June 28th

Good afternoon Bleaders.  How have you been?  I guess I always ask that because I feel like we're having a conversation...however one-sided it may be.  (smile).

Yesterday could have been a little bitter for me.  Had we done our transfer on June 19th as planned, yesterday would have been the day we found out if we were pregnant or not.  I tried not to think about it, but it kept popping into my head every-so-often.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm now very glad that we didn't do the transfer on the 19th because of all the pain I was having.  Can you imagine if I'd been having that AND knew that I had 1 or 2 viable embryos in me?!  I would have been a wreck not knowing what was going on in my uterus.  It also gave me a little break from all the drugs, stress and restrictive diet.  Kind of a breath of fresh air.  And now we're ready to get back down to the business of baby making.

So how did I cope with yesterday?  I worked.  And I perfected the Fertility Binder for Holly.  It is now complete and has been dropped off.  Let's hope orders start coming in!  The sewing part takes a bit longer than I remember, but I know that once I start making them repeatedly, I'll get better at it again and it will be a breeze.  I worked on the binders on Sunday afternoon too, and got quite frustrated with my sewing machine.  At one point after rethreading the needle for the umtheenth time, I pushed the material in and literally willed the sewing machine to start.  It took me a minute after the machine wasn't moving to realize that my feet were tucked under me, and there was no power to tell it to move.  Silly Nikus!

I'm very happy with the finished product and had lots of help from Liz (Womb for Improvement) who let me pilfer her wonderful poem (IF) and Volleyball Queen who had lots of ideas about funner things to include that we Infertiles sometimes forget about in the process.  Also had some thoughts from Heather and Ashlee!  Thanks for everyone's input.  I'll post pictures later this week for all to see, and maybe buy!  I almost didn't want to give the cover up because I'd spent so much time making it perfect that I wanted to keep it for our baby binder which is waiting in the wings!  But I realized that I could make another one for me later!

Then last night I got a text from Super-Mom telling me that another friend of hers who had just done her first round of IVF with Dr. H found out she was pregnant with twins yesterday.  So hopefully good karma is around for us next month!  I told J about Super-Mom's text and he took it as a good omen.  Which opened me up for the ability to see what he thinks about twins.  (I know people think I am insane but ever since I had friends who were twins (yes, they still are) in the 5th grade, I secretly have wanted to have twins!)  I asked J what he thought about getting pregnant with twins and he said he'd like that, especially given all the problems we've had and the fact that we both want two kiddos.  So at least we're in agreement about putting 2 embryos back in, now to get Dr. H on board!  He doesn't want to because I'm younger than 35 and healthy.  But 2 just feels better to me.  Will talk to him at our ultrasound on the 21st before transfer on the 28th of July.

I thought this whole baby thing was going to go out the window after J and I watched Leno who had Tom Papa on (from The Marriage Ref) on Monday night.  Tom Papa has a special place in my heart because besides being hysterical, he was actually mc-ing at my work conferences for a few years before he started hosting The Marriage Ref gig.  And even after he did the first season, he was at our conference last year.  So he feels like the celebrity I "know" a bit.  Anyway, here's the bit he did.  And while we were both laughing like crazy, the back of my mind was a little concerned J would put the kibash on everything, but he didn't.  Whew!  Enjoy!  (For those of you reading via email, click here to be taken to the blog website to watch Tom Papa, totally worth it!)

I never thought I'd say this...

Why hello friends!  How are you?  Did you have a good weekend?  Oh, you'd like me to finish the title sentence?  Okay here goes....

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm so VERY happy that Auntie Flo has finally arrived!!!  (Sorry if you were hoping for something else, that's all I got!)

The last two weeks have not been a barrel of laughs.  Every movement was a calculated transfer of weight and new pain was never exciting.  While I'm not a fan of AF usually, this time she was welcomed with open arms, even at 3 am with a lot of cramps!  But at least I could go back to my staple of Aleve and not the Tylenol that really didn't seem to be helping, and a little glass of wine and (Volleyball Queen can you guess what else?!) N-A-C-H-O-S!  And now, she's pretty much gone!  Plus, I was finally able to go back to the gym.  I know most people don't look forward to that but I really do like working out.

And then today I got my new protocol from Holly.  Need a few more pills (no more shots...well to buy, still have shots, but not for a few weeks and we've already paid for them and they're sitting in the IVF medicine box) that Holly assures me aren't expensive.  Bad news, I have to figure out all my questions before Friday when Holly departs until July 31st!  I think I read her email and the protocol and the Embryo Transfer and Post-Transfer instructions four times tonight to try and pull out any minor questions that I might have before she disappears.  And yes, I've already sent her 2 emails tonight because I forgot to add one little question on the first email. 

One big one that I asked was because I had such pain and "complications" for lack of a better term with the retrieval, could this have any bearing on the transfer or hopefully pregnancy?  Her answer was no because that was "ovarian" and pregnancy is "uteran".  So I'm hoping she's right.  A worry that has been culminating is that because there have been so many issues with the retrieval, and really AF my whole life (just a lot of pain), that pregnancy will be very difficult for me.  I'm hoping that Holly's right and I'm wrong.  Only time will tell.

And with that, I'm off to work on the fertility binder a bit that I didn't finish over the weekend and then head to bed.  Night lovely Blogites!

There's an agenda today

Well hello out there in blog land?  Have you missed me? I haven't been gone that long!

A thank you, a quick update about my condition, a few notes and then my question.  How's that for an agenda?

First off, thank much to all my new followers.  Lately, every time I look at the list and there's more.  A couple months ago I was clinging to 30 and had been since about my birthday (in November) and now I'm up over 41, not including the email followers who I'm not sure are listed as technical followers.  SO THANKS to the newbies and WELCOME!

Great, check mark next to "thank you!"  Yes, I'm that lady.

Next, update about me.  I am so happy to say that I am finally feeling about at about 85%.  Most of my energy is back, finally.  No more bursting cysts, since Wednesday at least (knock on wood).  And the only real pain I have is going from sitting to standing or standing to sitting, and the occasional sharp 2 second pain for no reason or when I'm using the ladies room.  The "girls" are still sore and large, but we're dealing (smile).  Doc has cleared me for the gym on Monday, as long as I'm not running a marathon...I promised to slowly integrate back to my workout.  Meanie Christinie is visiting her boyfriend in Cali, so no boot camp next week works perfectly to let me ease back into working out instead of zero days to 5 in a row.  I'm slowly adding some carbs to the diet and not having any issues.  I hope to say by Monday I'll be at 90% or 100%!  Update, done!

Next agenda item, notes.  Happened to have The View on this morning and they were doing an entire show about surrogacy.  Yes, I know we're not there but there's always a chance we will be at some point.  Guiliana Rancic (of Guiliana and Bill show) was on to talk about their struggles with getting pregnant, as well as some people who have used surrogates (good experiences and bad) and one woman who's MOTHER bore her triplets through surrogacy (Mom, should we talk?  Just kidding!).  The doc said they took Mom's uterus "out of retirement" because she'd gone through Menopause already.  WOW!  Anyway, the couple snippets that I caught and will remember: 1) always use an attorney, just so everything meets all the legalites, 2) surrogacy is illegal in New York (say what?!  That's ludicrous!), and 3) embryos coming out of cryo (frozen) state can die. 

Back the truck up!  Let's go back to number 3!  Guiliana was explaining her process of IVF, and that they got preggers with the first only to chromosonally miscarry.  Then the second, they retrieved the eggs, made embryos, and froze them to wait for her uterus to heal from Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome (similar to us kind of - I'm not all the way to OHSS, but my uterus certainly wasn't ready for embryos).  When they unfroze the embryos, they died!  So they had to start over.  Now I realize that they aren't going to unfreeze all my embryos to put in 1 or 2 next month, but if unfreezing the embies means we'll lose some, we might not end up with as many tries as I thought.  So what did I do?  I called Holly, of course.  My go-to.  

She assured me that this doesn't happen often and especially probably won't to ours because of their outstanding quality and day 5 status.  Plus their lab has a 90% unfreezing success rate!  So feeling better about that note.  This was when she assured me the gym on Monday was fine.  And that she'd be around next week when AF is due to show, with my protocol, with my transfer date tentatively scheduled for July 28th.  She'll be gone for most of July, but around for August when I'm freaking out while we wait and when we do the pregnancy blood tests.  I told her I was working on the binder she wanted for the office, and would try to bring it in next week (possibly with banana bread, but I didn't tell her that!). 

And that brings me to agenda item number 4 (see how I did that?  Just swung right into it?  I'm so clever!)  My question to you my fellow Infertiles are:
1) What did you need that you didn't have with your process?  (I'm talking information, organization, calendars, contacts, support, paperwork, a guide, etc.)
2) If you could have one thing in a fertility binder that would help you, what would it be?
3) What would you be comfortable paying for a comprehensive, organized, pretty system of recording your infertility journey?

I'm again working on the fertility binder, and it's a bit more difficult than the baby binder.  Yes, I'm using the binder I created for myself as a guide, and I'm sure nothing will cover everyone's path, but I'd like your help on what you'd look for.  Holly was very excited because she has a lot of patients who are unorganized, so that's the main purpose.  But I also want it to be inspiring, instead of a depressing process.  So that's where my weekend will be spent, save for the lunch with my girls (Music Maiden is in from Cali) and a movie with Mama K afterwards.  Want to have it ready for Holly early next week to see and put at the office to hopefully sell and help pay off the hole in my credit card from the retrieval. 

I would greatly appreciate any comments, thoughts, advice you have to give.  Maybe even have a page with just inspiring thoughts or things to do to make whomever buys this feel less depressed about the whole process. 

PLEASE HELP ME MY DEAR BLEADERS!!!!  I know you'll come through!

Another exciting morning (please note the sarcasm!)

Hello Bleaders...I'm still here.  Seemingly not recovering as much as I would like.  But first, let's go back...back to where we stopped.

Recovered from Monday and on to Tuesday.  No issues, a little bit tired and crampy but that has come to be normal in my life lately.  Slept in the fetal position Monday night and that seemed to help everything.  I want you to know how ingrained J is in this whole process.

Last night (Tuesday) when he got home from work he wanted to tell me about a dream he had Monday night.  Apparently, he kept thinking/dreaming that he had to be sleeping in the fetal position to help me not be in pain.  So all night long he was curled up and if he would wake up into that "half-sleep" and not be in the fetal position, he'd immediately curl up thinking he was helping me.  He finally woke up enough to realize that it didn't matter how he slept, because it wouldn't make me feel better.  Unless he was kicking me in the stomach in his sleep, which he isn't (for the record, I'm the fighter in my sleep...100% of decking him at least once and kicking him at least a dozen times in my sleep - and he's still here!).  I couldn't help but laugh when he told me, a deep belly laugh (that again didn't feel very good, hurt me quite a little bit), so not only am I laughing at how much he is trying to walk in my shoes, but I'm trying to stop myself from laughing because it hurt so much.  The two of us were quite a sight!

Finally, able to calm ourselves down, and pretty soon it's time for bed.  I head upstairs usually before him (mostly out of habit because usually I get up earlier than him to go workout, just not the last 2 weeks), and go to bed without any issues.

I was having a very odd dream about being a media buyer once again and trying to get a buy done before my deadline (Where do you think I got this Schelle?) and then I realized I had to pee rather urgently in my dream.  So I rushed out of the office, only to find a huge line at the bathroom and only a few working toilets in my dream bathroom.  Finally, was able to get to a toilet...and I woke up, again in pain.  Rushed to the bathroom and closed the door hoping not to wake J, but that didn't help my pain.  Now we're back to the serious pain of Sunday night, and add to that sweating like crazy and feeling hot, and rapid breathing because I'm freaking out about what is happening to my body.  Decide that it feels worse than Sunday night, so I swing open the door and yell, "J!" 

He wakes up rather quickly and says, "WHAT?" 

I half screamed, "it's happening again!"

By this time, I have crawled off the toilet and am laying in the fetal position, on the cool tile floor, almost in tears and that's where he found me.  He wanted to get me back into bed where it was more comfortable, but I refused.  He asked me what I wanted him to do and I said, "Call Holly!"  He ran downstairs to get my cell phone and handed it back to me.  I had gone back to my "throne" at this point, hoping to alleviate more pain by releasing my bladder, but no luck.  By this time (6 am), J has connected with Holly and told her that I am in extreme pain and what should he do.  I heard him say, "Northwest" which is our closest hospital.  He hung up and started to get dressed saying we're going to the hospital.  Meanwhile, I'm still in the fetal position in bed not wanting to move a muscle, but have slowed down my breathing which seemed to help the pain a bit. 

He's running around getting dressed, brushing teeth and finding shoes.  I'm still curled up contemplating how we're going to the hospital if I can't move and sitting in the emergency room waiting for hours.  I think I even said, "is an ambulance better?  At least we'll get right in!" 

As he ran downstairs to give the dogs water, I noticed that the pain was starting to slowly subside.  So, now I pick up the phone and call Holly again (6:15 am). She picks up and now can ask me questions to determine what we do from here.  After telling her of the pain, the quickness of its onset, the slow regression of the pain, the sweating, the rapid breathing, etc., she determined that it was indeed a ruptured cyst and not a twisted ovary.  She said with a twisted ovary I wouldn't be able to walk and the pain would be much more constant.  I told her that I feel it all day but it's about a level 4 pain, and then the pain this morning was about a 12, and at this point it had diminished back to a level 8 pain.  She concluded again, that it was a ruptured cyst and nothing really that we could do, except rest in bed with feet up and Tylenol.  So determined not to go sit at the hospital when the pain wasn't there anymore as bad, and they couldn't do anything anyway.

J crawled back into bed and we both tried to go back to sleep.  Finally, my alarm went off about 7 am and I had determined that I'd be working from home again so let Mom know that I wasn't coming in today.  Still, not feeling the best.  But at least a little better.  Still have to take my time getting out of bed and finding that perfect spot to lay so I'm not in pain.

Of course, I've emailed Holly to thank her for being so cordial at 6 am when we called her, and to ask if there is anything we can do so no more follicles become cysts that rupture.  But I am pretty sure her answer will be just to wait for AF, which for once in my life I can't wait for it, meaning she'll probably be late, because that's the kind of games she plays.  Can't wait! (again, note the sarcasm).

A special little note before I forget to say this, I've been walking around rubbing my belly because it hurts.  I swear strangers must think I am preggers because 1) I keep walking around in public rubbing my belly, 2) I have a belly to rub, 3) I need a bathroom more than every before.  Am hoping this alludes to happy things to come!

I'm off to the bathroom, A-G-A-I-N!