Just an outlet for me to share my day to day happenings of married life, life with our goldendoodle, Parker and my journey with infertility and IVF and now finally the joys of pregnancy!
I hope everyone had wonderful holidays! I know they aren't over yet...we still have New Year's to get through! I thought I would share some of our Christmas photos with you all, since not much else has happened!
Mommy and Parker in our Christmas jammies!
Christmas is hard
My sister got me this awesome necklace for my seahorse!
Parker got me a little jewelry dish. it says, "if I didn't have you as a mom, I'd choose you as my friend"
Some pregnancy scrapbooking stuff
I know that Christmas isn't all about gifts, but other than my little miracle waving to me which was amazing, I also got some great gifts under the tree! My sister got me a fetal Doppler and we tested it out, even though I figured it would be too early, but I managed to find a little galloping heartbeat in there and that was pretty exciting! When I get further along and the baby is bigger, I'm sure it will be much easier to work!
Now that Christmas is out of the way, we are officially in stress mode for the next month or so! On top of our little miracle making an appearance in July 2014, we decided to tack on another big event for the beginning of the year! We have 3 weeks to move from New Jersey to Charlotte, North Carolina. J got a new job and we are excited to move somewhere new and even have more space, but the actual move will be extremely stressful, as we don't really have much help and J will still be finishing up his last two weeks at his present job. Packing up an entire apartment alone, with my pregnancy exhaustion is going to be really tough! I hope my baby lets me wake up next week, because if I continue how I have been feeling the last couple of days, we are in big trouble!
Anyway, if I don't post beforehand, I am wishing everyone a Happy New Year and I hope that all of my friends out there will get their beautiful miracles in 2014!
This is my 9th week of pregnancy and the nausea is full on real! I have hardly eaten anything and drinking fluids is still slow and a little at a time, but I got to see my gummy bear today and that makes everything better!
Baby is measuring right on time at 9 weeks, had a strong heartbeat and as the ultrasound nurse was doing the measurements, she goes "Oh hey! He's moving!". We look at the screen and there is my little seahorse, wiggling his/her little arms and legs, waving at us! It was seriously the cutest thing ever! It was the most perfect Christmas gift for this mama!
So, yesterday was the beginning of my eighth of pregnancy and obviously still in the beginning stages!
This past week has been much more eventful with symptoms though...the morning (not so morning) sickness has kicked in and I basically can't eat or drink many things. My body is hungry, but nothing sounds, smells or looks remotely appetizing and drinking makes me gag. I have tried water, flavored water, Kool-Aid, juice, Sunny D, ginger ale....with little success. Popsicles are the only things I want/can eat and at least they give me fluids.
I hope that my little seahorse wants to eat next week, so I can enjoy the yummy Christmas food we are supposed to have! Plus, baby is going to starve me if (s)he doesn't let me eat things!
Anyway, according to my pregnancy bump phone app, the little seahorse should be growing about a millimeter each day and even has fingers and toes forming and can move his/her arms and legs. (S)he should also be forming taste buds this week (so maybe (s)he will like food more after that! LOL)!
I have my first "regular pregnant lady" OB appointment this week, but I am disappointed that I wont get to see my little seahorse (probably for a while) because how will I know they are still in there growing like they should be!? It seems like cruel and unusual punishment to do that to a pregnant lady.
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Other than feeling blah because of my sweet baby seahorse, I haven't been up to a whole lot lately, though I am seriously enjoying our new king bed and think this was definitely a good investment before I start expanding! J wouldn't have fit with me, Parker and baby seahorse in the old bed!
Think he likes it???
We also had the first real snow of the season this past weekend and Parker was so happy about that! He gets so excited when he see's the snow and snorts it up his nose like a drug!
Got to see baby seahorse again today! Heartbeat went up to 157 BPM, so I am super happy about that! And the baby was more than just a dot today, which was pretty exciting! His/her picture actually looks like a little seahorse right now, which I found amusing! The picture shows the baby upside down right now (silly baby), so the head is on the bottom and the little bit sticking out is a limb bud! My baby has limb buds! How cool is that!? (The dot off to the left side is the yolk sac, which the doctor says eventually goes away)
The doctor said that today will probably be my last day going to the fertility clinic (which makes me sad!), so I will be graduated to my OB like a regular pregnant lady now! I have my first OB appointment next Friday (December 20th), but I don't know if they do an ultrasound at that appointment and I am going to miss my weekly baby picture! I know being graduated is a good thing though, so I should feel comforted that the RE feels happy letting me go.
**Update** RE's office just called and said I am definitely being released from them (where's my cap and gown??) and that I can stop all my meds! This means NO MORE BUTT SHOTS!
Today is the beginning of my 7th week and even though that doesn't seem like much, it's a lot as far as baby's development and growth! This week, baby should be getting as big as a blueberry and his/her brain is becoming more developed and even beginning to have a more defined face!
A visible baby now!
As far as symptoms, nothing crazy yet, but definitely more nausea and I have moments of random and total exhaustion where I can't keep my eyes open! I am also having some "baby brain" memory issues (yes...I am blaming the seahorse for why I almost drove out of a one way entrance into a busy street yesterday!) and I think it is totally legit, because according to my pregnancy app, the blood from my brain is now being redirected towards the placenta for the baby! J doesn't believe me though and just thinks I am an airhead.
I have another ultrasound on Thursday, December 12th and I hope to see baby seahorse's heart beating even stronger! I think J is going to come to that appointment, since he was disappointed he missed the first one, especially since the doctor said the heartbeat will be easier to hear this week!
Yesterday, we went and got our Christmas tree and I started putting up the lights around our windows. I LOVE Christmas lights and I would seriously have them up all year round if it wouldn't make me look like a crazy lady! We went in a different direction this year with our tree...We normally go to one of those cut your own tree farms and pick a nice big 7ft tree, but this year we went to a more local farm that had pre-cut trees and the tree that caught our eyes was only 5.5ft! It's super cute, but feels weird not to have a bigger tree, though this one was is much easier to decorate!
Today I had my second ultrasound and was shaking at the prospect of not seeing my seahorse's heartbeat. I am 6 weeks 4 days today which is early, but I knew there was a possibility of at least seeing the little flicker.
When he put the ultrasound wand in, at first I was looking at the screen and didn't really see anything! My heart dropped thinking my baby was gone and I was going to get bad news....then he shifted the wand around a bit and there (s)he was! Baby seahorse has gotten bigger than last week (which is the goal obviously!) and then the doctor says "See that little tiny flicker??? That's the hearbeat!" It was sooooo tiny, but I saw it!
You can actually see the baby dot this week!
My baby's heart is pumping at 131 bpm and he even managed to catch it to be able to hear a few beats too! That amazing booming sound was the best thing I could ever hear! I wasn't even expecting to hear anything today, just see the flicker since it's early! Seeing the flicker alone and knowing that my baby is alive and moving, was so BEAUTIFUL and I feel so much better about everything! I know I am far from out of the woods, but I am glad that so far my seahorse is progressing as (s)he should.
**The heartbeat is difficult to hear in the video, but the bigger white dashes during the sound testing are the baby's beats! We heard it much better of course when I turned off the video camera, but the doc said it will be much easier to hear it next week! You can also kind of see my little seahorse flickering on the screen at the beginning!
So today marks the beginning of my 6th week of pregnancy
This week, my little seahorse should be the size of a pea and his/her heart should be starting to pump blood! He/she also starts to take a less "blobby" form.
I have my second ultrasound on Thursday, December 5th and I am just praying every day that the seahorse has grown since last week and that there will be a little flutter of a heartbeat!
As far as symptoms go, the biggest one I have had so far is not having an appetite at all... I take two bites of food and I feel full and turned off of it! I have had a few other tummy issues on and off, but I am not convinced those are from my seahorse and not just vacation food.
An idea of what seahorse is doing...Kinda looks like a seahorse! Lol
Dear Baby Seahorse, Mama wants to see/hear a nice strong heartbeat this week, so if you could do that for me, I would be very happy! I am excited to see you again, so make sure you aren't shy and show the doctor that you are a strong little bean! Love, Mommy!
Sunday marked the beginning of my 5th week of pregnancy, so I decided to start my chalkboards to commemorate every little size milestone my baby seahorse gets to each week!
Today, I had my first ultrasound and I was super nervous thinking about nothing being in there or them finding an ectopic pregnancy or something bad. I was literally shaking the whole ride to the clinic and then in the waiting room. I'm not ready for this to be over! It is just beginning!
The doctor comes into the exam room while I have my legs up in the stirrups and tells me not to expect to see anything today, since I am only 5weeks 2days pregnant and there might not be anything showing up yet. She said this was basically a check to see if my lining was still healthy because they would need to switch up my dosages of meds if need be. Finally, she sticks the ultrasound wand where it goes (ahem) and right on the screen, pops my little bean! MY bean was in there! My bean is clearly not shy and wanted the doc to know (s)he was in there! There wasn't a whole lot to see, but my yolk sac was there and even the doctor was surprised when she saw it. I had her print a picture of my bean for me, because I need EVERYTHING, so that I can just stare at my baby seahorse whenever I want!
I go in for more blood work and another ultrasound next Thursday and by then, there should be a heartbeat for this little one. Please God, let there be a heart beat! Let my bean grow big and strong and let me meet him/her so that I can love them forever.
Here is the ultrasound of my baby seahorse from today. The thing that looks like a fried egg in the middle...yep, that's my baby!! AHHHH!!! I am officially OCCUPIED!! There is no vacancy in my UTE! WOOHOOOOO
Had my second beta today and once again the RE's office made me wait FOREVER for the results! Finally they called and my HCG levels went up from 91 to 288, so basically where they should be as far as doubling rates!
Baby seahorse is growing!
Tuesday, November 26th, we have our first ultrasound, to make sure my seahorse or seahorses are in my uterus where they should be! Please God....let them be there. They will also check my HCG levels again on Tuesday with the ultrasound. I am super excited at the prospect of seeing the beginnings of my baby seahorse next week! I didn't think they would do an ultrasound until December! I know we probably won't see much that early, but hopefully the sacs of the little one(s)
Tuesday is also the day we are leaving for our Thanksgiving trip to Charleston, SC, so basically right after the appointment, we will be hitting the road with a long drive ahead of us! Hopefully I get to relax for a week after that and enjoy Charleston!
I made it to beta day! Had my blood work this morning and then immediately came home and tested with some HPT's, since I knew my doctor wouldn't call with my results immediately. I was crying as I dipped the FRER test into the pee and the control line of course came up quickly, but the rest of it slowly started building a line. Of course I watched it for the whole 3 minute time limit, so when the line first started forming, I thought I was seeing things and just kept saying "please...please...please" as tears welled up in my eyes even more. Three minutes was up, and there it was! A fucking line I had never ever seen before in my life!!! It was light, but definitely there, so I ripped open a Wondfo cheapy test and dipped that in too...another line! Even darker than the first one!
Yep...I have 1000 HPT photos on my phone now!
As I waited for my blood results, I decided to see if I had enough HCG in me to make a digital pregnancy test (they are supposedly less sensitive than the others) flash me a positive...plus I wanted to see that beautiful word! What a BEAUTIFUL WORD!! PREGNANT! It is my FAVORITE word in the world!
The word made it real!
The doctor's office finally called me back with my HCG level, which was a 91. The nurse told me at this stage, they look for at least a level of 50, so I am happy I am above that, and I go back on Thursday for a repeat to see if my levels have gone up accordingly. We transferred two embryos, but I won't know if there is one or two seahorses in there until my first ultrasound. I am over the moon either way though, obviously!
There is a long road ahead, but for now I can say for the first time in my life, that I am KNOCKED UP! Every time I say it, I start crying! I didn't think my body could do it!
My estimated due date according to an online IVF calculator is July 27th, 2014 (my new favorite day ever).
**I love you my seahorse(s) and I cannot wait to meet you! I cannot believe I get to say that you are mine. Please stick with me for the next 9 months and grow strong and healthy!**
The saying "Ignorance is Bliss" is so true right now. The closer I get to my beta testing day, the more nervous and negative I get!
I wish my Seahorses would give me a sign that they are still in there and have settled in, but I feel absolutely zero symptoms and that makes me even more worried. I know that logically, I wouldn't necessarily feel anything yet, since it is still super early, but I was hoping for a sign and too bad Seahorses can't talk yet!
I don't know if it is just my brain trying to prepare for the worst, but I can't keep my faith now and I just feel like it didn't work and my Seahorses are already gone. The not knowing leaves a tiny glimmer of hope, of course, so I don't want that to be taken away by reality...realities of infertility suck big hairy balls!
Preparing for the worst or not, I will still be devastated and lose all hope of ever having my own, biological child, since clearly I have an egg quality issue as it is and my insurance will officially be cutting us off from any more IVF tries, so there's that problem too.
AHHHH!! All of these things in my head! How do people stay so positive about negative things!? I wish I was one of those Zen people. They seem like magical unicorns that can handle anything...I want to be a freakin unicorn too!
In other news, I get this IPSY "Glam Bag" every month and I got my November one today! So that always makes me feel a bit better! I love getting mail! Even if I have to pay for it myself! It was all makeup this month, which means I have to learn how to do my makeup to actually look all pretty and glamorous...but it's still fun to get surprises every month!
*Now I just have to let that little glimmer believe that I will get another GOOD surprise this month too. UGH!
I am 4 days past my 5 day transfer and if there is anything happening, my seahorses should be well on their way to full implanting in their spots.
Yesterday, I had my progesterone (the butt shots) and estrogen levels checked and they found that my estrogen level had dropped super low, so they have now added estrogen tablets to my mix. These hormones keep my uterine lining thick and healthy, if they were too low, basically it would not be able to hold a pregnancy. Hopefully, now with the new pills added, this is a non-issue and I am still on my way.
When we left the clinic on Friday after our transfer, we left feeling happy that we made it, but also defeated and scared. The doctor that did my transfer (not my normal doctor) did not leave us feeling hopeful and confident in our little seahorses and every time we asked a question about them, it felt like she was giving us an ambiguous answer. The nurses at my blood work yesterday could tell I wasn't super chipper, so they got my doctor to call me and he went over everything with me and made me feel a little better about the chances of my two little seahorses. We can never know if they will make it to the end of the journey until we have them in our arms, but the doctor seems to think that these two have a good a chance as any to getting to the finish line.
Now, it is just more waiting and hoping and praying and just believing there is a chance we will one day be able to kiss the faces of the seahorses we met at our embryo transfer. I need to let my heart believe when my brain wants to lose hope early to prepare for the worst.
I made it....I ACTUALLY made it to my embryo transfer! (For those that don't know, PUPO is Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise....and hopefully I don't get proven otherwise!)
They transferred two stage 2 (early stage) blastocysts and it was the easiest procedure thus far. I hardly felt a thing, other than the need to pee from my full bladder and the whole thing lasted maybe 5 minutes.
I watched on the ultrasound screen as they shot the liquid that had my embryos in it, be inserted gently into my uterus and now I am hoping my little Seahorses are swimming around in there, trying to find a spot to snuggle in tight for the next 9 months! This is the photo I got to see of my precious baby Seahorses before they were transferred back into my uterus. I hope they know that I love them even more every day and I hope I get to see their beautiful faces one day and hear their laughter and comfort their tears.
Aren't they adorable? I think they have my eyes! Lol
I am so happy, yet so worried at the same time. It is going to be a long 2 week wait, and I am going to try to stay as calm as I possibly can, to let those embies get cozy. I don't want them in a hostile, crazy environment!
Parker in his Harvest bandana with Trixy this am
Also, the plan right now is to be Beta or bust! I think it would stress me out too much to test beforehand.
OMG! I THINK I am making it to transfer this time! Just typing this is making me tear up. I feel like I can't fully be excited until I have heard from the embryologist and actually HAVE the transfer, but I waited while holding my breath all day, praying my phone wouldn't ring with bad news and I hope that now that it is after 5pm, it means everyone is gone home and my seahorses are safe and sound in the lab! Today, if they are still okay, they should be at the morula stage of development.
I am still nervous to hear about how many of my 15 seahorses are left and what the quality of them is, but I think I am finally allowed to be a little hopeful.
I will update tomorrow once I make it past transfer and I am on the other side of this! **Then I will be going crazy for 10 days waiting for a beta. This will still be further than I made it last time and that has to be good for something, right?
So today is Day 3 for my embryo development and I am growing more impatient and stressed out by the minute. When the nurse called me on Monday with my fertilization report, she said she would put a note in my chart for the doctor to hopefully get me an update from the embryology lab on day 3 (today), since we all know how my last cycle turned out and I could use that update for my sanity!
I called this morning and left a message for someone to call me back for an update....the whole day goes by and no update. I call back and leave another message and they FINALLY just called me back, just to tell me "we don't get updates from embryology unless something has happened and plans have changed, so the good news is that you didn't get a call today!". No bitch...that doesn't help me! Last time they didn't call until the NIGHT before my scheduled transfer, even though they knew by this time last time that it wasn't going to happen! After the one nurse called me back to give me NOTHING useful, another one called right after, to tell me that my 9:30am Friday transfer has now been pushed back to 11am on Friday, which just means more time that I wont have me babies with me. I just want to see them and know they are okay! As crazy at it may sound to some, I am a MOTHER to those precious little balls of cells and I am feeling very protective over them.
I know I am probably being kooky and that I should have hope that this IS good news that embryology didn't update them and that means I still have a good chunk of embryos still growing in the lab, but the paranoia caused by my last IVF is taking over me like a monster! I just don't trust their "no news is good news" line anymore.
So, in an effort to have something positive in this post; my OHSS symptoms have improved greatly today and I am feeling much less sore and bloated. Also, if my seahorses are doing well and are healthy, they should look like this today:
A beautiful 8 cell embryo: I hope this is what my seahorses are!
I feel like I am going to lose my mind before Friday! I am so worried about how my seahorses are growing and I wish they had a webcam or something on them, so I could watch them whenever I wanted! I was seriously tempted to drive over to the clinic like a crazy lady and ask for a status report. Tomorrow, I was going to call and see if they can make a call up to the embryology lab tomorrow for a Day 3 update, but I am also afraid of the phone ringing because according to them, silence is golden and that means things are going well.
For the first IVF, I honestly didn't stress out this much. I figured as long as they didn't call me, I was fine and I managed to not be thinking about it constantly. This time, I know what can happen and it is way more nerve wracking!
This is what my seahorses SHOULD look like today.
What makes me even more nervous now, is that I am definitely feeling some OHSS [ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome] symptoms this time around (I had none last time) and that can potentially cancel my transfer if there is too much bloating and fluid and if my embryos make it to transfer day, I would be completely shattered if I got cancelled due to OHSS and had to freeze my seahorses!
Right now, I am still wishing and hoping and praying for my miracle.
So yesterday was my egg retrieval. The procedure went much better than last time and the anesthesia wasn't nearly as awful! I was able to come home and rest on the couch with some TV all day and not feel like a zombie with no appetite. Had some soreness which is to be expected (even though I didn't have any last time), but I pulled the sofa bed out for myself, and relaxed with my Dr. Parker all day, watching a marathon of Shameless episodes on Showtime!
So the details of egg retrieval: They retrieved 16 eggs this time...it was 15 eggs last time and they called me this morning with the news of my fertilization results.
16 eggs retrieved 16 eggs were mature (meaning they can be fertilized) 15 eggs fertilized with ICSI
That's right folks!!! I have FIFTEEN embryos growing right now! FIFTEEN!!!!!! I couldn't believe it! I started crying on the phone when the nurse told me....I thought I heard her wrong! We are doing so much better at this point than we were last time. We only had FIVE embryos last time, so I am hoping and wishing and praying that out of fifteen, our baby is in there somewhere!
Since I had a Little Mermaid theme going on for this cycle, my embryos have been dubbed my seahorses (to go with my carved pumpkin) and I hope that my Seahorses thrive and grow and know that I love every single one of them already and I hope they want to meet me as much as I want to meet them!
So the dreaded time has come. I wish I could be more excited, but I am already getting flashbacks about how I felt after my last egg retrieval. I am going to speak to the anesthesiologist about how I reacted and I am hoping there is something different he can use or that he can lighten my dose so I don't feel as awful and drained after.
This is how I am feeling about egg retrieval
I had my trigger shot last night (the shot of HCG is used to trigger ovulation, or in the case of IVF, loosen the eggs from the follicles so that they are easily sucked out when the doctor tries to retrieve them). Yep, that's the first of those big needles that go in my butt! J got a little cocky about the whole thing, since he had done them fine during my last IVF, so he didn't take the practice I made him do seriously and when he did the shot, it was awful and painful and burned like a sonofabitch!
He did it way too slow, instead of in a quick dart motion like he should have. It's a big needle so pushing it slowly into the skin, HURTS! I was NOT impressed and my emotions just started coming to the surface about this whole experience.
This video shows how NOT to do a Butt shot!
Not only am I worried about the initial side effects of the anesthesia that made me miserable last time, but now I am also extremely worried that my eggs will have the same issues and that any embryos we get will be abnormal again. After surgery, I won't hear about how many eggs even fertilized until Monday morning and then I wont know how my embryos are growing until at least Wednesday, which is a long time when you are thinking about your potential babies sitting in a petri dish, with no knowledge of how they are doing! When I went into the clinic today to get blood work to check my HCG level, I was already like a teapot ready to boil over. I get there and request not to have the nurse that hurts my arm with blood work, and of course she's the ONLY nurse there to do blood work today! Well that was it....as soon as she called my name, I burst into tears like a crazy lady! She was nice and comforted me, and then another nurse walked by and saw me crying, so I guess she went and told my doctor, so he came out to say hello as well. I need to start believing that this will work and I will get some nice embryos this time, ICSI will give me more options and increase my fertilization rate and my embryos won't be little scary monsters with a bunch of brains this time! I need a victory here!
Today, I am relaxing at home and making my mom's chicken noodle soup recipe as something to comfort me before surgery and hopefully something that I will be able to eat after surgery when I am feeling nauseous and have zero appetite. I even found "harvest" pasta at Marshalls the other day and thought that would be perfect to put in the soup, since this is the "Harvest Hopefuls" IVF cycle. It was randomly on a messy shelf full of different dry food goods and it was the last bag, so I am hoping it is a sign of hopeful harvests to come!
How cute is this pasta?
** Thanks for reading and thank you so much for all the well wishes I have received from everyone! It definitely helps to have the support when going through something like this. I will probably update on Monday, once I know what my Fert Report is for my eggies. THINK EGGIE THOUGHTS!
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