Step Two...Talk to the IVF Coordinator

Hello Bleaders...can you tell my mentality has changed a bit recently?  At least until my "big nasty" score gets posted....YIKES! (I am seriously freaking out...at least if I don't know the score, I can fathom on some level that I may have passed!!)  But I digress...

When we last left, I had called Dr. H's office and left a message for the IVF Coordinator, Holly, to call me back and discuss how we progress.  She called yesterday morning while I was at work, so before going too far into the conversation, I shut my door and settled down to take notes.  Didn't get very many taken.  Basically, she wanted to know when AF was due next (ahem...Friday, oh joy!) and that meant if we wanted to progress and do extraction in February that I needed to start birth control next week!  Whoa Tonto...Kimosabi Nikus is not ready QUITE yet! 

I told her about CFP and that we were kind of waiting until the score was up so I knew if I would have to go back to studying or was free to stress about other things.  (Let me just say that CFP caused me more stress than I realized.  While I was studying during November I noticed that I had an eye twitch...I kid you not.  It got so bad at one point, that I looked it up on Dr. Internet and it said it could be caused by a number of things only two of which I could really relate to myself, stress and caffeine intake increase.  Let me assure you that both happened in November, but recently my coffee intake hasn't gone down and I have noticed that said eye twitch is GONE!  Not a little bit, but completely!  If you've never had an eye twitch, count yourself lucky.  Basically, my left bottom eyelid (mostly) would just start to move by itself for no reason what-so-ever for about 15-30 seconds.  Very annoying and weird I'm sure to look at if you were talking to me at the time.  It wasn't happening when I was thinking about CFP, just anytime...however when during November wasn't I thinking about CFP.  So I'm not looking forward to welcoming that back if I must for anything, CFP or IVF.)  Again, I digress...

Holly agreed that two things as stressful as CFP and IVF shouldn't be mixed and all I had to do was call her a couple days before AF showed up so she could call in the birth control prescription, and then we would schedule the extraction, etc., for about 4 weeks later.  I find it quite interesting that when trying to get pregnant, they put on you birth control, but she explained that it suppresses the body and hopefully you get more eggs when they are extracted.  We also discussed if I needed more bloodwork and she recommended a couple, but they weren't anything fertility related (i.e. thyroid, and I forgot the other one) so hopefully insurance should cover some of it.  Also, she said that we would need STD testing if we even were considering giving an egg to someone else (?) as required by FDA.  This struck me, I guess because I wasn't thinking like Holly was.  Why would I give up a beloved egg if we weren't pregnant yet?!

So she explained.  When they do the extraction, they may get as many as 20-30 eggs from me...good LORD, I will feel like a chicken carrying around all those bad boys!  After they extract, they fertilize them all in a petri dish of sorts, and then maybe have as many as half (if odds are good) that will become embreyos.  They only put 2 back into me (no Octo-Mom here) and freeze the rest.  Of course, all of this is included in the $8,770 price tag!  If we get pregnant on round one (here's hoping), and if we decide we don't need the eggs anymore, we can decide to get rid of them or adopt them out.  Now there's a thought, donating my eggs out.  I hadn't every considered that before.  Holly said that she has heard the weirdest stories...people who've been successful in IVF flying somewhere and randomly sitting next to someone who strikes up a conversation about their fertility struggles and somehow they decide to give their eggs to this person!  WOW!  I guess after things work for us, I would be more than happy to help someone else get preggers if I could.  If we don't get preggers on round one, then we go back and get more eggs, therefore not having to do extraction again because the embreyos are in the freezer (and apparently just as good as fresh ones) and we try again.  However, if we decided to use a surrogate and hadn't been STD tested before extraction, we'd have to do another extraction per the FDA.  So we'll be STD tested just in case!  I know we're fine, but gotta prove it to everyone else I spose.

So where did Holly and I leave things?  I told her that "big nasty" score should be up in the next few weeks and that would decide things.  If I pass, I'll call her and get birth control.  If I don't, I'll go back into full time study mode and hope that we get to do this thing in May or so after the next score comes up. 

So that's our update.  Not much else goin' on...just trying to wrap my head around this whole thing.

Have a wonderful day Bleaders!

Oh, and if you could add a little something to your prayers totally unrelated to CFP or infertility for me.  Ms. Belly's Dad is heading to Iraq today for 6 months. Please pray for his safe journey, adventure and return.  For him, and for all soldiers, especially those that aren't on US soil.  Thanks!