Halfway through stims!

Today marks day 5 of my stimulation meds.  This morning I went to the RE for another early early early appointment for blood work and an ultrasound.  These are always nerve-racking appointments because you don't know if one thing is going to go wrong to stop the whole process.  You never know what they'll find on the ultrasound and obviously my ultrasounds in the past have generally sucked.  First of all, I got there at 7 am and a couple was in the waiting room with their one year old toddler.  Look, I get that there are millions of people in the world with babies, but on the first piece of paperwork from this fertility center, I think literally in the first paragraph it specifically says NOT to bring your babies.  I couldn't get out of the office fast enough this morning.  I don't need to be reminded of my infertility any more than I already am by going to an freaking infertility clinic.
Now that I got that off my chest, we can get back to my appointment.  I had another ultrasound to check my progress and everything looked great.  7 follicles on the left side and 8 on the right, all at a good size.  The doctor said at this point they should be small and they were.  Then I had my blood work and I had to wait all day for the invitro coordinator to call me with my results because it doesn't matter how many follicles you have, the blood test tells you if they are healthy or not.  The results were perfect, they checked my progesterone and estrogen levels and they told me if the number was too low, like 60, then they would increase my shots and if they were too high, like 300, then they would have to decrease my shots.  I got 180.  perfect score.  So that's good news because nothing changes and my shots don't increase, Thank God.  My next appointment is Thursday morning for another round of blood work and ultrasound check like today.  They also gave me a prescription for percocet for after the retrieval.  I didn't think the retrieval was going to be that painful, but percocets are pretty strong pain killers, so I guess we'll see.  I doubt that I'll need them though.
In the mean time we are still praying...

3rd day of stims.

I had my doctors appointment on Friday morning for a blood test and an ultrasound to make sure we were on track to start the stimulation medication.  As usual, I was worried about the results of the ultrasound, but as luck would have it everything was quiet on the uterine front.  So I went home all excited and ready to begin the fun process of waking up my ovaries.  They put my on 1 vial of Menupur and 150 shot of Follistim, divided 75 morning and 75 night, but the first night I had to take the full 150 to kick off the shot show!  They reduced the Lupron to 10 iu's from 20 every morning.

The Follistim is really easy to take because its basically preloaded in a pen.  All you have to do is dial it up and shoot. Just needs a needle tip change prior.  The Menupor on the other hand is a bit harder.  You have to take the correct amount of saline solution and inject into the vial of powder, roll the vial around to mix the solution, pull it back into the syringe, then change the needle tip to a smaller needle all before injecting.  This is my 9 o' clock routine.

After adding these 2 new medications to the daily routine, I have learned just exactly how spoiled I was with my Lupron shots.  The only unpleasantness is the initial pinch and then basically I don't feel anything while its being injected.  These new shots are a whole nother story.  The Follistim doesn't hurt while its being injected, but after its in there it hurts my belly for a few minutes.  The Menopur, I guess because its a mixture of chemicals, hurts kinda bad going in (stings a little), but once its in its fine.  The Menopur is the one that I really don't look forward too.  Definitely my least favorite. According to my husband, it also makes me extra specially moody and bitchy.  I've also had this crazy headache for like 2 weeks now.

On a more positive note, I'm starting to get excited about this whole process.  You'd think that the last thing I'd be is excited after adding all these shots, but my retrieval is a little over a week away so I have that to look forward to and my husband has that entire week off to spend with me so I also have that to look forward to.  I don't know if getting excited is the right thing to do because I don't want to get my hopes up too high, but I also know that if I go into this with a bad attitude, or I'm too stressed out, or I think to negatively that those could affect my chances of getting pregnant and every little bit of hope counts in a positive way.

For now we are still praying.      

Day 10 of SHOTS!! (More complaining..)

Well, I've been on these damn shots for 10 days now, and they are just buckets of fun. When I was on the birth control pills, I had very mild side effects from the Lupron. Like being cranky and a little nauseous.  Now that the bc has stopped, I feel all the side effects like 10 times more. It makes me soooo tired and double cranky and nauseous and I've had this headache for like 10 days straight now. And yesterday I felt like I had a fever. But aside from that, its really not all that bad, lol. I have until friday of just taking the Lupron shots and then I have a doctors appt that morning. I have to get up at friggen 6 am for because apparently they ONLY do ultrasounds between and 7 and 8 am and its never at the office by my house.. always the further office. Since i stopped the bc, i've gotten my "period".  No one warned me that I wouldn't get an actual period,  so i was assuming that because i was on bc for 6 weeks, that i was gonna have this extreme opening of the gates river of pain huge flow, but instead, i just have cramps and not even enough to wear a pad, which I guess is nice, because I don't like pads.

I went to my teaching class on how to mix my shots and i took my mom as my note-taker, which is good because i think she wrote down what the nurse was saying verbatim. They literally sit there and show you how to mix your menopur, and then they give you this little fake piece of skin?? Kinda looks like a buttcheek and feels like one too. So once you finish learning that, you learn how to inject them into the fake butt on the table. It was all very scientific. It was also very overwhelming. Because I always seem to underestimate just how many shots/ how many times a day i'm getting them. But I do understand now why they gave me so many needles , and thats because you have to mix the meds with the bigger needles than swap out for a smaller ones. All very scientific once again. My husband is getting excited because the retrieval is about 2 weeks away, but I cant seem to get excited, I'm too nervous, besides that my energy is soooo drained from all this excitement. I've said this before and I'll say it again, If I didn't have my husband to go through this with I would go crazy. Even as I'm writing this he is sitting next to me joking around about all of this. My mom has also been a huge help. She is always ready and willing to do whatever I need her to do at the drop of a hat, like going to my appointment with me the other day.

There's not much else to say.  I have my u/s on friday and I get my new list of injections (what, when and how much to take) of the new medications.  In the mean time I am still praying... and napping...

Day 4 of SHOTS!

I've though long and hard about posting an update on how the shots are going because I hate to complain. I know how lucky I am to be able to even afford these shots and be able to afford the whole in-vitro process, so I don't want anyone to think I'm complaining whatsoever. I'm just telling it like it is. Days 1 and 2 were ok. I had terrible insomnia on nights 1 and 2 and every day since I have been absolutely exhausted and kinda foggy in the head. It's nice being home because I can do a little housework and nap and then do a little more housework and nap some more, but I've been trying to not nap so much because then I don't sleep at night. When I get through at least 4 straight hours of sleeping at night, we consider it a big success now. My husband is still trying to get the hang of giving the shot every morning and I give him a lot of credit for being a great nurse. He gives me my pills each night before bed, and my shot every morning now, and to top it all off he puts up with my bitching about how I'm feeling all day long. He should get an award.

They make me feel like crap all day. Like I'm getting over the flu but without the chest cough. Just a feeling of being run down and tired after doing something as easy as the laundry. And I've had a bad headache since I got my first shot and it hasn't gone away yet. I keep thinking sleeping will help, but my new weird sleeping patterns aren't really helping me out with it. I get my shot at around 6:45 every morning and then, since I can't really go back to sleep, I read my book for a while until the itchiness in my belly goes away. And then I get up and I'm immediately irritable and cranky. It makes me laugh sometimes when I wake up and realize I have a cranky face on and I don't even know why I'm mad.

So far, that's how I've been feeling. My husband has been feeding me chocolate every night (trying to counter the moodiness I think!) and just being an all around very comforting and patient person. I have another appointment this Thursday for a class to learn about how to give my fertility shots, or how to make them? or mix them together or something? I'm actually not exactly sure, but I do know that I have no idea how to use that refillable injectable pen they gave me, so maybe that's what I'll be learning how to use. I'll update then. Until then, I'm still praying. Talk to you all soon :)

SHOTS!!

Shots!! Shots!! Shots!! Shots!!Shots!! Shots!! You know like that song.... This is what my husband has been singing to me every night for the past week. Not the whole song mind you, just that one part because I've been walking around saying the word shots at random times like it's the plague. So that's his response to lighten the mood lol :)

Well the big day has finally arrived. My mom came over on Tuesday to keep me company while we waited for the arrival of my big box of SHOTS!! The pharmacy told me it would come between 7am and 9pm so I basically had to sit around and wait all day for it. Lucky for us it came at around 2pm so we weren't imprisoned inside the house all day! I guess I was expecting something different. Not that I wasn't expecting little vials of drugs and some little needles to go with it, I just wasn't expecting SOOO many needles to come in the box. There must be over 100 needles in that box. The tiny insulin needles for the lupron shots that I started taking today, the injectable needles for the fertility drugs and some other much bigger needles for some other drugs that I have to take and then I think even more insulin needles in another bag, and then a smaller bag of littler needles and then some other refill injectables... Seriously, I may not be the best here at math but the ratio of little vials of drugs to needles is WAY off... Let me clarify one thing though, I'm not taking insulin. They're called insulin needles because they are the tiny needles that diabetics use to inject insulin. I am using insulin needles to inject myself with Lupron.

I got my first shot of lupron this morning given to me by my wonderful husband. I haven't slept in about 5 days because I had been having nightmares about doing the shots wrong. Either we inject too much, or too little, or the wrong drug and then we have to go back on birth control and wait another month and everything gets pushed back again. I know, ridiculous, but really not so ridiculous because this is a very exciting yet very stressful process to be going through and my subconscious is just messing with me every night after I fall asleep.

So before we went to bed last night we went on YouTube and found a video of a woman giving herself a shot of lupron and giving a tutorial while she was doing it (isn't the Internet great?). We went to bed thinking, ok so it looks pretty easy, I mean she gave it to herself, she didn't even need someone else to give it to her. So this morning when it was time, we got up and my husband got the needle ready and I layed down on the couch and he gave me the shot. It was unpleasant, as I had assumed it would be because, hey, it's a shot, but it wasn't the end of the world and I am more than prepared to do it again tomorrow morning and my husband was so good with everything, he made the whole experience a lot more pleasant than if I had to inject myself. He really was a rock star, he didn't even bat an eyelash at the whole thing and he really doesn't like needles at all! After that, I went back to bed for a little while before getting up to go to work and my tummy was itchy at the injection site for about 15 minutes. This is an immediate side effect apparently but it wasn't so bad and I fell back to sleep soon after.

So far that's all the excitement of the past week or so, and I am ready to catch up on all my sleep tomorrow after my next shot. I'll update soon with more side effects in about a week or so. Talk to you all soon!

First appointment with the IVF coordinator

Well, we had our first appointment on Monday with the IVF coordinator. We made ourselves sick worrying about it because we have never gone to that doctors office and had a good appointment or gotten good news so we were wondering just WHAT was in store for us. Every time it's "well you have a huge ovarian cyst, or you have a blood clotting disorder that makes it harder to get pregnant, no the clomid didn't work again, no the IUI didn't work.. I see some fluid in your uterus and I don't like it" Seriously, not ONCE have we had a good appointment, but this time, the stars aligned and for once all was right with my uterus. Thank you Jesus for that.

So, the very first step in the IVF process is going on birth control so I don't ovulate this month. It's so nice to not have to pee on ovulation sticks for once, but it's a little strange going on birth control. He says he has to time when I get my period so he can time everything else. So I've been on birth control for 2 weeks and my ultrasound looks great... the cyst is completely gone, the fluid is long gone, nothing negatively new in the old baby making basket (They also did an infectious disease (STD) test before the whole thing started and we were both completely fine. Let me tell you-- no matter what anyone says, even if you're 100% sure you don't have any STD's, it's still a huge relief when they call you and say you're perfectly healthy lol).

Here comes the best part... So we're on this mega high from having our first GREAT ultrasound and the IVF coordinator comes in with our next step in the process. Now we were both under the impression that the shots began November 4th, AND that they were injectables like my eppi pen. We couldn't have been more wrong (this is another great example why you should never believe what you read on the internet). So the IVF coordinator comes in with this syringe and this little tiny glass bottle or fluid and she starts showing my husband how to fill it up and where he will be injecting me. And I think time stopped for a whole 45 seconds and then the blood left my head so fast I thought we were both gonna pass out. She made it looks so simple. "Oh it's so easy, the Lupron should come in the mail by next Tuesday and you will need to start the injections on Thursday morning. It's so easy!" the nurse kept on saying how easy it was and even she could do it but I mean come on, you're a nurse of COURSE you can! This doesn't come second nature to us non-nurses here. Especially my husband, who expressed great concern months ago when we began entertaining the idea of in-vitro.

It is something we're gonna have to get used to though. Once the Lupron shots end, we start shots of the fertility drug. If all goes well and babies magically appear in my uterus at the end of all this, I will need to go on Heparin shots for my first whole trimester, so basically shots start next Thursday and (fingers crossed) end sometime in February!

Still praying, but mostly saying thank you to God this month. Our biggest fear was that SOMETHING was gonna happen and they were gonna tell us we had to postpone it another month but nothing like that came up. Kinda sorta starting to get excited now. Just kinda, though.

Oooh, where to begin.

I stopped writing after last month because I was upset. I thought writing a blog would be an easy way to get my feelings out but in fact it's a lot harder to do than I thought. The clomid didn't work the first time around and my husband and I sort of gave up hopes of ever getting pregnant. We didn't give up trying, we just both sort of came to the conclusion at the end of July that we didn't really believe it was ever going to happen. I've said it before because we've been feeling this way for a while but now we're getting scared that that's the ultimate truth. Despite what the doctor says about us being young and healthy and what high chances we have. So we gave up for about a week. After that, we pulled ourselves together and snapped back to reality and decided to keep on going. It's been very hard for us and that's partly why I've been so quiet on here lately but a lot has gone on and I thought I'd write in with an update because the next few months I think there are going to be A LOT of updates.

Well this month, September, we were supposed to be starting the fertility shots. We did one round of clomid in July and the next step was the fertility shots. By the way I went to the doctor this morning for a routine ultrasound and my ovarian cyst from the clomid is gone, as is the random fluid in my uterus that he kept seeing during every other ultrasound. I am in tip top uterine condition for the first time in about 6 months or more.

Now, before I go any further let me explain about our insurance. We have great medical insurance because my husband works for Verizon and even though they are still negotiating their new contracts (they were on strike for 2 weeks over this!!), the medical covers just about everything including infertility specialists. The problem, however, is that it only gives us a certain amount of money towards this. Forever. Once that money is gone, we're done with the fertility treatments. then we just try on our own from then on. Ok back to where I was.. We had a meeting with the doctor to discuss the next step, that being fertility shots, and he said he would see us in a month when it was time to begin.

Well last week I went by myself for a meeting with the doctor. Now that the strike is over I have to attend these meeting and make all the big decisions by myself since my hubby is working overtime! Well we started to talk about the shots and what that would entail. He explained the whole thing to me and I kept asking him what was the difference between the shots and clomid. I still think they are virtually the same thing except one is a weak series of pills and one is a strong series of shots. They both work on the same principal: use them, pee on ovulation sticks, get inseminated or have sex on the right day and maybe, possibly get pregnant that month. Then he offered me a third option.

He pulled up my insurance info and we started chatting about how much was left before we capped out and how much everything would cost and how many rounds of this or that we could do. We weighed together our chances and mixed it with costs and he then suggested in vitro fertilization and he said that it was covered by our insurance and we could do it for 2 rounds before capping out at our coverage limit. He told me everything there was to know about it and exactly how to process worked and how long it would take. He offered us this option the last time we saw him but we turned it down because we didn't think our insurance would cover it. Now that we know it does, I made the decision to jump on the chance. The whole process takes about 3 months so the actual fertilization part won't be taking place until mid-late November, but we are looking forward to it and I will try my hardest to keep blogging during all steps. I haven't stopped praying, no matter how hard it has been or how hopeless it seems. Talk to you all soon. Step one is calling the IVF specialist when I get AF this month.. Looking forward to that phone call! :)