Inching a little bit more

The second beta was today and it was 1,523 and progesterone is 69.2--according to favorite nurse this is very good!!

A part of me still can't believe that this is really happening....that at the end of all this I might actually have a baby. I am trying to stay as positive as I can and trying not to think of the negative. I will try to enjoy this as long as I can.

Again, thank you for all of your support and kind words!

I Can Breathe!

HCG=297

Progesterone=55.3

Whew...I don't even know what to say at this point..I am beyond happiness and a little shock...

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!!

4 Frosties

I couldn't wait to get the letter from the lab so I called to find out how many frosties we have and I have 4!!! Wow, I really can't believe this...I thought they said that 1 of the blastocysts during our transfer wasn't good enough to freeze--so I am not sure where the 4th one came from-but I am not complaining. I am amazed that 6 out of our 7 eggs made it to transfer or became a frostie. Hopefully I won't need these guys after tomorrow...at least for nine months! I can hope can't I??

Feeling blah...

I am almost at the end of this 2ww, Friday is beta day. I am having a really hard time describing my emotions at this point--maybe because it is a hodge podge of everything. Sometimes I feel just fine, that this will work out, and then there are times that I feel fear slowly creeping in-I feel a knot in my throat, my chest and my stomach and I can't breathe (okay, maybe this is not fear, it is more like a panic attack). I know that there is nothing else I can do at this point but sit and wait. Either my little guys implanted and they are alive or they are gone by now. I have no control of anything that is going on at this point-I just have to accept my faith and if things don't work out we have to be strong and do this all over again. But I hope we don't have to face this.

We decided that S will get the results from the clinic and he will find a way to break the news to me-good or bad. I will give him a list of questions to ask for both a negative and positive outcome-because based on history he needs some coaching on the questions category.

On a positive note, if you guys are feeling up to it and want to hear some positive news on blogland, stop by Mellie. Mellie's blog is the first blog I found on IF and I posted my first ever IF comment on her blog! By reading her blog, I realized that I can meet some wonderful women who will be by my side thru this journey.

But in the meantime, if you can send some positive vibes to me and my cycle sister Sube in the next couple of days. We are cycle sisters to the T, we had a meltdown on the same day, we were retrieved on the same day, we both had 7 eggs fertilized and now we have our beta on the same day! My wish is that we continue this trend and we can celebrate together!

Bed rest, waiting and other stuff

So it's been 3dp5dt and I am finally back at work. I realized that bed rest is not a lot of fun-there is a lot of bad TV out there. S said I am not a very good patient-unfortunately I have to agree. Oh well, I tried my best. I did cheat a few times, I went down to the office a few times to check on everyone's blog and check email and I had a girlfriend visit me yesterday with her 6 month old baby(I am pretty sure that holding the baby was not part of the bed rest prescription) to bring me lunch-she was very sweet.

Other than waiting-which I realized is what IVF is all about. You wait to cycle, you wait to take your meds, you wait for retrieval, you wait for fertilization, you wait for transfer and then you wait for beta! Oy! So, since I am on the subject of waiting, I still don't know what is going on with our 3 remaining embryos. I believe during my transfer they told us that they will send us a letter about the status of the 3 embryos and to see if they can be frozen. I find this odd since I've never heard of this practice--I thought they would just call you for an update. And I just took my valium when they came to talk to us so again, I was not coherent. Note to self--give S a list of questions to ask if we have to do this again, because obviously I can't communicate when I am all drugged up. So, obviously we are waiting for that letter.

S's parents are flying in today for a visit and staying until Monday. I am glad that they are coming because this will distract me during the 2ww-hopefully the weekend will fly by!

Happy Transfer Day!

Today we transferred 2 beautiful embryos. The embryologist told us that they look great and beautiful. We are very excited and hopeful. We are very happy that we've come this far and just hoping that we will get some good news in the next couple of weeks. Oh, and they didn't give us any pictures-I guess they said they didn't do that. Oh well, I was hoping that we were going to have some pictures to share with our future children.

Out of the 5 remaining embryos, one stop growing, another one made it to blastocysts but the quality was not very good so they recommended not freezing it. And there are 3 more that they are still in the process of getting to the blastocysts stage and they are watching those to see if they can be frozen.

So for now, S and I are taking this all in and and counting our blessings--and also celebrating S's 37th b-day-life is great! Thanks everyone for all the support in the last few days/weeks!

We made it to day 5!

Yes, we did-we are very ecstatic! We received the phone call this morning from the clinic that we are going to be doing a day 5 transfer. We have no idea how many embryos are still growing, but it must be a good sign that they are waiting until day 5. I am so proud of those little guys-they are strong and they keep growing and I couldn't ask for anything more!

In the meantime, if you haven't already please stop by Thalia to give her some much needed love and support.

I hope everyone had a good weekend-I hope by next year, we will all be celebrating mother's day or at least on our way to celebrating this day!

Waiting...

First of all I just want to say thank you for all the support yesterday....after I got my thoughts and emotions together...and especially after reading Sube post, my cycle sister, I realized that I should feel really lucky of the 7 beautiful embryos that we have. Her excitement and happiness is so contagious,and she is right..how can I not feel happy about my 7? After reading her post, I felt like such a heel for complaining/venting about my 7 embryos. And so after my short meltdown, I realized how lucky and fortunate we are. I hope that the 7 beautiful embryos are growing and they are strong and what ever happens I am just happy that we got this far.

Right now we are still waiting to see if we are doing a 3 or 5 day transfer. We got a call from the clinic earlier today and they really didn't give us anymore information. They said to call the clinic tomorrow at 7:30 and we will find out if we will do the transfer tomorrow or get pushed to Tuesday. I asked how many embryos are left and they didn't know...I guess the lab doesn't update them. I am assuming that they are a few good embryos left other wise they would have given us the bad news by now. So I am sitting here patiently..and I will be happy with either day. Both days are fine, mother's day or S's b-day..how can you go wrong.

So I received my first PIO shot last night...I was so nervous about it, but it wasn't bad at all. Maybe icing it for more than 5 minutes help, so by the time S gave me the shot my butt was completely numb. It was kind of funny because we went out last night to celebrate S's birthday and he was drinking a cocktail-which is very normal for us. As we were talking and joking around about our 7 embryos and how they are the coolest embryos in the lab right now we were cracking up and just having a good time. The PIO shot was on my mind all day so I asked him if he read his manual/instructions over and as I finished my question, I zeroed in on his hand holding his cocktail and I started to get scared. He looks at his cocktail and said "maybe I shouldn't be drinking before your butt shot". So just imagine how I got more scared after that. Luckily he did a really good job-I think going to see a jazz show before the butt shot help a ton!

Again, thank you so much for all of the support and kind words yesterday...I am so lucky to have found all of you!

Seven...I am not feeling lucky

So I just received our fertilization report and out of the 12 eggs, 5 were immature and the seven that were mature all fertilized. To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. Again, with our numbers coming in, I was really hoping for better results. I guess my wish of freezing some embryos are now old news. This is so hard and frustrating..I just feel like nothing has gone our way since we started this cycle. I think I was producing too many follicles too fast and not giving them enough time to develop. I can't help but think of the next step since my hopes for this cycle is slowly and painfully being crushed. I doubt we will make it to a day 5 transfer, since we only have 7 to go with. S doesn't understand why I am so sad and disappointed. He said 7 is good and this is the closest we've ever been to being pregnant. I know he is right, but I still can't snap out of this.

So if we do a day 3 transfer, it will be Mother's Day--how appropriate, if we make it to Day 5 it will be Tuesday and ironically that is S's birthday.

A Dozen Eggs

This morning Dr. K retrieved a dozen eggs. He said this was really good, I was still pretty groggy when he came to tell us the results so I wasn't able to respond or ask questions--which I really wanted too once what he said sank in. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed with the results, I guess I was hoping that they were going to retrieved more eggs since I had such good numbers going in. Maybe this is the reason that they don't want you to put too much weight on the daily numbers. So I keep telling myself that this is good..quality vs quantity.

Thanks everyone for giving us well wishes and thinking of us..now we sit and wait to hear about fertilization tomorrow. But for now I will go back to the couch because I can hardly keep my eyes open.

There's a party in my ovaries and I wasn't invited!

We are up to 27 follicles and 21 follicles are measuring over 10mm! Woo-hoo! I feel like my ovaries are having a party and they forgot to invite me! But I am not complaining. I have 9 on the right and 11 on the left. My estrogen level is...ready for this....3,107!! I didn't even think it went up that high! We are scheduled for Thursday retrieval, I can't believe that the stim phase went by so quickly.

I am not sure if I mentioned that there are almost 100 women doing IVF with Dr. K this month. I think this is a lot but according to favorite nurse this is normal. Of all the doctors in the clinic, he has the most patients and he also has the highest success rate. I don't know if this is good or bad, but I figure I can't really worry about it.

Now for the somewhat sad note....I have not heard from my parents at all since I started stims..not even to ask how we are doing. It makes me really sad, I will probably go into retrieval without them knowing about it. This is typical, so I am not even sure why I am complaining about it. I guess it is because I had a meltdown yesterday at church. A bunch (50!!) of kids were celebrating their holy communion yesterday and the church was packed with kids, toddlers, babies and pregnant bellies. I sat there thinking of what we are going thru, how my parents haven't called and I had a major meltdown. I am blaming it all on drugs, it makes me feel better that I have a reason for this meltdown vs saying that I am emotional/crazy etc.

Ovaries are playing along nicely

Today's monitoring went much better than last Thursday. I do have to mention that for the first time I didn't have a Wand Lady do the monitoring...I had Mr Wand. That was weird since I've always had a Wand Lady do all my u/s. Looks like both of my ovaries are playing along nicely. I have 12 measurable follicles so far, 7 on the left and 5 on the right (there are other follicles that Mr. Wand didn't measure). 7 of the 12 are measuring over 10 mm. This looks good right girls? I keep telling myself that quality is better than quantity and don't get too obsessed with the # of follicles...so I will try this thinking for now...let see how long it will last. My E2 is 896...I think this is good for where I am with my stimulations, I finished day 6 yesterday. Favorite nurse said that I continue my medication, no changes and I am going back Monday morning for more monitoring. So I guess, so far so good...I am keeping my fingers crossed.

How many follicles?

So I am a little peeved this morning. I went to my u/s and blood work and was not happy at all about the u/s. For all of my past u/s, whoever is my Wand lady shows me the screen and points out my ovaries and how many little follicles are growing. Well guess what??? This did not happen this morning...on my 1st u/s for my 1st IVF!! I am obsess with numbers...come on guys I am CPA, what do you expect?? Of course I want to know numbers!! I asked Wand Lady after how I am doing and she said oh..pretty good, your biggest follicles is measuring at around 10. I asked her how many follicles I have and she said about 8-9 per ovary. Well, since I couldn't see it and I didn't see her count it, I will take that as a grain of salt! Sorry I am venting, I just really want to know what is going on inside me and this is super frustrating.

So finally favorite nurse called me this afternoon and I am to continue with my medication ( I did decrease gonal-F to 150 last night from 225 units). I have to go for another u/s blood work on Saturday. This time we have to go to the "big-outside the city-facility" between 6:30 am to 8:00 am! Yikes! S is going to love this one! Hopefully I will get better information at that time.

Brave...that's my word for the day

S and I try to give each other one positive word each day..I know it sounds really corny, we saw it on Oprah one day and started it as a joke. It kind of stuck so now before we go to bed we give each other our word of the day. Last night before bed, S asked me if I wanted to know what my word of the day was and I said yes, and he said my word is Brave. I asked why my word was brave and he said it is because I gave myself 3 injections and that he doesn't think he could do it. I cried after he said this...good thing we were in the dark!

So yes, we started stims last night. For some reason I had it stuck in my head that I was only doing 2 injections, one for gonal-f and one for menopur. Well, what do you know.....I totally forgot about the Lupron...I don't know why...I've only been giving myself this shot for the last week and a half! It wasn't so bad. The only intimidating item was the menopur, mainly because I've never done it before. For some reason, the injection for the menopur hurt a little bit, but I think it was because I was a little upset that I didn't realize I had to do 3 injections as oppose to 2. Like it really makes a difference. I know it is all mental.

So, one down, a gazillion more to go! I don't even want to count, I am just glad that the first one is over with. I think once you get it started the next couple of injections won't be so bad. I have an appointment on Thursday to see how everything is going. Will keep you guys posted.