Back on the IVF pony

My clinic called yesterday to let me know the results of the doctor pow wow. They feel that I responded so well last time (50 something follicles, with 22 eggs retrieved, pregnancy and live birth) that they don't foresee a need to change my protocol. On day 21 of my cycle they will have me do blood work to make sure I've ovulated and then I can start the Lupron that day. They also need my husband to have blood tested. So, just like that we are off to the races! Day 21 of my cycle is next Wed, so I have until then to talk with the financial office and make sure that we are all paid up and we are good to go. Trying is better than not trying, having it work is better than it not working, but you can't get it to work if you don't get to try. Here we go!!!

Boston and beyond

Saturday and Sunday were wonderful. Dh and I got into Boston in time to grab some lunch. We did the touristy thing and went on a Duck tour before checking into our hotel. We've gone on one every time we've gone to Boston, so it is kind of turning into a joke for us. Next time, my husband says, no Duck tour. *

The hotel room was beautiful. It was a suite, actually, with a lovely living room like space and kitchenette, and separate bedroom. It was on the 35th floor so we had an amazing view of the Charles river from both rooms. The cars looked like ants from up there. We "hung out"** in the hotel for a while and then D took a nap while I familiarized myself with the room service menu and wrestled with the phone to set a wake up call. Both the alarm and the wake up call went off at 6, and after freshening up we set out to grab a bite of dinner and to walk to the theater district to see the Blue Man Group perform at the Charles theater. The performance was amazing, and the walk back to the hotel was romantic. It was a beautiful night and all around us were people having a good time. We toyed with the idea of grabbing a drink at one of the bars on the street, but we were exhausted so we headed back and crashed like rocks.

Sunday we relaxed and enjoyed the hotel room. We ordered in room service for breakfast, which was absolutely delicious, and with the view we had it was better than eating at any restaurant. Then we checked out and headed to the T to Bean Hill to see a house museum there and to grab lunch before heading home.

The museum was amazing. I enjoyed talking to the tour guide and just soaking up the beautiful architecture and furnishings. It was getting on 2 when the tour wrapped up, and we were starving. We were also missing the kids. We had called them that morning, and we had intended to be home by 4, but it was looking like we wouldn't be home until much later. We walked a couple of blocks and found an Irish pub. After enjoying some good Irish food and Guinness, and watching the Patriots getting smacked around by the Bills, we headed back.

It took us forever to get out of the parking garage, they only had one lane open for incoming and outgoing cars. We didn't get home until 5:45 or so and I have never been so happy to be home. :)

But.... After a few days of being home a post-vacation malaise has settled in. The beginning of Fall makes me feel like I should be DOING something. More than just cleaning the house and helping the boys with their homework, at any rate. . I have done several cycles during the fall months, including the first one where the transfer date was the day after our anniversary. Many of the bloggers I follow are pregnant now or have recently done a transfer, leaving me with the melancholy feeling that I'm standing in an empty train station with nowhere to go and no ticket to get there. On top of that the tour of the historic house museum has left me with an ache for my old job, any museum job really. But I know the chances of getting another job that pays anything is extremely slim. I can volunteer my time, but I will have to find something else to do that will pay me money, and that will most likely mean going back to school. But for what??

All of this melancholy and twitchiness under the skin with nowhere for it to go.

* A duck tour is a tour of the city in a DUCK boat. They were originally military transport vehicles, they can drive on land and go in the water so they make great tourist traps.

** made the beast with two backs

Waiting...

D's EEG came back 'normal' yesterday. Now we wait for the cardiologist appointment in October. He seems totally healthy, and active as always. Other than making sure he is eating well, which we do anyway, of course, and watching him like a hawk I'm not sure what I can do to make sure he doesn't pass out again. Thankfully he doesn't have a seizure disorder (most likely), because that is a terrible thing for a child to face, and the anti seizure medications are brutal. I jump every time the phone rings because I think it is the school calling. And for some reason, the phone is ringing all the time and I usually never get calls...the local paper trying to sell a subscription, some construction company that keeps calling my husband because some guy out there with the same name does plumbing contract work. I never had problems with my blood pressure before, even when pregnant with the twins, but I'm pretty sure if I had a cuff handy it would be spiking by now.

In other news, my husband and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary on Wednesday. I use the term celebrated loosely because hubby spent the day fixing the brakes on the van. That night we cooked up some seafood and ate in the kitchen with the lights turned down low to stir up some romance. This Saturday we are going to stay in a swanky hotel in Boston using up my husband's points that he earned by sleeping in not-so-swanky hotels in Virginia while on travel. More than three months of sleeping apart, with me being the single parent and hubby missing me and the kids dreadfully, has bought us one night of wedded bliss. It will be the first time I've slept apart from all of the kids in over 6 years. (I slept away from the boys for 3 nights while in the hospital having AK). This is going to be an adventure. Thankfully, my mom will be watching the kids, and besides being an awesome Mom and teacher, like all teachers she is trained in CPR and first aid. But still, the worry will be coming with us. Hopefully we can put it down for a little while.

As for the baby making front, I called the clinic last week. It took a couple of days for the nurse on the IVF team to get back to me. I knew they would be swamped. She told me that it had been a long time since they worked up a protocol for me, so the whole team was going to have to meet next Tuesday, and she would be getting back to me after that to tell me what the next move would be. The whole team??? That's a lot of people just sitting around and talking about my ovaries and ute. Hopefully I can get on board the IVF train before it shuts down for the December/January holiday season. We all know how this stuff works. You wait, and wait, go through testing and then BANG you're stimming and retrieving in the blink of an eye. I'm looking forward to this chance.

If everything comes crashing down and I don't make it to transfer, or when I'm crazy during the 2ww, please remind me how much I wanted this chance, won't you?

Parenting gets scary

I am scared. I am normally a pretty unflappable parent. I worked in pre school, I was an RA in college. I've seen some hairy stuff. I was calm and collected when D nearly cut the tip of his finger clear off. It takes a lot more than a sudden fever or hacking cough to send me running to the emergency room...but this time I am worried.

In June, near the end of the school year, DA had a strange fainting episode. I am unsure of the exact details because I got three reports and they aren't in sync. Either he had just eaten snack or was going to eat snack when he became unresponsive. According to his aid, his eyes rolled up in his head and he didn't respond. According to the teacher, he responded immediately, then blanked out again. I don't know if he sat down, or hit the floor. He had either just come back from gym or had come back from gym a half hour ago. Either way, I thought that he had a fainting episode from lack of food and over heating. He looked like hell when I got into the classroom, and the nurse said that he was looking better than he had looked, which freaked me out a little. They sent him to the hospital by ambulance, and I couldn't ride with him because I had to get his twin who was waiting anxiously in his classroom to be picked up. (Thank heavens for the classroom aid, Mrs H, because she rode with him and held his hand.)

He recovered from the incident. Nothing at all was found to be wrong with him. Naturally, I followed up with his pediatrician who said he couldn't find anything out of the ordinary, but wanted an EEG done to rule out seizure activity. I hounded the doctor's office all summer, but I couldn't call the hospital myself to make an appt, it had to be done through the office. In any case, they still didn't have an appointment for me in September. Then my little boy had another fainting incident at school. It was exactly the same as the last time, except he didn't become unresponsive.

Now the doctor is singing a different tune. It was amazing how quickly they got him an appointment to get an EEG done. We saw a different doctor in the practice this time, and he told me that boys this age don't faint, that there is probably something else going on. And that something could be serious. It may be his brain, or it may be his heart, but he thinks it is unlikely that it was just not eating enough and being overheated. Now we wait. We wait for the results of the EEG...which may or may not have to redone because he did wiggle quite a bit. We wait for his cardiologist appointment, which isn't until the end of October. We wait, and we hope that nothing else will happen between now and October...or now and forever, which would be my first choice. We watch him like hawks, and ask him how he is feeling, and tell him to eat, but nothing short of an answer to why this is happening is going to make us feel any better. And you all know how bad I am at waiting.

The RULES

Someone needs to write a book. Because I'm stumped.

Fertile people need to understand infertile people. Infertile people, however, can say whatever they like. Infertile people can complain all they like, including complaining about people who are complaining. Parents, pregnant women, and fertiles in general SHALL NOT COMPLAIN, nor shall they explain why someone may need to complain, or stand up for themselves.

I'm a parent. I have a Facebo.ok account. I complain occasionally about parenting. I've complained on FB. Am I a bad person? Am I a bad parent? Am I somehow smacking my infertile self in the face?

The other day a very nice blogger that I know, Emily, posted a rant about a FB friend who through out a totally normal parenting complaint status. It seems normal to me because I am a parent, and the status seemed to be a normal one. Something along the lines of 'I'm trying to watch my favorite show, daughter is driving me crazy....blah blah blah. This is why FB truly sucks if you are a parent with infertile friends, because you really CAN'T POST ANYTHING.

Here's the thing, infertiles and fertiles alike. WE ARE KNOWN FOR WHAT WE DO, NOT WHAT WE FEEL AND THINK. I can post all day that my daughter is driving me crazy. She does. Today, just as an example, she wanted me to read her the most...horrible...book....ever. It is a Barbie book, she waaaaanted it because it was pink, and my husband bought it for her because she's daddy's little girl. A long time ago, I swore to myself that no matter what I was doing, if one of my children brought a book over I would stop and read it. And so far, I have kept this vow. I have read books to them while taking a crap on the toilet, I have taken food off the stove, I have let my food grow cold/warm/congealed and nasty. But this book....I hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it. But I read it. Twice. But gods forbid that I put on FB as my status "My daughter is driving me crazy. If she brings that book to me one more time I'M GOING TO BURN IT I SWEAR TO GOD!!!.

We infertiles go through a lot of trouble getting fertiles to understand the difference between how hurt we may FEEL and how we actually ACT. We ACT happy for our friends when they are pregnant even as we FEEL sad, jealous, and crushed. We expect that people will try and understand the difference. But if you are a parent, forget it, DON'T COMPLAIN. It doesn't matter if I am with my daughter all day, being the best parent I can be, enjoying her company (nearly) every minute we are together. It doesn't matter that just being with her sometimes makes me cry because she just turned 3 and soon, too soon, she'll be off to school. It doesn't matter that seeing her throw herself into her daddy's arms when he comes home lights up the world with both of their happiness. If I complain on FB, all anyone will see, is that.

One thing is interesting, though. If I complain on FB, all my parenting friends get it. Does it hurt when you're told that you don't get something because you're not a parent? HELL YES. Is it true? Sadly, YES.

I'm tired of being told I can't complain. I get angry when I hear from infertiles that my fertile friends who are parents take parenting for granted. Or that my mother did, or my grandmother. I'm tired of hearing about how infertile people are hurting all the time, but I can't say, not once, how parenting can hurt just as much without being told that I'm 'Over the line'.

Over 65% of couples that come into an RE clinic seeing assisted reproduction will end up having a baby. That's a lot. Most parents out there aren't infertile, but most of us who are infertile who seek medical help will become parents. So please infertiles, cut your future parent selves some slack

September 11th and my infertility journey.

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, I was sitting at home reading a book and enjoying a cup of coffee. Normally, I would be at work. But on that day, my husband had an appointment scheduled with a urologist to take a look at his manly bits. This look-see would involve some anesthesia, so my hubby would need a ride back. The reason my hubby was getting the procedure done was because we were trying to take our fertility under our control. After more than a year of trying on our own, we still hadn't gotten pregnant, so we each went to our separate doctors. My husband's recommended a urologist, and a sperm test. The results were, in a word, dire...plus my husband was feeling pain, so a poke under the hood was scheduled. Unfortunately for my dh, this did not involve a simple wanding with a dildo cam.

So there I was, sitting with my cup of coffee. My husband's urologist had scheduled his procedure on a day where he was lecturing at a conference. Obviously, he had to re schedule. My husband's employer is incredibly flexible about taking time off. Mine wasn't. In 2001 I worked at a living history museum. There were dozens of exhibits, all of them manned by a well trained person. To get a day of in September was murder. I had to find someone who could cover my exhibit who would know what he/she was doing, and who was willing to give up a day off. In the end it required one person coming in on her day off and working for someone in her exhibit so the other person could work mine. Crazy stuff. When the doctor's secretary called my husband to cancel, my husband shrugged and said "whatever". I, however, pulled my hair out and screamed "Are you fucking kidding me?!?" My husband, went to work. And I took my two hard won days off, fuming because I knew I would have to do it all over again in October, one of the museum's busiest months.

I drank my coffee in a dark and stormy mood. The morning was as beautiful as you can get in Connecticut. My husband and I were married in September on the 21st in 1996. In less than 2 weeks we would be celebrating our 5th anniversary. The day we were married had been as beautiful and sunny as that September 11th day. My husband and I rarely got to spend much time together. In fact, we had spent most of the last year apart since he was on a long term travel assignment for work. I had been looking forward to spending the two days off with him, even if one day was going to be spent in a doctor's office and the other tending to my husband and his wounded bits. When I found out the procedure was cancelled, I assumed he would spend those days with me doing something fun, especially on a day that reminded me so much of our wedding day. I felt cheated. And I also felt angry. We couldn't get pregnant, and it looked like my husband may be the problem, and he didn't seem to care a bit. I didn't know what the next step would be, but the word 'IVF' had been hinted at by the urologist, and I was scared shitless.

So I half read my book and half thought about what my future was going to be. Then the phone rang. It was my husband telling me to turn the TV on. A plane had flown into one of the twin towers in NY city. I turned it on to see footage of the tower smoking and people running. Then out of the beautiful blue sky another plane flew in. I think I screamed over the phone, and I could hear my husband repeating what I said to his co workers. Then we hung up. He would continue to call for updates as I sat in my pajamas for the rest of the day glued to the television set.

My husband didn't come home until very late. Highways were shut down and my husband works for a military contractor and everyone was on high alert. When he finally came home I threw myself into his arms, just so grateful that he was home and alive.

As it turned out we did spend the next day together. Dh's work site was in lock down and everyone was home. My hubby's procedure was delayed, and delayed again as elective procedures were cancelled everywhere because of blood shortages because of 9/11. But I had learned a valuable lesson. Whether we had children or not, we had each other, and that made everything else possible.

Frozen in place

I haven't had much to say the last few days. School started on Tuesday, and the boys got ready, ate their breakfast, and got on the bus same as they did last year. It has been raining for days, there is a lot of flooding in the North East, which means that we haven't gone out to play. It is so quiet right now in the house you could hear a mouse scamper across the floor, or a ghost, or a cat if it should run across either mouse or ghost. It has been too damp and dark for my mom to finish painting the parlor (the painting is a birthday gift because she is retired, so she has more time than money). I feel pretty much at loose ends, so to speak. I knew I would.

My mom came over on Tuesday, with the intention of painting, but she stayed to see the boys when they got off the bus. We sat and had a cup of coffee to ward off the chill. She has a way of seeing into my thoughts and knowing when 'something is up'. Maybe all moms do? As we sat, and AK nibbled on her breakfast my mom said "There she sits, your last one. It won't be long before she's off to school, too. Your last baby." Then she gave me one of those knowing mom looks, like she was trying to squeeze a confession out of me. I have a feeling that she knows I don't want AK to be my last, she always seems to know. But I'm not telling.

Right now I'm just frozen in place. I felt good knowing that I had embryos in the bank. But as you know, I tried to make the dream into a reality, and now it's over. Having the chance to get pregnant again feels good sitting in my back pocket. I'm afraid. Who really WANTS to do IVF? We do it because there is not other way, but whose in a rush to actually jump in? I'm not. I thought I would be, but I've got my toes curled around the diving board for dear life. On the other hand, I really want to have another child. And the years between AK and her uncreated sibling are stretching. If I don't do it soon, I won't do it at all. What if I don't do it and my husband thinks I've suddenly gone sane and changed my mind? We can't have that now, can we? So what is going to make me jump? Who will push me?

Goodnight Irene, goodnight Irene

Almost a week without power and I'm finally back. Everyone here is fine,( although a huge tree fell on my brother's house). It is so good to be back in the blogosphere among the living!

I won't talk (much) about what a total, royal pain in the ass it is to have 3 kids 5 and under without running water. Or refrigeration. Or television, microwave, and electric light. I'm sure you can imagine. After a couple of days the bathrooms smell like latrines, even though we had plenty of water in the tub to 'flush' the toilets it just doesn't take care of everything. After three days almost all the food is eaten or no good, and much of the day is spent in lengthy searches for places that still have ice. After four days you stop reaching for the handle on the toilet because you know it won't work and start reaching for the cooler to get the milk instead of the fridge. You start running out of clean clothes to wear, will go anywhere to take a shower, including your MIL's house (that is a WHOLE other post in itself), and you don't want to step into a restaurant again for a good long time.

What I will talk about is how beautiful the stars are when no one in a 50 mile radius has electric light, they look so close you could hold them in your hand. Or that the air for days after the storm had the most beautiful smell of leaves, flowers, fresh cut grass and pure oxygen. And how my house, my wonderful house, didn't even rattle during the storm...it just stood there grinning and said "That's all you got?"

During the day, life was a grind. But the nights were magical. Our house was made for candlelight. The kids were hypnotized by their glow and never wanted us to stop reading to them. My husband and I walked under the stars and talked. He cooked delicious meals for us on the gas grill (while we still had food) and we ate by candlelight. Afterwords we snuggled on the loveseat and read and talked some more, just enjoying each others company. It was like staying at a romantic B&B that we didn't have to pay for. (one without flushing toilets or decent coffee...but you get the picture. Now I know what I'm going to do with all these rooms after we retire and the kids are gone). And the kids? Wow! They were amazing. Especially our little Nate, who doesn't exactly roll with the punches or handle changes in routine very well (he has been diagnosed with a mild form of autism) He dealt with all the challenges thrown at him with aplomb.

And, the icing on the cake. I gained a lot of perspective. It would have really sucked to be in the early stages of pregnancy this past week. Everything smelled bad, and made me gag. Bending over and washing the kids in the little tin tub was hard enough without worrying about what it might be doing to a fetus. Mind you, I would still be happier if I was pregnant right now, but there are worse things in life than not being pregnant, that's for certain.

All in all, life is good. The boys will be starting first grade on Tuesday. And as soon as I walk in the door after getting them on the bus, I'm going to have the phone in my hand calling the clinic about IVF #I've lost count. Weeee....... Sad and happy, happy and sad. It's a roller coaster, and it's all good :)