Forgetful

So, I had to set the alarm on my phone again in order to remember to give my shot. 7pm just seems to sneak up on me. I feel good so far. The shots don't hurt at all, and I have had no bleeders so far, so no bruises. I am sure after a month I will have a couple bruises to show.

I tried to take pictures last night and I attached 2. Sorry that they are out of focus. Bobby was wrangling Connor, so I tried to take them myself and must have been standing too close. Anywho, I will post others later in the process.


The more we do this IVF thing, the more laid back about it I am. Normally I would be so focused on this process that I litterally couldn't think about anything else. But now this is just sort of something that is going on in the background of my life. Maybe because this is a frozen embryo transfer, so my body isn't going through the whole process of making mass amounts of eggs.


Tonight is my last night of birth control. I expect a little mood shift in the following days because of this. I don't remember the Lupron affecting me that much last time, but both Bobby and my mom were quick to assure me that it did indeed affect me and not in a positive way - in other words, I acted a little bitchy...I truely don't remember being that way, but I'll take their word for it. I'm going to try to act a little nicer, but it's hard when you don't know that you aren't acting nice. Aren't hormones lovely?


Till next time....

Started shots

Last night was the first night of shots. Or rather, I should say "shot". I only have to give one shot at this time...Lupron. I think this is ok because the needle for this shot is pretty tiny. I was at Delta Gamma last night advising, and since I was told to give my shot at 7pm, I had the pleasure of excusing myself from the meeting and gave my shot in the bathroom. Since I have become quite the pro at shot giving, it only took a minute or two to set everthing up and administer. But it was funny because my hand was shaking the whole time. I don't know if it's because it's been a couple months since I have given shots or just that I was in a different place. Regardless, the shot was a success.

I am still taking birth control and will stop those pills on Thursday. At the end of next week I will add my Estrace, and baby asprin pills. I am not exactly sure what these do, but if it works, I'm not complaining.

I can say starting this process feels like a weight being lifted off my shoulders. The waiting for things to start is so hard and since Round #2 has taken us 5 months instead of the regular one month, I can definetly say that both Bobby and I are relieved to get this process underway.

I've decided to take time off of work again during this process. Even though I won't be producing eggs for a retreival, I still think the "limited stress" thing is a good idea. So I'm planning to take all of the days I go to Spokane for Dr. appointments off and then I think I'm going to take the entire week of transfer off and take it really easy. My first appointment isn't until the 20th, so until then I will continue to post about the shots, pills, hormones, and other little quirky details. I will try to post pictures later this week.

Finally

I finally got my calendar - woo hoo! I start my Lupron shot on Sunday the 8th. My dr. appointments don't start until the 20th of Feb. and I only have to go up to Spokane 5 times for those appointments.

I found out my transfer day will be either March 10 or March 11 (depending on how the embryos do when they thaw). I was glad they scheduled us for one of those dates because we are planning to go to Boise the weekend of March 20th and I didn't want to reschedule because we haven't been to Boise in forever!

I will of course be updating this much more once my shots start. This process is a bit different, so I'll be sure to include all of the gory details :-)

Waiting

Ugh! I am impatiently waiting for my calendar from my nurse. I know it should arrive any day and I can't wait to be able to plan a little further in the future than just this next week.

Things are going pretty good. I have been on my birth control and was told to skip my period because they had just cleaned me out during the d and c, so I am kind of in a holding pattern.

I did tell my nurse that we would prefer to have the transfer take place at the beginning of the series, and I hope that they were able to accomodate us. I am not looking forward to shots and appointments, but for my sanity I really need round 2 to come to an end.

I am going to call my nurse on Tuesday if there isn't a calendar in my mailbox tomorrow. I will write later this week to let you all know what the schedule looks like. Round 2 b...here we go!

Surgery

I had my d and c surgery yesterday at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane. We had to be there at 7am to fill out some paperwork and to have blood taken. My actual surgery was at 9am and everything went fine. The dr. showed Bobby the before and after pictures of my uterus, which totally grossed him out, but he said that it looks really good.

I am feeling pretty good today. No pain meds - just some mild cramping that really isn't too bad. I decided to take today off work to let my body rest one more day. It probably wasn't overly necessary, but I just feel like I have put my body through so much these past couple months, that I should give it a little time to recoup.

Dr. Robins said that we will definitely want to go ahead with the frozen embryo transfer soon since the polyps would most likely grow back in about 3 months. Yuck. He did mention that the d and c should actually increase our odds of implantation, so I was very excited about that. I was told to stop my birth control (I only had 2 days left anyway) and to go ahead and let my body have a normal cycle.

It sounds like I might be getting my calendar soon, so that is great news. I like being able to know what is coming up....I'm a planner.

Anyway, I'll let you all know when I get started on the series :-)

Surgery Scheduled

My D and C surgery has been scheduled for next Tuesday (January 13th). I got a call this morning and they wanted to schedule it for tomorrow. But with the snow and roads, and my husband freaking out about us driving in the snow, I called and had them reschedule it for next Tuesday.
I was nervous because I was told that if we didn't do it tomorrow or next week, then we would have to wait until Dr. Robins was done with the IVF series that is about to start. Which means we would have had to wait until Feb. for the D and C and we would have been bumped to another series again. So, thankfully they were able to get us in next Tuesday.
I'm not too worried about the D and C. I have had one before, and I don't remember it being too painful. I did have some pretty bad cramping, and a little bleeding - but nothing too severe.
I will blog the day before and and then when I get home and am feeling ok.

Till then...

Bumped again

Well, we have been bumped again. Now we will be part of the Feb/March series. One series is supposed to take 4 to 5 weeks. This series (aka round 2) will take about 5 months. It is never ending.

This is what happened: I went in yesterday for my hysteroscopy. This appointment was in Spokane, and if anyone has been watching the news (national included) you know that Spokane has over 5 feet of snow. Yesterday we had a big wind/snow storm so the driving conditions weren't the best. My mother-in-law, Marlene, offered to go with me since the last time I had a hysteroscopy, I had terrible cramping and hated having to drive myself home. Bobby couldn't come with me because he had to help a poor little old lady who's roof was collapsing. Anyway, so Marlene and I braved the road to Spokane and even got there early enough that we were able to enjoy a yummy lunch at Chili's (when you live in a tiny town, Chili's is quite the treat).

We went to my appointment. There was only one other person there, I recognized her from the last series, and figured she must have gotten pregnant. I found out later that she had gotten pregnant, but she was there because she was miscarrying the baby. My heart just broke for her - still I feel so sad for her.

Ok, so back to my story, I was called back fairly quickly and told to strip from the waist down, put on the smock (open in back) and robe (open in front) and the comfy socks with grippers on the bottom (which I keep meaning to steal, but always forget). So, I change and they take me into the little sterile operating room. I assume the position (legs in stirrups) and Dr. Robins comes in. He fills my uterus full of gases and liquid and in goes the hysterscope (a camera that also has a little laser on it). I am looking at the screen and instantly I know it doesn't look good. Your uterus should be smooth. Mine had no smooth spots. Just a fibroid the size of a golf ball and about 30 polyps - Polyps looks like that dangly thing in the back of your throat.

So there is my uterus with all of these dangling polyps (by the way, at this point I am having really serious cramps from the gasses) and Dr. Robins says, ok, that's that. I was like, Whoa there...shouldn't you be removing these nasty things. And he told me there were so many and the fibroid was too big to take care of them there and that I have to an an outpatient surgery (D and C) to remove them. What?!? I asked him if he was sure and he said that he could attempt to get them out one by one, but it would be painful and I would still have to have the D and C for the fibroid. No thanks, pants please!

So, I got dressed, still crampy, and waited for my nurse in the consult room. She came in and on a bright note, commented that I looked cute. I told her that this is how I look when I have a chance to get ready - she normally sees me at 7am after I roll out of bed at 4:30am and hit the road (not a pretty site). -K back to my story (I'm having a hard time staying on task today).

Karen says that Dr. Robins only does surgeries on Tuesday and it has to be done at the hospital. She said that she would try to squeeze me in this Tuesday, but wasn't sure if he had a spot available, and that the office would call me on Monday to let me know when we could do it. I asked if that gave us enough time to still do the January series and she said, "no, sorry. You will have to do the next series". I just felt so let down. I had my meds, my calendar. I was all ready to go. I am so impatient, and it seems all I get to do is wait.

I guess there are some positives to waiting till the next series.
- My uterus will be all cleaned out and ready to go
- the roads will probably be better, so I won't stress about the drive
- this gives us time to just enjoy each other and Connor without worrying about shots and appts.
- I can keep working out and hopefully get in a little better shape
- and I get to go through with Nicole, which will be really fun to have a friend going through at the same time.

I will update when I hear about my surgery. I hope this isn't getting boring for all of you - it's a little tedious, but it's my life right now.

Happy weekend!