Laughing, Laughing, Laughing

So they say that one of the things you should do after embryo transfer is laugh!  A lot.  Watch lots of funny movies.

So I've created a collection, two watch over the next 48 hours.

I started with Despicable Me.  Of course with the Valium and Acupuncture I had during the transfer, I fell asleep.  But when I did watch it I did LAUGH.  So I think next, since its late is Finding Nemo.

Then tomorrow

SpaceBalls - My mom wants to watch that one with me
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Eddie Izzard
Dave
(All of the above I borrowed from my friends Bryce and Patrick)  Thanks!

Then I have Sixteen Candles, Doc Hollywood, Aladin, Mary Poppins (more happy then funny) Shrek

And a few others.

I'm feeling good today.  My Doctor rearranged his schedule to make sure he was at my transfer.  I was all good with having his partner, but when I got there he said "I wouldn't miss your transfer!"  So that started my experience off perfectly.  Then one of my wonderful acupuncturist meet me at the office and set me up for before the procedure to relax me and get my uterus ready to except the embryos.  3 "Great" embryos.  Then I asked her if she would come in with me to the transfer.  My mom's back was really bad so she couldn't come and my sister had a big interview.  My dad would have come but last time they wouldn't let him stay in the room (of course I found out today that that is crazy and of course he can stay with me)  So if there's a next time and I hope hope hope there isn't, if he wants he can join me.  Its pretty cool.  When my mom came last summer, she got to look in the microscope and see the embryos before they put them in me.  She loved it.  Too bad none of those little guys grabbed on.  

Here's hoping with the scar tissue gone!!!!!  That this is it!

I'll keep you updated after I finish laughing my way through the next two days!

here we go again!

So...next FET is sometime around December 4th.  I haven't tried since July.   Had my surgery to remove scar tissue in September and went through a mock transfer with an endometrial biopsy last week, and the news was great!  Everything looks good and so now I get to dig into the 9 waiting embryos.

At the same time, sort of, I preparing for Foster to Adopt.  I've taken the training classes and had my LiveScan (fingerprinting) done on me and my dad.  Since I still plan on moving in with my sister she needs that as well.  All four of us (mom included) are going to take CPR and First Aid classes and then I can start the Home Study.  3 Visits for that and then I'm on the list!  Of course I'm hoping for a BFP before that but am planning on completing the Home Study since it will be keep me certified for 3 years after completion.  That way I can be put on the list for a little brother or sister in 2 years.

I'm having lots of good dreams and visions lately, and they had disappeared for awhile.  I can see myself with my child.  I'm even seeing myself pregnant which hasn't happened in a while.  I'm glad to be moving forward both biologically and adopting.  I KNOW that I will be a mom in the next year and half.  HOW?  who knows, but its so close I can smell it!

The "WHY" Pep Talk

I think I need a pep talk.  I think I need to give myself a pep talk.  I was so hoping that my Dr. would find scar tissue, but when he did, I wasn't expecting to be so so angry about it.  Don't get me wrong, at this point I needed him to find the scar tissue, because now at least I have some hope again for my remaining 8 embies, but...  Why didn't we look sooner, why didn't anyone take me seriously when I said my period was so so so light.  WHY, WHY, WHY!!!!!

I know, I know, things are happening the way they are meant to.  Really!!????  I was meant to go through this for almost two years (and counting).  I was meant to have two miscarriages?  I was meant to feel such utter disappointment that it hurts sometimes to breath!

Not turning into much of a pep talk is it.  Okay, lets try again.

I HAVE 9 WONDERFUL AMAZING BEAUTIFUL HEALTHY EMBRYOS!!!
I HAVE A PERFECTLY HEALTHY AND CLEAR AND JUST WAITING FOR THAT BABY, UTERUS!!!
I HAVE AN AMAZING FAMILY THAT SUPPORTS ME THROUGH ALL MY CRAZY!!!!
(hormones and all)
I AM FERTILE AND WILL BE A MOM COME HELL OR HIGH WATER!!!!!

oh, and I start my foster to adopt classes in 3 DAYS!!!!!

Ok, that helped a little.  I'm sure I'll need to give myself another peep talk soon.

till then....

Not a good couple of days

Tuesday

I know I try to be all brave and prepared for the possibility of being done with my attempts to get pregnant, but I was not prepared for today's phone call. Out of the 9 that fertilized, none are growing at the proper pace. They are going to wait one more day to see if any of them move past morula phase. But I at least got the embryologist to tell me that only 4 seem likely to possibly get there. I just really believed that with 9 I'd have at least 5, and now I'm hoping for all 4, but I know there's a chance I might not even get 4. And this is after being told I make beautiful embryos. I just don't get it. 

I'm trying to keep my hopes up for tomorrow. I know I have 7 frosties from the last cycle but we did things this time to help the eggs, since the 1st 5 we transferred didn't catch at all, and I had really high hopes that my kid was in this batch. I just hope I get good news tomorrow and that more than the 4 or at least all 4 start moving!!! 


Wednesday

So the news sucks. I emailed my RE last night and asked him to check the fertility report today so that we could talk if the worst happened. When I didn't hear anything by 2 I knew it was bad. I called the embryologist because I needed to know. She told me nothing grew. To put it mildly I'm devasted. I know I have 7 left from the last cycle but I was really counting on these new ones, with the Growth Hormone and co-culture I had such high hopes. So about an hour later my RE called. Turns out 1 made it. But its graded CC. My RE agreed with me to freeze it and add it to the others. It will be one of the last ones we try since I have much better graded ones already. This was my last retrieval though. 

Next week (I hope) I'll be going in for a hysteroscopy to see what's happening in my uterus, to see if there's scar tissue or something else stopping implanting since last summer. I'm truly hoping we find something, so that my hopes can rise again with the remaining 8 frosties waiting for me. 

I'm also going to check with the fos-adopt center I plan on using if necessary to see when the next session of classes start, as I had planned on waiting until January to start that, as I thought I would have at least 5 FET cycles ahead of me, but now really only have 2 or 3. 


This really is the first time my body and ovaries failed me in this whole process. I've always had remarkable response to everything so I was completely unprepared for this.

A bit of a Rant!

Great news... 16 retrieved, 11 mature and 9 Fertilized!!!! 

Not so great news. 1st the embryologist told me she was scheduling me for a day 5, then I had to tell her no no I'm an all-freeze. Then she asked me why and I told her to check out my uterus. Ok, here's the not so great part of the call, and you all might think I'm weird, but after all these IUIs and the 1st IVF and 1st FET, I'm tired of hearing it. She said that I make beautiful embryos, that she even looked at my report from my 1st IVF and couldn't understand why I wasn't pregnant yet. So here's my issue...since I started down this road of single-motherhood (in other words all medically supervised) and its been 19 months, I've been told this will be easy. "you're so fertile", "your numbers are amazing" "your ovaries have no clue that you are forty" So I was cocky for the first 1/2 a year, especially when I got pregnant with the 1st and 2nd IUIs once I moved to my RE. But its been exactly a year yesterday(lovely timing right) since my D&C for my last pregnancy/miscarriage. And I haven't been pregnant since. 

So I'm tired of hearing how great my ovaries are, how amazing my embryos look, how fertile I am. 

Just get me pregnant already!!!! 

Ok done with my rant. 

I'm truly happy that I potentially have 9 new embryos to freeze. That gives me (maybe) 16 to work with doing FETs, before I move on. And I truly believe that somewhere in these beautiful embryos is my child!

Summer 2014

So I've done the math and this is what I know.  By July 2014 I will either be a mom, be pregnant or be on the list waiting for a call from the Westside Children's Center about a child needing a home.  So that means I could be a mom by next July!!!  I want to say I will but not knowing how I'm going to get there is kinda of an obstacle.

So how do I know this.  Well I just started my last cycle of IVF.  Meaning this is the last cycle of stims I will be doing and the last time I will be retrieving eggs for transfer.  Oh and the last time I had to pick up the canister of my Sperm Donor.  If my ovaries respond as well this time as they did the last time then the most frozen embryos I will have moving forward is 19 (7 leftover from my last cycle and 12 new ones from this one).  If I were to transfer 3 at a time then the most transfers I can do is 4 ( 3/3 and the final one I would transfer all 4).  Therefore by the Spring if I'm not pregnant that I'm officially moving onto foster to adopt!!!!  I had a meeting last week with the head of foster to adopt at Westside Children's Center and it went great.  The guy was extremely helpful and supportive.  I've decided that I will start taking the training class in January regardless of where I am in my FET process.  I just keep moving this train forward.

I do still believe that this will work.  That I will get pregnant!!!!  But I wanted to learn about the process whether its for baby #1 or baby #2 or even both.  It helps me get through the bad months thinking about what I can do instead of the bad.  Not sure if that makes sense, but it does make sense to me.

So night 2 of stims in the books, blood test tomorrow and then we will see.

Here I go again...and again...and again

Yup, I'm back and still not pregnant.  But I feel good, well almost good.  My Dr. and I have a new protocol in the works for this IVF (which will be my last).  I will still have FETs to do, as I have 7 frozen embryos at the moment and will hopefully add to that number with the current cycle.  Our goal with this cycle is to improve the quality of my eggs even if this means lowering the amount of eggs we retrieve.  So a slower cycle of meds and adding Growth Hormone as well.  I feel like even though my body and ovaries have acting younger then their years, both in response to hormones and recovery times, the truth is I'm 40, yup 40, almost 41, so maybe we need to do a few things that get done for that older crowd I'm a part of.
So Growth Hormone, and yes same thing A-Rod is getting, oh wait nothing's happening to him yet. Anyway, the idea behind the GH is to help the cells in my eggs do what they are supposed to do throughout the retrieval and growth process.  Also we are going to do co-culture, what that means is that normally the egg is removed from the follicle it grows in and placed in a petrie dish with sperm.  In the case of co-culture, the egg is kept with the cells that surround it while in the follicle throughout the fertilization process.  Also adding in assisted Hatching (AH).  After my first IVF, my embryologist called to tell my how well my embryos looked and mentioned because I was over 40 they would do AH, but then she called me back 5 minutes later to say, oops, no AH.  Why?  Because they only do AH, when there are 10 or less embryos and of course I had 12.  Well shit, I'm still over 40, but that was the rule.  So this time I asked my RE about AH and said I'm still over 40 and he smiled and said yes, we will do AH this time!!!!!!!

So I've ordered all my meds and I'm back on BCP till next weekend.  I have my next u/s on Monday to make sure we are ready to go for next weekend.  Egg retrieval is tentatively scheduled for August 28th, one day before the 1 year anniversary of my miscarriage.  Not sure how I feel about that, but I guess I'll find out.  This cycle might be a freeze all, to allow my body to snap back and relax after the stims, but we will see.

That's it for now.

Thanks for reading.