150IU Br@velle/150IU M3n0pur

My first night of injections:

Mixing up the vials.

Making sure it's bubble-free.

Shooting up.

Holy crap that burns!

Teamwork

Wednesday Trina and I both had our first ultrasounds and blood work for this cycle. Hers came up perfect. Mine, not so much. I have a 22mm cyst in my right ovary. Our Dr assured us that it was considered "small" and that there was a good chance it wouldn't interfere with our plans. It would all depend on the blood results. If my estradiol was low, all was well and we could start as planned. If it was high, I'd have to go back on bcp and have weekly u/s until it disappeared. Then we could start our IVF cycle. Things generally don't go smoothly for us, but I wasn't prepared to hit another roadblock before we'd really even begun. We've already waited patiently through a 3 month break due to the holidays, a family trip and a lab closed for updates. It's amazing how quickly I went from nervous excitement to despair. I didn't want to go to work, I wanted to go home and crawl under the covers. I didn't even know if my cyst was going to be a problem and I felt like a failure already. Trina assured me it wasn't the end of the world and did her best to cheer me up. I went to work and tried to stay busy and not think about anything IVF. When I saw our Dr's office on my caller ID 6 very long hours later, my stomach dropped. Our nurse used her most chipper voice to tell me my estradiol was 41, so we had a green light to start meds on Friday. I asked her if she was sure and she laughed and said she was. I almost cried. All that panic and worry and self doubt for nothing. This is going to be a long road if I fall apart at every hiccup. What can I say? I'm new to this. I've never had the success of a cycle actually depend on "me" before. I've been to every Dr appointment, helped pick our donors, obsessively charted her temps and symptoms, gotten prescriptions from the pharmacy, found awesome deals on HPT, researched every possible aspect of TTC and documented the whole process for prosperity, but never has the ultimate responsibility of the outcome been mine to shoulder. This time we're a true team.

It's Time!

Wow, it's been 10 weeks since I've posted! I just didn't have to will to blog during our 3 month break from TTC. Let me catch you up to speed...

After much thought & discussion, Trina and I decided to use my eggs for our IVF cycle. I've since had all of the requisite pre-IVF wanding, poking, prodding & blood letting. Everything checked out fine, so we filled out all of the paperwork again denoting my new involvement & had our fee schedule recalculated. We've both been on birth control pills for over a month now to sync our cycles. This has been my first experience with birth control pills so I wasn't sure what to expect. Other than some spotting, an increased number of headaches and a few scalding hotflashes, all went well on that front. Trina had her lupron injection on Tues & took her last pill on Fri. My last pill is tonight, my first IVF u/s and blood is Wed and my first hormone injection is Thurs. Although we're still waiting for Trina's PIO to come in, we have a mountain of meds on our dining room table. This is starting to get very "real". :)

IVF, Here We Come

So much has happened since our BFN and I have had zero motivation to post.  I kept thinking, "Man, I should really write about this", but I never did... This may be a long one, feel free to skim until something catches your fancy.

I finally went back to work again after my wreck. It's exhausting! 3.5 months off really affects your strength and stamina. I did nothing but work and sleep the first week back. I could barely stay awake long enough to eat. Luckily it's getting much better now. 

The day after Trina started her period, we had a tearful consultation with our wonderful RE. He said we basically had 2 options. We could do a 3rd injectable cycle, then move on to IVF if it didn't work, or we could just jump to IVF. He said first 3 injectable cycles all have about the same rate of success, but starting with the 4th, the success rates drop drastically. Having lost all confidence in basic infertility treatments, we chose to jump to IVF. He scheduled Trina for a hysteroscopy so he could look at the exact spot he'd place the embryos. If the spot was clear, we could start this cycle. If the spot had scar tissue that needed to be removed, we'd have to sit out a cycle so she could heal. The procedure showed that she didn't have scar tissue, but that she did have a uterine polyp that had to be removed. This caused some cramping and bleeding for a few days, but wasn't too terrible. At her post op appointment, Doc said the polyp was small enough that we could start this cycle if we wanted to. Between my work schedule, the holidays and a planned trip to Arizona in Jan, we decided to hold off for now. She'll call them when her Dec cycle starts to begin suppression. In the mean time, I plan to do an obsessive amount of research, pay off as much debt as possible, try to decide who's eggs to use and win the lotto if at all possible...

We went to a patient education seminar dealing with a spectrum of infertility causes and treatments put on by our fertility clinic. They were giving away a free IVF cycle at the end. We didn't win, of course, but it was nice to dream. The seminar was great. The doctors are all so laid back and answered everyone's questions in detail. It was so much fun to people watch there. Infertility really affects a wide variety of folks. I liked listening to how people phrased questions. Some of them acted like the questions were hypothetical. They'd say "What if "someone" had a blocked tube blah blah blah", like they were asking for a friend or out of pure curiosity. I was thinking "You're standing in an infertility seminar, we know it's your tube that's blocked, it's ok, we're all in the same boat." Then there were the people who were over sharing in a major way. One girl rambled on for 5 min about her whoas. Apparently she knows her boyfriend isn't the problem because he's gotten 2 other girls pregnant and she's never been pregnant even though she's never used protection and that's how her cheatin' ass ex boyfriend gave her chlamydia. Wow. Then there was the guy who guzzled wine throughout the whole thing and cringed at all of the pictures and diagrams on the power point presentation. He says, slurring,  "I've had quite a bit to drink so I'll be honest, we got mobility problems, her parts are fine..." It was hilarious. Who would have thought hearing about infertility would have made for such an amusing night?

BFN#12

Not even pr0gster0ne could keep AF from coming 2 days early.

Not Looking Good

We've been so hopeful this cycle. Optimism has run rampant in our house. Even when her temp plummeted yesterday, we tossed around the idea that it was a REALLY low implantation dip. This morning's temp eroded our confidence and the spot of blood around noon has it pretty much shattered.

Two Sets of TIny Little Baby Parts

Our very good friends welcomed their beautiful twin boys into this crazy world on Monday. Trina & I have spent every possible moment in the NICU gazing at them in all their 4 pound glory. Those little boys are amazing in every way. I couldn't be prouder of them or their wonderful parents. Being around them makes our baby fever palpable. Please, please let this be our cycle...