Can’t Escape Them

CD17

Babies...i just can't escape them. Got home last night to find a birth announcement card.  Then I opened the rest of the mail to find a thank you note from my cousin with pictures of her baby born in October.  Then I started watching House Hunters and sure enough the couple was knocked up by the time they moved into their new house (they weren't even trying yet when they were looking at houses).  I figured, ugh, I should watch TMZ because that show won't have any babies/pregnant people on it.  WRONG.  They had a segment on Reggie Bush's pregnant girlfriend which segued into a segment on Kim Kardashian's pregnancy.  I won’t even go on facebook anymore.  I am probably oversensitive, but seriously, babies are everywhere.  I am already dreading the St. Patrick's day dinner at my uncle house since there will be 3 babies there.  

So no sign of ovulation yet.  I am assuming I won’t ovulate this month since I am not on any meds, but DH we will do our thing just to make sure.  

Posting Machine

I usually don’t do more than 1 post a day, but this has been a very full day which has warranted another post.

Because there is such a strong family history of breast cancer in my family, my doctors want me to do a baseline mammogram before we start IVF.  I went to see the Nurse Practitioner today so they could clear me for insurance, etc.  While doing the consult the NP tells me that her son and his wife have been dealing with IF for a while and she just found out today that their IVF #1 was successful.  She told me it was a sign that it will work for me too, and I sure hope she is right!  She also told me to pray to St. Gerard because he is the patron saint of motherhood, has anybody else heard this? 

On my way back to work from my appointment I stopped by the hospital where my cousin was with her newborn baby.  It was kind of funny driving from one hospital to another.  The baby is adorable.  He had his eyes open almost the whole time I was there and he was looking around and squirming like crazy.  Holding him was wonderful.  I didn’t feel sad, or envious, I just felt love.  I am so glad that I went to the hospital.  

Posting Machine

I usually don’t do more than 1 post a day, but this has been a very full day which has warranted another post.

Because there is such a strong family history of breast cancer in my family, my doctors want me to do a baseline mammogram before we start IVF.  I went to see the Nurse Practitioner today so they could clear me for insurance, etc.  While doing the consult the NP tells me that her son and his wife have been dealing with IF for a while and she just found out today that their IVF #1 was successful.  She told me it was a sign that it will work for me too, and I sure hope she is right!  She also told me to pray to St. Gerard because he is the patron saint of motherhood, has anybody else heard this? 

On my way back to work from my appointment I stopped by the hospital where my cousin was with her newborn baby.  It was kind of funny driving from one hospital to another.  The baby is adorable.  He had his eyes open almost the whole time I was there and he was looking around and squirming like crazy.  Holding him was wonderful.  I didn’t feel sad, or envious, I just felt love.  I am so glad that I went to the hospital.  

Whirlwind

 CD15

The weekend started out pretty chill.  I was working from home on Friday because we got like 1.5 ft of snow (much more than the forecasted 3-6 inches) but I love a good snow storm so that didn’t bother me one bit.

On Saturday we painted our family room.  I find painting very satisfying – it is a cheap and relatively easy way to make a room look a lot better.  DH and I had a staydate on Saturday night.  We got some nice steak to grill, opened a bottle of wine and reminisced about some of our vacation adventures.  We decided that whether IVF works or not we are going to plan a trip to Ireland for September.  If IVF (or IUI #6) works then it will be a babymoon.  If these don’t then it will be a welcomed consolation vacation and something to look forward to.

On Sunday I went to my friend from high school’s baby shower.  I was fine throughout the baby shower, I sat with 3 of my friends who don’t have kids and that was nice, but we sat at a table with a pregnant lady, a lady with 2 kids and a lady with 3 kids so the table talk was very kid focused.  Overall the shower was nice and I held up quite well.

While I was at the shower DH went to my mom’s house and helped her get her house ready to put it on the market, then took her to some open houses.  The fact that he does these things without me asking and likes to spend time with my mom makes me so happy.  He is truly a great partner and I consider myself extremely lucky that I get to go through life with him by my side. 

Last night DH called his parents and told them about our IF struggle.  We hadn’t told them anything about it previously, but we wanted to tell them because they are visiting in 2 weeks and things are so far along now that it has felt weird not telling them.  They promised not to tell anyone and I am sure they will keep it to themselves.  I don’t know whether the visit will be weird with them knowing, but I don’t think they will bring it up unless we do. 

I woke up to a text from my cousin with a picture of her son who was born last night via emergency c-section.  She wasn’t due for another 10 days but she went to the hospital last night with concerns and they had to take him out.  He is beautiful and wish I could say that the news made me feel overjoyed, but that would be a lie.  It breaks my heart that I feel this way.  How can I feel happy for someone and so sad at the same time? It is such a weird mix.  But I am determined that my outward expressions will only be ones of happiness, only those of you in blog world will know my true feelings (lucky you). I am going to try to go and visit them at the hospital today. 

Sono-hystogram...done!

CD9

DH is training for an Ironman triathlon (yeah I know it is kind of crazy, but he loves it) in July this year so we are trying to include a lot more vegetables and overall healthy food into our diets.  I saw on pinterest a recipe for kale chips and I figured I would give it a shot.  I picked up a kale bunch at the supermarket last night and took it home to prepare.  I cut up the leaves off of the stem and looking at these leaves I thought to myself “there is no way this is going to be good.”  I laid the kale out on a baking sheet, sprayed them with some cooking spray, drizzled a little olive oil, garlic salt and red pepper flakes and put them in the oven on 350 degrees for 12 minutes.

When they came out I was happy to see that they had crisped up.  I took one crunchy bite and they were actually really good!  Salty and crunchy like chips that sort of dissolve in your mouth.  DH tried them and he thought they were awesome too!  I highly recommend them and will be making them again, but with perhaps less red pepper since they were pretty hot. (sorry the picture is upside down)

I just got back from my sonohystogram.  It wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible.  It was better than the HSG because it was done at my RE’s office instead of a hospital.  I got my favorite ultrasound tech, Annie, and she did an ultrasound to check things out before the big event.  She checked on my cyst and I was happy to see that it is shrinking down!  It was like 42mm on CD3 and today on CD9 it is down to low 30something.  With this shrinking rate I am hoping it will be gone by the time my next cycle starts, fingers crossed.

The procedure was done by the ultrasound tech and a nurse practitioner.  First thing they did was put in a speculum just like they do for an IUI or a pap.  They cleaned my cervix with some iodine and then inserted the catheter.  This was all pretty easy, similar to IUI and no big deal.  The nurse told me that they were then going to inflate a balloon that would expand my uterus a bit so that they could see in there and push in some saline.  They warned me that I would cramp up and I certainly did.  Kind of felt like the HSG a bit, but not quite as bad.  Felt like the most intense period cramp ever.  Then she sent in some saline which also made me cramp up, but then they were able to shrink down the balloon a bit.  Once they shrunk the balloon I felt a lot better and I could watch up on the screen as they took a look at my uterus.   It was kind of gross how the saline drips out of you as they do this procedure. 

The nurse said that my uterus looked good – no red flags such as polyps or masses, so that was awesome news to get.  Once they took all the tools out of my whoohaa I felt a lot better.  I was back at work within almost an hour.  I did see a bit of blood once I went to the bathroom back at work, which surprised me because I didn’t bleed from the HSG. 

So now that that is over with I can continue on my break cycle.  I think I deserve a drink tonight! 

(just replace vodka with wine)

Sonohystogram?

CD8

I had a nice weekend, pretty chill.  On Saturday I went to my friend’s house for brunch with a few other gal pals.  She was dog sitting her parent’s dog, who is a goldendoodle just like Winnie!  In fact they are from the same breeder in Alabama so maybe they are distant cousins or something!  So I brought Winnie with me and the two of them did not stop playing the whole time we were there.  They are both about 1.5 years old so they have A LOT of energy! (sorry i dont know how to turn the picture!)

On Saturday night we had friends over including our friends who were visiting from NY and the wife is about 7.5 months pregnant.  Sometimes the conversation was a little tough with all the pregnancy/baby stuff, but overall it was fine because nobody else there had kids so it wasn’t the main topic of conversation all night. 

So tomorrow I am going in for a sonohystogram, anybody have one of these?  I don’t really know what to expect but it is at my RE’s office and they said it will only take 10 minutes, so how bad can it be?  The only thing that makes me nervous is that they told me to take a lot of advil the morning of.  If anyone has any experience with this please let me know!  I am glad we are doing it on a forced break cycle, because heaven forbid a month goes by when something isn’t being shoved up my whoohaa!

And after the procedure I go back to waiting for this cycle to end.  Part of the reason why being on a break this cycle is so tough is because it means that we won’t have a chance to be pregnant before my cousin gives birth (I figured if I got pregnant before this then it would make it a lot easier).  Also I had visions of being able to tell people we were pregnant on mother’s day if this cycle had worked, and now that is not going to happen either.  I don’t know why I set myself up for disappointment by imagining these things like “we would be able to announce on xx date if this cycle works!”  well a girl can dream I guess!

Book Review

CD5

So  a couple months back somebody on 3TC recommended the book “What he can expect when she’s not expecting” as a good book for husbands to read when the couple is dealing with IF. I asked DH if I should get it for him and he said “yes” and so I ordered the book from Amazon.com and it was pretty cheap if I remember correctly.

The book came and I showed DH and put it next to his night stand.  Maybe 3-4 weeks went by and he didn’t read it so I picked it up and started to read it.  He asked me why I was reading it and I kind of said “well somebody should” (as you can see I was kind of annoyed he wasn’t reading it).  Every night I would read a couple of pages.  The book was really good – written by the husband of a woman who went through 10 (yes 10!) IVF cycles and they finally had twins through a gestational surrogate.  The husband co-authors the book with a doctor. 

The book doesn’t get too technical but explains the testing, procedures, etc in terms that a non-doctor can understand.  The book has some humor in it – one section is called “The Room” and talks about the sperm sample collection room at the RE.  I thought it was an easy read and could help out DH’s who may not fully understand what us women have to go through in this process.

I finished the book a couple of nights ago and asked DH when he would read it.  He said he “wasn’t really into reading books” and I told him it was important to me.  He kind of hemmed and hawed and then I pulled out the “if I have to take drugs, give myself shots, go get bloodwork done, get ultrasounds and be artificially inseminated almost every month, then you can read this damn book” card and he started reading the book the next night :)  I had to push him a bit, but honestly I think he will enjoy it once he gets into it.