Our lil' Science Expierement

Our journey to our lil' science experiment began last Friday. With that, I had my initial blood work done to check various levels of my thyroid, FSH, estridol, and a bunch of other crap I can't remember...

Today, Rick was home to receive our shipment of meds. I knew it was going to be a lot, but I really never expected to come home to the amount of stuff we received. And for your viewing pleasure... Please note... I didn't take everything out of their boxes because I was too afraid to mix stuff up! LOL

Tomorrow we have an injectables class... Now, I've already taken plenty of shots in all of our previous attempts but, apparently, it is imperative that they show me how to inject the Lupron into my thigh. I just want to point out that combined with my Gonal-F needles I have over 100 needles staring back at me.

Today's arrival really makes this impending IVF seem more real. So will tomorrow when we walk into the doctor's office and they demand $8800 from us... There is a check I never thought I would need to write... It will hurt, but the end result will be so good... We both can only hope and pray... :)

Acupuncture or Bust...

It has been three long weeks since my last acupuncture appointment and I really missed it. I've been a steady acupuncture patient for the last year. My pracitioner specializes in fertility and my BFF used her while going through her IVF/ICSI cycle and ended up pregnant with her beautiful little girl.

In most of the research that I have done, coupling acupuncture with IVF increases the chances of a pregnancy by as much as 65%, which is HUGE... acupuncture can also increase the chances of a live birth by as much as 91%. I have such high expectations for this IVF. I hope that I'm not setting myself up for disaster. Our RE had a long conversation with us about the chances and how their numbers this year so far are even better than 2008 statistics. We left feeling great but we remain cautiously optimistic...

Tonight was my first night back and it was great. I left feeling so relaxed and hoping that my cycle starts any day now. My pratictioner poked me in a few different places to help the process along. I usually end up starting within 24 hours of her assistance...

**keeping my fingers crossed that AF shows up soon!**

I've become so impatient to get this moving along. Part of me hates that I'm going to be injecting the crap out of myself in the middle of the hot ass summer, but the other part of me just wants to get this over with and move on with everything.

On another note... I sat down with my boss the other day and explained the process of what will be going on and that during the ET (egg transfer), I might not be able to give ample notice about the time that I will need off. I know that a lot of people try to keep all of this on the DL with work, but I feel that it is necessary to keep my boss in the loop so that she can make ample arrangments if needed. Anywho... Signing off for the night...

ta ta for now...

"1 or 2... The decision is up to you..."

This is what our RE told us the other day... We've spent the last couple days discussing and getting people's opinions on what they think.

We've decided to put 2 embies back when the time comes. After talking to my BFF, she made a really good point that I'm the type of person who would kick myself if we only put back 1 and it didn't work. We're working on borrowed dollars (literally) and don't have the additional funds or insurance assistance to go through this more than once. So if this IVF doesn't happen to work we're hoping for some really good frozen embies...

I'll end this post with a favorite quote of mine...

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought." Buddha

Coming Soon...

OUR IVF!!!

We are excited and extremely nervous at the same time. We met with our RE today and went over the plan. We are waiting for my next cycle to start (which should be any day) and then we begin. Dr. P. recommended that we incorporate ICSI into our IVF due to Rick's count. We were hoping to forgo ICSI but we want to ensure that we end up with some great embies.

I've always been concerned about my FSH levels (I have no clue why, I can only guess because I've never heard anything about them). I asked Dr. P. about them today and was very pleasantly surprised that my number was so low. I registered at a 4!! So my eggs should be great and I should have plenty to go around.

We've been really worried about this IVF for sometime. We knew that we could afford to pay for it, but we knew that we would need a loan to do it. We had all of our ducks in a row when we found out that Capital One was no longer going to be offering fertility loans any longer... After a small break down and a very calm and collected conversation with my mother. She ever so graciously offered to loan us the money. I've never been so touched... So, my mother is officially our investor... :D

Surgery - Post Op Day 1

Yesterday was my surgery. Everything went off without a hitch. The staff was very in tune with my needs. They had me sedated as I asked for and I was out like a light within seconds of going into the OR.

I woke up and saw my RE's intern standing over me. She said and I quote "You probably won't remember a word of this, but everything went fine, we removed the polyup. As well as cleaned up your uterus. It was thick and shaggy." I remember closing my eyes, looking up at her and said "Like a carpet?!?" She looked down and laughed. She told me that Dr. P would go over everything at my post-op in 2 weeks.

Rick brought me home and took excellent care of me. This experience was a complete 180 for me from my last surgery. I'm very excited to go back to Dr. P and go over everything. Looks like if everything goes as planned, our IVF cycle will begin in just a few short weeks....

How much longer can we handle disappointment?

I don't think that we ever expected our journey to a baby to be like this. Even with the diagnosis of PCOS we figured it would take us a few round of Clomid and then we'd be on our way to having a family. As each round passed with no ovulation our prayers seemed farther and farther away. Of the 7 rounds of Clomid we went through ovulation only occured one time. SO disappointing...

I remember asking several doctors to test my husband's sperm, but kept hearing, he's young and healthy he should be OK. Finally, I insisted after visiting my 3rd doctor (an OB who performed IUI's). He went to the doctor's office and 'deposited' his sample. A few days later we got his results. Definitely wasn't what we were expecting. We were told that his count and motility wasn't too good. In one word... CRUSHED...

We brushed ourselves off and realized we needed to move on. We made an appointment with a new RE, whose group recently had a successful IVF with our best friends. Once meeting with with their PCOS specialist, we realized that this group was the group that we needed all along. When we left our meeting, we left with a plan. We would begin our first inject/IUI cycle once my next cycle started.

We FINALLY felt like we were on the right path...