper every time I pee.

Well...I wished for a little morning sickness and I got my wish. Meal times have become very challenging for me. It's not that I feel queasy most of the time - I actually feel pretty hungry a lot but once I raise that fork to my lips, I feel my throat closing and I gag alot. My poor DH has been running around, heating up food for me that I don't end up eating. My problem is that I'm trying to remain as gluten free as possible througout the first trimester but man, what I would give for some dry toast or soda crackers! I know these are not gluten free, but I've been eating a lot of dry cereal of late - Corn Flakes & Rice Crispies. It's all that I can get past my lips these days. I have also noticed that if I let myself get too hungry, the gagging gets even worse so I am trying to keep a steady stream of food to my mouth but that has been challenging. So far, dry cereal, fruit, smoothies, clear soups & rice noodles have been all that I can get down. I've found some gluten free waffles that are pretty good so I've been eating those too. I've been chewing on the ginger a lot but that doesn't seem to do much. Anyone have any suggestions on what calms their stomachs and what they've been eating?

Well, back to lying down. I promised my DH that I wouldn't sit at the computer too long and we don't have a laptop or wireless internet. Thank you for all of your sweet comments everyone and for coming back and checking in on me. You're all so sweet!

A Day Spent in Emergency

2009-07-27T20:12:00.004-04:00

Saturday morning I woke up and found some bright red spotting on my underwear, more than I had ever seen before. I had been spotting for a few days before that but I was reassured because it was always dark brown in colour and really can't be described as anything else except a light staining. I wasn't having any cramps but the fact that the colour changed from dark brown to bright red and that there was more of it than I had ever seen before, we decided to be cautious and headed to emergency at 8:45am on Saturday morning. My local clinic had already finished cycle monitoring and there wasn't an ultrasonographer in sight so we didn't really have a choice but to head to emergency.

It took *hours* to get the bloodwork done and to get in for an emergency ultrasound but we did get everything done that we needed. The ER doctor was actually really good and I know I wasn't high priority since I wasn't gushing blood but she kept on checking in with us and tried to hurry the process along as best she could. Six hours later, we finally got some answers. We got our HCG levels rechecked and by my calculations, we should have been in the 30,000 range and it actually came back at 75,000+.

We were also squeezed in for an emergency ultrasound. This was our first ultrasound and was right at the six week mark so it's iffy whether or not you'd see a heartbeat at this point. I couldn't help but remember all of the ladies I had read about who posted on IVFC who didn't see heartbeats until 7w and beyond but then suffered the stress of going to their first u/s and not seeing a heart beat. I was worrying about everything while the hours ticked away and we waited to get in for an ultrasound. I was worrying about seeing an empty sac, the baby having no hearbeat...all the paranoid kind of stuff that can go through your mind as you wait and clock watch. Tick tock, tick tock...

When the time finally came for my ultrasound, they made my DH wait outside. Then, the technician didn't or wouldn't say a thing during the exam - there were signs everywhere that said that the ultrasonographer needed to do the exam uninterrupted and the way they had me propped up, I couldn't see the screen at all. The scan went on for a good 20 minutes and during the whole thing, she said not one word. I was trying to face-read any expressions and I was hoping to catch a glimpse of something in the reflection on her glasses but alas, nothing was revealed until she was done.

We're having twins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My little 4CB and 2/3 both took! We are stunned and so incredibly, totally and completely grateful. And to think that we were going to give up on them, cycle again in hopes of getting a few more to transfer. I'm going to say it again - we are stunned. Both looked really good according to the radiologist and measured at 6w2d and they were able to find both heartbeats!! Way to go my little overachievers!!!

The spotting that sent us to emergency on Saturday morning was a subchorionic hematoma which is essentially a blood clot between the yolk sac and the uterine wall. I sent off the ultrasonographer's report to CCRM and got a call from them the next day and the nurse explained "subchorionic hematoma" to me in layman's terms. Apparently, the spotting is caused by the placenta tearing away from the uterine wall a little. Scary eh? She said to be really cognizant of my body motions, emphasizing that I was really not to lift anything heavy and no twisting body motions either. If it happens again, she said to put myself on bedrest, put my feet up and rest until the bleeding goes away.

Since the ultrasound was done in a hospital emergency, we weren't given the option of taking a photo home but my DH did get to come in after she was done and saw the pictures on the screen. When she finally told me, I burst into tears and then proceeded to cry all over my DH when he saw the pictures. It was such a relief to see both of them and to know that everything is going well. It was a very long and tiring day but it was worth those 6 hours in emergency to find out that information. A bad start to the weekend but it has gone up to a high for sure.

Protocol Details

2009-07-19T22:11:00.006-04:00

As promised, here is the protocol that I was on for the embryo retrieval portion of my cycle. Please keep in mind that I was also doing acupuncture 2x/week with a TCM that specialized in IF and I was also taking Chinese herbs. I continued to take the herbs without my clinic knowing and against their advice - they have a very clear policy of no herbs, even in the form of herbal tea.

I think this protocol is commonly referred to as the Estrogen Priming Protocol (EPP) and went like this:

1/28 - AF arrives; DH and I both start Doxycycline 2x/day for 10 days

2/6 - start testing for LH surge using OPK

2/8 - LH surge detected

2/18 - start estrace 2mg 2x/day (10 days after LH surge)

2/19 to 2/21 - Cetrotide injections 1x/day

2/23 - AF arrives; stop Estrace

2/24 - pre-stimulation check meaning u/s to check for cysts, E2 & P4 check
2/25 - start stims - 2 amps of Menopur in the AM; 300 Gonal F in the PM; start Dexamethasone 1x/day in the evenings; repeated daily

3/2 - continued stims as above & began Cetrotide 1x/day

3/7 - last day of stims; only did 2 amps of Menopur in the AM; no Gonal F in the PM; HCG shot at specified time

3/9 - embryo retrieval

I discussed my Day 3 fertilization report in a previous post but this was definitely the best cycle for us in terms of total retrieved, mature & fertilized. We have never made blast before either so there were some significant improvements over our previous cycles.

As we chose to do genetic testing, this was a freeze all cycle for us and we returned in July to do a FET & pick up the kid(s). I hope this helps!

As for the awful rash, it's still there and my hives have hives but it is slowly going down. I have been slathering Calamine lotion all of my torso to help with the itchiness and it makes it go away temporarily but all it takes is for a soft touch of fabric against the rash for me to get the urge to SCRATCH!!!!! I've never used Calamine lotion before and am quite surprised how watery it is but whatever works. I switched to oral Estrace on Friday thank goodness so it is just a matter of time until my rash goes away.

Rash & Memory Issues

2009-07-15T21:32:00.007-04:00

I have completely broken out into this awful rash...exactly the size and shape of 4 Estradot (Vivelle) patches. I have 4 welts on my lower abdomen and about 8 welts on my buttocks. I want to scratch SO BADLY and every time I go to the bathroom (which is many, many times a day), the simple sensation of pulling down my pants to pee drives me to distraction and it is all I can do not to scratch. Sometimes I give in and scratch for a few seconds but you know how it is - once you start, you have a hard time stopping.

This is not a complaint - I welcome this experience and everything that goes along with it and I do mean everything, even the itchy, uncomfortable rash. I haven't heard of any of you other ladies out there mentioning a rash so I was curious to know if anyone was able to get rid of one once they got it?? It has been days now since I peeled off the ones from my abdomen and I can still count all 4 patches. My buttocks feel like they're on fire and the warmth from the rash you can feel right through my pants. I'm going to try some calamine lotion on it tonight and hopefully that will help it go down or go away. I read the instructions that came in the box of Estradot and I chose a different site today (upper abdomen, waist area) which is okay as per their helpful diagram so hopefully the skin in the new area will not flare up.

I have also been extremely absent minded of late. I am forgetful on a good day and it has just gotten worse in the last week. Here's my list of absent minded things I've done recently:

Opened up my drawer in the bathroom to find my brush, hair bands...and my watch! I always put my watch on my night stand so I have no idea why I would suddenly change that and put it in the bathroom drawer.
Put my plastic cards in the wrong slots in my wallet and then freak out because I can't find my credit card...it was just in the wrong slot.
Lost my denim jacket...I can't even remember WHEN I lost it so it could have been lost for the past week and I can't remember where I last had it!
Forgot a very important PIN #...finally figured it out but and I had all the right digits, just completely in the wrong order! (Do you know how many combinations 4 digits can make??)

I've been feeling okay for the most part. Today I didn't really have any symptoms which is a little worrisome but I have to remind myself that these will come and go. I just would like some verification every day that there is still something going on down there. Just a teeny, tiny little bit of MS would be good but from what some of you ladies are reporting, there never is just a teeny bit is there? You're all going to remind me that I wished for MS if I do get some down the road aren't ya?!

Still enjoying the ride though, every single second of it!!

P.S. for the two ladies who delurked and dropped in to say congrats ("Anonymous" and "triumph") - thanks! I know you want protocol details and I will post them this weekend but I think what made the difference for me was the CGH microarray testing and transferring only the embryos that came back normal.

Beta #2 - 11dp5dt was 551!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-07-13T21:48:00.003-04:00

I got the call at 11:15am today from the local clinic. The nurse there, the very first IVF nurse I ever came into contact with, agreed to call me because she knew how nervous we were. I promptly burst into tears, made her repeat the number, we cried together and then I hung up the phone to run to the bathroom to have a really good "I'm so happy" cry your eyes out in private.

The number was supposed to be above 310 and it more than doubled. In fact, it almost quadrupled since Friday!!! Way to go my little over achiever(s)!!! I am reassured...for the moment. Once a worry wart, always a worry wart. I've already got my next thing to obssess about but I won't spoil this moment. I just want to ride this high. The feeling of *finally* taking a few steps down a different pathway, one we've been trying to get to for the past 7 years.

DH has been so wonderfully sweet, lifting anything for me, making me all my meals every day, telling me to put my feet up while he runs around, taking care of the house hold chores. He's going to make a great Dad.

I know there is a lot of speculation that there may be more than one in there but we won't know until the ultrasound. I've booked that for Wednesday July 29th in the late morning so I will find out then. Until then, I'm just trying to enjoy the fact that today, as of right now, I am pregnant.

Beta Day Thoughts

2009-07-11T07:30:00.005-04:00

Our morning started out with a trip to our local clinic. This is the clinic where it all started for us 6 years ago and in comparison, let's just say that it is not the place that CCRM is. However, they have continued to agree to help us which has made cycling in the US doable.

The plebotamist doesn't have the best beside manner and can be extremely gruff and she kind of freaked me out a little yesterday morning. In Canada, they make you wait at least 2 weeks post transfer to do a pregnancy test. Many times, I would get my period first before getting the beta done. In response to her question about how many days it was post transfer, I told her eight days had passed since my day 5 transfer and she started to complain that this was way too early to test and that the test results wouldn't be conclusive. Ack - are you serious?! Then I told her that I had already been testing postive on multiple HPT for a few days and she told me that "it doesn't matter what the HPT say because you need a blood test to determine the beta conclusively and it's too early to test". OMG. I did start to wonder whether the number would be really low, like in the 20's, but then I decided to put my faith in CCRM and NOT that clinic and trust that if we were testing this early, it was okay. I think that a lot of times people you run into doing all this IVF stuff just don't realize what the impact of their words are on people.

I then proceeded to go to work and then clock watch until I got the call at noon. I have call display at work and when the phone rang, I knew immediately it was CCRM calling since the area code was 303 . I was nervous, my heart was beating rapidly and I was almost afraid to answer the phone. What if the number was really low? I was so relieved when my nurse told me that the number was good (140) and that this was really really good because we tested a day earlier than normal. They were only looking for it to be >50 so we passed that first hurdle.

I was surprised to hear that CCRM only looks for a 66% increase over a 48 hour period. I know everyone else talks about wanting to see it double and all my research has said that it should double but again, if CCRM thinks that a 66% increase is good, that's what we're going with. I needed a number to know what we were aiming for on Monday's test and it rounds to about 310:

Friday's beta of 140 x 1.66 = 232.4 <---what Sunday's beta should be at least

since we're testing on Monday, we have to take half of the 66% increase between Sunday and what would have been Tuesday's beta

232.4 x 66% x 50% = 76.69 expected rise in beta from Sunday to Monday

So, Sunday's expected beta should be at least 232.4 + the expected rise in the beta to Monday of 76.69 = 309.09

My husband came over to my office for lunch (he works right across the road) so we sat outside in the warm sunshine and I told him the details from my call. We're keeping ourselves cautiously optimistic until Monday's beta and will celebrate when we get the news that it has increased at least 66% or higher.

We've been talking to the baby/babies every day, telling them to snuggle in and find a good place to hang out for the next 9 months. I find myself talking to them when I can and I don't know if it's more to reassure myself that I'm actually pregnant or to help me to believe that we are no longer the three of us (DH, Daisy our dog and I) but the four or maybe the five of us now. Fingers, toes and everything else crossed until Monday.

*************************************************

Jill M. - this part of the post is for you girl.

My hypnotherapy sessions were $150 each. I did two in total. The first one was on the phone entirely and we talked for an hour during which she collected a lot of background information, IF history, status of my relationship with my DH, childhood memories and really, anything that concerned me and my thoughts on the whole IF journey we've been on.

She then took that info away and made a personalized self-hypnosis recording for me that I have downloaded into my iPod and have listened to over and over again since then.

My second session with her was the week before transfer and I actually met her at her office in Westminster in Denver (about a 1/2 hour drive from CCRM). This time she did a hypnosis session live with me (vs. sending me a recording) and we spoke a lot about anything that was bothering me or that I was particularly concerned about at that time. This time she took about 2.5 hours with me and it was still only $150.

Lynsi was great and I would highly recommend her. I found her to be very insightful and she was able to draw connections for me that no one else has been able to do before. Those really were revelations for me, real epiphanies and if you ask me, so worth the $300 I spent with her.

The other thing that I like is that I never felt pressured to see her x number of times...you did as many sessions as you needed to in order to deal with what it is that you were feeling. She recommends 2-6 sessions but at no point did I ever feel pressured to do more than I felt that I needed.

Would I recommend her? Definitely - yes. You can at least try her out and if you don't connect with her, than you don't have to continue but at least you will get a personalized hypnosis to download out of the first session that you can keep.

Good luck and let me know if you do get in touch with her. She'll probably remember me since she is also Canadian :).

Beta #1 at 8dp5dt

2009-07-10T18:29:00.004-04:00

140.

It's so surreal.

It's early to be testing too and we got a great first number! We are keeping ourselves cautiously happy because of what happened the last time...we got a great first number which then did not proceed to double and then we went right into beta hell.

However, this time, things are different. We transferred NORMALS so if it took, it took right? We're repeating the test on Monday since the local clinic doesn't run pregnancy tests over the weekend. CCRM wants to see it above 310 as they are only looking for a 66% increase in a 48 hour period so I made my nurse sit down and do the math with me and 310 is the magic number for Monday's test.

Dare I say it?

WOOHOOOO!!!!

More later - I'm supposed to be lying down per DH's instructions but I just had to post a little update for y'all since you've been so supportive and wonderful and kept me going for such a long time.

Evil. Pee. Sticks. Need I say more?

2009-07-08T21:04:00.003-04:00

My friend A. reminded me how quickly your emotions can turn on the lightness or darkness of a pee stick line, hence the "evil pee sticks" title of this post. I started the day out optimistically thinking that first morning urine will have a high concentration of HCG so my ghost line should get darker right? Seems logical. [insert heavy sarcasm here] Now what about the journey so far would make me think that things happen LOGICALLY???

I proceeded to POAS and got this:

Snow white. After an agonizing 10 minutes (after which they say you're not supposed to read the results), a very faint second line showed up. Of course, you can imagine the freaking out that started. So I pulled out my very last, expensive Cl.ea.r.blu.e. test, took a deep breath and then followed the instructions exactly and got this:

It reassured me somewhat but then I started to wonder why the first test showed nothing? Same pee. Did that mean it wasn't doubling properly? I have been caught in non-doubling beta hell before and to say we're nervous and anxious is an understatement.

I left all my HPT at home, swore I would not test during the day and lasted all the way until I got home at 7pm and broke down and tested again. I've been trying to stay hydrated throughout the day and drank lots of water so I wasn't sure what I would get but there is definitely a second line now...faint but still there:

Pee sticks are evil. How am I ever going to last until Friday's beta?

I'm scared...this is where we got to last time, the high of a BFP and then the crashing desolation of a non-doubling beta. I keep reminding myself that we transferred two normals so our chances are so much better this time but still, there is that nagging fear.

I made an appointment with my family doctor tomorrow because I need a prescription for more meds to get me through the weekend but I don't know what to ask for. My nurse never e-mailed me back. Do I need 2 weeks of Estradot (Vivelle), Progesterone & Estrace? Four weeks? When do they start weaning you off if your b/w comes back okay?

How do you ladies stay sane???

Ghost Line?

2009-07-07T09:11:00.004-04:00

Did you lean forward and squint? I sure did. I've been carrying around these tests for the last 2 hours so I can look at them in all different kinds of light - natural light, strong lamp light, bathroom light...you get the picture!

I got home late last night and immediately POAS and that one was for sure a ghost line - only could see it faintly in strong light, tipped at a certain angle. I then proceeded to have a few POAS dreams. In my dream, the POAS was 3 lines not just two and when I went to read the results, a huge spot obliterated the lines so I couldn't tell. Ha!

I then got up this morning and did another one. I went back to the test strip seller's website to check to ensure that I had followed testing instructions properly and then proceeded to do a second test about 15 minutes after the first one just in case and I think, I think I see a faint second line. The top one is the one from last night. the two at the bottom are from this morning. What do you think????

Thank goodness I bought these tests in bulk - I have at least 30 more sticks to play with between now and Friday (beta day). It's still really early and today is just 5dp5dt (5 days post day 5 transfer) but a girl can hope can't she?

Transfer Day Details

2009-07-04T11:10:00.002-04:00

I'm back but only for a quick 10 minutes as that is all my DH will allow me to sit at the computer for. Good thing I type pretty quickly!

First of all, THANK YOU to everyone who took the time to stop by and wish us well. I really felt all of your good wishes and positive energy and took that with us into the transfer room. I am so very lucky to have such support and from so many of you who have been in the trenches for as long as we have been. July 2009 marks the 7 year anniversary of the start of our IF journey and I am so grateful for the many of you that I have met along the way. Your support has been invaluable and has meant so much to me.

Transfer day was awesome - both embies thawed with a 100% survival rate (i.e. no cellular damage to either) and both re-expanded fully. I asked the embryologist if they regraded the embies and she said that they didn't but the two things they look at post thaw are the % of cells that survived and the re-expansion so both looked pretty good to them. So I got my wish - two microarray normal embies to transfer! YAY!

We tried to take a photo of the little computer screen but we had some technical difficulties and combined with nerves, we didn't actually get a shot of them. I'll try to describe them as best I can. The 4CB embie was almost fully hatched. It kind of looked like the number "8" in that it had the original outline of the egg and then there was a round mass right on top of it that was attached. The other one, the 2/3 was starting to hatch and had a little bump on the one side where you could see that it was starting to come out of the shell. So another YAY! Two hatching blasts!!!!! We are thrilled beyond words. We got our wish to have two normals to transfer that were hatching. We are so grateful.

Bed rest was awful. I watched so much TV yesterday that I made myself sick. Now let me tell you all that I am prone to motion sickness and that I have given myself "TV head" before by watching too much television so this is not something unusual. I was also getting pretty restless so I was watching from strange positions - slightly propped up, on my left side, curled up on my right side, sideways...you get the picture. Of course, it doesn't help that my antenna is tuned to high so I'm wondering "is this pregnancy nausea?". This happened twice yesterday...in the afternoon and again at night. I also crashed really early the day of the transfer at 8pm (probably the Valium?) and again the next night at 9pm.

I so wish I had brought some HPT with me so I could start testing but I thought that Monday when I arrived home would be the earliest I would test as that would be 4dp5dt (4 days post 5 day transfer). So I have to wait although I am bouyed by the fact that many of you have gotten positive results on day 4 or day 5. No twinges to speak of.

Right now I'm so very thankful for everything as it has gone so well thus far. Oops! There is the 10 minute timer and I have to sign off now. More when I get home.

I'm PUPO!

Happy Canada Day, The Most Annoying Pregnant Woman Ever and Pre-Transfer Jitters

2009-07-01T08:31:00.004-04:00

Happy Canada Day to all my fellow Canadians! We will be celebrating here in Denver and wishing you all back at home a restful day and some fun fireworks.

We arrived in Denver yesterday after a pretty uneventful flight except for the most annoying pregnant woman sitting one row in front of us. I'm going to vent for a second and by no means am I painting all pregnant women with the same brush (and I mean no offense to anyone who is pregnant) but MAN! This woman was a nightmare. Basically, she was exploiting her unborn child trying to get free upgrades and inconveniencing everyone around here. She first just sat in the seat she wanted, not her assigned seat and made the other person take her old seat which didn't have in-seat entertainment (Air Canada has little screens infront of every seat and you can choose your own movie or tv show to watch...none of that little screen 10 rows up playing only 1 choice of movie!). Every "issue" that came up during the flight had her proclaiming loudly that she needed something or the other because she was PREGNANT (shouted loudly with a wide look around and a wink wink and giggle giggle to all looking) oh and did we want to feel her belly??? OMG. I felt sorry for the flight attendants that had to deal with her. She also ended almost *every* sentence with "Are there any empty seats in executive class?". If you wanted the extra space and comfort of a larger seat, you should have paid for it!! Grrrrr....May I never be that annoying or take advantage of my children that way.

Transfer is tomorrow at 2pm in the afternoon. I am doing pre and post acupuncture at CCRM. I've been trying to stay positive but a little bit of me is scared that nothing will survive the thaw and we won't have anything hatching out of the shell. I've been watching all of you ladies who have had hatching blasts and you all seem to get BFPs...not sure if it's the CGH or the CGH + hatching blast that makes the difference but I hope and pray that our little 2/3 embryo makes it to that stage by tomorrow. I also hope that our 4CB survives the thaw and maybe improves a grade or two??? They're thawing both of them today so everyone cross your fingers!!!

Denver Ho!

2009-06-28T20:16:00.002-04:00

It's official - we got the official green light and we are off to Denver on Tuesday. Transfer is going to be Thursday July 2nd and I am excited with a lot of nervous anticipation.

Let me back up a bit for a second. Last Friday, I flew into Denver for the day (thank goodness for direct flights and executive class!!) and went to CCRM for my doppler u/s and b/w to check E2. Now remember last October when my local clinic screwed up my u/s and I ended up having to cancel my cycle after travelling to Denver? Well, that is why I didn't want to monkey around with the clinic up here. I wanted it done once and done right. Believe it or not, it was about the same cost for me to fly down to CCRM and have the work done as it was for me to stay here and have the monitoring done locally. Given the choice, I would rather go to Denver so I did!

My lining needed to be 8-10mm and it was a nice 11mm!! My estrogen was also high enough that I simply continue with my 4 patches every other day. Way to go electro-acupuncture and herbs! Yes, I have decided to stay on the herbs right up until ET but then I am stopping them. Shhh...don't tell CCRM (as I sit here sipping my lemon-ginger herbal tea!)!

I'm packing tonight and I'm going to be bringing along a stack of old episodes from Friends and the first 3 seasons of How I Met Your Mother. They say that laughter is the best medicine so I intend to keep the TV light and airy so no heavy crime scene dramas for me. Anyone have any good comedy movies they would recommend?

Other than that, I am relieved to be done work for now. Things were really hectic the last 2 weeks leading up to this time off and I found myself working several 10-12 hour days to try and get through as much as possible before my time off. Glad that's done and I don't have to worry about that for the time being.

While I was in Denver for the whole day, I went to see Lynsi Eastburn again for a 2nd hypnotherapy session and it was really good. I left the appointment feeling very refreshed and the phrase that resonated in my mind over and over again as I drove away was "I feel great!". I honestly haven't felt this optimistic going into an ET ever and I feel that the work I've done with the acupuncture, herbs and the hypnotherapy really made a difference. I'm always looking to do something different and I think that I've really approached this cycle differently so let's hope that I will finally get the outcome that I've been looking for. Fingers crossed!

Hypnofertility Session

2009-06-20T16:55:00.006-04:00

Last night, I had my first Hypnofertility session with Lynsi Eastburn. This is my second attempt to do some hypnotherapy in relation to IF and I wasn't sure what to expect given my first experience with hypnosis with another practitioner wasn't all that great. I have discovered through this whole journey that you need to keep trying different practitioners with all aspects of your treatment until you find the one that you are most comfortable with because often, it is the connection that makes all the difference in treatment. I have found as well that it is the most beneficial to get someone who specializes in IF rather than a general practitioner (i.e. acupuncturist, herbalist, etc.). I'm glad that I didn't dismiss hypnosis as a possible form of treatment because I found the session to be very revealing. More on that in a minute.

The theory behind hypnosis and IF is that you're trying to get your subconscious mind to be on the same page as your conscious mind so that both are working together. The subconscious is the more powerful of the two and I have always wondered about how to access it and whether there were any unresolved issues that were lurking around in there that was preventing me from getting pregnant. We have unexplained IF - all the parts are there and nothing seems to be wrong with any of them but somehow, they don't seem to be working. It was interesting to hear about Lynsi's approach since she believes that when you get a diagnosis of "unexplained" IF, that the issues that need to be dealt with are psycological in nature not physiological.

Lynsi further explained to me that the subconscious mind is the more powerful one to engage in terms of achieving goals. It is the more creative side of your brain - the right brain so to speak. The conscious mind is the more logical side of your brain - the left side. So, while powerful, the subconscious is not very "smart" about achieving the goal. Let me explain - if your goal is that you want to run a marathon, your subconscious mind will just tell you that you need to run and run some more and keep running. Your conscious mind is the one that goes about formulating a training plan, makes decisions about diet, nutrition, length and intensity of training, everything in support of achieving the goal of running the marathon. Both need to work together in order to achieve the goal of running a marathon. Lynsi believes that in my case, my conscious mind is fully engaged and committed to the goal of getting pregnant and having kids; it's the subconscious mind that isn't on the same page and through hypnosis, the conscious and subconscious minds will be brought together. They will work together rather than against each other.

For this first session, it was done entirely over the phone. I called her at the appointed hour and we just talked. We talked about everything - our whole IF journey, treatments we have done and tried, how long we've been trying, the state of our relationship and the relationships with my friends & family, my family background and my childhood just to name a few topics. I found her to be very perceptive and she drew parallels and connections between things that I had never seen before. In terms of hypnotherapy, we didn't do an actual hypnosis session on the phone. What she did was when we finished our call, she recorded my very own personalized hypnotherapy session that she then sent to me. It was great because it was personalized to me, my life, my issues and dealt with the very things that concern me right here and right now (i.e. the thickness of my lining!!!).

I downloaded the hypnotherapy session Lynsi recorded for me a few hours later and it's on my iPod now so I can listen to it whenever I want. Here's the great thing about hypnosis - you don't really have to pay attention to it because your subconscious mind is picking it up even if your conscious mind is not. I had an acupuncture appointment this morning so I took along my iPod and did the hypnotherapy while the needles were in.

On the recording, Lynsi started off guiding me into relaxation and focussing in on the breath, much like you do in meditation. She called me by my name, used the words I had used while talking to her and she touched upon many of the topics we had discussed. One of the things that I wanted to get out of this was to feel more open to the idea of being pregnant, to embrace that idea more fully and not be so afraid of it. I guess I feel a lot of fear when I think about it because of my miscarriage and then for other reasons that I was about to discover.

The most powerful part of the hypnotherapy was when she asked me to visualize a photo of my DH and I holding our baby - the pregnancy went well, we had a good birth and now we were THERE, the place we've been trying to get to for SO LONG and we were SO HAPPY. That in itself was stunning to me because that was the first time I had that picture in my mind and I just couldn't visualize it before (and I'm a pretty visual person). I felt so much joy that it had finally happened for us that tears immediately sprung into my eyes. So there I am, face down on the table, needles sticking out everywhere, hooked up to electrodes, blubbering away. Then, Lynsi asked me to visualize that the picture was growing larger and larger, until it became life sized and then she asked me to step into that photo and BAM - I became a Mother, I became that which I so desperately wanted to be. A Mom.

The other thing that I realized during the session was that my childhood was characterized by struggle and sacrifice. Nothing was easy. My parents emigrated to Canada when I was just under a year old and things were not easy while they established themselves. My parents worked so hard to provide for us and I remember that while they did a really good job of providing everything we needed, it was always a struggle. We always had to sacrifice and then sacrifice some more. Also, since things were so hard when I was a kid, my parents were very left brained in thinking - everything governed by rules and discipline, lots of planning in order to get everything that needed to be done, done. I was a pretty right brained kid, very creative and always involved in arts & crafts and I think I was slowly disciplined over time into being a very left brained person. It is no small wonder that I ended up in Accounting - lots of rules and discipline to govern myself by (have you seen the size of the Income Tax Act? Talk about rules and more rules!). Lynsi suggested that this caused a disconnect to happen between my conscious mind and my subconsciuos mind.

Lynsi is the first person that connected the struggles I remember from my childhood to the struggles that we have been having now with IF. Could it be that my childhood has conditioned me into believing that everything must be a struggle? My aha moment, my moment of realization was when the thought came to me that everything does not have to be a struggle. My conscious mind is telling me that it is okay to be pregnant, everything has been done to get pregnant, there is nothing wrong with me physically and there is no reason why I can't get pregnant. Meanwhile, my subconscious mind has been programmed from a long time ago that everything must be a struggle and so therefore, pregnancy and getting pregnant must also be a struggle. My conscious and subconscious are not working together.

Life does not have to be a constant struggle.

Huh.

I think I gave myself permission this morning not to have to struggle anymore. I feel that for the very first time, I am fully open to being pregnant, to accepting that kind of happiness and to letting myself be who I really am, without struggling, without sacrifice.

I feel freer than I have in a long time and I am feeling more excitement and optimism than I have ever felt going into a cycle.

I am ready to not struggle anymore.

I am ready to take my baby home.

FINALLY!

2009-06-19T09:06:00.003-04:00

On Sunday, late afternoon, I finally got my period. Late in the day but it still counted as Day 1. I know - it's Friday and I am finally updating y'all so I apologize for holding out on you but it has been a busy week.

First thing Monday morning I was in "negotiations" with my nurse, begging and pleading to get squeezed in on July 2nd. After doing a lot of going back and forth, it was determined that she was going to rush my lead up by a few days to get me in on the one spot they had left for July 2nd. Here's the kicker though - my lining has to be at least 8-10mm by next Friday, June 26th. If it's not, I'm going to be pushed back an entire week to at least July 14th because they're booked solid the week of July 6th. I started the estrogen patches Monday and she's upped the date that I start doubling then tripling the dose so hopefully that will do it. I'm also working with my normal menstrual cycle since Sunday was Day 28 so I'm ramping up my lining with my body's natural rhythm. Yep - BCP and Lupron do nothing to me apparently! I've never had a problem with my lining but now of course, everything hinges on its thickness so I can't help but worry a little. I'm flying down to Denver to do the lining check Friday June 26th and will be leaving first thing in the AM, going straight to CCRM for the check and then flying back out at 7pm at night. I'll get home at midnight but it will all be done in one day and then I don't have to monkey around with the clinic here and I know that it is being done right.

My nurse spoke with Dr. Sch and asked if rushing the FET schedule was an issue and he said that he wasn't concerned. I wouldn't have pushed so hard if it was going to cause issues in terms of the quality of the lining, receptivity etc. but as long as my lining is of the right thickness, they're okay to proceed. I normally ovulate around Day 13 so transfer on July 2nd will be right at 6 days post ovulation with is exactly the day that my blasts were frozen. Things seem to be lining up!

Work has been crazy and I have been putting in a very solid day, often working through lunch. I've also been visiting the other locations which are about an hour away from my home so there have been a few longer days. By the time I get home and then get on the phone to make travel arrangements, I've been going to be on average at around 11:30pm at night. Not good but hopefully it will get better now that most of them have been made.

On another note, I'm having a hypnofertility appointment today with Lynsi Eastburn on the phone. She's based out of Denver coincidentally but she has written a book about the benefits of doing hypnosis for fertility. I have done hypnosis once before but didn't really feel comfortable with the practicitioner that I went to. Anyway, I've always wondered if it was something psychological that was holding me back from getting pregnant so I want to make sure that I've done everything that I can. With my wonderful diagnosis of "unexplained", it has been frustrating to try to "fix" what I don't know to be broken. I'm also hoping that she can stop me from worrying too much about the lining. I will let you guys know what I thought and how I felt after the appointment.

It kind of feels surreal to be cycling again and I've been struggling to maintain a sugar/dairy/gluten free diet as much as I can but I'm suffering from diet fatigue. I keep telling myself to hang on for just a little while longer but it has been hard. It doesn't feel real for me because this is the first FET I've done and what's a cycle without painful shots & dildo cams? It seems so odd to just peel a sticker and slap it on my abdomen every other day. I am using a product called Estradot since I can't get Vivelle up here in Canada and I know you ladies have been comiserating about how hard they are to pull off but my patch wasn't too bad to get off. Again, not as bad as I thought and makes this FET protocol feel so...lax. Funny - I never thought I would miss the dildo cam and the IM shots but I kinda do because they make me feel like I'm doing something!! Now don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, just commenting on their absence from this cycle!

So, moving onwards at last. Lining check on June 26th at CCRM (in and out same day) and then we both fly back down on June 30th. Transfer is July 2nd and we will be flying back home July 6th. I'm coming to get you kids! And to top it all off, we get to celebrate our first 4th of July with our American children :)

Still Waiting and Irritated

2009-06-12T17:38:00.004-04:00

Irritated. Frustrated.

That's how I feel right now.

AF has not graced me with her presence and it is day 26 of my normal cycle. At this rate, if it comes tomorrow, it will be on it's regular monthly schedule so I ask why, oh why, did I just spend the last 4 weeks taking drugs that obviously did not have *any* impact on me at all?

Then, I found out today that CCRM is not doing FETs from July 3rd to July 5th. I know that July 4th is a big deal and celebrated with much fanfare and I am not begrudging anyone that. Don't get me wrong - I know that all the nurses and doctors at the clinic work very, very hard and they all have lives outside of IVF and my personal cycle. I am frustrated because my original FET date was June 26th and I was very clear with my nurse when I told her that I would likely not be on time with AF given my past experience on this protocol. I went as far as to tell her I would be at least 7 days late. Hmmm...7 days after June 26th would put me at, oh, July 3rd...and no one bothered to do the math or think about the shut down for July 4th.

Grouchy...that's me right now.

I also feel the forces of nature working against us somehow. It seems that every time I need to have something done, CCRM is closed. After my botched cycle in November (cancelled b/c of a cyst), I couldn't cycle again right away because of the December shut down. Fine. Cycled in March. Couldn't do the FET earlier because the original timing of that would have fallen right on the first day of the June shut down. Delay again. Finally start the process to do the FET, advised my nurse that I would be late and would not get my period within the 3 day timeline she gave me after stopping BCP only to find out they're closed for the July 4th weekend.

I am frustrated. Is this Nature's way of telling me it's not going to work?

I have a request in for my nurse to call me because I have asked if there is anyway to speed up the FET protocol. I know she wants to push it back to July 6th but I want to move it up to July 2nd. Does anyone know if we can speed up a FET by a day or two?

I'm going to go sit on the toilet now with tissue in my hand so I can keep doing the wipe and check. Did I mention I am wearing white pants today? Maybe the key is to remove my pantiliner.

Grrrr.....

Garden Photos

2009-06-08T14:32:00.007-04:00

I was waiting to take some photos of my garden until my lilac tree burst into bloom which was yesterday and today so here they are:

We have a nice mix of perennials and annuals in our garden so it looks pretty good no matter what time of year it is.

The Lilac tree that greets all of our visitors.

All my herbs in the backyard, close to the kitchen door so I can just pop out and snip what I need and run back inside!

We hung a bird feeder for the first time this year and have had a lot of fun looking at the many little visitors we've had!

Backyard tomato plants! They still look a little anemic but I hope they'll toughen up and start to grow since they've been put in a much larger growing space.

Endless Summer Hydrangeas. These three bushes are one of my favourite plants - comes back every year with huge flowers. The trick is to see what colour they are since that varies based on soil acidity. I always want the blue flowers so I fertilize with the aluminum sulfate to get them to change colours but more often than not, I will have some pink, some indigo blue and others that are blue! Makes for a good variety and the blooms are always big!

Our front garden. The little spirea in the middle was really damaged by the winter and I had to cut it down to about 1/3 of its size. It seems to be coming back though so I didn't end up having to pull it out.

A Clematis vine - it has a lot of screening to cover so we're glad it's a fast grower!

I've been off BCP now for 6 days and still no sign of AF. I am not surprised though since last time I did this protocol, AF was 7 days late so I'm still expecting to get it sometime on Friday this week. I'm twitchy with anticipation because once AF arrives, it locks down the schedule and I can finally make travel plans. I will finally be able to book time off work and I will be able to look forward to the next step.

Next up on the FET protocol for me? Estrogen patches!! I've never used them before and I know that everyone talks about how sticky they are and how hard they are to remove without taking a pound of flesh off but I am looking forward to it. Why? Because it means that I am moving forward and we are getting closer to going to Denver to pick up our American children.

On an interesting note, I was talking to my TCM doctor and I mentioned that I had a lot of dental surgery done to put in dental implants since I'm missing so many adult teeth. In total, I am missing 13 adult teeth...never had them, never will. Apparently adult teeth is something you're born with or without and if you have them, they're little tiny seeds that sit in your gums until it's time for them to turn into real teeth. Missing teeth is also hereditary in nature. Seemingly unrelated to IF right? Apparently not! My TCM got all excited when I told her because the kidney essences govern bones and bone structure in addition to governing fertility and she remarked that it was interesting that I was also missing teeth because it indicates that I didn't have enough kidney yin at that time either. Huh.

Week two, taxes & cravings

2009-06-04T20:09:00.004-04:00

Second week of work done! 21 more weeks to go! But again, who's counting? This week I started making a shopping list of the things I want to buy while I'm down on Denver. You Americans really know how to have a SALE. At most up here in Canada, we get 50% off the original price max, but when I go outlet shopping in the US, there is 50% off the last ticketed price which is about 50% off the original price and then, somehow, you magically get another 25% off at the register just for showing up! I paid $6.50 for these awesome Ann Taylor silk crop pants that I just LOVE. Never in a million years would I have been able to find that kind of a deal here. So, my working has enabled my shopping...although the list is very practical at this point and full of necessities that I was putting off buying like underwear and bras. Still fun to get to go out and buy it though!

In other news, I just about dropped from shock when I check the bank balance this morning and discovered that Revenue Canada deposited our entire refund plus a few whole dollars in interest!! We were thrilled to finally get that money back. I haven't seen that much money in our bank account for a while and it was nice to have a little cushion in the cash flow again.

Finally, I've started having horrible cravings and for really strange things too. I'm Chinese so our seasoning of choice when growing up was soya sauce. My Mom used to make me soft boiled eggs, crack a little opening off the top and then I would eat it, spoonful by spoonful with a little soya sauce dropped into the egg for each mouthful. Mmmmmmm yummy. Don't knock it until you've tried it! Trust me - soya sauce & soft boiled eggs are amazing. Now in my adult years, I've discovered that eggs really upset my stomach (gas, bloating, diarrhea) so I don't eat them anymore but boy oh boy was I craving one a few days ago. Anyone else get any crazy Lupron cravings?

I feel much better today too and I've been off the BCP for 2 days. I don't know if that has anything to do with it but I'm not as paranoid or insecure as I was a few days ago. I went back into work the next day and all of a sudden my problems and issues were not so insurmountable. I had a productive week too so I feel like I actually earned the money instead of mooching it off the company for work not really done. In one instance I was worrying on how to answer a question and fill out a chart because the issue was that in my mind, the question wasn't applicable and I just couldn't figure out how to complete the chart and answer the question properly. Next day, I had a blinding flash of insight (haha) and simply inserted "N/A" as the answer. Sheesh. Lupron sure does strange things to your brain.

Performance Anxiety of the Lupron Kind

2009-06-02T22:07:00.004-04:00

I thought I was doing okay with getting used to the new job and all the meds but today, I burst into tears (at home after work) for no apparent reason that I can think of other than the Lupron. Ah yes, our good friend the menopause inducing drug. The one that can reduce a grown woman to tears with no warning. And here I was, wondering whether or not it was working! Yep - emotional instability? Check!

I think that I'm really worried about making a good impression and doing a good job and my normal anxiety about job performance has been magnified a thousand fold by the Lupron. Today was the first day I actually did some real work rather than just reviewing what has been done to date and I kept reviewing over and over again in my head what I did and then extrapolating the day into various permutations of what I could have/should have/would have done differently. Note to self: GET A GRIP!

I took my last BCP this morning and I am continuing with the daily Lupron shots of 10 units at night. Now the waiting begins. I wonder when AF will show up? Supposed to be three days after stopping bcp but last time on this protocol, AF was 7 days late. When, oh when, will she show?

Let's take a poll and see what y'all think.

Twenty two more weeks of work to go but who's counting?

Funny story - the other night, my DH offered to go get my "loopy stuff" from the fridge. Get it? Lupron? Loopy stuff? Lupron probably fried my sense of humour too but I sure found that funny!

One week down

2009-05-29T16:13:00.002-04:00

I finished my first week of work! Yay to some income! Our tax refund is still outstanding (we keep calling and they have now told us by June 15th it will be processed) but I'm "richer" than I was on Monday morning before working! It's a nice place, people seem friendly enough and the work isn't bad. I'm getting through the pains of settling into a new job - learning new names, figuring out who does what and setting things up but it's all good. I've had lunch with my DH every day that I worked (he's right across the street - how convenient!) so that has helped with the transition. He's great that way...always willing to hold my hand and make me feel better when I'm getting used to something new.

Right now cycle wise, I've been on BCP for 10 days and I start Lupron today. Instead of doing the shot in the AM, I've decided to do the shot in the PM so that I can sleep off any spike from the initial injection so I don't go to my new job all menopausal! At least that's the plan! My last BCP will be on Tuesday next week and then I wait for the start of AF. I will be relieved to get it honestly because the start of AF will lock in the timing of my calendar and I can start making arrangements and book the time off work.

I've been lax about getting back onto a strict gluten free/ sugar free/dairy free diet but I am trying to be better. I think I'm suffering from diet fatigue but I have to keep reminding myself that this is temporary and that some day, I will eat bread again! Ahh the small things make me happy these days...nothing gets my mouth watering faster than the thought of a warm baguette slathered with butter. For those of you who are currently pregnant and did the GF/SF/DF or any part of that, did you continue to be GF for your pregnancy?

I know I promised pictures of my garden once planted but I'm not done yet - still a few plants here and there that I'm putting in so I will take photos soon and post them. Promise! It's almost done.

Finally, a little shout out to all my fellow bloggers who have done or are doing transfers right now - good luck to you all and I wish you success from the bottom of my heart.

Changes

2009-05-22T14:38:00.003-04:00

I start work on Monday and I am trying to keep sane about things. Of course, I am trying to get things done that I have been putting off for a while so I won't worry about doing them later so that has turned into a flurry of activity. Cleaning, organizing, filing, keeping our medical expenses up to date - you know, all that kind of stuff.

Today is CD5 and I have been on BCP for 3 days now in preparation for the FET. Lupron shots begin next week and then I wait to get my period after stopping BCP on the 2nd of June. After that, I will finally know when I will be heading back to Denver and I can make travel arrangements and let my new employers know when I need my week off.

I'm trying not to dwell on the FET too much...I have to admit that I am getting pretty scared about the whole thing when I really stop and allow myself to think about it. So much time and money has been invested into this cycle and I am terrified of the pain and heart break if it doesn't work. Like Sue said in her blog, the high success rates of getting a BFP when transferring CGH normal embryos used to give me such hope but the closer I get to my FET, the more my attention seems to get distracted by the small percentage that doesn't work. It's like something I didn't see before but now that I've seen it, I can't stop focussing on it. Can I please just be a part of the big percentage for once? That would be so nice...

I'm still taking my Chinese herbs although I'm sure CCRM would disapprove if they knew. I figure I have nothing to lose at this point and I may as well try to make things as optimal as possible. The goal with both ART and TCM is to create the best environment and the nicest lining for my embryos and I have done it so many times without doing the herbs so this time, I'm going to try doing it WITH the herbs and see what happens. I don't believe that it can hurt and I am so incredibly desperate.

Other than that, nothing else going on. I'm still waiting for my whopper of a tax return refund to come back. We knew they were going to have a fit when they saw $65K of medical expenses for 2008 so we paper filed our return this year and sent them all the documentation up front so they would have it when reviewing our return. That didn't seem to help though. It's been 2 months since we have submitted the return and all we have been told is that it is under special review. Apparently special review has 5 weeks to look through it and we called the day after the 5 weeks was up to find out the status, only to be told that they couldn't do anything except log that we called and put a query on the file. What does the query do? It gives the special review section another 4 weeks to respond to our query. Geez. The frustrating thing is that the supporting medical receipts were all organized in the same order as they were listed on the summary and I even referenced the receipts to the summary so they would have no problems finding everything. I think they're going through each and every expense and trying to disallow something given the size of my refund. There's nothing else we can do except sit and wait.

Sit and wait. Seems we do that a lot around here.

Back to Work!

2009-05-13T09:32:00.002-04:00

I signed the contract yesterday. I got the job offer on Monday, signed yesterday and will be heading back to work on Monday May 28th at 10am - gotta love those part time hours! In the end, I decided that it wasn't a bad thing - I just had to get used to the idea of returning back to work.

I think that part of the issue was that in my mind, I associated the return to work with failure. It seemed as if I was taking a step backwards, returning to what I had left, the life that I had abandoned in order to pursue creating our family full time. What I have realized that this is just another step that I need to take in our continued journey towards creating our family. I always said when I left my job that I could always return to work if I had to - well, I don't *have* to right now but that extra income would sure make things a lot easier. Besides, as someone else pointed out in a comment a while back, it would be nice to have the additional money since both babies and school cost money!!

In terms of our FET, I am waiting for AF this weekend sometime and then I get to start BCP on day 3 of my cycle. Very anticlimactic. I'm going to have to be careful though - I start Lupron on my 3rd day on the job so I will have to really watch my drug-induced-menopausal self!! Lupron-me will certainly not make a very good impression so I will have to make sure that it is just *me* that shows up for work every day.

On the TCM front, my doctor told me the other day that she thought that my pulses were improving. For those of you who are not familiar with TCM, they always feel the pulses on the inside of both wrists. There are three points on each wrist, representing different energy meridians (i.e. heart, kidney, spleen, lung, etc.) with your left wrist representing Yin energies and the right wrist representing Yang energies. She told me last time that my pulses felt like they had improved but in general, my chi was low. When I first went to see her, she said that my pulses were very high and full of anxiety (this was 1 month before my CCRM cycle!) and she said that this has been stripped away now so that she feels that it is just the underlying chi left. Interesting stuff!

We have a long weekend coming up this weekend and we have a long list of things to do around the house - repaint the garage and front doors, put sand on the interlocking stone in the front and back and plant our gardens. I will post photos of it once it has been completed.

Other than that, just enjoying my last few days before returning to work.

Job Seeking

2009-05-06T10:29:00.005-04:00

When IF has invaded your life, you can't help but think about it and assess its impact on every decision you make. Nothing goes untouched and I don't want to think about it so much but I do. Take this week for example - I'm considering a contract job and all I can think about is how it is going to impact our plans and our FET and a potential future cycle.

I've had my resume out there for a while now with some head hunters that place people in contract roles and before, my travel plans would always interfere with jobs b/c they were too long in duration. However, a role just came up for 6 months on a part time basis at a company right across the street from where my DH works. It's about 20 hours per week but can go up to as high as 35 hours some weeks. The work itself is pretty mundane but this is apparently a good place to work as the company has been ranked in the top 100 companies to work for in Canada. It's big, well established and I don't think it's going through a period of rapid change so a fairly stable environment. They're willing to let me take off 1 week for my FET at the end of June/early July but of course, they just think I'm going on vacation somewhere and I would never tell them the real reason.

It's appealing because it gives me a chance to earn some $$ and it is 6 months long so I'll be done the contract at the end of November, which fits my schedule if I still end up going back to school in January 2010. It is also part time most of the time so I can still fit in my twice weekly sessions with my acupuncturist. Now this is where my thought process is interrupted by the "what if" questions that IF raises to which I have no answers.

What if the FET doesn't work and I have to deal with the devestation mid contract? Will I even be able to function on the job?

What if the FET does work but then I can't take it easy during the first trimester? I know, I know - pregnant woman can work but I'm not like the other fertiles out there and it has been such a long and hard road that if I finally got pregnant, I would want to do everything in my power to make sure I was giving it the best chance possible. I don't think that any employer would condone a mid afternoon nap!

What if the FET doesn't work and we want to cycle again? I wouldn't be able to get the 2 1/2 weeks off from the contract so I would have to wait until November to cycle again and then we run into the issue of the December shut down so I may have to wait until January...and then that would interfere with school.

Little Miss Worrywart - that's me! So much of this is out of my control and I know I have to make a decision soon if I get the job.

My head is telling my heart that this is the logical thing to do - the extra $$ would be nice and would help to offset our medication and travel expenses and if I decided to go back to school, we could set aside the money for tuition easier. My heart is heavy though and I think it's because I associate returning to work with failure. I decided not to work so I could focus on treatment and trying to get pregnant and I still haven't gotten to where I want to be. In my mind, going back means that I'm returning to the same place that I left so essentially, nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. And that is the hardest thing to wrap my feelings around. It would be nice to be Vulcan right now and let my actions be dictated solely by logic. There is the logical choice and then there is the emotional choice and it's hard when they aren't the same.

In the end, I am a practical person and if I do get a job offer, I will take it. Deep breath...I have to believe that this will all work out in the end. Somehow. Some way. I have to believe that.

The Frugal Me

2009-05-04T08:44:00.015-04:00

Over the past year, I've had a lot of time to whittle down our expenses and to make budgetary and lifestyle choices that would support my $30K/cycle habit. We've cut corners and we've really changed the way that we do things in order to economize. We're down to one income, our savings are gone and we don't have the 8 month contingency fund that Suzy Ormond likes to preach about. In this economy, I thought that it would be fun to share some of the things that we've done to economize b/c we're all in the same boat and no matter how you slice it, $30K/cycle is no small pill to swallow on one or even two incomes.

Here are some things we've done in no particular order:

Changed automobile & home insurance policies to a group insurance plan - both my DH and I are Chartered Accountants and for the longest time, we've been getting ad mail about a group insurance policy that was specific to our profession. I guess statistically speaking, a group of accountants doesn't pose as much of a risk! I shopped around after my last insurance company tried to raise our rates again and turns out, the group insurance through our profession actually DOES cut our insurance cost. It actually cut our cost in half!

Buy our meat 50% off - the day before the best before date on the packaging is when many grocery stores slash prices by 50%. We call it trolling for cheap meat at our local grocery store (haha). The meat is still good and hasn't changed colours or smell funny. We simply freeze it if we're not using it right away.
We've stopped giving each other gifts that cost money. For Christmas, my DH gave me some coupons that I could "cash in" at any time. There are the ones that I can't share publicly and the others like where he volunteered to reassemble Daisy's doggy fold out couch after I've washed the cover (it's not fun - it comes in one piece and it always takes me a minimum 30 minutes during which I get incredibly hot and frustrated trying to stuff the foam back into the cover. Did you know that you can't slide cotton over foam without it sticking??

Buy hormone and antibiotic free meats instead or organic - organic is great but it is super expensive and I can't afford to eat it all the time. One 4lb certified organic chicken can cost more than $20 and that is just too much with our budget. Instead, there are a lot of grocery stores that offer hormone and antibiotic free meats, which is better for us and easier on the pocket book. A 4lb hormone & antibiotic chicken cost about $14 - or $7 if you get it 50% the day before the best before date :)

Buy in bulk or buy wholesale - for items that we seem to consume lots of (i.e. OPK, HPT, vitamins), I have researched and found wholesalers where we can get a volume discount. Also, there are a lot of online retailers who also give you a break on the cost such as Save On Tests and you get better prices because they have lower operating costs since they don't have retail stores and often skip the fancy packaging.
Buy only what you need - there is a store called the Bulk Barn here in Canada where everything is sold in big bins and you scoop yourself what you want. I am lousy at estimating how much I need and have often bought too much in the past which goes to waste because I don't use it. Now when I go, I bring a measuring cup with me so if I only need 1 cup, I only buy 1 cup. Also, don't buy the stuff in bulk that you use infrequently - although the unit price of one will be higher, the total cost of one is usually less than the total cost of two.
Buy financial software and track expenses - I have found this very useful for projecting out cash flows and juggling our money around. It also tells us how much we've been spending on things and where we can perhaps economize a little further. How else would you know where you're spending your money and where there is room to cut? Sometimes you don't want to know but I think that we've reached the poing where we have to know and this is one way to find out!
Eat more vegetables with a little meat vs. large serving of meat and a side of vegetables - I find that vegetables are generally cheaper to eat than meat so what I do often is to make a stir fry (for example) and throw in a lot of vegetables and then chop up some meat to put in it as one component of the dish. That way, we split a chicken breast (for example) rather than each eating one. Besides, aren't we all supposed to be eating more vegetables??
Buy less expensive cuts of meat - I often buy bone in, skin on meat like chicken breasts/thighs, especially when they're on sale and I debone the meat myself. It's not hard and I'm sure there are lots of videos on youtube about how to do it. I then wrap it up in plastic wrap in individual or double portions so that I can thaw only what I need. The best part is that I save the bones for stock and can make a better quality stock that contains less sodium. Tip: roast your bones for a deeper, richer tasting stock.

Rediscover your public library - you can now borrow the latest DVDs from the library for FREE and I have rediscovered my love for reading. I also have perused through the magazine section where they always have the most recent issue on the shelf.
Install water aerators for taps and shower heads - I resisted this one for a long time but with the focus these days so much on the environment, I figured it was time to save us a little water and $ and it is also the environmentally friendly way to go.

Trade time for services - some organizations will allow you to volunteer your time in exchange for their services. I looked into this at my yoga studio and they had an energy exchange program where you would work 4 hours/week cleaning the studio and then you would get unlimited free yoga the following week. I didn't end up doing this since my TCM doctor has recommended against Bikram (hot) yoga for me but I've filed that in the back of my mind for the future.
Got a credit card with rewards - when I knew we were cycling in the US, I upgraded my VISA to a Gold Card so I would get more rewards faster and so for each cycle I charge to the card, I get my flight for free. Even with the increased annual fee, it is still better for me to have the card than to buy a ticket.

Those are the many things we've done to cut our costs down. I'd be interested to hear if you have any innovative or new cost saving tips you'd like to share.

Spring Plantings

2009-04-27T11:43:00.008-04:00

I'm a beginner gardener with more of a brown thumb than a green one but I'm slowly learning how to grow a beautiful garden. In addition to some flowers, we like to plant tomatoes and it has to be one of the easiest vegetables to grow. Believe me, if *I* can grow them, they aren't that hard to take care of!

This year, for a change, I am playing around with a bunch of heirloom tomato seeds. I planted 7 different varieties in many different colours and as they sprouted this past week, I kept drawing paralells between growing the seedlings and our journey with IF and IVF.

In this first photo, there are actually 3 plants that sprouted. There's the big one on the left at 10 o'clock, the tiny little one on the right at 2 o'clock, and believe it or not, there is a small one poking up through the soil in between the two at 12 o'clock. The first thing that I noticed was that although I had planted them at the same time, some took longer to germinate than others. I have no doubt that these seedlings will all grow to be healthy, producing tomato plants, it just took longer for some seeds to settle in and sprout. This reminded me of my 2/3 embryo that was biopsied on day 6. I've been concerned that it was developmentally slower and therefore less viable than other embryos since most would normally be a full blastocyst by day 5. However, like my little seedlings, sometimes it takes just a little longer to get to the same stage.

In this next picture, there are three seeds that have sprouted in the pot at the front but you'll notice that the one in the back right hand side looks like it is wearing a little helmet. That's because the seed pod is still attached and is preventing the leaves from opening up. I've seen the leaves on some of my other seedlings shrivel up and die when they weren't able to successfully separate from the seed pod. However, if I remove the stuck pods, they will continue to grow and become strong tomato plants. This reminded me of the assisted hatching that the embryologist performed on our embryos. Sometimes they just need a little help to get going and sometimes they won't even be able to make it without a little help.

In this next photo, there are three plants here and I know you can't really see well from the photo, but the plants at the 11 and 2 o'clock positions each have one leaf that has turned yellow in colour. It is interesting to note that these two were the first to sprout and are the tallest ones of the bunch. I'm not sure if they will be okay because of the withering leaves. The last little on at the bottom in the 5 o'clock position sprouted last but is the healthiest one with two perfect, dark green leaves. This reminded me of our results from the microarray testing - our best looking embryo was abnormal and never would have turned into a baby. On the flip side, one of our lousiest looking embryos was normal and hopefully, that one will survive the thaw and implant and become a beautiful little baby. Looks don't always matter.

Finally, there is one variety that I planted where all three sprouted at the same time and they are all healthy looking and all three are growing at the same rate. Sometimes, you just get some real strong ones that take off and do everything that you expect them to do the first time. You just never know which one you're going to get. Of course, you hope for this best case scenario but even with my little seedlings, only one variety out of seven turned out to be so strong. This reminded me of how some people seem to not have any trouble, that everything they "plant" seems to take without any apparent effort at all. But that is not our story...we're more like one of the other pots but with a little coaxing and some extra attention, those pots did okay too.

Preparing for a FET

2009-04-22T17:30:00.011-04:00

We have finally decided.

Afer much debate and a written pro and con list, we have decided to do a FET with my next AF in May. The discussion went on for days, we went around and around in circles, we weighed all of our options and we always seemed to end up at the same answer - FET. Thank you to the many people who gave us such helpful support and advice and we did ponder everything very carefully before deciding. It may not be the most obvious choice but let me explain our rationale and how we came to this conclusion.

My first knee jerk reaction was to cycle again and bank as many as possible to give the FET the best shot possible. However, in thinking back over my long IF history, when I've done back to back cycles in the past, my results get worse with each progressive cycle. I know that CCRM doesn't believe that you need to rest at all between cycles, but being the poor/average responder that I am, every little thing seems to matter. If this was the option that we pursued, than the logical answer would be to wait a little while longer to cycle. How long would we wait? Probably a few more months...long enough for us to do a FET now. Besides, if we waited to cycle again, doing a FET now would still be considered a resting period for my ovaries. Full circle back to FET.

If we pushed to cycle again first, we considered the possibility that we could get more and better graded embryos. When time came to do the FET, we would likely bypass the 2 embryos we have on ice now (a 2/3 and a really iffy 4CB) in favour of the higher quality embryos. That would mean that the ones we have now would remain vitrified for a longer period of time if we get a BFP. Vitrification is such a new freezing technique, there isn't a lot of information out there about the effects of vitrification on embryos stored for the long term. Given how fragile everyone keeps telling me my eggs are, it may not be the best thing to keep our two totsicles vitrified on a long-term basis. The best thing would be to do a transfer sooner rather than later. Full circle back to doing a FET now.

We also considered that if we cycled again, I could end up with nothing and still be in the same place with the same two totsicles. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush or so the saying goes. We always knew that pushing out to day 5 blast would be a big risk for us and that possibility is the reality that we can't ignore when we cycle again. To mitigate this risk and to improve our odds, I would want to continue working with my TCM doctor with the hopes of improving my response. I have seen some positive changes since beginning to work with her and it has only been about 2.5 months so if we waited to cycle, it would give her a longer period of time to get my body back into balance (whatever that is!). While we wait, might as well do the ET and see what happens. Full circle back to ET.

No matter how we looked at it, it just seemed to us that all signs were pointing to waiting to cycle and doing the ET now. It feels like the right decision for us regarding these two embryos. We felt that we needed to give them a chance but have left it open that if things don't work out, we will cycle one last time at CCRM. I know, I know - I've said that before but I still feel that this is the year that the ART portion of our IF journey will be brought to a close. The only reason why we are even considering doing one more cycle at CCRM is because of the size of our tax refund.

My calendar has been tentatively set to start with my next AF expected on May 18th. If I started with my April AF, ET would have been during the June shut down and would have been put on more and longer meds to get me past that time. Given my body's dislike for meds, that didn't seem like the right choice. With my May AF, ET is pushed back just 2 weeks and is estimated right now to be June 26th.

The knots in my shoulders and neck have gone away now that we've made our decision. No more chest pain either. Onwards...that is the only way we can go at this point. Now I have a date, a timeline, a schedule to follow. We have carefully planned our next step. Let us now take that step forward boldly.

Things That Make You Go "Huh"

2009-04-16T15:07:00.002-04:00

Two things that happened to me today that made me pause a little.

First - had a dream about a friend of mine showing up pregnant one day with a cute little bowling ball bump. Saw her today and she is, you guessed it, pregnant although not showing. The showing part was completely in my dream.

Second - I've been having terrible shoulder and chest pains and my TCM doctor told me today that the shoulders in traditional Chinese medicine represent the gall bladder meridians and the gall bladder governs decision making! Huh - so I'm all conflicted about what to do - cycle, don't cycle, FET - and it is totally and completely being reflected by my body. My chi is low and my shoulder pain indicates that I am pretty conflicted about this decision we have to make. Interesting...

No decision here yet although my DH is leaning towards doing the FET now and seeing what happens and then dealing with the result then. Me - still sitting on the fence about it. I'm not getting any younger and if we have to try again, I would rather do the cycle now and increase our chances for the FET. But it always comes down to money. Ironic that our mortage needs to be renegotiated by June 1st and if we needed more $$, now is the time to get it. If I increase the mortgage, I feel like I am dooming the FET to failure since I have put contingency plan in place. If I don't increase the mortage, I am essentially putting all of my eggs in one basket (haha - pun intended!). I still don't know what I want to do.

Anyone have a good psychic I can consult with?

Decision Time

2009-04-13T13:59:00.007-04:00

I'm having a hard time writing this post because my thoughts and emotions are all jumbled up and I feel scattered at the moment. I just got off the phone with Dr. Schoolcraft and he gave us a lot to think about. Although I had a bunch of questions written down to ask him, I still felt unprepared and of course, had a new question for him as soon as I got off the phone. That never seems to change! The high I carried with me through the weekend has now evapourated into the cold, stark reality of what we're facing.

The first thing we discussed was what the results indicated and if it could explain our past failures. My take on it was "isn't it great that I produce normal embryos?" and his take on it was more along the lines of "this confirms our poor egg quality theory". That's Dr. Sch - he always tells it like it is. I'm still digesting that tidbit of information...I've always been in denial that our IF was my issue, wanting to believe that it was more unexplained, but now it seems that CCRM is confirming what the doctors here have been telling me all along. That's a very bitter $30k pill for me to swallow.

How is this indicative of poor egg quality? Well, we've never had anything go to blast before and on day 3 of our CCRM cycle, it appeared that I was having (in his words) a perfect cycle, meaning that we had 6 embryos that were all 8 cells. The high attrition rate from day 3 to day 5 when we dropped from 6 embryos down to just two viable ones confirms for Dr. Sch that the poor egg quality is reflected by the poor embryo quality and the high number that arrested. In the past, we always did day 3 transfers so we never knew that we had such a high attrition rate between day 3 and day 5. I should have asked him about the 4CB poor quality blast that was normal - how come it was normal yet such poor quality? I suspect he would have said that quality and viability are not always directly correlated with the right number of chromosomes and make reference to my poor egg quality again. Again, should have asked him, but didn't think of the question until I hung up.

Interestingly enough, he was also in a bit of disbelief at my estimate of the success rates (65% for 1 normal transferred; 85% for 2 normals transferred). He was asking me where I had heard those numbers and I told him that it was from the genetic counselling session and based solely on my age. He was quick to correct my estimate and decreased it to a 40% chance if we transferred one normal embryo, taking into account my past history. He thought though that we could get as high as a 70% chance if we transferred two normals.

Dr. Sch also confirmed for me that the 4CB embryo is not normally one that they would have biopsied and he doesn't have a lot of past experience with the thawing of such poorly graded embryos. He doesn't know if it will make it through the thaw (the embryologist seemed to think that there was a good chance that it would not) but if it did, he would be okay transferring that one as well. However, he said again that this was a poor quality blast and that, in his opinion, we only have the one real contender here. Ouch.

As an aside, I asked him if the grading of the embryo could change from the time it was thawed to the time of transfer and he said that the freezing and thawing of embryos does not change embryo grading. What they were graded before the freeze is the grade that they are at thaw. They will tell us however, what percentage of the cells made it through the thaw but that's it. I was also wondering if we would be able to get a better idea of the grade of the inner cell mass and the trophectoderm cells of the normal 2/3 embryo after thawing and he said that the time between thawing and transfer is about an hour so there is not enough time for the blast to develop any further in culture.

So, it is decision time and I do not know what we're going to do. Part of me thinks that we should go down and hope for the best, that both will survive the thaw so we have two to transfer. The other part of me wants to cycle again in hopes of getting one or two more to transfer and therefore increase our chances as high as possible. I've even had the thought cross my mind to cycle again up here since it is cheaper and ask my doctor to follow CCRM's protocol but then I think about CCRM's top notch lab, which becomes even more important given the fragile nature of my eggs. Another option would be to try and treat this through TCM only because, after all, this is the only school of thought that believes that there is no such thing as poor egg quality.

In the end, lots to think about. Which way will we go? Don't know yet.

The Wait is OVER - Microarray Results 3w5d Post Biopsy!!!!!

2009-04-10T17:32:00.004-04:00

Yes, you read right - I got "the call" from CCRM today that they received our microarray results in what I think is record time - 3 weeks and 5 days post day 6 biopsy!! My nurse called me today and the funny thing was that I just spoke with her yesterday about our FET protocol and thought she was calling back with my tentative calendar. She shocked me when she told me that she had microarray results for me. We haven't yet spoken with Dr. Schoolcraft who is supposed to call us to talk about the results in more detail but just knowing what the results were was big and my nurse knew I was dying to know and called me as soon as she got them!!! Thanks Dawn!!

Yes I know - stop blabbing on and give out the results. There were:

TWO NORMALS!!!!!!!

I am so cautiously happy and for the first time in a long time, I felt the beginnings of real hope spring from within the depths of my heart. I had almost forgotten how that felt, to feel again that the possibility exists for us, that we, K & J can become parents. Right before she told me, I had a moment of intense fear - was it good? Bad? But then I had to know and I cried when she told me that we had 2 normals!!!

Onto the nitty gritty for those of you who like details like me. As you all know, we had 4 biopsied and vitrified and they were graded with microarray results as follows:

Embryo 1: 5BB, our best graded embryo by far - ABNORMAL

Embryo 2: 2/3, early blast - NORMAL

Embryo 3: 4CB, poor blast - NORMAL

Embryo 4: 2, early blast and also marked as poor quality by lab - ABNORMAL

Here's where the shades of grey come in. I think that they only biopsied Embryo #3, the 4CB one, because we asked them to. I distinctly remember asking the embryologist about this one and Embryo #4 and she told me that they were pretty poor quality and they normally wouldn't have even biopsied them. It is my understanding that they only did so at our request. She cautioned me that those two embryos would likely not make it through the thawing process. I am afraid that means that even though there are two normals, only one is a real contender. Don't get me wrong - I am extremely grateful to have the one and that has more than doubled our chances of success that Dr. Schoolcraft gave us (he estimated for us a 25% chance during our phone consult with him - transferring 1 microarray normal embryo gives us a 65% chance). However, the question remains, is there one or two real contenders here?

I can scarcely believe two normals...it almost seems too good to be true. Remember that it's me we're talking about here - the poor responder with 5 failed IVFs under her belt. Can it really be two normals for us? I'll have to discuss with Dr. Schoolcraft when he calls.

There are so few high moments along this journey so I'm going to bask in the knowledge of 2 normals for the time being. We really couldn't have asked for a better outcome and we are truly grateful.

TWO NORMALS!!!

My Body is Trying to Tell Me Something...

2009-04-09T16:47:00.006-04:00

I feel fine most days and I don't think that I am stressing about the microarray results but I think my body is trying to tell me differently. This week started off with me getting a huge crink in my neck. I've gotten them before but haven't in a long time but it is a sure sign that I am stressed. My shoulders are really tense and I have knots right along my shoulder blades. My acupuncturist helped to get rid of the crink in my neck but then since the crink couldn't be there, it shifted places...over to my chest.

Now before everyone freaks out, I have had chest pains before and they were definitely stress related. I've had EKG's several times and there is nothing wrong with my heart. I also know these are stress related chest pains because I can actually feel the muscles knotted in my chest and when I press on them, like you would press on a knot in your back, it hurts. So, stress related and nothing else. My TCM doctor also said that the point that hurt was what they call a "spirit point" and that meant that my spirit was low. How to fix? No idea. She did stick a needle in it and now, I am happy to report that the pain is gone. Gotta love the TCM thought process...does it hurt? Than let's stick a needle in it!

I actually had a dream last night about getting our results and the funny thing was that it indirectly involved Sue as she is also currently awaiting her results (although from CGH not microarray). It wasn't a stressful dream, but the fact that I dreamed about it makes me think that this whole wait is weighing heavily on my mind, if only in my subconscious at this point. In my dream, I received an envelope through the mail and I just knew it was results from CGH/microarray. However, somehow I knew, as you only can "know" in dreams, that the results didn't belong to me - they were Sue's and there was a mix up and they sent her results to me by accident. I wanted to open the envelope, even though the results weren't mine (talk about being nosy!) because in my dream, I was convinced that Sue's results were a predictor for my own. I knew that opening up Sue's results was wrong but I wanted to know and not know all at the same time. The dream ended with me still conflicted about opening up the envelope. Weird eh?

We're fast approaching the 4 week wait mark and I called my nurse today to talk about the FET calendar since I want to squeeze the transfer in before the June shut down at CCRM. We'll see what she says and maybe once I have a timeline in place, it will get me moving on other things that I have been procrastinating about.

*****************************

Update - spoke with my nurse and the shut down for ET is from May 30th to June 7th (1 week). I think it's longer for ER and she didn't tell me what the shut down was for ER but I suspect it's an additional week, although which week (i.e. the one before or the one after the shut down for ET) I don't know.

Hatchlings

2009-04-08T21:11:00.014-04:00

Ahhh snow. Here is a photo of my backyard from this morning with everything blanketed in a fresh layer of snow...notice the hopeful looking BBQ on the left!

As promised, here are some photos of my Easter hatchlings that I was working on today. They turned out to be decent looking but boy are they SWEET...or maybe they taste that way because of my recent attempt to eliminate sugar from my diet!

My ingredients:

1 box of cake mix, 1 can of frosting & eggs (oil and milk not shown)

Lots of sprinkles, dragees, candy corn, dots & candy coated mini chocolates from which I will create my beaks, eyes, feet and ears!

Assorted sprinkes that I used - hearts & stars with some barnyard animals thrown in but not used - I was trying to figure out what I could use for feet but the hearts worked just fine turned upside down.

This was the first time I've ever played with melting candy coating chips and it was fun although some of the colours were very bright - like the pepto bismol pink ones on the left. I had to temper that colour with the white chips on the right but it still ended up being fairly pink!

See what I mean? BRIGHT PINK!

This is what the cake balls look like after the cake has been baked, crumbed and mixed with the can of frosting - I cheated and used my KitchenAid mixer but I tend to use it for everything I can. Love that thing! Of course, there is one of my trusty cookie scoops which made portioning out the cake balls pretty easy.

Drumroll please....introducing a very pink bunny...

...and my first chickie...

...and my second chickie with different eyes...

...and another wascally wabbit...

...and an egg.

They all look a little stunned b/c I couldn't find one of those edible markers to draw on a few more features but I thought they looked pretty good for a first attempt! I packaged them all up in little sucker bags except that a lot of them didn't fit on account of their large behinds. I was lamenting to my DH that all my bunnies and chicks had big butts but then he wispered to me that "some people like that"!!

And just in case you weren't sick of photos yet, here is a close up of some bunnies...

Here's a close up of the chicks and eggs.

There you have it - my attempt at cake balls/cake pops! I hope the kids like them! I'm excited to give them to my nieces and nephews, pump them full of sugar and then send them all home to their parents (snicker snicker). After all, what are Aunts for?

It's snowing

2009-04-06T11:20:00.008-04:00

Yes, spring has officially arrived yet we are in the grips of a snowfall here. It's overcast, sky is grey and it was snowing big huge flakes this morning and has since turned into sleet that hits your face like hard little ice pellets except wet enough to stick. Needless to say, my walk with Daisy this morning was short and sweet rather than our usual jaunt through the forest and around the parks in the neighbourhood. There were some pretty confused robins hopping around, leaving these cute little "-->-" tracks in the snow. Hopefully this terrible weather won't last.

It is now officially the half way point of our microarray wait. I just read on Sue's blog that CGH is taking about 8 weeks since the lab is helping to set up another clinic with CGH testing. I don't know if microarray is done by the same place but if it is, we're in for another 2 more weeks on top of the 6 weeks we were originally told.

What to do in the meantime? I haven't recommitted myself to any plan yet in terms of diet, exercise and meditation so I guess I should be figuring that out soon. It's hard though since I need so much privacy to do many of these things like meditation and my castor oil hot packs and we always seem to have a steady stream of house guests. I can always go into my room and close the door when I need privacy but I'm not comfortable since there is the possibility that I will be interrupted.

Easter is next weekend and I have a lot of family in town and a lot of family events going on. I'm going to make some of the chick & bunny cake pops following the instructions from the Bakerella site so that will be fun. If they turn out, I will post some pictures here. It will be a first for me as I have never made any cake balls like Ashley has. I tried making a Tart Tatin for the very first time this weekend and it didn't quite turn out as I thought it would (tasted good - looked terrible since the caramel was very watery). Nothing like runny caramel to teach me to use the type of apples as is specified in the recipe!! My DH is a master BBQer and we had our inaugural BBQ of the season yesterday - he smoked 2 racks of back ribs and it was SO GOOD. The meat was tender and perfectly seasoned, falling off the bone. He only put a dry rub on it too and omitted the sauce since most BBQ sauces contain tons of sugar and I am trying not to eat sugar these days (the tart was my one treat this week!). I'm a convert to dry rubbed ribs now they were that good!

I sure hope it stops snowing soon...

Let's Play a Game...

2009-03-31T12:46:00.005-04:00

I've been a downer lately - chalk it up to the looooooong wait for microarray results and the crashing hormones after ER with no ET. Today is 16 days post biopsy so another 4 weeks to go. Ugh.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to play a little game, totally made up and thought up in my mind and probably a reflection of how unstable I feel these days. So if the rules don't make sense, put it down to the hormones okay?

So here's the game. When I am cycling or trying to get pregnant the old fashioned way (by doing the BD ladies...yes, rumour has it that some people actually do get pregnant by doing the BD), I get all superstitious. If someone helps me along the way, I am so grateful that I often think to myself "I'm going to name my kid after you"! Last cycle, before I left for Denver, I actually qualified for local radio contest to win a trip for 2 for Breakfast in Barbados. You know, the contests where they qualify the first 5 callers starting with the 25th caller for the draw the next morning...I was caller 30 so I finally qualified after years and years of trying (hmmm...years and years of trying...why does that sound familiar??). Anyway, I didn't win the trip, but the act of actually qualifying for the draw was so exciting and I thought to myself, "I'm going to name my kid after you [the radio DJ] because this is an indication of more good things to come right?!".

As I have said before, I am so grateful for all of the wonderful people I have met in Blogland and for the outlet this gives me to express all of my emotions. In honour of my gratitude, let's all pretend that we're going to name our kids with the help of the blogger "word verification" (the sometimes real, sometimes made up nonsensical letters they randomly put together to fool the spam software out there) that needs to be typed in before you can submit a comment :).

You get 3 tries to get a word you like and then you have to answer the following questions:

1. What did blogger name your kid?
2. Is it a boy's or girl's name?
3. What does it mean (make it up if you have to - extra points for being creative!! extra extra points if you can tie it back to IF and TTC!!) and how do you say it (make this up too if it's a funny looking word!)?

Good luck to you all and I hope Blogger word verification is kind to all of us!

***********************************

I posted on someone else's blog this AM and I'm going to use that verification word as an example:
1. What did blogger name your kid? CYLOWNH
2. Is it a boy's or girl's name? Girl
3. What does it mean and how do you say it? It's pronounced with a soft "c" at the beginning so it sounds like the "s" in the word "soft". SIGH-LONE. It means "force to be reckoned with" as its origins are from the word "cyclone"!

Possible Combinations

2009-03-30T10:29:00.003-04:00

It has been 15 days since the biopsy.

Two weeks and one day.

At least four more weeks to go. [Insert loud scream here]

I was okay at first, keeping myself busy settling back into life at home and getting us back into our daily routine but I found myself very emotional this past weekend and I wonder if it's because I know at the back of my mind that I'm anxious about what results we may get.

I've considered all of the possibilities too.

Possibility #1: two normals! Yippeee!! Yay!! Awesome! This is the best outcome we could hope for and in this case, we would transfer back both and take our 85% chance of success. This one was the no brainer.

Possibility #2: two abnormals. Boo hissy boo. This would be the worst outcome and I will be pretty devestated if this is what comes back to us. I don't know what we would do if this was the case. We could try to scrape together the $$ for another cycle but then that would mean living our lives on hold for even longer since we would be in the cycling holding pattern.

Possiblity #3: one normal, one no result. This is still pretty good too IMO. We would know we have at least one normal so that's a 65% chance which is much higher than the 25% chance Dr. Sch initially gave us. Who knows with the no result embryo too...could be fine too so this option is pretty good too.

Possibility #4: two no results. Talk about a shades of grey option but the possibility exists that this may happen so I've been chewing on this one. My DH and I have talked about doing another banking cycle in the hope of getting one normal in the bunch if something like this happens. But then again, we need some more $$ to do this choice and this puts us back into a cycling holding pattern.

I've also been trying to decide whether to take on a short term contract to earn some $$ to pay for another cycle just in case we want to do this or whether to just hang in until we get the results. I have my name out there with two head hunters but with the economy the way that it is, I've heard nasty rumours that most job postings are fake so they can still get the candidates to come in but then they don't really have any real jobs. I figure if something works out than great but if it doesn't, maybe I should sit it out until I hear back about the test results. See how we've come full circle? Everything comes back to waiting for the test results.

Four more weeks to go...

Forgiveness

2009-03-23T09:29:00.022-04:00

First of all, I wanted to thank all of you who shared your own experiences with me in my last post about talking to people IRL about IF and why I shouldn't feel as though I have to justify why I am at home. By the number and length of all of your responses, it seems that I did hit a nerve and from a purely selfish point of view, it made me feel a lot better...not that you've all suffered the same kind of pointless and hurtful things in your life...it's the knowledge that I am not alone in what I struggle with. It's always nice to have people who understand you and get it so thanks everyone for taking the time to respond with so many heartfelt posts.

Secondly, I am still catching up on things I was remiss in doing while I was away in Denver. I wanted to metion and give a shout out to Mamasoon, who I had the great pleasure of meeting in Denver just before my ER. We met at Park Meadows Mall and just sat and talked for a few hours. It was so nice to meet up with another CCRM IVFer and I so admired her strength and determination, even though her cycle was not going as she had hoped. Hugs girl - I'm thinking about you.

Thirdly, Momsoon nominated me for the Sisterhood award which was so cool and I haven't yet thanked her for it. Since I'm weeks behind with this one and I saw it go around the blogs already, if you haven't already been nominated, consider yourself nominated by me. Thank you Momsoon for the nomination - I am truly honoured and touched.

Now onto the subject of today's post - forgiveness. I found myself thinking about this more since my last post and thinking that I had to find a way to forgive others and, more importantly, I needed to find a way to forgive myself. But what does the actual act of forgiveness really mean? When you say that you have forgiven someone, does it mean that you no longer feel any anger or hurt that was caused by their actions? But then how do you stop feeling that anger or hurt that is now associated with that person/action? Are your emotions somehow turned off? Is forgiveness a mindset, a change in your thought processes?

Let's take an example. I have been trying to forgive my sister for her insensitivity that she has continually shown to us throughout our struggles. At first, I did tell her what was going on...I was brutally honest about how it was to suffer through all the testing, even describing to her how awful it was to do a medicated IUI cycle (early morning doctors appointments, dildo cams, daily blood work, etc. etc. We hadn't yet made it to IVF). We also talked at length about the emotional side of IF and how it made me feel, how isolating it is and how depressed I was about it. She nodded, said that she understood, but then when it came time for her to announce her own news, she suffered instant amnesia and told us (IMHO) in the worst and most hurtful way possible. What bothers me too is that she outright lied to me about starting to try to have a family. I agree that it is nobody's business when you start to try and have a family, but if you're going to ask me that question and expect an honest answer, than that means that the same question is fair game for you then. Needless to say, a few short months later after she lied to me, our faces screamed our shock when she handed us a photo frame with the words "insert a photo of your new niece/nephew here on [date]" in it at a family dinner a few short months later. We were completely unprepared. We went numb. Since then, I have completely been unable to open up to her about anything that has been going on and it is a subject that I refuse to talk about with her.

Back to forgiveness - how do I forgive her? I want to...I have tried to...but I find that the old wounds open up every time we scurry around the topics of pregnancy & babies. I tell myself that she wouldn't deliberately hurt me and that she didn't know how insensitive she was being. I remind myself that she is only expressing her own excitement and wouldn't I be excited too if I had news like that? All of these reasons seem logical & rational and it is very much in my head...but my heart continues to hurt. Does the act of forgiveness mean then that your head tells your heart logical and rational reasons why the hurt was not deliberate and then does your head keep reminding the heart until the heart listens?

Yes, I could always confront those that have hurt me but I can only control my actions and my response and forgivness is something I have chosen to do. It doesn't matter whether they think they are right or wrong...if I have decided that I want to forgive, it is something I need to do, not anyone else. However, what bothers me is that there is usually not a lot of remorse or acknowledgement that any hurt has been caused and there are a lot of repeat offenders out there. That tells me that they just don't get it and often, it tells me that they just don't care to get it. I've discovered a lot about who my real friends are and who are the acquaintances in my life. Does this suggest though, that the act of forgiveness involves the other person who caused the hurt to show remorse? But then is that still forgiving or has that morphed into forgetting? Does the act of forgiving inherently involve forgetting as well?

Lots of questions. No easy answers.

Than there is the issue of how to forgive myself. There is not a day that goes by when I don't feel a lot of shame and embarassment (especially when I get asked "what do you do all day at home??") that my body is not able to do the one most basic thing that nature intended. All the parts seem to be there...but they're not working right and they're not working together. Can you imagine if Eve (of the biblical Adam and Eve) wasn't able to have children? If I were Eve, and the future of mankind rested on my ability to reproduce, we would all be in BIG trouble. The Bible would have been a very short book indeed. But I am not Eve and it seems that, however reluctantly, I am walking down the road of IF and I am struggling to find the forgiveness I need to give to myself. How do I forgive myself for failing at one of the most important things in my life?

It's an easy thing to say "I forgive myself" or "I forgive you" but in practice, it is a hard thing to do. I generally do not hold grudges and I think I am a pretty forgiving person but IF has made it so much harder to be that person. So in the meantime my head continues to remind my heart and maybe, one day, my heart will listen again.

Nothing To Show For It

2009-03-19T10:41:00.008-04:00

Today I'm down. Pull up a chair if you want - Crazy is about to start her rant...

Yesterday I had lunch with an old coworker of mine. For those of you just joining me, I haven't work since November 2007 when I quit my job so I could focus on pursuing treatment full time. It is now March 2009 and I have nothing to show for it...at least not externally and nothing I certainly care to talk about with most people IRL. When I gave my notice, everyone was asking me why I was going and my answers were along the lines of:

"I've been working too many hours and this has been seriously affecting my marriage [which it was] so I'm going to take some time off and maybe look for something in the new year" or I'm thinking about making a career change and maybe going back to school".

In my head, I was secretly thinking about all of the doctors appointments I needed to schedule, trying to get into a new clinic without too much of a delay, copies of medical files I needed to get, looking for a new acupuncturist that I'm not afraid of, trying to find a way to get to all of these appointments. You get the picture. I was doing anything but sitting at home, eating bon bons and picking my nose. Of course, none of this truth crossed my lips. I just quietly resigned and went on my merry way. I'm sure some people suspected the real reason why I was quitting but I never confirmed anything - it's no one else's business and I don't care to air out my personal laundry for the company to gossip about.

Fast forward to yesterday - after lunch I ran into two other co-workers of mine and they were asking me with genuine curiosity about what I've been doing since I left the company...to which I don't really have a good answer for. And it's not only them - the longer I go since leaving my job, the more everyone wonders about what it is that I do every day. My sister asks me constantly what I do during the day as does my Mom, my in laws, my friends who don't know what's been going on. Even my parents' friends ask me when I run into them. I am tired of having to justify why I'm at home right now, as if I don't have a right to be here without a brood of children under foot. Believe me, I would rather be chasing after a small child than spending my time chasing doctors and appointments all over the continent.
I also hate the "quick check" - you know what I mean. The quick glance down to your belly area to see if you're showing. Maybe I'm super sensitive but I catch EVERYONE doing it, usually right after they ask me what I've been doing or have been up to these days. God help me on the days that I have a little muffin top going on above my jeans.

I said above that we have nothing to show externally for the past 6 years we've been trying to start our family but man, the scars that run inside run pretty deep. Some days my scars feel as wide and as deep as the Grand Canyon and I wonder how I will ever feel whole again. My fellow blogger DAVs talked about having invisible children in her post and that made so much sense to me, for our invisible children cannot be seen by those around me that continually ask me what I do during the day. If they could see them, they would certainly stop asking me wouldn't they? Another fellow blogger, Kris, talked about at what point does life begin and how disregarding all of the eggs retreived and fertilized along with any chemical pregnancies or m/c would be the same as disregarding everything we go through as couples experiencing IF. She's so right.

What frustrates me as well is the need that I feel to justify our decisions to everyone else. Maybe I'm ashamed that I've had the luxury of being at home without a small child to care for that makes it acceptable in society's eyes not to work outside of the home.

It has crossed my mind to just tell everyone the truth about what it is that we have been going through...but I can't bear the thought of the pity that would accompany such an admission. My past experiences have also not been good with coming clean and some of the greatest hurts have been inflicted by those around me that I've dared to share our plight with. I've even been dumped or frozen out from some groups - like from the first group of former friends that I told about our IF. The lunch where I told them was the last lunch we ever shared together...in fact, I never heard from any of them ever again. They all went on to have children and never called me again. Didn't they know that my admission was a plea for support? Instead, all I got was the stone cold wall of silence in exchange for baring my soul. If it was hard for them to hear about it, couldn't they imagine how hard it was to live? It's MY life you know...they only had to listen about it for a short hour or two and yet that proved too uncomfortable.

Better to know now is what I've told myself. You don't need "friends" like that. You don't need to suffer more hurts like that. So instead, I keep this all to myself and just answer probing queries about what it is that I do every day at home with vague replies like "I'm studying" or "I'm going back to school soon". Call me crazy, but it seems easier that way. What have your experiences been like with telling other people about your IF? Have you been pleasantly/unpleasantly surprised by the responses of others?

Day 6 Fertilization Report

2009-03-15T13:51:00.006-04:00

We just heard from the lab and the news isn't great but we're not out of the running yet. I just wish we were dealing with larger numbers since we were doing such a good job of defying the odds - I had hoped that trend would continue.

We're down to two blasts that are pretty good quality and two that are really poor quality. Normally, they wouldn't have even biopsied the two poor quality blasts but they only did so at our request. The embryologist said that they haven't seen the poor quality ones turning into babies and that they usually don't freeze or thaw well. However, we still wanted them biopsied and again, you must be your own advocate as I have told everyone and anyone over and over again that no matter what, we want everything and anything biopsied, arrested or not. We just want answers and I want as much information that I can lay my hands on because this is it for us.

Of the three early blasts from yesterday, one was graded a 5BB and the other one was graded 2/3. To understand what this means, I am quoting from Linda's Day 5 post from November since she explained it so well:

"The blast development status (expansion - hatching stage) is indicated by the number in the front. The number ranges from 1 to 6, with 1 being the lowest and 6 being the highest quality.

1 = Blastocoel cavity less than half the volume of the embryo.
2 = Blastocoel cavity greater than than half the volume of the embryo.
3 = Full blast, cavity completely filling the embryo.
4 = Expanded blast, cavity larger than the embryo with thinning of the shell.
5 = Hatching out of the shell.
6 = Hatched out of the shell.

The first letter is the grade of the inner cell mass (the cells that will become the fetus). The letters range from A to C, with A being the highest and C being the lowest quality.

A = Many cells, tightly packed.
B = Several cells, loosely grouped.
C = Very few cells.

The second letter is the grade of the trophectoderm (future placenta cells). Again, the letters range from A to C, highest to lowest quality.

A = Many cells, forming a cohesive layer.
B = Few cells, forming a loose epithelium.
C = Very few large cells. "

Thank you Linda!

Really, you're looking for embryos that are graded 5AA so a 5BB is a pretty good quality embryo but not the best. The one graded 2/3 is the earliest blastocyst stage and they can't grade the inner cell mass or the trophectoderm cells (hence no letters after that grade) at this point. They biopsied it anyway because they felt that if they waited any longer, it may have hatched out of its shell. They don't like to perform biopsies on hatched embryos but she did say that the cells of the 2/3 looked good and healthy so we're hoping that this one will be okay.

Of the three early blasts from yesterday, two are the ones I just talked about and the third one has turned into a poor blast. The grade she gave it was a 4CB...ouch. The final blast biopsied was one of the morulas from yesterday and I believe that the grade given to that one was a 2/3 again but she said that this one didn't look very good. Everything else has arrested but she said that they would continue to culture them for one more day just in case the improbable happened but that it was unlikely that anything else would come along at this point.

In total, 4 blasts were biopsied, two being pretty good quality and two being very poor quality. I always knew that the attrition rates were high and we went from 8 fertilized in total down to 2 real contenders but it is pretty stark when you look at it. My mind is telling me that we only need one and if the probabilities hold true, one of the two of those will be normal so there is our singleton...but my heart is demanding retribution for the long, long road we have travelled to get to this point. Shouldn't IVF results be positively correlated with the length of the journey and the suffering that ensued along the way?

I think the embryologist I spoke with told me that they would call us one more time tomorrow with the final count but I don't think that anything will change between today and tomorrow.

I'm not sure how to feel...excited to have the two or sad for the others that were lost along the way. I don't mean to sound ungrateful for the two that we do have...I just feel conflicted at the moment. I think that I need some time to digest this information. I have maintained that I didn't want to do a transfer for the sake of doing a transfer and I would rather know than go through the pain of another m/c...but part of me, naive me, still managed to plant the seeds of belief and hope, secretly thinking that the statistics were wrong somehow.

If both of the two embies come back normal, we have an 85% chance of success if we transfer both. If one of the two embies come back normal, the success rate drops to 65% because we would only be transferring one. Still, these odds are better than what we would have had given a fresh transfer so I need to hang onto that. So I guess we settle in now for the 6 week wait for microarray results.

Day 5 Report

2009-03-14T15:01:00.005-04:00

I spoke with John, the head of the embryology lab today as I had asked them to call us with any news or results since waiting until Day 6 without any news would be excruciating.

The short version - nothing was biopsied today.

The long version - there are three early blasts that they can't yet biopsy but that will likely make it to biopsy. From my understanding of the biopsy procedure, they actually made a small hole in the zona pellicuda on day 3. When the embryo grows to the blastocyst on day 5, the biopsy is done on trophectoderm cells that protrude out of that little hole. They don't perform the biopsy until there are cells protruding out of that little hole. In addition to the 3 early blasts, there are two embryos that are at the morula stage, the stage right before blastocyst. John said that those embryos are still doing what they should be doing so those 5 are still in the running (the three early blasts and the two morulas). The two eggs that were ICSI'd on day 2 plus one from the original 6 that fertilized don't look that great but they are still continuing to culture them and will check and see what they look like tomorrow. John said that he was hopeful for 2-3 making it to biopsy but we have put our order in to the powers that be for all 5 to make it to blast biopsy. Please, oh please!!!!

Of course, each day brings new things to worry about so I'm worried that since there was nothing to biopsy, that's not a good sign. After all, they don't call it day 5 biopsy for nothing! Is the fact that they haven't developed out to that stage mean that they aren't as strong or that they aren't going to make it?? Has anyone had their embies take longer than 5 days to go to blast? Logical me is quick to remind myself that CCRM did tell us during the genetic counselling session that sometimes it can take up to 6 days to develop to blast so it is normal but I do wonder...

Come on kids! Keep growing! Go to blast!! Hang in there!!

WE REALLY WANT YOU IN OUR LIVES...

Day 3 Fertilization Report

2009-03-13T10:13:00.003-04:00

I'm back at home now and settling back in. As I put my long johns and extra layers on this morning, I thought longingly of the warmer weather in Denver but at least the sun is shining here in Toronto! It's amazing how you can come and go and nothing seems to have changed yet everything is different somehow. I've been pretty tired since getting home which I attribute to the 2 hour time difference and the additional hour we lost to daylight savings time this past weekend but I'm adjusting so everything is fine.

Technically, today is day 4 post ER so we did get our day 3 fert report yesterday but late in the day. I basically spent the day sitting by the phone, waiting for it to ring which was pretty nerve wracking. To bring everyone up to date, the two eggs which matured overnight after ER were ICSI'd on day 2 and both fertilized!! That brings our final count up to 11 eggs retrieved of which 10 were mature (!!!) and 8 fertilized (!!!). This is definitely the best cycle ever for us and I know I'm not blowing anyone out of the water in terms of absolute numbers but we are pretty thrilled to have done so well given our past history.

At this point, embryos should be between 6-10 cells with 8 being the perfect number. CCRM begins grading their embryos on day 3 and I asked the embryologist to go through and give me the grades for each of our embryos. In short, the day 3 embryos at CCRM are graded using the following chart, 4 being the best and 1 being the worst:

4 : 0% fragmentation
4- : less than 10% fragmentation
3+ : less than 20% fragmentation
3 : less than 30% fragmentation
3- : less than 40% fragmentation
2+ : less than 50% fragmentation
2 : less than 60% fragmentation
2- : less than 70% fragmentation
1+ : less than 80% fragmentation
1 : less than 90% fragmentation
1- : 100% fragmentation

Our embryos were as follows:

Embryo 1: 8 cell grade 4 & compacting (this one is the most advanced of the bunch)
Embryo 2: 8 cell grade 4
Embryo 3: 8 cell grade 4
Embryo 4: 8 cell grade 4-
Embryo 5: 8 cell grade 4-
Embryo 6: 7 cell grade 4
Embryo 7 (from day 2 ICSI): 8 cell grade 3
Embryo 8 (from day 2 ICSI): 6 cell grade 2+

We are pretty impressed with the lab so far because at this point in all of our other cycles, we had a ton of eggs either a) not fertilize or b) arrested already. So far, we've been lucky enough to only lose 1 egg due to immaturity, and 2 other eggs failed to fertilize. In comparison, my last cycle we had 7 immature eggs out of 10 eggs retrieved! To my knowledge, nothing is arresting at the moment; however, the embryologist that I spoke with did tell me that they do expect to lose 1/3 to 1/2 of all embryos going to day 5 so it is unlikely that all of ours will make it to the blastocyst stage. We will continue to hope and hang onto positive thoughts.

The embryologist also told us that the next time that they will be checking on our embryos will be tomorrow (Saturday). Any embryos that have progressed far enough will be biopsied with any remaining embryos biopsied on day 6 (Sunday). After the biopsy, they will be vitrified (flash frozen). Since it is the weekend, they may not be able to call us tomorrow but they will definitely call us by Sunday to give us the final report post biopsy. For once, I want to beat the odds and have all of our embryos make it to blast and biopsy. I can always hope can't I?

My DH has been cracking jokes since ER and asking me whether our kids will have U.S. citizenship since they were conceived in the beautiful state of Colorado! We also lovingly refer to them as "our American children" :). It's wonderful to think that right now, at this very moment, there are 8 little embryos in this world that are made up of half of me and half of my DH.

For now, we're back to reality...DH has returned to work and I am sorting through all of our travel expenses, paying bills and getting our tax return ready. I hope our good luck will continue to hold.

One final note - I wanted to say a very warm thank you to everyone who have posted comments on my blog and given me such wonderful words of support and encouragement throughout this cycle. You have touched me and at no point did I ever feel alone. You guys are the best!!

Retrieval and Fertilization Report

2009-03-10T13:48:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone - I'm sorry I haven't been able to blog until now but yesterday was kind of rough for me as I was sore and in more pain than I have been in the past so I was just lying around, trying not to move about too much. I didn't think I needed any pain meds until afternoon when the pain meds from the surgery wore off and I sent my DH out to find me some Tylenol.

I went in at 10am for retrieval and the first question out of my mouth after I woke up afterwards was "How many did they get?". Initially, Dr. Surrey said that they got about 7 which was a pretty good number for us but it got even better when the embryologist who came to talk to us told us the number retrieved was actually 11 after they went through the follicular fluid!!! Eleven!!! That is a record number for us!!!

Then, the waiting began for the fert report. We have gotten 10 eggs retrieved before but it was a dismal fert report afterwards so we were cautiously optimistic, but nervous all the same. Were we going to drop from our high of 11 eggs retrieved to a dismal number? So, we have been sitting by the phone all morning here, trying to keep the phone free for that all important call from the lab. That finally came at around 11:20am.

Well, of the 11 they retrieved, 8 (!!!) were mature and they ICSI'd all of them and that gave us 6 fertilized eggs!!!!!!! I was pretty happy about that and in my excitement, forgot to ask her what about the other 3 immature eggs of the original 11. So, had to call them back and then wait for the return call from the lab and she called back and said that of the 3 that were immature, 2 matured overnight and they will ICSI the add'l 2 today!!!!!!!!!

We're so happy!!!!

So, of the 11 retrieved, a total of 10 were mature and right now we have 6 fertilized with a potential for 2 more.

Yippee!!

Of course, now the nail biting begins to see how many make it to day 3 and ultimately to day 5 but it seems that we are off to a good start :). Tomorrow, the lab said that they would call us to let us know if any of the 2 that matured overnight fertilized. Right now though, we are riding high on the news to date. Go CCRM!

Tomorrow is ER!

2009-03-08T18:26:00.004-04:00

I triggered last night. My estrogen had shot up to over 3300 which bodes well for some mature follies right? The general rule of thumb is that each mature follie will generate about 200 units of estrogen so if we do the math, we should have more than we've ever had in the past. DH is betting on 16...I'm being more conservative and betting on 12 but we shall see. They still only measured about 9 follies >10mm so I'm hoping that they missed some and there are some lurking in the back that they can't see. Otherwise, maybe some of the smaller ones will give up some of their eggs?? I sure didn't miss the IM shots and that trigger shot brought back memories of doing those all cycle long since my doctor in Canada preferred IM shots over subcuntaneous shots. Today was a wonderful injection free day so I truly enjoyed it!

I'm nervous...I am getting to the point where I don't care if they just retrieve 9 eggs if they're ALL mature and if they ALL fertilize :). Only time will tell.

Thank you everyone for all of your thoughts and comments and all of the support you have given to me through this cycle. It is so nice to know that I have my own little cheering squad who are thinking good thoughts for me. I have had the pleasure of meeting up with some of the women from IVFC and am hoping to meet up with MamaSoon from blog world on Tuesday. These gatherings are so wonderful and I feel really lucky to have found all of you.

I probably won't blog again until Tuesday and hopefully will have some great news from the fert report. Everyone cross your fingers please!!

Twas the Night before...

2009-03-07T00:07:00.004-05:00

I am 99% sure that tomorrow is trigger day. One more day of shots, one more date with the dildo cam, one more day of b/w and that is it for me. We're done. What a sprint this has been to the finish line. For those of you who are detailed oriented, here are my numbers from today's u/s and b/w:

Left Ovary
This cycle: 19mm, 15.7mm, 14.1mm
Last cycle in Canada: 17mm, 10mm

Right Ovary
This cycle: 22mm, 18.4mm, 15.8mm, 15mm, 13.6mm, 11.7mm
Last cycle in Canada: 21mm, 20mm, 19mm, 17mm, 15mm, 14mm, 14mm, 13mm

E2= 2199
P4=1.3
LH=1.9

It is very interesting to note that in my last cycle in Canada, my doses at this point (day 10 of stims) was a whopping 750 units/day whereas yesterday, they dropped my dose down to 300 units and today raised it back up to 450 units. I don't see much of a difference in the results so again, more proof that what they say about amounts >450 not yielding better results is holding true for me.

My original calendar had down that I was supposed to trigger tonight but I've been told that it will most likely be tomorrow. I have been repeating and repeating myself over and over again to anyone who will listen that I have had a history of immature eggs and because of my insistance, Dr. S (not Dr. Sch) has pulled me over one more day to see if we can improve on the maturity of my eggs retrieved. Under normal circumstances, he would have triggered me tonight. It just goes to show you that you MUST be your own advocate in this whole thing and if you have a clinical history of something, make sure they know it when they are evaluating your case as it may make a difference to the decisions they make about how to approach your file. My nurse also told me that they may also give me a bigger dose of the trigger shot (HCG) in an attempt to help this issue and mature more eggs. Usually, the dosage is 10,000 units but they may give me more. We shall see what happens tomorrow.

Today we also had our meeting with the genetic counsellor and it was a really educational meeting. We are down to down Microarray testing to check for aneuploidy in our embryos since there are no genetic mutations that we have been diagnosed with that we may possibly pass along. In non-IVF speak, checking aneuploidy means that they will confirm that all 23 pairs of chromosomes are present and that there is no more and no less genetic material. Since we have had a history of not producing that many embryos, we really had to make a decision whether or not we were going to try and push our embryos to make it to day 5 when they will do the biopsy for microarray testing. Embryos must make it to day 5 post retrieval in order to have enough cells to biopsy and the attrition rate is about 50% from day 1 post retrieval to day 5 post retrieval. We were really wrestling with this because we have never tried to push our embryos to day 5 given that we have had, at most, just 3 on day 3 post retrieval. The risk is that we can end up with nothing to biopsy on day 5 and then we would have nothing - nothing to transfer and no answers either. However, the genetic counsellor that we spoke with told us that in these rare instances when this happens (i.e. nothing to biopsy and send for testing), as long as the embryos made it to day 4 post retrieval, they can still do a biopsy and send it out for testing, just to get some answers back for us. Just because the embryos don't make it to day 5 post retrieval doesn't automatically mean that it was abnormal. Also, if this happens, they will refund us $4,000 of the fee for Microarray. The head embryologist said that I am still young and that in his experience, he usually sees embryos from people like me making it to the blastocyst stage on day 5. In the event that we have only 1 or two embryos make it to day 5, we have also requested that they biopsy and test any and all other embryos that may have arrested on day 4 or day 5. We're after answers here and it sounds like they can give us those answers. If they all come back abnormal, than that's my answer whether I like it or not. I also said to my DH that I just would rather not go through again all the pain and anguish of transferring in one or two (if that's all we had left) and then miscarrying later. I would rather find out they are all abnormal and transfer none than not find out and then getting pregnant only to miscarry a few weeks later. Once was enough times for me.

So, hopefully trigger tomorrow with retrieval on Monday. Let the games begin!

Report From The Front Lines (3rd u/s)

2009-03-04T12:10:00.004-05:00

It has been 8 days of stims and things are continuing to chug along. I think I'm doing marginally better than how I did back in Canada but it's hard to say and my DH keeps saying that we are here also for the lab, the impact of which we will not see until after ER. So, for those of you numbers and detail oriented people, here are my stats from today with comparatives:

Left Ovary:
This cycle: 18mm, 12mm, 9mm. 5.6mm
Last cycle (cancelled): 18mm 8.5mm 7.5mm, 7mm
Last cycle in Canada: 13mm, 7mm

Right Ovary:
This cycle: 17.5mm, 15mm, 12.3mm, 12mm, 11.1mm, 10.5mm, 5mm
Last cycle (cancelled): 17.3mm, 13.5mm, 10mm, 9mm
Last cycle in Canada: 17mm, 15mm, 15mm, 13mm, 11mm, 11mm, 8mm, 8mm

It's very interesting that my last cycle in Canada had me on whopper stims of 600 units/day and I seem to be doing about the same, which supports what CCRM told me - that amounts >450 units/day are not proven to be beneficial. I think the whopper stims fried my eggs last time so I am hoping that this time, we will have better quality. They're estimating that we'll get between 6-8 eggs this cycle and I really hope that they're all mature and they all fertilize. Cross your fingers!!

I had lunch yesterday with Mangymutt and Mom2beASAP from IVFC yesterday and what a fun time that was! We met at around 11:30am and didn't leave the restaurant until 5pm when they politely told us they were starting dinner service!! The time just flew by and it was great to sit and chat with both of them and trade experiences.

I have also been chatting with the plebotomist that has been drawing my blood every day at CCRM and she has been telling me the funniest stories! She told me today that the fainters mostly tend to be the men (haha - but not my DH...he was a real trooper and didn't blink at all with all the vials of blood they've taken from him) and that she really has to baby them (i.e. fully recline the chair, give them juice, etc) and that it can take up to 40 minutes to draw 2 vials of blood! One poor guy was so nervous he soaked through his whole t-shirt in his anxiety over having blood drawn! Yesterday, we were talking about the colour of blood and if there are various shades she sees (mine was dark red, well oxidized she told me). She she said that sometimes, the blood serum that is spun out can vary if the person has high cholesterol. Blood serum s/b a yellowish colour, kind of like the colour of a custard but when someone has high cholesterol, that turns the blood serum white - ewwww! Interesting things you can learn chatting with the people at CCRM.

As for Dr. Sch, I have yet to even see him walking the hallways of CCRM. My ER is estimated to be on Sunday or Monday so I don't even know if I will meet him this time. If anyone else is potentially doing ER this weekend, Dr. Surry is the one who will be doing it.

That's it for now - will update with hormone levels later. I'm down for daily monitoring now so we're really into the crunch time now.

**********************************

Update:
My hormone levels came back today and E2 has continued to rise while P4 and LH have stayed the same. I was worried about potential breakthrough ovulation b/c I have had a lot of CM the last few days (sorry - TMI I know) but my nurse said that it would be very, very unusual to have breakthrough ovulation while on Cetrotide. I was worried because I know you can have breakthrough ovulation on BCP and Lupron so I wanted to make sure that this couldn't happen on Cetrotide.

So, today's hormones are:
E2=847
P4=0.4
LH=1.3

Second Ultrasound

2009-03-02T12:36:00.004-05:00

So I have been stimming for 6 days (including today) and went in for my second u/s this AM and things are looking good! In comparison to my other cycles where I was on whopper stims (600 units a day), things are going slower but that is a good thing since I've noticed that all the follies coming along are hovering around the same size. In past cycles, I've had huge disparities between the biggest and the smallest follies ranging from 15mm to 6mm and this time, largest follie is 13mm and smallest one measured is 9mm so they're nice and close in size.

So here are the results from today's u/s:

This Cycle:
Left Ovary: 13mm, 9mm, 9mm
Right Ovary: 12mm, 10mm, 10mm, 9mm, 9mm

Last Cycle (cancelled due to cyst):
Left Ovary: 16.4mm, 5.7mm, 5.2mm
Right Ovary: 11.8mm, 10.2mm, 7mm, 4.7mm

Last Cycle in Canada:
Left Ovary: 11mm, 6mm
Right Ovary: 15mm, 12mm, 12mm, 11mm, 11mm, 9mm, 7mm, 7mm, 7mm

In hindsight, it seems now that we definitely made the right decision to cancel the cycle in November as the results are already much better than what we had then. The u/s tech was still saying that it was early and there were some small ones she didn't bother measuring so they could come along. So, it looks like there are 8 good follies coming along at this point. Yay!

At this point, I'm not sure if I will have to go back in for another check tomorrow b/c they may let me ride until Wednesday. We shall see what my E2 and P4 numbers come back at later on today. Other than that, I've been enjoying the wonderful weather in Denver, the bright blue skies and sunshine. I've been able to meet up with some of the girls that I've been chatting with on IVFC and just relaxing, giving my body the rest it needs to keep growing follies!

************************************

Update - I didn't get my hormone levels today since I wasn't at the hotel when the call came through but they are starting me on Cetrotide today which means that my LH must have started to surge. It is CD8 today and I usually have my LH surge on CD11. I also saw some CM today so everything lines up with the beginnings of an LH surge. I am a little concerned that the Cetrotide will slow things down a bit but we'll have to see. I'm not going in tomorrow but will be back in on Wednesday for another check.

First Ultrasound

2009-02-28T10:04:00.004-05:00

I went into my first ultrasound with a sense of anticipation - what was going on down there? The first and second day that I started the stim shots, I felt a fullness in my ovaries that I typically don't feel until later on in the cycle, usually towards the end. However, I did have this feeling early on but it disappeared yesterday. Anyway, things are where they usually are and she measured off about 8 follies although they ranged in size from 9mm to 3mm. Here is the info with comparatives to my prior cycles:

This cycle: Left ovary - 9mm, 6mm, 4mm, 3mm; Right ovary - 8mm, 7mm, 6mm, 6mm, 5mm
Last cycle (cancelled): Left ovary - 12.4mm, 3.7mm, 3mm; Right ovary - 8.5mm, 7.3mm, 7mm, 5mm
Last cycle in Canada: Left Ovary - 8mm, 3mm; Right ovary - 9mm, 8mm, 8mm, 7 mm, 6mm, 5mm

So, I'm tracking about the same as my last cycle in Canada. I was hoping that the Estrogen priming that we did was going to make a big difference but it doesn't look that way. Also, it is interesting to note that my last cycle in Canada had me on 600 units a day of stim meds whereas my daily dose here has been 450 units with no noticeable difference. I am hoping that things will continue to grow in a more even fashion and that more will come along. The u/s tech did say that there were a bunch of small ones that she could see that she didn't bother measuring because they were <1mm. Maybe we can get some of those to come along too. We'll see!

Side note - for those of you who don't speak IVF, a mature follicle is usually around 20mm in size so there is a little ways to go for me yet.

************************************************************

Update:

The nurse just called me and my hormones are as follows for today (day 3 of stims)
E2=188
P4=<0.2
LH=1.4

My estrogen was waaay higher in my last two cycles at this point (350-450) so this is indicating to me that things are progressing along slower than they did in the past, which is not necessarily a bad thing since I always have quite a few immature eggs. I'm on the same max dosage until Monday when I go in for my next check. We'll see how things are coming along then. I keep repeating to myself that it doesn't matter how many, we want better quality ones than before but it's hard not to play the numbers game. Thank you to everyone with your well wishes. Your comments made me smile today :) so thank you for that!

P.S. L - I have copies of all of my medical records and I asked the nurse this morning if I could write down all of the sizes. On Monday, I will actually see my own nurse for the first time and I will ask her if I can get a photocopy of the actual monitoring sheet so I will fill it out myself as we go along. I would never be able to remember all of those details in this poor, hormonal brain of mine!!

10 Honest Things About Myself

2009-02-26T18:42:00.006-05:00

I've been tagged for the first time by MamaSoon to list 10 honest things about myself . Before I start, the rules are:

1) Choose at least 7 blogs you find brilliant in content or design.

2) Link to these blogs and leave them a comment that they were tagged! The image in this post is your official award!

3) List at least 10 honest things about yourself.

So, I'm tagging the following people:

1. Kris

2. Linda

3. Jill M.

4. Sky

5. Molly

6. Momsoon

7. JJ

I know some of you have already been tagged by others in our little blog circle but I can't come up with any more so you it again! And now, onto the fun stuff - the 10 honest things about myself...

1. My parents don't know we're doing IVF and they certainly don't know that I'm in Denver right now. It has been a very hard decision not to tell them but I fear the judgement that will come along with it. I know they love me and they want the best for me but my Mom has very strong views on natural remedies and natural healing and believes that everything can be done through diet and exercise. Through the stress of all the IF stuff, I don't want to be on pins and needles, wondering what she will say next, kind of like the potato comment from before. We've covered both our absences by telling them we're in Denver for a "series of meetings" for my DH's work and we do have friends that live north of Denver who we are visiting with but I hate the lying.

2. I am an accountant but I have always felt like it's something I pretend to know how to do. Yes, I do have three accounting degrees (a bachelors, a masters as well as the official Chartered Accountant's designation) but I always feel like I don't know enough. I know now why I like the Shopaholic book so much because the way she feels (in the book, not the movie) is exactly the way I feel, like someone is going to find out one day that I'm a lousy accountant and that it's all just make believe. I actually like bookkeeping more and I really shouldn't have gone on to get three degrees in Accounting...a little overkill eh? It's kind of like killing a fly with a giant anvil. You really only needed a fly swatter :)

3. I really want to make a career change to become a pastry chef and even have the school all picked out. However, I wonder if I will still love baking as much as I do if it becomes my job every day? Can you really love doing something so much that it is fun to do, 365 days a year?

4. I would love to host or work on a cooking show on Food Network. How much fun would that be?

5. I hate exercising but I will do it because I recognize the health benefits to keeping fit. I have the attention span of a gnat though and need to keep changing things up to keep myself motivated. Sometimes I run, sometimes I work out at the gym with a trainer, I swim, I love hot yoga (although the yoga studios around me cost a fortune -not a cheap way to exercise), I power walk the dog and sometimes, it's as easy as just giving the house a good old cleaning.

6. I worry about having enough to do CGH. We have never, ever, ever, gone to day 5 blast because I have never had more than three embies at day 3 so they just transfer everything back in. I wonder what the threshold will be, the magic number that we want so that we feel comfortable doing CGH. Say we get only three embies again - do we test the three? What if we end up with only one? The attrition rates are quite high to get to day 5 blast so I'm worried we won't make it that far.

7. I would continue to do IVF until we got a child if we had unlimited money but sadly, the money has run out and I don't want to be on hold any more.

8. I have really awful digestion sometimes and things as simple as too much fiber will set me off. Also, when I get nervous, I get the typical "fight or flight" response and for me, that translates into a run to an urgent run to the bathroom. I would never be able to participate in those reality shows like Amazing Race - Phil would yell the word go and instead of running to my car, I would run for the nearest bathroom!!

9. I have a weakness for reading historical romances. I love reading about Earls and Dukes, Duchesses and Ladies and yes, the plotlines are very simple and you know the two main characters are going to get together in the end but I just love the happy endings.

10. I love travelling but for the most part, my DH and I remember destinations more by what we ate and what food we saw. When we cruised a few years ago on Celebrity's Millenium, we deliberately chose the ship for the food (it is ranked #3 by Conde Naste and the rest of the Celebrity ships are in the top 10) and everything else pales in comparison. We will spend so much time pouring over travel books and visiting websites like Chow Hound to see where people have eaten and what is good local cuisine. We are real foodies :)

Green Light!

2009-02-24T21:28:00.003-05:00

It's official - I passed the suppression check and this time, I know it was done properly!! I have no cysts and my E2 was 39 (they like it <50) and my P4 was 0.2 (they like it <1). I arrived in good time this morning as my United flight was a half hour early (and there were only 16 people on board - first time EVER that my luggage actually made it out before I did!) and it was blue skies and bright sunshine in Denver. I checked into my hotel with lots of time to spare, settled in a bit and then headed over to CCRM for my appts at 11:30. Got the all clear at around 4:30 so I start shots tomorrow!

I don't have to go back to CCRM until Saturday for my first stim check but I've scheduled two acupuncture sessions this week on Wednesday and Friday. Other than that, just doing my shots, growing some good follies and enjoying the wonderful weather.

Awesome!!

(Sorry - have to keep this short since there is only 1 computer in the business center at the hotel and I don't want to hog)

High Five! AF is ON TIME!

2009-02-23T09:08:00.003-05:00

So sad - my DH and I gave each other a high five this morning when AF arrived right on schedule today. What a relief! I think this is what they mean when they say to "find joy along the way". You know you have no secrets from your DH when even he recognizes the signs of AF coming better than you do and you both celebrate when she does arrive. What a twisted reality we live in!

I'm making final preparations to go - packing, last minute errands, confirming with CCRM, making sure there are some meals in the freezer for DH (not that he can't cook - he can but I am not partial to his specialty, which we have lovingly named "hodge podge") and preparing my pooch for a stay at my parents' house.

It's for real this time - I'm really going and this time, we're going to finish the cycle, come what may. AHHHHHHhhhh!!!!!

Spotting

2009-02-22T15:14:00.004-05:00

I've started to spot. This is a good thing (so my DH was quick to reassure me) because I usually spot right before I get AF. I noticed the spotting first thing this morning with my hyper sensory abilities (haha) and immediately freaked out, thinking that AF was going to arrive right then and there. I was all set to call the airlines and change my ticket etc. but then DH reminded me that I usually spot for at least a day before AF actually arrives. Let's hope this is the case and that AF will arrive tomorrow right on schedule. Just in case, I had my DH massage the acupoint right on top of my head which is supposed to delay AF. I don't know if it did anything but it made me feel better and made my headache go away a little.

I'm a nervous mess today. I don't know why - maybe it's because this cycle is it as I discussed in my previous post. I'm being so clingy to my DH...kind of like a barnacle to the side of a boat. Every time the poor guy turns around, I'm asking for a hug and he is always quick to squeeze me tight and rub my back. I also started baking to ease my nerves so at least, the house smells nice and I'll be leaving DH with a pile of treats to remember me by (gingerbread biscotti and almond biscotti along with oatmeal molasses bread - YUM gluten!).

Thank goodness for the Oscars tonight - something to distract me in the evening so I don't sit and brood. Last shot of Cetrotide was last night and I have continued taking the Estrace twice a day. I think once I get to Denver and get in for my suppression check (and pass) I'll be okay but until then, timing is tight and I'm watching everything like a hawk!

We're on our way...

2009-02-18T14:21:00.004-05:00

Last night before I started officially doing anything drug related to this upcoming cycle, my DH and I were talking about it and I got really nervous all of a sudden. This is our LAST CYCLE. This is IT. Whatever happens, no matter how many eggs are retrieved, no matter how many are mature, no matter how many fertilize, we're done. I've said it before and I'll say it again, this year I want to move on with my life, whatever that means but you know what? Now that "whatever it means" is staring me right in the face, I find myself faltering a bit. I'm not as confident as I thought I was and I find myself doing ridiculous things like hoarding meds just in case we decide to cycle again locally (I know - somebody call the looney bin). There is no way we could afford another IVF at CCRM and if we did cycle again, we would still be stuck and that is not where I want to be in 2009. This is the year we become un-stuck.

After much thought, I came to the conclusion that somehow in my crazy mind, I equate giving up cycling with giving up hope. I'm afraid to do it and this makes me no better than the people you see on TV who are addicted to plastic surgery. It's invasive, it's painful, it involves lots of drugs and money yet they still return, time and time again. Sounds like someone I know - me. How does one give up a dream? Maybe I need to think about how the dream will change instead of thinking that I have to give it up entirely. Any thoughts guys?

I'm trying to adopt a more Zen-like attitude about this cycle and I have already sworn to myself that I will not be a control freak about all of the details (yeah right!). I closed my eyes this morning and popped my first Estrace pill and we are officially underway!

Cycle question for those of you who have done the Estrogen Priming Protocol before - did your AF arrive early, on time or late because of the Ganirelix/Cetrotide shots you took pre-cycle?

If I had a million dollars

2009-02-16T15:35:00.005-05:00

I was watching Rachael Ray's show last week on The Brides of Harris County and I found myself welling up many times throughout the one hour show. In short, this show was about couples who live in Harris County and whose wedding plans were destroyed when Hurricane Ike swept through the area. Many reception halls were destroyed or were forced to close in the aftermath and many of these couples lost some if not all of their money.

I kept on thinking how wonderful it was that Rachael used her time and influence to make the dreams of so many of these brides come true and for no material gain on her part. I thought that was mighty fine of her.

My thoughts started to wander down the path of what I would do if I were blessed with those kinds of resources. Thankfully, my life has not been touched by the devestation of a hurricane so I cannot relate to that specifically, but what I have can related to is IF. Unfortunately, I know that ugly face. IF has consumed my life and has dominated my 30's. When I look back, my 20's were all about graduating, meeting and falling in love with my DH, the wedding of my dreams and creating our home. My 30's were all about the pain of IF, countless shots, treatments and appointments, loneliness and despair and a heck of a lot of soul searching.

Wouldn't it be great if all IVF treatments were free and you could do all of the cycles you ever wanted to do? How about if our medication was fully covered forever? Imagine if others were simply educated about the huge financial and emotional toll that IVF has on us?

Well, turns out that I did not win the jackpot for our local lottery but I was thinking about how I could still contribute and not use the lack of funds as an excuse not to. Use what you have right? I don't have much to offer right now but what I try very hard to do is to be supportive of others. I try very hard to find the right comforting words to say to my IF sisters when those in their own lives do not understand. I try to empathize and sympathize when my IF sisters are trampled on with ignorant and hurtful words. I am a shoulder to cry on and any information I know that I have come across in my IF travels, my IF sisters are more than welcome to share in. It's not much but it's something and I know that when I've been down and out, more and more it is my IF sisters that pick me up and get me moving again. I am so very grateful and hope that I too can pay that kindness forward.

Have a good day everyone and remember, if you need me, I'm here for ya!

Life is So Unfair

2009-02-10T16:09:00.004-05:00

And you know what? I'm not talking about my life for once.

My BF's mother was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Yes, this is the same type of cancer that Randy Pausch, author of The Last Lecture, was diagnosed with. My BF's mother is to undergo surgery to remove the tumour in a few weeks and the doctor gives her a 30-50% chance that she will still be here in 5 years if the tumour doesn't return. My BF is a numbers person, just like me, and it is hard when the majority isn't on your side.

Again, I ask the question "why"? Why her Mom and at such a young age? Her Mom is just in her mid sixties and leads a very active life. She is an incredibly giving person, always travelling to visit family and friends and the first person to lend a hand should the need arise. She sits on the board of a large charity and has done so much volunteer work it puts the rest of us to shame. She has so much gentle wisdom and has sacrificed so much for those she loves.

I know that I am very guilty of putting blinders on and thinking that only MY life is unfair and that everyone else exists in a fairness vacuum where the good receive all the blessings and the bad receive nothing but curses. This is not so. Again, another example of how there is no rhyme or reason to life and maybe the more pertinent question is not "why?" but rather "how?"

How should we live our lives given the challenges we face?
How do we make the most of the time we have been given?
How do we make good choices while remaining true to ourselves?
How can we grow through our experiences?
How do we cope?

I suppose that in asking "how?" rather than "why?" we are encouraged into action when we contemplate the answers, rather than wallowing in the inevitable (and sometimes necessary) self-pity that accompanies the answers to "why?". Believe me, I have spent my fair share of time in why-land. Maybe the only pathway is to go through "why" to get to "how" and it is in figuring out the "how" that we find a way to move forward.

Please, if you have a few moments today, say a little prayer for my friend and her mother. Thanks.

Lucky Charms

2009-02-07T08:42:00.004-05:00

I used to point and laugh at people who carried around lucky charms, always whipping them out like talismans to ward off bad karma but you know what? I realized that I too have lucky charms. I'd like to think that mine are more subtle but you be the judge...

The first one is a necklace I wear around my neck. It's a Chantecler bell and legend has it that each time you hear it ring, it is your guardian angel asking you to make a wish. The funny thing is that most of the time, I don't hear it. It's very tiny, about 1cm in diameter and the ringing is a high little tinkling sound. My DH hears it all the time though and once, I was shaking the bell upstairs and he heard it all the way downstairs in the kitchen and he had to come all the way upstairs to tell me to stop shaking the thing :). Even when I do hear the bell, I get silly about my wishes and it usually goes something like this: "I wish that I get pregnant!" and then "No wait! I wish that I not only get pregnant but then I carry the baby to term" which then changes to "What I really wish for is to be pregnant with a HEALTHY baby that I carry to term" and so on.

The second thing that we do is both my DH and I sleep with two newborn sleepers under our pillows; we each have one pink one and one blue one. Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night, I like to reach under my pillow and touch them, hoping that somehow, it will attract the right baby karma to us. One girl that I know of who did this ended up having twins after multiple IVF failures. The other girl that I knew who also did this got pregnant with a singleton, defying all the odds as she is 40 and a very poor responder (i.e. 1-2 eggs per IVF cycle).

The crazy things we find ourselves doing in the name of IF...

Goodness in the World, Nerves & Saizen

2009-02-05T12:35:00.004-05:00

I wanted to start this post off on a very positive note. Someone that I "met" through IVFC has very generously donated her meds to me! There are still some very kind people left in this world and I am so very grateful to her. The timing of this couldn't be better since I am completely OOP and this second attempt at our last cycle in the US has stretched our finances to the absolute maximum. Cash flow is tight and everything counts and she is saving me a bundle of $$ with these meds. Grateful hardly describes how I feel and this really restores my belief in the good of people. A very heartfelt "thank you".

There was also a flurry of activity today getting ready for my upcoming cycle. I booked flights using our reward points for myself and my DH. My flight was not a problem since I was just redeeming points for a new ticket. My DH's ticket was another story since I was trying to use an unused ticket from October '08 when were supposed to go out there the first time. Those of us Canadians who have ever dealt with Air Canada and their Aeroplan reward program know what I mean (roll eyes here). I won't bore you with the details but suffice to say, it wasn't easy but we managed to accomplish this small feat this morning. We're both booked now - I'm flying in on Feb 24th and he will be joining me on Mar 5th. We're both flying out on March 11th.

I'm nervous about whether the timing will work out or not. It's always a delicate balancing act. AF better be on time (and she usually is) but I'm nervous given than I'm going to be playing with my hormones again this month and taking 3 shots of Cetrotide right before she is scheduled to arrive. IF all things go as planned, I will fly in on CD 2 (Feb 24th) and be in for a suppression check that morning right from the airport. If all goes well, I will be starting stims the next day (Feb 25th) with an estimated ER on Mar 8 after 10 days of stims. Things were going pretty slowly last time so we can go as far out as Mar 10th for ER and then I would fly out the very next day.

Of course, I have to watch the weather to make sure that there are no storms brewing either up here or down in Colorado. I don't want to screw up my cycle because I don't fly in on time. I'm also nervous AF will either be early or late which will throw off the timing. Geez...do I ever run out of things to worry about?? Last cycle it was a little easier to predict my schedule as we locked and loaded my calendar when I started the BCP. This time I'm relying on the arrival of AF. I know things will figure themselves out but that doesn't stop the worry in the meantime. Maybe I need to go meditate (or is it medicate??) and get rid of some of that stress...

So the Saizen debate...I think I am finally ready to let it go as in I am not going to request that it be added to my cycle. For those of you who are on it, I will be watcing your cycles with great interest and I am by no means saying that it is a bad thing to have. For me, I keep coming back to the point that Dr. Sch did not recommend that it be added for me and I am paying so much money for his advice. Also, last time we had the best response ever with the antagonist cycle but the poorest quality so I'm hoping that with the estrogen priming he added to my cycle, that will be enough to coax some better eggs out. Someone else with Saizen added to her cycle told me that Dr. Sch's objective in doing so was to get maybe 1-2 more eggs out. For me, my body clearly does not like all the meds since I respond so poorly to them. I figure that adding yet another medication would probably not be received well by my body so I'm going to leave it. I just want better quality eggs than the last time I did an antagonist cycle (10 eggs retrieved but only 2 lousy looking embies to transfer 3 days post retrieval). Let's hope that is the right answer for me and my body for now, this is what feels right and I have debated this endlessly for the past few weeks. So, here ends the Saizen debate.

Odds & Sods

2009-02-04T15:55:00.004-05:00

I've been kind of quiet of late - just trying to get over this blasted cough I managed to catch. I think I'm finally getting over it but kicking the last of it always seems to be the hardest part with coughs. Thankfully, there was no fever or nasal congestion or any flu with this cold - just a deep chest cough.

I've been back to see the TCM doctor 3 times now and she is doing different acupuncture points. She is also really quick putting the needles in which is really good since that part always stresses me out. When I'm done there, I always feel like a wet noodle and really, really relaxed. Hopefully my blood stagnation is being resolved but who really knows?

I haven't been successful at restarting my daily meditations or my Qi Gong. I associate both of those with IF and trying to get pregnant and I haven't felt motivated to get back to doing this yet. Every time I look at the counter on the sidebar I start getting antsy about going back. Have I done enough? Should I even bother starting the meditations again?

As for the Saizen/no Saizen debate, that is still raging but I think I am siding more and more with just leaving it. Dr. Sch didn't recommend it for me (and I KNOW he has recommended it for others) so I should have some measure of trust in his opinion. Besides, Saizen is supposed to improve response not quality and with the estrogen priming added to the antagonist protocol he has me on, hopefully that will be enough to get better results.

On a tangent, one of my favourite shows is How I Met Your Mother and this past Monday night, I found out that BOTH of the women who star on it are PG. For crying out loud! Now every time I see the show and see them, my eyes will automatically be drawn down to their bellies to see if they're showing. Thankfully, neither pregnancy has been written into the storylines...yet. Then today I see the cover of OK magazine that is speculating that Katie Holmes is expecting again...can Hollywood just give it a rest?? Geez.

Okay - rant over. And that is what's going on in my world.

TCM and my IF

2009-01-30T14:30:00.004-05:00

TCM. Traditional Chinese Medicine.

So as many of you know, I went to see a TCM doctor here that is affiliated with Dr. Randine Lewis' Fertile Soul program. I wasn't sure what to expect...maybe just a new set of eyes and a fresh perspective on my situation. I also want to try to prepare for my upcoming cycle as best as I can and again, maximize my chances and perhaps better my results.

Right now, she thinks that my issue is blood stagnation. Everything that I have ever been diagnosed with & other factors point to this:

- endometriosis
- fibroids
- poor responder to the IVF meds
- keloid scars
- blood clots in my menstrual fluid (I know...TMI)
- bruises that take a long time to heal

She said that the blood can be nourished and rich and perfect but if it doesn't circulate well enough and reach the places where it needs to go, than it can't do any good. She thinks that there is a blockage somewhere (in my blood energy flow, not literally a blockage in my blood circulation) and it has manifested itself in my body as reduced blood flow to the reproductive organs. With acupuncture and herbs, she is trying to get things moving again.

I'm sure there are a lot of things not exactly accurate with what I said above, but this is how I understood the information she was telling me. She said that what she is trying to do is bring my body back into balance long enough for me to get pregnant. Sometimes, she's seen cases where she thinks that someone needs a lot of treatment to become balanced again and then she tweaks something just a little bit and that's all they needed. Sometimes, she works with someone for a long time before they are successful. It all depends.

I've also managed to catch a slight cough this past week so she is trying to clear that up for me in addition to moving my blood around. Maybe if I can get this blood moving again and reach my reproductive organs better I'll have a better cycle??

Am I grasping at straws again??

As a side note, my DH and I are *still* debating the Saizen. He is still against...I waver and go back and forth between trying it and leaving it. My nurse told me that she has seen some patients cycle with Saizen and she has not seen any noticeable difference in egg quality/quantity. This is again, based only on anecdotal evidence but I don't have anything else to go on right now. I asked her if she has ever heard of whether it has hurt the results yet and she said that it hasn't to her knowledge. I don't know...today I'm sitting more on the side of "just leave it". Anyhoo....

Happy Chinese New Year!

2009-01-26T10:48:00.003-05:00

It's the year of the Ox and I was born in the Year of the Ox. So was Barak Obama. Happy Chinese New Year! I hope that this year is our year and that through our persistance and hardwork with luck making up any of the differential, we'll have our baby this year. I wish the same for all of you.

P.S. I made an appointment with the new TCM doctor that is affiliated with the Fertile Soul Retreat on Wednesday this week. I am seeing my family doctor today to get a new script for meds. I start the doxycycline on with my AF which will be in two days (she'd better show up on time!).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fun Chinese New Year Traditions & Superstitions

1. No house cleaning today - you will be sweeping and cleaning your good luck out the door so keep all the dirt inside today and get rid of it another day (as if we need an excuse NOT to clean - here's your excuse for today!)

2. Wear new clothes (I'm wearing new socks in light of our budgetary constraints this year but the rest of ya - GO SHOPPING!)

3. Don't shower or you'll be washing away good luck

4. Eat only vegetables today as you shouldn't be killing any animals on the first day of the new year.

5. Light firecrackers to scare off evil spirits and bad luck

6. Open all your windows and doors to allow the good luck of the new year to come into your home.

When Do You Know When Enough Is Enough?

2009-01-25T07:46:00.007-05:00

I'm trying to figure out how to make sure that this last IVF cycle we're doing is our best cycle. There are so many options out there about alternative therapies, new therapies & new age therapies. I feel paralyzed, unable to rationally make a decision for fear that it is not the "right" decision and therefore will not give me the baby that we so desperately want.

One of the things I've been trying to decide whether to add Saizen to my protocol this time. Although he has recommended this for other patients, Dr. Sch did not recommend it for me but is willing to add it to my protocol if we want (yeah - thanks for expressing your $30,000 opinion!). There is no rhyme or reason why it is recommended to some patients and why it is not to others (I asked my nurse to find out what criteria he uses to include it in someone's protocol and that is what she told me after discussing it with him). He keeps saying that drugs like Saizen have not yet been proven on a scientific basis to positively impact IVF outcomes and that it may or may not help...he doesn't know. So, the decision rests with me and now I get to play doctor and decide whether I will have regrets or not if we do/do not add it to our protocol. If it can help, great but the fear that I have is that it may not help but hurt our outcome. That fear isn't based on anything - just my irrational thinking rolling around in my head. How many times have I gotten to the end of something without achieving the expected response to have someone tell me "well, it wasn't supposed to happen like that - you're definitely the exception". I don't want to be a Saizen exception with our last try.

My DH is tired of grasping at straws and has voted in favour of not including it. Me? I'm still on the fence. I have no hard, scientific evidence to base any decision on so I'm just reading anecdotal evidence from others who have been put on Saizen. People have been reporting that egg quality has been improved which results in a greater number of higher quality embryos but again, this is based on anecdotal evidence of just a small few.

Another thing I've stumbled across late yesterday night was a fertility retreat called "The Fertile Soul Retreat" run by the author of The Infertility Cure, Dr. Randine Lewis. I was stunned when I went to their website and lo and behold, wasn't there a quote there by MY OWN DOCTOR...

"I have treated patients for years who have also utilized Randine's alternative medicine approach to infertility in parallel with our IVF or other fertility technologies. It continues to amaze me how many of these women are successful at achieving a pregnancy despite having very difficult problems. Many have test results that suggest their prognosis is nil, yet with Randine's help they keep beating the odds and realizing their dream of having a baby. I would encourage any patient who is pursuing pregnancy to take a comprehensive approach to their care. The Fertile Soul's advice and treatment is an important part of such a plan."
~Dr. William Schoolcraft, Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine~

Should I go? I can squeeze their next session in (Feb 9th to Feb 12th) before my next IVF but it's $3000 for the 5 day session but at this point, money is really tight. Besides, who's to say that this is going to work for me? I've already taken a mind/body fertility program and even though the success rate of graduates going on to get pregnant and have babies was boasted to be a whopping 85%, I still ended up on the wrong side of that percentage. Do you know how much it sucks being one of two people out of a group of 11 that did NOT have a baby?

The seductive part of Dr. Randine's approach is that she believes that for most, IF is caused by imbalances of the body and that by putting your body back into balance, it can naturally conceive. For people like me who have been "diagnosed" with unexplained, do you know how appealing that sounds to me? And it's done through diet, exercise and herbal supplements, not drug therapy. It's more natural, holistic and addresses not the symptom (infertility) but the root cause.

I don't know what to do...even if I did end up going, is it something that can have an impact on the cycle we're planning on doing next month? Or would it be beneficial since the important part would be in preparation for ET, which is at least 3 months out? You see, I've done Chinese herbs before and acupuncture and I did NOT notice any difference. Granted, it all depends on the practitioner that you have and how good they are in diagnosing and treating the problem. So far, I've seen two Chinese herbalists/acupuncturists. The first one had terrible communication - she didn't tell me what was going on or my diagnosis, wrote all of her notes in Chinese, stuck a needle so far into my back that I freaked out and could still feel that point days later and she really gave me a phobia about acupuncture. The second herbalist/acupuncturist I saw I really liked and she was warm and friendly...but I don't think she knew what she was doing regarding IF and I didn't notice any change in anything during treatment.

I'm not convinced that going to this $3000 retreat is the answer. However, I did notice on the Fertile Soul website that there is a TCM doctor here in my city that trained with Dr. Lewis and is affiliated with her program...maybe I'll go in to see her. Fees for an initial consultation with her of $120 is a heck of a lot cheaper than $3000.

I always wonder though (and I am really bad at making decisions) how you don't think about the path not taken. For example, we chose not to pursue our immune diagnosis, partly because it is extremely controversial and we couldn't afford to do the treatment for it in addition to IVF. How do you not wonder at the end of it all if you made the right choice when the one you chose still did not get you to baby? When do you know when enough is enough?

People often tell you that you are ready to move on when the alternative no longer looks so scary. I feel that way about adoption - it no longer is so scary and I am at least willing to entertain the idea whereas before, I would completely plug my ears while singing "la la la la la" so I would hear nothing about it. How do you stop yourself from wondering what would have happened had you chosen differently?

Sorry about all the rambling...I guess I have to be a grown up and make a decision about what we're going to do. My DH is against the Saizen so it makes it hard for me to go against the opinions of both him and my doctor. As for the retreat, that's also a no go from a purely financial point of view. I think I will, however, make an appointment to see that local TCM doctor and maybe that will be my stepping stone to an entirely new path.

Adoption, thy name is 2YW

2009-01-22T12:04:00.021-05:00

For quite some time now, I've been turning over in my mind the idea of adopting a child since we are nearing the end of our ART journey. Most of the time, I like to know what's coming next and I found that I needed to know that we had options if we walked away from IVF. I am the consummate planner although in this case, I have shied away from thinking about adoption for a long time because the thought terrified me. It was always my Plan B, you know, the one we would never have to seriously think about executing because Plan A was always going to work. I also felt that by considering adoption, I was jinxing any current cycle because I was not thinking positive enough thoughts and assuming failure.
Even if we finally have a child through IVF, I think a lot of the time now that I would still like to adopt a second child. I doubt I will have any totsicles left over, I will be older if we try IVF again and I'm sure I'll have an even dimmer prognosis than ever. Besides, the altrustic nature of adoption has always appealed to both my DH and I.

My DH was watching a program about adoption and the older children that are still in the system and he said that his heart was touched by what these kids were saying. They always tried really, really hard to be "cute" or "lovable" but couples always chose the younger children. These kids suffered disappointment after disappointment, much like how we have suffered disappointment after disappointment doing IVF. Wouldn't it be so wonderful to end that cycle of disappointment for one another? I wonder if I have the courage.

I also think to myself about how much I LOVE my fur-baby Daisy. She has provided me with so much comfort over the last few years as we have struggled along this road and I couldn't imagine our lives without her. I know that I can't give birth to a dog so I accept that the only way that we can have one is if we adopt one. I wish that I could just as easily accept, if this really the case, that I can't give birth to a child as well and embrace the idea of adopting. Of course, the big difference here is that humans do not give birth to dogs but history has proven, time and time again, that the human race can and does give birth to our own babies...just not us...yet. This idea of procreation is so deeply entrenched in every pore of my being and this makes it hard for me to accept any other truth.

Today, I summoned up the courage to investigate on the internet about adoption. The idea no longer terrifies me as much and I can think about it and consider it rationally. What I found was so disappointing and very disheartening, it almost makes me want to keep doing IVF! I always knew that the wait times were very long and getting longer by the minute and a "quick" adoption would be a minimum of 18 months. Again, like with IVF, the waiting never ends. So, after we finish with IVF #5 in June of 2009 and get the ball rolling immediately with an international adoption, we are looking at least as far out as the very end of 2010 or early in 2011. How depressing is that? And meanwhile, there are endless news reports about starving and abandoned children in the world who need homes...

I don't have a lot of details yet but my understanding is that, in Canada, you can only pursue international adoption with one country at a time. If you get on the waiting list for Thailand for example, and midway through your waiting period they change the rules and close their borders, you have to get in line for another country and your wait time begins AGAIN. No credit for time already spent waiting.

Anyway, this is what I read this morning that utterly depressed me:

China: "...will no longer accept files for the mainstream China program..."

Korea: "This program is only available to Ontario residents. This program now full for 2009. The Call Back is full for 2010."

Vietnam: "Please Note: Due to the backlog of files currently in this program...[we] will, regrettably, be unable to accept any new applications for this program until further notice."

Thailand: "Please Note: This program is now full for 2008, 2009 and 2010."

I'm discouraged. I feel beaten. Right now, it feels like we're going to be old and grey before we have our family. Before this, I couldn't imagine anything worse than the 2ww but now, there is something called the 2yw.

And here I thought things couldn't get worse...

Superbowl and IF

2009-01-19T19:57:00.014-05:00

Why is it that I always feel guilty for saying "no" to events that are guaranteed to make me miserable, even when my DH and I already have plans? Let me clarify...when I say "DH and I already have plans", I really mean that just him and I have plans alone, together. I feel guilty for choosing to spend time with alone with my DH over some other event and some invitations often feel like a summons.

Take for example, my nephew's upcoming birthday party, which just so happens to be on Superbowl Sunday. A little background here - my sister and her family live in a city about 5 hours drive away from us. My nephew is turning 3 and for the past two birthdays, we have always made the trek to their house. Keep in mind that we are also talking about wintertime in Canada and where I live, that should conjure up visions of lots of snow, slippery driving conditions and frigid temperatures. Also, last year at this time, we had just found out that we got a BFP with IVF #3 but our exhilaration was short lived because as soon as we got back, Monday's b/w revealed that there was a problem because my betas did not double over the weekend as they should have while we were at my sister's. I'll always wonder if I had done something wrong that weekend - ran around too much with my nephew stooped over? Sat still in the car for too long without moving around? Anyway, his birthday reminds me of one of the hardest times of my life b/c of the m/c that happened later but I digress...

My sister calls me this past weekend and extends a rather lukewarm invitation to his party - she phrased it as "I don't know if you're interested" (come on - he's my nephew!) and also advises us that they don't have any beds for us to sleep on. This birthday party is also a Gymboree party (i.e. kids in a gym like setting with toys) and all of her friends that I know and have met at various times over the years and their little ones are going to be there.

Mentally, I recoil at the thought of spending 2 hours, locked in a gymnasium type of structure with screaming children while having to field questions from her friends, all of whom are bouncing newborns on their hips, regarding why my DH and I do not have any kids of our own yet. As soon as she issued the invitation, lukewarm as it was, I felt obligated to go, like I would be shirking my Auntly duty if I said no. I knew that I wanted to spend some time with my nephew and celebrate his birthday but not under such miserable circumstances.

Now here's the kicker (no football pun intended) - my DH and I had been planning since before Christmas to have a BBQ on Superbowl Sunday. We enjoy watching the big game together and remember, BBQing in mid February where I live is nothing short of miraculous. I did not put two and two together when my sister called and failed to realize that my nephew's birthday party was that same Sunday. What frustrates me as well is that we are also talking about something a mere 2 weeks away which does not give us much time to get things organized. We were beginning to think that there may be no birthday party at all this year since we hadn't heard anything about it. In addition, let's just say that we don't just "drop in" on my sister...formal invitations need to be received before you even consider going for a visit as there have been situations in the past where I have been turned away.

I stressed about having to call my sister back and explain that we already had plans because she, as a fertile, does not understand how anything could be more important than her son's birthday party. When I finally did call, I was irritated when she insinuated that I should have known to keep that weekend open since my nephew's birthday is in early February. I was beginning to think no invitation = no party = no trip. I also used to keep weekends open for my SIL around the birthdays of her two kids but then we would keep so many weekends open just in case and then the party would end up being sometime much later and in the meantime, we would not make plans to do anything, just in case. Yeah, we stopped doing that after a few years.

I felt guilty for already having plans with my DH, which I know is absolutely ridiculous. I am frustrated with myself that I did not have the courage to tell her about our conflicting plans, almost as if my DH and I as a childless couple do not merit any consideration. Why do I feel that the invitations of people with children immediately supercede any plans that people without children may have? If we don't go, why is there such a perception that since it is "just the two of us" so we should always readily give up our own plans in favour of events for others?

In the end, what I ended up doing was calling her back and I told her that we already had plans for Sunday dinner (true) and would not be able to make the Gymboree party. We thought about it and it's not as if we would 1) enjoy the Gymboree party; or 2) my nephew would even notice that we were or were not there; or 3) play with my nephew at the Gymboree party since he'll be busy running around with kids his own age. I did tell my sister that we would still come up that weekend and celebrate the night before in combination with the Chinese New Year celebration that my parents wanted to have. I only omitted the fact that our Sunday dinner plans involved only the two of us. Does this make us the most selfish people on earth?

Bad Dreams of the IF Kind

2009-01-16T11:36:00.007-05:00

I had one of those awful dreams about being IF last night. I hate having those because at least in my dreams, it is the world of make believe and anything and everything can happen. When IF invades my sleeping world, it is horrible because I usually wake up upset and sad with a huge ache in my chest. I guess when something affects you so much you can't help but dream about it. I should be grateful I don't dream IF dreams every night because then I would really be dealing with this 24/7.

In my dream last night, I was back at school and someone I know that also suffered from IF came to visit. IRL, this person and I had been what I call a "Friend in IF," meaning that we knew of each other's problems and supported each other, right up until she got pregnant and then I never heard from her again. Anyway, in my dream, she was visiting my school and had brought her newly born infant daughter with her. I wanted to find her so I could offer my congratulations and see her new daughter but I just couldn't seem to locate her. I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think I was equating finding her with baby with finding myself with baby. That would explain why I felt so upset when I woke up with a huge ache in my chest.

The part of my dream that stayed with me most was when I was searching for her and everyone else seemed to know where she was. It was like a secret that everyone else knew that I was not privy to. I felt left out, totally excluded from the group of those who knew where she was and how to find her. I felt that my sense of belonging had been taken away from me. All of my insecurities came flooding back, just like I was back in high school and trying to fit in all over again, except this time I'm older and babies are involved. It's still the same desire, the desire to belong.

Will I ever feel like I belong again in any part of life? I am in such limbo right now with no clear direction. With everything that happens, I find myself further and further away from being done. I feel paralyzed, unable to make even the simplest decision about what comes next. I realized today that since we have been delayed due to the cancelled cycle, I now won't be done this CGH cycle + FET until about June of this year. Man oh man...I was supposed to be done in March 2009 at the latest yet here I am, still waiting, still not belonging anywhere.

I have no living children so I don't belong with all of the Mommies I see out and about all the time during the day. I'm not working so I don't belong with the professional working women out there that I know. I don't belong with the students because I can't decide whether I should apply this semester, next semester or even next year for Culinary school. I just don't belong anywhere...

...except that I have all of you. I know that none of us want to belong to this group we find ourselves in so reluctantly but I guess I find a great sense of safety here. Everyone's story is different, yet we're all the same. If nothing else, we all belong together as we stumble along this road. I'm not a freakish, baby crazy, hormonal female. I am simply a woman, searching for the rest of my family and there are many like me who struggle to find the same thing. Like many things in life, IF does not descriminate and I often wonder when I'm reading all of your blogs why it strikes people who are so warm, loving, giving, beautiful, generous and kind of spirit. And that my friends, isn't so bad a group to belong to now is it?

How Much Did That Cost??

2009-01-13T12:07:00.008-05:00

I'm an Accountant...well, at least for now, that is the hat that I am wearing. I've really made a point last year of keeping track of our medical expenses because I knew that there would be a lot of receipts and come tax time, the summarization would be a horrendous task to complete. Yes, even us accountants can find sorting through a large pile of receipts a little daunting, especially when they're old and not organized.

I knew that we spent a lot of money on treatment and medication in 2008 but the sum total was staggering, even to me. I told my DH the morning after I had completed my initial summary and he almost literally fell out of bed. If you had told me that we would have spent so much on treatment 6 years ago when we started all of this, I never would have believed you. Not in a million years.

Curious how much we've spent? Our total medical expenses, all IF related for 2008 was (drum roll please)....

$64,185.80

Yep, that total was the amount we spent from January 1st to December 31, 2008. One year.

We are not rich but we are comfortable, don't live an extravagant lifestyle and we've had the benefit of 2 incomes up until 2007 when I quit my job to focus on treatment full time. We had savings, which have since been completely depleted. Our final act of desperation was to draw against the equity in our home to fund one last treatment in the US. Granted, we haven't completed the US cycle yet so there is a huge chunk of money in the total above for an IVF cycle we will do in early 2009. But wow...$64K in ONE YEAR?

I know that we are extremely fortunate to have the funds to pay for treatment but this is it...there will be no more treatment after this one because we are, quite simply, out of money. I will not spend $64K again in 2009 chasing this dream. I can't keep asking my DH to continue to support me while I sit at home with no children, knowing that I can help our family's finances if I returned to work.

For those of you who like details, the total above breaks down as follows:

$800 - Counselling
$6,580 - medication not covered by health plans
$14,445 - Canadian IVF fees
$41,904 - US IVF fees (including travel expenses)
$457 - Acupuncture fees

Since I am Canadian, fees for doctors' visits, b/w and u/s are covered by provincial health care plans and my DH's private health insurance had some IVF drug coverage that we used up at the beginning of 2008. This is what is over and above that. Also, we have spent so much $$ on treatment, all of it charged to our credit card with reward points for travel, that we have enough to fly to CCRM for free every time we need to go. Can you imagine how high the total would have been if I had to include these things in addition to the above?!

I don't mean this blog to come across as a whine because I am truly grateful that we have been able to do as much treatment as we have done. My realization from this exercise is that we have gone further than we ever thought we would have gone down this road and spent more money than we could have ever imagined. I laugh when I remember how it was when we started - I wanted to do this all naturally, didn't want to take any drugs, was a complete ninny about needles, blushed during doctors' examinations, moaned about the inconvenience of having to get up early to go for b/w and u/s...I was so naive. I realize how much this experience has made me grow up. What an expensive lesson this has been.

Do I regret the money spent? BFP says no I won't. BFN says I will. And that is the hard part - not knowing which side of the equation you're going to end up on. However, I know that I am grateful to have had the chance at all because I know that there are many out there that want the same thing that I do but can't afford treatment.

So what will $64K buy you? A few more shots, another kick at the bucket and the opportunity to chase the dream, one more time. I would be really sad if all the money we had couldn't give us this chance.

Eating & Lifestyle Habits - Take 2

2009-01-11T19:53:00.009-05:00

I changed my blog template...wish that some things in life were as easy to change as just choosing another option. I thought that with the new year and new beginnings it would be nice to have a new "look". Like it?

A few posts ago, I started blathering on about how stringently I was going to be adhering to my new and revised eating and lifestyle habits. Oh how sanctimonious I sounded! I completely gave up trying in December and baked my heart out and sampled everything along the way. Butter - check! Flour - check! White, granulated, processed sugar - check! Whipping cream - check! All of it...yummy...but now it's January and time to get back on track towards cycling again. So far, I don't think I've had one single day where I've been successful in eating no dairy, no gluten & no sugar. I've been much better at reducing it in my diet but I still slip up and eat it.

Today for example, I was eating lunch out and ordered a vegetarian stir-fry on rice. Sounds pretty safe right? Well, as soon as I saw the vegetables, guaranteed there was soya sauce in it which contains wheat (gluten - check!). I tasted the sauce over the vegetables and it tasted sweet so guess what - sugar...check! Finally, I thought the rice would have been safe but when I put that in my mouth, I tasted the unmistakenable richness that only butter can add...dairy - check! So that makes me zero for 3. I guess I'll have to try again tomorrow to be better.

It's so hard to give all of that stuff up, especially if you are eating out because you can't control what it is that you're eating. There are so many things that I can make at home that are sugar/dairy/gluten free that are typically made with any or all three of those ingredients listed when out in a restaurant that sometimes I'm fooled into thinking that they're safe to eat anywhere. Not so.

Rather than give up when I slip up, I'm going to try very hard to get back on the wagon right away. You see, in the past when I've slipped up and ate something I wasn't supposed to eat, I would then use it as an excuse to binge eat whatever it was that I wasn't supposed to be eating for the rest of the day. I had every intention of starting again "tomorrow" but I would get really lax with the rest of that day since it had already been screwed up. Oh glorious day when I slipped up in the morning! This time around the sugar/gluten/dairy-free tree, I'm not going to give up so easily. If I slip up, that is just at that point in time and I have decided to continue to try for the rest of the day. Granted, this is a small change but one that will make it easier to keep on this dietary pathway.

So for dinner, I'm going to try very hard not to eat anything gluten/sugar/dairy related and keep going from this point. I have to start schooling my brain into monitoring for these things again. But I can't give up so easily...my time to prepare is getting short and I need to make the most of what time I have left. I'm 99% sure I'm going to apply for a Baking & Pastry Arts program that starts this fall and I can pretty much guarantee you that I will be the first Pastry chef that doesn't eat gluten, dairy & sugar! I hope they don't laugh me out of the class!!

P.S. The funny ache in my side is now gone so I hope that means that any related cysts have also disappeared. It must have finally listened to my "cyst be gone" chant!

Here's the Scoop

2009-01-08T14:42:00.004-05:00

The blood PT came back negative. I also saw my acupuncturist yesterday and she believes that it is a cyst because my kidney pulses (the kidney system in Chinese medicine govern reproduction) were off. She said that if it was appendicitis, she would have expected my digestive pulses to be off and they were fine. Looks like there is one huge cyst there as it is still bothering me.

Hopefully, the acupucture I had done yesterday and the other things she recommended I do to help my body resolve this cyst (dandelion tea and castor oil packs on top of the tender site plus heat) will get rid of this ASAP. I scheduled an u/s to check and see what was going on and that is booked for Jan 21st right now. Hopefully it will be gone by then.