Saturday Sputterings

There's not a ton to write about but it looks like some of you are reading this - so here you go, my devoted friends!

It's been a busy couple of days!  Thursday was VERY busy.  I took Tally to the vet at 7:30am and dropped her off for countless tests.  They did an abdominal ultrasound, chest and abdomen x-rays, blood work and a special pancreas light test.  Literally $1,000 later and I don't really know what, if anything, is wrong with her yet!!  I am hoping my Vet calls on Monday with the results the bloodwork and pancreas test.  The Ultrasound showed that her intestines were slightly thicker in some spots, which is not a normal indicator of inflammatory bowel disease.  The pancreas was slightly larger too, which could've maybe indicated pancreatitis.  Overall, she's just thin.  BUT, she gained back the tenth of a pound she had lost...so instead of being 4.9 she is now 5.0 pounds again, but about a year ago she was 5.5, so she's still significantly thinner, and she itches all the time.  Scratches her face till the fur comes off and her whiskers break off.  Poor little girl.  I've been watching to make sure she eats more (she's such a slow eater!).  I'm hoping that will help; both put the weight on and give her strength to fight any disease she might have going on.
Also on Thursday I went to the dentist, and then handed out holiday hams at work from 5:30pm-9:30pm.  Needless to say, Thursday was a long and busy day!
Friday I had an ultrasound and bloodwork appointment (me and the cat - both doing ultrasounds and bloodwork!). My follicles are growing.  I had one that was like 9.7 on the left side, and one that was 10.something on the right.  Both sides look like chocolate chip cookies on the u/s screen.  They said they like to see them around 18, and once they hit about 12, they really take off, so I was nearly there on Friday.  Surprisingly, I'm not having any discomfort (yet).  I mean, I feel great - hoping that feeling lasts right on through retrieval.  With feeling so normal though, it's hard to believe my insides are doing what they're supposed to be doing...it just doesn't feel like anything is happening!
My nurse called on Friday night to say that we would add some more meds in on Sunday night, and then hold my meds on Monday morning and come back for another ultrasound.  I'm betting by then we will be close to trigger shotting it.  :)
Today, Mom and I went to lunch at the Radisson, which was a holiday celebration hosted by Appleton Alliance Church.  It was a women's lunch gathering, with great food and a beautiful message.  I couldn't believe the number of women there who were choosing to be there rather than fighting the mall for much needed Christmas gifts.  Very wonderful.  So grateful for that positive in our lives.
This evening Rob and I went to Menards and got some drywall!  Yay!  We are SO CLOSE to closing up those darn basement walls and getting it to look like real rooms again down there!  We have a few more inspections to pass, and need the spray foam insulation guys to come out...but Rob is working on the cement board in the shower for now.  We bought some really cool tile to put up and can't wait to get started on those fun finishes.  We're hoping to have it all finished up by the Super Bowl so we could entertain the idea of throwing a party to show off all of Rob's hard work.  He does such an incredible job and I'm always so proud of him.  He's such a great husband.  I could tell you a really funny story from our time alone together in the ultrasound room on Friday, but I think I'll keep that one just between him and I. :)
On an extremely sad note, the woman I had been writing about in my blog who was trying to save her IVF twins lost them last week.  She posted a quote to her friends, "Don't pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to deal with a difficult one."  I thought that was so beautiful.  I saw on Facebook one of my friends posted that she knows 3 couples who are pregnant right now.  While that is beautiful for all those couples, whoever they may be, it still made me sad.  It always seems so effortless to everyone else.  Pregnancy for me has become like climbing Mt. Everest!  Even Kelly Clarkson on Ellen...(her interview was great by the way...super funny) she's 11 weeks pregnant.  Talking about it without a fear in the world.  Singing her heart out, bouncing around dancing on stage...seriously the only thought running through my head was, "hopefully she doesn't have a miscarriage."   And, she probably won't, but to me, that is what being early pregnant means...it means expecting a miscarriage.  Total insanity.
Overall I'm looking forward to this week.  I'm going to be unimaginably busy at work trying to tie up lose ends for benefits before the new year hits...and then I'll have to take a day or so off to go have retrieval.  I can't even envision how it will all work out, but it will.  It always does.  One day at a time!

I'm thinking Jimmy Johns

Jimmy Johns just delivered because I couldn't imagine feeding my husband another frozen pizza.  One of these days I will start cooking.

Anyway, I had my first ultrasound this morning to see how our little follicles are growing.  Apparently they are, but very slowly and aren't much to brag about right now....which is no doubt why I feel so good.  My nurse warns that they will catch up to me!  I have to do another injection tonight, a bigger dose tomorrow morning, and back to normal on Friday when I have another ultrasound.  Pretty standard.

Today at my u/s I had a technician who I've had many times before.  They all know me there.  I'm one of the infertility clinics best customers, no doubt.  She looked at my chart and said "I didn't realize we live so close to each other!"  I said "Oh, do you live on Capitol Drive?"  She said, "No, I live on Sunset" (which is the road right behind ours).  She said "What part of Capitol do you live on?"  I said "Between Richmond and Oneida," and she said "Oh, so do I!"  I said "The people with the 2 Boxer dogs that just built the fence this summer are right in my backyard."  She said "I live right across the street from them....well kind of diagonally.  I have the blue house with the brick." and I said, "Do you hang a big lighted Christmas wreath out front each year?" and she said "Yep!  That's our house!"  And I said "Oh - I can see that from my kitchen window.  I look at that wreath when I do dishes!"  So now I'm the stalker neighbor...but oh well!  She said "when you have your babies, you'll have to push them in the stroller around the block and come say hi!"  How cute!  :)

The story I reported on yesterday about the girl with the twins...without going into too much detail, it currently is quite a miracle.  She still has both babies.  She is looking at bedrest in the hospital for about a month if she wants to have any chance at keeping them.  She had contractions this morning, but so far they're still hanging in there.  Keep the prayers coming for that family!

Ok - stomach growling - time to go eat that sub...freaky fast!

There. I blogged.

Well, to keep up with the blogging, here I am.

Nothing new to report today.  I did have blood work yesterday and my nurse called me late yesterday and said that I needed to do another shot last night of more stim meds, and then a bigger dose this morning, and back to my regular dose tomorrow morning.  Tomorrow morning I have an ultrasound and more blood work to see how things are progressing.  I really don't feel anything, which is slightly bumming me out.  Last time my ovaries hurt so bad I could barely walk, which encouraged me that things were working, but maybe I should be careful what I wish for.  Those days may be just around the corner for me.  We will see tomorrow what we're working with.

Today was an interesting day.  I got home from work and my mom texted that they "lost their cat."  Dolly the cat had gotten outside when my mom hung a Christmas wreath on the front door.  Mom's text wasn't clear at first that they had found her!  I was worried sick! I was ready to strap on my boots and go hunting through mom's woods to find poor Dolly before she froze to death.  Thankfully my dad found her in their backyard.  She was so scared she "screaowed" (Scream meowed) at him to let her back inside!  Poor little cat.  It would've been DEVASTATING to our family to have lost her right before the holidays like this.   (Well, it'd be terrible to lose her anytime, but really, right before Christmas?!  C'mon!)

So after learning that Dolly was home safe and sound, I headed downstairs to feed my own kitties.  That is when I noticed our cat food bowls pushed oddly out of place, and licked clean.  The culprit?  Rodger.  Our basement is in the process of being remodeled, so to keep the dogs from getting at the cat food requires strategic placement of several baby gates across the open stud-framed walls.  Rob forgot to put one where it belonged last night, much to Rodger's delight.  :)  He had a good Tuesday.  The cats did not.  I think to express his distaste, Rocky the cat decided to "think outside the box" when going number 2 today.  That was a fun one for mommy to deal with as well.  TMI, and super gross I know, but welcome to a day in my life.  Pretty soon ROB will have to clean the cat boxes, when I am pregnant with our twins.  :)

Speaking of pregnant with twins, some sad news.  My co-worker has a close friend who was 19 weeks pregnant with twins conceived via IVF.  When she got pregnant she suffered from severe OHSS and spent days in the hospital.  The only positive to the OHSS being so bad was that it probably was a good indicator that the IVF had worked...which it did.  She found out on Friday that the twins she was carrying were both boys.  But then she started bleeding and as of yesterday was pretty certain she was losing one of the twins, and was hoping to hold on to the other one.  As of today I have not heard what happened.  My heart absolutely breaks for her.  Just to survive IVF is one thing.  To get a positive pregnancy test is another hurdle to be ecstatic to leap over.  Then to find out it's twins - pure elation!  To make it past 12 weeks of pregnancy; if it were me I'd think I had it in the bag!  Then, to be slammed with such insurmountable grief, I cannot even imagine.  You have to be extremely strong to take on this IVF journey because you just never know the outcome.  I am so saddened by this news, and I don't even know her other than as a friend of a friend.  I can only imagine a fraction of the pain she must be going through.  How do you even go on after something like that?  I'm sure today she may feel that she simply can't.  But she will.

On a lighter note, I delighted in seeing my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's Christmas Card online today.  The shot of Randy, Alyson, Cab and Jack is just priceless.  It reminded me that should IVF really never work for us, my family of 5 fur-children will be more than enough to keep my heart warm while we start the adoption process.  Speaking of fur children, prayers please for my kitty Tally.  She is our youngest cat - but by young, I am still talking like 10 years old (since none of our cats are young anymore).  She was a tiny stray that I rescued back in 2003.  I had gone out for Christmas Dinner at Marty's Place with the girls from work.  Rob was in California at the time.  I brought home some leftover fish and opened my patio door to feed it to the little stray who I had been feeding cat food to for weeks.  It was bitter cold and she had been living in a garbage can that I had laid sideways on my deck and had stuffed with hay so she could keep warm.  That night, when she tasted the fish, she decided this was too good to pass up and she bolted through my open patio door into my home...and into my heart.  10 years later and our little Tally is losing weight, significantly.  We've already run 2 blood tests which came back normal for metabolic diseases, meaning she doesn't have a thyroid condition or diabetes.  So, that leaves my Vet to worry that she has an intestinal disease, possibly even intestinal or pancreatic cancer.  She is going in for an ultrasound, xrays, and more bloodwork on Thursday.  Just getting her to the Vet is quite the treat, and she will have been there 3 times in the last 2 weeks after Thursday's visit.  Hoping we get good news Thursday, or, if it's bad news, that there's some sort of hope.  Can't even imagine losing her right now - right in the middle of trying to not stress with IVF, and right smack dab in the middle of the joyful holiday season.  We all have our fingers, toes, tails, and whiskers crossed over here!

Well, that's about it for tonight.  It's nearly time to give Dumb and Dumber (Cecil and Rodger) their bedtime treat, then it's time to cuddle up on a blanket on the floor until bedtime.  That's our routine these days.  Rodger is such a cuddler.  :)  My 6:30am ultrasound appointment will be here before I know it.  Hard to believe that we could be at retrieval just one week from tomorrow!

let the 3rd fresh round begin

Well, when we started this journey I NEVER thought I'd be writing this blog entry.  In my mind I thought I'd have my baby by now.  Not so.  As you can see, I never updated my last blog like I promised I would...back in August...but FYI - that frozen transfer resulted in a negative pregnancy test.  Shocking!

So, on Saturday I started my stimulation injections for our 3rd and final fresh IVF try.  It's so hard to believe that the last time we tried a fresh transfer was nearly exactly a year ago!  Our last fresh try, our retrieval was on 12/12/12 and this time we're targeting 12/11/13.  Last time we found out we were pregnant right around the holidays, and I miscarried on 1/23/13. 

"Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."  We've been planning to make a baby through IVF for over a year.  It hasn't happened, yet life goes on.  How quickly a year can go.  I'm a year older, which is like a death sentence for infertility.  But, I'm also a year wiser.  Rob and I laugh now at how we don't even bat an eye at the injections.  We used to be so cautious and nervous and worried we weren't doing things right, etc.  Now it is so much a "go with the flow" vibe we have going on!  We are so relaxed because we know EXACTLY what we are in store for.

I really hope this is going to be our miracle try.  Wouldn't it be amazing if the 3rd time really was the charm?  In my wildest dreams I can envision a big round pregnant belly, and a beautiful birthing experience, and a little bundle of joy to carry home to a perfectly decorated nursery.  I would give anything to be able to experience those moments that so many other first-time moms have. 

This blog is a little redundant.  I've talked about the same feelings for over a year now.  I still long for a child of our own.  I still feel sad that it hasn't worked out.  The symptoms of the drugs are all the same, moodiness, tiredness, uncomfortableness.  Nothing has changed, there's not much new to write about, but I'll try. 

I found a quote today:  "Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't permanent." (by Jean Kerr)   I hope that my feeling of "it's never going to work...we won't get pregnant...we're going to miscarry..." can finally be replaced with "Thank God!  It finally worked!"

IVF update - FET #2

I haven't been blogging.  My nurse suggested it was a good thing to keep doing it because it helps me get my emotions about this whole journey "out".  But, my heart just wasn't in it.  Until today. 

Tomorrow we leave for MN, again.  We will try our last frozen embryo which will be transferred on the 14th.  I figured I should start my blog up again just in case there is any good news to report on down the road. :) 

One thing I wanted to include was some excerpts from and email I received from a co-worker today who has been through infertility herself and who ended up adopting her beautiful children.  What she emailed me today spoke directly to my heart and summed up exactly how I feel.  She "gets" it.  Here's what she wrote:

Jennine, you are very very strong. you and your husband will have a baby, I just know it. one way or the other. I know how frustrating and long this has been for you. it is also hard when people around us get pregnant with no problems. we wish them the best but it is hard to watch. I am crossing my fingers for you and praying that this works. it is not easy, any of it. You can only put a good face on it and try to carry on, like you say.

 

you deserve the best, just like every other couple who tries to have a baby. it's hard to have patience but that is all you can do for now.  I know it is hard and that is why I don’t ask you about it all the time. I know you are busy being strong about this but that doesn’t mean it's easy. It's the hardest thing ever. But it'll pay off Jennine, one way or the other. then you can tell your kid someday what you went thru to get her or him. that you already loved her so very much. You will amaze your child someday!

 

you are a person with feelings just like any body else. Just because you have this to do does not mean you chose it for yourself, obviously. and also, you are not a football game with everyone cheering for you. you are just regular people who didn’t ask for this. You are a naturally optomistic person who hopes for the very best but also has to be realistic. fertility is something other people take for granted and so they are at somewhat of a loss with what to say to you. they don’t really get it, even if they mean well. Also, they don’t know how long it takes and they just think well next month then, if not this month. but it doesn’t work like that. it becomes very clinical with all the doctors, but you and your husband are still people. and deserve a baby too. and you will get one, it just takes a bit more effort.  I am rooting for you!!!

 

Her email could not have been more perfect, and I needed to hear it today.

 

Heard the Katy Perry song "Roar" for the first time this weekend.  Love it!  The lyrics are about continuing to be a fighter even when things are getting you down.  It is a song directed towards a person that is holding her down, but I think for me it is a song directed at infertility.  I am roaring back at it with all my might!

 

Tomorrow we head out to MN but we are going to make a fun day out of it.  We're leaving at 8am after we sleep in a little.  Going to Top Dog to purchase RIR sweatshirts (Did you know the founder of Top Dog used to run his business out of MY BASEMENT!?  Before I lived here of course...but the house I live in now used to be his, and he used to run Industrial Nameplate, the parent company of Top Dog, out of his basement - in 1973 - which is now my basement...and is currently in shambles).  :)  After Top Dog we have to stop at the shop to drop off Rob's golf clubs for Chad to use.  Then it's off to Cabellas, then to the Red Eye Brewery in Wausau for lunch.  When we get to MN we will meet our friends for dinner, then it's back to the hotel by 9pm for my butt shot.

 

Transfer isn't until 1pm on Wednesday.  That is later than usual.  Will be a little bit of a bummer cuz we'll get home later, but then it's nothing but bed rest anyway.  I'll be off of work through Thursday and back on Friday.  Nice to have a 2 day work week, even though I don't consider IVF much of a vacation.

 

I will post again once we know how the transfer went.  This time it took FOREVER to get my uterine lining to grow like it should...so I don't know if or how that will affect things.  I just keep telling myself, we're doing this because it could work.  Maybe this time it will.  Good nite!

HPT negative

Well folks at first glance it appears this time didn't work either.  I will stay on my meds and still go to both my blood test appointments to confirm, but the HPT this morning was a very clear BFN (big fat negative to those of you not familiar with the lingo).
There is a bright side though - now I can help Rob remodel our basement...I'm much better at demo when I'm not afraid of hurting the baby! :)  And, I can continue on my quest to drop some lb's.
I guess from here we'll try our last Frozen Embryo and if that doesn't work it's on to fresh cycle round 3.  I bet we can do our next FET fairly soon.  Probably just have to get a period and wait for all the meds to be out of my system.  My butt will be happy to get a break from the shots at least!
But - I'm not going to forecast the future.  We'll just have to sit around and wait for what the doctor's say....again.  Tell ya what...IVF is not fun anymore.  It has now become something I just want to "get to the end of" so I can get my money back.  (There's the crabby Jennine you all know and love!)

Stay tuned...

Wanna see my butt again?

While this isn't as bad as when I "fell off my bike" it's still pretty bad.  This is what 10+ days of PIO shots will give you.  Fun Fun!  And just think, if I'm pregnant I get to continue these shots for WEEKS!  And the bruise isn't even the bad thing, it's the soreness in the muscle tissue that really gets you.  But, in all actuality, it isn't really that bad.  Kind of hurts when I climb into my car, and when I plunk down in the recliner, and when I roll in and out of bed.  Other than that, it's liveable.

We are officially 1 week in to our waiting period.  Transfer was a week ago today.  For those of you looking to see if I'm having any symptoms, I hate to break it to you but I have none.  No sore breasts, no cramping.  That's fine.  Cramping just scares me, and who wants sore boobs?  No one.  Ever. 

That's right, I have no symptoms...although Larry at work tells me I have "the look."  (I think he means a pregnant glow or some wifey-tale of that nature....or maybe all the McDonald's I have been "stress-eating" has given me "the look..." months before I should have "the look" if you know what I mean!  Oink!)

I am 100% certain that I will end this guessing-game nightmare with a home pregnancy test on Friday morning.  I just want some answers, whatever they may be.  Remember how I have no patience?  Just tell me already! 

This cycle has been completely different though.  Rob and I are just going through the motions.  Pills and shots.  That's it.  Nothing too exciting.  Peeing on a stick is no big deal.  I used to make it such a production.  Ooooh, what if it's negative?  How will I cope?  But, I have been through everything now.  A failed cycle.  A successful cycle ending in miscarriage.  Nothing scares me.  Now, a pee-stick is just a means to an end.  Am I pregnant or not?  Tell me, oh magic stick!

One thing is for certain, I "manage" stress by TOTALLY overeating.  That is one thing that I find detestable about myself.  I had to talk myself out of getting McDonald's fries as a "snack" on my way home today.  Gross.  I watched Keeping Up With The Kardashians on Sunday night and it was all about how fat Rob has gotten.  I, my friends, am Rob Kardashian.  I think food makes me feel the way Bud Light used to make me feel, without all the annoyingness.  It's just a happy thing to injest into your body.  Bud Light made me unlikeable, and McDonald's makes me "Un-swim-suit-able."  I can deal with that.  There's always next summer to be swimsuit ready...after I take off the baby weight.  :)