Running over the same old ground

On this day seven years ago I got my first positive beta ever. Today, I transferred 3 decent looking 3 day old embryos. On November 11 I go in for my pregnancy test. Four years ago on November 11, I transferred two embryos, one of which became my daughter. I seem to be running over the same dates and times while ttc, wearing a groove. I hope that this November 11 is another bright spot on my November timeline, along with the transfer of my daughter and the birth of my boys on the 29th.

The transfer went ok. It was done by a doctor in the practice whom I'm not familiar with very much, except for his picture on the brochures and stuff. His bedside manner left something to be desired, compared to my doctor who jokes with me and gives me great feedback about the embryos. He had a great touch though, and I didn't have the discomfort I had last time.

There was no problem with the snow and the power. On the way back home, though, we ran into a lot of crap. First off we wanted to grab a bite to eat because it was lunch time. There was an incredible line at the diner because people were looking for a place with power to eat, although it moved very quickly. Then we needed to get gas and ended up waiting in line for almost an hour to put enough gas in our tank to get home. Now I'm sitting in my recliner at home while my husband takes the kiddies out trick or treating :( They looked so amazing in their costumes, and they were soooo excited to be going out that they could barely stand still.

It feels good to be PUPO :) In spite of not being able to go out, I'm enjoying the quiet time in the house, and I am in a really good mood. I hope that I can carry it forward for the next 11 days.

C'mon lucky seven!!!

Out of the 16 eggs retrieved, 11 were mature, and 7 fertilized. Those aren't bad numbers for me. I usually have a lot less mature eggs, probably because I have always ended up coasting for the last few days until retrieval to prevent hyper stimulation.

Transfer day is Monday at 10:30. I hope that at least 3 of the 7 embryos are good enough to transfer. I would love to have enough to freeze one or two for a final FET if needed, but I'm not counting on it. The problem with our severe male factor is that even the good looking sperm often don't have great DNA, we never know what lies in wait for us.

In other news, we have our first winter storm! Storm Alfred has been dumping heavy, wet snow on us all day and is supposed to continue until dawn. We will probably have a foot of snow by the time it winds down. Much of the state of Ct already is experiencing power outages. We still have power...for now. (dum dum dum...ominous music). I hope that they have back up power at the clinic! (I'm sure they have generators. most likely, right?).

Retrieval day

Everything went smooth and swimmingly. Even the IV was painless. Coming out of the anesthesia I had a strangely distorted sense of time, it seemed to take forever for my husband to arrive at my bedside, although the nurse and DH assured me that it had taken only a few minutes to collect him from the waiting room.

We've got 16 eggs! Not too shabby given my age. Tomorrow they'll call with our fertilization results. I can't wait :)

My husband is outside getting everything out of the garage. Our insurance company is going to drop our homeowner's insurance if we don't knock it down by Monday. And it snowed last night! Enough so that there was snow on the roofs of many cars driving in this morning. I bought the makings for my daughter's costume, but I still don't have the fabric for NB's hat. Things are getting just a little crazy around here. Here's to hoping that we have a new baby to add to the chaos next year!

Things are popping out all over!

I've got follicles. Not the usual huge amount, but since I'm 41 now I'll take what I can get :) There are 15 follicles of a good size, a good handful of which are 19 or higher. Trigger is tonight, retrieval Friday, transfer on Monday.

With only 15 follicles right now I really don't know how well things will go. Even though I have produced good eggs in the past, (and hopefully Friday, too) our fertilization rates are kind of crappy. Out of 21, 19, and 22 eggs...if I remember the numbers correctly I have only had two good ones to transfer, and 4 to freeze with each cycle. I hope like crazy that I can get at least three embryos to transfer, but I'm not holding out any hope for more than that.

I'm going to be so happy when I am in the downward stretch of this roller coaster with embryos on board. I'm bloated and uncomfortable and a little stressed out about the whole timing of everything. Transfer day is Halloween, and I have been given strict instructions to NOT go Trick or Treating with the kids. This saddens me deeply, and I still haven't finished 2 of the 3 costumes. I know that you just can't tell going into a fresh IVF cycle when everything is going to happen, and if I hadn't had to delay stims because of my weird lining I would have gone through retrieval already, but I still feel guilty.

This is how we make the babies

Monday I drove in to the clinic. It was a beautiful sunny day. Traffic was light (for once) and I was right on time. I've got follicles. Lots and lots of follicles. Some pretty good, 17, 14's...and lots of 12's both on the right and the left. I go back tomorrow for another check, and if all looks good, I'll probably trigger on Thursday night and have the retrieval on Saturday.

Driving in all I could think of is how different it is for us. Tomorrow will be CD14 for me, the time I would normally be ovulating if I wasn't suppressing everything. If we were a normal fertile couple, my husband and I would just have sex, like everyone else in the world. Maybe we would wake up early and do it quickly, listening for the patter of little feet running down the hall to interrupt us. Maybe we would have a night of romance, have a candlelit dinner and watch a romantic movie. But that isn't for us. Our babies are made with us not even in the same room as each other. The babymaking process is clinical, calculated, scientific...and cold.

Tomorrow I'll drive in to the clinic again. As I do, somewhere there will be a college student picking her panties up off of a stranger's floor and doing the walk of shame...pregnant. There will be a young married woman who wakes up and quietly tiptoes to the bathroom and hopes, maybe today?....pregnant. Moments of passion, love, lust, and even violence everywhere making babies, but not here. My husband and I are state of the art. Nothing but science and cutting edge technology for us!

Wake me up early tomorrow, because I've got to go make us a baby :)

Everything is a GO!

Wednesday's appointment was a little weird. From one angle, everything looked hunky dory, from another, the lining looked like a comet, with the lining as the tail and a strange blip thing at the end. It could be a polyp...could be a bit of left over lining...they have no clue. My regular RE is in Florida and isn't coming back until Monday, so the rest of the docs, interns, and a bevy of med students had an impromptu conference in the office and hallway. It looked kind of like a group of kids trying to figure out what to do when their parents are out of town. In the end, the doctor that checked me came into the room where I was sitting with the nurse and said that they decided I should proceed with the cycle as planned. Woot! So...I've started with 300 units of Gona.l F every night with a blood test on Saturday. I'll take it! 300 units seems a little high to me, though. I know I'm 41 and all, but when I did this last time when I was 37 I got over 52 follicles and touch of OHSS to go along with them. I hope that they can manage to keep me walking that fine line between stimming too slowly and not getting many eggs, and stimming too quickly and then having to slow down so that fewer eggs are mature at retrieval.

Baseline

Ug. I am sick to death of driving to my clinic. The traffic today was so bad going into the city that I was a half an hour late for my appointment, and I gave myself what should have been an extra half an hour or so already! I had to pee so badly that my eyes were literally watering, but there was no where to go in bumper to bumper traffic. Arg! I didn't even have a partially full bladder or anything when I left because it was unnecessary at this appointment. Good thing.

The ultrasound went ok. I have about 6 follicles on one side, 5 on the other, which isn't bad for a baseline count. But, I had fluid in my uterus which made the doctor nervous so they want me to go back for another baseline on Wednesday. My husband was already pissed off today because I was so late coming home, and when I told him that I would have to go back on Wed he REALLY got his panties in a twist. Between the white knuckle drive, the killer Lupro.n headaches, and DH's griping I was ready to just break down in tears and give in and throw in the towel.

Thankfully, we worked things out, I get to drop the Lup down to 5 units tonight, and DH even offered to drive me to the appointment on Wed. I hope the extra fluid that the intern saw on US turns out to be nothing and that I can start stims soon. Fingers crossed.