There is a plan

Sorry it's been a week since I last updated you. Well we have a new plan. I started BCP on 11/27 and I will be on them for 21 days. On 12/15 I will start Lupron and then on 12/23 I will go in for a suppression check to make sure everything looks good to start stims that night.
For those of you who have been around for this whole journey I will be on the same meds Gonal F and Menopur. I think the dosage will be lower this time. I am nervous about the change in adding Lupron and getting rid of Ganirelix but I am willing to give it a shot.
Well things will probably be pretty quite around here until my meds arrive on the 11th, only 8 days away. Come on time can you please move a little faster???

Where do we go?

Well after the bad news on Friday I surprisingly woke up in a good mood. A new day and a new start, right? I had a very productive day of shopping only to be capped with the late night arrival of AF. At least this means we can move on. But where do we go? I called Nurse D this morning and left her a message. She called me back about 30 minutes later to tell me how sorry she was that this didn't work. We started to talk about where to go to next. She emailed the RE and told him we need a new protocol for me. So basically we are waiting to find out if I will be able to cycle right away or will I go on BCP again so that I can start stims around Christmas for an ER after New Years. I really am okay with either route. I just want to know where I go next.
If any of you have experience with back to back IVF cycles what did you do? BCP or no?

Beta or Bust

As I mentioned before we decided to go beta or bust. Meaning that we would not test at home and just wait for the phone call from the RE to know our fate. As it turned out our second wedding anniversary was our beta day. This had to be a good sign!!! We decided to hit the RE's office and get the bloodwork the go to the mall to do some Black Friday shopping and then enjoy a nice lunch at a steak house. As we sat there and enjoyed our lunch I got the phone call. I turned out to be the worst moment ever where we got the news that IVF was a bust. I was unable to maintain my composure and cried throughout the remainder of our meal. We decided that we should probably go home and nap since I didn't really know how to face the world. After a few Aleve and a three hour nap I felt a little bit better. Now we wait until Monday to follow up with my nurse and RE to see what our next step will be.

Nothing New

Just dropping in to say there is nothing new going on here. I am anxiously awaiting my beta day which is Friday. It's a short work week for me and that makes me very happy. In addition to Friday being beta day it is my two year wedding anniversary. We scheduled the blood draw at 9 am then plan on walking around the mall and maybe heading out for a nice lunch.

I'm PUPO!!!!!!

Today was the big day. We had our embryo transfer. We transferred two embryos, a four cell and a six cell. The experience was not too bad except for the fact that they want you to have a full bladder when the do the procedure and then they push all over your belly with the ultrasound and all you can think about is how bad you want to pee. After the transfer they make you lay down for five minutes and then they let you finally go to the bathroom and then they send you home to be on bed rest for 24 hours. So that's where I am now! Laying on the sofa taking it easy so that these little embryos can snuggle in. You may wonder what PUPO means and for those of you who don't know it is Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise. Here's a picture of my precious embryos.

Fert Report Part 3 and 4

This morning I missed yet another call from Dr. M. He left me a voicemail and told me that he was happy to report that we have 3 two cell embryos. I am sad that my Rockstar is gone but, Woohoo the groupies are still here!!!
I was surprised by another call from Dr. M later in the afternoon. Wow twice in one day I feel so special. Anyway he gave me the afternoon report on the embryos and said we have one 2 cell, one 3 cell, and one 4 cell. He then talked about doing the transfer tomorrow. He doesn't seem to think that we will have all 3 around tomorrow but he feels very confident that we will have 2. So the plan is to use assisted hatching and transfer back 2 embryos. The transfer is scheduled for 12:30pm on Friday.

Fert Report Part 2

This morning I got the call from Nurse D. I was a little in shock that she was calling me since she has been out of the office for pretty much my entire cycle since her father is dying, but it was nice to hear her voice. She told me that as of today we have 3 around 1 cell and 1 with no change from yesterday. I was very confused by what this meant and asked her to explain. She said that she believes that the 1 unchanged from yesterday is my rockstar, she said that it is very possible that it still is with us and that it just hadn't changed since the last report. She said that the other 3 were the ones that we were able to rescue with the ICSI. She said that she would give me a call back tomorrow to give me another update on my rockstar and groupies and that she would be giving me my transfer time for Friday.

I tried asking her some more of the questions that I had put together  but they are questions that would be better answered by Dr. M. She tried to get me to make an appointment to come in to talk to him about that but I really feel like we could do this over the phone much faster, so I asked her to send him an email and have him call me back. I am still waiting for a return phone call and I hope I hear from him soon. The most pressing questions I have for him at this point are:

1. Are there any tests that can be done on the eggs that diid not fertilize to find out why they didn't?
2. When we spoke yesterday you had mentioned something about a possible auto-immune issue, is there testing for this that we can get done now so that if we have to move on to another cycle we are already ready?
3. If this cycle does not work with I be put back on birth control?
4. Will we do the same protocol except ICSI won't be a rescue technique it will be the primary technique?

I am sure there will be much more to talk about, the longer it takes him to call me back the more things pop in my mind and I wonder should I ask him if this is an issue or is that an issue. (I know I should stay away from Dr. Google, but it is just so hard).

Fert Report Part 1

So this afternoon I got the call from Dr. M. He was amazed that we got 27 eggs, he was pleased that 23 of those were mature eggs, he was thrilled that my hubby's sperm count was 16 million post wash and 99% were moving. Then it was like a gut punch when he told me that only 1 fertilized. WHAT????? So at that point I lost my shit on Dr. M and asked him about ICSI and he told me that since we had already introduced sperm that we couldn't try it. I was really confused because all of the consent paperwork that we signed said that they would use ICSI as a recovery resort. Dr. M then told me that he was going to walk over to the lab and find out what was going on. He called me back 15 minutes later and said that they were able to ICSI 12 and now we need to wait until tomorrow to find out if any of those fertilize. So as of right now I only have 1 confirmed rock star and the hopes of a few more tomorrow.
Here's hoping that tomorrow is better than today!

Easter Egg Hunt

Today was egg retrieval day (aka the Easter Egg Hunt). I had to take the day off of work since my retrieval time was 12:30pm and we live about an hour away from the facility. We had to be there at 11:00am and I wasn't allowed to eat at 5:30am so needless to say I was a hungry girl.
They start my IV right away and when it was go time they walked back to the room gave me the meds in my IV and poof I was out!! The next thing I remember was being rolled to the recovery area. They game me some crackers and water and told me I could change. A minute later the nurse came in to tell me that we got 27 eggs!!!! I actually cried when I found out because I thought we were only going to get 12 or so. Now we just wait until tomorrow for our fert report.
Here's a picture of me and the hubby just before they took me back.

What a crazy week!!

Stims started on Saturday night and my first monitoring appointment was supposed to be Tuesday morning but Sandy had different plans. You may ask who is this Sandy I speak of??? Well she was the hurricane that came through our area Monday night into Tuesday morning. On Sunday my RE's office called me to tell me that the office would be closed on Tuesday so I would need to wait until Wednesday to come in for monitoring. Wednesday rolled around and I went in for my first monitoring and everyone was amazed at how well I was responding. I already had a few follicles I've 14mm so I was told I would be adding Ganirelix to my shots that night, I was also told to increase my Menopur to 2 vials and leave the Gonal F the same at 187.5iu. So the Ganirelix was just as easy as the other shots the only trick was that for the first dose I did it at night with my other shots and then I had to do the second dose the next morning and then continue with it in the morning and my other meds in the evening until the day I am told to trigger. I was told to come back in Friday for monitoring to see how things were going, this is when things got crazy!!!! I was told that they wanted me to trigger that night except the problem with that was the hubby had been activated with his task force to go and help the people of Western Maryland recover for Sandy. Dr. M and Nurse B both calmed me down and told me that we would turn the meds back a little, have me come in on Saturday morning and then most likely trigger on Saturday night for Egg Retrieval on Monday since hubby should be home by then.
Saturday's monitoring went well and it appeared that we had a dozen follicles on the right and about half that on the left. My E2 levels were up to 1789 for 1041 on Friday. I was given my trigger instructions and told to trigger at 1:30am. This is when I realized what amazing staff there was at my RE's office. Nurse B offered to do my trigger shot at her house that night since the hubby was still away and I had no one else to do it for me. She only lives about 5 miles away from me so I had a late night rendezvous at her house and she did my shot. I am so thankful for her and her willingness to go far above the call of duty.
Hubby got home on Sunday afternoon and we went out for a delish steak dinner. Yummy!!!!

My box full of tricks

Today is the day that I break into my box full of tricks. I start stims for IVF tonight. I really can't believe that this is happening. So what's the plan you may ask??? Well I will do 187.5iu of Gonal F and 75iu of Menopur. This dosage will be for Saturday, Sunday and Monday night then I will head in for monitoring on Tuesday morning to see how things are going.

All aboard the IVF Train

Today marks my last day on BCP's. 19 long days have come and gone and I am finally done. This IVF train is leaving the station. Early morning baseline monitoring tomorrow to show that all looks good and then get my calendar to start shots on Saturday. I can't believe this is actually happening. I feel like someone needs to pinch me.

Where have I been?

Since my lasy post I have been sailing the blue ocean. I went on a 7 day Disney Cruise and had a blast!!!
Here are a few pictures of the paradise we visited. St. Thomas, St. Maarten, and Castaway Cay. I know that I can hear a couple of you right now saying that you would never go on a Disney cruise because there are too many kids. Well you are wrong my friends. There are so many adult only areas that you can sometimes forget that there are even kids onboard. And if you have kids it is awesome too because there is so much for them to do in the private kids clubs that they don't even want to be around their parents. So totally a win, win situation if you ask me. We had such a great time on our cruise that we even booked our next cruise for November 2013, I can't wait!!!!!

As much as I was sad for the cruise to end I was happy because on my drive home I got to visit my best friend Katie (you can check her out here) I also got to meet her beautiful twins for the first time. I am in love with them!!! (Katie, you did a great job!!) After my short stop at Katie's it was back home so that we could get back to work to pay for everything. Work has been out of control busy since I got back so that is why I haven't posted. Don't worry though, things are starting to get exciting around here so I promise there will be more updates on the way and I promise I won't make you wait too long.

I think that Joe was thinking about seeing if he could transfer down to Castway Cay. I'm game!!!!

Winning!!!!!

I often find myself entering into all sorts of sweepstakes in the hopes that I may win something exciting like a new house, new car or even a kitchen makeover. Of course I never win anything like that, EVER!! But a girl has to be able to dream, right?
Well this morning I actually won something. Okay, it wasn't something big like a house or a car. But you have to start somewhere, right? I woke up to am email from Goodreads.com explaining that I had won a free book giveaway. The book is called Let's Eat: Recipes from My Kitchen Notebook. They tell me it takes about a month for the book to arrive. I can't wait!!!!! Because is there is one thing you know about me, it's that I love food. So how can I go wrong with this book.
Once it arrives I will let you know and of course give you a little review.

The Positives and Negatives

Today is 15dpiui and beta day. I woke up early and decided to POAS. It was the first time I did it this cycle, but the outcome was no different than any other cycle. Yep that's right it was a Big Fat Negative. I still went into the RE and had the blood draw done for my beta and now I await the call from my nurse. I haven't cried about it yet today, which seems weird to me. I am upset, no better yet I am pissed that 5 IUI's and nothing. What gives???
But with each negative there is a positive. Not being pregnant now means that I can drink while we are on our cruise next week. I fully intend on enjoying myself on this cruise. I will take this time to reset my mind to gear up for IVF. I'm not really sure how/when the whole process starts(I will know more when Nurse D calls). I know that I will be starting BCP at some point in time, probably this week. And double good news about my next cycle starting sometime this week means I won't be on my period while we are on the cruise either. Can you say winning????