Bananaversary

We celebrated our 2 year "bananaversary" today. We went out to Not Your Average Joe's. It was pretty delish!!  Also we went grocery shopping...lol we are wildly romantic. Honestly tho I havent been shopping in like a month an a half. I am so excited to have some fruit!!

I started to buy my books for my masters, I am so not all about school right now. I hope its done relatively quickly. I am doing Lesley's 22month cohort. Its about 1 weekend a month and later only 1 every 2 months so hopefully it will be less horrible.


Random IF (infertility) thought-  I keep thinking things are going to be "fixed" like it's just something temporary, sometimes its hard to come to the realization that no this is really the only way my husband  and I will be able to create a family together. I have to put my body through this every time and deal with the overwhelming uncertainty. Its hard to wrap my brain around. We were talking a little about it tonight, aside from the obvious sadness the two of us feel, our next emotion is anger. We have been doing really well not taking that anger out on each other, tho I think if this next cycle doesnt work, we really will need to consider some counseling together.


We start our next cycle in August, which is national panini month, so that is sort of exciting to me. I like panini's also its fun to say.

The end!!

2 posts in one day?!?!

Yup, I'm an animal. Today was the last day of school!! I painted 2 book shelves and packed my last box. It's kinda sad. I'm so ready for the "break" tho. However, right to camp tomorrow morning. Money in the bank.

RE nurse called today, her documents didn't match the REs notes, so she will touch base with me tomorrow.

Tomorrow starts eating health again, little to no carbs like last time, and if I can get my butt to the gym after a 10 hour day that would be fab too!

That is all! good night!!

IVF #1

I said I would talk about our fist IVF cycle. So I will, then I will start using this like a regular blog.

So right after Bill's surgery it just so happened that I was in such a place in my cycle that we could start with our first cycle that Friday! GASP. I was given the job of loosing 36lbs. I lost 18 and they said that would be enough. So on we went.
My insurance requires that we get specific authorization for each medication so I received my meds in two packages. 

This is my first package of meds I received. 80bajillion syringes, lupron, alcohol swabs, estrace, and a sharps container. I started using Lupron for suppression of my hormones. I took this picture while I actually said out loud "wow, never thought this was how I would be making a baby..."

Bill gave me my first shot in my belly. I cried and cried and cried. He did SO well, I didn't even feel it. Every day I had to find someone to give me my shot, I sat in a bathroom in a Chinese restaurant for about 10 min willing myself to poke my belly, I couldn't do it, my summer boss had to do it for me (luckily I have known her for 10 years, so no biggie) Finally one day I just decided I had to do it myself. I grabbed my belly and squeezed hard while I gently put the needle in my belly. I didn't feel a thing!! I could do it myself!!! I went in for a suppression check where they determined it was time to start stimming. In comes second package of meds.

 

3 boxes of gonal F (including needle caps) 

1 bottle ovidrel 

a dose of hCG

Crinone (progesterone vag. sups -ew.)

and some massive intramuscular mixing syringes, with subq needle attachments.

Man was I SO happy I didn't have to use those! I started with gonalF injections and dropped my lupron injections down to 5IU (yes two a night)

 

I went in to the hospital every 2-3 days for a trans-vaginal (oh yeah, its as awesome as it sounds....I call it the dildo cam, don't judge!) as well as blood work. I don't have normal veins so that meant a pedi needle in my hand every 2 days. awesome. Sometimes it went ok, sometimes it ended like this:  

 

Ouch!

Finally my ovaries started to cooperate, cooperating ovaries look somewhat like this:

Though those little follicles look nice and plump, they aren't large enough! I stimmed for 15 days. UGH.

This is your belly after 15 days of stims 

FINALLY it was time for ER. Bill came with me, everything went well except it took them 30 minutes and 4 tries to get the the IV in my arm, they gave me Valium and just let me sob a tiny bit. When all was said and done they retrieved 5 eggs. I said to the surgeon "Oh man, that sucks". because after all that drama I only got 5 eggs out of the deal, not ok. Oh btw, they get the eggs by sticking needles up my whoohaa and poking them through my fallopian tubes and into my ovaries, they drain each follicle and look under a microscope for the eggs. 

The embryologist fertilized the eggs by thawing one of the vials and doing ICSI- Inter cytoplasmic sperm injection. They take one single sperm and insert it into an egg. The next day we got a phone call with our "fert report" Only 2 of the 5 eggs fertilized. I was sad, but we has to remain optimistic. The next day they called us to come in for a 2dt (2 day transfer) our embryos were not doing very well, their only chance of survival would be in their "natural habitat". Bill couldn't come with me, so my mom did. We joked that my mom would be watching her grandchildren be conceived. (If you don't laugh, you'll cry).

Our two embryos were a 2DP and 4CF, in real people terms: #=number of cells, on a 2dt they should be between 2 and 4 cells, 2 cells is the lowest # for it to be considered a living embryo. The first number is the grade of fragmentation (space between cell divisions) grade A-D, so we had a D and a C. The last number is the symmetry in the cells graded Good, Fair, Poor, so we had a Poor and a Fair. Here they are, my babies

  (needed the sparkle nail for focusing purposes, but they are cute!)

Then we waited. 3 days before my beta (blood pregnancy test) I started spotting and cramping. I knew it was the end, the amazing nurse moved my blood test up one day so I could have it done with, I cried so hard that night, my babies were gone, and I knew it. I couldn't do anything to help them. And selfishly I was so upset that I would have to go through this all over again. I had worked so hard on a "project" for 3 months, then it was lost. like when your computer crashes in the middle of your thesis and you didn't save it, except with a baby. When the nurse called me and told me the inevitable it was almost calming, I had closure and I was ready to move on to the next try.

My RE is going to chance everything about my meds next time. I will begin on BCPs for suppression July 8th and stims on July 27/28th, tentative egg retrieval Aug 6th (which is cute b/c its our 7 year anniversary!) 

That's all about IVF 1. Now this will be a regular non rambling blog! 

So shall we start at the beginning?

When we started trying to have a baby we knew I didn't ovulate, I have PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome). It has a whole bunch of awesome side effects, one of them being anovulation. My amazing OB started me on Clomid. An awesome drug that made me throw dishes, cry, yell at Bill and have hot flashes. Bill calls it either "the clomid crazies" or "clomidia". As soon as I went off of my birth control, I started temping and charting. I had 90+ day cycles which ended in meds. Hence the need for the Clomid. This is my second cycle on clomid, what a chart should look like. Except mine kept ending in my period. 

 My OBGYN decided we needed to do some further testing, with the data that we had we knew there was more to this "problem". I had an HSG (hysterosalpingogram)  done. Basically a catheter with a balloon on the end is inserted into your cervix, it is then blown up to "block the hole" and dye in inserted into your uterus while xrays are being taken. They are looking for the dye to pass through your tubes. Basically it feels like a large man is standing on your uterus for about a minute. Fantastic. Along with the HSG we decided Bill needed to have a Semen Analysis (SA).
I received the call from my nurse at the OB's office in December. I can remember that moment like it was yesterday, standing outside in the cold listening to her say "sperm count is zero". Devastation. No other word for it. I couldn't even cry, my students had arrived. I looked at their little faces as I sang the circle time songs and just kept thinking "I will never get to have one of "these" with my husband" "I will never hear circle time songs from my kids, or sing to them". The only thing I have dreamed of since I was a little girl, ripped from me and it wasn't fair.
I went into "fix it" mode that day I called a local urologist who gave us the name of the top Male factor infertility (MFI) urologist in the NE area, Dr. Oates. We got an appointment with him in January, followed by an appointment with the Reproductive Science Center of New England (RSC). Dr. Oates did another SA, still zero, no obstructions. Genetic testing was done (we waited 7 weeks for the results) - nothing was found. We weren't sure if this was good news or bad news....it felt like no news. Our next step Testicular Sperm Extraction (TESE). A very invasive procedure Bill had to go through. After a long battle with the insurance we got it approved.

Here is Bill in his handsome surgery attire!

Bill went in for surgery and 30 min later Dr.Oates walked out into the lobby with this:

It was now my job to drive the sample from Boston Medical Center, to RSC in Lexington.  Most. Stressful. Drive. Ever. My mom came with me while Bill's mom stayed with him in recovery. I am so thankful to our families for being unbelievably supportive through all of this.
Bill and I went home and Bill got settled in bed with some good pain killers. and we waited. We thought our call from the Dr. to tell us whether or not sperm was found would come around 3ish. We arrive home around 11 we got our call at 12. SPERM WAS FOUND, 5 WHOLE VILES!! it was the best news we had heard in a very very long time. We just held each other and cried, we were going to get to have OUR baby. Something so many take for granted.

We then found out I was in such a place in my cycle to being with IVF right away. We were so happy to get things moving! I will update tomorrow on our IVF process, since I feel like this is plenty long enough!

-Nicole