Nope-si-daisy (7dp6dt, beta #1)

I peed on a FRER yesterday and this morning, and the beta confirmed it.

Less than 5.

Not pregnant.

Again.

Repeat beta on Wednesday, just to make sure. Continuing meds until then because why the eff not. Honestly, I'm hoping with everything I have in me that it stays negative so we don't have to ride the hellish chemical rollercoaster again.

At 13dpo, a negative beta is a bad thing, even if the 15dpo comes back positive. It really just is, and there's no way around it.

Thank fucking god we're going on vacation at the end of the week. I think our tropical destination sounds like the perfect place to decide how we're going to come up with another $13,000 after just buying a house. Oh, and whether we want to part with that cash in June or July. And what the FUCK to change so this shit works.

When I arrived at the lab this morning, the women checking me in said (and I kid you not) "You must love getting this test! You've had so many!" Instead of violence, I told her we just haven't gotten the right answer yet. And promptly lost my shit in front of her.

I think we're up to about a seven layer shit cake by now.



(and whoever the FUCK signed me up for daily inspirational emails can eff the eff off.)

Public Service Announcement

Captcha's Suck.

If you have a blog with captcha's, I'll only comment if I REALLY want to. But I'll hate you a little inside for making me squint.

So yeah. Make the captcha's go away. You'll thank me for it. Actually, your blog readers will thank me for it.

(I haven't had mine on in at least a year and have never gotten a spam comment. so there.)

(I don't know this blogger but they have a "how to" make them go away.)

(these are the things that annoy me while I'm in my TWW)

squashing The Fear (3dp6dt)

I'm finding myself in a tough place today. Bedrest is over, and while I ended up excruciatingly bored by yesterday, I don't want to be here at work. I feel like at least doing nothing was doing *something*, and now I'm doing something but *nothing* to help our little embies stick. I haven't felt much of anything yet, aside from a bit of uterine cramping tuesday night (1dp6dt). There's maybe some discomfort today and yesterday, but no twinges or spotting or anything that would lead me to believe that the dudes are still partying it up in my ute.

I have so much fear and anxiety with this cycle suddenly, fear that started on Monday but didn't really manifest until I left the house this morning and was faced with the Real World again.

I am afraid that this cycle will end up as another negative.

I am afraid that this cycle will end up as another chemical. I am afraid we will lose tons of money by cancelling our vacation.

I am afraid that we made the wrong decision to thaw ALL SIX of our remaining snowbabies and only transferred two. I am sad for the two that didn't survive the thaw, and even sadder for the two that did but not well enough to rate being transferred or refrozen. I wonder if the same decision would have been made by another clinic, and I'm sad that they weren't even given a chance at success. I'm afraid we were greedy by trying for better quality, because clearly that route hasn't worked for us so far.

I am afraid of going through another fresh IVF cycle, knowing how hard one is and that we will max out our insurance benefits by doing so. I know I *can* get through a fresh cycle, but I also know how hard it is.

I am afraid that whatever isn't working can't be fixed.

I am afraid we'll hit our limit before our family is complete.

All A'board... again

Oh, and happy ICLW! I'm only two days late on that one... oops. Seriously, hi to all of you stopping by through ICLW. In a nutshell, I have PCOS, and ovaries who value quantity over quality. After failing the clo clo challenge, we moved strait to injectables, and had a hard time getting my oves to respond with much of anything there. After two BFN's, we did our first IVF cycle in Nov/Dec. That ended in a BFN, and our FET in Feb ended up in a crappy chemical. You've caught us right at the precipice of our second FET... and had our transfer today!

Dr Boy and I had a pretty fabulous weekend, though it was ridiculously hot and humid here, completely uncharacteristic of the area. Our alma mater had a huge parade/open house/festival type thing and we saw a ton of old friends from undergrad, then on Sunday we took an impromptu trip to Napa. Much needed R&R to relax pre-transfer!

Today didn't really go as well as either of us would have liked. It started off well- finished up some laundry, changed the sheets, cut my pineapple, threw dinner in the crockpot, and headed to pre-transfer acupuncture. I left super relaxed and went to the clinic. Just before we got there, Dr Boy got a call from our RE. The thaw was not going well. 

Our plan was to thaw each embryo individually until we ended up with two high quality ones to transfer. We had three day 6 embies left, 1 day seven frozen alone, and 2 day sevens frozen together. After going through the three day 6's and the 1 day 7, we had one that survived at 80%, two at 60%, and one at 50%. We were going for two 80's. The RE wanted permission to thaw the last two we had, which we agreed to. As that was going on, one of the 60%ers fragmented more and we were down to an 80, a 60, and two 50s. We had, in one transfer, blasted through all six of our remaining embryos from December's IVF. We've got nothing left. If this doesn't work, it's back to the drawing board (and bank account, and ER).

At this point, thoughts of transferring more than two were floating around, risks were being evaluated, tears were flowing, and my adrenaline pretty much killed any buzz I would have gotten from the valium. We hung out for another hour waiting for the last two to thaw, then headed back to the transfer room. 

PDLAMBLATI- Complements of Her Royal Fabulousness

and Cristy's Fertility Sock Exchange!

Finally, we got the good news that one of those last two thawed at 80% (and the other at 65%) so were able to transfer that and the other (which had started hatching while we waited, apparently- sweet!). After transfer, the embryologist checked the catheter to make sure all babies were on board, and low and behold, we had a holdout! 

"I've still got one here!" So, in goes the catheter again, another swoosh and flash shows up on the u/s monitor, and we finally got the all clear that the ute party had started. 

Post-transfer acupuncture helped me calm down, but it was not quite the zen-like magical moment I had hoped for. AND my car** hit 66,666 miles as we drove home. I take this to mean I am carrying Dr Boy's devil spawn. Of course. 

Spawn 1 and Spawn 2 (lefty is the sticky, day 7 embie

and righty is the more easy going hatching day 6-er)

(dark spots are the parts which didn't survive thaw, called fragmentation)

So now we wait... and rest... and bribe these embies with cookies and pineapple and other delights while we pray that someone decides to stick around for the long haul this time. We are super lucky at least... our clinic does the first beta at 13dpo, which for us will be 7dp6dt. Only a one. week. wait.

Beta in 7 days...

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**The car we bought four years ago when we decided to start trying. It was brand new. And had 1,000 miles on it. Yeah. That car. Piece of advice, guys? Don't buy the car until you're effing pregnant and damn near bursting your waters. </end public service announcement/bitter infertile rant>

A few of good laughs

...just to brighten your day.

First off, Mrs Green Grass, from The Baby Making Merry Go Round, translated a Shakespeare piece, explaining how, simply put, Shakespeare Hates Infertiles. Check it out. Hilarious.

Second off, do any of you have cats? I do. Two, in fact. They are adorbs. Sometimes. Like this time:

Ellie on the left, Vesta on the right

Other times, they're just funny. Vesta has always had a yen for weird plastic things. I don't know what the chemical in it is, but she really goes apeshit and rubs and drools and generally goes down on certain plastic-y products around the house. It started with a mini toolkit I got from Target in college. To this day she drools all over it when it's left out. Another time it was a random plastic box, and another she had a fling with my crocks. Last night, I left my Reef sandals out in the bathroom overnight, and woke up to drool puddles in the dent where my heel goes. Dr Boy was able to get a video of her doing it the other night, and it is just hilarious.

Do any of your felines have a crush on inanimate objects in your home? Do they obsessive compulsively mark them? Or is our V just off her rocker?

And finally, just today, someone googled "vaginal farts and progesterone inserts" to get to my blog. I assure you, never have I ever typed those words before. Even today. I copied and pasted. So there.

What are your funniest google search redirects?

Thick like...

...butter?

...sliced bread?

...a good roux?

...uhhh... a fantastic uterine environment that makes you want to snuggle in for 9 months?

Yeah, I don't know. But forgive the lapse in good metaphors, because I'm busy being happy that my uterine lining came looked fantastic at our ultrasound this morning. We're exactly one week out from FET numero dos, and already things are going so much better than last time! In February, my lining never climbed higher than 7.9mm, and actually thinned out a little before transfer. This time, we're already at 9.3mm! Yowzers!

We joked that my ute was thanking us for giving her such a nice saline bath last week... a girl like's to feel clean and pretty, you know? She likes her spa days! My trilaminar pattern really did look textbook perfect. Way better than it did last time, and better than with our fresh cycle in Dec.

I had a bad dream that at the u/s, the were hundreds of mature follies apparent on my oves, and that the RE was mad that I didn't agree to using lupron this cycle. Oooops. In reality, everything's still nice and quiet, and the decision hasn't come back to bite us in the ass (or sub-cutaneously, as you will).

Dr S even went as far as to say that we looked good enough to skip our final check on Friday, but I doubt we'll forgo that. I may not be the biggest fan of wandy mc vajercam, but I would just not feel right if this doesn't work, and wonder if there was something that we could have caught. No sir-ee-bob, we're going for one last date.


Dare I say it? I may actually have a hint of optimism this time around... for now...

Slightly boring PDLAMBLATI, but better than nothing!

Berry or Blue?

So Project Less Fatass-ness is in effect.

Kindof.

Or rather, it will be once we are through with this FET and back from vacation. So really, it'll fully be in effect in just under a month.

To prepare, I'm buying a bicycle. Also, I think my residency card for the town I live in will be revoked if I don't purchase a bicycle soon. And even more also, Dr Boy "bought" me a bike for my birthday... 13 months ago... so it's high time I finally pick one out! (this year's "purchase" was a ski jacket, which I'm fairly certain will wait until at least Dec)

Which I did, but it's not in stock, and I need to order it on Monday to get the sale price. What color though???

Berry?

Or Blue?

I'm leaning towards Berry (it'll show less dirt, I won't get tired of it). But blue is fun too! Decisions, decisions... 

(For you bike savvy folks, it's the Trek 7.2 FX)

(Thank you, Trek, for your images)

The Ute? Still Cute.

We went ahead and had a saline sono yesterday. But let me back up to last Friday. It was effectively CD 1.5 by that time, and AF was in FULL effect with some serious cramping going on. When Dr S did the u/s (which is nasty pants that early in the cycle, right?) he noticed a little bit of irregularity in my ute, but it could easily be attributed to my lining being shed. We decided to do an additional u/s on Tuesday (yesterday), and decide at that point whether to throw some saline into the mix.

Fast forward to yesterday, and we decided to go ahead with it. There was still a wee bit of irregularities seen on the regular u/s, and my cycle ended early Monday. Turns out my ute is still super duper cute, no issues, just awesomely perfect looking lining. He spent plenty of time going through the ute and showing me where everything is (cervix, fallopian tube openings, air bubbles from the saline, etc). Pretty cool! Turns out my ute is smooth and a seemingly perfect implanty space. Score one for us!

He did find a small polyp on my cervix though, measuring 3mm. Pretty darned close to the opening, and pretty darned small, so we're not worried about it posing a threat to anything. It's way too far away from where the embies would be deposited.

I've had some seriously fierce cramping though, since yesterday. Way more than I did for my first saline sono back in Nov. Way more. Today it feels like my vageegee is bruised beyond any measure, and my ute did backflips all night. If I twist at all funny I end up with uterine spasms, still, 24-hrs later. All I want to do today is curl into a ball and sleep. It's frustrating, but we still have 12 days to transfer for my body to recover.

So for now, we'll focus on the positive- my womb is friendly, and is just getting a pre-marathon workout. Right?

-------------------------------------

You know what also made me cranky today? Someone threw away the lunch I had put in the work fridge this morning. For serious??? They thought it felt "hard" (leftover subway sandwich) so they tossed it. Mother effers. Mother effing effers.

CD1. Again.

AF decided to rear her ugly head last night, right on schedule. I had been spotting super lightly since Monday, and finally started cramping yesterday afternoon. My acupuncturist said my pulses felt like I was about to pop- lovely, huh? Cramps have been pretty awful since last night which I honestly wasn't expecting considering we were only on 12 days of BCP. I realized though, that it had been two weeks since my last CD1 that we actually started BCP, so this cycle ended up being a near perfect 30 days. Go figure! Hoping beyond hope (like every time) that this is the last CD1 for quite some time.

We moved our monitoring blood draw and ultrasound until tomorrow to give things a chance to clear out a bit more, so we'll find out tomorrow morning what the saline sono status is. Has anyone heard of their RE not wanting to do one in the same cycle as a transfer? Just curious.

Let the games for FET #2 begin!

Other than that, just plugging along. An IRL IF-er friend suffered a devastating 19-week loss yesterday, so I've been having a bit of trouble coming to terms with that. I feel ridiculous for having problems MYSELF with something I didn't, nor ever have, experienced, but I still am. This poor woman had been through so many of the same things I had, and we transferred just two days apart back in December. My heart aches for her and her husband. More so than I thought I would.

------------------------------------------------------

Other than THAT (and because I need to move on so I don't cry again today), I thought I'd share a few pictures of what's been going on lately. I love taking pictures. And I love seeing pictures I've taken. So you get to, too :)

So much fun. Saw it the day it came out :)
We kept joking that they were going to make us come
back the next day to see the "Games"

I have been making a few of these green smoothies.
You seriously can't taste the spinach!

This kept me very busy last week.
Very.

My flippin' hero today.
(not paid to say that)

Did I mention that THIS happened?
The day after I turned 30?
Ooops.
It did.

Off the pill

Or the birth control pills, anyways. Our last day was on Friday, so we're not just waiting for AF to arrive some time tomorrow or Wednesday, if my track record holds. I certainly won't complain when things do start rolling, because according to our u/s a week ago, my lining (after one week of BC, mind you) was already at a 6.5mm. Fairly certain we just didn't completely empty out once the chemical ended. Now *that's* a great mental image, huh?

Here's the calendar I promised last week... lupron-less and lovely.

I heart color coordinating!*
(click to zoom)

I may be done with the pill, and avoiding lupron like the plague, but I'm still on plenty of other fancies, of course. We're doing a course of doxycycline to prep for the saline sono I'll (hopefully**) get at the end of the week. That shiz makes me SOOOO naseous. If I don't get a substantial amount in me fore breakfast, the morning one makes me want to vom. So far, a single nutragrain bar is not enough, nor is a single nutragrain bar plus a cup of yogurt. Two donuts, however, are perfect. Damnit.

A recent IRL friend with IVF success let me know the course of vitamins and such that a clinic she had a consult with recommended. This was the formula that worked (after multiple failed fresh cycles and FETs) for her this time around (as well as the meds I normally take) so I thought what the heck! Can't hurt!

AM- Synthroid
         Doxycycline (after the 1-hr wait to eat, and eating)

NOON- Metformin
               Fish Oil

PM- Doxycycline
        Metformin
        Prenatal with > 4000 IU Vitamin A
        Baby Aspirin
        800mg Folic Acid
        Fish Oil
        Melatonin


If *that* isn't fun, then I don't know what is! At least I get to scratch the two doxy's off the list after tomorrow, and regain my naseau free mornings.

At least until this FET words, damnit. And then I will relish in the vomit-inducing awesomeness of pregnancy.

PDLAMBLATI from last Monday's appt.
Aside: why do ankle socks give me cankles? Discuss.

*Anyone want me to prettify their calendar? It's like crack to me.

**I may not be able to get the darned saline sono as previously requested. My RE "doesn't like to do them during the same cycle as the transfer", so we may avoid this time around. I'm pissed because he KNEW that I wanted it, and waited until it was too late (lining too thick even w bcp) to do one pre-transfer cycle. I don't think it was done intentionally, just more of a forgetful afterthought that frustrates me. He said he'll take a good look at the ute this week when I'm wanded to see if he thinks it's necessary. To which I still say that if you could SEE if it was necessary on a wanding, saline sono's wouldn't be done in the first place! Arg.