Airport, babies and other stuff

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We survived the visit with the in-laws...it was actually lovely. I wasn't sure how the visit was going to go. I haven't blogged about it much, but my SIL and I are as opposite as can be! She also had a baby this year-May and she is living with her parents since they are helping her with the baby. She is a single mom and that story needs to be saved for a post in itself for a later date! Anyway, she is the type of person who likes to gives advice and who preaches. Sometimes, her advice/lecture is not appreciated by me or S! She makes you feel like a total turd when it comes to parenting. One example, right before I was going back to work from my leave of absence-she sent us a thank you card. I just found a day care for B and S and I were pretty nervous about the transition. You would think that if you are a mom/parent, you know that trying to decide the best childcare for your child is a very sensitive issue. As I mentioned, she tends to be a preacher-this is what she wrote in her card -" I decided to move to mom and dad's house--I love my daughter too much and a daycare or a nanny is just not good enough for her!" Let's just say there were some foul words that came out of my mouth after reading this card!!! Needless to say, I was very nervous about seeing her and what other stuff she will say that will offend both S and I. But to my surprise, the visit went really well. Yeah, she is a little quirky, but as long as she keeps her quirkiness with her daughter we are fine with that!

The trip itself went really well. The week before Thanksgiving we went to Chi.ca.go so I wasn't so nervous about the flight. B did really well flying. The only problem was getting through security! It was a big pain! I seriously don't think I can fly with a baby on my own....ever!!! When people see you in line with a baby..they try to avoid you! They know that it will take forever to get through that sensor stuff!!! Can you blame them? First you have to take off your shoes, coat, unload your laptop(if you have one-which we had 2 flying to Chi.ca.go!!). After you take care of yourself, you have to tend to your child, take of the coat, declare you have baby food in your bag, take him/her out of the stroller, hand him to dad or mom(god forbid you are flying alone, no one in security will take your child...instead you kindly ask the people behind you to take your baby while you fold the stroller and put it through the sensor!! And at this point you are just halfway through security. You take your baby back from the nice strangers, and you hand your boarding pass to the lady who refuses to hold your baby, you attempt to cross the security but wait you are denied entrance!! "Sorry but you have to take your babies shoes!!" Are you freakin' kidding me?? It's a ro.beez and those shoes are not even functional!!! Argh!! You take the shoes off, you hope that thing doesn't beep. You finally get clearance, only now you have to put everything back! Sigh. I am tired just writing this post!

Update on B-he is doing great! We almost have teeth! Yeah! He has 2 little ones poking from the bottom...I think it is just a matter of days before they completely pop out! He is cruising and trying to walk...but he can't really figure it out yet. He holds on to furniture and walks along them. Feeding is going well..he is getting better with eating with his hands. Most of the time we still feed him with a spoon. I really don't know how to get away from that. Sippy cup training is going poorly. I put the stopper on the sippy cup, but I worry that he is really not getting anything out of it. It just looks like he needs to work hard to get anything to drink with the stopper. If he tries the sippy cup too long, he looses interest with his bottle and ends up not drinking his milk. I take the stopper off but wonders how he will learn using the sippy cup if the stopper is off. So as you can see..sippy cup is a bit of a struggle for both of us. Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions on how to train with a sippy cup?

Update on IVF #2
Nothing really exciting going on with this topic. We got our blood work done when we were in Chi.ca.go. Now I am back on the waiting game. I need to get an HSG test after my period starts and also start the pill. Oh fun stuff!

When S went for his blood work, he had to take B with him since I was working. I figured this was fine since it was after the morning monitoring so there won't be that many ladies at the clinic and it will minimize the chances of offending anyone. Well, it really didn't work out that way. The appointment was around lunch time. You would think that S would give him a bottle before going to the clinic...but no! S went to visit some old co-workers before the appointment...hence there was not time to give B a bottle. Instead, S gave him his bottle in the waiting room!!! Holy crap!! Of course all the nurses were goggling over him but that is not the point! I asked S how many ladies were in the waiting room with him and he said a couple! I am pretty sure they didn't appreciate this fanfare! S didn't look at it this way, to him they should take this as a good sign...a hope that treatments can work! I said good point, but I bet you they don't think of it that way.

Consult Update

First of all thank you so much for all the encouragement from my previous post! You guys rock and you don't know how much all those kind words mean to me.

I had my consult with Dr. K last Friday. It was very short and sweet. Dr. K talked to me like we are old pals--which I wonder if he remembers my face! He sees so many patients, he performs about 50 IVFs a month! So for me to wonder if he remembers my face is not an exaggeration!

In a nutshell, this is what is going to happen. The January series is going to start on January 21st and ending on the 29th(holy crap!!). I will go on birth control pills during my December cycle. S and I need to get all of our blood work again--silly me thought that since we already did this we are good to go! Not! I guess those test are only good for 1 year. I am flying to Chi.ca.go on Thursday for work(and I am taking the boys with me)-so to make things easy we are going to get our blood work done at our regular clinic. I am a little afraid, because we have to take B with us-and I remember how some patients don't really appreciate this. But I have no choice since we can't really leave him with anyone. Maybe he will make his cute faces and smiles and the ladies can't help but like him.

I also need to get another HSG exam. Yikes. I don't have a regular doctor out here yet, so I had to make some cold calls this morning. Oh well, there is only one big ob/gyn clinic in our town, so it is not like I really had any choice. I was hoping that I could also do the HSG test in Chicago, but according to favorite nurse my lining will be too thick by then-oh yes!! Of course I remember this! So I had no choice but to call for an appointment with a new doctor. I have an appointment early in December since I need to do a meet and great with the doctor before I can do the HSG test.

And then I still have to figure out the logistics about travelling to Chi.ca.go. Does anyone know if I can book a plane ticket with an open travel dates? I think I heard this somewhere, but I am not sure how to go about it. We don't mind paying more, if we can call a couple of days in advance to get a departure date since we have no idea about travel dates. Any ideas ladies??

The post I've been dreading to write....for a long time....

So I've been thinking and thinking if I should write this post..a part of me is afraid of what people will think and another part of me feels like I am being greedy for doing what I am about to do. I am not sure how my readers(the few of you left) will feel about what we are about to do...here it is...

We are trying for another IVF cycle...there I said it.

S and I have been thinking about this a lot. We know we want more children and we are not spring chickens either. We know that the longer we wait the chances of success gets lower. We are extremely blessed to have B in our lives and we are having such a good time with him--and I think knowing what this joy and happiness is all about is what motivates us to try and have some more children.

And then there is the financial aspect of the treatments. As most of you know, since I work for an Ill.in.ois company, they pay for all of our IVF treatments. The state of Ill.in.ois mandates that the insurance covers infertility treatments. We are entitled to 4 IVF cycles for our first child, if you are successful and have a live birth from these IVF treatments, you get 2 more IVF cycles for your second pregnancy. Not a bad benefit. And due to my work situation, S and I figured that we should at least try one more cycle before my contract with my job is over(my contract is good until March)--one cycle will save us thousands of dollars!! So this benefit played a big part in our decision making. We figured that we should at least try one more time and see where this journey will take us.

Honestly, we've been trying on our own since B turned 6 months. All that bad memory came flying back. I caught myself keeping track of my cycle(but I have to say I am not charting my temps..I am very proud of myself), getting anxious towards the end of my cycle, obsessing about impending AF--checking the tissue after going to the bathroom to see if any blood shows up. One thing haven't changed, I am still in dread of taking a pregnancy test. The past 4 cycles, I've only taken 1 pregnancy test. The same old feelings are back, I don't want to get disappointed, since I know that my body failed so many times before, I still can't handle seeing a negative pregnancy test.

So here we are, I have a phone consult with my doctor in Chi.ca.go this Friday. We decided to go with my old RE--I called around for doctors out here but a lot of them don't accept our insurance. We can go to them, but have to pay our out-of-network share, which after calculating the expenses will be in the neighborhood of about $5-$7K so we decided to go back to my RE. I will have to do my daily monitoring at one of the local clinics here and head to Chi.ca.go 3-4 days before retrieval. It sounds really complicated, but as I used to tell myself all the time, I will just have to take it one day at a time.

Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone had a fun Halloween!!