2dp3dt

Saturday we put back in 2 grade B embryos. One 4 cell and one 6 cell. Both have some fragmentation issues. I am trying to be optimistic because the embryos are better then last time, but again, can't keep out the negative thoughts. The hot weather has not been agreeing with me either so I feel sick and dehydrated. I think I will be testing out my trigger tomorrow and testing for pregnancy starting Saturday. 

This cycle!

IVF # 3 is well under way and the DR says everything looks great! Exactly where she wants us to be! I have. 15  antral follicles which are basically beginner follicles. I have read if you have 15-20 you have a better chance of the IVF working. I am on day 4 of stims and feeling a little dull bloating. I head to te big hospital tomorrow for blood work then back up Friday for ultrasound and blood work. I'll have a better idea of when ER will be next week at this appointment. Can't wait! 

IVF # 3.....

Has begun! I started taking my Lupron shots Friday morning and will be having a baseline appointment on the 26 to make sure I'm all set to start stims. 

I thought I would also include what I really have to do through out my cycle to rep and actually do for the IVF cycle. So above is what I take every morning to prepare for a cycle. The stuff on the spoon is called Royal jelly. I've mentioned it before, it's supposed to help with egg quality and health. The small white pill is birth control, ironically I have to take it to get pregnant. The dark brown thin pills are coq-10, it's also supposed to be for overall egg health. 

Metformin is the bigger round pill and again that's for cycle and egg health. And lastly is the light brown pills. Those are prenatal pills for my overall health and (hopefully) baby's health. 

I take one more metformin pill at night so it really is an all day thing.   

IF, the never ending roller coaster.

In my previous post I mentioned we couldn't afford the stimming meds and had to put off IVF indefinitely... Well I got a call from my nurse yesterday and she told me someone donated ALL the stimming meds I needed! So we are back on track for our June/ July IVF!! I am so excited! I got the rest of my meds today and will be starting meds next Friday! I can't believe we are starting and so soon, I am do ready though. 

Back to Basics

My insurance, after jerking me around for 2 weeks, decided that they will be covering all my meds except my stimming meds. Which is fine and dandy if it wouldn't cost me $1700!  I was supposed to start my meds in 2 weeks so I decided to cancel the cycle because there is no way I could afford my meds. Jon is leaving on Tuesday to visit his brothers in LA so we really can't afford anything extra. So we are going back to basics

This means that I will start temping again and using ovulation predictor kits. I think we have a better understanding of what our issues are so we can address them with supplements and what not. We haven't been trying naturally in over a year so this will be different. I hope we can do this natural, but I am not naïve enough to think it will happen no problem. I will still be saving up for our next IVF cycle.

Life of an infertile

Nothing like brining your niece to dance class and being around a bunch of newborns....on the first day of the cycle. Fml seriously. 

With the upcoming cycle, comes more stress

So going into this cycle I thought we were going to be on less meds my doctor said quality over quantity. I agreed

But still I wanted to make sure we had enough eggs to work with. The only good thing was going to be less money for meds. I was wrong of course, i am on the same dosage as last time, that means coming up with $2000 in the next month. Ugh, I wish things weren't so expensive and hard! I have no idea where I will come up with this money. Hopefully I will have some meds donated from my nurse like last time. 

I also have a call into a couple of different loan offices specific for infertility so hopefully I will get things figured out really soon. I just stopped birth control I'm on 1500 mg of metformin and will be getting blood work done next week while I'm on my period. I start birth control back up next weekend and then 2 weeks later start meds! 

Dates, dates, we've got dates!

We have dates for IVF #3!! I can't believe it's actually coming quickly. I have some regular blood work to do next week when my pills are done. Then I start another pack of birth control pills next weekend. I stay on those till June 14th which is when I start my suppressant Lupron. I start my stims the 29th of June and looks like IVF procedure the week of July 8th! 

I can't believe how close this is. I'm a little freaked out but I have a really good feeling about this cycle so I'm trying to stay optimistic! 

The day many infertile women dread....mothers day.

I'm not sure how I feel personally on Mother's Day. The past 4 I have just thought " next year I will be celebrating Mother's Day with my own baby." And of course as you know that still hasn't happened. I don't need things to be about me, but when every other woman in my families is being honored, it sucks when it's about something you want the most. This year I'm sad, but I'm so hopeful for my next cycle so I'm trying not to dwell on this too much. All I can do is really be thankful for the awesome role model mothers I have in my life. My mom and my step mom :) 

Lifestyle changes

I am already a pretty healthy eater in the sense that I eat fruits and vegetables a lot. However I do have a real strong addiction to sugar I eat cakes cookies candy and of course my favorite chocolate! I saw a study on YouTube recently that compared sugar addiction to that of heroin or crack. Apparently when you get your "hit" of sugar it triggers the same feel good hormones that the drugs do. I also read in the book Clean Eating for Dummies that sugar really is an addiction that needs to be broken. 

So long story short I started the clean living lifestyle. I've cut out as much processed foods I could and sugars. I bought some organic foods from my local co-op and am trying to go natural or organic. I really think this will help hormone imbalance and maybe my body will produce eggs properly. My body will be cleaner without all the extra chemicals and a plus, I will hopefully drop the 20lbs I have been working on. 

As for the metformin, I had a crappy reaction to it yesterday because of Mac and cheese and chocolate chip cookies. So I figure my clean eating will also help with my reactions so I can stay on it. 

Started metformin

Yesterday was my 25th birthday. I had a little freak out because a) I'm half way to 50 b) I am almost out of my 20's and c) I really thought I would be pregnant by now. I did have a birthday party BBQ and it was a lot of fun! Saw family and some friends, definitely a good time :)

Anyways I started my metformin yesterday and at the beginning I felt fine, but then I realized near the end of the afternoon I hadn't eaten much. So I are one little piece of kielbasa, immediately I started feeling sick and ended up in the bathroom. I eventually was able to eat a little something, but most of the night I felt kind of crappy. I'm really hoping this passes like the dr told me it should because I'm not even taking the full dose she wants me on!

Got a plan!

Went to our doctors today, there was a lot of confusion between Monday and today. I ended up scheduling an ultrasound appointment without meaning to! All was well though because I guess I needed to do another saline ultrasound because its been a year since I had that done last, which lets face it, is depressing. A whole year?!? Really?!?! Anyways everything looked good just like last time, I have a perfect uterine cavity...how exciting.

She also started me on metformin, I am looking forward to this for a couple reasons. I have read in numerous places that it really helps egg quality it has also been known to help you lose and maintain your weight. So yea I start that tomorrow. My RE said that my nurse in Dartmouth where I do my treatments will contact me soon, so here we go!! We're hoping to cycle in July which really isn't that long!

DH's DNA fragmentation test..

When Jon and I went to see the new RE she had us immediatly order a sperm analysis to test Jon's sperm for DNA fragmentation. We were able to order a kit to do at home and the lab would send dry ice that day. So the day comes and my husband does the test right before work. He comes in when he is finished and says he doesn't know if they will get anything because the sample was so small. So I went and looked at it and freaked out! There was like nothing in there! So an hour later I was pain stakingly trying to get every last drop into the vials. I sent it out that day with no hope at all that they would get anything. I posted on the infertility board I frequent and said I was nervous about it. They all made a good point, they don't need much since they aren't looking for numbers just fragmentations.

So fast forward to Friday and I got the call that Jon's sperm is normal!! No fragmentation issues!! This was awesome to hear, it's not often that we get some good news. At this point I am definitley feeling good about our cycle coming up in probably July.

I am currently taking a egg quality "cocktail" the RE that we went to for a second opinion put both Jon and I on CoQ-10 and I did a lot of research on Royal Jelly. Royal Jelly is mixed in bee pollen in the gel I take. I have read great results from different places especially how the ladies had much better mature egg quality which is my problem. Plus if my doctor starts me on Metformin I should be in pretty good shape! I am getting really excited for the next cyle.

It's been awhile

I haven't written in a while but mostly because I haven had much to say! We have been in limbo for 3 months now, but I think we finally have a plan to move forward. We met with a new RE at Baystate reproductive health. I liked the doctor in the sense that I thought she could get us pregnant but I didn't like her personality at all. She did put us on coq10. This is supposed to help both sperm and egg quality issues. After a lot of research I also started taking royal jelly with bee pollen in gel form I have also heard great things about egg quality with this. I thought we were all set to move on to a new DR with a new plan. I was wrong.

I had my follow up appointment with my current RE and I really like the direction she would like to go in. She is thinking about putting me on Metformin for egg quality. I read up about this and have seen some awesome results with other ladies who changed up like this. She would like me to be on it for 2 months before my next cycle which is what I figured we would be waiting anyways. I really liked this plan so I think we will be staying with our current RE for one more cycle.

I feel really good about this decision and will be calling my RE today to tell her we are ready to go! Feels good to be hoping back on the IVF train.

Well, I knew that was coming...,

Negative beta today. I knew it was coming so I did have some time to prepare. Surprisingly I am ok. Jon has been nothing short of amazing. He is truly my rock and I love him to death. He is hurting and still thinks of me and how I am doing first. I am so lucky to have this man in my life. Now where do we go from here? We have decided to go for a second opinion and I am excited for this, I really feel good about the new clinic and will be setting up an appointment tomorrow. We will also go to our follow up appointment with the current RE just to see what she has to say, but I do think we will be moving on.
So that is where we are at now.

4dp3dt

The cramps have finally stopped, well for the most part. I have some twinging around my right ovary and some pressure around my pelvic area. I'm still bloated, but that is the only sign of OHSS that I have had. I did test out my trigger Sunday at 8 days past trigger and it was gone. I am going to try and hold out on testing until Thursday or Friday...maybe. I have plenty of cheapies to hold me over. Still not feeling like this worked. I really don't want to get my hopes up and be disappointed.

3dp3dt

And I am not feeling hopeful at all. I originally thought that I would be ok in the 2ww if I ever got to it. I am "considered" pregnant, as in there are fertilized eggs inside of me. I thought I would be able to deal with the 10 days or so till beta. Well, I was wrong. every little thing I do makes me think I am making it harder for the embryos to implant, and I'm worried about the state of my ovaries and developing OHSS because my doctors were worried about it.
I'm also a little worried about my Dr. telling me we need genetic testing if we don't get pregnant this IVF because she is far fetching that Jon may have an extra y-chromosome and therefore need donor sperm, no shit, when I'm laying there about to explode because I need to pee so bad, she tells me that she thinks there is something wrong with Jon's sperm. So now I have been freaking out about that too. Jon is very much opposed to donor sperm, and although I want to carry my own child, I can't force something like that. So that isn't an option so adoption is the only option and it would take a while to save up. So it would be years before I would get a family. And that saddens me.
Jon and I did decide that we might go for a second opinion with another RE, I don't like how my RE, even though I like her, came about the genetic testing. I also think something needs to change with my cycle. I had 21 eggs and not even half were mature, last time I didn't have mature eggs either and they didn't do anything to change the protocol just added more medication and put me in danger of getting OHSS.

All and all I am way overwhelmed with IF right now and not very hopeful. Hopefully I am proven wrong :(

PUPO

We are PUPO!! We put back 1 grade B embryo and 1 Grade C embryo. I am hoping and praying they stick around. I went in for my 11AM appointment with a VERY full bladder as requested. I have been really bloated with gas recently so my stomach was hurting. I asked the nurse if I could pee just a little to take the edge off and they let me. I was still uncomfortable while they did the transfer and could not calm down, I was way tense and so uncomfortable. The transfer its self was pretty quick and as soon as they were done my Dr inserted a catheter to relieve me. It was the best feeling in the world lol.

while laying there they did tell me that they wish the embryos were of better quality, but all hope is definitely not lost. My ovaries also caused some concern, they are large and do have some fluid around them so they are worried about me getting OHSS.
For now I am Pregnant and just praying we get our take home baby out of this.

Here we go...

So I had my ER on Tuesday, and they got 21 eggs!! I was and am still in pain. I'm feeling a bit of pressure, but I have no other symptoms if OHSS so that's good.
Now unfortunately out of the 21 only 8 were mature and only 3 fertilized. I was really hoping for more. After talking to the nurse today I found out that all 3 are still growing and doing well!

Sooo ET is set for tomorrow at 11am! I am still nervous and probably won't relax until I have my embies in me. Jon and I did decide to put 2 back in. FX this works!

ER day...

Jon and I got here pretty early so now it's just a waiting game. Since I couldn't eat or drink I am now starving and really thirsty. I'm not freaking out yet, but I'm sure as soon as I walk in there I will be. Ughh deep breathing!

Tomorrow's the day!

And I'm nervous as all hell. I'm worried we will have a bad outcome again. Jon gave me my trigger shot inter muscularly last night and it hurts like a bitch today. We leave at 6:00 am tomorrow for an 8:00am retrieval! So nervous!

And it's a go!

Just got the call from my nurse, I have about 5 mature eggs now and my E2 is 2000. They wanted most of the eggs to be really mature and ready before ER and it looks like we are there! Jon will be giving me my HCG shot tomorrow night and ER will be Tuesday! I am extremely nervous after last time, but I am also optimistic after seeing so many great follies today!

Monitoring appointment

Went in for my monitoring appointment which consisted of ultrasounds, blood work, and talking to the nurse. The ultrasound showed I had 29 eggs! 10 to 15 being measurable. The measurable eggs were between 17 and 14! I had 8 measurable follies last time so I am really happy with these. My E2 was 1452 I believe. So I am going back in tomorrow for another monitoring appointment and it looks like ER will be Tuesday!

I'm a little nervous it being on a Tuesday again. Everything looks better this time so I am hoping and praying everything goes well. I am much more sore this time I feel bloated and just uncomfortable. Jon has a Christmas party tomorrow and thank goodness I have a forgiving dress!

Update

Quick note, had E2 checked today and I'm at 239 after 5 days of stimming. This time last cycle I was at about the same after 7 days of stimming so this is good. My nurse said to leav everything the same and I go back for blood work and an ultrasound on Friday. FX that everything works out!