No More Debbie Downer for me!

Begone, bad thoughts! Begone I say! I started out at the beginning of this FET cycle thankful to have the chance to grab for that brass ring just one...more...time, and Damn It (Janet!) I'm going to stay that way! Hopeful and Thankful. (and nonononono those are NOT going to be the names of my next set of twins. Bite your tongue!).

I have been upset more for other bloggers than myself. Women who need this cycle to work a heck of a lot more than I do. Unfortunately, luck doesn't work that way. There isn't some cosmic number of BFP's out there being parsimoniously handed out like trophies at a state fair. Sure, all of us won't win, but we all COULD.

But....and this is a BIG but (yeah, yeah I said Big But). I already have children. Three children, to be exact: soft, squishy, squirmy, often smelly, loud, messy, and occasionally bratty children. This FET is a total bonus. At the very beginning I intended to make it like a romp, and infertile holiday if you will. I was going to throw 'cautiously optimistic' to the winds and do as the fertiles do. I was going to pick nursery colors before I had my legs up in the stirrups. I was going to start picking out baby names and drop coy hints on Fartbook that we were going to 'start trying' . What the heck? But I haven't been able to quite pull it off, as my last post would attest. Somewhere along the line it stopped being just about me, but about all the brave women I'm cycling with (sorry, that makes it sound like we are all racing in the Tour de Crotch, it is VERY hot here). Somewhere along the line it stopped being just a lark, and an honest to g.od cycle with honest to g.od consequences. Somewhere along the line it stopped being just IVF #7, but the chance at baby #4. A baby....a soft, squishy, often smelly baby, a mix of my husband and me. Now all I want to do is curl up in a ball and mumble over and over "please, please,PLEASE let it work. oh please please please."

Hopeful and Thankful :)

Melancholia

No, I'm not even sure if that is a word. Except for maybe a 19th century disease affecting women and poets.

I have come to that dreaded time of the cycle, where everything feels wrong and the doubt is pouring in like icy seawater into the holds of the Titanic. The alarm bells are ringing. So far one of our brave cyclesistas has already been dragged down by a BFN. My estrogen came back way too low today, so the amount of patches has been upped already. My body isn't responding quickly as it always has...all of this has left me floundering in a dark sea of melancholy that I can't shake.

What am I doing this for? Haven't I been hurt enough already? I don't expect this to work...but if I get pregnant and it's a chemical pregnancy...or worse, I miscarry, I will be devastated. I don't need this FET to work, but I want it to so very, very much. And more to the point, I want it to work for all the women whose blogs I have been reading...and I know it can't work for everyone. This makes me feel terribly bitter and sad in a way I can't put into words.

Mind your speed and have your life rafts ready.....Icebergs ahead.

Never Tell Me the Odds

When I went for my baseline ultrasound and blood work last week, I was struck by a recent change to my RE clinic. Outside of the discreet office door on the third floor was a giant display, and I mean HUGE display, of the clinics statistics. They were good, very good, which is why they are so proud to post them. Why not flaunt it if you got it, right?

The ongoing pregnancy rate, in the age range of 30-35 was 57% . That is the percentage of women under 35 who walked in the door this year, unable to get pregnant, who walked out carrying a viable pregnancy. That's more than half, heck, it's almost a third. The next age range I can't remember, and the over 40, was 24%. Nearly a quarter of the women over forty walked out with a viable pregnancy this year.

This is where I get confused. According to my RE, I'm not a 40 year old trying to get pregnant, but a 37 year old,(the age of my eggs when these embryos were created) which is why he is only transferring two embryos. Soooo....does that make me more in the 35-40 age range category (which numbers I didn't take in, naturally). Hmmm.... Well, I know which age range they'll be putting me if I should get knocked up.

My own odds are something else entirely. Since I have had my fibroid removed, I have gotten pregnant every. single. cycle. Granted, out of those 4 pregnancies only two made it out the door as viable pregnancies. But still, 4 cycles, 2 viable pregnancies...pretty good odds, right? I'm beginning to see why everyone in the clinic smiles when I walk in the door.

Then why am I feeling that this cycle isn't going to end well? *sigh*

what's in a name?

A very brief post...

My husband and I have a gift of giving our animals trendy names, years in advance. So...if anyone out there wants to know what NOT to name their child, you can run it past us :)

A sampling: Evelyn, Chloe, and Bella

All beautiful names, but trendy as all get out. None of them were trendy when we used them, however. The youngest pet in this menagerie is 12.

Happy...and starting to get excited.

Yesterday our beautiful cat Evelyn returned from whatever rock she had been hiding under for the past 4 days. We have three cats, and normally we do a head count every night, get them inside and fed. On Saturday, my husband asked me if I had seen Evie at all that day, and I could only remember seeing her Friday night. We called, and searched, and listened and called again...but no Evie. Monday I could have sworn I heard her crying, but more calling and searching just made me feel like I was slowly losing my mind. By Tuesday night, both my husband and I were resigned to the fact that she probably wasn't coming home. It is very unusual for our cats to wander, and if they are gone for more than a day we know something bad has happened. Once, Bella got locked in a neighbor's garage, another time Evie was trapped under our porch, severely dehydrated and close to death. I was sure that something terrible had happened to her, and so I began to mourn her in my heart. Until around 5 yesterday...

It was a beautiful evening. There was a sun-shower, and I was walking around the house looking to see if I could see a rainbow. I looked up, into the trees...the sun was shining through the raindrops and the world was glowing with a beautiful golden afternoon light, and I remember thinking "everything is going to be ok." I was filled with a wonderful sense of calm and peace...and then I felt a tickling sensation around my ankle. There she was! Gaunt looking, but none the worse for wear, appearing out of nowhere. Right now she is curled up sleeping on my bedroom floor, recovering from whatever misadventure she got herself into. Crazy cat, she probably has about 4 lives left, but she just took about 10 years off of mine :)

As for the FET of '11, I'm finally starting to feel some excitement. I had my third day blood work and ultrasound today, and my schedule for blood work, estrogen patches, and transfer. Everything looks good internally, no cysts, fibroids or other problems, I even have some follicles! The intern who gave the ultrasound said "you must produce a lot of eggs" I agreed, then told her that my eggs had never been the problem. The nurse who overlooked my chart and went over the FET schedule gave me a handful of undated Quest lab slips that I would need for "when I got pregnant" so I could run in and get my progesterone checked. I said "Boy, you are really optimistic about this" and she just gave me a really amused look and said "You DO have a really good track record." And I do. I am probably the most fertile infertile in that place.

In any case...I'm starting to feel that old familiar feeling. Like this cycle might actually go someplace. At the very least, I have my cat back.

It Feels Like the First Time. (well....not exactly)

Finally, I have a transfer date. August 2. Tomorrow is my baseline ultrasound, day 1, and I get to drop the dreaded Lu.pron down to 5. Which is a giant relief, because the headaches and the constant draggy feeling is driving me crazy. That's just how it is, though, the minute you can't stand it anymore you get to move one to....yippee....estrogen patches!!!! woo. hoo.

Can you tell that I am...shall we say....underwhelmed? unenthusiastic? under...something. I can remember that first time my husband and I "flew without a net". How excited I was! I couldn't sleep. I just lay there in the dark thinking...This could be it. I could be pregnant. We could have a BABY. O my frickin G.od we could have a BABY!!!

Well, not so much. If you have any of the handful of posts I've written you know that it didn't work out that way. But I was enthusiastic about my first round of IVF. I had that wonderful feeling of butterflies in my chest. What joy that was. What a wonderful feeling to have that hope back. I had just about forgotten that feeling entirely after having spent two years trying with nothing to show for it...not even a moment where I thought "maybe I could be pregnant". But, then that cycle didn't work...or the next one... and somewhere along the line I stopped having that loving feeling. I would have hope, but it was polluted with a huge pile of skepticism. Then I had the miscarriage and I totally didn't care anymore...

This cycle is a total bonus for me. It is a total freebie. It is the strangest feeling in the world, going through IVF as if it is happening to someone else. I'm not afraid....but I'm also not skeptical. I don't feel anger, or longing, or jealousy. But I also don't feel hopeful. I wasn't giddy when I got my big box of meds. There were no jitters when I gave myself that first shot. I am so glad that I have this chance...to try and conceive free and clear of doubts or expectations, like it's the very first time. But man, what I wouldn't give to have some of those first time butterflies back.

Chickenpig makes a bold decision...damn the consequences

First off, before I write this I want both of the people who read my blog to know that my husband and I are not independently wealthy but that we are incredibly lucky. Well...to qualify that...we are lucky in some things. We both had very bad luck in the father department. We apparently had terrible luck when it came to buying a house...until recently. And we did have the bad luck of having infertility, hubby with his crappy sperm and me with my gigantic fibroid. Where we do have the luck is with our insurance. And with my body's amazing ability to produce many healthy eggs in one go. We also have been very lucky to have two healthy pregnancies that resulted in three wonderful, healthy children. Very, very lucky.

I also am lucky enough to have frozen embryos. Four of the little totsicles. The only reason we have the totsicles is because in 2007 we thought our insurance luck had run out. We wanted to transfer the two remaining embryos we had in storage, and when we began the process we got a letter from our insurance company telling us that the meds we had ordered were not covered because we exceeded our lifetime quota for infertility. We knew that wasn't right because our insurance had no cap. With a little research and a lot of calls to HR we figured out that the company would be switching over to a lifetime cap of 3 cycles for IF in 2008, just a few months away, and that the insurance ppl had been getting ahead of themselves. The FET ended in a chemical pregnancy, and more than anything I wanted to try again, and I knew that it was now or never. We could scrape and afford the 3,550 price tag for a FET, but there was no way we would go into debt to do a fresh cycle when the insurance changed. So we bit the bullet and did a fresh cycle right before year's end....and got pregnant.

Now it is three years later, and I have been agonizing about what to do with them since AK was still a baby. Should I put them up for embryo adoption? Dispose of them? Donate them to science? And the storage fees are piling up. My husband is no help, either. I think he feels if he just ignores them the clinic will just dispose of them...no harm no foul. But he doesn't face the fact that he will still have to pay. And like I mentioned earlier...we're not independently wealthy.

I would like to be able to let go of these embryos, but I just can't. I hold my kids and I can't imagine having a brother or sister of theirs and giving it up.(Not that anyone would want them, considering the things that run in the family, like autism, mental illness, and addiction) I can't imagine destroying them, or giving them up for science. I am pro choice, and I have never believed that life begins at conception, and I would never dream of telling someone else what to do with her body. But I have had to admit to myself since my twins were thawed, transferred, and grown into babies before my eyes....there is something there. It is a potential something, four somethings, and I can't look myself in the eye and lie about it. I just can't. So I'm doing the only thing I can do, I'm going to transfer them.

I admit it is selfish. I admit that it's greedy. I admit that I'm crazy. But at least I am lucky. My husband's workplace dropped our insurance in 2008 for a plan that costs us more and gives us less coverage. But what it also gives us....that's right....three more cycles covered by insurance. 90% covered, after our deductible, not to exceed $750.

So...how much do you hate me now? Not completely, I hope, because I don't want to do this alone. My husband, the understanding soul that he is, has agreed to my logic, and bent before the sometimes overwhelming power of my will, but he is not happy about it. Perhaps he will relish the act of shooting hormones into the upper quadrant of my ample buttocks, and so enact his revenge? I don't know. What I do know is that my future has split into two distinct paths, one where I get pregnant and one where I don't...and I am incredibly over the moon excited about just having the chance.

Tonight, I will be injecting myself with 10 units of Lupron, for the 5th day in a row, and I'm loving every minute of it.