Meet our embabies! :)

The transfer went great this morning! We had 2 blasts (that's the stage we wanted them at today) that were grade A, transferred in!! We also had an early stage blast and another that was just about to that point - both of which they're freezing.

The transfer itself went fine, the worst part was that I had to pee! I had to lay flat for an hour afterwards, and ended up having to use the stupid bedpan - 3 times - guess I have a small bladder. :)

They took a picture of our embryos and are mailing it to me. We were able to see it on the viewfinder of the camera though, and I took a picture of it on my cell phone. One is a bit further along than the other and should start to hatch soon. (hatching ... wierd, right?) They are both really good though.

Here is a picture of them in me. (Also a picture taken by my cell phone.) I have the actual u/s pic, but couldn't scan it at home. They are the little white dot in the middle of the red circle.

Now we wait and pray that they snuggle in for a long while! As of this morning I am so hopeful, happy, and excited. I'm not going to lie - I'm in love with those little embryos. I'm sure I'll get back to being pessimistic (I actually prefer it that way, it's less disappointment), but for today I'm actually hopeful. :)

First, whatever medical mystery that has been affecting me the last few days seems to be gone. I've been nauseous, dizzy, had a fever, achy, etc. Either my body was reacting to the stress of everything, I had the flu (great timing, eh?), or maybe some wierd drug reaction. We had my blood tested yesterday to make sure no infection was going on, and that came back fine. I fell sort of worn out today, but otherwise better. (Except that my abdomen has wierd pains when I walk - sort of like it's bruised.)

I'm starting to get nervous about tomorrow! I just hope they're all doing ok still and we'll have 2 to transfer in. They don't look at them today because they don't want to disturb them while they're all nestled in their little incubator. It seems dumb, but I've become highly attached to the little embryos. If this doesn't work it's going to be awful I think. It's just that any other month, we don't know if things have fertilized and just not implanted, or never fertilized or what. It sucked when we weren't pregnant, but I don't know that I really felt like I lost something. Now we have proof that Jason and I made something that is just ours. (I'm sure people w/ babies or PG women have that thought often, but as we've never gotten that far, I'm thinking it now.) If it doesn't work, then it means they didn't make it. I'm not really into figuring out when I think life starts, etc - and I don't think I'd call them our babies yet, but they are our little embryos, and I'm attached to them.

Moving right along

We just got the phone call that we'll be doing a 5 day transfer. It's scheduled for 7:30 on Thursday morning. I've done so much reading on 3 vs 5 day transfers and I can't really find anything that says clear cut which is better. It makes me nervous.

By today we wanted them to be 8 cell embryos. Then they grade each one - 4 means perfect. 1 is bad. Here are mine:

12 cell - grade 3+

8 cell - grade 4

8 cell - grade 3+

7 cell - grade 3

6 cell - grade 3

4 cell - grade 2

I found pictures online of embryo development. There aren't our exact ones, but it should be what they look like. The first picture is what they all looked like on Sunday with the pronuclei. The second picture is of an 8 cell, grade 4.

So all in all, they are doing fairly well I think. Now if only I could feel better. I've been running a slight fever (100.6) off and on the past few days, and I'm sort of dizzy at the moment. Great fun.

OMG!!! We have 6!!!

Kim just called me - they ICSIed all 8 of them, and 6 fertilized!!! 6!!!!!!! There is still so much that can happen to them between now and the transfer, but as of today we have 6!!!!! I'm in shock, total shock. As of the day of the trigger I only had 2 follies that size were mature and my E2 only indicated 2. And somehow we have 6!!!!!!

I'm so excited, but at the same time I feel like crap. My shoulders hurt beyond belief and breathing hurts like a bitch. I'm also bloated/gassy, which is such a bizarre feeling. I can't suck my stomach in!

Anyways, all of that is easy to ignore because WE HAVE 6!!!!!!!!!

Shoulder pain

So the pain is in both shoulders and a lot worse now. I called Kim and apparently it's a referred pain, from fluid that has leaked into my diaphragm. It sucks. I've taken more pain meds and am trying to sleep - we'll see if it works.

What today was like

I asked Jason to write it up from his perspective because mine was a bit scewed. Here is what he came up with.

"As we waited for them to come and get us from our private waiting room and take us into the retrieval room we chatted. Finally, after what seemed like quite a while they came and we slowly walked into the room. When we entered the room there were monitors everywhere it was dim except for the bright dentist type light above the table. As soon as we entered the room I was brushed aside and a flurry of activity ensued. Laura was helped onto the table and suddenly there were nurses everywhere. They moved her around and got her positioned and machines started whirring and beeping. Everything is monitored from oxygen level in the blood to pulse. All of the nurses worked smoothly together and each had their own job to do. As the doctor poked around while watching the ultrasound monitor another nurse was flushing and then attempting to retrieve the egg cumulus from each follicle. On the screen, you can see the follicle swell and then shrink as each part of that process is completed. As they fill up vials with fluid from the follicles they pass them through a small window to another nurse who checks them for eggs. They don't determine the quality of the eggs just the quantity. After retrieving 8 of them they call it a success and quickly withdraw all of the tools. The doctor dabs any blood or fluid away and then Laura is carefully moved onto the bed she was originally laying in and rolled into our private room. After some funny conversations with her (she was given an amnesiac) where she repeats the same things over and over, we are required to stay for at least an hour before we can leave. And that's what happened. "

He pretty much got the whole thing. Some things he left out, or didn't know:

I was changed into a hospital gown when we got there and they even gave me socks to wear (although I of course wore my lucky ones.) Dr. S came in and talked to us, and we signed more consent forms as we waited. Jason had already provided his stuff right off the bat. He said they got new "movies" and I think was quite pleased with himself.

It was pretty scary when we got into the room they did the procedure. There were about 5 in there who moved around really quickly and got me positioned. I was on a table with some holder things that my knees went in, up in the air. They covered me up with a blanket because it was cold. The light above me was creepy. One of those big lights that looks like a bunch of smaller ones all together. You know in movies when someone comes back to life and the first thing they see is a light overhead - that's what it looked look. The anesthesiologist started the meds and I felt them really quickly. There were various times times they had to increase the pain meds. I vaguely was aware of what was going on, but couldn't really focus enough to watch it on the screen. Jason sat next to me and rubbed my wrist/hand the entire time and kept remind me to breathe.

As Dr. S went into the left ovary she hit a blood vessel (can be common) so they had to put pressure on that at the end to stop the bleeding. I still am a little bit.

I cried a little bit at the end and Jason said he did some too. They brought in the bed I was originally in and got me transferred to it, and then got some awesome fishnet panties with a pad in them on me. Awesome fashion statement.

I've been in bed since I got home, trying to stay at a 45 degree angle - there are about 10 pillows surrounding me. :) My lower belly hurts off and on, especially if I cough or sneeze. My shoulders also hurt quite a bit. Something about an air pocket? It hurts to breathe and isn't fun. I've gotten really nauseous once and had the most bizarre experience when I got up. I got really dizzy, sort of clammy, and my head felt hot/cold all at the same time. I got really pale also and shaky. My mom said it's a response to all the different meds. (On top of what I was on there, I've taken some pain meds and an anti-nausea med.)

So now I'm watching Rent in bed. :) And praying so much that some of those eggs fertilize.

8 eggs!

They got 8 eggs! We don't know much about them, and they aren't necessarily all mature, but still pretty exciting. I cried. :) Now we hold our breath and wait until tomorrow to see if any fertilize.

I'll probably write more later but the pain meds are kicking in a bit and I'm sleepy.

5am

So it's 5:30 am on Saturday and I can't sleep - I've been up since 5. I didn't need to wake up until 7:30. I'm just so very nervous, so I thought I'd blog. :)

Yesterday was a nervous day too. I actually threw up (more like dry heaving) from the nerves. I worked until about 2, trying my best to concentrate, and then finally gave up. I stopped by to visit my friend Laura, and then went to JC Pennys to find something to wear today. Yes, I went shopping for an outfit to wear to my egg retrieval. Nothing fancy - just some gym pants and a long sleeve tshirt. I came home and modeled it for Jason asking if it screamed "good eggs." He said yes, so now with my lucky socks I have a lucky outfit. Then I found a fun "good eggs" gift in the mail from Anna, got Gilmore Girls from Anne, talked to Kim, and my mom came over to help me fold some laundry.

The phone call from Kim helped me quite a bit. We went through what all will happen today in detail. I found out that if we get NO mature eggs (which she says won't happen) that we'll get quite a bit of our money back. They have it all broken down into different steps and we don't have to pay for what doesn't happen. So if there are no mature eggs, Jason won't have to do his thing, they won't need fertilized, etc. That made me feel a little better and it means that if that happens we can probably try again.

Anyways, onto the procedure. I'll be given an IV with Versed which is an amnesiac. It will "produce sleepiness/drowsiness, relieve anxiety, and can produce unconciousness." I think I'll be concious, but hopefully in a lala land. With the amnesiac quality, I probably won't remember much of it afterwards, which is a bizarre thought. I'll be awake and know what's going on, but won't remember it afterwards. I'll also be given Fentanyl. I looked this one up and it says that it has the potency approximately 81 times that of morphine. This makes me a very very happy person and has taken my anxiety level down a bunch.

Jason will be in the room with me for the actual ER. It will be done by guide of an ultrasound. It's the same vaginal ultrasound that I always have, but it has a guide attached to it, that the needle goes through. Dr. S will stick the needle into a follicle, and suck out all the fluid (and hopefully an egg) into a little tube. She'll pass that off to someone who will stick it through a window into the lab. They'll dump it into a dish and look for the egg. If they've found it, Dr. S will move to the next follicle. If they haven't, then she'll push fluid back into that follicle and suck it all out again. Sort of to rinse it and make sure she got the egg. Kim says she'll do this until she's gotten the egg out. Then move to the next follicle and repeat.

Since I don't have the potential of that many, I don't think it will take too terribly long. Then I'll be in recovery for 3-4 hours, sometime during which Jason will go do his thing.

So that's what I'm doing today! I'm annoying Jason with the typing sounds so I'm going to try to get some more sleep.

Triggering tonight - feel like it's such a waste

Kim called and my E2 is now 687. They think that I should go ahead and trigger tonight, with the ER on Saturday. Obviously I'm always a crappy responder, but this is probably the best I've ever had. I just feel like it's such a waste. I felt like I should stim again tonight and in the morning (I do the shots 2x day) and see where we're at. My E2 went up from 253 to 687 over the last 2 days so they feel like this shows that the 2 18's are really good. They think that if they wait another day we run the risk of those 18's ending up post mature and there is no guarantee that the others will mature. And I could ovulate on my own. In the next breath though they tell me that those 14's could catch up by Saturday and not to count them out.

I keep getting the quality vs quantity speech. She said they just don't know that I'll ever respond much better than this, they think that the 18's are really good ones, and that doing this will tell us so much more than what we already know. Seems like an awfully expensive diagnostic test.

I'm just so upset and frustrated. I wanted to be excited when we got to our ER, but I just feel like it's a waste and we won't get anything out of it. This sucks.

So nervous!

So I'm dying of nervousness right now. Lining today was 8.8 (yay!), follies were 18.5, 18, 15, 14.5, 13.5, 13, then some 11's through 8's. I think anyways. I've done really well this cycle at not requesting copies of everything and just trying to trust them. Anyways, now we're waiting on my E2 and they also were checking my LH to make sure that hasn't started to surge on it's own. If that is still ok, then we'll continue shots tonight and in the morning and I'll be checked again and probably trigger tomorrow night. Eek!!! I just hope my E2 has gone up. I really think it has to, because I finally started noticing EW mucus last night and typically that happens when my lining thickens and my E2 goes up.

So I now wait impatiently for the phone call.

Some improvement

My estradiol went up! Kim called yesterday afternoon and it's now at 250. I think that if you ignore the fact that I have stimmed for 8 days already, and just look at the E2, lining, and follie size - it all looks ok. What I mean by that is that I think they all are together where they should be. There were times that I had much bigger follicles, but still with my lining and E2 where it is now. So I feel like maybe everything is just moving slowly together and that's not so bad.

Also, I learned a lesson yesterday. You know the girl from the message board that I mentioned I was so jealous of because after 8 days of stimming she had 15-20 follies, and an E2 of 3600? I so badly wanted to be like her and was upset that my response was so much lower. She posted yesterday though - they had to cancel her cycle yesterday! She was supposed to trigger last night but her E2 was suddenly over 6000 and that can be dangerous. I feel so very awful for her. It also goes to show that higher numbers aren't always better, people respond differently, and I should be happy with my slow progress.

I'm convinced my body hates me.

I wouldn't say that things are awful yet, and there has been no talk of canceling, but it just seems that nothing ever really goes the way it's supposed to. I'm a "slow responder", "poor responder", have "resistant ovaries." What the hell does all of this mean? And WHY WHY WHY???

Had another u/s this morning. The follies have grown, so that’s good I guess. They are roughly 13, 11, 11, 11, 9, 9, 8, 6, and 4. So 9 still, although that 6 and 4 probably won’t catch up. It’s just so hard to not compare to other people, or even myself in previous cycles. There is a girl from my message board who had her appt yesterday that was the same as mine today. She had 15-20 follies that were getting close, and her estradiol was 3600! I don’t know what my E2 is yet today, but I found out that on Saturday it was only 58. 58?!? Even if you compare it to previous cycles, it was higher than that on that day. Even compared to my friend Andrea who was also a slower stimmer (13 days total) it was much lower. She thinks that with the follies growing we’ll see an increase today, but I’m not exactly optimistic at this point. My lining was just over 6, which makes me think my E2 won’t be very high. I guess though, compared to the follies, it might be ok. If only my body would wake up and respond!! Argh.

So now I’m back at work with the ever present headache, the ever present need to cry, and the ever present urge to curl up into a ball for the next however many weeks.

Maybe we should stop and use that money to run away to a tropical island.

Worthless day

I knew that when I woke up with a headache this morning I should have just stayed in bed. It never went away and I had such a hard time getting work done. Not to mention I'm incredibly nervous about my appt tomorrow morning. I just hope the follies have grown and that maybe, just maybe, more will show up. I had a dream (nightmare?) last night that the ones I had all shrunk. I don't even know if that's possible, but if it is, watch it happen to me.

So keep your fingers crossed for me around 9 am on Tuesday!

Saturday's appt

I had 4 follies, all roughly 8 in my left ovary and then 2 the same size in my right and 3 smaller ones. So 9 total. She said that she didn't think I'd develop anymore, but hopefully I'll end up with those 9. I was pretty disappointed and started crying. She said that she knows I've read on message boards where people have a lot more, but that you don't have to. I just keep remembering during my IVF consult they said that they wanted 10-15. I'm trying not to panic too much yet. We have another u/s on Tuesday and I guess that will tell us more then. I just don't understand how some people can be on low doses of stuff and here I am on 300 of Repronex (4 vials, which at least seems like a lot to me) and don't have much of a response at all. I actually just went and looked at my response on the lepori (generic repronex) on around this same day, and I tended to have 7-8 follicles even then, and some were bigger! Now I'm on the real stuff, more of it, and it's worse? Although I guess the plus is that they're mostly the same size now, instead of one or two being bigger. Argh, this is just so frustrating. She did say that I had I stayed on Lupron they probably would have been even smaller.

Oh, and the full feeling I was having? While I know part of it is ovary related, I'm pretty sure I'm also constipated. (Lovely to know, eh?) Can I blame this one IF too? (Actually maybe I can - I figure it's because my diet has been crap lately (poor choice of words) and that I can blame on the stress which can be blamed on IF. :)

Anyways, I'm feeling better today than I did yesterday. Truthfully, I came home yesterday, got back into some pjs and stayed in them all day. (I also managed to read book 3 AND 4 of the Twilight series!) Then I got an email back from my friend Andrea and felt much better. She reassured me that some people just start slow but that doesn't mean it won't work. I also don't need to have 20 follies for it to work. She had 8 total, 5 of which fertilized, and is now expecting a little boy.

So I'll go back on Tuesday and we'll see!

Ovaries in overdrive

At least that's what it feels like anyways! It's a hard feeling to describe, but mostly my ovaries feel "there." I'm not in pain, and not all that uncomfortable yet, but I can tell something is going on. I can feel them when I'm walking/sitting down/etc. I guess it's a full/bloated feeling, and it mostly just happened overnight. I'm actually pretty excited about it - finally, some action!

This is earlier than I've felt like this before in a cycle, so I'm hoping they're not too active. Although really, we WANT more to happen than previous cycles, so maybe it's a good thing.

I can't wait until my appt tomorrow! Just watch though - this is all in my head and we'll find hardly any follies.

Stims are kicking my butt

I'm cranky, tired, can't focus, have a headache, want to cry, and lost count of the hot flashes I had last night. I thought that I'd feel worse on Lupron and that wasn't all that bad, so I was looking forward to stims. This is not better.

Maybe once I drop the Bravelle and am just on Repronex I'll feel better? I don't know, I'm probably stretching here.

Sorry for the complaining, it's just a been a long afternoon.

On to the next step

We start stims tonight!

I stopped birth control on Thursday, started my period yesterday, stopped the Lupron this morning**, and start stims tonight. I had an u/s and b/w this morning and aside from an u/s machine malfunction, all went well. (They eventually had to do the u/s where they do the PG ladies, so that was loads of fun. Obviously nothing against PG ladies at all, but it sucked waiting with a bunch of women who were super excited to see their babies on screen.)

All in all, I'm feeling ok, although things sort of turned crummy this weekend. I was PMSing big time on Saturday and was very bitchy/irritable and kept picking fights with Jason. Then yesterday afternoon I had one of the worst headaches I can remember having. I also started to feel nauseaus and have had to run to the bathroom numerous times. I don't think any of that is related to TTC, just some sort of stomach bug. Luckily some immodium is helping a little bit.

**Stopping the Lupron is probaby what makes me most nervous. From what I've read, it keeps you from ovulating early. They're concerned that it will keep me too suppressed though, so they're completely taking me off of it. I keep expressing that I'm worried about ovulating early but they don't seem to think I'll have that issue. I understand where they're coming from - my LH never seems to want to do what it's supposed to and I have to trigger to O (or I'll O late and have post mature eggs) but what if this month is different??? I'm trying so hard to "relax" and trust my doctor.

Anyways, I'm home from work today and laying in bed, where the bathroom is just a few steps away. I'm hoping this stomach thing goes away soon!