First stick

I just gave myself the first Lupron injection. 20 units. I haven't injected myself in a few months, but it's just like riding a bike...except totally unpleasant and it stings a little. Or at least it did this time. Really, though, it was very easy and went smoothly. Hopefully, that continues. Yay for getting to the next step!

Christmas gifts purchased. Meds ordered. Bank account drained.

Well, I finally finished all of my Christmas shopping today, just in time for the infertility pharmacy to call and collect the rest of our money.

My meds will be delivered on Thursday. It will be like my very own Christmas. Tearing open the box to see all the colorful pills, shiny syringes, cute little gauze pads and big, fancy sharps containers. Eeeee! I can hardly contain my excitement. Santa's little elves have nothing on Big Pharma!

Not sure T will feel the same way about her package, but hopefully it wont scare her too much.

Also talked to one of the lawyers who works for my uncle. She is getting our paperwork taken care of and we will have another family friend look over it as T's lawyer and then we'll be done with the legality of it all.

The other thing I didn't mention yesterday is that the doctor scared the heck out of me about putting back two embryos. All of these statistics that are designed to scare us out of considering having twins. I know that multiple pregnancies are more risky, but I think (or I thought) it was worth the risk. After a day and a half of research and thinking about it, I'm still leaning toward transferring two embryos. Most twins are born just fine. As you can probably tell, I'm still a little bit conflicted. I'd love to have twins. I want twins, but not at the risk of losing them. I have some time to think about it, so I'll keep going back and forth I'm sure. 

Coordinating this cycle is starting to feel like a part-time job. I'm putting so many hours into talking to pharmacists, family members, lawyers, nurses, doctors, and assistants, I'm hoping this all slows down soon. Because I have to get back to focusing on being Mommy to my little T, and being a wife to my husband, and committing to my real job, and cleaning the house, and doing the laundry, oh and also trying to fit some exercise in there somewhere.

It's going to be a hectic month, but hopefully we'll never have to do it again!

Flights are booked. No turning back now.

Today was very stressful, doing all the coordinating to make sure all the moving parts are in order, but it was totally worth it, because... 

We signed the papers. We have our calender. We're starting the cycle.

T got her first week at her new job pushed back a week so that she will be able to come home for the retrieval. She'll stay in Colorado until January 3rd, at which point she will fly home to Boston to cycle til she is ready for her retrieval. Once she's ready, we'll take her eggs out, fertilize them and transfer those babies over to me.

My brother M generously offered to use his miles to fly her home for the procedure, which means we only had to pay $33 for the round trip tickets!  I can't explain how blessed I feel to have all these amazing siblings. My mother has been a tremendous help to me. Talking me down when I'm stressed and just generally being supportive and amazing. I can't really thank any of these people properly. I just can't wait to see the joy on all of our faces when we have tangible evidence of the love in our family.

There's more good news too! I actually have some of the medication that T needs left over from my pathetic cycles earlier this year, which means I can ship those to her. We still have to buy some of the meds that I don't have, but we're lucky to be saving a few dollars here and there. It all adds up!

So far I can't tell if I've had too many side effects from the Birth Control. I do seem to be up a couple pounds, but I've been indulging in holiday treats and beverages, so that could be either. I also have noticed a few pimples popping up, but nothing too bad and thankfully I'll only have to take the pills for about 3 weeks. I start the Lupron on this Friday, the 13th! I'm actually so excited to be moving forward, I'm fine with whatever side effects these meds bring, so long as they do what they're supposed to as well!

Next week I also have to have a Hysteroscopy. That's when they take a camera and get a nice shot of my uterus, to make sure that there are no polyps, fibroids or other creatures in there that could mess with our chances of getting these babies to stick. Not something I'm really looking forward to, but you do what you gotta do.

Then in a few weeks, 12/23, I'll start the Estrace and Baby Aspirin. They will help to bring blood flow to my uterus and get it ready for implantation. I take more and more until T is ready for the retrieval. Once she's ready, I will start the Progesterone and continue the Estrace. The progesterone shots are intramuscular, which I haven't done yet. Means injecting myself in the booty. Because of the tricky position required for that shot, I may need help. I hope J is up for the task.

Then I'll be ready for transfer and I'll continue those two meds hopefully into my tenth week of pregnancy. (I refuse to explain what happens in the event that it doesn't work, because I'm not acknowledging that possibility at this time, I'm sure you can understand).

T's cycle is a little different. She will take the Birth Control pills until the 12/27, then she'll start taking Gonal F and then ganirelix. She'll go for monitoring (bloodwork &ultrasound) on day 5 of the meds. On day 8 of the meds she will fly to Boston and likely have monitoring every other day after that. Leading up to the retrieval it will eventually be daily. Then she'll be ready for her retrieval when her follicles are the correct size. The estimated date for now is around Jan 7th. Less than a month from now!  Which is so exciting!

The ultimate irony

In order to get this infertile girl pregnant, we first must take some birth control. Yup, that's right. Today, I took my first birth control pill since 1996. Man, I hope I don't get any side effects from them. I didn't love it back when I was 16, but I'm hoping it's changed a lot since then.

They let me start the pills after I had some bloodwork done. I had to redo my labs from last year. Surprisingly my numbers were actually a lot better this time around. Too bad it doesn't seem to make me any more fertile! Oh well, I don't need my crusty old eggs any more! Hopefully, I'll have brand spanking new young and fertile eggs in a month or so. Santa, all I want for Christmas are some shiny new eggs!

We're still not sure about the scheduling issues, but we will know on Monday once we see the doctor and sign the papers. She will then give us our calendar and we will see if T needs to move her work start date at her new job (or if she'll be able to) or if we'll get pushed back a month.

We know what I'm hoping for. And I'm trying to stay positive about it. The nurse said that she thinks T will have to fly home to Boston on January 4th. That just seems perfect to me. Start the new year with a new, very hopeful cycle. 

Oh and I'm very excited to report that my uncle is willing to help us, which will save us over a grand. So grateful for so many loving and generous family members!

Anyway, I'll have more updates on Monday! Have a great weekend!

Time to panic

Wow. Ok, so there's a lot going on here. I'll try to get it all down.

First of all, T came home last week for her testing and everything went great. The counselor seems to think that our situation is going to work out well for everyone. And that's even after hearing our sarcastic banter. Phew. Also, our doctor thinks she will produce lots of viable eggs which should give us an excellent chance and some leftovers to try again if it doesn't work the first time. Hooray for leftovers!

They also told us on Wednesday that we need to get a legal agreement...in the next 2 weeks!! This is another $1250 out of our pockets. With Christmas coming up, a dog who is very ill, a daughter who is growing like a weed and countless other expenditures not to mention all the infertility money, things are getting tight and it's been really stressful for J and me. So, with that in mind, I called my uncle, a lawyer, for help. He said he knows someone who went through this and will ask them and get back to me. I really wish they had told us this before. Like I said, we're on a clock, because from the time I start the birth control pills we have 2 weeks to have an agreement done. Eek. I'm still waiting to hear back from him whether he can help or whether we'll have to see someone who specializes in this ($1250). I'm really hoping he can help and hopefully at a nice family discount (read: free). I am his God daughter after all.

Ok, so then T got her cycle day 1 (cd1) on Saturday, which started the clock for her. I waited patiently for my (late) cd1 and finally it showed up this morning. I've never been so happy to see my Aunt Flow (or AF in infertility site jargon). It really is surreal when for the last five years off and on (whenever I wasn't pregnant) I was dreading that tell tale sign that another month was headed down the drain, literally. Well, not this time. I basically did a happy dance. Let's get this show on the road. So, I called the nursing team who called back and told me I will have to go in for labs on Friday (insurance requires it) and then I'll be able to start my birth control pills on Friday. Something I haven't seen since I was in high school. 

Ok, as I was typing this there have been more changes. Turns out that my sister's relocation to another state during our cycle may mean we have to wait another month. I am devastated at the idea of having to wait another month. I'm currently waiting to get the exact dates from my sister so that I can bring them to my nursing team so that we can decide whether we can make it work this month. Oh and I just got the call from my husband that my dog has to go back to the vet to see if he will be able to live a little longer or if we'll have to put him down. Damn. This really sucks. Well, I should have more news today or tomorrow. Hopefully it'll be good news. All these setbacks are just so hard. I just want so much for this all to work out. I can feel the air just being sucked out of me. I hope I'll be able to remain positive and just keep moving forward, but man, I just wish something would go right.

Getting In Sync

It's getting closer and closer to the time where this will actually start happening, which is beyond exciting. So much so that I'm pretty sure my sister, husband, and friends are sick of hearing about it from me. I can't really think about much else. In fact, last week I started to panic. I had a last minute, cold feet moment and started looking at this whole process as insane. What am I doing?  Why am I spending a huge chunk of our savings trying to grow my family when I have a perfectly wonderful little daughter in a house that fits the three of us, without great debt or money problems? What if one of us loses our job after we get pregnant?  Then we'd have two or possibly three children to feed?  Where will we put this new addition?  Our house will need upgrades, can we afford them (especially after all we've spent thus far on trying to get pregnant again)?  All of this hit me like a thunderbolt.  I took all of my fears and anxiety to J, as I always do, and he calmly reminded me that I'm crazy. I'm just looking for something to worry about, because it seems like everything is going smoothly and I'm just not used to that with infertility. I'm trying to find the bad. And I need to stop. Like now. So thankfully after some tears, a glass of wine, and a nice 8 hours of sleep, I was wondering why I had been freaking out at all the night before.

So, now I'm feeling really great. I talked to T and she and I happen to be expecting our periods within 2-3 days of each other in about a week. This is so exciting, because the whole idea of the first part of our cycle is to sync up, and it seems like nature wants to help out (for once)!  So, because I'm me and I needed to find something to worry about, I then worried that because we would be starting our periods the week before J and I go in to sign papers and make this official, we would miss that cycle and have to start up in another month. I called my lovely Donor Egg Coordinator, who must be sick of hearing from me, and she assured me that if we let the doc know when we go in for T's testing and our group counseling session on Wednesday, there's a good chance that the doc will let us sync up this cycle. She said we don't necessarily have to sign the papers before the sync up starts.  Do you know what that means?...

WE MIGHT BE STARTING NEXT WEEK! 

I'm trying (and failing, as you can see), not to get my hopes up, because a lot of things have to happen before next week in order to start (and it's a holiday weekend, gobble gobble), but I'm so hopeful that it will work.

My friend is reading The Secret and keeps telling me to just think like it will happen and the universe will provide (or something like that), so that's what I plan to do. We WILL be starting our sync up next week. AHHHHH!  Woo.

Well, I'll try to update this weekend about how our counseling and T's testing goes on Wednesday. I'm so very excited. All this is happening AND it's my favorite holiday, AND all my siblings are going to be in town this week, AND my amazing group of friends from high school is planning on a mini-reunion this weekend. I think it's very appropriate that it's Thanksgiving week, because I have SO much to be thankful for.

Counseling

Yesterday, J and I went for our counseling session. This is a counselor who is a part of our clinic's team. She specializes in infertility concerns and has met with many, many couples and individuals who have used both known and anonymous egg donors. In our case, most of the focus was on the relationship between me and my sister and my husband and my sister. How using her eggs might affect our relationship and her future relationships. We were asked about family history as well. I found many of those questions to be difficult but the most difficult were the ones pertaining to my sister's future fertility. What if she had fertility problems later in life? What if something happened in our cycle to hurt her fertility (very highly unlikely and has never happened at our clinic, ever) but what if? What if she married someone later who took issue with it?

It just underlines one of the most frustrating things about infertility in general and that is the utter lack of control we have in all of this. I want this all to go well and for my relationship with my sister and with my husband to get even stronger and for T to be able to have her own children when and with whom she wants...without any struggle. I want my future children to be close with all their aunts and uncles, especially their special aunt T.  Obviously I have no control over any of this, but those are my hopes.

So, our counselor was happy with how open we have been with our family and close friends. She says that's a great sign that we are truly ready for this and realistic about it. She said she thinks that our situation so far sounds ideal. My sister will meet with them the day before Thanksgiving and we'll see what they say about her, but so far, it's looking great.

Now if only we could speed up this process! That's the hardest part still. Everytime I see a pregnant woman or hear another pregnancy announcement it stabs at me. I just want to move on from all of this. And have one or two more healthy children to show for it. Patience has always been tough for me. But I do finally believe it will happen. So that helps a lot.