Chugging along

So my numbers on last Thursdays beta were over 900. Things were all good until on Tuesday I just started randomly bleeding. I bled very heavily for 8 hours. Of course I freaked out and went and got blood drawn again to check the levels. My RE office called me and fit me in for an ultrasound. I'm happy to say I am still pregnant but this scared quite a few years off my life.

I'm sure I know why it happened and that is because of stress. My mother (with whom I am not on speaking terms currently) found out about the pregnancy and proceeded to hound me on facebook, phone, and I'm sure email as well (luckily I have those blocked). Luckily my tech capable husband has taken care of that and will be contacting her to let her know I will not be including her. Harsh I know but there is about 30 years worth of explanation. The other stressful thing was I had to tell my boss's boss about my pregnancy because I have appointments and it is our busy season so I have to have a good reason beyond a Doctors appointment. So I told her that I was still very early and considered high risk and that shut her up. Luckily she had a baby earlier in the year and came back in March from maternity leave.

June 15th (my husband's birthday) is when we go in for the offical ultrasound where we will hopefully see the heartbeat.  As of now the only thing I cannot stand to smell or taste is Shrimp. My sense of smell is very much heightened as this means the husband showers more LOL. But seafood is the only thing that sets me off.

FET #1 results

Got the call from my RE. My Beta HCG is postive and is at 352. I'm so many things right now but I'm keeping a lid on it until my 2nd HCG on Thursday. 

FET and waiting to hear

Since my IVF cycle did not end up with a transfer our Dr recommended that I wait for 2 months before doing our first FET. The embryo transfer was on the 17th (one month exactly to my 30th birthday) and I take my blood test on Tuesday the 29th. The Doctor, procedure nurse, and embryologist are all optimistic as my 5AA blastocyte came back 100% after the freeze. It was so cool to watch them put that inside of me and I felt teary.

So I've been feeling slightly tired and today the taste of eggs made me feel like I was going to puke. I'm very aware of my chest and so have decided to take all these things as good signs even if it might be psychosomatic. 8 days until I know for sure.

Cycle Day 1

So our first round of IVF was really stressful and very very fast. We got 42 eggs at retrieval and 24 of those went for frozen embryos.  The reason being I was severely Hyper stimmed. So severe I ended up in the hospital for a day and had to have my fluid drained. In the course of 1 week I gained 15lbs. I was in misery. I wanted to be put out of my misery. So we had to freeze all and will have to do a FET cycle.

So rather than focus on how crappy that all turned out I am focusing on how happy I am that I can take a deep breath, am able to fit into my clothes, and don't ever have to do IVF again.

First day of Stims

This morning I took my first stim shot (150 Bravelle mixed with 75 Menopur) and I mixed my stim shot for the evening (75 Bravelle mixed with 75 menopur). I even got the Lupron shot ready since I was mixing drugs and put the shots in my handy re purposed pencil case.

This part is the second hardest part of the fertility treatments (the hardest part being the two week wait). I dislike all the hormonal changes and not being able to anticipate them. But It is worth it to me to take them for the end product.

First shot IVF cycle #1 last night

Last night I gave myself the first shot in the protocol. Yay for Lupron. I shot up and went directly to bed since I hate side effects.

I feel very conflicted about all of this. You see we spent my paychecks to pay for the IVF cycle and the loudest voice in my head is yelling "if this doesn't work you just wasted a lovely trip to italy". Sometimes I really wish I could shut up the mental voices but I'm not able to. I'm stressing out which is making my neck wrench and be incredibly stiff.

I guess the main thing is that I don't want to be a failure at this anymore. I'm going to do everything I can do to make this work but ultimately its not in my hands. The worst thing for a control freak like me. So I need to focus on what I do have control on: My eating habits, my exercise habits, and meditation habits. I'm starting to train for my second attempt at running a 5k in September for the Giants Race.

I pray for the serenity to gracefully get through the next month and a half.

Countdown to injections

Today (after enduring a full day of the comedy of errors with our clinic and the prescription not going where we were told) we were able to order the entirety of our drugs for the IVF round coming up.  I think what surprised me the most in all of this was that there was a $3600 dollar difference in going and picking up the drugs and getting them shipped to us. I mean that $3600 is really my budget for baby when we finally get there. I'm happy that I don't have to go to a pharmacy to pick them up and deal with all of that.And I even know that its about 2 weeks before I even need it but still it will be nice to have the piece of mind that we have the meds and just need to go from there.

Jumping topics to talk about Work. There are times when I love what I do and times I don't. This week has really been a struggle between love and hate. You see my school is sending me off with our admissions department to give a financial aid presentation (which looks awesome!) in Washington and Oregon. The trip is over a weekend so it will be a long week. And its the weekend before the tuition deadline. So I anticipate that while I will be talking it up to students I will also be working long nights to keep caught up with email and reports.

I know that the next 2 months are going to test me in so many ways and I look forward to it. I look forward to knowing about where we are headed even if it isn't the path I want. I know I can deal with all the fallout if the bottom drops out. I look forward to sharing what happens with you while going through this.