Telling my Mom

My Mom has been my biggest supporter on my quest to motherhood. So keeping the fact that IVF #1 was a BFP from her for 5 days was truly challenging.

Her best friend has had a terminal diagnosis of metastisized cancer for almost 6 months and took a horrible turn for the worst on Monday, the same day I found out I was pregnant.

My Mom called me crying, terribly concerned for her friend while H and I were out having our celebratory steak dinner. I tried to reassure her that she's doing a great job as a nurse and best friend looking out for her friend and helping the friends adult children care for their mother. Comfort care is what we are going for at this point because treatment attempts aren't going to work and it's horribly sad to know that the fight is over and the end is nearer than we'd like.

My heart was breaking for my mom, I wanted to tell her "Hey we actually have some great news in the midst of all this shitty stuff happening to you and your friend" but I wanted to make sure my beta would double.

When I got the call that my beta had doubled, my H and I felt a sense of relief and a level of comfort that it would be okay to share with the parents.

Last night H and made our way to my Moms. I knew she'd spent the day in her pajamas just hiding out taking a mental health day since my Dad was upstate hunting. We visited with her for a bit. She was very interested to know if my husband passed his test. (He had just taken a certification test required for his job) He was happy to tell her that he passed, and he got "the big envelope" with the certification and not "the little envelope" with the 'you failed' letter.

When she was done cheering for him I said "and I passed MY test too! I'M PREGNANT!!!" She reacted just like we thought she would. She gasped, said "are you serious" and covered her mouth while the tears started flowing.

We hugged for a long while while tears of joy poured out of her. I didn't full on cry but I teared up a bit. I was so glad we could give her something to look forward to. Then I told her the details that I'd known since Monday, which she was responded with a light, playful slap on the arm telling me to "get out of here".I told her that I found out today that my numbers doubled. I told her what the numbers were and she said that they were great. We told her that if all goes well that the baby would be due July 25, 2013. My H and I told her my crazy story about how I told my H.

It was pretty much the best visit ever. She was so overjoyed for us and I feel more excited now that she knows. We plan to tell the rest of the family at Thanksgiving dinner, including my Dad because he's gone hunting.

Beta #3 will be on Monday, November 19th. The Nurse I spoke with yesterday said that I can expect to come in for twice weekly beta draws until my numbers are 10,000 and that I can schedule an ultrasound for the first week in December. It seems like so far away, but I'm hoping it will fly by with the holiday season upon us.

Telling My Baby Daddy.

Telling my husband the good news was no easy feat.

The original plan was that I was to call him and tell him what the doctors office said. If it was bad news he was going to try to meet me at home and help me down a bottle of wine.

Since it ended up being the best news ever that changed the game a little bit. Once I regained my composure in the car (because no way could I stay at work being the jittery crying mess I was) I decided I didn't want to call him.I didn't want to  miss out on seeing his facial expressions and I wouldn't be able to hug him until hours later when he returned home from work. LAME!

When we began our journey in October 2008, I had grandiose ideas about creative ways I might use to tell my husband that we were pregnant. Once a medical team started intervening in 2010 with Clomid and then onto IUIs, I had pretty much given up on that shit. With this positive pregnancy test result, I saw my opportunity to reclaim my original dreams. So like every 30 year old suburbanite woman, I devised my plan and set out to procure supplies for the surprise at Target.

Once I got to Target I picked up some bibs that said "Worth the Wait" a digital pregnancy test and a copy of "What to Expect When You're Expecting". I also picked up a fancy canned meal "Filet Mignon" flavor for the dog because... the WHOLE family is celebrating tonight!

It was now around 2:30pm and H starts texting me "Anything?"... "Have you heard anything yet?" and I'm stalling him. "No, honey. Haven't heard anything yet."

So when I get home, I put the book, the baby bibs, and the pregnancy test in a bag. I wanted to include the dog in the surprise for my husband and I'd seen a very cute idea on another blog that I follow. I got on the computer and typed up a sign for the dog to wear "I'm gonna be a big brother", but of course asshole wouldn't cooperate wearing the sign very well.

Around 3:30 my husband was going out of his mind with nerves and texting me. I knew I couldn't keep him at bay with texts any longer. I called him up and told him that I had called the doctors office to ask them why I hadn't hear anything yet (keep in mind I've known for like 3 hours at this point). I told him the office had said that the lab courier picking up my blood sample had been in an fender bender accident and they had to wait for another lab courier to pick the specimens up around lunch time. So the office says the specimen lab had just now gotten around to processing the samples. I said that the office said I should hear something around 4 or 4:30. I told him, that I told the office to just wait and call me after 5, so that way he'd be home from work by then and we'd get the news together. My  husband bought the story. This whole nutty story is believable to him because I work at the hospital where the specimens are sent for processing. It's feasible that I'd be able to validate this fender bender story.

So around 5:15 he gets home from work. My heart starts pounding about how I'm going to do this. I begin wrestling with our asshole dog to try and get the sign on him- he was not cooperating. I hear the door open and I say forget it and just hold the dog and sign.

H walks in and was confused for a second, then his jaw hit the floor. I said "I'm pregnant" and he just stood there for a second and then grinned. I could see the wheels start turning that he realized I made that whole stupid story up. He asked how long I'd known and my heart was pounding as I revealed the entirety of my plot to him. He said "ya know, on the way home, I thought just for a second that whole story was bullshit" and he laughed. I called him a sucker and we hugged.

Then we let the dog eat his Filet Mignon Ceaser canned dinner and H took me out for a steak dinner where we grinned at each other like idiots.

So that's the story of how I broke the news to my baby daddy.

I'm Pregnant!

I am still in shock.

I got the call around 12:55pm and I missed the fucking call!! The one time I wasn't holding my phone in my hand like I did all friggin' day, the doctor called. 15 minutes later I see I have a missed call from the RE office and immediately my heart started racing. I got out of my seat and went to find a private room to listen to the message. I was facilitating new hire orientation today at work, otherwise I might have asked for a personal day for such an occasion. The message was "This is Dr. we have your results, please call the nursing line at xyz number". No discernable happy or sad emotion in his voice.

I call back and am put on hold for what seemed like an eternity but was really only about 3 minutes with some horrid banjo like music which didn't help my blood pressure. Finally the Dr. gets on the phone and I could hear he had a happy tone but he's usually a chipper guy so it didn't really tell me anything.

He said "I have *Pat, *Tami, *Robi, *Rowena (all the nursing staff) with me here and we have your results" I asked with a shaky voice "is it good news?" He said "It is! You're pregnant" I started quietly crying and all I could manage to say was "Holy Shit!!!"  This made them all crack up. The Doctor says "can I quote you on that?" I said "sure" still laughing and crying.

Then through my trembly, crying voice I asked what the Beta HCG number was. He said it was 270 and that my estrogen is almost twice the number that they look for it to be. He said everything looks good. Then he jokingly says "How many we'd put back? 5 or 6?" I said "We did as many as it took for me to have my own TLC show "Me and H plus however many we get". Then he says "Nah, we put in two and they were beautiful".

I wasn't listening to much else he was saying other than I have to go back Thursday for another beta draw. It was like I was having an out of body experience. I've never heard those beautiful words "You're Pregnant!!" before and it's been a long fucking time coming!

4 years of tears, anger, alienation for self preservation, more tears, disappointment, thousands of dollars spent with no results, hours upon hours and doctors appointments, even more tears, strained family relationships, holding your breath when someone starts a sentence with "Wife and I have some..." and finally I've heard those words that I've longed so much to hear. It truly is a miracle.

I realize that I still have a long road of milestones to reach, but for today I am overjoyed and will soak up every moment of this joyous news! I've been in dispair for so long that I will allow myself to celebrate today and deal with Thursday's beta when that time comes.

*names changed to protect innocent nurses that probably don't want their real names in a blog with so many cuss words.

Life's a Puzzle!

 While waiting around during the dreadful 2 week window, something a co-worker said a while ago popped into my head. She said that she had been doing a puzzle after a stressful period because it was "her therapy".

One particularly terribly emotional and tense night this past weekend I suggested to my husband that we go buy a puzzle and work on it to occupy our minds and pass some time. He was really surprised at my suggestion and probably thinking "Hold your horses granny! Where's my young wife?" but he drove us to Target where we found a lovely 2,000 piece puzzle of the sky line of NYC. We basically picked the least ugly, least femmenine one.

We headed home to get to work. 1.5 hours later we had the whole border of this puzzle done and even though it was nearly completed silence while we got to work our moods were remarkably improved. We were able to quiet our fears, doubts and anxiety just by doing a puzzle.

We've been working at it a little bit every night until we get frusterated and the progress has been good.

So to all those going through a stressful or uncertain time I highly recommend you and your partner get to work on a monster size puzzle and save yourselves some therapy co-pays. If nothing else your local Police Department will thank you for the decrease in domestic disturbance calls at your address because you two will have your heads burried in puzzle pieces instead of engaged in a progesterone/lupron/stimming enduced rage-a-thon!  

Hurry Up And Wait!

My H and I were just discussing last night how last week was jam packed with RE visits and egg retrievals and embryo transfers and update phone calls. Every day there was something IVF related going on. No so much for this week.

That's how it is with infertility whether you're actively trying to conceive the old fashioned way or through assisted reproductive technology. If you're doing it un-medicated it's all about waiting until ovulation and then it's a mad dash get it on and get that egg fertilized. Then you wait for 2 weeks to see if it worked. Hurry up and wait! It's similar with IUI/IVF when your hurrying to start medications and make ultrasound and blood work appointments. You do everything in your or your RE's power to fertilize the shit out of your eggs and then you sit around and wait. Hurry up and wait!

I've had a pretty shitty week and work. I knew it was going to be shitty and was dreading it starting last Thursday. It seems like every hour of this week has dragged on and on. I can't wait for 5pm tomorrow when it'll all be behind me.

I'm so exhausted by the time I get home from work at night. Not sure if that is day light savings time, the stress of work or if  it's because my embryos are becoming babies! I've pretty much been asleep by 9pm every night, so lame!

So it will be a couple weeks more before we find out if this worked or not, but I am so, so hopeful! Just wish I had more to write about on my blog.

One of the crafts I had planned to do while we wait for the time to take a pregnancy test was to make a shadow box of a couple of key artifacts from our wedding. I think I'll have time to do that over the weekend, but we'll see!

Frosties

I'm happy to report we ended up being able to freeze our three remaining blastocysts. The "runt" which had made it to the blastocyst classification didn't make it to freezing. I'm am excited that we have "Frosties" but a little sad that my Super Six is down to a Fantastic Five. That's just par for the course, not everything works out the way we hoped.

In election news, I ended up opting for absentee ballot because the thought of waiting in line with a bunch of strangers with stupid opinions was too much to bear with the wicked side effects of this progesterone I've been feeling. It's a constant state of PMS with the staby, raging anger when it's not the weepy kind of tearful PMS. I've just been trying to keep my mouth shut at home and at work because I'm finding there are many things that I don't have any tolerance for while I'm on these vagina mentos pills.

Here They Are!

I found the most beautiful sight in my email this morning. This is a picture of the two blastocysts we transferred yesterday morning. 

Now let's hope and pray that at least one of them settles in for 9 months to give us our take home baby!