Day 2 of stims

I received a link to this article in my email today.  Thought I would post it here.
How to Stay Positive in the Face of Uncertainty and Fear
I found it particularly helpful especially now that I've started stims and fears are becoming more apparent.

Day 2 of stims has gone well.  Had acupuncture today too and that was very nice.  Not much else to report.  All in all a pretty boring day!

Day 1 of stims is here!

Just got off the phone with the nurse and I am to start injections tonight! I have a lower dose than last time. I'll be doing 225 units per day (split up b/n morning and evening) instead of 300 and I'm getting monitored on Saturday morning while hubby is submitting his sample. Ordinarily they start monitoring of day 6 of stims which would be next Monday but since I got out of control early on last time they wanna keep an eye on me I guess. Once they see how I'm doing they'll adjust dosages and tell me when to start taking low-dose HCG. I guess that med helps with egg maturation. That is what lutenizing hormone (LH) does and currently I am producing enough on my own. That may change by Saturday though. So they'll look at my bloodwork to see if I need to start on the HCG.

Also asked them about my heavy spotting and she said that is to be expected and is not a big deal. So I think I have an official period right now that started yesterday and that is normal too. Just weird, but whatever!

Still a 30% chance of snow in Saturday but Tom Skilling says that the snow won't start until Saturday afternoon so we should be in the clear!

Baseline Appointment

Had my baseline appointment today!  It went well.  Had 20 antral follicles and lining was about 4.  Happy with those numbers - wish AFC was over 22 (last time it was 22) but 20 is still really good.  Nurse will call me tomorrow with estrogen levels and will tell me what to inject tomorrow night.  Hoping everything will check out and it will be 'all systems go'. 

However, something annoying - the nurse told me today that my hubby 'really should get a semen analysis done at our lab' and he needs to have it done by Saturday so the lab has enough time to analyze it.  Well, we can't just drive down the street and drop it off!  So after some mild griping and complaining I made an appointment at 8am on Saturday to drop off his sample.  That is the latest time that they have.  GRRR!!  So yes, that means we have to leave Indy at 5am! Thank God for gaining an hour on the way up though!  It's currently a 30% chance of snow on Saturday morning in Chicago so hopefully weather will be okay and we don't have issues.  We are going to just drive up, drop off, then drive home.  Have too much to do to stick around.  Plus if we stayed, we'd have to board the dog and would rather not do that b/c chances are she'll be boarded for the next 2 weekends as well. 

Other than that, everything is going well.  My face is clearing up, only to undoubtedly resume acne-city once stims and especially progesterone starts.  I've got an acupuncturist lined up in Chicago who will actually come to the clinic for a pre and post-transfer session so I don't have to go anywhere!  Excited for that:)  For now, just continuing with my meditations, positive visualization, and keeping things low-stress.

Getting ready!

Last weekend before IVF starts and I'm almost ready. Got the house clean, paid bills, did taxes, signed all our consent forms (which rivals the paperwork required for a mortgage). Still need to double check my inventory to make sure I have all my meds. Pretty sure I have everything though. First weekend in awhile that I did not workout. Feel kinda lazy but docs orders after polyp surgery to not do strenuous activity for a couple days. So not letting it get to me. I am going to be on a strenuous workout hiatus until I either get a negative beta or give birth. I'll continue walking when possible and will start stretching/light yoga but heavy lifting, HIIT workouts, etc are no-nos for awhile. Don't want to push too hard and end up with 'ovarian torsion'!

So things to do tomorrow: get acupuncture appointments lined up & call RE to ask about my period-like bleeding. Hopefully it's not a big deal. Need to figure out what to do next couple weekends to keep my mind & body occupied. Don't want to just sit on the couch driving myself crazy with goggling stuff. I've gone thru my 'hobby room' and found a bunch of stuff to hang up so maybe I'll do that and paint the guest room or something. That would be a good project! Too bad it isn't nice out or I could do some gardening too! I've started regular meditation too so that should be a stress reliever.

Period on BCP??

One more day of birth control, thank God!!! I am such a biaaatch and my face is terrible! Seems like every hour a new zit pops up. Ugh. Its gettin really old! What's weird though is I think my period may have started. Why is it starting if I'm still on the pill? And I had my last period 2 weeks ago, plus a surgery to remove a polyp. How is there anything to shed yet? Oh well. I'll just deal with it and give RE a call on Monday.

Polyp removal went well last week. They said they got everything so my uterus is ready to be home to a growing little bean for 9 months:). Had some pretty heavy bleeding the day of the surgery but the next day I was back to normal. Didn't really have any pain either.

So now I just wait until my baseline appt on Tuesday. The real fun will begin Wednesday. Seems like it is happening so fast this time. The lupron protocol eased me in to everything - but it was long... agonizingly long. Feel like I need to give myself a couple practice shots. I bet I'm rusty!

Day 4 of BCP & Dealing With Fears

I am on day 4 of birth control pills and so far so good.  10 more days to go!  I don't have any nausea or anything physically debilitating.  But I am definitely more bitchy than usual and am very moody and hormonal.  To be expected I guess - hubby hasn't been enjoying it though;P  I just don't remember being like this when I was on the pill years ago - seemed to be more of a mood stabilizer.  I also stepped on the scale yesterday and saw that I gained 1.5 lbs just within the last couple days.  And so it begins.  I have been working out and eating the same amount that I usually do so there is no explanation other than side effects from the pill.  I'll just deal with it I guess. I'd rather not put on too much weight until stims start.   I can workout up to the end of the month when I start stimming, so hopefully I can keep the weight gain from the pill in check.  I gained about 10 lbs during my last IVF cycle (both while I was down-regulating with Lupron and while I was stimming) and it would be nice to gain only about half of that this time.  But as a side note, the weight I put on wasn't really "real" weight.  Granted, I was eating like crap and not exercising but I'm pretty sure that it was mostly bloating and water weight because it was fairly easy to loose once I was off the meds.  Despite that though, weight is weight whether it's water weight or not and it was beginning to be a problem finding clothes to wear to work without looking like I was popping out of them!  I may have to wear lounge pants to work instead of regular pants if it gets worse than last time.  I would go out and buy some preggo pants (LOL!) but that just seems too premature and I would jinx myself!  So I'll just stick with the lounge pants as my backup for now.  Or I could go through my parents attic and find some of my old clothes from the early 90s.  Leggings and big sweaters seem to be making a comeback.  Perfect attire for bloated women!

I am seeing my therapist tonight.  My hubby and I went to see her around the beginning of December when I was really struggling with our first negative cycle.  We really liked her, gave us some good suggestions for dealing with the grief, but she was expensive.  So we decided to try a therapist who was in network.  We found just 1 therapist who dealt with infertility issues and we met with her around mid-December.  Unfortunately she was pretty unhelpful.  Especially glaring was that she kept bringing up her personal struggles with infertility as well.  I'm not too familiar with how therapy sessions are supposed to go, but I'm pretty sure that issues the therapist has are not appropriate to discuss with the patient!  I think she was just trying to sympathize with me and illustrate to my hubby that it was normal to feel what I was feeling, but it didn't come off that way to me at least.  My hubby was pretty good at directing the conversation when it got to be too focused on the therapist's issues - but if it had just been myself, I'm not sure I wouldn't have stepped in to the counseling role.  Anyway, so today I am going back to the original therapist - just myself - and want to discuss some things.  I feel like I have dealt with the negative cycle, have accepted it, have gotten closure, and am ready to move on.  I was tempted to cancel my appointment and declare myself healed, but I'm not so sure.  I don't want negativity to be a part of this next cycle and I can see it becoming a problem if it rears it's ugly head.  Sure there are things we are doing differently this time - biggest one being the switch in REs along with some other smaller changes like taking up regular meditation and blogging about my thoughts - but still, want to keep the paranoia at bay.  I don't think she will spoon-feed me any answers but just talking about my fears with a professional I think will help me find solutions or ways to cope. 

Now that we are standing on the threshold of another IVF cycle, there are so many fears that are running through my head that I wasn't thinking about back in October when we were about to begin our first cycle.  We were blindly optimistic - never considering the possibility of the cycle failing, not having embryos to freeze, producing bad quality eggs, etc.  Similar to the initial infertility diagnosis, I had delusions of grandeur and never thought that anything like that would happen to us.  Negative cycles happen to other people.  Not us!  My eggs are superstars and they can survive anything.  I really don't think there was anything wrong with our naivety and I think that's what our mindset had to be to proceed with the cycle but now that we know how it feels when an IVF cycle goes wrong, it's scary to think about it happening again.  Especially now that the stakes are higher and we don't really have a 'plan B'.  This cycle may be the determining factor on whether or not I have bad eggs.  The FSH and AMH tests that were done indicate otherwise, but the only definitive test for egg quality is IVF.  If I produce bad eggs again, that may force us down a road that could include donor eggs, embryo adoption, or conventional adoption - all super expensive, not covered under insurance, and have a whole host of new legal, ethical, & moral issues that we would have to work through.  But even if I produce better quality eggs, there are countless other things that could go wrong.  After this cycle we will have spent our yearly max for infertility from our insurance.  I don't know if we'd want to shell out $9000 of our own money to try a 3rd time.  We could wait until 2014 when insurance rolls over again, but that's another long year of waiting.  UGH!  I feel my blood pressure rising and I am getting WAY too ahead of myself, going places that I just don't need to go yet!  So, that's why I'm going to the therapist today to try to shut my head up.  I try to take my own advice, put it all in God's hands and let go.  But it is just so damn HARD to do in reality...especially when you are incredibly hormonal!

I'm on the schedule!

Finally have some news to post!  My period came yesterday (with a vengance, I might add - don't remember a more painful period) so I called my fertility clinic today to let them know.  They have me on the schedule for egg retrieval sometime around February 10th and transfer sometime around the 15th.  My monitoring will begin January 30th (I think this will be my baseline appointment).  I start birth control pills today and continue those until the 27th to shut my ovaries down.  Meanwhile, my RE determined that it's probably best to take out my polyp.  Luckily it won't screw up dates or anything with our IVF cycle as long as we get it taken care of next week.  So I'm going up to Chicago next Wednesday for surgery.  Sorta nervous about how that will go but I trust my doctor so I'll put it all in his hands.  I'll be doped up too so that will take the edge off;)  Can't imagine going thru that surgery without some sort of sedation especially considering how painful just the hysteroscopy was for me! 

So for now I am to just take birth control.  Hopefully the side effects won't be too bad.  I've heard it can be brutal for some women - but when I was on it years ago it never seemed to effect me, so hoping that it is still the same way now.  At the end of the week hopefully I'll have more details (injection calendar and such) and my FMLA papers to give to my work so I don't have to use vacation or sick time for egg retrieval and embryo transfer. 

Also asked my old fertility clinic if they could do my out-of-town monitoring and they said yes, all they need is an order from my current clinic.  So that will be a lot more convenient and I am confident that they know what they are doing from that end.  It'll be slightly awkward going back there and running into my nurse (who I loved) and possibly having to have the conversation where I tell her that we switched REs.  But it's nothing personal - just need to put our money where it has the best chance to bless us with a baby!  Everything fell together so easily with this new clinic (besides for the financial issues of having to pay upfront), so feel like God is telling us that this is where we are supposed to be.  But still, feel sorta bad.  Oh well.  I'll get over it!

Hysteroscopy

I had my hysteroscopy yesterday.  Holy cow, was that really painful!  I had 600 mg of advil prior to my appointment like my nurse suggested, but that didn't seem to help.  The cramps were horrendous!!  They did find a polyp though so I guess it was worth the pain and effort.  I will find out next week if the RE wants to remove it.  They said it was a "flat polyp" so it wasn't that big of a deal.  We'll see though.  Also got my AMH level back.  It was 1.24 so that was good (anything above 1 is good).  But I do have a vitamin D deficiency so I have to take a vitamin D supplement.  You'd think with all the vitamins I'm taking, that I should have plenty of everything - guess not though.  Even though vitamin D is included with the calcium that I take, I'm still deficient.  I'm reading though that sometimes people on steroids can become vitamin D deficient.  I am still taking Prednisone, so maybe that's why.  Anyway, they want me to bring my levels up because there is evidence that a vitamin D deficiency may cause problems with implantation.  Whatever they say, I'll do it!!

Also had to discuss financial logistics at my visit yesterday.  That part was very unpleasant.  Basically found out that we have to pay for everything up front and we have to take care of submitting claims with our insurance later.  I do NOT like this.  This was not how our former clinic operated, so I was not expecting this news.  At first I said that we were going to back out and go back to our old clinic.  But after thinking about it a bit and discussing it with my hubby we decided to stay where we are.  We already have all our drugs specific to this RE, their success rates are so much better than the clinic that we were at, and they have already caught things that my old clinic didn't bring up at all.  They are going to get the pre-authorizations from my insurance company tomorrow so we should have that in writing before we have to fork over money.  That will lessen any pain later if the insurance company claims that they will not cover something.  We will put it all on a rewards credit card, will pay that off in full with a 0% credit card, and then will pay that bill with our HSA money as it becomes available to us.  Sounds confusing, but it won't be that bad.  We have the cash to front it but just want to get whatever we can to be tax-free.

So the next steps are for them to call me regarding my polyp and I will call them when I get my period.  Then they'll plan everything out and I'll go in for my baseline appointment and we'll go from there.  But in a nutshell, my visit to my RE went well!

Good-bye 2012!

Happy New Year!  Looking back on 2012, it was a pretty good year despite the heartache of our first IVF not being a success.  It was really not that bad of an experience though.  I learned a lot about myself, my body, and my husband and I are stronger now because of it so I am grateful for that.  There were plenty of positive things that happened unrelated to TTC efforts too.  Training for and completing 2 sprint triathlons this past summer was definitely a highlight for me.  Accomplishing that was like a metaphor for how I have gotten through the hardships in my life.  If I could cross the finish line twice and live to talk about it, I can overcome anything that God may send my way!  If I grit my teeth and push through the pain, I'll emerge on the other side a stronger person. 

Often I wonder, like a lot of couples struggling with infertility, why us?  Early in our infertility journey and when we got our BFN from our last IVF cycle it seemed as though God was punishing us for some reason - if only we were nicer people, or maybe we did something to make Him mad at us - then we wouldn't have to suffer so much.  But now I realize that these hardships have to happen to some people and there is no reason for it.  God isn't "picking on us" and He does not ever give us anything that we cannot handle.  He knows that we are strong enough to handle infertility and has given us countless tools and blessings that we can use to overcome and get through it.  As long as we see these blessings and thank God for them, we will persevere. 

I have also found that God has given us qualities and talents that are meant to be given away to others.  Whether it is supporting my new friends on the online boards that I have found, or helping children learn to read, I receive as much - if not more - than I give away.  This year my company adopted a family for Christmas.  Since we have no children of our own yet, I decided to volunteer to shop for a little girl in that family.  It was a lot of fun shopping for that girl and delivering the gifts to the mother was heartwarming.  Helping that family have a wonderful Christmas made me see that material possessions really don't matter that much.  The phrase in the St Francis Prayer that "It is in giving that we receive" really hit home.

As far as new years resolutions, I don't have many.  Just want to continue on in the same mindset that I have been in.  Staying healthy in both mind and body is the priority for me right now.  Continuing with working out for now to pass the time.  My tummy definitely got flabby from the inactivity last fall.  I know I won't get rid of all of the flub, but I'm making progress at least.  The more I loose now, the less I'll have to loose later when I'm hopefully working off the baby fat next November! 

I have my hysteroscopy set for Thursday morning.  Hopefully they'll tell me more info regarding dates and such and what my AMH level is.  I am anticipating my next period to arrive on the 12th or 13th so that may mean that I'll be due for starting stims in possibly 2-3 weeks or so.  This RE likes to schedule cycles more than my previous RE though so they may put me on birth control or something so that I start stimming when they want me to.  Fine with me!