Survived

a superbowl party at the neighbors.  It wasn’t too bad, although their house is so packed with crap that two of the rooms only have a pathway to walk through.  I don’t know how people can live that way, but I digress…

Only one inappropriate comment was made—how they have an extra baby swing we can have “if we want it.” WTF would you say that to an infertile person?!  Luckily I didn’t hear the comment or I might have gotten up and walked out.   They know that we’ve I've failed at this twice, once just this week, so WTF would you offer up a baby item that I will most likely never need? UGH!

I have a confession to make.  I’m not a person who is into other people’s kids.  I’ve never been one of those women who fawns over babies.  I’m pretty sure I’d love my own, but I’m really not that into yours.  I generally don’t want to hold them, feed them or change them.  Just give me my own thank you very much.

WTF rescheduled for Thursday evening.  Not really looking forward to it.  Luckily we pretty much covered everything in our non-WTF meeting a couple of weeks ago, so this should be short.

Oh and I’ve got some really exciting news that I am dying to share with someone, but I don’t want to jinx myself by saying anything just yet.  Hopefully things will start moving along this week and I’ll be able to share.  In the meantime DH is probably getting tired of talking about it. LOL!

Cancelled

My WTF meeting was cancelled. For the best really. There is just not much to say about all of this. Maybe I’ll reschedule next week. Maybe not.

Today I’m just feeling bitter. And angry. I can’t believe how jaded this experience has left me. Coping with failure is just not something I’ve ever had to do. And I suck at it. Looking back I am so angry at how the first cycle ended. For four fucking days I thought IVF worked. And it was ripped away from us in an instant. And now I am so sad that that might be the most pregnant I will ever be.

FML. (Which means fuck my life for those who asked a couple of entries ago.)

And thank you for all the support you've given me.  I know it isn't easy to listen to negative rants all the time.  Next time I'll hopefully have better news.

I’m officially a failure—again

No surprises there. I’ve never failed at much in my life, but I sure am good a failing at this. I guess that is why this is so hard to take. I knew this wouldn’t work, even before we did it, so the phone call was no surprise, but wow does it hurt being told you’ve failed yet again. How many defects can one person have? Obviously a lot.

I have WTF 2.0 tomorrow evening, but really what is there to say? I’m tired of the optimism.  There doesn’t seem to be any reason for it at this point.  This is my reality: We had 10 embryos that turned into 3 “excellent quality” blasts. And now we have nothing. This means that I didn’t produce a single good egg in that cycle. Not one. All defective. Just like me.

I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep going in circles. I am so tired of living like this. I’m tired of feeling bitter and angry. We need to move on. So we are.  I’ll share more in the next few entries.

Negative

I POAS this morning—a cheapie internet one. It was negative. Of course it was. I decided that I’d rather find out it’s negative now and have the weekend to recover from it than finding out during the week. DH is disappointed, but I’m surprisingly okay with it. I mean I never really thought this would work anyway, so that has made it much easier to take. IVF works for other people. Not me. I really don’t think it will ever work for me.

You might be wondering then why we are doing this. Well, I didn’t want to look back a decade from now and wonder ‘what if,’ so that is why we are doing this. For me mostly. I think DH would have been happy to move right to plan B, skipping IF treatments entirely.

I will say this though. I am getting tired of hearing about women who have crappy embryos transferred and then end up pregnant, usually with more than one. There must be a fucking lot wrong with me to have three “perfect” blasts transferred and end up with nothing. FML.

ICK!

Have I mentioned how much I hate suppositories?  I am lucky enough to get to do both suppositories and PIO.  Yet another experience that fertiles don’t get to have.  My lady bits are feeling a little irritated from them.  I didn’t experience this last time, but the dosage this time is double, so I wonder if that is causing it.  At least I only have to do it once a day, but it still takes a good 18 hours for the dripping wet feeling to go away. Blah.  AND Monday and yesterday (3 and 4dp6dt) I had a lovely light brown discharge.  I guess this is considered spotting, although it never really went away.  It was definitely from the suppositories even though they are compounded white bullets (not the endo.metrium or crio.nine everyone else seems to use).  Yep, totally normal apparently for it to irritate the vaginal mucosa and cervix.  Totally annoying.  Like I need one more thing to worry about these days.  It seems to be gone today though, so that is good.

I’m not going to discuss symptoms, but if I were I’d tell you that I feel the same way I did last time.  Which we all know means absolutely nothing.

The list

I thought I’d compile a list of things that I am not allowed to do during the 2ww. Here’s what I came up with:

1. No caffeine—okay, but most women don't even know they are getting pregnant during the 2WW and still manage to get pregnant while on a morning cup of java.
2. No smoking—duh! But I actually know someone who told me that she stopped smoking during her first pregnancy and had a premie so decided to continue smoking during her second pregnancy thinking it would "make him stay in longer."  Yeah, that didn't work.
3. No alcohol—no problems for me, but plenty of alcoholics manage to get and stay pregnant while on the bottle.
4. No baths—WTF?!
5. No exercise strenuous enough to “cause a ponytail to bob”—okay, this gives me a valid excuse for not doing anything after work.  Hey, I like this one! LOL!
6. No cocaine/marijuana/heroin—LOLI added this one for good measure! Obvious, right? But maybe this will make me fertile. Has anyone done a study on this?  Anecdotally, it seems to work.
7. No OTC meds—except for low-dose asprin and vitamins...
8. No prescription meds—other than those required to maybe sustain a pregnancy 
9. No sex—sorry DH, I don't get this one either.
10. No lifting anything over 10 lbs—might the embryo pop out if I lift some groceries out of my car? 
11. No cleaning the litterbox*

I can’t get over the irony in my list. A fertile person can do every.single.thing on that list and still stay pregnant. I can avoid every.single.thing on that list and may not even get pregnant. Infertility bites.

Actually, with the exception of the obvious ones I think I could probably do all the those things and it wouldn’t make a difference. I mean WTF will happen if I take a bath or go for a jog?! I think they give the above list to IVF patients because so they can’t irrationally blame themselves for a BFN or miscarriage. That’s my theory anyway and I’m sticking to it.

* I added this for good measure. It’s a chore that I hate and DH has been picking up the slack for me. Thank you DH ;-)

FET complete

Thank you for all the thoughtful comments to my last post! I meant to post before we left for Vegas, but things got kind of crazy busy and I just ran out of time. And then I didn’t take my computer, so no internet access. And I’ve neglected my ICLW duties, but I will get caught up on that today.


First things first, the transfer Friday went well. Dr. S. transferred another “excellent” quality blast. This one was already hatching. Very exciting. Again the worst part of the process, well besides being spreadeagle for the doctor, a nurse and the embryologist, is the full bladder ultrasound. TORTURE! When the doctor started he look at my flat stomach (not that mine is that flat, but laying the back helps with the illusion) and commented that he didn’t think my bladder was full enough and that he might have to “fill it a bit.” Those are words you do not want to hear anyone say. Ever. I said that I was sure it was pretty full and sure enough it was perfectly full, and not overly so. (I’ve gotten this part down to a science now. There is no way I can drink 64 ounces of water and not have an overly full bladder. 12 ounces will do just fine thank you very much.) Aside from the nurse pressing in my bladder it was a painless procedure. I was even able to lay there for the required hour without having to use the bathroom. Yay me! I rested the rest of the day and we left yesterday evening to come home.

I have to say that vitrification rocks. I can’t believe all clinics aren’t doing it. Essentially it improves FET success rates to that of fresh transfers because over 95% survive the thawing process.

My mom knitted me some “lucky socks” to wear Friday. She doesn’t know about the whole IF lucky sock thing, so it was funny when she sent them to me and told me they’d bring me luck Friday. She said she contemplated putting smiley faces on the bottoms. I thanked her for not doing that. No need to distract the doctor. LOL!

Our non-WTF meeting went very well. I’m so glad we scheduled it while we were there. Dr. S. has such a great bedside manner and was very straightforward with us. Basically he reiterated that my cycle was perfect in nearly every way and that the embryos transfered last time were probably aneuploid (chromosomally abnormal) because my uterus is perfect, my lining is perfect and my immune issues were treated. He explained to us that only about 1 in 4 day 3 embryos are euploid (competent and able to make a healthy baby) in women my age, which I knew, but he also said that 1 in 3 blasts are euploid, which I did NOT know. This is why he is hopeful that this FET is the one that statistically should be good. I assumed that once they made it to blast stage a higher percent would be normal, so I feel better knowing that statistically 1 of the 3 blasts we got should be “normal.” Of course I am obviously on the wrong side of the odds quite a bit or I wouldn’t have to do IVF in the first place.

I asked him what he might do differently next time and he said that he would stim me at a higher dosage to try and get more eggs because the more I have the better my chances are at having more normal ones, but he thought that it was phenomenal that he got 15 out of the one ovary that I do have and reiterated that I do NOT have DOR. He felt that the stimming protocol he used was good (i.e. not too much or too little LH), that he would just up the dosage of FSH to try and get more eggs. I asked him if having 1/3 of the eggs being immature was normal and he said that it was because he takes everything he can out of any follicle that is greater than 8 mm, which most doctors don’t do. He said that most REs would have probably gotten 12 eggs and that 10 would have been mature. I asked if he’d recommend any other tests for DH or me and he said no, that we’ve pretty much covered all the bases. He said that next time we could do CGH testing to see which ones are normal. He seemed on the fence about whether or not he’d recommend that at this point. We’ll have to give that some thought. All in all he was very positive and felt that given my age, ‘perfect’ uterus and treated immune issues, we would have a baby. It was a helpful meeting for DH and me. He also offered to give us his cell phone number to call any time with questions. Who does that?! But then again he’s the first doctor I’ve had who introduced himself by his first name.

My dad's surgery went well. His doctor was able to clear out quite a bit of scar tissue from surgery #1 and bone fragments that had broken off. They fixed the vertebrae with some sort of fiberglass so he’s got to lay flat for 48 hours until it’s “cured.” He was hoping to go home today, but they aren’t sure yet because he can’t even get up to walk around until later this afternoon. I guess he’s not been a good patient, which is exactly what I would expect from my dad. He’s allergic to so many pain meds that there isn’t much they can give him and what they did give him caused some hallucinations. This happened after surgery #1 and was so bad he checked himself out of the hospital early AMA. Hopefully today is better.

So…beta #1 is on the 1st and #2 is on the 3rd. Seems a long way off.

P.S. I had to give myself a PIO shot in my seat on the plane last night. I’ve got it down so well I’m not sure anyone even noticed. How's that for commitment? LOL!