Ouch, Ovaries are screaming!

I definitely know something is going on in there! My ovaries are feeling heavy and are a little sore. I'm really interested/scared to see how I feel by ER, which is predicted to be an entire week away! Sweet heavens! There's no backing out now. Which, yes. I've considered over the last couple of days. This is scary people. This is our only shot at IVF. We aren't going to do it again and again. So, sometimes it's easier to say, "I don't know if it would have worked because we didn't try it," rather than, "No, I failed at that, too." I've failed at fertility treatments and this last biggie, well. It's a little scary. But, overall, I am feeling quite positive, believe it or not.

Oh, the bruises. The belly is a bruised mess! There are tiny bruises around multiple injection sites. The hubs is going to have a hard time finding a spot tonight. And, the bloat. By the evening, it's out.of.control! Then, miraculously, it's gone by morning. I'm not sure where it goes, but at least I get to feel like myself for a few hours in the morning. I'm not sure what I expected after getting this every night:

It could be worse. But, this is enough! One of those buggers burns like hell, but I can't seem to figure out which one it is exactly. I think it's the low dose hcg. Not sure. But, my natural instinct after the burn last night was to slap the hubs in his face. Seriously? When was it a good idea to do that to a man that is holding another needle and getting ready to cram it in your gut? Well, luckily he found it hysterical and I think he feels a little badly over the whole thing, so he didn't take it out on me. Note to self: Do hcg last and let hubs RUN away right after injecting.

Most importantly: Tomorrow is Ayden's 10th birthday!! TEN! Wow! He is so handsome:

Here's to a VERY HAPPY 10th BIRTHDAY to my precious, Ayden!!

Kids in a RE's office??

I don't know how you feel, but I would never ever in a zillion years take my son to my RE appointment. For many reasons, really. One, he doesn't need to see what goes on in there with the dildo-cam or anything else that might be happening down there on any given day! Second, it's just plain flat out rude, IMO. Maybe I'm just too sensitive and empathetic, but I  don't think that's the case.

So, today after being creative with childcare for Ayden so I could go to my appointment, I walk into the waiting room to find it filled with kids. Seriously?? This is not a daycare people. The thing that struck me as odd is the one lady had another lady with her who just sat in the waiting room with her 3 kids while she went back for her appointment.

Now, this office is in a HUGE hospital with a great gift shop, 3 places to eat, and LOTS of places for kids to run around and get their energy out. A fertility office is NOT the place for kids to run around. Apparently, these ladies didn't get the memo. Then, another lady and her husband (I assume) came in with their screaming child. I mean SCREAMING. I might have looked at her with my best 'I'm disappointed in you' teacher look. Not sure she got the point.

Obviously, I get that secondary infertility exists. I've been the poster child for the last 9 1/2 years. Just because people have one, two, three, six kids it doesn't mean the next will come along as easily. Or, maybe fertility procedures were needed for the other kids. I get it. But, when I saw these kids today, I went back to when I had my m/c and had a zillion u/s appointments. Every time I went to the docs office, there were babies everywhere. It was painful. I would never in a zillion years want to do that to someone else. You just never know where women/men are in their cycle and how seeing a small child (or crazy ones running all over kingdom come) will effect a couple. I just set me off, but seeing the smaller child kinda stung a little. I'm not sure why, since I do already have one. Maybe it was the though of never having one that little again? Not sure. But, ugh. Rude! Okay, off my soapbox.

My estrogen came in at 150.6 today, which is after 2 days of stims. The nurse said this is perfect. I'm just gonna have to believe her because I have no idea! Of course, I'm going to go research it because that's what we IF women do. Research everything under the sun to see if by some chance, we might be just a little normal at some point in our cycle. I should just leave well enough alone, but I'm not. Also, I was instructed to drop our dose of Follistim to 200 from 225. Maybe I'm responding too quickly. Not sure. But, less of a med that stung the crap out of my gut yesterday is a welcome surprise!!

My next appointment is on Wednesday for a u/s and more blood work. I'm really fascinated at how anti-climatic this whole thing has been! Looking at the calendar when we first got it, I was WAY overwhelmed! Now, I realize that I'm only getting injections once a day, granted it's 3 of them, and headed to the RE's office every-other day. The time in between I'm just sitting around waiting for the next big event, which is over in a few minutes, leaving me waiting again. It's like being in the Army. Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait. No. I've never been in the Army. I did do a fast stint as an Army wife while the hubs was still enlisted. (It's nothing like the show. I promise.) But, there was a lot of hurrying up and waiting. A lot!

Onto other exciting news: Ayden will be 10 in 2 days! WOW! Quite a few years ago, I met a woman who had a 10 year old and was still trying for her second baby. I remember thinking to myself, "Thank goodness I won't have a 10 year old when I'm still trying for a second." That, there folks, is Karma. It's also, I imagine, God's sense of humor. While I do have a good sense of humor, I'm not actually sure if I find this particular 'joke' funny quite yet!

And, Ayden is onto us. You can't possible hide that many meds and needles from a 10 year old. They're in the fridge for goodness sakes. He's a growing boy and he often opens the fridge. Luckily, he hasn't tried to drink any of the meds yet. He's also been mentioning having a baby pretty often lately. Rut ro. Only a couple more months left of lying to my precious spawn! I can do it!!

Starting Stims Tonight!

It's here!! Tonight we start stims! That also means the number of times my gut gets stabbed each night triples. That has me a little anxious, but definitely excited to be moving on to the next phase of IVF. This part is only a little over a week long, so that is definitely doable. I go Monday for a blood test to see what my estrogen level is at this point. It should be around 400 according to the RE's nurse. After that last appointment, I'm interested to see if it does indeed do what it's supposed to or if it is too high. Fingers crossed that my body does what it's expected to do!

Today was Ayden's birthday party. He had a blast! I'm pretty sure he'll be sleeping ALL night long! The boys played basketball for 2 hours and only slowed down to eat cake and candy. They had me tired! On a fun note, Ayden has been saving his money like a mad man because he wants to buy his own computer. After his party today, he has almost $600 saved and we're hunting for a laptop tomorrow! I'm so proud of him for learning to save at an early age. We definitely preach the idea of saving your money and buying what you want with cash and I hope it keeps him far away from debt when he's an adult.

I'll update again when I get my results on Monday!

Baseline Appointment

Baseline went great! I have about 15 follicles waiting to come out and play on each ovary. I saw the other RE in the practice and, while I like him just fine, he freaked me out for a little bit. He was really worried about the number of follicles I have on each ovary. Now, I thought the point was to get a lot. Maybe I'm wrong. Now, not all of these are going to make good embies, but I'd rather have more to start with. Maybe I'm wrong. I know it's quality over quantity. However, he was talking about lowering my dose of follistim for tomorrow. Then, after talking with the nurse and me, he seemed to think that after being on bcp since August, my follicles would be slow to respond and all 30 might not mature. Well, I sure hope he's right. That's a crap ton of eggs. It makes me feel like a chicken! So, tonight is the last night of Lupron only and tomorrow we start stims. Yippie!

Tomorrow is also Ayden's 10th birthday party. He is obsessed with basketball and so he invited his basketball team and other kids from his class to play basketball at our local rec center. He is so flipping excited. He's been running around here like a crazy person! He's also excited because he'll be 10! That's a big deal in kid land! No more single digits for this kid!!

Lupron is the devil, reincarnated.

Seriously. The bloating. Oh the bloating. If no one has ever told you that shooting meds in your gut makes you bloated, well consider yourself warned. The hubs kindly mentioned my ever growing bloat during my shot tonight and then chuckled. Oh, yes. It's hysterical. Then, there are the constant headaches. Those are lovely, too. And the gas. That's been pleasant, as well. I think everyone's favorite is my crabby ass attitude. Well, it's my favorite anyway. I don't give a shit if everyone else likes it or not. Honestly, the headaches, bloating, and farts are enough to make my crabby. That may not be the Lupron after all. AND, to top it all off, AF arrived yesterday. That sucked, too. I forgot how crappy I felt during AF. So, yesterday I laid on the couch, bloated and gassy with a heating pad. Toady, I drug my crabby self to the zoo to enjoy the weather. It was a beautiful day and I was really enjoying myself....then, my daily headache returned. Oh joy!

Not much to report

Still just chugging along. Not much to report today. This morning I only had to take two pills. That was weird! No BCP and no antibiotic. I'm only taking my prenatal and baby aspirin as prescribed by the RE's office. Yesterday, I did have a horrible headache and I'm starting to think it has to be from the Lupron. They've been almost daily since starting and are usually start in the early afternoon and hang around for varying times each day. It sucks! Yesterday, I broke down and took over the counter migraine medicine, although I'm not sure if I was supposed to, but I just couldn't stand it a second longer. I didn't take my prescription stuff, so I figured it was better? Not sure if that's true or not!

As for my attempt at the endo diet, I have successfully cut out caffeine, dairy (which upsets my stomach so badly anyway that I don't miss it at all!) and soy. I've avoided soy for quite sometime after reading how horrible it is in general, so that wasn't very hard either. This week, I'm cutting out wheat. Heaven help everyone around me! There are so many other things I can eat to pacify my carb addiction, so hopefully I don't miss it too much! I'm also cutting out sugar this week. Oh boy. Wheat and sugar in the week I'm supposed to have my first AF since August. This should be interesting! However, both of these things cause a super toxic environment in endo patients and that's what I need to avoid. So, this will give me almost a month to un-toxify my gut before my embryo transfer.

Oh, also, my ovaries were pretty sore last week from the Lupron and that had me freaking out. However, after looking it up online, it seems kind of normal. Ok. Not normal. But, it can happen. As of yesterday, they're back to normal and in no pain. So, yay!

IVF: Not as scary as I originally thought

Considering that IVF is a lot of money and the calendar my RE gave me was insane, I'm surprised at how anti-climatic it's been so far...get a shot at 10pm and wait until the next night at 10pm and do it all over. Then, one week from today, 3 shots at 10pm. I'm sure that once the appointments start to be every other day, I'll feel differently. But for now, other than some odd moments of crying because I have hormones for the first time since August, I'm doing great. This isn't nearly as overwhelming as I thought it would be and I'm pleasantly surprised. I actually get VERY excited the closer it gets to shot time...IF has jacked up my mind! Seriously, this is coming from a girl who had to be chased around the doctor's office to get a shot when I was 12 years old. That's not even kind of an exaggeration. I even screamed. Really loud. My Mom will never let me forget how embarrassed she was. Sorry Mom!

So, updating the blog in with IVF news isn't nearly as exciting right now. Oh. Except I did take my LAST Aygestin (BCP) today!! Although I'm very excited to have that part behind me because it's one step closer to a successful cycle, I have sooooo enjoyed not being in pain. Endo sucks so bad. Unfortunately, I've read that it can make IVF more painful. However, the goal of going on BCP after my last endo surgery was to lessen pain during this IVF. I'm hoping and praying that's true!

Just as a weird IVF tidbit, I read somewhere that laughing is helpful with implantation because it lowers stress. I don't know how true that is, but I announced to the hubs that after the transfer, I can only watch funny shows. Especially after we watched our DVR'd episode of Hannibal last night. It was horrible. I was screaming like a mad woman, covering my eyes, and plugging my ears. I'm fairly certain nothing is gonna want to live in me for 9 months listening to that noise! The hubs agreed...So, I'm stocking up on funny stuff to DVR and even if it isn't true, at least I'll have something to do while I lay here!