It Takes Two to Tango -- Or Something Like That

I am trying really hard not to be disappointed or to read too much into this.  Our embryologist just called with what he called "good" news this morning.  Of the 12 embryos remaining after transfer, we are able to freeze two of them.

Just two.

I already knew that 2 of the 12 were poor quality and not likely to make the cut.  Still -- I had hoped for at least 4, which, in my mind, would give us two more tries.

What bothers me even more, though, is that out of 14 embryos, only 4 made it all the way to blast in good shape.  I know it only takes one, and I know that sometimes less-than-stellar embryos make perfectly adorable babies.  But given our history (two pregnancies, two first-trimester losses), I wanted a little bit more reassurance.  A back-up, so to speak.

As if this wasn't reminder enough that things don't always turn out the way you would hope, one of my cyclesistas got a BFN today after her first IVF.  Please stop by and give her some extra TLC, as I know her heart is broken.

I know in my heart of hearts that any sort of stressing/worrying/praying is futile -- but I can't help myself.  Universe, if you could just send a break my way, I would be forever grateful.  

Day 3 Embryo Update

The embryologist called bright and early this morning with our embryo update.  Of our 14 embryos from Day 1, we now have:

2 Excellent
6 Good
4 Fair
2 Poor

I didn't ask for any more detail than that (i.e. how many cells, etc.), because I honestly don't need anything else to obsess over.  Of the 14 we started with, 12 are hanging in there.  I think Mo was a little disappointed to hear that only 2 were graded as "excellent,"  but I reminded him that "good" embryos make babies, too!  In fact, our "good" embryos made it further into pregnancy than our "excellent" ones did the last time.

I am curious to see how many remain in good standing on Tuesday.  I am still hoping against hope that we'll have two to transfer and six or so to freeze -- and that we can complete our family from this cycle (with an additional FET or two).  I know that given our history that may seem a little far-fetched, but I am just so hopeful that all of Mo's lifestyle changes the past year will change our final outcome.

I still have no idea what we'll do if this doesn't work.  6 hours each way to the clinic is going to be hard to pull off during the school year.  We could possibly try to schedule a FET over Christmas break -- but, no.  I'm not going to even consider it.  This IS going to work.  Positive thinking and all that jazz.

In the meantime, I'm keeping myself as busy and distracted as I can.  Lots of blog reading, FB-ing, and a stack of new electronic books (love my Ki.ndle!).  I even baked some cookies the other night.  Thanks, Kristin, for the recipe!  I could use some suggestions, though:  what new books have you read lately and loved?  What do you do to keep your mind off of IF?  Any recipes that you'd like to share?

It's going to be a long two days -- and an even longer two weeks after that.  I need all the distraction I can get!

ER and Fert Report

Sorry for no update yesterday (I know ya'll are just on the edge of your seats!), but I was exhausted after ER.  I woke up early due to nervous anticipation, and we were able to head home immediately afterward.  So, needless to say, after 6 hours in the car, all I wanted was some food and my pillow!

ER went exceptionally smoothly.  The Awesome Clinic (DallasIVF, for anyone in/near Texas) continues to impress me.  I checked in at 7:45 and within 10 minutes they had me in the back in a gown, watching TV and reading magazines with Mo.  The nurse came in and introduced herself, started my IV, and made friendly chit-chat.  (I learned she also has two white labs, and we showed off pictures of our furbabies!).  Interestingly enough, she was familiar with The Clinic From Hades as she just moved to TX from TN and worked at another nearby clinic.  She said they got a lot of patients from our town, and that no one was really impressed with the clinic here.

Anyway, I digress.  Anesthesiologist came in, asked a few standard questions, made me feel very comfortable.  The staff is just so caring and kind here.  They whisked me away for retrieval, and I was back in less than 20 minutes.  When I woke up I felt great!  No pain, but I was a little weepy.  I was just overwhelmed by how nice everyone was, and I think that (in my medicine fog) I kind of boo-hooed that to all the nurses.  I'm a little embarrassed now, but I really do think they're amazing.

They managed to get 18 eggs yesterday, and I spent the entire day marveling at that number.  That's almost double from our first retrieval!  Of the 18 (I learned this morning), 17 were mature and were fertilized using ICSI.  Today, 14 showed signs of fertilization.

Our next update won't be until Sunday, when they will call and schedule our Tuesday transfer.  I am so, so pleased to have 14 little embryos ...but I have to admit, I'm still nervous that none of them will make it to Day 5.  Last time, we transferred two at Day 3, and at Day 5, only 1 was ready to freeze.  It wasn't until months later that we learned that 3 more had caught up and that we were able to freeze those on Day 6.  Since that pregnancy ended in miscarriage, I have always wondered if those two embryos would have made it to Day 5, especially since that skews our blastocyst statistics.  Do we consider it a 60% survival rate, or 40%?  Or, just 10% since only 1 embryo was actually on track on Day 5?

I know, I know.  I am totally over-analyzing it.  I need to remember to breathe, and to keep myself hopeful.  I just really, really, really want this to be THE ONE.  I don't know how many more IVF's I have in me.

(On that note, we got a letter officially denying us the additional insurance coverage we applied for in May.  I wasn't surprised, but Mo was.  They denied me for infertility coverage because....wait for this....I have a history of infertility.  All of this in a supposedly "IVF-mandated" state.  Gotta love the loopholes the politicians make for themselves!)

Nothing left for me to do but wait...and analyze...and Google.  Come on, Tuesday!!!!!

Neutral

I painted the nursery today.

Some of you long-term readers may recall that I painted that room just last summer, in an attempt to reclaim the space as my own.  And while I had the most grandiose ideas of actually using it, the room in fact became a dump-all for all the crap I just didn't know what else to do with.

Around Christmas, I began storing clothes and getting dressed in there in the mornings in an effort to avoid waking Mo (I leave much earlier than he does during the school year).  So, in addition to being crammed full of papers and books and non-working computer parts, I now added big piles of shoes and sweaters and dress pants to the mix.

Beyond that, the door remained closed.  Those baby-blue walls were just too painful a reminder of what I had hoped the room would become.

Today I gave both the room and myself a fresh start. I've now got nice, bright neutral walls that lend themselves to whatever use I may find for that room in the future.  Whether that's as a nursery, a guest room, or just a continued catch-all remains to be seen -- and I'm okay with that.

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I'm kind of hanging in neutral in regards to this cycle as well.  I'm excited to be moving through the process, and I hope that it turns out the way we want it to in the end.  At the same time, I'm a little bit cautious, too.  I KNOW, all too well, the many things that could still go wrong.  I KNOW that there are no guarantees.

What's different this time is that I have no back-up plan.  Before, I always knew exactly what I would do if we had a negative beta.  I knew what the next step was.  I knew where we were headed.

Now I have no clue what I will do if this doesn't work.  Or, for that matter, if it does.  I really AM just taking everything one step at a time, trying not to allow myself to slip too far into either despair or elation.  Staying in neutral, if you will.

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Mo has been talking constantly of this next year, saying "we're going to have a child" and "when we have a child."   I appreciate his positivity, and I know that he believes that speaking it will somehow help make it true.    And I'm trying not to rain on his parade with too many realistic reminders of what might happen.  But I just can't make myself say, even jokingly, "WHEN I get pregnant," or even "when we have a baby."  Everything is prefaced with an "if" or a "maybe" -- perhaps my effort to show the universe how truly neutral I am, in hopes that she doesn't feel like pulling the rug out from under me this time.

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So that's where I am today.  Neither here, nor there.  Not up, not down.  Just in the moment, waiting to figure out which direction this is going to take.  Hoping for the upswing, but prepared to downshift just the same.  (Okay, have I totally overdone the metaphor now?)  And totally wishing I could fast-forward two and half weeks from now, to that place where answers lie.

Purgatory

Out of the blue, Mo asked me the other night: "What's purgatory?"

Apparently, a friend of his on F.B. had posted a status asking people's opinion on it.  I briefly explained the concept to Mo, and we joked about it being like being the waterboy.  You know, not being good enough to make the team, but not being bad enough to be in the band.  (I know, I know, that's terrible.  And, for the record, Mo played football AND was in the band, so we are both very aware of how wonderful it actually is, and how much can be gained from playing an instrument.)

Anyway, as I was writing yesterday's blog post, I was struck by how much our life right now feels like purgatory.  We're not in hell -- not by a long-shot.  Infertility bites, for sure.  But, as heartbreaking as it is, it's nowhere near as hellish as the life we left behind.  We're far enough from our losses that, while they still sting, they don't knock me over and take the breath out of me anymore.

Our lives, right now, are good.  They are happy.  WE are happy.

But it's not heaven.  We're still incomplete.  We are still missing that unencumbered joy, that peace, that satisfaction and feeling that this, THIS, is what we've been searching for.  Like I imagine it must be in purgatory, we can see this happiness on the horizon, just out of reach.  We believe that we can achieve it in time, and so we endure whatever is necessary to get to that place.

I can't help but wonder, though:  how much longer will we have to wait?

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All metaphors aside, the concept of Purgatory greatly interests me.  Any long-term readers will know that I am decidedly un-religious.  I didn't grow up in a church, although we went infrequently.  As a young adult I studied the Bible and became very "churchy" for a long time.  Still, I feel as though my knowledge on the subject is definitely lacking.   I come from a Protestant background, and Purgatory is not something that we embrace.  I do know, however, that I have several Catholic and Jewish readers who could give me some insight into this whole idea.  So, please, chime in below.  What are your thoughts on Purgatory?  What do you think happens when we die?  Is this life just a preparation for what's to come, or do we make our own Heaven and Hell here on earth?

Why Me? Why NOT Me?

Those two little phrases have been dancing in my brain for days.

So similar, and yet so different.

For years, I was trapped in the "why me's" of infertility.  Why did it have to be so hard?  Why was it taking so long?  Why had I been chosen to carry this particular burden?

Of course, those thoughts were often coupled with the "why not me's" that came with every glimpse of a rounded belly, every pregnancy announcement, every baby shower.  Every trip to the store/mall/movies/you name it became a source of comparison:  why did they (seemingly) have it all?  Why NOT me?

Then came loss.  And the "why me's" ratcheted up from a whimper to a wail.  Why did I have to go through so much, to be given a glimpse of happiness, and then to have it snatched away?  It was so unfair.

Another loss brought even more in the same vein.  About 5% of women will suffer two miscarriages in a row. Why did I have to fall into that statistic?  Why me?

I am trying, with this cycle, to break myself of the why me syndrome.  It's hard.  After nearly 10 years of (not so) patiently waiting my turn, its decidedly out of character for me to stop feeling sorry for myself.  But, I am making the effort, if it is somewhat contrived at this point.

Every time I start to "why me?" about IVF, and infertility, and recurrent miscarriage, I am trying to stop myself.  To remind myself that somehow, someday, this will all be resolved.  It may not be the way I imagined it, but this rollercoaster WILL eventually end.

And who's to say it won't end happily?  Why NOT me?  Why should I NOT be within that 60-70% of women who carry their third pregnancy to term?  Why should I NOT fall within the 62% of successful live births that my clinic boasts each year?

There ARE happy endings out there. I read about many of them here.  I see others all around me.  And so this time, though the words are the same, the tune I'm singing is drastically different: Why NOT me?

One Blood Draw? That Will Be $741, Please.

You read that right.

Today I paid $741 to have my blood drawn at my local Lab.corp.   I have to laugh, lest I cry.  Actually, I did both.  At the same time.

The past-due bill was another, timely, reminder of the second Pregnancy Gone Horribly Wrong.  Remember how we were uninsured Way Back When?  My balance is a reflection of those E2/P4/Beta blood draws taken over a year ago.  Those bills, along with a few others of the $7000 D&C, are  were lagging in collections while we make payments (and try to save for another IVF).  I have priorities, people, and while I believe in paying your medical bills, I also don't believe in overcharging patients for medically necessary procedures.  So, I haven't been in a huge hurry to pay anyone off.  The problem was that LC refused to run any additional bloodwork for me until my balance was paid in full.

And since I needed bloodwork today, well, they got paid.  Not with any particular relish, mind you -- but money is money and I'm sure they could care less about how grudgingly I gave it to them.

The good news is that now we DO have insurance, and they will be billed for all my bloodwork henceforth.  I have no idea if they'll actually cover it (please, please, please do), but in the meantime it saves us several hundred dollars in upfront costs.  (Remember, my local fertility clinic refuses to bill my insurance at all -- even for covered procedures -- and each blood draw costs $85 a piece.)

Other than that, things are progressing as expected.  AF arrived right on schedule and the clinic in Dallas should be calling me tomorrow with my E2 results and my actual dates to start stims.  I'll be doing 2-3 monitoring appointments at the local clinic (grrrr) next week, then it's back to Dallas for our final appointments, retrieval, and transfer.  

I can hardly believe it -- but we're about 3 weeks away from the end of this cycle.  Here's hoping there's some light at the end of the tunnel!

Fear

Maybe it's the Lupron talking, but today I can't stop the negative thoughts from playing a continuous loop in my head.  I am trying, trying, trying to remain positive, hopeful, and upbeat about this cycle.  But, in the back of my mind, hidden under all the "This is GOING to work"s are the fears:

*  What if it doesn't?
* What if we don't get enough eggs?
* What if they stop growing?
* What if we don't make it to blast?
* What if we have nothing to freeze?
* What if we spend all this money -- and get a BFN?

And the most haunting of all:

* What if it works, just to lose it again?

I know that I am doing all that I can, everything possible in my power, to make this work.  There is just so much I CAN'T control -- and I hate that part of it.  I can do everything right, and it still might not take.  I can eat right, exercise, eliminate caffeine, take all my meds, gamble all our money -- and still walk into that cold room and hear the worst.

I know that, no matter what happens, I will survive.  The past ten years have taught me that I can survive almost anything.  The thing is -- I'm TIRED of just surviving.  I'm tired of feeling that heavy ache in my chest, of having these dark, negative thoughts swirling in my head.  I'm tired of infertility, and all the baggage that comes with it.  I'm tired of trying to find the good in a terrible situation.

I'm tired of being on this side of things, and my biggest fear of all is that I always will be.

18 Months

I was looking over my blog today, and noticed something disturbing? sad? surprising? All three, really.  It's been 18 months exactly today since I lost my first precious baby -- the one I really thought I'd be bringing home after all those years of disappointment.

In some ways it feels like it has been so much longer than just a year and a half.  So much has changed....though superficially it may seem like we are still stuck in the same place (childless, infertile, gambling everything we've got on IVF) -- we are so not.  My life today resembles nothing of my life then.

That day was a catalyst for me.  It broke me, in a way that nothing that I've endured up until then could.  It took several months for me to emerge enough from the blackness to take any sort of action, but that day was the beginning of our new life.

I've been toying with the idea of starting a new blog.  I know most women do that once their infertility journey is over, and mine is far from it.  But it does seem as though this blog doesn't fit the way it used to.  Part of it is my fault -- in the year-long break we took after our second loss, I stopped commenting.  I was still reading (mostly on my smartphone), but its so much harder to comment using that.  And so it should not surprise me that my own comments have dropped off, in direct correlation with my posting.

But its more than that.  My life -- as recorded in all its deliberately vague glory -- has changed so drastically from a year and a half ago.  Mo is a different person, I am a different person.  And while I don't want to lose any of my past (as it has contributed significantly to my present), it also bothers me to look back and see reminders of where we came from.

Those were dark days, darker than many people will ever realize.  I never, ever, ever want to relive them.  It's hard to even revisit them (as I've been doing a significant amount of navel-gazing and archive-reading lately) -- knowing, as I do, the subtext of all those posts, all the things I couldn't write then -- and yet will never be able to erase completely from my memories.  It's funny how re-reading those posts can take me back so easily, and stir up emotions that I would rather keep locked away.

I've often said over the years that you can really never know a marriage unless you're in it.  And that was so very true for so many years -- Mo and I put on the perfect facade.  You would never believe how many women over the years have told me how lucky I am, how wonderful and funny and smart and sweet and genuinely GOOD my husband is.  And all of that is true.  But they never saw the darker side of our life, the raw emotions, the fury, the helplessness, all the dirty, ugly things that no one wants to talk about.

Ironically, that quote is still true today.  You can't know how much Mo has grown, changed, back into the man I married over the past year.  It's been a bumpy ride, for sure, but he is so different -- and thus WE are so different -- I can't even explain it.  And no one will ever be able to see it the way I can, because they aren't in our marriage, and never have been.

This summer marks ten years since Mo and I began dating.  In those ten years we've endured so much more than I ever thought possible.  I've seen every side of Mo that there is, and he's seen all sides of me.  That's the beauty of marriage -- it gives you a safe place to be your very worst self, and also your very best.  I read a line many years ago that has stuck with me.  I think it was from Scarlett, the sequel to Gone With the Wind, though Google fails me in this regard.  Anyway, a philosopher was quoted there as saying something along the lines of  "No woman can ever be considered truly beautiful, unless she is also sometimes truly ugly."    And, for me, that's been my life, my marriage: sometimes brutally ugly, but also sometimes breathtakingly beautiful.

I am grateful today to be exactly where I am, though I would never have chosen the path that brought me here.  And I hope that, in time, I can say the same thing about infertility as I have about marriage -- it's been a long, arduous, and bumpy road -- but in the end, it was all worth it.

Kickoff Time

This week we officially kicked off IVF#2.  It feels weird to call it that, even though it's technically accurate, because our FET was, in my mind anyway, our second REAL try at having a baby.  So I feel as if this should be considered our third cycle, although it's technically only our 2nd fresh transfer.

Anyway, we returned to Dal.las this weekend for our second appointment with Dr. Down-to-Earth.  We arrived on the 3rd, so that we could enjoy the 4th before our visit on the 5th.  We stayed near downtown, and ventured into the We.st En.d for dinner.  Yum!!!  For the actual holiday we went to Fai.r Par.k and enjoyed the free museums, aquariums, and fireworks show.

As we watched the brightly-colored explosions overhead that night, I couldn't help but become a bit reflective.  This was the 10th 4th of July that Mo and I have spent together, always in a different place, and yet always doing the same thing.  How I hoped/prayed/wished upon a shooting star that this was the LAST 4th of July that we will celebrate as a family of two.

The appointment on Tuesday went exceptionally well.  Mo thought it was interesting that we had to do a mock transfer, until I reminded him that our previous RE had seen my ute enough times (with all of our IUI's and monitoring appointments) that a mock really wasn't necessary.  Everything looked quiet, and we were cleared to move ahead.  We did some injection teaching, as this time we will be doing an intramuscular HCG shot (as opposed to Ovidrel) for trigger as well as progesterone in oil (POI) shots instead of the suppositories.  I am very much NOT looking forward to those!!!!  Mo also submitted to yet another SA -- but this time we were THRILLED with the results.  After all the lifestyle changes Mo has made during the past year, it was nice to see the results.  His counts more than TRIPLED from our last IVF attempt (post wash they increased even more)....and everything except morphology came back NORMAL.  This has never, ever, ever happened before.  Mo has had about 10 SA's over the years (when you include our IUI's and IVF), and we have never had such good results.  We both are feeling very confident that this bodes well for our success this time.

 So far, so good.  Let's just hope things continue to go our way!