Baby Showers used to affect me pretty bad. I would still go, because I was genuinely happy for my girlfriends, but I remember sitting at them completely distracted by my own selfish feelings. It's not something I'm proud of, and I don't think anyone even knew that I was feeling that way, except maybe my mom. I remember one time that she was watching my face at a baby shower, and she said she could read sadness on my face. I thought I was playing the supportive friend well, but apparently not. I do have resting bitch face syndrome, so it very well could have just been that. :)
It hurts when the world is moving fast around you and you feel stuck in one place. Like those dreams where you are trying to run and you feet feel like cement bricks. It hurts when there's little you can do to change that. It hurts when you see growing bellies become babies and then turn into more bellies and babies and then even more bellies and babies. I've seen friends have their 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th kids. And here I was, wanting one. When I was little, I used to say I wanted 4. And I would still love to have multiple kids, but I'm not sure how that's going to happen. I'm still young, according to my mom and my dr. But at 33 (which I will turn in May), my mom was having her 4th child (me!) and I can't help but think if I was her right now, I'd be pregnant with the most perfect baby to ever walk the earth. HAHA. just kidding. I crack myself up.
My life was obviously not supposed to go the same route as my mom. It's not supposed to go the same route as anyone. That's the beautiful and scary and exciting thing about "life". You don't know what lies ahead. But I have hopes and dreams. And wants and needs. And what I hope for, is to always be happy and content in whatever I'm doing. My dream is to give birth. My wants are to have a family and my need is to be a mom. See, I understand that I may never give birth. But right now, on the road I'm on, that's the goal.
I hope to someday have a baby shower in my honor. To be the one holding up tiny clothes hearing the rest of the group say "cute" 10,000 times.
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Range of Emotions
Have you ever been mad, glad, sad, happy, scared and nervous all within 20 minutes? And no, I'm currently not on any IVF meds besides my birth control pills (which I'm going to say is not the reason this time).
I found out that the four embryos we were freezing until after my next egg retrieval were mistakenly tested for HD and other chromosomal abnormalities. (mad)
I also found out that 3 of the 4 did indeed have the HD mutation, and that 4th didn't, but had some abnormality. (sad)
I learned that since it was not our mistake, that the lab would still honor us the full 8 that we've already paid for when we do this process all over again. (happy)
We've paid for 8 (and if there's more retrieved, we will be gladly paying for those as well), and now know that 4 of the 8 we would have been sending are not going to work out, so we can send a fresh batch. (glad)
What if since 3/4 had HD, that the next round of 8 or more will have the same results? (scared)
Will we have enough money to make it through this whole process? (nervous) We've only gone 1/4 way, and we are back to square one. I want to say there's 4 major steps (there's actually way more). 1st step: Egg retrieval (which involves 1 month of birth control pills, then 3 weeks of nightly injections, multiple blood draws and ultrasounds, and the surgery where they knock me out cold to retrieve the eggs). 2nd step: Waiting for those eggs to make it to the blastocyst stage and be sent to the lab to be tested for HD (which could really be counted as multiple steps) and get results on how many we get to have transferred. 3rd step: FET (frozen embryo transfer) where they transfer those perfect embryos inside me. 4th step: Having those embryos (because if I can, I will transfer more than 1) actually result in a pregnancy. And I guess another good argument would be that there's always step 5: going all the way to giving birth to a healthy baby and step 6: raising that healthy baby to age 18 and then sending them off into the world.
On top of those emotions, I literally slept 1.75 hours that night. I ended up waking up feeling like a crazy mentally unstable person. I could not go to work and sit there and use my brain like a normal person. So I took a personal day to sleep, relax and go through the Sonic drive thru to get a Cherry Lime Diet Dr Pepper drink. The girl at the window was in love with Lola and ended up giving her 2 treats. She said she had a border collie too, named Buddy, and wanted me to know that was short for Budweiser. If I wasn't still distracted from my emotions, I would have told her that we had a Miller named after the Champagne of Beers.
I woke up today thankful for the wonderful life that I currently have with a great husband and amazing dog. I jumped out of bed at 4:30am to make my hubs a sandwich for work, picked up Lola and pulled her back in bed with me. She was sharing my pillow and, I kid you not, snuggling with me with her front leg around me and her nose in the crook of my neck. She fell asleep and I wanted to stay in that moment forever, but decided to go rack up some steps on my fitbit and watch Parenthood from the beginning, because that.show. Its the second time around and I love it just the same. It's so good. I cannot wait to be a parent. I just hope my kid likes to snuggle as much as my dog.
I found out that the four embryos we were freezing until after my next egg retrieval were mistakenly tested for HD and other chromosomal abnormalities. (mad)
I also found out that 3 of the 4 did indeed have the HD mutation, and that 4th didn't, but had some abnormality. (sad)
I learned that since it was not our mistake, that the lab would still honor us the full 8 that we've already paid for when we do this process all over again. (happy)
We've paid for 8 (and if there's more retrieved, we will be gladly paying for those as well), and now know that 4 of the 8 we would have been sending are not going to work out, so we can send a fresh batch. (glad)
What if since 3/4 had HD, that the next round of 8 or more will have the same results? (scared)
Will we have enough money to make it through this whole process? (nervous) We've only gone 1/4 way, and we are back to square one. I want to say there's 4 major steps (there's actually way more). 1st step: Egg retrieval (which involves 1 month of birth control pills, then 3 weeks of nightly injections, multiple blood draws and ultrasounds, and the surgery where they knock me out cold to retrieve the eggs). 2nd step: Waiting for those eggs to make it to the blastocyst stage and be sent to the lab to be tested for HD (which could really be counted as multiple steps) and get results on how many we get to have transferred. 3rd step: FET (frozen embryo transfer) where they transfer those perfect embryos inside me. 4th step: Having those embryos (because if I can, I will transfer more than 1) actually result in a pregnancy. And I guess another good argument would be that there's always step 5: going all the way to giving birth to a healthy baby and step 6: raising that healthy baby to age 18 and then sending them off into the world.
On top of those emotions, I literally slept 1.75 hours that night. I ended up waking up feeling like a crazy mentally unstable person. I could not go to work and sit there and use my brain like a normal person. So I took a personal day to sleep, relax and go through the Sonic drive thru to get a Cherry Lime Diet Dr Pepper drink. The girl at the window was in love with Lola and ended up giving her 2 treats. She said she had a border collie too, named Buddy, and wanted me to know that was short for Budweiser. If I wasn't still distracted from my emotions, I would have told her that we had a Miller named after the Champagne of Beers.
I woke up today thankful for the wonderful life that I currently have with a great husband and amazing dog. I jumped out of bed at 4:30am to make my hubs a sandwich for work, picked up Lola and pulled her back in bed with me. She was sharing my pillow and, I kid you not, snuggling with me with her front leg around me and her nose in the crook of my neck. She fell asleep and I wanted to stay in that moment forever, but decided to go rack up some steps on my fitbit and watch Parenthood from the beginning, because that.show. Its the second time around and I love it just the same. It's so good. I cannot wait to be a parent. I just hope my kid likes to snuggle as much as my dog.
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Only 4
Four have survived and will sit and wait for me to make more so we can send them all at once to be tested. And after talking to the dr, we've decided to not send those 4 to be tested since I've paid for 8, and we'll do another round of meds and egg retrieval and send those plus the 4 that are now frozen and waiting patiently.
Monday, March 9, 2015
Back from Vegas
Long story short: I had my polyp removed at the same time as egg retrieval. I had 7 eggs retrieved, and although that wasn't as high of a number as I was hoping for, they called yesterday and said that 6 had fertilized!!! So happy about that. Now we wait until they are all tested for HD and then I go back to Vegas for them to implant the HD free ones!!
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Vegas Baby, YEAH
We arrived at midnight on a Friday night. My brother and his daughter picked us up and they were just as excited as we were! The next morning I had an ultrasound and blood work to determine how far along my follicles were developed. We enjoyed the weekend with my brother and family eating amazing food and hanging out with them. The next week, we went back to the drs about every other day for an ultrasound and more blood work. They determined that my egg retrieval would not be until the following Monday. It was projected at first to be on Friday, and this is why we only bought one way tickets, because we didn't know exactly when we'd be flying back.
On the days when I didn't have any appointments, Rodney and I used our phone's GPS to explore the big city. We often wondered how people did this before GPS. They got very frustrated, thats how, and the probably didn't get to see everything they planned on seeing. We walked the strip and in and out of various casinos, ate some seriously strange yet amazing food, walked Lola, played the Xbox Kinect, and just enjoyed each other. Oh, and went through the nightly injections that we were becoming pros at. I was injection two a night until the end and then it was three. At the end of that week, I was starting to feel super sore in my lower ab area, like I had done 8-minute-abs four times a day. Its because those eggs were getting bigger. Then on Saturday before the retrieval, I took my trigger shot and was ready for Monday's retrieval.
I was very nervous. Nervous of being put under. I hadn't been since I had my wisdom teeth out at 19, and I couldn't really remember what it was like. But thats just it. You have no memory. When I woke up, I was still, obviously, groggy and they wheeled me back into the room where Rodney was waiting for me and this was the dialogue:
Me to nurse: "Can you get me my glasses?"
<nurse goes and finds my glasses and hands them to me>
1 minute later-
Me to Rodney: "That was sure nice of them to put my glasses on me"
Rodney: "They didn't. You just asked her to go get them"
Me: "I didn't dream"
Rodney smiled.
Me: "They had me in crazy stirrups"
Rodney smiled.
1 minute later-
Me: "I didn't dream"
Rodney: "You just said that"
Me: "They had me is these crazy stirrups"
Rodney: "You just said that too"
On the days when I didn't have any appointments, Rodney and I used our phone's GPS to explore the big city. We often wondered how people did this before GPS. They got very frustrated, thats how, and the probably didn't get to see everything they planned on seeing. We walked the strip and in and out of various casinos, ate some seriously strange yet amazing food, walked Lola, played the Xbox Kinect, and just enjoyed each other. Oh, and went through the nightly injections that we were becoming pros at. I was injection two a night until the end and then it was three. At the end of that week, I was starting to feel super sore in my lower ab area, like I had done 8-minute-abs four times a day. Its because those eggs were getting bigger. Then on Saturday before the retrieval, I took my trigger shot and was ready for Monday's retrieval.
I was very nervous. Nervous of being put under. I hadn't been since I had my wisdom teeth out at 19, and I couldn't really remember what it was like. But thats just it. You have no memory. When I woke up, I was still, obviously, groggy and they wheeled me back into the room where Rodney was waiting for me and this was the dialogue:
Me to nurse: "Can you get me my glasses?"
<nurse goes and finds my glasses and hands them to me>
1 minute later-
Me to Rodney: "That was sure nice of them to put my glasses on me"
Rodney: "They didn't. You just asked her to go get them"
Me: "I didn't dream"
Rodney smiled.
Me: "They had me in crazy stirrups"
Rodney smiled.
1 minute later-
Me: "I didn't dream"
Rodney: "You just said that"
Me: "They had me is these crazy stirrups"
Rodney: "You just said that too"
Friday, March 6, 2015
Embryonic Process
Who knew the good news of 6 out of 7 eggs fertilized would soon turn into possible bad news?
Not this girl. Why? Because I'm naive, and don't know the entire IVF/PGD process. Well, now I know more.
So I got a call yesterday from the lab that is watching my little 6 embryos grow and they said that there's still 6. Which is great news. But she said that if only 4 or less make it to Sat or Sunday (the end of the process where the become blastocyts) then I will have to do egg retrieval all over again. Grrrreat. I knew there were going to be bumps in the road, and there certainly have already been bumps. And polyps. Well, only one thankfully. And its been removed.
So now we wait a couple more days until we find out if all 6 survive. I really really hope and pray they do.
Not this girl. Why? Because I'm naive, and don't know the entire IVF/PGD process. Well, now I know more.
So I got a call yesterday from the lab that is watching my little 6 embryos grow and they said that there's still 6. Which is great news. But she said that if only 4 or less make it to Sat or Sunday (the end of the process where the become blastocyts) then I will have to do egg retrieval all over again. Grrrreat. I knew there were going to be bumps in the road, and there certainly have already been bumps. And polyps. Well, only one thankfully. And its been removed.
So now we wait a couple more days until we find out if all 6 survive. I really really hope and pray they do.
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