Green Light to Start Estrogen

I actually am looking forward to this for more than one reason. Last cycle I felt totally amazing, happy and calm on my estrogen. I am hoping for a repeat. It will be a nice change after the bcp crazies :) The results from my appt yesterday are as follows: uterus thin and ovaries suppressed, estradioal is a bit high at 129 but still got the green light to go. So far I have taken 2 estrace (2 mg each), one 400 iu Vitamin E, 81 mg Aspirin. Still on my plate today are 2 more estrace, one more vitamin E, 16 teapills, prenatal and one e2v IM injection. Only 23 days to go! :) 

We are going out tonight for New Years. Normally I would love this, but I am just not feeling it today. I would so much rather snuggle my babies and go to bed early. I am still waiting on my start of meds fee from my agency. I've been on meds for 2 weeks now and it makes me grumpy that they wait until they are mailing my monthly allowance. Its completely unreasonable for me to feel this way, but I do. Lets blame the bcp :) I feel like I had something else to add here, but I have totally forgotten it. I hate that feeling. As soon as I post this, I will remember :/

I have acupuncture on Thursday, I am sooooo looking forward to that! I have been thinking about getting up early for some yoga but Brooke is such a light sleeper in the morning. Maybe I can just wake her up with me, give her a bottle and let her watch me. Something to get my blood flowing. I am still trying to gain weight. I know this is a problem that only I have. I had gained one pound one day but am back to starting weight. It is so frustrating. When I was pregnant with Brooke I gained weight like crazy and I couldn't stop it, nor did I try to since I was pregnant. However, now that I want just 3 more pounds, it seems impossible. I've added McDonalds and extra food to my daily norm. Oh, I wanted to try Ensure. Let me go order some... Wow well I was away a really long time, not that you noticed :) Shopping online is the best! I got myself some weight gain Ensure and some yummy baby food for Brooke. It will be here Friday. Gah, I'm so impressed with the shipping speeds here. I ordered gifts for my niece and nephew the day after Christmas and they arrived the following Monday. Incredible. I am alone in the office at work now. I think there are actually 3 other people here somewhere.... I guess I better do some actual work. Its a pretty light week :) 

Last BCP

I happily took my last bcp yesterday and promptly threw the rest of those little asshats away. The reality that I still have 2 months worth should I need them is being ignored. I hate those guys! :) They make me mean, angry, irritable and just an overall snarky person to be around. I got the correct chinese herb in the mail tuesday and started them that night. I will stop once AF arrives completely and pick them back up with I start the estrogen. 

I do not want to work today. There's like 10 people in the office so the motivation is just not there. I would rather be home cleaning up the christmas mess. 

Only 4 weeks until transfer! I am getting excited again. AF should arrive tomorrow or saturday. Base line blood and ultrasound on monday. Start estrace, delestrogen, herbs, vitamin E and L arginine tuesday! Acupuncture one week away on thursday. Followed by another ultrasound and blood work on wednesday the 8th. That is the big one. If my lining is only a 4 I might literally cry :( but it wont be. It cant be. Not with all that crap I am going to take. 13 days and we will know. I guess technically if it is only a 4, I still have another week to get it to at least a 7 pushing for an 8. Really want a 10 to make that dream come true! :) Then Dr D can not even theorize that my lining was any problems. :) 

I can not wait to grow an obnoxious belly again. And wear awful maternity clothes! :) I am completely sincere in that I love being pregnant and I am conscious of the fact that it makes me sick and uncomfortable. :) 

Cycle #2 (or cycle #4 overall) has begun

Last night I took my first Lupron injection of this cycle. It was super easy, as usual. I wanted to start my Nu Ke Ba Zhen Wan, however the silly company sent me Tian Ma Gou Teng Wan, which is really not the right herb. So I got the return set up for that order, and used a different company to order again, hopefully I get the right herb this time. Right now I am just on Lupron, prenatal vitamins and BCP. In 12 days I will start the estrace, delestrogen, acupuncture, Nu Ke Ba Zhen Wan, vitamine E and L Arginine. And then its officially ON! :) 

Great Wolf Lodge KC Kansas

We had a great (long) drive out to kansas city from our house south of denver. This is in the early part of our trip, just after sunrise. We managed to leave about 4:45 am! The girls and I slept until sunrise :)

We finally arrived about 3:15pm and went straight to the water park after checking in. All those pictures are on an old fashioned disposable camera! :) But here are some from the room and hotel lobby. The cool cabin and fireplace were in our room. I loved how kid and adult friendly they managed to be! 

The drive home took forever! And I think I am still getting over that part :) I am not a small spaces kind of person. I like to have room to roam. We have our holiday lunch here at work. Sorry to be so short :) 

Just can't wait to be pregnant

I tested out one needle with one syringe last night and it seems to work out ok. It doesn't twist on like the others, rather it just pushes together. I guess that will get the job done. Still not sure if I should use the bigger needle to draw up the delestrogen, or just use the smaller needle to draw up and to inject. I'm just so excited to be pregnant. Honestly I feel different about this cycle. Maybe because I have completed a whole cycle start to BETA under my belt now and there is no uncertainty with the process. Or maybe its just whatever is meant to be will be :) 

we leave in 12 hours to drive to kansas city for Zoe's birthday surprise. Should have some pictures to share next week :) 

Got (another) big box of MEDS!

So I got another big box of meds last night. Although I really wish they would have spoke with me before ordering all this. I have a little over one bottle of progesterone suppositories that I will not use as they inexplicably switched me to Crinone. I have 2 boxes of Crinone. I have 7 (seven!!) bottles of PIO. 270 estrace pills. 3 bottles of delestrogen. A whole bunch of baby aspirin and prenatals. and of course the proper amounts of prednisone and doxy. Its insane :) I also have the vitamin E bottle  of my own addition. Oh and 3 months of bcp. Next week I will have my bottle of the chinese herbs(Women's Precious Teapills) the acupuncturist recommended. I will start those as soon as they arrive to try to get more of that into my system in prep for this cycle. On monday I started 1 Vitex a day ( I took this the cycle I got pregnant with Brooke) but will stop vitex when the teapills arrive. Have also been thinking about adding L Arginine, but then I would probably take L Lysine as well because arginine is a known cold sore aggravater and lysine is a known cold sore treatment/preventor. AND I'm pretty sure the syringe they sent me for the delestrogen is not compatible with any of the needles they sent. so I will have to test that tonight AND the directions on the new estrace are different from what my timeline says, so I email the coordinator. Turns out the rx is correct, the timeline wrong. Awesome :) So I will be taking 8 mg estrace a day and the delestrogen twice a week. I really feel good about this cycle :) every now and then the nervous about my lining act up, but I try to keep them quiet. I am putting up a couple maternity shirts so that I have something positive to focus my thoughts on :) I am silly excited every day just thinking about all of it :) I really really can not wait and could not want anything more than to be pregnant for A and R!!! :) 

A Big Rant...

Sorry that this may be a more negative toned post, these BCP makes me a person I don't like as much... But I am going to rant like a mad woman :)

thing #1

There is a girl at work that bugs the ever living crap outta me. She is young, just turned 23, so some of this may be due to her lack of experience. But most of it is because she is dumb as rocks. I try not to hate her, but she doesn't make that easy. I can barely understand her because she says the word "like" every 3 seconds and I like totally can't like stand that like type of like thing.  I don't want to spend much time on her, but I hope she gets a promotion so she leaves my dept.

thing #2

There is a woman, who NEEDS attention. She will start a thread and cry if no one responds to her. Could a person be more needy?! The internet is not dedicated to you. I could not be friends with her. Sometimes no one has a comment to something you say, its no big deal.

thing #3

My clinic is not as good as I thought. I guess they are better than NEFI, but they are far from smoothly operated. So my own impatience aside, they sent an RX to a different pharmacy. They ordered all my meds AGAIN from this pharmacy. Without considering that I still have 150 estrace, they ordered more. Without considering that I have 2.5 vials of PIO left, they ordered more. My thinking is that this could have been avoided if we used the same pharmacy. My IFs would not have had to pay for all this extra stuff if more communication was attempted. Now assuming I get pregnant at our next transfer I will use all these up, but if I don't then that was a big waste of money that the clinic did not care to think about.

thing #4

Dr D thinks the reason we are not pregnant is that my lining was only ok, not great. I told him about my days of positive pregnancy tests, but he did not seems to believe me. Asked if I took them right, asked about using the right urine?! Said it was too soon to know if the embryos had issues or if my uterus had issues. Really?! 4 of 8 embryos just stopped growing, 50% of them stopped growing and you can't think they might have an issue. 2 made it to freeze at 5 days and the 2 that we transferred to me tried to implant but didn't make it all the way. And there is no reason to suspect they might not be of the best quality?! Sharron said "R has one nice 5 day embryo left and A has one embryo left." Don't think I missed how she only said that R's frozen embryo is nice and that A just has one frozen. Dr D never even looked at my lining before transfer, so whose to say it was not great?! Granted the transfer was guided by abdominal ultrasound, so he could tell a little. He said we had better success than NEFI did at getting my lining thick enough to transfer, but since it didn't result in a pregnancy, we must need it thicker. Yes I am being angry and unreasonable, and we have a nice plan in place to try again. But a big :P to you!

AND THE GOOD NEWS:

my next timeline:

12/18/2013 - start Lupron and prenatal
12/25/2013 - last bcp
12/30/2013 - ultrasound and blood work
12/31/2013 - start two 2 mg estrace and .2 cc delestrogen(every tues and fri) and baby aspirin
(1/2/2014 - acupuncture, start chinese herbs and vit E)
(1/7/2014 - acupuncture)
1/8/2014 - ultrasound and blood work
(1/14/2014 - acupuncture)
1/15/2014 - ultrasound and blood work
1/17/2014 - last Lupron if my lining is thick enough
1/18/2014 - first PIO
1/19/2014 - crinone, prednisone (5 days) and doxy (5 days)
1/24/2014 - transfer of 2 frozen 5 day blasts (praying that both survive the thaw)

I still have to schedule the acupuncture, and buy the chinese herbs, once I find that paper she wrote them down on. My agency wants me to find flights, so off to travelocity. :)

I LOVE my IFs

My IFs are the best ever :) Let me tell you what happened today that makes me know this even more... So these bcp make me a little angry and unreasonable, pretty much all the time. The clinic has been less than communicative with me, which I let go for all of last week due to thanksgiving. But when I get a call from yet another different pharmacy (3 now) wanting to ship meds, that I don't even know what they are, I get a little frustrated. So I sent a snotty email to the clinic. And I emailed my IFs to let them know I am being a pain in the rear to the clinic. Then R tells me to just be a b*tch about it. :) Yay! made me feel so much better that they support me even when I am being hormonal and demanding :) At least the email back from the clinic was polite and even cheery. When I started this post a few hours ago, I had a lot more feeling involved. Now I am a little exhausted after Zoe's hour long ADHD results appointment and all..... So I actually have to get some work done. I have my phone call with Dr D tomorrow so I'm sure I will have an update then.

I will not cut my hair

I will not cut my hair until I deliver a surrogate baby. So here are pictures :) 

Before I cut my hair in July 2013

After haircut in July 2013

Me and Josh, my hair at transfer 11/2013

My hair now shoulder length and a little pink 3/7/2014

4/7/2014 past my collar bone; with Zoe

5/10/2014 straightened; if only I did not cut my hair in July 2013

9 weeks until transfer #2

Well... Hoping to get a new calendar tomorrow with a new time line that ends with transfer Friday 1/24/2014. The good old witch (aunt Flow) arrived yesterday and although I have no cramping at all, she is quite.....heavy in her visit. At least I know my lining really did thicken up. I stopped all meds last Wednesday; and Thursday through Saturday night were impossible. Not only was I constantly sweating all night, Brooke is teething again and has not been sleeping well herself. So the NC said DR D wants to add in one more injectable med to the process, but she wouldn't say which one. I have a phone meeting with him on 12/4/13. I am still so bummed that this first try didn't work. Its probably much better timing to get pregnant in January though :) I am much more guarded however. Have I broken down the donor egg thing?? Well I will again, 12 retrieved, 8 fertilized, 2 transferred to me on day 4, 6 attempted to grow to day 5 but only 2 made it to freeze on day 5. So of 12 potentials, only 4 have been deemed good enough to transfer. Now we have to have faith that those 2 totsicles will thaw and can be transferred to me. I will make more acupuncture visits and perhaps try those herbs she suggested. I will ask Dr D on the phone call next week about those. 

This week is thanksgiving. I love this time of year. Not so much the cold, but the feeling of the holidays makes me so happy. Also next week we get to hear the recommendations for Zoe's ADHD. I am looking forward to taking steps with her on this. She was with her dad this past weekend. I always miss her so much when she is with him. Just serves to remind me that I can't live without her :) At least I have my girls to get me through this disappointment :) Oh and in 17 days we take Zoe on her surprise 10th birthday trip. I am really excited for that. Then its Christmas! So thanksgiving this week, Zoe's appt and phone call with RE next week, week after that is Zoe's trip, a week of nothing after that, then its christmas, then new years, then I will start  meds again for our January transfer. :D yay! :) 

Here are picture of me and Zoe being silly. 

Big Fat Negative

Well, Beta is in.... and.... Its negative. Must have been a chemical pregnancy. I am bummed. I will take a few days to collect myself and come back and update here with a plan hopefully.

BFP??!!! 7 day past a 4 day transfer

This is all the same test, just 6 pictures of it :)

The start of a BFP???

This could be the start of a BFP, still too early to call it for sure! :) But wanted to post anyway! First the BFN

BFN from 3.5dp4dt and 4dp4dt

4.5dp4dt

4.5dp4dt tweaked for better line observance

and for fun her is the tweaked picture in negative :)

3 Days Past Transfer

Well, here I am, 3 days past a 4 day transfer. I have pictures to share and what should be a long story. But I will try to keep it short. Transfer was Sunday  Neither A nor R could make it. They retrieved 12 eggs and 8 fertilized. 4 for each IF. We transferred 2, one from each IF. The RE didn't even check my lining!!! Had blood work this morning. E2 is 1467 and P4 is 42. Both great numbers.  I already have taken 2 opks (can be used as an hpt but not as reliable) and one hpt. Last night the opk was start white but this morning it had a squinter of a second line. I took a cheapie hpt which was BFN, no pictures of that. :) I have been calling these embies Jack and Jill. I know they are both snuggled in, just can't wait for the HPTs to show it :) I have 3 HPTs left and a bunch of opks. So I guess I will take another opk tonight and an HPT in the morning. The PIO is still not bad. The injection sites are tender, but that does not make the shot hurt any worse. Josh is still doing a great job of giving them to me. Have to add the pictures and then take off, plenty of work to do at...work. 

2.75dp4dt negative opk

3dp4dt modified by opk to show the hint of a second line

me with the two embies all tucked in

my transfer shirt 

"I might change your life"