11DPO

I have been feeling crampy and haven't slept all week, and two days ago I was completely convinced that this was it. Then, last night, E and I went through old fertil.ity_fr.iend cycles (both A's +hpt and the countless unsuccessful ones.) Lots of the same symptoms in both types. ARGH!!! Last night, I was so deflated that I was convinced there were no babies left.

This morning, just as EVillage was preparing my progesterone shot, AVillage vomited all over me. Poor little guy. So, we spent the day together in comfy pants on the couch. I had an unsettled tummy all day,

and was worried that it was b/c of the early morning incident. Now, though, I'm really hoping it's b/c of this:

It's positive! Ok, you can't really see it, and we aren't supposed to test yet, and technically the trigger shot could still be in my system. (10-14 days is what they said, 14 days will be tomorrow at 9:30pm). Still, it's giving us lots of hope!! You'd better believe that we'll probably be testing from now until beta day! (Beta day is still 6 days away!!!)

Transfer complete

We arrived this morning and learned that both eggs were still dividing. They were both given a B- rating, which is considerably lower than we had hoped, of course. Regardless, given the fact that only two were retrieved, we have hope that they are going to pull through since both are still going. The RE gave us a 35-40% chance at a baby. It's definitely better odds than we had on Monday.

This has been emotionally and physically exhausting. On Monday, for the retrieval that barely wasn't, she tried so hard to get my follicles to give up the eggs. She worked them over for twice as long as a normal retrieval takes. I am still just ever so slightly sore from it. Thankfully, E's dad has been here doing most of our childcare. Hopefully, it will be worth all of the hassle once we are done and have our twins. (OK, I'll settle for ONE!!)

Lots to process, and now it's time to stay on my rump (bedrest) and let those embryos grow/divide/implant.

Come on universe. Smile on us.

Hopefully just the first hill was the steep drop

Monday was the retrieval. Sour news as only two eggs were able to be retrieved. We were devastated. S grew 6-7 follicles that were look to be promising but when the RE went in only two would give up eggs.

Yesterday they reported that BOTH fertilized! We couldn't believe it.

Today, one is a 2 cell embryo and the other is a 4 cell embryo. Moving along.

We are scheduled for a 10 am transfer tomorrow.....let's hope the only devastating hill on this roller coaster was Monday.

Getting close

My eggs are growing slowly, but surely. They are now projecting a Monday retrieval. I'm ready to get them out of here. I've been waking up much before dawn and driving the 1.25 hours each way to have my monitoring done, and I am exhausted!

(We are between two large-ish cities. One of them lost it's RE clinic a few years ago when the doc moved to another city. I suspect there will be a new RE in town very soon, just not soon enough for us. Unfortunately, however, the other city near us is rather conservative. All three RE clinics work ONLY with married couples. No single women and no lesbians. Awesome. So, we are going to a clinic just over an hour away. We really like them, and they have good results compared to the other clinics based on the other numbers we've seen, so....)

A Monday retrieval gives us a Thursday or a Saturday transfer I believe. I'm feeling hopeful. Again, I wish I had more eggs to retrieve, but it only takes one!

Time for a nap.

Drugs Drugs and more drugs

We just had our 8th day of injections. So far, the shots are going fine. The RE is gradually upping my drugs b/c I'm not really getting very many eggs. So far, we are up to 7. I'm hoping that number creeps up a bit more. I guess I'm not that surprised given that I always tend to have a one-egg response to the drugs when we are doing them for medicated IUIs when most folks get 3.

We had an estimated retrieval of Saturday, but given our small-ish eggs today, I think it will get pushed back; although the RE isn't saying anything. I'm trying to not read much into anything and take each day/new instruction as it comes. Her office has been mostly positive about everything, and I feel like the energy is a good thing.

Surgery

I had to have another polypectomy. Luckily, the procedure was able to be scheduled such that we are not delayed any for our cycle. I had them removed yesterday. The RE said that she removed two large ones and 4-6 smaller ones, plus she did a D&C to remove any micropolyps.

I just had this done in December and she was able to find 6-8 already! I'm a machine. I wish I could grow babies like I can grow polyps. Argh.

I'm feeling well enough today. Not too crampy, and taking a bit of dar.vocet here and there when I start feeling really icky. Evillage had to go into work last night. She's had quite the month. I think after last night, though, that things should settle down, and she will be much more able to focus on what is going on over here. I would be mad, because I can be selfish from time to time, but she has had some seriously legitimate and serious issues going on at work. Hopefully things are ready to settle down there though.

We have started our Geni.relix injections. No biggie at all. We go in for our first of many ultrasounds on Monday. I think I will go in by myself and E will stay with Avillage. I was looking at names today, trying to conjure up lots of hope and good baby-vibes. I looked at both boy and girl names, hoping that we have to pick one of each. :-)

The big guns

Well, obviously our June/July try didn't work... again. We decided to go straight to IVF. We can't do this anymore. We can't emotionally afford to do this indefinitely, and I'm only getting older - not that I'm the most fertile person out there to begin with.

So, we decided to move to IVF. To complicate matters, I have polyps in my baby-maker, so I have to have surgery tomorrow to remove them. This will be my third one. It will be my second one in 9 months. Yeah, pretty much over it. It's an outpatient procedure, but full anesthesia makes me more than a tad uneasy. The good news is that tomorrow surgery is perfectly timed in order to allow us to move forward with a September cycle.

Another ounce of good news is that our insurance is actually covering our meds, with really high co-pays; nonetheless, several hundred dollars is so much better than several thousand. So, tonight, we did our first IVF injection.

More to come on this. I am beyond stressed out these days - though I will probably be a lot better after tomorrow's procedure is complete- and it's a big deal too. Given we get a few good eggs, we are planning on putting in two. I want twins so much, and I'm hoping that setting my heart on it will mean that the worst news we get is a singleton pregnancy.

Pray that this is it for us, internets, because this mama doesn't have much left to give. Oh, and we're going broke over this too, quite literally.