How to tire out a puppy

Why we have no nice family pictures on the walls

There may not be any genes shared between these two but the amount of turd in both if them reveals that they are definitely family. 

Trying to get nice family pictures and they are completely, obnoxiously in sync. 

Oy!

Sophiekins

Can I just tell you how much this little babyface melts my heart?

My whole life revolves around this fuzzybuns lately. Emma adores her, Chad baby talks to her and holds her like a baby, even if she is nearly 30 pounds at three months old. Such a sweet little new family member. When she's not trying to eat your face off, zombie style, that is. 

I'm so attached already. 

Ch Ch Ch Ch Changes....

I actually have a lot to share, but don't know where to start. Except for the major change that the pictures can't tell: we said goodbye to Winston last month. The boy was old and had a happy life and it was time for him to be pain free.

I'll let the pictures tell the rest. Life doesn't stop around here.

 

 

 

 

Gird your loins, verbal diarrhea ahead

My head has been a mash of mess in the last week. Has it already been a week? Seems like a year.

We met with Dr. Troche on Friday to talk it over, a sort of WTF meeting, if you will. He was amazingly kind, and his staff was wonderful. Really, I can NOT say enough good things about this doctor and his associates, and BELIEVE ME I know doctors.

Basically, he thinks my body just took too long to respond to the Follistim, and the eggs took too long to mature. When they did mature they looked beautiful, but he thinks my lining was too "old" for them at transfer time. We couldn't have frozen any embryos, because their quality made them less-than-ideal candidates  for freezing. The leftovers that we tried to freeze didn't make it to day five. I had seven babies. Now I have none. How could this have happened? I also apparently had what is called a "chemical pregnancy", where I had one implant and then stop growing. So I had a few days of being pregnant and then lost it. He is pushing us to try again, saying that he can use a different drug protocol and supplements to help with my egg quality. He was very positive about future chances, and frankly said that he tells people when it's time to quit but it's not our time yet. If only we had the money. Insurance only covers a third of one cycle. Each cycle is about $15,000.

When we got home Friday I started to bleed. It's all so final once that starts. And to add insult to injury, I started having horrific abdominal pains that evening. They lasted throughout the night and then became unbearable around five Saturday morning. I was bleeding extremely heavily, heavier than I ever have (hellooooo, more information about my vagina that you probably could have done without) and I couldn't breathe. Chad had left before the sun came up (not knowing I was writhing all night) to grade an army PT test, and I couldn't reach him. I called the doc, and she wanted to see me right away. She was on call for Dr. Troche and had just finished some procedures at the office that morning, and would wait for me to make the drive to Glendale. My mom took me and they discovered a few things: I had free fluid in my abdomen, probably from the fertility drugs, and blood outside my ovaries, maybe from a cyst bursting, maybe from the retrieval, they weren't sure. I was also shedding a thicker-than-normal (15 mm) lining and essentially having a very early miscarriage. She wrote me a script for pain pills and gave Chad (who, after checking his phone freaked out and drove to Glendale to meet us) strict instructions that I was to do nothing for the next 72 hours, just rest and drink tons of fluids. (Vodka is a fluid, right?)

So how fun is THIS.

I am now eating my feelings (sorry, neighbors, I hope you didn't want any croissants from the Fry's across the street - I have purchased and eaten them all) and am swaying between feeling 'eh' and curling up into the fetal position and bawling. So I'm basically getting fatter and my eyes are very, very red.

People ask me how I'm doing and I don't know how to answer them.

I angry. I don't want to hear any more about God. God can suck it, if he's even there.

I am so, so sad. I'm not ready to let go of the dream of holding my newborn for the first time. I had all these plans, names picked out, which room would be the nursery, even though I knew it was far too early to make plans like that. But I let myself get excited. Chad did too. This is the kind of thing that can ruin a marriage but at this point it really has strengthened ours. He's holding me and saying all the right things when I suddenly burst into tears out of nowhere. I had to run to the car from the credit union because a woman and her two adorable toddlers were in front of us in line and it hit me that I would never have that again and I started randomly sobbing. Don't mind the crazy lady kids, she just needs to cry it out in the car.

Nobody has said this yet, but everyone is thinking it. You have Emma. You should be happy. OF COURSE I'm happy that I have Emma. She's wonderful, she's funny, she's the light of my life. But I had other dreams too. Of giving her a sibling. Of having a house full of kids. I was supposed to have lots of kids. That's what I've always wanted. I'm a good mom. I deserve more kids. Even if I'm a heathen when it comes to religion. It's not fair that homeless crackheads give birth every day, that women who depend on welfare and refuse to work have five, six kids, and don't appreciate them. It's not fair that I have a job that reminds me every day what I won't have.

I'm also trying to find nice ways of answering the question that I got asked this morning at Emma's orthodontist:

Them: "Oh is Emma your oldest?"

Me: "She's the only one."

Them: "So do you want more?"

I can answer this one of three ways:

A. No, we had her and then I realized that I hate kids. Do you want this one? She's for sale.
B. I am currently losing all my hope of having a baby. Right at this minute. Would you like to see?
C. Don't you want to be skinny? Then why are you fat? DON'T ASK STRANGERS QUESTIONS LIKE THAT.

I can't find any nice ways quite yet. Hopefully I'll have some more answer options in future.

I know this will take time. I KNOW THAT. I see myself marching in and around and through all the normal stages of grief, just like they teach in nursing school. I know I need to take time to grieve, but nobody wants to deal with me in the meantime. TRUST ME. Knowing that I need to go through this process doesn't make this any easier. I don't want to go out of the house. I don't want to talk to people. I don't want people to call me and ask how I'm doing. I don't want to be reminded. And I want a baby. I'm consumed with trying to find ways to save up enough money to do this again. But can my body take it? I would do anything for a baby of my own. I would burst every cyst on each ovary if that's what it took. Fill my abdomen up with fluid. I would inject myself with anything I needed to to grow a tiny person who looks like Chad. Chad doesn't feel the same way. He's had enough of watching me hurt physically and emotionally, sidelined while I put my body through all of this. He's done injecting oil into my hind end with inch-and-a-half long needles and then watching it bruise and blister. He doesn't want me to cry anymore. And he keeps reminding me that we don't have the money. Which we don't.

So if anyone finds $15,000 lying around, will you please let me know?

I just want a baby.

Nope

We are heartbroken. A baby probably started to implant but didn't go any further, which was why I got a faint positive and then nothing the last two days. Blood test confirmed it today.

We said this was our last time. We're trying to come to terms with that. Part of me wants, so badly, to max out every credit card we have and give it one more try. But we've done that. We actually just made the last payment on the attempt from five years ago. It's no fun making payments (for five long years) on something you never got.

This whole thing is so unfair.

Meh

Well today's test is the same. I'm pretty sure I'm seeing things and that there's nothing there.

So I'll wait a few days to do it again.

In the meantime, enjoy this video of an ostrich dancing to Celtic music:

Ostrich video

Oy.

I went back to work last night and have to admit it was wonderful getting back with the babies and my hilarious coworkers. So when I got home this morning I did the inevitable. I took a home pregnancy test. Now here's the deal. I'm 11 days past "trigger" today, and the HCG from that is supposed to be out of your system after ten. It's also ridiculously early to be testing but I just couldn't help myself.

I, uh, got the faintest of double pink lines. Like so faint you have to hold it in direct sunlight to see it, but it's there and it's pink. This wasn't nice concentrated "morning pee" either, so really, if it gets darker tomorrow when I (of course) repeat this event then I know I'm on a good track to being really WITH CHILD.

I could be pregnant.

But I could not, because it *could* be leftover trigger.

But wheeeeee I could be pregnant.

Or not.

So really, I'm exactly where I was before I peed on that stick.

I'll keep you posted tomorrow.

Waiting waiting waiting

Lots of cramping today. Hopefully that's a good thing, since they should be implanting themselves soon.

In the meantime, this is how I feel:

Please pass the super glue

Well I'm pregnant, technically.

How many did we put in?

Three.

Because we're insane.

I remember making a very similar blog post five years ago, triumphantly announcing that we were pregnant with triplets. But I'm not about to be so excited this time, because none of those took. But our grades were better this time - Bs - even though, to me, the pictures make the embryos look a lot more fragmented than they are. Dr. Troche said that it's the way they were in focus for the pictures that makes it hard to see all the good cells in there. Given my age and the fact that our last one didn't take, the embryologist recommended we put in three. The overachiever now 10-cell, and two 8-cell embryos are currently sitting in my uterus. The remaining four are still in the lab and if they grow until day 5 they will be frozen.

And since you asked (didn't you?) here is a picture of what daily progesterone-in-oil injections do to my sensitive little (HEY) hiney:

Objects may be smaller than they appear.

I'll be on bed rest for three days, really just for my own sanity so I won't think I did anything to make them not stick if this doesn't work. I've also decided, with my vast medical knowledge obtained at my local community college, that eating extra chocolate right now can't hurt because these children are related to Emma, which means they will be more inclined to stick around if there's junk food involved.

In the meantime, I'm amusing myself but choosing horrible baby names. Eilonwy, Egbert, and Efharis (Bueller) are my current E favorites.

Here comes a fun ten days before we find out.

(The one at the very top is the ten-cell, and it was transferred as well, as a last-minute decision.)

1st quarter grades

Today we still have 7 embryos growing. Last time we had three "D" grade embryos and implanted all three. (Obviously none took.) The embryologist grades by fragmentation, and then we also look at how fast or slow the embryos are dividing. We have:

3 2-cell embryos, 1 B and 2 C's

3 4-cell embryos, 2 B+ (these could turn into A's tomorrow, maybe they still have extra credit to turn in) and 1 C+

1 6-cell embryo, B grade

Tomorrow we'll meet with Dr. Troche to talk about how many to transfer, and to look at pictures, and the transfer procedure is scheduled for 11:30.

I am a nervous wreck.

Babeeeez

So out of the 13 eggs 10 were mature and got ICSI'ed (sperm injected into them) and 7 of those are growing normally today. That's more than double what we had last time (three eggs grew) so I am OVER THE MOON. The norm is that around 50% will grow appropriately.

I'll get another report tomorrow with the grading of our little ducks and chicks.

I can't believe we're this far!

(This is not a picture of ours but an example of what a normally developing 1-day embryo looks like.)

Baker's dozen

Friday: The trigger shot

Saturday: No needles!  Yay!

Today:

Embryo retrieval this morning.

We got 13 eggs!!! 

Got me a nice Propofol/Fentanyl nap (plus Versed, since I guess I was doing another little anesthesia freakout on another very nice anesthesiologist, whoopsie) and they jammed a bunch of long needles in each ovary and hoovered out the contents of each follicle. I'm not in any pain now, just tired and crampy so I'm laying around watching horrible vampire movies on ABC Family while I sleep off my drugs. We'll find out tomorrow how many of those 13 were mature, and how many are growing. They thawed out Chad's donation this morning and informed us that they were nice and wiggly. They should have already injected one sperm into each mature egg at this point. There could be 13 Corinne/Chad hybrids growing in petri dishes right now. What a scary thought.

Still cautiously optimistic, but things are looking ok. My prolactin levels are suddenly high, so they've put me on a medication to take that down so that implantation won't be affected. Now we begin steroids and progesterone shots every morning as well. Just another drug regimen, la dee dah.

Can't wait to hear tomorrow's embryo growth report.