I'll let you know either way

Tomorrow is the big day! Blood draw at 7 am and then anxiously wait for my nurse to call. M and I decided to have her call him and give him the news. Please, please, please let it be a great birthday present for him! We're feeling optimistic that it will be, but just in case we figured he can handle the call better than I will be able to. I know many of you will also be waiting along with me, so I will let you know either way. Thanks again for all your positive thoughts and support!

no snowbaby

I forgot to tell you that my nurse called yesterday and told me that the 3rd embryo did not make it to freezing. She said not to worry about it, that it just means that they definitely chose the best ones to put back in me. Of course it makes me worry! But it's out of my hands now. It's also a bit disappointing knowing that when we are ready to do this again (be it soon if this doesn't work out or in the future when we want to have more kids), we will have to start all over again with the shots etc. On my boards they call the frozen embryos "snowbabies". Kinda wierd but kinda cute at the same time.

TeamJBL, can't wait for tomorrow's news! I'm predicting a girl.

the evil trio

Ugh. This waiting just sucks! The not knowing is killing me. I am trying not to get obsessed and follow M's advice to just live in the current phase and not get ahead of myself. This is kind of hard when I am having cramps all the time. So even if i am not thinking about it, i am having physical reminders of what *could* be happening. One of the most frustrating parts is what i am calling the evil trio: the fact that early pregnancy signs, PMS and side effects of all the meds I'm on are basically the same. Cramps? fall into all 3 categories. Exhausted? same. Ditto bloating, sore boobs, moodiness...

Well, at least it's the weekend!

Waiting

After all the flurry of activity, now we wait.

I'm not so good at that.

No news to report!

PS: sorry for those who have been worried that i've been quiet! there's just nothing going on.

success! (for now, at least)

Greetings from my comfy bed!

All went well this morning. The 3 eggs were still growing, yay! One of them was bigger than the other two. The big one had 9 cells and the others had 6-cells. They grade the embryos from 1 to 5 (1 is the best) and mine were all grade 2. As an overachiever, this upsets me a little but she did say that the big one was borderline grade 1. Her recommendation was to transfer two embies: the biggest one and one of the smaller ones. The other one will continue to hang out in the lab and will hopefully continue to grow over the next few days so it can be frozen for future use.

The transfer itself was rather easy and painless, except for the fact that you have to have a full bladder which gets really uncomfortable after a while! We got two funny parting gifts: a printout of the ultrasound as the catheter was releasing the embryos, and our first baby picture! The embryologist gave me a picture of the two embryos in the dish. M is trying to get our scanner working so that I can share them with all of you. Kind of ridiculous, but amusing and thoughtful nonetheless.

Today i am watching my cat sleep in the sun, reading for pleasure (just finished To Kill a Mockingbird which i haven't read since high school and LOVED just as much the second time around), and will soon be transferring myself to the couch to catch up on episodes of Gossip Girl, 90210, America's Next Top Model and other such trash that i can't stay away from. Oh and speaking of trash i can't stay away from, can't miss Sarah Palin on Oprah this afternoon!

Thank you once again to everyone who has supported me so far! Your love is definitely felt on my end. Now time to visualize those embies burrowing in to their new home...

Yes!

All 3 eggs continued to grow! What a relief. I've been freaking out waiting for this phone call. Woke up early and started mentally preparing myself for the worst case scenario, imagining the call telling me that it was all called off because the eggs stopped growing. Instead i got the best case scenario: all 3 are still growing! The egg transfer is scheduled for tomorrow morning at 9:15, and then I have to be on bedrest all day tomorrow. I am still freaking out. I've been so scared this morning. I am going to need some SERIOUS help getting through the next 2 weeks.

50 Percent

Fertilization report: As M's swimmers played around with my eggies in their little dish in the lab, it turns out that 3 of the eggs cooperated! I just got the call saying that half of the eggs fertilized. 3 of them are now 2-celled embryos. Tomorrow they'll call to let me know how many continue to grow into 4-celled embies, and also whether the doctor recommends the egg transfer for Monday or Wednesday.

Thanks to everyone who called, texted, emailed, commented with hopeful thoughts yesterday! Now grow, embies, grow!!!

Half-dozen

Egg retrieval was quick and relatively painless (thank you, vicodin, ha ha) and I'm home vegging out now. They retrieved 6 eggs! This is a pretty good number, i think. In the end it's all about the quality of the eggs and not so much the quantity. Tomorrow they will call between 12 and 3 to let me know how many of them fertilize, which is a more important number than today's. Then on Sunday they'll call to say how many of the fertilized eggs divided, and from there move on towards deciding when to transfer them back! I am trying to stay calm, but am kind of on pins and needles. This whole thing is stressful. Breathe in, breathe out...

All triggered up

Yesterday we got the green light to go ahead and do the LAST injection! This one is called the trigger shot because its function is to tell my body to go ahead and ovulate. Everything is so time-controlled and sci-fi with this one. My retrieval is scheduled for 12:15 pm tomorrow, and we had to do the shot exactly 36 hours before, which meant that i went to bed and M woke me up 3 hours later at 12:15 am to inject a needle into my booty. Fortunately i have a lot of cushioning in the buttoxal region! :) But c'mon, i have to be woken up to get a needle jabbed in me? When will it end? Soon, soon, i know. At least i get the day off school tomorrow and some fabulous pain meds to boot!

3 days in a row

Sorry to leave you hanging...I didn't have to go to the RE on Sunday! We got to stay downtown and boy did we enjoy our night! M paid the price the next day...sometimes 3 whiskeys at the open bar happy hour is not the best way to start off your long night of drinking! :)

Yesterday i had an ultrasound and bloodwork, today i had an ultrasound and bloodwork, and tomorrow i will have an ultrasound and bloodwork! Follies are growing, lining is "textbook", but in the words of the ultrasound tech who is my new BFF "you've got a couple of guys in there leading the pack but the rest of them need to catch up". They got my hopes up today that i would be doing the trigger shot tonight and having the ER (egg retrieval) on Thursday, but no. One more night of injections (with an upped dosage to hopefully light a fire under those lil guys), another early morning visit tomorrow, and most likely trigger Wednesday PM and ER on Friday.

Getting closer=good
Egg retrieval on Friday the 13th=not good
Trying to find evidence that the number 13 can actually bring luck...let me know if you have a good association with the number!

we're growing, we're growing

8:30 am on a Saturday morning and I was not in my warm beddie, but rather at the REs office. Yippee. The things I will do for this (possible) baby! Ultrasound tech said "things look great" in there, meaning that now some of the follies are measuring 14-15 mm. The flip side of this good news? The doctor may want to see me for monitoring again tomorrow morning instead of Monday. I'm already kind of worried about dealing with the injections tonight while at a wedding, and now I may have to get up early again tomorrow? Ugh! Again, the things I will do. This is one of the many times when it just doesn't feel fair that i have to go through all this to get what some people can get so easily, sometimes even on accident! Can't a girl just sleep in on the weekend? That's all I ask. My belly is covered with small bruises from the injections that my poor husband has to shoot me up with every night, and I can't even sleep past 9? Sorry to be a whiner, but it sucks.

On a lighter note, we got a last minute deal to stay at a fun boutique hotel downtown tonight after the wedding! We were going to cab it to my parents' house and stay over there so that we wouldn't have to drive home to the burbs, but then we found a great deal. I'm looking forward to the king size bed and hoping that I get the phone call this afternoon that says to come on Monday morning instead of tomorrow.

Have a great weekend everyone! And happy wedding day to Holly and Bill!

another thrilling update!

Went in for a monitoring appointment today. They say all looks good; 7 follicles detected on the ultrasound, and bloodwork at appropriate levels. Right now all the follicles are under 10 mm in size. The nurse says that they look for at least 4 follies at 17-18 mm before the big trigger shot, so i've got a little ways to go. But I'm on track in the numbers department, yay! I go back on Saturday morning for the next monitoring appointment.

Needle Count: 13

Yesterday I started two new injections. So now I do one in the morning and two at night. One of these new ones really stings! Definitely plan to numb a little better tonight. I go back to the RE on Thursday morning to see what effect these drugs are having.

Not much more to say. I am brain-dead from 2 straight days of parent-teacher conferences and can't think too straight!