Hello blog world. I have missed you terribly and instead of getting a post written I spent the majority of yesterday afternoon and this morning getting the photos together! I got back home around noon and it seems like forever ago that I was in Miami. We are in the “ignorance is bliss” waiting stage now. Home pregnancy tests may or may not begin to pick up any hCG levels on the 6th day post transfer and my first blood draw to see beta levels will be Monday, Feb. 8th. That seems forever away!! For now, enjoy the photos and Lucy and I will get a combined transfer post together ASAP. Keep praying that it is God’s will for a little pocket bebe (or two) to grow!
P.S. Youtube hosting drives me LOCO. I can’t stand how the video can’t just play the entire duration….Frustrated sigh.
We had a transfer today, we had a transfer today! I wish I could give you all the details but we can only get an internet connection by the patio of the hotel room and I am on strict bed rest. I love my BlackBerry but it is not intended for blogging..
Two of the four embryos survived the thaw and they were transferred today at around 12:45.
Ready to break it down one time? Will Smith rapped it best when he said, “I’M GOING TO MIAMI.” Sing along, it makes you feel good.
THE DISH:
Progesterone injections are going awesome so far. I keep alternating cheeks and live on the heating pad. I have no bruising or lumps so far- knock on wood, throw some salt, and send up arrow prayers to the big guy. The Husband has been beyond stellar and as the mother-in-law mentioned in a comment, he HATES needles. I am so proud of him!
Tonight my mom and I fly to Miami and the transfer is tomorrow afternoon. I’m so excited! I’ve got the new camera charged and ready to go for the big day. We even have matching t-shirts to wear to the transfer! I believe that I have acupuncture before and after the transfer and the transfer is around 12:30.
PRAYER REQUESTS:
Successful “defrost” of embryos. We are hoping that at least one embryo will be viable from the first set of two but worst case scenario we need at least one to make it out of the four.
Lots of sticky vibes so the diamond encrusted uterus will grab hold and not let go!
Calm for all of us involved and heightened skill & clarity for the fertility team.
Endurance for The Husband who is holding down the fort.
Thanks for all the support! I (hopefully) will catch you up once the transfer is done and I’m on bed rest. Adios Amigos!
I am a member of the Lumpy Butt Club now! I had my first shot of Progesterone yesterday!
When I went to the clinic on Thursday for my ultrasound and blood work, I was told the lining of my uterus was at 14 mm and that anything over 8 mm was good. My estrogen level had a significant drop from somewhere in the 400’s to mid 100’s which made Miami nurse nervous. I had been told to reduce from two Vivelle (estrogen) patches to one last week but she wondered if I had missed any of my oral estrogen, which I hadn’t. Apparently the reproductive endocrinologist wasn’t as concerned because she didn’t end up changing any dosages of estrogen and we are still trucking along.
Yesterday, Friday, was my last shot of Lupron and the beginning of the Progesterone shots. I am still keeping the time of my injections in the evening because mornings at our house are way too hectic for that kind of business to be going on. My surrogate friend, who is also a nurse, came over to help instruct The Husband on how to give me the shot. An hour beforehand I applied some Lidocaine/Prilocaine cream to the target area and let that begin to work while I sat on the heating pad trying not to freak out.
Ten minutes prior to the injection I placed the vial of Progesterone in Oil under the heating pad to warm it up and make it less thick. Drawing the dosage up into the vial took some real muscle power, holy cow! Surro Friend had already drawn a target on my buttock with a sharpie so I rested on the bed and covered up my head as The Husband was instructed on what to do. I began to get really scared. I remembered that he hadn’t practiced on the oranges and the more questions he asked her in order to do it right, the more I began to freak out that he was totally going to screw up and hurt me. The anxiety was killing me! KILL-ING ME! I finally just asked The Husband to wait until tomorrow and just observe the first shot for which I think he was secretly relieved about. Surro Friend swiftly inserted the needle, showed The Husband how to draw back a little to see if we happened to hit a blood vessel, and then slowly administered the Progesterone over the course of a minute in order to minimize the “lumps” that can happen from the thickness of the oil.
Once that drama was over and done with, I rubbed my wound for awhile to help spread the medicine out a little bit and resumed my seat on the heating pad. Our family and Surro Friend’s family played some Sing Star on the PS2 (Surro Friend and I totally rocked Poison’s, Every Rose Has Its Thorn) and then I headed to bed with heating pad in tow.
This morning the injection site is tender but I don’t have a lump. Later today The Husband will practice “darting” the 1 ½” long, needle into an orange to get the feel of things for tonight when the left side of my butt will then get a turn.
Lord please, PLEASE, help guide thy husband’s hands. Amen.
Hey all! Today my little pumpkin pie, Michelle, puked the entire time it took to drive the big girls to school and get back home. It has been a day full of puke laundry, baths, continuous rocking in the rocking chair and liberal bleach cleaning. During the times the poor girl finally would quit heaving and fall asleep in my arms, I was able to use my free hand to jump links all over the internet catching up on blogs and exploring new ones.
One blog that caught my attention today was Surrogate Mother – Growing a Family. Two of the surrogate’s posts talked about how hard it gets over time to give yourself an injection. She is not kidding the psychology of it all is crazy. I went into giving myself the injections as a fearless warrior and now I don’t want anything to do with being the needle jabber. I’d be sitting on the edge of my toilet counting to three, then ten, then backward from twenty before bringing myself to push the needle in. Many times, like the other blogger, the needle would go in by accident when I got too close to the thigh in my rhythmic counting. I started bruising or itching after every injection and decided it was time to pass the torch.
Daily Introspection: needle jabbing is not an area where I feel the need to exercise my inner control freak.
The night after I decided I would no longer give myself the injections I found myself at my friend’s birthday party at the martini bar. My friend AK willingly bore witness to the dimpled cottage cheese factory that resides on the side of my thigh and gave me my injection. The same scenario repeated itself with a different friend at Applebee’s this past weekend. I’m not sure if anyone came into either restroom while we took hostage the handicap stall but can you imagine what you might think was going on if you went into a restroom at a bar and through the crack of the door you saw one person with their pants down and the other one jabbing a needle in their thigh? I can tell you the last thing I’d think was, “Oh, just some fertility drugs.” I’d beeline it for my girlfriends like I was running for Olympic gold just so I could point out to them the lady who’d been in the bathroom and declare that I saw her and her friend in there shooting up smack.
No, I really wouldn’t say that but I might think it.
The Husband has gotten good at the Lupron injections and sometimes he goes so fast they are done before I even know it. It has been good for him to get in some practice as the PIO injections will be coming around the 22nd.
Only eight more days until the transfer! It has come so fast now, I can’t believe it!
My middle child loves attention, so you should have seen her at school dismissal on Wednesday afternoon when with a grin similar to the Cheshire cat, she announced that her mom was, “having a baby and giving it to someone else.” Her group of six and seven-year-old girlfriends stood huddled together waiting for me to deny this outrageous claim while my daughter reveled in the shock value of it all. I instantly had a flashback of when our oldest daughter, at that very same age, told a girl in her first grade class that babies did NOT come out of bellybuttons, they…wait for it…come out of your private parts! PRIVATE PARTS! I’ve heard the mother’s reaction to her daughter’s new knowledge base didn’t please her very much and all I could do was think “at least she didn’t clue her in about life in the Sudan, Hitler, or heaven forbid- that the tooth fairy wasn’t real.” THAT is the kind of information that can leave some real permanent damage on a young and unsuspecting soul.
At any rate, the book we ordered- The Kangaroo Pouch by Sarah Phillips Pellet, finally arrived the other day. The book is good but not all that I had wanted it to be. I think I’d like to create my own book. Any Children’s Lit agents out there want to guide me right into a major publishing house? Is that asking too much? Yeah probably, I will just go ahead and add that to the prayer list. Anyway, the book is a good tool and the Kangaroo story is helpful. Our biggest goal with the girls is to stress that the embryos were created by Lucy and Ricky. Lucy is the egg mommy, Ricky is the seed daddy and that makes the bebe belong to them. Lucy’s tummy can’t keep the bebe egg safe for the right amount of time so she is using my tummy to grow the little pocket bebe and when the bebe is done growing and ready to live outside my tummy, the little bebe will go home to live with the Ricardo family. We won’t even approach the possibility of two babies in my “tummy oven” unless that possibility becomes reality.
My appointment at the clinic on Thursday was quick and painless. I left at 5:30 am, arrived at 7:15 for the appointment, was seen at 7:40 and out of there at 7:55. The ultrasound showed that the lining of the diamond encrusted uterus was indeed thickening. Miami clinic emailed at the end of the day to say that everything was looking good and to actually cut down from two estrogen patches to one. I was back in town by the time my weekly small group met at 9:30. I actually noticed most of my girlfriends’ cars still at Dunkin Donuts where they were consuming the massive amounts of coffee that fuels our two plus hours of nonstop talking as I passed by and beat them to the church. That comment actually makes me laugh because as a kid we sometimes got donuts from the donut shop in the morning and I remember all the farmers and their wives in there having coffee and swapping talk. Makes me feel like an old fart.
Lucy has been super busy being wife, mommy, doctor, and student. A self-professed schoolaholic she is currently studying for her latest conquest, comprehensive exams for her Ph.D. Hopefully when things calm down a bit for her she will be able to contribute a few posts.
I read a funny blog post the other day about my cousin’s birthing class and all that she learned in preparation to have her first baby. Apparently there was a guy there that kept everyone shaking their heads in disbelief; they named him Vodka Sex and his antics had me laughing out loud. Click here to read it! Just for the record, I personally LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the mesh underwear you get from the hospital after having a baby.
Many prayers going out to Haiti, the Husband and I texted a $10 donation to the Red Cross yesterday and it was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. By the way, the cell phone companies are lifting any texting fees if you donate to Haiti over texting. To donate to the Red Cross you text the word “Haiti” to the number 90999. They then send you a text telling you to confirm that you really want to donate $10 by replying back with the word “YES.” The $10 is then added to your cell phone bill. Pretty cool!
Thursday ushered in the rush of hormones that I had been expecting this whole time but was starting to wonder if I might possibly avoid. Many times on Thursday I wanted to unleash snarky criticism at many different and random people. I also almost cried three different times in public and then finally did at home to a husband that was really quite sweet. He listened, sympathized, and did not minimize my feelings or try to tell me how I SHOULD be feeling. It was such a blessing and that alone would have made me cry if I were not already blubbering all over the place.
Like it continues to be, it was freezing cold on Thursday morning. Yes, northern folk who may be reading, I actually had a layer of ice on my windshield that needed to be removed prior to driving. It was miserable at 7:30 in the morning trying to get moving and out the door with a crusty, sleepy preschooler. I ended up being fifteen minutes late to the Tampa clinic and realized after getting signed in and getting Michelle dressed that we had arrived in Tampa with no shoes for her. Yes, I became THAT mom who on the day that Florida had record breaking, freezing temps, did not have a pair of shoes for her four year old daughter. Any and all mommy self worth deteriorated in that split second and I began to wonder what kind of judgment Lucy was lacking trusting me to carry her baby. Yes, I know…VERY dramatic and over the top. I’m not saying that any of this makes any sense. This is hormones at their best; this was almost crying in public episode #1.
To make a long and still tender story short, the morning at the clinic was full of chaos, way too much waiting, lost charts, and confusion on lab and ultrasound orders. I was frustrated by everything the entire time and I couldn’t get out of there soon enough which finally happened around 11:45 am. This was almost crying in public episode #2. At any rate, the ultrasound was good. My lining was nice and thin where it was supposed to be and now comes the task of getting it built up right where they want it to be able to accept the little pocket bebe.
Episode #3 happened while in Wal-Mart when the clinic in Miami called me and reported that there was estrogen in my system and wanted to know what was going on. I had to explain that my meds schedule said for me to start taking the Estrace that morning and to take it 3x a day and also to put on the first set of Vivelle patches. Apparently, the meds schedule was SUPPOSED to say to not take anything until after my appointment when Miami would give me the “all clear” and that the Estrace is only to be taken twice a day. By the time this call happened I had all ready taken the middle of the day dose releasing a second dose of estrogen into my system more quickly than necessary. I was told that Miami needed to talk to the doctor and that they would call me back. So, phone call ended with me feeling like I had majorly screwed up and was to blame even though the directions on my schedule were wrong! A few minutes later my Blackberry went off with an email containing smiley faces saying that everything was fine but to only take the Estrace twice a day. The smiley faces didn’t make me feel as good as the appropriate acceptance of responsibility would have but then again, I have to wonder if it would have ruffled my feathers as much if I weren’t so damn hormonal.
I know, I’m whining and it is grossly pathetic. I semi, sort-of apologize for that.
