Wonderful fall!

So it has been a long time since I have made a post and I apologize for that, I know some people have wondered what is new and what our next plan is so thought I would do a update and try keeping this more up to date.

We finished off the summer at Crane Lake as always, this year was really fun cause our friends the Fladeboe's came again and then Harley's sister and her family came too!  The weather was the best it has been since the first year we went up there about 5 years ago so it was wonderful.  Did a lot of boating all weekend cause it was so calm and hot out.

Right now we are getting ready to start hunting season up in Moose Lake.  We just finished the two October birthday parties for Mataya and Cash and then had one of my best friends wedding.  Congrats Luke and Steph!  It was pretty fun and of course thanks to my pal I wore exactly what the guys wore, pictures to come later :)  So the next three weekends we will be up north doing that, wish us luck!  This year will be the first year hunting since Harley's grandpa passed away last August so it will be a little weird not having him and Grandma up there with us.  It's always a fun time being with the Johnson's but we will be a small group now.  Hopefully we will do really good and get lots of deer!

We have decided to wait till the beginning of the year to start another round with IVF, things will be less stressful after the holidays cause from now to the end of the year we are pretty busy!  So I'll start some of the medications January and it will probably be end of February  or early March before the actual process happens.  I will be keeping this updated as we go now and hope to be back with some pictures and deer stories for all!

Love always!

Happy 4th of July!

Summer has been pretty great so far!  Had a great 4th of July up on the Whitefish chain of lakes with Harley, my mom, my step dad Tom, my brother Ryan and his family, my step sister Michelle and her family and my step brother Steve and his wife.
We had Christmas in July, it was all us kids gift from mom and Tom to stay at Heath's Resort for a week over the holiday and it was great!  We had lots of fun on the water boating, tubing, skiing and hanging out at the sand bar.  All the kids had fun together and us adults had even more fun, can't wait till next year!

This weekend my Grandpa Gene and Grandma Rita were in town from Wisconsin so we spent the day at my aunt and uncles house on the water in Clear Lake and had some fun catching up, playing yard games and going out on the boat for some swimming and tubing.  Tomorrow we will be going to another aunt and uncles house in Ramsey for some more family time, excited for some homemade brick oven pizzas!

Other than that we have just been working and I've started my 'get in shape' plan.  With help from my friend I have set up what I will be needing to do for diet and exercise so hopefully I will get some results soon!  I also started using Myfitnesspal.com again which is a great site for tracking food calories and getting tips from others.  I am in a few groups for people with PCOS and trying to conceive and I'm learning some good things about what others have done.  I have been reading from a few people about taking Maca supplements to help regulate my cycle so I am hoping they will work out!  If anyone has heard about them at all please let me know if people have had success or anything with them.

Well it's time to say good night, hope everyone is enjoying their summer!

Here's to the summer!

Sorry I have not updated for awhile, it has been a long month in many ways.  First I want to start with my results, they looked hopeful at the beginning, I started with a HCG test level of 12.  I had the Dr leave the results on a voicemail cause I couldn't listen to it alone at work, so me and Harley listened to it that night.  It was somewhat good new at first, the results were positive but they were showing very low.  Normally a level of 5 is negative so I was just positive and after hearing that my mind started wandering and I started looking online with a bad feeling.  I wanted to stay happy and live in the positive test but I knew it was not the best result and started searching and most things online said that a level of 12 was either a chemical pregnancy or could result in a miscarriage I tried not to worry cause there were some people who said they started at that level or lower and ended up in a healthy pregnancy.  I wanted to think that way too!  But I went in two days later for another blood test and it only had risen to a 13 when it should have doubled, that was when our hopes were up for this try.  Dr Casey told us that I could come in for another test but usually if it only went up a few levels that means it would stay at that for a few days and then go down and be considered a chemical pregnancy.  Basically that means a very early miscarriage, I know many that have gone through that and it makes it hard cause it means you were so close but it just didn't work.

Our next plan is to take the summer off and relax!  We were devastated after all of this with going through so much after the retrieval you just get so upset about it all, I'm crying about it now and it's been weeks since this all happened and I last cried about it.  It is not a actual miscarriage but I feel it is like one cause I did get some symptoms of pregnancy in the early stages so it was hard to hear bad news after thinking it worked for a week or two.  I know it will work you just always want that time to work and it is upsetting when it doesn't.  Friends and Family have been so great through it all and it has helped so much talking about it with everyone, I've learned so much from people's experiences and finding out about so many that have gone through the same thing.  Since we started this journey last year in August we figured it would be best to take a break for a bit and summer is the perfect time, with all the appointments needed and not knowing when you need to go in until that day we didn't want to miss out on our summer cause of trying all of this.  So I am going to try to lose some weight, it can help with the PCOS and see if anything happens on our own this summer and then start the IVF process up again in the fall if nothing works out this summer.  I want to thank all of my family and friends for being there for us through all of it and telling your stories, it's weird to hear about peoples stories when I never knew about them before I came out with this.  Being a 'adult' now it's weird to think about all of this, but it has brought me closer with a lot of people.  It's been a good experience and I hope in the end we have a good outcome.

Along with that Harley has had a change in work, I don't want to get too into it but lets just say he will be around all the time from now on!  We are both much happier and less stressed in life so we are looking forward to a good year together!!  He is very excited about his salmon fishing trip he has with his friend Nate in a week out on Lake Michigan and I am very excited to spend time with family over the week of the 4th!  My mom got a cabin for me and Ryan and my step dad Tom's kids to go up with our families to a cabin for a week so we are all very excited to spend the week on the beach and swimming and boating together.  It will be good to relax for awhile and spend quality family time plus a little bit of cuddles from baby Isabelle! After a very long month at work it will be very much appreciated!  At work I have been given our whole food auditing division that started the beginning of the year and right now I have started scheduling our biggest egg farm account and so after next week I will be so happy for a week away.  Yes I will just be going to Crosslake MN when the lady I work with at Eggs America is taking her vacation to Italy but I'd say I would rather be in Crosslake :)

Tomorrow I will be going for a tux fitting, yes I am a usher in one of my best friends wedding!  He has been one of my best friends for the last 11 years now, Luke DeLaForest.  He was a usher and spoke at my wedding and I am happy to be a part of his big day as well.  I told him this is the one day I will wear and do whatever he wants just as he did for me, so tomorrow we will see what I will be wearing in October!  It has also been a hard few weeks cause his mom who has been another mom to me over the years recently lost her long battle with cancer.  We have been doing a lot with his family in the last few weeks of her life enjoying all the memories we had and making her last few weeks for her as great as they could be.  Their family and friends are the greatest and I cannot express how strong they all have been through this all and am happy to have been there for it and to be there for them in the upcoming year which will be very hard on everyone.  Terese will be missed by so many and I love her so much and will miss her, but I will live this wedding and all the upcoming events for it in memory of her and thinking of her always.  It will be a very sad time but also will be great to see this family honor her and show their strength and love that she passed onto them.  I see her in each of her kids and that helps me to know she will live on in all of them.

I will keep this blog up over the summer to share what we are up to and pictures of the summer.  Thank you all again for the prayers and keep them coming as we hope to have good news to share sometime soon but as we all know about everything it is all in the hands of god and the plan we all have for our lives.  Love you all and talk with you soon!

Countdown to first pregnancy test- 2 days to go!

Well everything is going good these days!  I feel like my normal self finally, even though I still don't really look it.  I'm still about 7 lbs more, all in my stomach, than I was the day before the retrieval but that should go down with time they said.  Recovering from the retrieval was a lot more than I thought it would be, I was hoping to feel better a few days after it but it took me till about Wednesday afternoon this last week before I felt comfortable walking around and eating good.  Hopefully it was a helpful thing that I couldn't really move around, hoping that gave baby embryo more resting time to latch on in there!

We went in on Sunday, May 27, for the embryo transfer.  We went in thinking we would have 4 embryos, 2 that we would transfer and 2 that we would freeze.  Unfortunately between Thursday and Sunday none of them made it but one single embryo!  We were a bit shocked and disappointed but at this point nothing could be done but transfer the one we have and pray that there is a reason why only one made it through.  There is still a high chance this will work with just one, a lot of couples do just one embryo on the transfer.  We just wanted to do two so it would increase our chance a little and then if we happen to have twins we would be happy with that.  So normally on any given month a women has a 20% chance of getting pregnant, doing a IVF transfer with one embryo increases your chances to about 40% and then if you transfer two embryos you have about a 50-60% chance.  So only doing one didn't ruin our chances all together, we are still very hopeful this will work and if not it's ok and we will just try again.  Sometimes it takes a few times.

So as you can see below Harley is already to go in for the transfer!  I was surprised he came in with me, I thought it would just be me and the Dr and nurses.  Nope, they geared him up!  As you can see he wasn't the happiest when he had to wear a cap and booties on his shoes but I thought it was a good time to take a picture!

Before we went in the Dr came in and explained what we were going to do and brought us our hopefully first picture of our baby!  This is the embryo that made it through the days and the 'blast' they call it, we told it to get nice and comfortable in there cause we didn't want to do this again anytime soon!

Once we went into the procedure room they set up a ultrasound on my stomach to do a test trial to make sure he could get into my uterus fine and that went fine, then a woman appeared through a window in the wall and delivered the embryo to the Dr.  We watched as he placed the embryo in my uterus!  It was pretty amazing, I didn't think we would actually be watching the whole thing but sure enough you could see absolutely everything he did!  After that I had to lay there for about 10 minutes to let it settle in a place then I was free to go to a room and lay for 30 more minutes.  I was a bit nervous cause Harley was making me laugh so hard that I was worried it would shake the embryo loose and we wouldn't get pregnant all cause he was making me laugh, but the nurse came in and he asked her and she said that it is snug in there and that will definitely not shake it out of me.  Oh the things I never thought we would say!   Below is a picture of the ultrasound after the implantation, you can see a computer finger pointing to a white dot that is in a grey blob. The grey blob is my uterus and the white dot is the embryo, or at least the fluid that it is in when he implanted it.  Unfortunately it doesn't look like that now so they cannot do a ultrasound to do the pregnancy test, all the fluid moved and if I am pregnant it is so small they wouldn't be able to tell if it was in there for a few more weeks.  And I'm sorry the picture is sideways but you can still see the little finger pointing in the middle of the picture.

Now we are at the waiting point.  I go in early this week for my first blood test, this will tell us if I am definitely not pregnant or if I possibly am pregnant.  They will have to do a few more blood tests and a ultrasound to confirm over the next few weeks.  With all the drugs I have taken it can make my estrogen and other levels read incorrect so it is not until the ultrasound that they can really confirm if something is surely in there if my blood tests come up positive.  So we are asking everyone to keep praying in hopes that we will have luck this first try and that our little strong baby embryo has made it through this last week and will continue to make it through.  I will keep in touch with how things are going and will hopefully have good news to share soon.

Recovering

Day 2 after the retrieval and I'm doing ok.  I'm still very bloated which they said I will still be after how many follicles there were.  I'm hoping it goes away soon so I can stop worrying about getting the hyperstimulation, I have to take my weight each day so I can monitor the change except now I am doing it about 3 times a day.  So I've been over thinking it a lot but I have gained about 5 pounds since Tuesday and all in my stomach!  I have been working from home cause I am supposed to rest and intake a lot of protein to avoid the hyperstimulation.  Other than that things have been going alright, Harley has been helpful and thank goodness it has been rainy out the last few days cause that means the dogs sleep all day so they have not needed to get out a million times a day while I have been home.

I received a call from the embryologist and they said that out of the 7 eggs they retrieved there were only 4 that were mature and all 4 fertilized!  Very luck that all of them fertilized!!  And a good thing that we had so many follicles to work with from the beginning, the body is a weird thing!  So we did get what we wanted in the end as long as things go good.  We will transfer 2 embryos on Sunday and then freeze 2 of them for if this try doesn't work or if we need to try again in the future.

I'm staying home from work again tomorrow cause I need to take it easy and then Sunday- Tuesday I will be on bed rest after the transfer so I feel I'm going to get sick of this house!  A few friends might come visit this weekend which would be nice but being a holiday weekend I know a lot of  people will be gone.

I will check in again after the transfer.  Hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial weekend and even though I am hoping it rains all weekend since I will be in bed the whole time, I hope it doesn't rain on everyone elses weekend!

Retrieval... check!

Today went great for the retrieval!  We got in at 8:30 and met with a nurse, then Dr Casey and then the anaesthesiologist to go over the procedure.  At 9:30 they took me to do the retrieval and Harley went to do his business.  I got in the room and laid down while they tried putting in my IV, and I do mean tried!  They tried my arm and they tried my wrist and finally got it in the top of my hand.  I knew they would have a problem cause all the nurses have a hard time drawing my blood all the time.  After the IV was in the anaesthesiologist and nurse were saying I would feel like one tequila, two tequila, floor and man did I ever!  I last remember him talking about Mexico and then I was out, I woke up in the recovery room with Harley there.  We sat in there for 30 minutes or so while I woke up and let the drugs wear off.  I hate it when your husband is so funny that he finds it necessary to constantly say things that makes me laugh after having a procedure in your stomach! :)  I couldn't stop laughing and am not sure if it was cause of the drugs or not but he just wouldn't stop.  It's been interesting going through this with him, kind of like this morning when I could not eat or drink since midnight last night and he decides to stop at McDonald's on the way down  this morning for breakfast and coffee!  Who does that? :)  Oh well, I got my McDonald's on our way home.

We talked with Dr Casey after everything, well Harley did and I just laid there pretending I was listening, and she said that there are 7 good eggs that they will be fertilizing over the next 5 days.  I will get a call from the lab in a day or two to see how things are going and how many have promise to become embryos.  We are hoping all or at least most of them make it to that so we can transfer 2 and freeze the rest!

This week I will just rest a bit, work from home most the week and get ready for Sunday when we have the transfer.  I'll keep in touch over the week to let you know how it develops!

Step 1 here we go!!

Well I went in Sunday morning and brought mom to show her what the ultrasound looks like with 21 mature follicles!  Yes 21!  They told me at the appointment to keep my phone on in the afternoon cause they would be calling me and letting me know when I should take my 'trigger' shot that evening.  Finally it is time!  So we set up my last shot for 9:30 pm that evening and scheduled my retrieval for Tuesday at 9:30 am.  They said this is what happens when you have PCOS, you get so many eggs it is crazy.  They said it is really good though and there should be a lot of good eggs and my estrogen is perfect, everything looks really great!

The only thing they warned me about was hyperstimulation which happens when you have a lot of eggs and they remove the eggs and fluid in the ovaries which makes them fill up with fluid to replace what was taken out. In some cases the fluid can spread to your body cavity and you would have to go to the hospital till it drained out.  That doesn't happen often but I could get a mild case of it where I feel sick and get bloated.  Right now I am pretty bloated, which isn't surprising since normally people only have 1 mature egg at a time and I had 21 on Sunday... and I'm told 5 others probably turned mature over the last few days.  So they are hoping there will be 26 eggs to retrieve.

I am told to keep it easy until the transfer next Sunday.  With my estrogen so high I will experience many things like hot flashes, tired feeling and dizziness.  I had to leave work today around 2 cause I did start to get dizzy and tired so I came home to rest.  Now I get pretty worn out if I am up and moving around for a little bit of time, hopefully it isn't this bad when I'm pregnant!

We will go in tomorrow morning at 8:30 am and get all set up for things, I will go in and have my procedure at 9:30 am and Harley will go make his contribution to things :)  After that I will be home resting, the nurses said that normally women go home and sleep and in the afternoon they wake up feeling great.  No more bloating/ full feeling like I feel right now.  After that I will be working from home for a day or two recovering and waiting until Sunday when we do the transfer.

The transfer will happen 5 days later which will be Sunday, so everyone cross your fingers and toes that we will get some good embryos out of this.  I'm going to take a shower and get ready for the morning!  Talk to you all soon and I'll let you know how it goes.

Appointments, appointments and more appointments!

We are so close now so of course they want to see me everyday, the only thing that stinks is that we are on a weekend now so I have to drive a hour each way to go to a 15-20 minute appointment.  But at least this time it's been good news day after day!  Friday's ultrasound went great, there were many more follicles overnight that grew quite a bit.  There was the first 18mm one and then some 16mms, 14mms and many 12mm and 11mms as well.  The nurse told me to take things easy this weekend and not overdo anything, she said to just relax in the sun in my lounge chair... who can argue with that prescription!  My estrogen is great and there is a great follicle count so the nurse was thinking a Monday or Tuesday retrieval day.

So I went in this morning for my next appointment and things are continuing to go great!  There is so much going on in there, there are many that are averaging what they need.  She said there are 6 mature follicles right now and there are a few at 14mm still that should get to it as well in the next day or so.  They want me to come in again Sunday morning to check again, depending on how many follicles there are and what my estrogen level is they will decide which day we do the retrieval.  They will keep me going on medicine until Monday if they can since that will guarantee more follicles as long as my estrogen doesn't get too high and put me at risk of hyper-stimulation.  If I get to that point they will not do the retrieval, right now I am perfectly fine but they want to keep monitoring it.  Hopefully tomorrow we will know which day we are going to do the retrieval!

Wish me luck for tomorrow!

Today's ultrasound

Had some more great news today!  Things are really coming along now with the follicles there is a 14mm, 13mm, SEVEN 12mm and a few 11mm on the right side alone.  And then there is a 14mm, 12mm and 11mm on the left side.  My lining is great still and estrogen is rising as it should be.  The nurse called this afternoon after the Dr reviewed everything and they said it is all going as they want it to and we will wait till they get between about 18-20mm size follicles and then do the retrieval.  I go in everyday now for a ultrasound until things are ready cause at this point they should grow 1-2 mm per day, so if that is the case I would say by Monday or Tuesday things should be ready!  Very excited and hope things keep going as smoothly as they are now.

But just wanted to give everyone a quick update and hopefully I will continue to have good news to share!

We are getting so close!

I haven't posted much lately since not a whole lot has changed until Friday.  Friday I started my other shots, so right now I have two in the morning and one at night!  I didn't think it was going to be a big difference but my poor stomach is full of needle pokes on either side of my belly button, looks like I will definitely need a new tankini swim suit for our weekend up at Scott's cabin in early June!

I am on one shot that will stop me from ovulating and then two stimulation shots.  The stimulation shots started Friday and things are going good so far.  I went in for blood work on Sunday and my estrogen is rising as they want.  I went in today for my first ultrasound to see how things are going, I had a very good feeling about today cause I could feel lots of stuff going on.  It's weird to say but I can usually tell if things are growing in there, thank god I was right!  I could tell right away before they even got the ultrasound wand to my ovaries that there were already a few that were pretty large.  On the right side there is one at 13mm, 12mm and three 11mm and then on the left side there is one at 12mm and one at 11mm.  They were very pleased and so was I!  They will wait till there are enough at around 17mm so there is a little more to go but we might be set by the end of the week as planned!  I will go back in on Thursday to see how much they grew and then probably again on Friday or else on Saturday, I'll go in Friday if they are very close otherwise they might have me skip a day.

We have had a few good laughs over the last week or two, with all of these hormone drugs going in me I can have pretty big mood swings and things like that so if you see poor Harley give him a hug :)  It's pretty common to hear him look at me and say- "is this the drugs talking or you?" or him say to himself over and over "it's just the drugs, it's just the drugs", so at least there is humor keeping us sane through all of this.  He also made me laugh the other morning when I was in the middle of taking my largest shot!  Halfway through I started laughing and the needle came out of my stomach, so for that one I had to do it twice!  I was mad at the time but also couldn't stop laughing.

In the meantime I have gotten hooked on the Fifty Shades series!  I can't put the books down and I think Harley is getting tired of me carrying my book around with me everywhere.  I read the first book in about a week and now I am about done with the second book that I started Friday night!  I usually take many months to finish a book but this one I cannot stop reading.   And I think I've gotten a few others hooked too!

Now we are getting ready for the IVF procedure and hopefully some fun weekends after it.  Just trying to enjoy our time right now, trying to stay relaxed and stress free!

I hope everyone had a great mothers day weekend and I will post again the end of the week with hopefully another great update!

Goodnight!

The shots have started again

This past weekend was nice, had dinner with my girls Rachel and Shannon Friday night.  Talked lots about what is going on in our lives right now so it was very nice to catch up.  Then my friend Patrick, or O as some of you know him as, came into town for a short visit.  We had Paninos Saturday night which is always good and then a bonfire at Luke's house, it was very good to see him!

So Sunday was my first shot again since early March, I'm not sure if it is the type of needle or what but it went smoother than I remember.  Did not feel it one bit!  I've started the Loupron shot which will prevent me from ovulating in the next few weeks.  I'm still taking birth control until Wednesday this week, still hate the fact that I am taking that but I made a joke to Harley that it would be pretty funny if we ended up getting pregnant now with me being on the pill!  I don't think that will happen but you hear about all these people doing fertility treatments and right before they start they end up getting pregnant on their own. 

I believe my first appointment will be next Tuesday but I think it is just bloodwork to see where things are at before we start the other shots, a baseline for them to measure changes over the next month.  I'm feeling better about the retrieval part of the process, I've been freaking myself out a bit but I've come to the conclusion that I cannot think of what the process is.  I don't need to know any details I just need to know that I will be sleeping the whole time and they can do what they need to do! 

I can't believe we are already to the month where things will now start, it's been about a month and a half of not really doing anything, after doing different kinds of appointments constantly since last August it was nice to have a bit of a break but I am totally ready to get back into it and hopefully make a baby this first round! 

Hope everyone enjoyed there weekend too and have a great week!

A wedding and a baby!

Big week for my family this last week, over the weekend my cousin got married to the love of her life!  It was a beautiful ceremony and very fun reception in Oakdale.  Everyone had a good time dancing and playing in the photo booth!

Another big event in the family this week was the birth of my niece, my brother Ryan and his wife Martina welcomed Isabelle Irene today!!  She is very cute, has very chunky cheeks to pinch and weighed in at 9 lbs 13 oz!  So fun, and I can't wait to see her grow up like the other niece and nephews we have gotten to watch grow up into little people!  And Mataya is already a great big sister, giving her lots of love and telling everyone who Isabelle is and where she came from "mommy's belly".  She wasn't very interested at first but once everyone was asking her questions she got into it and was sharing her time so others could hold Isabelle.  So cute!  Me and Mataya will be spending the day together Friday so mom can rest in the hospital one last day, so I'm sure we will have lots of laughs together.

We are starting to get back into the busy times now that it is warm out.  This weekend we have "Take your mom to the bar day", it started with some friends going out for Lowell's birthday and having a few of our mom's come with for some drinks.  And every year since then we have gotten together with our mom's one day at the bar, it is very fun to get all the mom's around!  They all know us separately from over the years but it is really a lot of fun to get them together to share their stories.  Last year it was very big cause lots of the dads came too so this year we are having a BBQ at Luke's house so hopefully it is somewhat nice and we can have a bonfire.

Then things really get busy both medically and socially, I'll start shots in a little over a week and then appointments start a few weeks after that.  We have lots of parties and celebrations for friends and family and once June starts there are vacations and other fun things to go do!

Well everyone hope you all have a lovely weekend and we'll talk soon!

Easter and our consultation

Easter was great!  A day to relax and not do anything but hangout with family.  We went to my Grandma Gloria's and had our Easter egg hunt, I was the big $5 winner!!  Coffee at Starbucks for me :)  We had a great lunch and then played the dice game for some fun outdoor games along with some Easter decorations.  My and  my niece Mataya got hula hoops, brought back old memories!  I tried but couldn't keep it up, I blame it on the hula hoop- they don't make them like they used to.  But Mataya had fun trying and watching all my tricks.  Harley won a kite so since it was nice and windy he got to fly it!  After all of that it was nice to just get home relax, take a nap and munch on some leftovers while watching Lifetime movies.

Back to reality, today had our nurse consultation and we scheduled all of the appointments we will have up to the week of retrieval.  They kept saying 'I know it's a lot of appointments' but then they remembered that when we were going to do IUI I was in there a few times a week at least for about 5 weeks, so going in maybe 5 times will be a breeze on me and our checkbook!  Found out how many shots I will be taking and got to see all of them so I know what to expect.  It's not really like what you see on TV and movies when people take shots in the butt, all shots will be in my stomach just like I was doing for IUI rounds.  So now we just wait until shots start April 29, once those start things will start going fast.  We will hopefully have things go smoothly according to our mock schedule, which will mean retrieval will happen around the week of May 21 and transfer possibly Memorial weekend.

I'm kind of looking into acupuncture, online I've seen a lot about it helping.  Mostly they say it helps the blood flow, when I brought it up with my Doctor she didn't seem too impressed by it so I think I will pass for now but if anyone knows anything about it and know if someone has done it for any fertility reasons let me know if they liked it and felt it helped them.  Some do it every week for 3 months prior, some just start when they are starting the whole process and do it weekly, then some people do it only the day before transfer and the day of or after transfer. Not sure if I want to do it or not, I might but maybe not until it is May.  Let me know!

And the scary thoughts begin...

I've been watching reruns of Guilliana and Bill on the style network.  They are celebrities who the cameras have been following since they got married years back.  She is the E! ancor that had breast cancer last year.  They have been doing infertility treatments for a few years now and it is very interesting to watch this since they are doing the same exact things we are.  Some of it is a bit scary cause you see her go through a IVF cycle and a miscarrage.  We have our first appointment on Monday to go through a few things and after watching this I have many more questions about the whole procedure.  But one has to do what they have to do to get what they want.

So Monday we will be going in and meeting with a nurse, we will be going over the whole timeline of things and what we should expect during the next few months.  I will be doing a trial transfer to measure out a good place to transfer the embryos to.  While I am doing this Harley will be making his donation to run a test as well, his test will determine whether his sperm are strong enough to breakthrough the eggs or whether they will need help.  If they need help a needle will put them in the egg.

It's a good thing that we are doing this at this time of the year since it is when Harley can be around home more for work.  Luckily both our jobs allow us to take time off here and there for all the appointments we do.  I've pretty much decided that if in June we find out this round didn't work we will take a month or two off before trying again.  The summer is so busy and we've been at all of this for almost a year now since the very first appointment with Dr Votel so sometimes you just need a break to relax before getting back in it.  I'm sad that I might be spending my Memorial weekend on bedrest after the transfer but that's ok, we've had rain and cold weather the past few years so hopefully it will be a rainy weekend :)  Sorry to all of those who have outdoor plans but I'll be praying for rain.

But after that we have lots of exciting things planned, a few weekends away with good friends and a week with family over 4th of July at a cabin up north.  Then all the little fun stuff we have planned for the weekends.  Very excited for the summer! 

Well that's about it for now, just wanted to get a little of my nervousness out of my head before our appointment Monday.  Happy Easter everyone and hope you have fun spending it with the ones you love, I know we will!!

Past, present and future...

My first post!  Welcome all, after a few different kinds of fertility treatments and about 17 months of trying with 10 of them getting help from Doctors I decided to start this blog.  In doing this blog I hope to inform my friends and family, express my feelings both good and bad and maybe even help someone going through the same thing.
So here is our story...
After going off birth control I was not getting my cycle, I thought it would just take a little while since I was on the pill for over 10 years.  I went into my regular OBGYN and she told me that there was nothing they could do yet until a year of trying, we were only trying for 3 months then.  After hearing that I was disappointed, I knew something was going on and wanted to get started on other options.  After talking to a friend of mine who was having the same problem she recommended me to Partners OB which is where her Dr recommended her to go.  In June I started working with Dr Votel, there were many blood tests to see if they could see anything obvious going on.  Right away she thought I had poly-cystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), this is something most women with infertility problems have.  It is nothing too serious until you are trying to conceive, basically my follicles do not fully mature and drop eggs they turn into little cysts and never go away.  After a ultrasound confirmed that I started Metformin and that has stopped the follicles turning into cysts.  The next step we took was to get me on Clomid, it was to jump start the development of follicles and then I would continue to take estrogen pills to guide my body and grow mature follicles.  After trying that 4 times they found that no follicles were growing enough to mature into a egg so that is when they referred me to start seeing Dr Casey at the Center for Reproductive Medicine (CRM).
At that point I was pretty upset, I was really hoping that getting the PCOS under control and using Clomid would be all that it would take.  I did have a lot of hope cause my friend had a lot of success going to Dr Casey, she will have her little girl this summer!  So I felt like I was going to be in great hands and was feeling good about starting our next step.  We started with me and Harley going in and meeting with Dr Casey to decide on what we were going to do first, it was agreed that we would try a few IUI cycles to see how I responded to that.  Being that Harley had a great result in his tests, which he was very proud of and will sing it from the mountains, IUI was the best next step.  In December I started doing infertility shots, these shots were to stimulate the ovaries and grow some mature follicles, or follies as the nurses called them!  Once I had a couple follies that were 17 mm or higher I would take another shot to induce ovulation, then a few days later I would go in to be inseminated.  For IUI they just implant the sperm into your uterus, they still have to do their normal job and find the egg and do all of that hard work but doing the IUI that would get them close.  None of us knew how long the process would take, including the nurses.  Being that I have PCOS my cycle was LONG to say the least, the follies grew but at a slow rate.  Which they said slow was good cause then they would be good eggs, but it was about 24 days of daily shots and about 2-3 ultrasounds a week.  Lets just say I know all the ultrasound techs and nurses at CRM very well! Haha!  On day 28 of my cycle they did the IUI, two weeks later we found out it didn't work.  We were pretty upset that it did not work, since my cycle ended up starting over the same day we got the news we went right back into it and started again for the next IUI.  Dr Casey said that it is very common that the first IUI doesn't work especially if you don't usually ovulate on a normal basis so your body has to get used to it.
The 2nd IUI try Dr Casey increased the dose of my shots to get it to go a little faster this time, unfortunately it went a little too fast.  Around day 14 of my cycle I was at a ultrasound and I ended up having 7 follies that were mature!  It was funny cause they were just looking at my uterus and we could see all of the follies before even moving the ultrasound wand over to the ovaries.  So sadly they had to cancel the cycle due to a huge risk of dropping all 7 eggs and having sextuplets or something like that!!  Just last month we tried for our 3rd IUI, this time she started the dose high and then dropped it after a few days hoping that the increase at the beginning would get things started strong and it would not take as long as the first cycle.  With IUI it is very difficult to control things when you have PCOS cause it will go slow, slow, slow and then all of a sudden hyperdrive!  So we were trying to find the right dose and combination to get things to move along nicely, it was going slow like the first round which was ok but then my estrogen started dropping.  I started taking estrogen pills to get it back up and it worked and the follies started to mature but a few days later things started going in the opposite direction.  Dr Casey called me and we talked about whether we should keep going and see if something turns around or cancel the cycle.  I didn't want to start over but I knew nothing else was going to happen that time.
After that Dr Casey and I decided that moving to IVF would be the best next step.  IVF is more controlled and they want you to grow many follicles cause they will take all of the eggs they can and it will give us a better chance for multiple embryos to use the first time and then some to freeze for future rounds.  So she felt this would be a great choice for us after seeing how I responded to the fertility shots so far.  Me and Harley went in and met with her and asked questions about it, we learned that this would be about a 8 week process.  We also learned about the procedure, costs and insurance.  Luckily we have GREAT insurance, one of the best she has ever seen.  So we have 5 IVF attempts covered under insurance so with that many tries she feels that is more than enough and is very hopeful after the first or second try we will become pregnant.  During IUI we had a risk of about 20% for multiples depending on how many follicles matured and how many dropped during ovulation.  With IVF we have the choice to implant one or two embryos and she said most couples do two to increase their chance of one of them making it.  With implanting two we do have a 36-60% chance for twins, Harley was all on board for that!  He wants twins- a boy and a girl and then we will be done.  I feel like I would want to be pregnant a few more times but we will have that discussion once it comes up  :)
At this point my cycle just started, today actually, so we are at CD1 (cycle day 1) and have around 75 plus or minus to go until we know if this worked or not.  I start out doing blood tests tomorrow to see what my levels are, after that I will go back on birth control pills!  Funny since we are trying to have a baby, but that will help keep hormones and everything going.  I will be on them from anywhere between 9-21 days, after a few weeks I will start taking Lupron shots.  Lupron will prevent early ovulation, I will take this for 21 days.  Around mid May I will start taking more shots, of Gonal F and Menopur which will stimulate the ovaries and   get the follicles to start growing.  In about the 8-12 days I am on those I will go in for blood work on day 3 to check my estrogen levels, then on day 6, 8 and 10 I will go in for ultrasounds to see how things are growing, once they find enough follies mature enough but not too far gone I will take a shot to induce ovulation and will go in the next day for retrieval.  They will retrieve all of the eggs they can before one drops, cause as soon as a egg drops the rest of them dry up and go away.  After 5 days of fertilizing the eggs they will take the two embryos that look the best and implant them, 10 days after that we will take a pregnancy test!
We are very hopeful and excited and hope we have good news to share with everyone this summer!  Sorry this was such a long first blog but I just wanted to get everyone caught up that did not know what was going on or only new a little.  In the future they wont be this long :)  Feel free to email me or call me if you have any questions or want to talk about things, I don't have a problem talking about it I just wanted to start the blog to keep everyone caught up who wants to know how things are going.  The emails and texts some of you were getting were getting hard to remember who knew what so this will be much easier!  Well I'm going to say goodnight now and I hope everyone enjoys there weekend and I will talk to you later, much love!!