Bébé Maybe

I made it through the stim shots. I'm pretty proud of myself. I'm tired and my stomach is covered in bruises, but I made it. I made it through 4am wake-up calls and making it to appointments before long days at work. I made it through the stress of going through this process while juggling working full-time, subbing for additional classes, teaching dance 2 days a week, and dog-sitting. After my appointment this morning I waited faithfully by my phone for the call that would tell me whether I needed to come in again or whether to prepare for the egg retrieval. Of course, the call didn't come until I was sitting on a 100 year old train surrounded by other people on the way to an apple orchard. The response was the latter- I got instructions to take the trigger shot tonight for a Monday retrieval. It will be on the 28th- happy anniversary to us. I'm trying to be happy that we at least made it to this point because that's not a guarantee. But I'm sad and disappointe...

It's been a week. Tuesday was day 1 of IVF cycle #2. We woke up at 4:30am to get to our clinic in Illinois before work. I had a 6:30 appointment, and I ended up having to wait a whole hour before my appointment even started. That's never happened before, I usually never have to wait at all. I was stressing out pretty hardcore because I told my work I would only be a few minutes late and get there by 8:10, and David had a 9am meeting he couldn't miss.  Thankfully David ended up being only few minutes late. But I didn't get to work until after 9:30 and it was chaos when I got there. I had to sub for another teacher (with no lesson plans) and I was exhausted by the end of the day. After school I had multiple errands to run, including my second blood test of the day and stopping at the Falls rec. department in preparation for yet another job that was starting the next day. I finally got home 12 hours after I left. I did my first shot that night. Wednesday was a normal work ...

 September is shaping up to be the busiest month of my life. I honestly have no idea if I will be able to mentally/physically handle it. Our next round of IVF will most likely start in less than a week. That will mean shots, medications, and all of the side effects... plus at least 6 visits to the clinic in Illinois. Right now we're planning on going the clinic before work. That means leaving the house at 5:30 to get there at 6:30, and rushing right to work to be there close to 8am. I'm worried about getting enough sleep to be able to physically function. One of the medications last time caused insomnia. I would wake up at between 2-4am and not be able to fall back asleep. It wasn't a big deal last time because I could sleep as much as I wanted during the day. This time... not so much. Besides working full-time (7:50-3:50), I am subbing for 2 Hebrew classes this month. I have to prepare those extra lessons every day. As if that's not enough... dance starts next week. I...

 Currently chilling here half-asleep waiting for a phone call. It hasn't been a good day. The last time I tested was on Thursday. I tested again today hoping to see a darker line to reassure myself. That backfired. The line wasn't darker. It looked pretty much exactly the same... if anything, a tiny bit lighter. Theoretically it should be significantly darker 4 days later if I have more HCG in my body. It was dumb, but I did that test at 3am. I woke up and felt nervous and couldn't wait. Then when the result wasn't what I hoped for, I couldn't fall back asleep. I've already been super tired thanks to the extra hormones, and waking up at 3 did not help. Really not feeling myself. My mom drove me to the clinic today to get a blood test, which is of course much more precise. My levels were 87 on Thursday, and should be at least 350 today if everything is going well. I'm really struggling to hope right now. I cried the whole way to Illinois. Last week they calle...

Yesterday was a pretty historic occasion. I had my first positive pregnancy test. In my life. I took the test 8 days after our transfer. Some people start testing as early as 4 days afterwards, but the likelihood of getting a negative (even when you are pregnant) is pretty high if you test too early.  I've seen enough negative pregnancy tests in my lifetime, not really interested in seeing more. I also didn't want to wait all the way until my blood test, because waiting for that phone call hours after your appointment is horrible. I wanted to have an idea of what the results would be beforehand, but I also didn't want to torture myself by testing obsessively every day. I dreamed the night before that I had a positive test, and in my dream I was so happy that I carried my pee stick around all day and kept looking at it haha. I did NOT do that in real life, but I did keep it out on the bathroom counter and smiled every time I walked past it. After my dream I woke up feeling e...

It has been an eventful week. I've heard other people refer to this part of IVF as the "Hunger Games" because there are less and less of your precious little embryos every day. It's a terrible waiting game as you know more of them are dying off every day. As each one dies off it's one less chance to have a child. After the fertilization report on Friday (7 made it to that point), I was expecting to hear on Monday how many blastocysts we had. Blastocysts are the embryos that look healthy and are developed enough to either transfer or freeze. Apparently my clinic doesn't give you that info then. They just called to schedule my transfer, so at least I could assume that we had at least one good embryo. It really messed with me to not get that information. It was a hard day. I kept envisioning that we only had one, or that they would call to cancel the transfer because that one didn't make it either. Monday's key word: STRESSED. Besides stressi...

We've officially made it through the retrieval and I'm so happy! After 12 days of shots, I took the trigger shot at 10:45pm on Tuesday night. Don't mind me, just taking artsy pictures with my needle late at night. The timing is very precise. You ovulate 36 hours later, and that's when they schedule your retrieval for. On Wednesday I had a break from shots but I couldn't really do much because I was sore, bloated, and really tired. I had some nerves on Wednesday night, but we felt excited when we arrived at the clinic on Thursday morning. Only cool people take mask selfies. Waking up from anesthesia is such a weird feeling. I'm not nearly as funny as David is when he has drugs. I didn't say anything weird, but I did try to drink water with my mask on. We got the good news right away that they retrieved 10 eggs! This was the absolute best case scenario, so I was thrilled. 2 days beforehand the nurse counted 6 follicles that were alre...