well this is embarssing

i cried my face off for so many reasons when i got the NO – this morning.

i called my husband and cried to him and we talked about our feelings regarding a failed transfer.  we know that our lives are awesome with maeve and we are truly happy and grateful to have her and our little family.  we talked about just living life for a while before we think about what to do with those 3 frozen embryos.  we just paid the annual fee to keep them frozen and we will know for certain if we will want to try again for another baby before this year is out.

i texted a friend to let her now i got a negative just to let someone else know.

then i went to the washroom and the digital test with NO –  was staring up at me from the trash can.

then i thought about opening the digital test.

when you crack them open they just have the normal test strip inside that has a control line and then obviously the second line if it’s positive.

i cracked it open and found this

the “nick” in the center was from me tearing the paper when i was taking the strip out of the test holder.  the second line is to the left of the nick. i would say that is a pretty good faint line.

damnit. i’m embarrassed guys. fucking hormones! let’s see what the first beta number is on thursday.

fairly certain she will be an only

i always test before my beta blood draw.  if i’m pregnant i get a positive HPT before my missed period, if i’m not, I don’t.

today i am two days away from my beta and i got a negative.

other than this crazy metallic taste on my tongue i haven’t had any other symptoms. i have felt in my heart since about friday that this transfer didn’t work.

i have been pretty even with my emotions.  no manic mood swings or anxiety but i have cried a few times. i cried because i REALLY didn’t want to have twins, i have cried because i know it didn’t work, i have cried because “it did work and i only want to have maeve! i want her to be an only”.

today i cried when i saw the NO – because i’m worried that maeve will be mad at me if she is an only child.  will she hate us for not giving her a sibling?  will she be jealous of her cousins that have their sisters to be best friends with.

i am crying because we still have 3 embryos frozen and i don’t really know if i want to transfer them.  they are from our first IVF cycle where sperm and egg did not meet and fertilize within the first 24 hours and rescue ICSI was performed to try and salvage the lot.  one of those embryos was a blighted ovum pregnancy, two more from that batch were a failed frozen transfer.  we don’t really trust those embryos and neither did our doctor so that is why we did a second IVF, the IVF were we got maeve.

i am crying because i selfishly just don’t want to do this anymore.  we have been going through this stuff for several years.  we have a beautiful, healthy, smart and funny baby girl.  i kind of just want to stop trying for more.  i honestly don’t know if i need more.  i think with this transfer i really started to realize that I DON’T NEED anything more to make my life or my family complete.

i am crying because i don’t know if our families will understand and accept this.

blood draw is thursday morning.  we’ll get the real scoop (confirmation) and then i’m going to go back to loving maeve and our little family just the way it is.

when 1 becomes 2

we went for dinner at chris’ parent’s house and put maeve to bed there at about 8 p.m. she was super gassy for some reason and she was screaming, SCREAMING when we put her down.  that NEVER happens. i thought of course, here we go. i managed to sooth her on my breast and then rocked her and sang to her and she was all settled to sleep in no time. phew!

i awoke like a shot at 5:37 a.m. after having a mild nightmare about me loosing maeve in a natural disaster.  i was reunited with her at the end of the dream and was crying ugly tears of relief. i woke up with tears on my cheeks.  it’s been a long while since something like that has happened so rattled me quite a bit but i was all calmed down by 6:10 when our alarms went off.

we got out of the house by 6:55.  not bad as we set our goal time at 6:45.   smooth sailing until about 40 min down the highway and then like usual, stop and go. yet another accident.  we crawled through that for about a half an hour, and although i know they wait for you to arrive to start the thaw, i still just didn’t want to be dealing with this added worry.

we got up to the clinic at exactly 8:45 a.m. so we were actually right on time!

we had to take care of some finances first so we made our way to the payment office. when one IVF cycle became covered by OHIP this year the regular fees for procedures and what not skyrocketed.  a frozen embryo transfer used to be $1,500, now it’s $2250.  the freezing & storage fee was $240, it’s now $480.  we paid for our transfer and discussed a problem i was having getting in touch with the payment officer at the hospital (our clinic is part of a hospital and storage fees are taken care of by the main hospital instead of the fertility clinic. why? who knows).  we have two separate storage fees to pay.  one from our 2013 IVF (three embryos) and 2014 IVF (two embryos).  we got the payment for one of the storage fees taken care of and have to wait for the invoice for the second.

when we finished up there we went straight to the procedure’s waiting room. i didn’t even sit down on the lounger when i was called to “gown up” haha. then we went straight into the procedure room.

a nurse that i love was there and the over seeing doctor was the same doctor that performed maeve’s transfer two years ago.  seeing their faces made me SO happy.  we made small talk and i showed the nurses, doctors and embryologists pictures of maeve and they were so excited to see her.  the embryologist asked if she could keep one of the pictures for our file and i told to keep them all! she was thrilled.

then the doctor brought over the consent sheet to go over the embryo that was being transferred and to our surprise there were TWO EMBRYOS listed. TWO.  we was only supposed to be ONE.

when we told everyone that we were planning on only transferring one embryo you should have seen the look of shock on all of their faces LOL. i don’t think i have ever seen eyes get that big before!!  they calmly walked over to the counter and checked our chart and sure enough our doctor had listed A DOUBLE EMBRYO TRANSFER.

we had just talked on sunday about being nervous about only transferring one embryo this time. we have always transferred two.

we went over the odds of implantation and the chance of twins and then chris and i chatted in private and we just feel like our decision was made for us. (an added bonus – we don’t have to pay that second storage & freezing fee! bahahaha)

TWO IT WAS.

there was a 3BC and a 3CB.

the embryologist told us that only one of the embryos looked perfect after the thawing and was already starting to hatch. the other was not in the same condition.

in our hearts we feel like this will be a singleton pregnancy, you just never know, but this is what we feel.

so, now we wait until september 1st for my first beta test.

i hadn’t planned on listing all of my symptoms as i wait for my first beta but i already have a major symptom going on.  my tongue feels like i have metal in my mouth. it actually hurts with the “taste” it’s so strong.  every other time i have been pregnant i have had this “metal mouth”.

now we wait!

best hubby out there -coffee and water for the road.  also, bagel sandwiches for the road, yum! our photos of maeve to share. my lucky pants!! a little chuckle after the transfer. a couple of old bitties out for a cruise, helmets and all. their heads will be perfectly in tact when they find them decapitated on the side of the road.  i am soooooo morbid, i know! our new little “squirts” xox

August 23rd

tomorrow is maeve’s 16 month milestone 🙂

tomorrow is also our frozen embryo transfer day 🙂

our transfer time 8:45 a.m. i am taking maeve to my in-law’s this evening for a sleep over and that way chris and i can get a good sleep, get up and just head to the city.  no rushing around for drop off.

i have had a few moments leading up to our transfer that have me feeling like maybe the universe is lining up for success for us.

we were at a farmer’s market on thursday and maeve was playing  with an older girl. maeve kind of poked the older girl in the face and she said “that’s okay. i have a baby sister and she does the same stuff to me. i don’t mind”.  i told her she was a great big sister. then i told her that maeve loves to play with big kids.  out of nowhere the girl said “i hope you have a baby, then she can be a big sister too!”. wow.

maeve has been saying “baby” non stop.  i go into her nursery to get her after a nap and the first thing she says is BABY. she honestly points at me and says baby. i say “where is the baby?” and she points and she says “here” and points all over and says baby over and over.

looking forward with an open heart and hoping for the best!

 

this is just wrong

since taking the Hcg shot on Wednesday night and starting progesterone suppositories on Thursday morning, i have been nauseous and dizzy and having moments of pretty solid cramping. i actually had to breath through not throwing up after breakfast today.

I DON’T EVEN HAVE AN EMBRYO IN ME YET.

just wrong.

oh ya,

i had my thryroid u/s last week and my thyroid looks completely normal.

Trigger

so i was just finishing up my day 16 monitoring post and i got the call from the nurse letting me know that all of my numbers were fantastic today and my doc gave the go ahead to do the ovidrel shot tonight at 10 p.m. 🙂

i will start my prometrium in the a.m tomorrow (4 pills a day – a.m. and p.m.) and will do this for 5 days.  i will get a call from our clinic downtown on monday afternoon letting me know what time our transfer will be on tuesday morning.

we aren’t going to make it to algonquin park after all as chris has to be on site to supervise a job on saturday morning but we’re looking forward to a relaxing weekend at home.  the ONLY ONE WE’VE HAD ALL SUMMER!  we are going to go out for dinner at our favourite restaurant and have a fire and set up the projector in the backyard to watch the hip’s last concert.  sounds like a pretty nice 6th wedding anniversary celebration to me 🙂

oh my goodness. i never thought i’d be in the place again. getting ready to try for another baby. it’s way better this time. i’m happy.

day 16

soooooo what is with these nurses?!

i had a different nurse for my post monitoring consult this morning and according to her a follicle of 18mm (which mine is today as it grew another mm) is perfect for triggering. really? the nurse yesterday told me they like to see a follicle MUCH bigger than that before they will trigger?  WTF?  so i was worrying about my follicle being too small for a day for nothing? great.

my lining is actually 1.3 cm today so i’m not sure where i got 1.8 cm from yesterday.  it was 1 cm yesterday.  i got some more insight into my blood work. on monday my LH was 12 which is apparently high for a resting rate but also fine.  i didn’t see what it was yesterday but they will be looking for it to be about 15 today.

the nurse told me that the trigger could very well happen tonight or sometimes they will give the go ahead at this point and then set the trigger for two nights from now.

 

kind of frustrated

why did i think i could trust my body?

usually my cycle is 35+ days.  of course for the first time in in like a decade i had a 31 day cycle this past month.  this meant that starting monitoring on day 17 may have been too late for tracking so it was decided that monitoring would start on day 14.  well, it’s day 15, my follicle is growing but slowly and i have to go back to have more BW and U/S tomorrow morning.  if i knew i could trust my body i would have just stuck with starting monitoring on day 17. i would have started with a follicle of about 19 or 20mm, cut my blood draws in half and would not have this added anxiety.

hindsight. sigh.

Day 15

my follicle grew only 1 mm and is now 17mm. lining is prefect at 1.8 cm. i am not sure where my bloodwork is at.  they never tell me anything about bloodwork.  

i was told they like to see the follicle MUCH bigger for trigger but said as long as they have two factors (out of how many I’m not sure) then they go ahead with the transfer. so my two factors are lining thickness and a dominate growing follicle. 

i am waiting in the rain (in the nice warm car) in the middle if nowhere in a parking lot at a pharmacy that carries the medication i need to trigger and the fun (nasty) little balls of prometrium that will soon become my best friends once again.  

so with the way things are developing we at least know that our anniversary camping trip to Algonquin park is saved! what a nice way to relax and unwind before the transfer.  we had just returned from a camping in Algonquin when we transferred Maeve. a sign?!