Tales of the Polycystic Ovaries

What's that? Good news? Again?

Uh, I hope I don't run out of good luck because I don't seem to have a lot of it... until this week. It makes me kind of nervous.  

We got a call from the fertility clinic at 1:35.  The nurse asked how I was doing and I said replied, "great" and she laughed and said that I was going to be doing even better because the embryologist just emailed Dr. Hotness to say they'd like to move me to a day 5 transfer.  I have 12 embryos still dividing and 11 of those are GRADE ONE!!  Crazy!  Again, I don't want to get too excited because I still need to get to the day of transfer and have happy healthy little blastocysts.  Then they need to stick to my uterus.  Then I need to get a BFP!!  Then I need to make it to the ultrasound and see all the important things you expect to see when you look at your tiny little growing baby for the first time.  Then I need to get past week 12 and then I might start to relax.  Around the time I start to show I really chill out.  So, it'll be a good while before I truly believe things are ok and actually going well.  But, so far so good.  Right?

On the OHSS front, I'm feeling better.  Thank you Gatorade!!  It seriously has made me feel sooooo much better!  The pressure inside of my body has gone down and I no longer look pregnant.  The bloating was awful, my belly was so distended that it was painful.  I could have gotten stretch marks.  I should have been rubbing myself down with cocoa butter.  I love it.  Gatorade is the shit!!

Aislinn is feeling better too.  She slept with us last night because around 9:30 her temp was almost 103 while on infant tylenol!  She was on fire.  I decided not to worry about catching it because I'm on doxycycline which is an antibiotic anyway so hopefully all is fine.  We've been checking her temperature every 4 hours and by 2 pm her fever was gone.  She back to her old self running around playing and eating.  Yay!  Now, hopefully she'll go to sleep in her room tonight.  If not that's fine too, she's leaving to stay with Grandma and Pa for a few days soon.  Monday night she leaves so that I can get a few days of rest after the transfer.  I'm going to miss her but I'm looking forward to a few days of playing Sims 3, eating and sleeping whenever I want.

"That's what you get for calling your body a piece of $*#@ money pit"

That's what my friend, Miss L (Can I refer to you as Miss L, hon?) said when she called me back this morning after getting my text about the embryo report.  Nurse M&M called about an hour ago and said, "I have good news."  Good news?  What's that?  She said that out of the 17 eggs retrieved yesterday 15 of them were mature enough for fertilization and of those 12 of them fertilized normally!!  I HAVE TWELVE EMBRYOS!!!  My body showed me!  I have to go back and check but I'm very sure I didn't even have 12 eggs retrieved when doing the IVF cycle that Aislinn was conceived.  TWELVE EMBRYOS!!!  Nurse M&M explained that this makes me a good candidate for a day 5 blastocyst transfer, which we wanted, but they wouldn't be able to come in on Tuesday yet.  They might call tomorrow but if not then they'd call me back first thing on Sunday morning.  Holy cow!  12 EMBRYOS!!!  Ok, enough celebrating.  I can't let it get to my head.  This is good news but it doesn't mean that everything else will turn out the way that we hope, so I'm going to just take it one day at a time.  

As for me physically, I was sooooooo unbelievably uncomfortable last night.  I felt so bloated and it felt like my belly was distended.  The good thing was that I could still pee because I guess when you can't be then you have severe OHSS, but as uncomfortable as it was it was only a sign of mild OHSS.  I think it was just gas.  I was up all night peeing because I kept drinking Gatorade to make sure that I could still pee.  By the time the sun came up I was feeling much better.  Now I'm only mildly uncomfortable which actually feels great after what I experienced last night.  

Because it was suggested that I sleep on an incline while feeling so horribly bloated I slept on the couch and Aislinn slept with me since she was sick and felt like she was on fire.  She woke up at 5 am crying so Howie, who slept in the chair next to us (poor Howie), and I got up and changed her diaper together because she was freaking out about having her soaking wet diaper changed and I didn't want to get kicked in my bloated belly.  She then asked for applesauce and water and a popsicle.  LOL.  After that she snuggled back up with Howie and we all went back to sleep on the couch.  She woke up in a good mood, still a bit warm, but happily eating crackers and apple juice.  I think she'll be fine tonight and hopefully will sleep in her own room.

Eggs!

As scheduled, I went in for my egg retrieval this morning.  They had a good time trying to find a vein.  They poked me 3 times before they got it to work.  I don't blame them, it's the same thing every time someone has to tap a vein in my arms so I know it's me.  I try to have a good sense of humor about it.  All went well and they got out 17 eggs!  Woohooo! Ok, that's as excited as I'm going to get.  No more celebrating until we know how many of them were mature enough for fertilization... and how many embryos there are.  So, I'll know more tomorrow.  But so far so good, right?  I have scheduled an acupuncture appointment for before and after the embryo transfer to hopefully improve my chances of the embryos sticking.  It'll be nice and relaxing.

I am very uncomfortably bloated and tired so I took a nap with Aislinn this afternoon.  After we woke up she was snuggling with me and watching tv when she suddenly threw up.  That's when I noticed she was a bit warm.  Howie called the doctor's office because she had told him earlier that her tummy hurt and she had only eaten half a waffle all day.  We left without taking her temp because we figured they'd just do that there.  They took her temp, but under her arm and not well because they said it was normal and Howie was like, "but she's burning up".  Then the doc said she seemed warm when she was checking her.  We checked her temp when we got home and she had a fever of 100.7.  Just a slight fever, but she looked red and worn out.  We gave her some tylenol and she was a new baby.  She ate a waffle, some cheese, 2 pedialyte popsicles, water and chicken soup.  She is attached to me at the moment so I think the two of us are going to sleep on the couch tonight.  Hopefully we'll wake up to some good news tomorrow.

Pee Pee is Awesome!!

Ok, enough about IVF for a second!  Aislinn and I were upstairs cleaning and she came up to me and said "Mommy, I have to go pee pee. I have to go downstairs and sit on my potty."  We have two potties but a week or so ago she decided she liked having both of them downstairs and in an effort to make her happy and hopefully get her to pee in the potty I brought the second one down.  So I'm thinking, this is her way of trying to get downstairs so that she can sit in front of the tv and watch Phineas and Ferb but of course I say ok and we walk down.  She also told me she wanted to walk downstairs on her own.  She didn't want me to hold her hand this time.  I usually hold her hand because it's hardwood and also because she is her father's daughter (very clumsy!).  Anyway, this time I let her walk down on her own, just following behind her.  She walked over to her potty and took off her pants and diaper then sat down on the potty.  She sat for a second and asked if I could put on Phineas and Ferb.  While I was looking for the remotes I thought I heard her actually pee.  I turned around and looked at her for a second and she stood up and yelled, "I WENT PEE PEE!! I WENT PEE PEE!"  So i walked over and looked inside and she did!!  She went pee pee in the potty!!! YAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!  I picked her up and we danced around the house cheering.  Yay!!  Ok, I know it was just one time but she told me she had to, she held it while she walked down the stairs, and then actually peed in the potty!  That's awesome!!  I'm soooo happy and so proud!!  Yaaaaay!!  I gave her a book of Dora stickers and she's sooo proud of herself.  I'm so excited!  Maybe we'll make cookies or cupcakes today too and celebrate!

Pulling the Trigger!!

I went in for blood work and an ultrasound this morning and Dr. What's-her-face (can never remember her name) said that I should be ready tomorrow to take my trigger shot.  She's not going to make me come in for monitoring again tomorrow (thank you Dr. I-can-never-remember-your-name).  So, it's on.  I take my trigger shot tomorrow night at 9:30 pm and we go in for the egg retrieval at 8 am Thursday morning!!  Yay!!  Super awesome!  I did it!  Well, they did, but yay!!  

Now that the stress of getting to the point of taking my trigger shot is over I just want to relax.  I cleaned the tub and I'm thinking I need a nice bath tonight.  I'm off to do that right now.  Hopefully my next post will be more entertaining. 

Getting closer... I think...

I went in for blood work and ultrasound this morning.  Dr. H did the ultrasound this morning and he explained to me that when my estrogen dropped the follicles that were growing at that time kind of just tapered off and now those are useless.  Now that the estrogen is going back up again there's another whole crop of follicles growing now.  He felt that it was worth trying to keep going and see if we can get them to where we want them.  So, he was thinking I should just come back in two days but I guess after my estrogen levels came in they decided that I should come back tomorrow morning.

I thought that I knew what to expect after 3 IUIs, 2 IVF cycles, 1 FET, 2 miscarriages, and 1 successful pregnancy but it seems that every time I think I know what to expect I end up being wrong.  I'm trying to not think about any of it and just go with the flow.  Take it one day at a time.  I'm trying to be relaxed and all that but it's hard when my in-laws are paying for it and this is probably the last time we'll ever get to do an IVF cycle.  So I'm just hoping that this works and all goes well.  Fingers crossed.  Hoping & Praying.  Now I'm going to go to bed and just get through tomorrow.

I need to give myself a time out!

Could I be more dramatic?  Can I blame it on my hormones?  Sorry for all the drama, but Dr. Hotness was all kinds of negative about my insides this morning and I almost cried right in front of him like a jackass.  Anyway, Nurse M&M called and all is fine.  My estrogen went up REEEEAALLY well so I'm just going to stick with my same dosage and go back on Sunday.  Let's hope it keeps getting better.  Cross your fingers, toes, arms, legs, eyes and anything else that you can cross for me, pleeease!  I need it!

Update and more...

Here's a quick recap of what I've been up to since my last post:

Went batshit crazy on Provera.  STAY AWAY FROM PROVERA!

Turned 30.  Had kick ass party.  Got drunk.  Happy 3-0 to me!

Went on birth control and the bitch monster that I was went away.  Happy and level again.

Had a great 4th of July.

Went to various carnivals and ate too much fried dough with powdered sugar.  Mmmmm!!

Went on South Beach diet and lost 4 lbs in 4 days.  Got lazy again.

Had polyp and fibroid removed from uterus.

Started Lupron while still on birth control in preparation for IVF cycle.

Went to Lancaster, PA with Howie, Aislinn & in-laws for a weekend.

Went camping in Cape Cod with Howie, Aislinn & my sister, brother-in-law & niece!  It rocked and I wish we could have stayed longer.

Started hardcore fertility meds and all was going well...

That catches us up to now.  We were expecting that I should have been ready to trigger tonight or tomorrow but went in this morning and how strange... my uterine lining went from type 1 to type 2 which is no good.  Need to be type 1.  My follicles, not doing a thing.  Lazy fucking ovaries!!!  Dr. Hotness checked me over and over and then said that we'll see what my estrogen levels are but right now it looks like I've only been on meds for 3 days and he'd rather cancel this cycle and start over with a higher dose.  

WHAT THE HELL???  I can't believe that I didn't even get to the negative pregnancy test.  So, my in-laws shelled out the cash for this cycle just like the did for the last one and this time we didn't even get to make embryos so I don't think they're going to pay for another cycle.  Hahaha, "I don't think".  They're not going to pay for another cycle.  Why should they?  There's no guarantee that it'll work out but not even finishing a cycle and loosing your cash is pretty shitty.  I feel guilty and responsible and I'm considering renaming my reproductive organs "The Money Pit".  That's what they are.

The other thing that upsets me is that when the meds stop I'm going to go back to being the hormonally imbalanced mess that PCOS has made me.  I can take the pill but I'd like to improve my fertility while staying hormonally balanced if possible and not prevent pregnancy but I guess I can't do that.  I also know that in 6 months I'll probably have another polyp and/or fibroid that will need to be removed before I try to make babies at home... which is just totally ridiculous anyway.  Making babies at home the old fashioned way.  LOL.  

I know I should just wait to hear what my estrogen level is but what does it really matter?  My follicles and lining don't look right, so what good is that?