Doggy Sitting

Since there isn't much going on in the way of our IVF cycle just yet, I decided to do some more off topic posts. A little variety is always good, right? :o)

We are doggy sitting for our neighbors this week. They have to go out of town and can't take Harli with them, so Sophie gets a playmate for a few days! I have a feeling it's going to be quite entertaining! Sophie and Harli get along, and enjoy playing together, but Sophie has never had another dog in her house. She can be pretty territorial over Matthew's parents' house, so I can only imagine her reaction when Harli comes over tonight. Let's just hope Sophie doesn't bark all night long!

I'm hoping to get some good pics of the two of them running and playing the next few days. Maybe this is just what Sophie needs to chill herself out a little bit. Haha, or she'll be really mad at us. I'm willing to be it will be more of the latter. Although, yesterday I did tell her that Harli was going to come to our house for a sleep over, and she ran all around the house looking for her. Hopefully that was a good sign. haha! Wish us luck! Maybe wish Harli a little bit of luck as well. :o)

Birthday presents!

This post has nothing to do with the baby process, but I'm sure you're probably tired of reading about just baby making stuff. So here's some fun off topic reading!

On Tuesday Cindy texted me and said that I would have my birthday present waiting for me on Friday when I got home from work. She and Mom and Dad went together to get me something and it was being delivered on my birthday. She knows how impatient I can be, especially when it comes to presents, so I'm convinced she did it just to torture me :o)

So after being at school until 7:00 for parent teacher conferences, I get home to a box from Barnes and Noble. I had my suspicions as to what was inside, but didn't linger on those thoughts for long! I ripped into the box, of course, and squealed with excitement when I pulled out my...

NEW NOOK! I can't wait to load it full of books! I plugged it in to charge, then went to dinner with Matthew. Once we got home I picked up my Nook and didn't put it down until I was ready to go to bed :o) What a fun birthday present! It definitely helped make up for the weird things that happened at the doctor that morning!

Nothing can be easy...not even on my birthday!

Well...today I had my baseline ultrasound before starting birth control for IVF. I went in because I haven't had a period yet since our IUI in January, and they were going to give me medicine to induce it, but they needed to make sure there were no left over cysts from last month's meds. Thank goodness for no cysts this time (yea!) BUT since my body can't do ANYTHING easily, we have another bump in the road to clear.

Dr. H was doing my u/s and first checks my endometrial lining. It was still much thicker than it should've been at this stage (hence the no period yet) then he starts looking at my ovaries. The first one is clear of cysts, but there was a strange tissue line extending from the ovary to my lining. He wasn't quite sure what to make of it at first, because I haven't had anything like this in the past. So he checked the other ovary and everything looked great there. He could see where I ovulated the eggs last month for our IUI and said the broken down follicles looked great and just as they should after ovulating. Then he moved the wand back to the first ovary. The tissue line was still there. He looked from several different angles, and it never went away.

He told me he's seen this in other patients, but never in me before, so it definitely surprised him. He printed out the u/s pictures and continued to study them. He told me that he wanted to do one more urine pregnancy test, on the off chance that my lining hadn't shed due to pregnancy. He said the chance was very slim that it would be positive, but he needed to know for sure before giving me meds to induce a period. At this point I thought "that would be the best freakin birthday present EVER!" Of course the test was negative, I didn't really think there was the slightest bit of hope there. Then he explained that he didn't know if this is something I develop every cycle between ovulation and menstruation, or if it is a fluke thing this time. He wants me to take the medicine to induce a period and schedule another u/s as soon as it comes to check whether or not the "line" is still there. If it isn't, then we're clear and no big deal. If it is, then he said he wants to do a hysteroscopy (click here for more info) to go in, look at it more closely, and remove it.

Since we are scheduled for IVF in April I asked if this hiccup was going to push it back, and throw off the schedule, and he said it won't. We found it early enough, that even if he has to do the hysteroscopy, there is still plenty of time before I start stimulation meds, that it won't hurt anything (whew!)

That was a lot of info to take in before 9am today! Now it's on to Parent/Teacher Conferences at school. My 29th birthday is definitely one for the record books already, and it's only 11:00!

Deposit Paid!

Well, we are in! This morning I paid our deposit for April IVF! If you're one of the lucky people with insurance coverage for IVF they require a deposit to ensure you're fully committed to the cycle, and to cover any "patient responsibility" up front. We have part of our deductible left to pay, so our deposit will cover the rest of our deductible. Anything left once the patient responsibility is covered, is either refunded, or left as a credit on the account for future copays.

A couple of nights ago I went to dinner with our neighbor and friend who was also a patient of Dr. H. She went through a Frozen Embryo Transfer in November and is pregnant with their first baby! They have been dealing with infertility a lot longer than Matthew and I have, so whether they wanted to or not, they've kind of become our "infertility mentors." Since they've been through this already, many times, it's been really, really nice to have someone to talk with who truly understands everything. It's also nice that she has seen the same doctor. It's easier to compare protocol when you know it's all similar because the doctor is the same.

Anyway, back to where this story started...we had dinner and I told her we were making the leap to IVF in April. She showed me the protocol calendars Dr. H's office had given her for the two previous cycles she went through. Once you start birth control, and have had a baseline office visit, they give you a calendar showing what medicine to take what day. The doses can change, but the meds themselves will usually stay the way they have them listed on the calendar. There is A LOT of medicine! Holy crap! I knew there was a lot, but seeing in on the calendar, all color coded, wow.

She was also so incredibly sweet to give us a bunch of left over things she still had that weren't useful for them any longer. After the egg retrieval is done I will have to have (well Matthew will have to give me) NASTY shots of Progesterone in Oil (PiO) right in the butt. It is a very thick substance, which of course translates into a HUGE needle! She had a bunch of left over, unopened PiO and unopened needles/syringes of various sizes. She also had a huge sharps container that was barely used so we have that as well. I have a feeling it's going to fill up quickly! At least we are saving a little bit of money throughout this process :o)

So I was relieved the other night after talking with her, and incredibly thankful for all the extras she had left over! I think it's been good for Matthew to have a guy to talk with who can relate as well. Guys are even more reluctant to talk about this stuff than women are, so even though they wind up doing a lot of joking around, it's good for Matthew to know there is someone, besides me, who understands his frustrations.

Tomorrow I have a baseline ultrasound to check for cysts, since I haven't had that checked since the end of our last IUI. Hopefully everything is clear! I really don't want to have another one drained...

It's Official...IVF Here We Come!

Well, in case you couldn't tell by the title of this post, we are officially on the list for IVF! I called our RE's office this morning to let them know we made a decision. I left a message for the head nurse, Merry Kay, and when she called back she said they would put us down for the April cycle!

There are details we still have to work out, but at this point my instructions were to call them back when I had a new cycle begin. She asked when I was expecting it, but basically because of all the weird breakthrough bleeding I had in January, I honestly couldn't tell her when I was expecting it. She told me if I started in the next week to call back and let them know, but if I hadn't started by next Friday to also call, and they would give me medicine to induce a period. The first thing in an IVF cycle is going on birth control pills. In order to start them I need to be at the beginning of my cycle, not somewhere in the middle.

I'm sure you're thinking, why in the world are you taking birth control when you're trying to MAKE a baby not PREVENT a baby. As Dr. H explained to us, the first thing we need to do make my brain relinquish all control of my reproductive organs, specifically the ovaries. The birth control starts the process of letting the medicine control my ovaries instead of my body itself.

So sometime in the next couple of weeks we will begin the journey to the big egg retrieval and transfer! There will no doubt be more to blog about with an IVF cycle than an IUI cycle. Although, Dr. H did tell us several times that the things we went through for IUI are very similar to what we'll experience with IVF, so maybe there won't be too many crazy surprises!

Onward and Upward!

Today we sat down and talked with Dr. H about our options. I had several questions about some diagnostic tests that I felt it was probably time for. I'll start with those.

The first one is an HSG. Don't ask me to spell out the whole word. It's always referred to as an HSG, so that's what I'm going with :o) An HSG is basically an internal x-ray to check the fallopian tubes. The doctor inserts a catheter filled with dye, and puts the dye through the uterus so it can (hopefully) flow through the fallopian tubes. If the dye pools in the uterus it means the tubes are blocked. The radiologist can then watch the screen to see how much if any of the dye is able to flow around the reproductive organs. You're obviously hoping it doesn't pool in the uterus. Sometimes small blockages can be removed by the HSG, but the whole process is quite painful for most people. I wasn't looking forward to having it done, but it seemed pretty important.

Dr. H told me that he is not a big proponent of HSGs. He actually hasn't done them for about 10 years. He feels it's too painful and doesn't give a good enough indication of whether there are problems or not. He feels that doing a laparoscopy (LAP) gives a much better indication of physical problems within the reproductive organs. The downside of a LAP is even though it's considered a "minor" procedure, it's still surgery. I would be completely put under and in an operating room. That part kind of freaked me out. During the procedure Dr. H would use two or three laporoscopes to examine the inside of my abdomen, specifically the reproductive organs. This procedure would allow him to see if there are any endometriosis lesions, or other problems causing our infertility. It generally takes a day or two to recover from the procedure. He said that typically most patients end up moving to IVF after having a LAP done, IUI doesn't do enough any longer.

The other thing we could do was bypass the LAP altogether and just go straight to IVF. Since IVF is probably where we would end up anyway, it seems kind of pointless to put myself through the pain of surgery if it's not really necessary. While yes it would be nice to know a little more about what could be causing my infertility, I also don't want to spend more money and waste more time by doing a surgery that won't be super beneficial. For us, it's more exploratory than anything else.

So Matthew and I talked in the car and we decided that moving on to IVF is the way to go. We are trying to decide whether we want to get into the April or May IVF cycles our RE's office does. My biggest fear with IVF is getting the scheduling to work with my school schedule. Dr. H said that they could give me early morning and late afternoon appointments to work around my work, so hopefully that ends up being true. I know there will be some days I'll have to take off of work, but I don't want to use too much of my sick time. We have to use sick days for maternity leave. I can get up to 30 paid days, anything over that I can take unpaid. If I don't have 30 sick days to use, then I can use however many I have, be paid for those, then take the rest of my time unpaid. I'd like to avoid as many unpaid days as possible, so I've been really paranoid about using my sick time this year.

Anyway, we are continuing to move forward! Hopefully this is just the process we need in order to finally have the family we've been hoping for!

More waiting...I really HATE waiting!

Well I tested yesterday morning like I was supposed to, and to no one's surprise the test was negative again.  The disappointing part was I didn't start like I should've.  I can't say that surprised me either, but I was really hoping for it.  It's amazing how when you're going through IF treatments and a cycle doesn't work, you INSTANTLY want your period.  I've very rarely ever wanted it, but now I do.  Ironic?  Probably.  Annoying?  DEFINITELY.


I called my doctor's office with the results this morning, and when Lisa called me back she said that I should start within the next two weeks and to call when I am on cycle day 1 again.  I guess it's probably better to just let my body do it's own thing and start when it's ready, although I'm not excited to just wait for the next two weeks either.  There have been many days in the last 13 months where I feel like I can actually feel time slipping away.  Each day that passes without being on a treatment cycle feels like an eternity.  It's amazing to think that if each cycle comes and goes right on schedule AT BEST we only have 12 chances each year to finally conceive.  It's very rare that each cycle will come and go right on schedule so in reality we probably only have 9-10 chances each year to try for our baby.  It gets even more depressing when I think about it like that. 


I have been thinking a lot since this cycle failed about what else could possibly be wrong, why we aren't getting pregnant.  There is a specific x-ray, called an HSG, designed to check the fallopian tubes to make sure that there is nothing blocking them.  I've never had this test done, but more and more I think it's really important to do it.  If my tubes are clear, hopefully it will give me a little peace of mind.  If for some reason my tubes are blocked, then depending on how bad the blockage is, they can possibly open them, or we may have to move away from IUI straight to IVF.  There is no reason to continue with IUIs if it's impossible for my eggs to get out of the tubes in the first place.  So for that reason, I scheduled a consult with Dr. H next Tuesday afternoon to discuss the HSG, and any other tests he feels would be beneficial, as well as where he would like to take our treatments in the coming months.  I need and want a plan laid out for us, so I know what to plan on and expect.  That's one of the hardest parts with all of this, the not knowing.  It's a great big guessing game, many times even for the doctors.  It's just trial and error, which is so hard to deal with when you're talking about something so important.