Ordering a Baby…

That is what it felt like last week when I made the call to “R.”

Me: Hey “R” this is IVFwoes, how are you!

R: Woes! How are you?!  We are great, how are those twinkies of yours!

Me: They are great, growing like weeds, and keeping me on my toes.

R: That is great, you need to bring them in sometime! We just love seeing our creations! And your DS? How is he doing?

Me: He is wonderful too! Yes, we will bring in the creations in soon.  Well, I am calling because I would like to order another one.  I only would like one this time, but I am as assuming they will take both out of the freezer and thaw both to be able to pick the best one?

R: Yes, and if we can re-freeze the egg we will,  when would you like it?

Me: Well, I am thinking spring or summer baby, so August sound good?

R: Yes, let’s get you scheduled.

Now, it didn’t go EXACTLY like that, they don’t call my babies creations, and I didn’t order a baby like pizza. But it felt that way. This last cycle we just straight order what we would like, this ain’t our first rodeo, but the fear is still there. I find myself getting excited and then I remind myself that not every embryo will stick.  I have only been through one FET and it failed.  I feel in a much better place than I did during that cycle but the fear is still there, constantly creeping up at unexpected times trying tear down my hope.

Now that I have set my date what is next.  They will schedule me for a meeting with Mr. Wandy to check to see if my uterus is clear.  I need to get serious about my health.  I am not going to go crazy with vitamins, herbs and all that good stuff this time. I just need to take what my body needs.

Prenatal, Fish Oil, Vitamin D and U Co-Q-10.

Then I will go a massage every other week, and start going to acupuncture in June.

I have started exercising daily, and will add Yoga and Barre Method the first week of June.  Yoga is something that I have done basically my whole adult life. It’s good for the soul and helps me visualize being pregnant and implantation which I think is so important to be in the best head space, and Barre method is something new I want to try.

Lastly, I pray, daily, every day, every chance that this baby will stick. I am scared and that is the truth. I want this so bad, I want this last baby to finish my family, but I have to remind myself how lucky I have to have the 3 already. Sometimes I feel greedy but then I think it’s not fair that I should feel like that, there are people who have 4, 8, 10 kids and they do not ever have to think of themselves as being greedy. Just because I am using science does not mean I have to feel that I should stop at whatever point is “rational” for others.

So I hold on to hope and work as hard as I can to prepare my body for this journey!

Today I live you with this:

1 John 5:14

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

Love and sticky dust!

IVFwoes

 

Oceans…Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders

Like I told you in the beginning, as I finish this IVF journey I may jump around.  Mainly because I will write what I feel at the moment.  I am about to head to bed and I am listening to Oceans by HIllsong United. This song is going to be important to me for the rest of my life because this was my song during my twin cycle.

As you can imagine after 2 failed IVF cycles we were feeling defeated. We still had our son and so we tried to keep things in perspective that he just might be our only one and we were grateful for that.

My husband needed surgery to extract sperm and not just any surgery.  The surgery he needed was going to be a Micro TESE and only a handful of people truly specialized in the surgery.  I went back to find the original article done on this surgery because if we were going to do it, we were going to the best. At this point we had already spent $50k in IVF cycles and had our sweet son to show for it, but two heart breaking failures.

That is when I found Dr. Bruce Gilbert in Great Neck, NY. http://brucegilbertmd.com/micro-tese/

At this point we were ready to drain our financial resources for another child (as this cycle ended up costing a whopping $48K.)  We made an appointment with him, as you can imagine he is booked out far in advance.  But of course getting there would not go smoothly.  Our flight got cancelled and knowing that we did not want to have to reschedule and push our cycle back, we flew in to Maryland, rented a car and drove 4 hours to get to the appointment on time at 8 am.  We were exhausted and that is when we coined our phase, “if this was easy, it wouldn’t be worth it.”

I will go into more details about Mirco-Tese and the Cycle in a different blog but for now I just want to talk about the song.  So during the 5 months, I leaned on God with everything, I mean I could not have walked during this time if it wasn’t for him.  And anytime I started to doubt or feel weary, the song Oceans by Hillsound United would come on geh radio or pandora, and I would think to myself, there is God reminding me again to trust HIM.

Well I go up for the week of ER and transfer, and I am just praying that Oceans would play. I am listening to Hillsong United Pandora station, Christian radio, and NOTHING. The song that I have heard probably a 100 times in the last 6 months in my moments of doubt does not play for me one freaking time. I was so low, and so sad. Because even after transfer as I leaned on HIM, I am asking please give me a sign this worked, give me MY sign. Nothing. After almost 2 weeks of being in New York for ER, Transfer then 4 days of bedrest, I finally am leaving to go back home.  I drive to LGA, and I am thinking well, we did our best, but I don’t think this worked.

Then as I approach the airport, OCEANS PLAYS on chrisitan radio, and ends right as I park the car the rental car to turn it. I burst into tears, the ugly hyperventalating tears. People must have thought something terrible had happened because I could not stop crying. And I KNEW, I KNEW at that moment HE never left and I was pregnant. Then 8.5 months later I gave birth too 2 healthy, beautiful 35 week twins that needed no NICU.

Moral of the story: Never lose hope.

Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders

Love and Sticky Dust,

IVFwoes

91 days till transfer…

Let’s call this what it is people!
I have NEGLECTED you. But that ends today. While getting ready for tomorrow the BIG day. I found this, and old top to a storage bin of our vitamins that my husband and I took in preparing for our cycle #4 with resulted in our twins.  At the time I am sure there was a reason why we took all of these pills.  As I get ready for Cycle #5 and hopefully baby #4.  I do not feel the same urgency as before, but will plan on looking into some of these vitamins and get back to you next week with which ones I will take this time.  But with tomorrow being 90 days’ till transfer it is time to get my s*** together.

Why is 90 days so significant?  Well, some of the obsessive reading I have done over the years explains that the development of an egg approximately takes 90 days.   Sol I also kick it up a notch in the health department 90 days before egg retrieval.  In this case I will not be retrieving any eggs so my 90 days will end on the day I have my frozen transfer.

I do everything in my power so that I will not have any regrets.  We tend to beat ourselves up, and the reality is, at the end of the day, we are all just praying they stick. We all know that even a great looking, grading embryos sometimes just doesn’t stick.

Anyway, I am off to work out.  Part of the daily plan! I look forward to sucking you in on my journey the next 90 days!!

Here we go!

Love and Sticky Dust!

IVFWoes

The Reality of Failure…FET#1

Before I start this post I want to apologize for the discontinuity you may feel with my posts.  Since I essentially have skipped blogging for about 4.5 years I will be playing catch up and giving new details about my journey now and then.  But today before I get on the DREADED treadmill and start my 16-minute mile I thought I would talk about my first and only FET thus far.

I feel the need to write this post but I am feeling nervous while writing it knowing that I will be going through another FET cycle in August. When my 1st FET failed I was heartbroken but I kept it together because I was one of the lucky ones whose first round of IVF had worked (even though 2 embies were implanted and only one took, I still got my DS.)

So when this FET failed, I went home and cried but at the end of the day I still rocked my first baby to sleep and I am grateful for that because I know how many people do not have the buffer of another child when these cycles fail.  But nevertheless it hurts.

People who do not have to use science to have a baby do not understand the devastation that comes with a failed cycle.  Not only have you put money, time, and effort into going through a cycle, the emotional rollercoaster and the daily reminder that you have to go through this for a chance to have a baby slowly chips away at your soul. The daily injections, patches, pills, alarms set on phones so you don’t forget, wondering if all the PIO got injected because you feel like some leaked out. It’s taxing. It’s hard to stay positive or grateful for the opportunity because every day you are reminded that you cannot have a child without science, and chances are still not high.

But I will write a blog on support another day, today is about why I think FET#1 failed.  If I am being honest FET#1 was horrible timing.  This is where I left off on my blog, so I figure I will pick up there.

After the Routine Appointment, I went in for my first meeting with my old friend Mr. Wandy.  There is nothing I love more than to have a plastic camera stuck up my vagina (obviously I am joking 🙂 ) It was during that ultrasound that we discovered I had polyps in my uterus, which the doctor believed they developed after the birth of my first child.  Immediately the May cycle was cancelled and I was scheduled for a polyp removal surgery instead.

I was happy about this because honestly I was not ready for a cycle in May, I only had 2 months to mentally and physically prepare and I was not there.  Our life was crazy, and I was still trying to get down the first time mom thing with no support, my husband had just stopped traveling for work, and it was a messy time in our lives to be spending thousands of dollars on having another baby. But my husband was ready, and I wanted more kids so why not go for it.

After the removal we were given the all clear, and set for a July FET.  I tried my best to get in shape, but I didn’t. I didn’t take my vitamins regularly, and I was still overwhelmed with life, my marriage was in a rough place, it was just a hard period. Acupuncture and massages which were regulars during my first cycle, I had cut out because I did not have the time and quite frankly did not want to spend the money!

I knew my mental and physical body were not prepared, and I still went through it. I got angry for a while because people get pregnant all the time when they are stressed, when it’s the wrong time for a baby, crack addicts get pregnant. And I am thinking, My God, we are good people, we go to church, volunteer our time, love everybody and do not discriminate, we have a home, good jobs, a good life, and it should just work damn it.  So what if life is a little crazy, why can’t it just be easy.  But when it didn’t work and I got that HORRIBLE CALL I wasn’t surprised, I knew in my heart the timing was off, I was not ready, and it just was not meant to be, but I knew then we would go through another full round and when we did it would work, because it had too, it was only fair, right??

Looking back, I was naïve, but you have to be to keep going time after time.  You have to keep the faith that you are going to learn something, do something different and you will get the baby you have been praying and dreaming about.

And you know the worst part of a failed cycle, is that damn progesterone, telling my body, I am pregnant with the sore boobs, bloating and nausea. It’s a good swift kick in the gut and a reminder that until that call I received at 4 pm, I was pregnant until proven otherwise. It’s like you don’t know what to do with yourself, you feel silly for being so upset, it’s not like you were pregnant so can you call it your baby, it’s not a miscarriage, the embryo just didn’t stick.  If that is the case, then WHY DO I FEEL like I lost a baby, why do I FEEL like that was my child that I never get to meet now, WHY does it HURT so much. For all I know the embryo was missing chromosomes or maybe it had severe defects, but I don’t know that because I did not have testing done on them. So instead I am left wondering why I am not pregnant. The pain is real.  But I didn’t give up, we didn’t give up.  And this time I knew that I had to take control of start prepping now for my next cycle.

With no embryos left and we would have to start from the very beginning.  IVF Full Cycle #2, try #3 here I go!!

Until next time!

Love and Sticky Dust!

IVFwoes

The 16 minute mile

Oh F^%& ya! 1 mile in 16 minutes and 45 seconds! Are you serious?? I can’t even. You know when people are like you will never regret a work out, well I do, every F-ing time I do it. Now I am a Christian woman, and cussing only comes out of my mouth when I am at my limits, but my gosh. I hate working out right now. Truly hate it. I know one day I will love it. But tonight I hate it.

When I started this IVF journey I was a hot, tight, 128 pound 26-year-old girl. Working out was more about seeing my friends at the gym, and running a quick mile and lifting a few weights and then head out to eat pizza and drink wine. I didn’t have to work out to stay in shape. Fast Forward to gaining 10 pounds of water weight every cycle (that is TIMES 4 people!) from bloat and fertility drugs, then giving birth to 3 babies, bedrest with twins for half of a pregnancy, gaining 60 lbs. with the twins, and that tight ass body was then 175-pound ball of fat, with diastasis recti, boobs that hang to my navel and twin skin that has its own zip code.

So, here I am 4 months out from my LAST IVF and I know that the times I have been successful I have been at my best mentally and physically. That has been my key to success. Back in November I knew I needed a mind reset so I did the Whole 30 eating plan. It is NOT a diet, but truly a reset. I lost 15 lbs. after completing Whole 30 and then another 10 lbs. after a month just by continuing my habits until I was 150. I kept almost all the weight off for the last 4 months but it has slowly started creeping up. I am now at 155. I don’t know what my goal weight is but right now all I want to feel is strong and healthy again in the next 4 months before I stick another child into my uterus praying that is sticks.

Until Next time!

Lots of love and Sticky Dust!

IVFwoes

Here We Go Cycle #5 and Baby #4!

Hi!

IVFwoes here! You may be wondering why my first post (in almost 3 years) is a picture of an undecorated bathroom.  Well, I am in the process of decorating my ½ bath.  We moved to our new home about a year ago and it has taken me that long to finally figure out what style I will be decorating this house.  So now, I will start from the beginning decorating ANOTHER house.

How is this relevant to IVF.  Well as a 6-year veteran and 4 cycles under my belt I now understand that it takes months, maybe even a year to gear up and prepare for a cycle.  You will try and do some crazy things in hopes that it will increase your chances of pregnancy.  Even after all these cycles here I am again, planning my vitamins, exercise plan and pre & post cycle plan.

So, as we start our prep for the very last cycle we will ever do – I will once again share that experience the same way I shared our first.  Hopefully, I will find time to fill you in on the years past as we go along but life is busy. But most of all I hope that this helps others along the way on their journey to baby. It’s long and painful, but always worth it.

So here is the number 5 and final. Don’t call it a come back, I’ve been here for years! 😉

 

Routine Appointment

As you know we are ready to start thinking about Baby #2.  So we went to see Dr. Truth and talked about plans for the next baby and what we would need to do.  Everything seemed great and since this is not our first rodeo it was brief.  We then go into Nurse Boss’s office and she said so what date do you want, and the Huz says May! I look at him like what! He then gives me that, “Well why not?” stare…I told Nurse Boss that we will call her tomorrow with an answer.  Since I thought we had decided we were going to wait until the July cycle.

At this point I am not on board…I don’t think we are ready for number two, I have so many projects that I want to get done before I get pregnant.  Well more like purchases not projects! So I call my mom and she tells me if you are not emotionally or physically ready for another baby then don’t do it, but if it’s because of finances, I expect you to go through this in May.  Don’t get me wrong, we are not super wealthy, but we are pretty comfortable, and I just had other things I wanted to buy that we were saving up for before I had another baby.

So I call Nurse Boss and tell her that we are going to be doing the MAY cycle! Yep! That’s right! We are going through this in less than 2 months, so my 4-5 month window just CLOSED very quickly. I do not even have my protocol yet, but I will start BC pills today.  So wish me luck and we start this FET process! I honestly can’t believe it, but It is a relief because the decision is made and we are doing it. So here’s to stickiness!

OH LIFE!! You’re So Funny!

Sorry it has been a few weeks since I have been on last, but SO many things have happened in the last two weeks that I am going to separate the blog posts. I don’t want you to read more than you have too!  I can say that I finally feel settled though. We have had so many big decisions lately that everything was up in the air, and now we know what direction we are going in and it feels really good!

Fast Forward…My Venting Session

The waiting game…With infertility you are always waiting, waiting for your next doctor’s appointment, waiting for test results, waiting for something. Most of all, you are waiting for your children. 

Thinking back to when I was a little girl playing pretend and house, I always envision myself with a certain amount of kids (mine was 3), but I always only had 1 baby and a couple of older kids.  What you don’t know at that time is each kid has to come one by one and at one point they are ALL babies.   I LOVE LOVE LOVE my little man and I am trying to savor every moment with him.  However, sometimes I just want to be on the other side of having kids.  I want to know I am DONE paying/savings to have kids, I want to know how many I will end up being blessed with, and I want to know I will never have to give myself another shot. I just wish I could fast forward to the end so I know,while trying to enjoy the present.

With all that said, I do feel a little bit at ease with this second go round.  I feel comfortable and ready for baby #2, I have all the items I need, and now that I have been pregnant I feel that I am more in tune with my body.  Even though every baby is different, there are certain things that I feel less stressed about, for instance, nursing, I made it a year with little man, and I know what to expect.  I hope to make it a year with #2 but if I don’t make it, I do not think I will be as devastated as I would have been with little man.  I am just more realistic about the LACK OF CONTROL you have with your child. Certain things work and other things don’t, and it’s all about just surviving and living in the moment with children.

The main stressor is hoping to get pregnant (as usual.) It worked last time, but you just never know…ever. I hope that it works again but you can’t get your hopes up too high.  I am doing all I can on my end and I just hope that it works with Gods plan.  Because the July implantation is really our only shot for this year, we would have to make major changes in vacation plans if we have to go another round, which would result in having to tell family members when we really do not want to until after we are pregnant again.  I just hope this frozen embie holds on for dear life!

But at the end of the day,  I am so grateful that I live in this day and age.  Who knows if we would even have children at all 35 years ago. I feel so blessed and lucky to have my one.  So even with all this waiting, anticipation, worry and expenses. I am grateful.

Round Two