Fertilization Reportation!

Drum roll!

37 was the final egg count; we received 19 of those as primary couple in a split cycle.

17 were mature

10 fertilized normally

All are snuggled up in the incubator and the embryologist is planning on a 5 day transfer as of now!!! That would put our transfer date on Monday, the Fourth of July! We have never made it to a 5DT, so please pray that our embabies grow!

Don't get me wrong because this is the furthest we have ever come...but is 10 our of 17 normal?? I just figured that since they did ICSI on every egg that we would have a few more. I am not being greedy, I just know all too well that the number can dwindle drastically by the time we get to the transfer.  We haven't spoken to the embryologist directly, but we kind of figured that it was Andy's sperm. Who knows. We'll see!

All I know is that we are extremely grateful and excited to be at this point. We have 10 embabies y'all! I have continued taking estrogen three times/day, and we started progesterone-in-oil (PIO) injections yesterday. So far my butt is surviving, but I have a feeling that it will start bruising and lumping up soon. Andy gives a good injection though...I can barely feel it! We'll be heading down to Charleston tomorrow to get away from work stress and wait everything out.

We have always done a 3 day transfer which normally puts the embryo in the 8-cell range. Our embryos have always looked like this:

 

After 5 days, they have developed further into a blastocyst, which looks like this:

This will start to hatch towards day 6, and the ICM will develop into the fetus, and the TE will form the placenta.

Pretty cool, huh? 

I'm a dork.

Maybe I need to get out of oncology nursing and become an infertility nurse. Hmmmm.

Thank you all for the sweet comments and prayers. Keep them coming! :)

Party in the Petri Dish!

Thirty Six. THIRTY SIX eggs retrieved from Cindy Lou Who this morning...unbelievable! Since we are splitting the cycle, we get eighteen...but still! This is more than we could have ever asked for.

I had to steal the title of this post from a comment that my blog friend Jenicini left for me the other day...cracked me up! She has been a huge support for a while now, and even had success with her donor egg cycle last year. Cutest little boy ever! She even has an American Bulldog just like Andy and I do!

They fertilized them all this morning via ICSI. Andy drove down to Charleston at the crack of butt to give them some babymaker. Thank goodness this wasn't another wasted three hour trip. The embryologist will call me tomorrow morning to let us know how many fertilized normally! So flippin' excited!

As far as we know, our donor is resting and did well during and after the procedure. They will be monitoring her closely for OHSS. Bless her heart. She is our angel!

Please cross everything you can cross and storm the Heavens for us in hopes that our 18 little embabies make it through the next few days.

It has to be our time. HAS to.

Get In Mah Belly

After 7,021,934,579,872 injections, I thought that I would keep it classy and share with you all the experience of injecting my last Lupron.

 I hope!!!

It's Triggertime Again!

It's confirmed! Cindy Lou Who's retrieval will be on Wednesday! She has so many follies that they had to put her on low dose HCG yesterday to calm her estrogen down. I'm not sure how that works, but all I know is that we don't want to put the poor girl in the hospital with hyperstimulation. She was supposed to do her HCG trigger tonight which will prep her eggs for the retrieval. My last Lupron injection will be tomorrow morning.

Andy has to be in Charleston by 8:45 a.m. Wednesday to work his magic. Please let the swimmers cooperate. Luckily we have a batch that has been in storage for a couple of years as an emergency backup. Never hurts to be prepared! We pray that this trip will be worthwhile, for we all know what happened the last time he drove down there. What a waste!

They will call me Wednesday after her retrieval to tell me how many eggs we have, and then again on Thursday to let me know how many have actually fertilized.

Eeek!

Thank you all so very much for your love and support. I don't think I could have gone through the last two years of treatment without this blog. Talk about a support group!

We are packing for Charleston and getting the house straightened up so that I don't have to worry about it while on bed rest next week. I will be in touch as soon as I have more news!!! :)

She's a Trooper!

This is how many shots I've given to myself since we started the donor process in February...almost three sharps containers full. My poor belly! Make it go away!

However, this week will open up a whole new realm of target practice. I'll get to stop the Lupron injections, but then I add the PIO shots twice daily on retrieval day. I'll be busting out the heating pads for those daddies to prevent painful lumps in my butt! Andy gets to give me those...awesome! I will have to administer those until 9 weeks of pregnancy if this cycle is successful.

Did I mention that there is a nationwide Lupron shortage?? I ran out mid-cycle and almost had a mini-meltdown. Luckily my nurse found a compounding pharmacy in NJ that gladly made some for me. Talk about lucky. What in the world would they have done? Only me!

Our update today was nothing less than grand...they measured around 35 follies (ouch) and her retrieval has been pushed back to Wednesday to allow for optimal maturation of her eggs. So exciting! Our nurse described her as a "trooper". I would have to agree. I remember my ovaries feeling like water balloons when I only had 13 measurable follies. Poor thing!

It's hard not to think about a negative outcome after all that we have been through. Yes they are telling us 35 follies, but what if only, say, 12 are mature? Then we have to split them with another couple which gives us 6. Then we have to worry about any of them fertilizing normally because Andy's sperm is hit-or-miss. Lots of pressure here! BUT, we will continue to put it all in God's hands and hope for the best. I think that we've shown God that we want this more than anything!

Our donor will have another ultrasound tomorrow morning so we should get an update then as well. She should administer her HCG injection tomorrow night if she is to have a Wednesday retrieval.

Now I'm on the hunt for another sharps container...I guess that a milk jug will have to do. Please pray for us and for that poor girl's gonads...bless her soul for going through this for us. Such a selfless act!

She's a Brewin'!

Our donor started stimulating last weekend and we are starting to receive our ultrasound reports! According to our nurse, she is brewing a lot of follies down there! So many that they couldn't get an accurate count! They had to change her to a low dose stim this morning because they don't want to hyperstimulate her ovaries, which puts her at risk for OHSS. Our retrieval was set for Tuesday morning, but since they are going to slow the process a bit it may occur on Wednesday. She is having another ultrasound tomorrow morning and we will have a better idea by then!

Our nurse said that she feels like we made a very good match this time around. It's about time, haha! She said that with the number of follies she wouldn't be surprised if we had some snowbabies to set aside. We do have to remember that quality is better than quantity, but we are feeling pretty optimistic about this cycle! Woohoo!!!

If the retrieval occurs Wednesday, then that puts us at Saturday for a 3-day transfer, or Monday for a 5-day transfer. Happy 4th of July to us! We will head down to Charleston next Friday if everything goes as planned. I am taking off work the entire week after that so that I don't have to be whipped by the slave driver which will lessen my chances of this working. We've put too much into this to have it ruined by stress! I will be on bed rest for a few days, and then get to enjoy the company of my little sis visiting from Chicago along with my other sister and niece coming to visit!

Also, please pray for my best friend and her hubby who just had their first IUI perfomed...they have been trying for over 4 years. How often does an infertile couple have a BFF going through the same hell? It definitely helps to have someone who can honestly relate! Wishing her the best and hoping that we can raise our babies together!

I will be in touch. Hopefully this will be the last weekend we share as a couple...by next weekend I could be growing our family! Please pray!

Oh, ya know, this and that.

1. The fee stands. Nowhere in our contract does it state that we are supposed to pay it as a primary couple, but she said that it was effective this past January and we have to pay it. Whatever. Next time I am sitting face to face with my doctor I will give him a piece of my mind for taking advantage of vulnerable couples.

2. We did not lose an attempt with Shared Risk. They are charging no fees whatsoever to Attain, so this attempt will count as our first attempt. Thank God.

3. My period has finally started and is thriving. If I didn't know any better, I would swear I'm giving birth to a placenta.

4. I'm not sure if I am going to be mentally stable enough to care for a child if I actually get one. Infertility and treatments are going to send me to the frickin' insane asylum.

5. It's been almost a month and Andy hasn't completely finished the wood floors. I knew I should have hired someone to do it. I'm going to nut up.

5. That is all.

Crazy Hormonal Female...Vent Session

So, tell me how you would react to this phone call...

Jessica: Hello?

RE's office: Hey Jessica, this is ------. Just calling to let you know that since you are the primary couple in this cycle, you owe a fee of $500 that isn't covered by the Shared Risk Program. We need to get this taken care of today before your donor starts medications. 

Jessica: Um, fee? What fee? Nobody told me about an extra fee. I was told that with the Shared Risk program I would not have to pay anymore out of pocket except for my medications and ultrasounds. 

RE's office: Well, this is a fee that was instituted recently, so you wouldn't have known about it. The primary couple now has to pay a fee of $500 per cycle.

Jessica: Um. Okay?

Mind you, I'm in the middle of giving a patient medications and had to walk away to take this call because I thought it would be my nurse. I was completely caught off guard, so my only reflex was to hesitantly say okay, pull the credit card out, and pay the fee out of fear of being kicked out of this cycle if I didn't pay.

Seriously???

So, does this mean that they can just randomly call me and tell me that they have added another "fee" and I'm expected to pay it or be kicked out mid-cycle? Am I the only one that thinks that this was a complete lack of communication on their part and that we are being taken advantage of....again? How do you get around something like this? They have our balls in their hands and we have no choice but to pay it!

As soon as I got home today, I explained the situation to Andy and he went from cute to livid in about 30 seconds. He will be calling our doctor directly tomorrow and asking him why we didn't receive a letter or communication of some sort. I mean, who wants to dish out $500 unexpectedly? A little notice please! It wasn't even in our financial estimate that we received from the office in February. What really makes me mad is that I paid off a credit card LAST NIGHT thinking that I was done giving the fertility gods mine and my parent's life savings. Son of a biscuit eating bulldog.

To top it all off, I got home and received a statement in the mail that "insurance" was pending on our canceled cycle. I got to thinking, now why would they bill Shared Risk for a canceled cycle? After looking at our contract, it states that a cycle will count towards you if it is canceled AFTER egg retrieval. Andy will be grilling their butts about this tomorrow as well...we take it as that cycle counted against us even though we never went through with the transfer! We got absolutely nothing from that cycle but a bunch of wasted money! As a matter of fact, the primary couple had to pay out of pocket for our half of the cycle PLUS the office got our Attain money too! Even if we were paying out of pocket, we would have gotten our money back and the primary couple would have to strike a check for our half. I don't get it. If this is the case, we would almost have been better off paying out of pocket for 2 fresh cycles then giving Attain all of our money. Omg.

This is Jessica going from cute to livid in 30 seconds.

Now it's time to put the icing on the cake folks. I was supposed to start my period, um, Sunday. I'm supposed to go for my first ultrasound tomorrow. No, I'm not pregnant. However, this cycle will be delayed until I start my frickin' period. F'awesome.

I will blame the delay of the menstrual cycle on certain family and work issues over the last week stressing me out that I should probably not mention on here since most of them read my blog. Once again, you find out who your true friends and family are when going through tough times. And it doesn't help that someone I work with is the clone of Attila the Hun. That being said, the stress from my doctor's office and Shared Risk program is completely unnecessary and cruel. Why must they do this to me while I'm doped up on Lupron and hormones galore?

If we did lose that cycle, then I can only pray that this first real cycle gives us a damn litter and that I don't have to do anymore. Otherwise, I will only have one fresh attempt left and that will really stress us out. I will have more answers tomorrow after our office experiences the wrath of Andy.


God, please help me. Everything is always against us...do you just not want us to be parents?

Is this really my life?