Fear Number 1

Alright, first ultrasound since baseline. I was so nervous going in. I just knew I didnt have that many just like last time. First ovary, a 10 which is awesome and then about 6 or 7 more which were all decent size based on CD I am on. other ovary, about the same thing about 6 or 7. So at this moment we have about a dozen (maybe baker dozen) of eggs that are growing well. So, fear number one has been put to rest.....

Now fear number two comes up and its that when they do retreival I will have empty follicles like last time and end up with three......just praying this will not happen.

Praying my mommyhood days are coming soon......

Ready! Set! Go......!

Baseline completed! Bloodwork completed! First day of shots have come and gone. So, now we begin. Everything looked good on our baseline check up last week and we started I took Femera on Sat along with my daily dose of HCG and Follistem. I remember all the medicine from last time but the dose is so much more. What put it in perspective, I received the follistem cartridge of 2 (900 IU) and 2 (600 IU) and I put it in the fridge next two the left over from last cycle which was a 300 IU cartridge, we only bought 2 cartridges that cycle and I didnt even use all of them. Now I am donig 300 IU a day plus 60IU of HCG a day. After three days of shot my belly is so black and blue. I have at least 10 more days of shots to go, where am I going to put them all. Positive note, its nice outside so I am wearing dresses and dont have to deal with the rubbing of pants or jeans. Plus, dont know if my jeans would button because of the swollen ovaries I have that make me feel 3 months pregnant. The things we will go through to get pregnant, almost forgetting about the 9 months of torture I am beggin for.

So, this IVF we have kept quiet. The last IVF we told our family every step of the way and called them the day we got the results. Of course, my momma couldnt get her excited mount quiet and told almost everyone in the town she lives in. We started getting congrats cards in the mail after I remember distingly telling mom, keep this quite until we are comfortable to tell everyone (3 months). So, we last the baby right at 3 months and when I went to IL to visit my mom, everyone was telling me congrats still. I felt so bad telling them we lost it plus I just really didnt want to talk about it right now. We love our families, we just wont to go through this together and we will include them soon enough. My mom is going to be so mad when she finds out but it is actually better for her emotionally becuase she would call me everyday, "how you feeling" "what you doing" "you been eatin right" ....blah blah blah. I know it comes from a loving plate but when you trying to be stress free it doesnt help.

We go on Wed for our first U/S, so nervous. I know we will have an idea at that point how many follicles we are working with. We are so nervous because I usually produce low and we only got 3 eggs last time to work with. I am nervous after everything we will be back in the same spot. So, everyone please keep us in your prayers!

change again.......

Okay, so I will make this long story short. The "DR of multiples" with the high sucess rate (our new RE) just didnt feel right. We went before vacation to what was suppose to be our IVF consultation. We met with nurse to go over medication and how to give myself a shot (like I dont already know that after 3 years of feritlity treatments) and go over the calendar, we then met with Dr who completed a vaginal ultrasound and did a Saline (trial) transfer, and then we went to pay our co-pay of $50.00, well or we thought. They slapped a $500 bill on us and we still dont know for what. I thought, this must be part of the $8,500 for the IVF, sat down with the financial nurse who advised it was not and it would cost us around $13,000 for the IVF including the meds and they dont have a payment plan or financing. The $13,000 would be due at start date of March 15th. So, we go home and start checking our accounts to see where we wanted to pull this amount from because its 2 weeks away......

Then it hit me. I dont like these people, the staff is rude, the Dr doesnt ask you questions he just tells you and schedules. Then they are making us pay $500 and for what, never explained the cost. Is this who we trust with an entire savings account to do what is right for us, what is best for us!

I dont think so. The reason we didnt go with our RE from prior IVF was because we felt robbed. We loved them and they loved us. It is the type of office where the nurses dont have to look at your chart to know your name or what is going on. (Insert about other Dr, they have to take our picture and put on our file, weird) After discussion, we thought we should at least hear him out as to why he thought we only had 1 quality egg out of an entire IVF cycle....we made appointment and met with him the Friday we left for vacation. He made us understand everything....we did what is called a mini stim IVF. The goal is not to provide eggs and is less medicine which in return is less money. He stated if we chose to go on with him for a second one, he would do a traditional which the goal is to produce as many eggs in a healthy way. YEAHHHH!!!!!! And by the way, they have a payment plan if we wanted to utilize and cheaper.



SOOOO.....change again is the RE. We are back with Dr Lipari and we are so happy and comfortable about that. We got the calendar in the mail yesterday. We have our baseline ultrasound Tuesday and then start with the injections. He was not kidding about last IVF being less meds. Just to sum it up there are 11 catagories on the chart for meds and I have something in every colum. I am going to be one toxic woman.

Keep us in your prayers as we go through this, again! : )

Job Interview

Well, had job interview on Friday which will help us decide how soon we can start back our fertility treatments. Due to the position I am in now, it is really hard to get personal time and sometimes we work 60 year weeks, like now, which makes it hard to plan a cycle because we know that never goes as planned. So, hopefully I will get this job and have a normal 40 hour week schedule and be a less stressful environement. This would allow us to start planning our cycle now instead of waiting till the beginning of the year when we are slow.

As for who to start it with, that is a different subject. Our last RE was awesome. We loved him and his staff. However, I felt as if he is very conservative and it cost to much money to be that way. We went into egg retrival with 7 follicles, only retreived 3 eggs and only 2 took. Which means we had none to freeze for a frozen cycle. I just feel like we didnt get all we could out of the cycle. I am so happy he got us pregnant the first time but I just want to explore my options.

There is another RE in town who has a very high sucess rate and is the same price as our prior RE. A friend of mine used him and loved him. She got pregnant the first transfer with twins. He is known as the Dr of multiples which could be a good and bad thing. Means he is aggressive but do I want to be too agressive.

When we get a day, we are going to make an apt with his office and see if he is someone we would be comfortable using. I am so ready though. I feel more eager and eager everyday but also nervous to start this process again.

So the check list begins:

1) get more flexiable job
2) get physcially ready
3) get emotionaly ready
4) get financially ready
5) pray, pray, pray......

GTL: Gym, Tan, Laundry

Seriously, doesnt it make you mad. Why is it not WGTL...where is the W for work? They make $60,000 an episode and if you dont know who they is, its Jersey Shore. GTL stands for gym, tan, and laundry. I happen to watch the show before going to work this morning and while I am at work I started thinking about it. A guy that people know for his abs and ridiculous nickname, "the situation" gets 6 figures for his autobiography. This is what this world has come too. We are more interested in watching people that make up sayings for things that already have words and have crazy nicknames like J WOWWW and Snoookie then about politics and education. Then we all wonder why are kids dont know who the Vice President is or what the senate is. We also have kids starving and people needing help but someone is paying these kids millions of dollars for appearances. Does anyone else not see the problem?

Well, back to reality. Jason and I have started thinking about trying again. I think enough time has passed since loosing baby nugget and we are just ready to try again. Since working out I have had 2 periods on my own. Not regular but hey, its something. I use to have nothing. I go to my OBGYN next week to see if she will put me back on Clomid. I figure we will start small and go big again. Maybe with the weight loss, I may not need to go and have another IVF. Lord willing, maybe my body will treat me better then last time. I bought a ovulation watch because I heard with PCOS they are the best bet. We will see....everyone please keep Jason and I in your prayers. We are waiting on God to tell us what he wants to do and this just seems right for some reason.

Humpday....

Just a quick note, sitting at work. Haven't heard anything on the job yet. It would be so awesome to know something soon. We have decided to go to IL in May, May 12-17th to be exact. My friend Jennifer is getting married that weekend so not only do we get to spend time with our family we also get to go to her special event. I hope to buy the plane tickets today. If anyone is wanting to go somewhere, Airtran has one way tickets like $50 each way. Even though the plane ride back went up for us its still a ticket for under $200. Not too bad considering....

Oh and speaking of Weddings. I am so excited and ready for September. Just found out my best friend Lindsay and her new husband, when she gets here, will be making us a stop on their road trip honeymoon. How exciting?!!!! Cant wait....

And for those wondering about fertility treatments, I took the 10 Femera pills on Monday. We go tomorrow for an ultrasound to see if they have started any follicle growth. I believe this appointment they decide when I start my injections which speaking of injections I am a little nervous. I had a meeting with the RN on Monday and she explained all the risk. I was thinking she was just going to go over the multiple pregnancy risk but no she had to talk about the risk of the medicine all together. She said, no exercise light walking only. I guess my ovaries will way more then normal and by doing any jumping, running, etc....I could twist my ovaries which is emergency surgery. Then she explained the possibility of too much fluid in my abdomen which would make me have to also have an emergency IV to drain the fluid and the then the other one was hyperstimilating my ovaries which would mean the cycle would be cancelled and hope none of the cyst pop. So, when I left her office I was scared out of my mind. After doing a little research I believe she was just telling me worst case scenario and what to look for but she didn't phrase it that way and had me all worked up..lol.

Well, hope everyone is having a great humpday.

Cute pics of our baby....

While Jason and I were visiting my Grandma this weekend my aunt took some photos of Louie. As we were packing him up to go Grandma saw his booties. I got him dressed up for the winter and she got the biggest kick out of it. I had to post some of the pictures....hope you enjoy :)