When your body doesn't follow the rules

Well my body had other plans.. because good ole' aunt flow came a day earlier than my "mock up" calendar had projected. I sent in an email to my nurse to let her know that I started my cycle. She called me back to let me know that we will need to move some things around on my calendar and to check my patient portal later that afternoon for an updated calendar.

I started on my Estradiol patches and my daily aspirin on cycle day 3. Let the hormones begin!!!!!!!!  I will start out with just one patch every other day. I also was able to reduce my lupron injections to 5 units per day.
                                      

Man oh man are these headaches killer!!! And the lovely heart burn has come back. Not terrible but it comes and goes at least twice a day now.

I received my updated calendar and the only thing that changed was the days I needed to go in for blood draws. So for now everything is still right on target.


But let me tell you that keeping up with all of this and chasing a one year old is tough. Remembering all of the medicines was challenging the last cycle but it is way harder this go around. And my poor tummy has little bruises all over it from the injections :(


                                                                                   
I went in for my first blood draw on cycle day 8. Since I was here I dropped of the checks to pay for this FET to the business office. At the rate I am going I will forget to put them in the mail on time and then we'd be screwed.

The nurse called me that afternoon to let me know that my levels were 138. Last cycle my estrogen levels were at 109. They did not do a lining check this time, which I thought was weird but they are the experts not me. I was instructed to increase my patches to two a day starting on cycle day 11, to 3 a day on cycle day 13, and then to 4 a day on cycle day 15. I will go into the clinic for another blood draw and a lining check on cycle day 17.


On cycle day 14 I received a phone call from one of the nurses at CCRM. She called me because she did not have a good phone number for Johnny, even though we just updated all of our information. She needed to get permission and the OK that we are going to be doing an embryo transfer. Thought it was a little odd since he was with me at the one day work up appointment and signed off on all the papers. But whatever LOL.

I am trying to update as fast as possible but there is not always time LOL. So bare with me! I hope that you all have a great Christmas and New Years. I will check back in next year ;)

Starting the FET meds

So when our nurse gave us our "mock up" calendar she also gave us our estimated transfer date. Like before this date is just an estimate. As long as my body follows the schedule they have then this will be a set day but we wont know for sure just yet. 

I started on my 10 units of Lupron injections on 11/9. Lupron overstimulates the body's own production of the usual hormone exchange that cause follicle production and ovulation.

 I will continue the 10 units every day. I havent had to take any injections for a while so after the first one I instantly remember how bad it made my stomach burn and would turn red immediatly. The last time this medication made me have outrageous hot flashes and wicked headaches, and sure enough those lovely headaches were back. I didnt have those hot flashes like I did the last time. Which was definetly a good thing. 

That same day I received an email from a lady at the buisness office reminding me that we needed to get our payment in no later than 2 weeks before our scheduled transfer date. We had to make two seperate payments. One to CCRM for $2830.00 and one to the FLC (Fertility labs of Colorado) for $3516.00. 

I sent a check in email to my nurse just to make sure that I was doing all that I should be doing. We havent had much contact so I felt like I may not be doing something right. I got the response back and everything is right on target. I started on my second pack of birth control on November 11th and continued taking that until the 13th. Yep, had to get a whole new pack of birth control to take 3 pills out of it. Now I just continue my lupron injections and wait until my cycle comes.

Check in with CCRM and medication order

So I finally started my cycle on 10/19. I called into my nurse and let her know. She sent me the list of all medications that I needed to order for this go around along with our "mock up" calendar. She also called in my first pack of birth control to the pharmacy so that I could start on that on cycle day 3. I called around to the pharmacys that I used last time to check on the cost for all of the medications. I found out that this time I was able to use some of the generics for the medications so that was going to make the cost a little bit cheaper. Hey a little bit adds up to a lot in this case. I was able to find that one of the pharmacies I used the last time could get me all of the medications for $1467.53. They were able to submit some things to my insurance which was nice.

I continued on my birth control pack #1 and placed the order for all medications.

Since I get to work from home on Fridays I scheduled the appointmet for both Johnny and I to go have our communicable blood draw done on 11/3 as well as have my medications delivered this day since it needs a signature. Bentley and I went and had my blood drawn early in the morning so that we could make it back home for when the Fed Ex driver showed up with my box of goodies and Johnny went after work.

I recieved an email from our nurse on Monday 11/6 telling us that she was going to be leaving for maternity leave and would not be returning to the clinic. She introduced us to our new nurse through the email portal. Not like we could see her or meet her but hey at least we have her name and her extension. I guess that will do for now. Within the same email she let me know that our lab results from our communicables came back negative. This was a good thing. :) 

Starting round 2....

So eventhough we have our frozen embryos the doctor says its been too long and we have to redo the majority of all of the testing in order to do another round. We scheduled our one day work up for August 25th. I had to do another HSG test. This is where they insert a gas into your fallopian tubes to make sure they are open and do not have any blockage. I also got an ultrasound done to check on my resting follicle count. and blood flow. Anything greater than 8 follicles is a lot. The last time I had this test done I had 35 resting follicles on the right ovary and 20 resting follicles on the left. This time I had 32 on the left and 36 on the right. To say I am fertile is an understatement LOL.  Then the last test I had to get was the hysteroscopy, this is a test that shows the inside of your uterus and checks for polyps, scar tissue, or any abnormalities that would cause a reason for pregnancy not to be successful. Again because our insurance does not cover any fertility we paid $ 1436.00 for these tests.

We also met with our nurse to update all of our paperwork with new phone numbers, address, and emergency contacts. She gave me the list of blood work that I needed to get done. The majority of these could be done at an outside lab so that we could use our insurance. We talked about they time frame we wanted to shoot for the transfer. Since we had planned to take a cruise in September we wanted to wait until well after we got back. One other blood draw we both had to get done was our Communicable disease testing. We wanted to put this off for a little while just because they are only good for 6 months and we did not have an ideal date set for when we wanted to do our transfer. We got our cost outline from the business office and then on to our last appointment.

The last appointment we had was to talk with our doctor and talk about our 8 frozen embryos, the grade scale for each of them and how many we would like to transfer this time. Since we had sucess with just one embryo we are going to do the same for this time around. We were reminded that in order to prep for pregnancy alcohol and caffiene needed to be cut out. I would need to stop playing sports before I could start on any of the medications again. Now that I have finished with all the summer sports and coaching Nevaehs volleyball this would be just fine with me.

We had our cruise cancelled because of the hurricane in Florida. So we had to push it back a few weeks. We finally made it on the big boat in October just in time to celebrate our 7 year wedding anniversary. We had a great time on the ship but missed Nevaeh and Bentley so much. We couldnt wait to get back home to see them. Once we were back I had to wait until my next cycle came so that I could get in touch with my nurse and schedule for the remainder of our blood work, get the list of medications I was going to need, as well as talk about getting our "mock up" callendar for transfer.

It's so crazy to think that we are now going to be going through round 2 of this very stressful yet exciting time. Please keep us in your thoughts over the next few months. ;)

Catching Up

Wholly Guacamole.....… I noticed it’s been a while since I blogged anything. But life has been full of crazy lately.. Not complaining here at all because I love to be busy….. Well I left off with Mr. Bentley’s birth story. Wow that doesn’t seem that long ago but really it has been a whole year already. I was fortunate enough to take off 14 weeks to spend with my handsome. During that time Nevaeh was also out of school for the summer. We spent our days at the pool, Splash Park, lunch dates with our friends and most of all lots and lots of snuggling. J Bentley was two weeks old when took our first road trip to Pueblo for a friend of the family’s wedding. We took Bentley on his first camping trip when he was 2 months old and then had to rush back home to welcome little Miss Piper to our family. We made our annual trip to Glenwood Springs, played Mudd Volleyball for the March of Dimes, had a Luau to celebrate my 30th birthday, celebrated the birth of another friends little boy, and attended a friend’s wedding to finish out the summer. My grandpa came into town and was able to meet Bentley and take family pictures with us.

We were fortunate enough to have family and friends watch Bentley when it was time for me to go back to work. As hard as it was to go back I knew that he was in great hands. And plus I am not made to be a stay at home mom LOL.

So me being the one that thinks ahead all the time decided that the layout of our house wasn’t going to work with small children because it was so closed off. SO…. We decided that we would sell in the heat of the market again. I said that I am not moving again before but this time I REALLY mean it! Well at least for a long long while. We stayed in the same area so we didn’t have to switch Nevaeh schools. We love our new house and the open layout that it has. Oh and the best part is there are NO snakes!!!!! We moved just in time because Bentley started crawling at 6 months old. So having the open layout is so much better for us to keep our eye on a busy bee.

 Nevaeh decided to try out Volleyball. So we signed her up for a recreation league through the City of Aurora. Bentley had to have his first surgery on December 16th because he had a hypospadias. This was heartbreaking for me. I didn’t want my baby to be put under anesthesia. He did fine but this momma was very sad.

So since we had a gap of time between when we sold our house and when we could close on our new house we had to stay with my mom for a month. We celebrated Thanksgiving with the family and then got all moved into our new house just a few weeks before Christmas. We had Christmas dinner at our house and it was fun to watch Bentley open presents even though he was still kind of young to fully enjoy it.

After returning to work I quickly found out that I was not welcomed back like I thought I would and therefore it created a lot of problems with myself, coworkers, and manager. I thankfully found a new job in February of 2017. Bentley started at a new daycare a little after I started my new job. He loves his daycare and we couldn’t be happier.

In April of 2017 we celebrated Nevaeh’s 12th birthday with a spa themed birthday sleepover party. And Bentley’s first air plane ride to Tucson Arizona to see my great grandparents. It was a nice little get away we just wished Nevaeh would have come with us.

May means that our little boy was not so little anymore. We partied with all of our friends and family at the house to celebrate our Mr. ONEderful. I cannot believe that our little (well not really that little, weighing 9 pounds at birth) miracle baby is now a whole year old. I wish that I could stop time and he would stay little forever but that is just not possible. So now we are snuggling (only when he lets us) a 20 pound toddler when he is not running all over the house screaming “Dada”. We are so blessed to be his parents and love him beyond the moon. We think he likes us too, especially his sissy.

Now to ponder when we will decide to go through with another round of in vitro…… for now please send all your good vibes and sweet thoughts our way as we look in that direction.