Terrified

I feel like I’ve been relatively calm/relaxed/optimistic/excited about our upcoming IVF, but it hit me last night how terrified I really am. I’m not so much scared or worried about the process – I’ve read up on it enough and been through similar parts of it, to know what to expect. I have a great support system and know I’ll make it through it. What I’m scared about is the after, the outcome. What if our eggs don’t fertilize? What if they do, but no embryos make it to transfer? What if they do, we put them back in, and I don’t get pregnant? What then? Unless we have some frozen embryos to use, this is it. Maybe we’ll end up at new jobs that have infertility coverage and we can try another time. Sure, maybe later down the road my body will change and by some miracle I’ll get pregnant on my own. I just have a hard time being optimistic about that, especially if one of the most invasive controlled procedures doesn’t get the job done.

So what will we do in the after? How will we handle that? How can we accept that we might not ever get the family we wanted? The rest of the world will be moving forward and we’ll be stuck in the same place. Sure, we’ll try to be that happy childless couple – do whatever we want, travel a lot, etc – but I think it will always feel like something is missing. So how will we get past that?

I know that I’ve talked about adoption before and how we were totally on board with it, and that may still be something we’ll look at later. Right now, with where I’m at, it’s not an option. You’re probably thinking that I change my mind so much on that, but as Anna once said – every time I make a decision or a plan, really, I’m just trying it on, seeing how I really feel about it. I have the right to change my mind if I don’t like how it feels. And right now, we want to have our own child.

And while I know it’s not the most important part, I won’t lie – I want to be pregnant. I want to know that a baby that Jason and I made is growing inside me. I want to experience that feeling when there is a positive pregnancy test – I want to see Jason’s face when it happens. I want to have fun announcements with it. I want the doctor’s appointments, the ultrasound to find the sex, I want to be fat. I want to feel our baby kick, I want to hear the heartbeat. I want to give birth to our child.

Sorry to be such a downer, and I’m sure I’ll get back to being optimistic, but it just hit me last night that I have no idea what we’re going to do if this doesn’t work. And like I said, it terrifies me.

Countdown!

We have so many things going on over the next month - I'm so excited and nervous!

9 days until we do our infectious disease testing
14 days until my first accupuncture appointment
16 days until our pictures with Ryan Cook
20 days until our big appointment to go over our official schedule, all of the meds, and to sign our life away
23 days until we go to the horse races at Keeneland in Lexington, KY
27 days until I start Lupron!
29 days until NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK!!!! Yay!!

Just thought I’d post some updates about what’s been going on in Chez Fletcher.

-I had my insulin retested last week (yucky orange drink test) and they are now increasing my metformin. It went down from 83 (in April) to 58.4, so it’s at least improving. She said that based on when we tested it, we’d really like it to be less than 30. So they increased my dose from 1000 mg to 1500mg (3 pills now.)

-I’ve also switched from the Target prenatal to a prescription one – I guess it’s just a little better.

- We are doing our infectious disease testing sometime in the next 2 weeks.

-We have our pictures scheduled! I think I mentioned this before, but we wanted to do something that is just for us. So we’re taking them on October 11th. This gives me 19 days to lose some more weight! (Not that I’ll lose enough in 19 days to really make a difference, but if I see the scale going down, I’ll feel better.)

-On the weight loss, I’ve lost a total of 14 lbs – since May, but still exciting. I’d really like to lose 5.6 more lbs before starting IVF (exactly one month from today!)

-My high school reunion was this weekend and I’d like to think that I handled it ok. Friday night was an event at the highschool football game and it seemed (to me anyways) that everyone was either pregnant or had little kids with them. It reminds me of the way I feel when I go to weddings and see the dad walk the daughter down the aisle. I would never wish that the bride didn’t have her dad to walk with her, but I’m upset/envious that I didn’t get to. Still, I managed to get through the weekend without crying.

-We’re trying to decide where to plan a mini vacation for in December. It has to be somewhere that I can either plan last minute or somewhere that we can reserve but cancel last minute. Basically if we find out that I’m not pregnant, I want to get the hell out of dodge. And quickly. Any suggestions?

-I’m still trying to find a good acupuncture place. The one in town that I know of is so expensive so I’d really like to find someplace a little cheaper.

I think that’s it for now!
Laura :)

On the schedule!

Kim just called and we got everything scheduled! Jason and I have an appointment on Oct. 15th for a few hours – we’ll have b/w done for the HIV/etc testing, and also will be going through all of the paperwork, signing our life away, etc. My retrieval is currently scheduled for Saturday, November 15th. Obviously we have to be a bit flexible with that, depending on my response and how long it takes to get enough mature follies.

With that retrieval date, my transfer date (if everything goes well and we do a 5 day transfer like they plan) is November 20th. That date might not mean much to some of you, but my dad passed away on Nov. 20th 4 years ago, so it’s a pretty big day for me. I’m not even really sure how I feel about it, but it brings up all of these emotions and makes me sort of choked up. Not in a bad way, not in a good way – just sort of an overwhelming way. It sort of would just bring things back full circle, if that makes any sense.

Like I said, it’s all semi-tentative based on how things go, and I’m going to just have to go with the flow, but still, it’s nice to know!

Laura

Big update!

(Forgive me – this will be long.)

So much for our extended break! About a week before my latest BFN Kim called me with some news. She hesitated in telling us, because she knew that we struggled with the decision to take a break and this news was going to throw a kink in the plans. Someone had donated MANY vials of Repronex to the office - and they were giving about half of them to us. Repronex is the more expensive drug, that was about the only other thing we could think to try. It's also the drug that Dr. S uses for IVF. The catch – they expire in December. Obviously this meant our break was going to be cut short – not that we’re complaining – we are SO blessed to get these drugs – roughly $4000 worth!

This lead to some interesting discussions – should we try a few more IUIs with the meds, or use them all for one IVF cycle. The answer ….

We’re doing IVF!!! We had a consult this morning with Kim, Dr. S, and some resident thrown in for more fun. They feel that we’re at the point that we need to move past the IUI’s – we did 7 of them and they obviously never worked. She thinks that IVF will increase our chances a lot, and it will also help us potentially figure out some of those iffy questions (quality of eggs, are they really fertilizing, etc.)

The original plan was that on CD21 of the cycle prior to IVF, I would start taking Lupron, to suppress things. However, my cycle isn’t regular so that potentially wouldn’t be timed out right. That meant that we were adding birth control, when I start my next period. Again, because my cycle isn’t regular, that could be too late and potentially end up conflicting with when the lab is closed around Thanksgiving. SO, I start birth control today – this should give us more control over when we start everything. We’re planning on starting the Lupron around the 3^rd week of October. I’ll take that for about 10 days (I think) and then start the Repronex (with potentially a drug called Bravelle added in.) At that point she might have me stop the lupron completely. She normally has patients continue that at a smaller dose, but she's worried about my response and I think this could potentially suppress things too much? The stimming process will be much like stimming for IUI, but with more shots. I’ll have an appt every few days to check how things are going. When there are enough mature follicles, we’ll do the trigger shot.

She’s hoping that we have 12-14 mature follicles for retrieval. That will be 36 hours after I trigger, and will take place at this joint lab in Carmel. Also, I’ll be awake for it!! I thought that most people were knocked out, but the paperwork says that I will be given medication to feel drowsy, but that Jason and I will be able to watch the aspiration of the follicles on a monitor. I’ll stay there for 3-4 hours afterwards to recovery and then go home with some painkillers.

They’ll call me the next day to tell me how fertilization went. They always try to do 5 day transfers. Apparently at this point they are blastocysts and we’ll be able to pick out the better quality ones easier. If I don’t have very many or they aren’t doing as well, then I think we’ll transfer at 3 days. Starting the day of the retrieval I’ll add progesterone (in oil), and estrogen.

For the fertilization part - it sounds like they want us to do ICSI where they actually inject a sperm into each egg, rather than letting them fertilize on their own. There is another test they could run on Jason to check “binding”, which would help us determine if we need ICSI or not, but that would just cost more money, and if there are issues the answer is ICSI, which is only an additional $500 anyways. Apparently “some” studies somewhere have shown that it can sometimes decrease quality, but Dr. S said that their lab (which is where she works with Dr. Gentry and Dr. Henry, two other Indy REs) hasn’t found that.

I’ll be awake for the transfer as well, and from what I can tell it will be much like an IUI. They’ll insert a catheter through the cervix to transfer them, while watching on an abdominal ultrasound. I’m supposed to take it easy for 1-2 days afterwards. Basically bed (aka “couch”) rest – who wants to keep me company?

I have a whole calendar, listing each day and what meds I’ll be taking. I’ve already mentioned the birth control, lupron, repronex, possibly bravelle, estrogen, and progesterone. Others are: baby aspirin, antibiotics at some point, and prednisone after the transfer.

I’m going down on Monday to retest my insulin and see if we should increase the metformin. Also, Jason and I both have to do STD tests sometime in the next month. (Some rule having to do with storing frozen embryos.) And we’ll have another appointment where we fill out all sorts of consent forms, contracts, etc.

I was a little upset about starting birth control now, only because I was thinking that we’d have a hail mary, last chance, miracle break cycle BFP. Chances of that happening were slim though. So for the most part I’m really excited! It will still be awhile, but we’re starting it!

Until then, I’m trying to really watch what I eat, and exercise. I’d like to lose 8 more lbs before we actually start the process and I think that’s a realistic goal. Also, we’ve decided that sometime in October we’re going to have pictures taken of the two of us – think engagement pics I guess. I feel like it would be something that is just for us, that has nothing to do with baby stuff at all. I thought it would be a fun way to de-stress before IVF.

I’m also looking into acupuncture – some people just swear by it. Worst case, I think it would at least help on the stress/relaxing front.

So there you go – that’s what we’re doing! We are still getting somewhat of a break, as it will be another 5-6 weeks before any shots and some time after that before the appointments start.

Sorry for the novel!

Laura

On our break

Just in case anyone was wondering, I'm not pregnant. I started spotting last Sunday, and AF arrived on Wednesday. So we're on a break until further notice.