was nervous about my progesterone… but it’s doing ok

on friday my hcg was 446 (good number) and my progesterone was 6 (not such a good number). the extra progesterone seems to be making a difference

my progesterone is up to 9.26 and my hcg is up to 1572 – yay!!!

we go in for a an ultrasound next tuesday (5/19)

i know there are more hurdles to overcome before we can really feel confident that the pregnancy will stick, but getting over beta1 and beta2 is quite a relief.

446

i was gonna post our beta number earlier, but i had to take a nap SO bad i crawled straight in to bed. i have NEVER had to take a nap more desperately in my life, i fell asleep in the car on the way home from doing errands after our doctor appointment.

our beta number is 446… very good, and according to my doc does not ”necessarily” mean multiples my progesterone is a little lower that she wanted, so i am adding a second progesterone supplement, i will now use it at night in addition to the mornings, but she said things look good.

i go back on monday for a second beta and then if things still look good, we have an ultrasound on may 19th.

wow…

we did it!

go little rock star embryo, go!

as of 5:30 this morning… we are now P (we can drop the ”until proven otherwise”). we are heading in to the doc to get blood work done and numbers and all that… will let you know more when we know more…

pupo

so, i have been told/reminded by halfdozen that i am now pupo (pregnant until proven otherwise) so i am going to try and go with that

the transfer went very smoothly. other than having to trade down to a smaller speculum… turns out if it hurts like hell when they are ratcheting that thing wide open, there is a *small* size they can use instead, and presto, no pain! the embryos were in before i knew it!

we put in 3 top-o-the-line little ones and froze the rest… now the wait begins we will test on Friday 5/8… and till then, i am pupo.

i am now in my last week at my job… the hunt for new employment begins in earnest monday. i have a few leads that i have been working, but hopefully more will emerge soon. i am ready to be leaving, so that’s good.

dakota is just starting to feel *herself* today, 6 days after her retrieval. for those of you who have been through retrieval, how long till your lower abdomen and nether regions felt ok? she has been walking slow and a bit gingerly for days. i felt like total crap, but mostly due to the over stimulation problems, so i had horrible bloating and nausea etc… not so much pain/discomfort. love to hear how you all have done. our RE seemed to think that a day or two was all a person would need to be tip-top. though she is lovely and understanding and wrote dakota notes to get out of work, she didn’t seem to expect that it would be an issue.

oh, and i have to say that the embryologist said that her embryos rivaled those of 20-something-year-olds that he had seen… and that they were as good as donor embryos usually are and you know that they only use whippersnappers for donors (except with directed donors like us) so we were feeling pretty good about that! and then they told us that with all our combination of elements, the % of getting pregnant is still at about 9%, so we are trying to *ignore* that part and go with her rock star embryos cause 9% just seems soooooo small…. ok, back to focusing on ROCK STAR embryos!

thanks for all your well wishes and good vibes, i felt them!

still going strong!

our fabulous 11 embryos are still going strong! 8 are rating top of the line and the other three are chugging along in good shape too.

monday at 11:30 it is

11 :)

we got 11 eggs harvested and count ‘em 11 eggs fertilized!!!

our embryologist told us that 9 eggs were mature, but that he got the other 2 to play nice and fertilize too. we LOVE our embryologist, really their whole techy team is very helpful, personable and totally dedicated to making happy embryos… just what you want when you hand over your eggs.

dakota is bloated and sore and sleepy and sore and a little queasy and did i mention SORE , so she is laying low through the weekend.

we are most likely looking at a day-5 transfer since, so far, there are so many embryos to chose from (ok, feeling very lucky and blessed at this moment, so a little gloating is ok, right??) and they want to put in the ones that seem to be at the top of their game.

we will do the transfer to me on monday… i am on estrogen patches (2 every two days) and estrodial pill once a day and crinone (progesterone, yuck) every morning. and in case you were wondering, i feel like i am gonna hurl and i have headaches still and the runs. this IVF shit ain’t for sissys!

we’ll update when we know more about our little embryos…

longest cycle EVER!

MARCH 16th was cd1 for me… it is now april 19th and we have not yet done the deed.

summary of drugs from hell
i have done 7 days of aygestin, 22 days of lupron, at which time i was switched off the lupron on to ganerelix (cause i thought i was going to DIE! i had the worst headaches of my life – and i am a regular migraine sufferer, so i ain’t no slouch when it come to tolerating headaches, plus i had horrible bouts of the runs – we’re talking lasting several days at a time). i have also been on estrogen patches every three days since since april 4th.

why do we think we can PLAN these things?
partly the delay/length of this IVF cycle is my insanity of not wanting to chance the possibility of the transfer needing to happen during the big week of meetings that i just finished producing on friday (there was a conference for 200 the week of april 13th and a much smaller conference for 50 on april 28th and 29th) – yes, these are for the job that laid me off starting may 1st. WHY did i even CARE??

I asked my doc to delay the start of things by a week or so because i didn’t want to chance the transfer falling during the weeks i had to produce the meetings – we were aiming to have things hit in the free week BETWEEN the two sets of meetings… then dakota didn’t start her cycle when we thought she would so that delayed things… then when she did start her follicles have not progressed at the same rate they did the last time and so we are a bit more delayed and now instead of all the action – her retrieval and the transfer to me – happening in the week between my two weeks of producing, the action will likely run over in to the final week of meetings… and you know what I DON’T CARE! i mean, i do care about the fact that i have WAY TOO MANY drugs in me at the moment, but i don’t care anymore if they hit at a bad time… what are they gonna do? fire me??!

a taste of my week
i had an episode this week where a very tense conversation was happening between the manager of the venue i was using for our meetings and the owner of the catering company i hired. catering company had broken a big rule at the venue… venue gal was WAY over crazed about it and she had a melt down and stormed out with her eyes all welled up like she was going to cry. as soon as the door closed behind her, and it was just me and the catering lady left in the room, i BURST into tears… and I COULD NOT STOP crying. it was so embarassing, luckily she is a nice lady and she thought it was about how hard my week had been and the mistakes her catering team had made and how it added to my stress… but we all know different i was then laughing and sobbing and wiping the tears from my eyes as the just kept coming and i told her as crazy as the week had been, and as unexpectedly intense and disturbing as the venue lady’s melt down had been, that the tears were more from one YEAR of infertility treatments and the amount of hormones in my system making it so that once i teared up in empathy for venue gal’s teary eyes, i couldn’t stop crying. she laughed and hugged me and i think SORT OF believed me.

boy am i glad that week is OVER!

a reprise on the theme of lupron
in case you didn’t gather from above, lupron is evil! i am VERY happy for my dear friend over at inlocoparentis who sailed through lupron with out a scratch. yes, i mean that… no sarcasm should be attributed to that comment… cause she’s my bud… for me there is not way that i will EVER take that drug again. it was like someone took a large brick to the back of my head, repeatedly. not to mention levels of gastronomic distress that i have not seen since i went gluten-free after my celiac diagnosis 6 years ago. just plain awful… like a 24hour a day pass to the loo.

enough rambling from me…

what is coming next, and what your REALLY tuned in to our program to find out
we go in monday for blood and u/s… to check that my lining is still good and ready for transfer in about a week from monday. and to check on dakota’s follicles… looked like there were about 7 again this round (that is how many she had last retrieval in september. they think that she will be ready for the retrieval on wednesday.

xxoo mulberry

i’m alive, i promise…

hello friends… the volume of ”are you ok” emails is picking up… i realize it has been FOREVER since i last posted…

i am ok… i am and things move slow and that is hard.

i am working on my resume – it is close to ready for the unveiling – i mean ready to send to potential employers… i have to give a special shout out to my fabulous pal and lifesaver at word to your mother(s). with out her help my resume would still be a puddle of words at the bottom of a crumpled page.

we are moving forward with our ivf plan as well…

on march 18th, two days after i got my period, i was put on 10 units of lupron a day (shots) to suppress my ovaries. if dakota had gotten her period before me or to close to when i got mine, she would have gone on birth control till i was ”ready”… she got her period right at the time she would have been coming off the birth control (3/30) so she got to skip that part.

now she will go through the stimulation process for about two weeks and i will be doing estrogen (patches and pills? and maybe lower doses of lupron?) to build my lining and then sometime during the week of 4/14 – (the first of two weeks that i produce big meetings) they will do the retrieval from dakota and 3 – 5 days later they will put a couple embryos in me.

if i were not SO consumed by the fact that i have to produce big meetings with my production team having been ripped apart and the management having striped me and the other producer of our decision making powers – and – the fact that when the meetings are all over i will not have a job… i would be SUPER excited. the thought of carrying my sweetie’s child, as you all know, is a thought that brings me GREAT JOY.

well, i feel more joyous just typing that… i guess i will have to spend more time over the next few weeks thinking about the embryos coming my way if i am to have joy in this time of laid-off-ness…

more later, just thought if i didn’t write, you all might send a posse out after me to make sure i was not dead in a ditch somewhere

mulberry, signing off for now

sigh…

i was laid off yesterday… ouch!

in the world of lay offs, it was a good one. i can stay through may 1st to produce the big round of meetings we have coming up (or leave if i wanted). they are giving a 6 week severance and allowing me to keep my company owned laptop. i am one of 7 being laid off, taking our # of employees from 12 down to a team of 5. the two partners and 3 others.

it was not totally unexpected, and the severance safety net and advance warning (8 weeks before last day) were much more than i expected we would get, if and when the time came for lay offs…

and yet, it sucks! i have been with this company for 5 years, and until the reorg in october (if you are interested, there is at least one scathing post in late october on the details of that dark time) i LOVED my job.

i have no idea what i want to do, have barely ever interviewed (this job for 5 years, the last one for 12) and walked away from college one semester away from graduating to become a political activist/community organizer. most of the time i don’t care about the degree… but resume time, i care!

truly, in this moment it is the knowledge that we NEED my insurance that is stinging the most… cobra?

yippes!

20, 13, 10, 5 what a numbers game this all is…

hello all…

we are at 2 days post retrieval and here’s what we have at this stage in the game…
5 fertilized embryos

what started as just short of 20 follicles went to 13 eggs retrieved, to 10 mature eggs in the batch, to 5 fertilizing.

we wait to see tomorrow how many make it to the freezing…

in the mean time, i am bloated and have the worst case of constipation EVER i was up most the night with the discomfort – and now am drinking metamucil like crazy. dakota is the one with the hope and enthusiasm this cycle. i sit and watch as she bursts with smiles and potential… thank goodness for dakota. i just don’t have it in me this cycle. i worry that we will have (what seems like) so few embryos in the cupboard for the future/backup – i sure don’t want to have to do this again!. i know that 5 is pretty good, but when you un-freeze them you never know how many will survive that… well, as i said… dakota holds the hope at the moment, so don’t listen to me