Trigger happy

This cycle has indeed progressed very fast. And I am proud to say that I have taken a very hands-off approach so far. I have had 4 monitoring ultrasounds and b/ws so far and I have no idea what my E2 levels have been. All that I know is they have been looking good.  For an “A-type” like me… that is a big deal! I am calm. I have faith on this cycle. If you ignore what happened on Friday, no negative thoughts whatsoever. Things are just going smooth.

Now, a little follie update.

I started taking Gane.relix and Micro.dose hCG on Friday night. So along with my Meno.pur shot, I had to take 3 shots in the evening. Yes… a pain… but no biggie. On yesterday’s u/s (my 4th),  the follies looked awesome.

Right ovary: 7 follies that looked ready ranging from 20mm – 17mm; 1 other follie at 15mm.

Left ovary: 3 that looked ready ranging from 19mm-17mm; 5 others ranging from 16mm – 13mm.

The RE that did my scan said I was ready to trigger last night. She did warn me that I might not get as many eggs as my first time (18 retrieved w/ 16 mature) but she didn’t want to push me because my E2 levels were alarmingly high (>5000) last time. And apparently a high E2 like that can sometimes be detrimental to the quality of the eggs. Huh?? Really?? I thought E2 indicated the number, size, and maturity of the eggs. Oh wells, I didn’t probe on that further because: (a) She is the one with the medical degree and (b) I am paying her a lot of money to do this and (c) because of that, I better trust her.

My only concern with not having as many as last time is that I want to be able to get to day 5 this time. And I don’t know if 10 is good enough for that. We are scheduled to do ICSI. And, I wanted to make sure they are performing assissted hatching as well. I know this does not come into the picture until transfer time… but no harm in being proactive.

On a side note, since I have only 10 or so big follies, I don’t feel as “full” as last time. I can definitely feel my ovaries stretching and taking up quite a bit of space in my abdomen area, but it is not anywhere as bad as last time. I can still do all my activities, but just at a slow pace.

So I took my hCG trigger shot at 7:30pm last night. I take my enema (I know… yuck!) after dinner tonight to clear out my system. No eating or drinking (not even water) after midnight tonight. And off to have my ER @ 7:30am tomorrow.

The most exciting part of this process is about to begin. I am ready! :)

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Breakdown of #3

This cycle has gone by sooo fast that I hardly had time to stop and wonder when ER or ET or anything else would be. Thanks to being really really busy at work and DH’s flu, my mind was way more pre-occupied during the last couple of weeks. One night, I was soo busy that I almost forgot to take my evening Men.opur shot. I was an hour late!! THAT has never happened before. I have always been on time and I try to stick to the 12-hour rule as much as possible. So… everything was going really great until Thursday evening.

DH was feeling better for the first time that week (Thanks for all your well wishes :)). We were watching TV and having a light conversation. I was telling him how fast this cycle was going and we were discussing our financial situtation. I wanted to make sure we weren’t double counting the saved-up IVF money. I told him we would need money for 3 more cycles (remember my post about trying for 6 cycles!) and he just freaked. He freaked… not about the money… but about the fact that I wanted to do three more. He said 3 cycles was the maximum. “If we don’t have a kid by then, we are adopting” is what he told me. That was a HUGE blow. It wasn’t fair that he was putting so much pressure on me. I didn’t talk much that night because I was in shock! How could he throw this at me right now? Sooo not fair. OK… to be fair, he did say 3 was the max right after my miscarriage with IVF#2. But I just chose to block it out and ignore it. So, yes, I am also to blame for not talking abt this earlier. The real bawling and crying-like-I-got-hit-by-a-truck didn’t come until Friday morning. More talking during our breakfast led to more surprises! He says if we don’t have a kid (or get PG) by the end of the year, we are adopting. I know he is saying this because he cares for me. He hates to see me get my hopes high and then back down because the cycle didn’t work. He hates the fact I have to shoot up needles everyday and go through so much pain. He hates the roller-coaster ride as much as I do. But seriously?? Adoption is not like going to a store and buying a kid. It is an deeply emotional process and I am SOOO not ready for it. I need time. I need closure on the fact that I can’t have a baby on my own before I can even begin to think about adoption. Besides, I told him that I am not in a hurry to have a child. And that led to the realization that I am doing IVF to prove two things. (a) I am not broken and (b) I want to have a baby. Yes, that is true. There is probably more of wanting to prove that I am not broken than the need to have a baby. I am young. If I knew that I could get PG like normal people, maybe I would wait a little longer to have a kid. But the fact that it is not that case and the fact that I am not getting any younger and the fact that the probability of having a kid goes down as I get older want me to do IVF now. If IVF can’t help me now, it can’t do much good the older I get! So yes… I would wait to have a kid if I know I can have them later.

Having a biological child means a lot to me. DH doesn’t care one way or another. To me, adoption can wait. My age is not a factor for adoption. I do not have to do it today even if I were ready for it! Don’t get me wrong… its not like I am against adoption. I do want to have kids in my life and if adoption is my path there, then I will take it. But, just the thought of being pushed to adopt because I can’t have my own, brings me to tears. I haven’t accepted that. I still believe that I can have kids on my own.

And after lots more crying, and hugging, and losing hope on myself and my body, I am back to being cautiously optimistic that this cycle will work!  Roller-coaster ride it is!

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Google reader, Stim update

OK… I need suggestions. I currently use google reader to check on any new updates on all your blogs. And it is driving me up the wall. There is a significant amount of lag (abt a day) between when I see a new post on your blog to when it shows up on my reader… and it is driving me crazy. Is there anything better out there? What do you guys use??

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Thanks for all your well wishes… DH is feeling a little better today. He didn’t take off from work but he stayed at home and worked from here.  I still have him all drugged up with Tylenol. Hopefully they didn’t do anything to his swimmers!!

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Oh… and my IVF coordinator called me in the afternoon. She said that everything looked good and so they wanted to lower my meds to 100IU of Folli.stim  in the AM (down from 150IU) and 1 vial  of Meno.pur in PM (down from 2 vials). I was shocked. I have only been stimming for 3 days and they are already lowering my meds??!! And the follies weren’t that big in the u/s today morning. She didn’t make a mention of my E2 levels. And it didn’t occur to me to ask until after I finished talking to her. I asked her twice if she was sure and she confirmed. Exactly 5 mins later, she called back saying that she made a mistake in her instructions. The Fol.listim goes down to a 100IU but the Me.nopur stays at 2 vials. OK… thats more like it. I can believe that… because they want to take it slow and steady.

Then, it got me wondering how fragile this entire situation is. We make changes to our meds based on a single phone call and there are so many instances where things can get screwed up!! Whew… I am glad she double checked my charts and called me back. She is a really sweet person. She must have been extremely caught up in something else for this to happen.

In any case, things are still looking up for me. I can begin to feel my ovaries a little bit more as the days progress. Things are definetely happening down there!

Grow… Follies… Grow!!

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Weekend, Flu, Monitoring

This weekend was very relaxing. DH didn’t have school on Saturday and so it felt like we had a long weekend. We started off the weekend with dinner w/ a couple of friends. On Saturday, we slept in, lounged around at home, and later we decided we would go visit a friend who recently gave birth. This was the friend that I talked about earlier with a premie at 35 wks. They were now home. And OMG, the baby was too cute. I got to hold him and put him to sleep. I was soo happy. There wasn’t one bit of angst or jealousy. I was just happy and content. Another friend of ours gave birth this past week and we might be visiting them next weekend! Babies ARE the cutest thing… now… I just need one to call mine! Hopefully all these newborns will bring me luck! :)

*****

On Saturday night, DH was like “I am not feeling well, I think I am running a fever”. And the very next thought that runs across my mind is “Oh no… are the swimmers ok?”!! Sad what IF does to your thought process. Good that I didn’t actually say that.  DH is running a fever, has body ache, sore throat, and the cough… hmm… the flu!! Poor thing couldn’t sleep all last night because of the cough. I made him some throat soothers tea in the morning and that helped quiet it down a bit. God… its been more than 2 years since anyone of us got the flu. And I almost forgot what to give him for the flu. I have put him on Tyl.enol Cold. His fever drops within 30 mins of taking the meds but it rises back up in a couple of hours. Ughhh!! I going to see if it subsides within the next day or so… otherwise, he is seeing a doc.

*****

Today morning, I went in for my first monitoring appt. So far… so good. 8 follies on the right and 7 follies on the left… all under 10mm. She measured a bunch of them at 8×8, 8×7, etc. So they seem to growing at a steady pace. And I am told to maintain my dosage @ 150IU folli.stim in AM and 2 vials Men.opur in PM. Haven’t got my E2 number yet. Still excited and very hopeful!

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Drug junkie

OMG, I am super excited about this cycle. Yesterday, I could barely wait to get home from work and I could barely wait for my PM shot time. I don’t why I am so jacked up. DH is almost amused by my state. He is like.. “Oh man… you are a drug junkie!!”. And I agree… I just can’t wait for the drugs to work. Last night, we went out to dinner with a couple of friends. And because it was time for my PM shot, I had to shoot myself up in the restroom stall! Piece of cake. All of us have done it at one point or another… but it was a first for me. But thank God, I anticipated it and pre-mixed my 2 vials of Me.nopur at home. Trying to mix it in the stall would have been a little icky.

A couple of you guys asked about the enema in my med spread. My RE’s office has me taking it the night before ER to…ummm… clear out my insides. I had to do this for IVF#1 as well.

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And so IVF#3 begins…

Today is stim day1. 150IU of Foll.ist.im in AM and 2 vials of Men.o.pur in PM. For a couple of seconds just before I shot it up, I had a needle scare. I know… I couldn’t believe it. After 10 wks of continuous PIO shots, I was scared of the puny 29g, 1/2 inch, Folli.stim needles!  But that didn’t last too long… a kick in the butt and a slap at the backside of my head knocked the fear right out of me. After the shot, I was actually a bit embarrassed at myself for having a scare.

In any case, I am hopeful, happy and optimistic. This cycle will work.

As promised, here is the obligatory med spread for IVF#3… Enjoy

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Updates…

My home network is back. I’m a happy camper! :)

Lots of things happened in the last couple of weeks…long post…. so beware!

For the first time in a year or so, I fit into my skinny pants that have been sitting in my closet, staring at me, and mocking at me. This happened about a week ago. I was just ecstatic. All that diet and exercise crap really works!! Go figure! More than the weight, I lost the inches and I think I am finally at my pre-IVF weight (mind you… not my pre-TTC weight).  I fit better in my clothes. Its almost like I am re-discovering the potential of an entire wardrobe of previously rejected clothes in my closet. And this has done so much good for my self-esteem I can’t even begin to explain. And because I hate it when people say they lost weight but not say how they did it, here was my game plan for the past 6 weeks:

1. Eat breakfast. Mine was either quick-cooking oatmeal or multi-grain cheerios w/ fat-free milk, 1/2 a cup of berries, and just the whites from 1 hard-boiled egg
2. Eat at least 3 fruits a day. I usually had a 1/2 a cup of berries in the morning, a banana mid-morning, and an apple mid-afternoon.
3. Salad for dinner. I’d make some kind of a vinaigrette w/olive oil, added some spicy greens, celery, shredded carrots, slices of apples/pear, peppers, and topped it with toasted almonds/walnuts. It was good. Even my salad-hating DH liked it.
4. Reduce consumption of white rice and replace w/ other whole grains. Being an indian, rice was one the predominant ingredients for lunch/dinner. So this was a little tough. But I have to tell you that I did not strictly follow this rule. I ended up having rice once in 2 or 3 days.

And most important of all…

5. Workout for 3x/week for 35 mins each. I started with doing the elliptical and then moving onto the treadmill.

My entire mind/health/body has benefited from this trying-to-lose-weight fiasco. This past getting-pregnant-and-losing-baby episode made me realize how much I have been abusing my body and how much I have been taking it for granted!! By doing this, I felt like I was giving my body a chance to recoup, and take care, and do what it does best… make me function properly!

So to celebrate my success so far, I ran an 8K (5 miles) race this past Sunday! I have never participated in a group running event before and I have never run more than 3 miles at a stretch ever before. This was a first. My race time is bad according to a lot of people (58 mins) but I don’t care. I finished! That is all I care about. And I am so proud of it. Huge Humango Big Mucho THANKS to DH, because without his persuasion, I wouldn’t have entered the race. And he supported me by running side-by-side w/ me throughout the entire race. The fact that I went from IVF-and-TTC-induced-coma-ending-with-miscarriage to running an 8K in about 2 months makes it that much sweeter!!

Ahhh…. now onto the good stuff. The very next day after the race was my baseline u/s and b/w. Everything was A-OK’d and I am off to start stims for IVF#3 tomorrow! Picked up my box of meds and am just v v excited to start. Promise to post a pic later.

Love the new beginnings. This cycle, I vow to stay positive and be cautiously optimistic! This cycle will work. Period.

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