Oh, What A Day!

Goodness...where do I even begin?  It has been a fantastic Saturday!

First up...Day 2 Embryo Update

I have been doing my best to stay busy so that I am not stressing and anxiously counting the minutes til the phone rings.  To my surprise, I got the call regarding our embryos before noon.  Usually weekend calls do not occur until after 2pm.  But I'm not going to complain that my phone rang so early.

The sweet, quiet voice of the nurse on the other end informed us that all

TEN of our embies were still growing.

She said the embryologist rated NINE of them "good," and ONE of them as "fair."

I couldn't be more Amazed.  Blessed.  Thankful.

Next report will be tomorrow.

So the other major thing that has been going on in our lives
is that J & I have been house hunting.

We only started last week, but it is a VERY fast market out here s
 we needed to be aggressive.

And boy were we ever when we found the builder we absolutely loved.

We originally put in an offer on their model home,
but the seller didn't want to get rid of that just yet.

So we quickly put in another offer on a different house.

We went back and forth just a couple times, walked through the house
again this morning and then finalized everything TODAY!

We are SO excited!

It is 2730 sq feet.  3 Bedrooms + a Bonus Room + a Den with 2.75 bathrooms

and a cute yard in the back.

Plenty of room to start a cute little family.  :)

We close on it Feb. 13th and will have about 6 weeks to move into it before our lease is up on the house we are currently renting.

So needless to say, this has been consuming my thoughts for the past couple of weeks,

which has shown to be a good thing to take my mind off our second IVF cycle.

And lastly....

our Seattle Seahawks won the first round of the playoffs tonight against the Carolina Panthers.

Woo Hoo!  Go Hawks!

Day 1 Embryo Report

Some days my nurse coordinator really gets the best of me.  She has forgotten to call with reports in the past, so whenever the late afternoon comes around and I haven't heard from her I start to get a little anxious.  On Tuesday, she assured me that she would call me first thing in the morning on

Friday with our Fertilization Report.

Well, 9 past by.  Then 10...11....12....1..........2.........3!

UGH.  When the clock turned 3, I told myself I would giver her til 3:30 before I called. Well luckily at 3:15 my phone finally rang.  Good grief!

The kind, soft voice on the other end happily informed me that of the 12 eggs that were collected yesterday, 11 of them were mature and put through the fertilization process (ICSI).  And of the 11 fertilized 10 were in culture and growing beautifully.

YAY!

We will get our next update tomorrow.

Keeping our fingers crossed!

#operationbabyvincent

A Basket Full

We left our house two hours before retrieval was scheduled this morning.
We were not taking any chances on traffic.
It turned out traffic was a breeze and we arrived 45 minutes before we had to check in.

Nap time in the car it is.

At 7:50am, we walked into the Seattle location of our clinic.
Acting like cool cucumbers, J & I were pretty relaxed and excited for the next step in this cycle.

Turned out our nurse was an IVF success story and was currently 8 months pregnant, so that was pretty fun.  I had my IV started, chatted with the doc and anesthesiologist, signed some consents and it was time.

The last thing I remember was the anesthesiologist telling me some story
and then it was lights out.
Before I knew it I was back in recovery with J holding my hand.

Yet another fantastic nap.

But the minute I opened my eyes, I was in pain.  Ugh.  My nurse quickly had me put some crackers and juice in my tummy before giving me a pain pill.

After I was a little more with it, the doctor came in and gave us the magic number...

TWELVE!

It was music to my ears, and brought me to tears.

We waited for the pain pill to kind of kick in before getting ready to head home.

The car ride home was brutal.  I felt EVERY bump and pothole in the road.

Luckily they gave me a script for more pain pills.
I spent the rest of the afternoon on cloud 9 with my heating pad.  :)

We will get our first report on our little ones tomorrow morning.

Can't wait to hear how they are doing!

Final Scan Appointment

Day 10. Tuesday, January 6th, 2015. This morning should be my final appointment before retrieval.

I feel like a bus, so I hope they don't make me stim another day.

I am so very bloated and feel like I have constant horrible cramps.

Blood was drawn without issues...then it was time for the ultrasound.

I was actually excited for this one and eager to see how many follicles I had.

The U/S tech at the SRM Kirkland location is awesome.  She is kind and very thorough.

She counted two follicles on the right, measuring 20mm and 17.5mm.

Moving on the left ovary, she counted 13!  YAY.  They measured 23mm, 20mm, 17mm, 16mm, 20mm, 13mm, 19.5mm, 23mm, 16.5mm, 21mm, 12mm, 10mm, and12mm
FIFTEEN TOTAL!  WOO HOO!

Food for thought, I essential have a bunch of 13 juicy grapes on my left ovary.

Fantastic!  :)

After the scan, I spoke with my nurse coordinator.  She was almost certain that I would be triggering that night, putting our retrieval on Thursday.  Sounds good to me!

I walked out of the office and immediately sent a text to J.

This was his response to hearing we potentially had 15 eggs....

I think he was a little excited.  What do you think?  :)

That afternoon, I got a callback from Katie.  My estrogen was 1397 and I was indeed triggering that night...8:30pm to be exact.  Retrieval was scheduled for 8:30 am Thursday morning.  YAY!

J had no problems stabbing the 2 inch needle into my backside.

He may have even enjoyed inflicting that pain on me.

And we are set!  Excited and ready for retrieval.

Running a marathon from my couch

Besides my constantly aching ovaries, the biggest most noticeable difference in this cycle is that I am exhausted ALL OF THE TIME!  

My acupuncture therapist told me last cycle that IVF is like running a genetic marathon.  Demanding that your body makes a years supply of eggs all in one month takes a lot of work will inevitably leave one very tired.

Yep, that's my excuse and I'm stickin' to it.  ;)

Now, if you need me I'll be taking my 3rd nap of the day.

And Away We Go....

Round TWO has officially begun.  Sorry I haven't written until now, but things have been just a wee bit crazy....but anyway.

Day 1. Sunday, December 28th.  Injections started with a bang...

...one banging headache that is.

It was the 4th day of said headache, so we had spent the day just relaxing at home.

In the days leading up to starting, I was pretty chill and calm.

No crazy countdowns or busy schedules.  Just cuddles by the fire, watching good movies and sipping hot chocolate.  I truly feel that my calm state has helped with this cycle.  Even though my suppression check showed a MONSTROUS cyst of 4.6cm, my RE assured me that it wouldn't effect our IVF cycle and that it would likely shrink when injections started.

Day 3, Tuesday, December 30th.  First appointment for blood work.

I later heard that my estrogen level was only 71.  My RE and I both had flashback to my previous cycle where I had the same low numbers.  But this time instead of sitting on the same dose till my next appointment, she skyrocketed my doses.  Which I was very happy for.  I doubled my Menopur dose and increased the Follistim from 300u to 375u.  

I also doubled my intake of avocados to one whole one per day. YUM!

Tuesday night my dear husband insisted we see the third Hobbit movie at the IMAX before it was gone.  So I packed up my injections, did my best to look presentable and we headed out for a date night.

We enjoyed a yummy dinner at Blazing Onion, followed by a romantic time of "shooting up" in the car.  Yup, I administered my injections by street light, while hubby played look out.  

Awww...if that's not a sign of true love, I don't know what is!  :)

When the deed was done, we donned our 3-D glasses and watched the elves and the dwarfs defeat the orcs (sorry for the spoiler).

New Years Eve.  Another day of relaxing.  We usually have a movie marathon of  some trilogy, but this year we decided to finish Season 7 of True Blood.  ha ha ha

By 11pm, I had a snoring husband on the couch.  When the clock struck midnight, I did wake him and tell him "Happy New Year," but he mumbled something about Jason Stakehouse playing Minecraft so I left his snoring butt and went to bed.  Of course!

Day 5. Thursday, January 1st 2015. Happy New Year!  We were up with the sunshine for our appointment which was down in Seattle and you never know about traffic.  We arrived in plenty of time to take in the beauty of Lake Union.

Blood draw...check.

And now time for the dreaded ultrasound.  Since we started this journey we have NEVER had a good u/s report......until today!  :)

The tech counted 12 or so growing follicles.  And my cyst was shrinking! YAY!

I later found out my estrogen level had gone from 71 to 180.  My RE once again raised my Follistim dose from 375u to 450u.

Friday evening I started experiencing some pretty intense waves of nausea.  I pulled the "ME" card and requested that I got to spend the evening in bed with my heat pad, journal, ginger candy and Powerade Zero.  It seemed to do the trick.

 With my rapidly expanding ovaries, I feared that bending over would soon become difficult....and I couldn't go into my egg retrieval with nasty toes.  So I decided to give myself a pedicure Saturday morning.  My first go at a Jamberry pedi and I must say that I. AM. IN. LOVE!  :)  So pretty, and I didn't have to spend $40 at the salon.  :)

 Day 8. Sunday, January 4th.  Ah, the dreaded Day 8.  It was at this point in our last cycle that the on-call RE told us that we should consider cancelling our cycle.  So needless-to-say, there was just a little anxiety walking into this appointment.  Besides the fact that I am pretty much nauseous ALL THE TIME and I can feel my ovaries ALL THE TIME, I did my best to stay as calm as possible.

It took two pokes to get my blood.  Not a good sign.  But it may not have helped that my first nurse was a new grad and I told her that I was a veteran nurse myself.  I knew I was in trouble when I saw that oh-so-familiar inexperienced shaking needle headed my way.  I tried to coach her and tell her she was too high, but in the end she passed me off the the 15-year veteran.  LOL.

And then it was time for the ultrasound.

....deep breaths....

First off my lining was 9.9mm....very good if only I was doing a fresh transfer this cycle.

Moving on to the right ovary.

TWO great sized follicles, measuring 13.5mm and 16.5mm

(last time we only had one lead follicle on this ovary) YAHOO!

And now the left ovary.  We knew we would have to take one measurement away as it was likely the cyst I have had since the beginning.  The tech started calling out measurements to the nurse.  As I watched the scan on the screen and heard the tech continue to call out sizes one after another, my eyes swelled up with happy tears of joy.  It seemed to go on forever.  It was such a great feeling.  And in the end she had measured 8 total (although I think she missed one or two).  They measured 14mm, 13mm, 16mm, 12.5mm, 14mm, 16.5mm, 16mm and 15.5mm.  She also saw 7 that were around 10mm, so there is a chance that a few may make it to size in time for the big show.  Later that morning I heard from the clinic that my estrogen level had gone up from 180 to 620!  Yeowzers!  I am to continue with the same dose and go back to the office on Tuesday.

Keeping our fingers crossed for continued good reports in the coming days and weeks.