The 3T!

In my year of treatment with Dr. C, Dr. K and Dr. Awesome, I could never ever imagine what it might feel like to be pregnant. We were trying everything under the sun to start our family, but I couldn’t picture it actually happening. Now that I am here…..at 28 weeks and in the third trimester (!!!)…..there seriously are no words…..oh, my gosh…..I am so lucky and so grateful for this miracle I’m experiencing and for these babies who hubs and I love so very very very much.

I am thinking of all of my bloggie friends who are still in the trenches and hoping so very hard that the end to your suffering and the answer to your dreams is just around the corner. Please lord!

As you all know, I’m not much of  a pic poster. But I’m including a smattering of images from the past six months—proof that this is really happening. Because it’s seriously on the verge of incomprehensible how incredibly lucky and blessed we are. Apologies for the fuzz-tastic quality, these were taken on my phone. I pray with my whole heart and every cell in my being that they continue to grow big, healthy and strong and that we meet these babies when the time is right! Grow, babies, grow! We love you.

One perfect gestational sac. My heart practically burst with love. Thank you, Dr. Awesome!!!

Suddenly two sacs! Freaked out, thanked the lord, flew to Oregon for a long-planned vaca with hubs.

Finished the day we found out about Baby A and Baby B on a beach together in beautiful Oregon.

12-ish weeks. About to go on an EZ jog.

22-ish weeks.

25-ish weeks.

28 weeks. Yeah, I pretty much live in lululemon Groove pants apres work.

We hung stockings for sweet Baby A and Baby B this Christmas. This is my iPhone background. 🙂 We love you so so so so much sweet babies!!!

I didn’t run my 10th marathon on 10-10-10

And I couldn’t be happier about it. 🙂

Yesterday, on the awesome date of 10-10-10, 45,000 runners woke up at the crack of dawn and raced 26.2 miles in the Chicago Marathon. I watched the elite athletes race on TV. Even if you are not into running, if you want to see the most inspiring, chills-inducing finish EVER, please watch this AWESOME video that shows the last mile or so of the men’s race (they run so fast it’s only a few minutes long). I was literally yelping so loudly from the living room that hubs had to come in to see what all of the racket was about. I got to meet Sammy Wanjiru last year for work—he’s the guy in red—and I heart him!! (Weird coincidence, the day I interviewed him was also the day I popped my first-ever Clomid pill.)

For the past 15 months I have been so careful about not over-extending my body and that has meant no racing and no long distance runs. (Except for a race over Memorial Day weekend, right after I found out IUI/injects 1.0 was a bust and I was on bench month because of a cyst.) This has honestly been pretty tough for me because I guess you could say I have always fallen back on races as life-preservers to get me through hard spots. I signed up for my very first marathon when I was a few months out of college….hubs was working insane 100+ hour weeks in his i-banking job in NYC and I was feeling lonely and lost in a new city. Answer: Find a goal, connect with the running community, dedicate myself to training and feel good about myself during a rough time. (It worked!)

Of course I have done plenty of races just for the fun of it, but I have repeated that recipe throughout my life. When we moved to Chicago three major things happened within the span of one month….we were plopped into a new city, I started a new job, and we got married. Whew! My answer to the stress: train for and run the Chicago Marathon, of course!

During infertility treatment, training would’ve been a great coping mechanism for the hormones and stress I was putting myself through. Based on my hormone levels—and the fact that I was not underweight or low on body fat or anything like that—neither Dr. C, nor Dr. K, nor Dr. Awesome said running caused my anovulation (that may forever be a mystery), but they all agreed I should relax on it during treatment. Running was exactly the opposite of what my body (physically) needed. And we wanted a baby so very very very badly that there was NO QUESTION I would chill the heck out and let my body rest up.

So I stopped training for stuff cold turkey. And as for plain old exercise, I stopped running hard, and long, and I ran less often.

Over the past year I have fielded a lot of questions from coworkers and friends about what race I’m gearing up for next. When a big part of your identity is as an active, sporty, race-running person, I guess that’s what happens. It would hurt my heart every time I’d give my “Actually, I’m taking some time off and running for fun for the joy of running!” response.

It was the truth, but still.

I told my bosses we are pregnant on Thursday morning (!!!) and gave them the green light to tell people at work (I am much too shy for that!). So the news slowly trickled around most of the office by the end of the week.

I think it’s pretty awesome that I was given the gift of feeling comfortable enough to tell people right before the marathon.

Now when someone asks me, “Did you race this weekend?” I can say, “Nope. I am pregnant!” I am so lucky and so very very grateful to be where I am today.

It’s the same old song

Every morning, en route to my office, my bus drives right by Grant Park, a beautiful lakefront park in downtown Chicago. Hubs and I will be there baking under the steamy August sun this Sunday, as we are every first weekend in August, listening to our fave bands and discovering new ones at Lollapalooza.

This weekend is also the one-year anniversary of the first home pregnancy test I ever took. (I’ve only taken four since then, all because Clinic #1 required them.) It had been weeks and weeks since I’d been off birth control and while I was 90% sure I hadn’t ovulated and wasn’t pregnant (I’ve never ever ever had a symptom, remember?), I wanted to make absolutely sure before indulging in some beers at the the concert. I remember standing in my bathroom early that Saturday morning, hopping from one foot to the other, waiting to see. UP popped the control line, in a flash. And of course, that was all there was. One lonely line. Hubs gave me a hug, then I took a walk around my neighborhood and thought and thought about my next steps. I knew something was wrong.

I was fine afterwards, it wasn’t a shock or anything. But late that night, after a couple of beers were in my system, tears began rolling down my cheeks while hubs and I watched the Fleet Foxes play an aftershow at a bar. It was this endless well of emotion that I didn’t even know was inside me, and I was tapping it for the very first time.

I wish I could go back in time and give that woman a hug. She had NO idea what was in store for her and how tough her year would be. Provera. TSH test. Referred to RE. Consult with Dr. C. The Clomid bust months. The crazy-thin lining. The HSG. Second consult with Dr. C. The cysts. Consult with Dr. K. The hours and hours and hours of Googling.  The bench months. The early morning monitoring appointments. The blood draws. The canceled cycles. The injectables. The failed IUI. Consult with Dr. A. The second failed IUI. The third IUI. The jealousy. The fear. The anger. The regret. The frustration. The guilt. The shame. The heart-crushing longing to see two lines. So many tears.

And now I can’t help but wonder, as I look forward to my weekend at Lolla….do I need a hug now? The truth is, I STILL have idea what’s in store for me. Will I ever get to move forward, and leave this purgatory?

Let’s make a deal

The stakes are higher this go-round. No, not just because of my inevitable post-2ww cyst and bench time, or the emotional trauma and inconvenience of having to go through another three weeks of injections/monitoring/etc, or the impending holy-sh*tness of IVF.

You see, back in June, hubs and I compromised that we would go through one more cycle with Dr. K at clinic #1. (I really wanted to jump ship and go to Dr. Awesome a clinic #2 right away.) If it didn’t work, we’d head to Dr. A for our third and final injects/IUI cycle. Somewhere in the middle of the June injections, I think it was after my first monitoring appointment, I made a deal with hubs. If we got pregnant this cycle, I would buy him all of his beers* for the next 12 months. As the champion of Dr. K and her Luveris/slow & steady/no stepping-up meds protocol, I decided that he would deserve some HUGE PROPS if this actually worked. So. Yes. A full year of beer, on me. If, and only if, Dr. K’s plan worked.

Ever since then it’s kind of been a joke that it would be really really really really really awesome for him if we were to get pregnant this cycle. Not only would it be, you know, the happiest and most relieving thing EVER, it would also mean he’d be drinking on the house for the next year. (Picture a pregnant lady buying her husband’s beer at a bar, the liquor store, at dinner….whew, we’d get some raised eyebrows! I would revel in them!)

So you can see this is a very important 2ww for us, my friends! The only problems: I don’t know if 1) I had a good eggie because of my fracked up E2 level on trigger day, 2) if I even ovulated, and 3) I haven’t had single DANG SYMPTOM suggesting Dr. K’s protocol worked. (I feel just like I did in my May 2ww….and we know how that ended.) But if I were suddenly to develop tingly nipples/aching breasts/metallic taste/twitching uterus/bloating/cramps/nausea/sensitivity to smell/WHATEVER in the next five days….I would be the happiest person on Earth. And I would love nothing more than to start saving my pennies for hubs’s beers.

*In case you were curious, hubs isn’t a big drinker. He just enjoys the occasional unwind-after-a-long-day beer or football game beer or dinner beer.

Googled out

Hi bloggies. I hope everyone had a great July 4th weekend! I spent Saturday working on some big freelance deadlines and also fit in some extensive Googling and message-boarding on my low-estrogen situation. Hubs Googled and found some cool studies that suggest the link between E2 and number of mature follies is not as important as I thought. Of course, I also found some studies that suggested otherwise. You can drive yourself NUTSO with Google Scholar, my friends! And don’t even get me started on message boards…oof, lots of scary/wrong/stupid information floating around out there.

I wish

I wish I didn’t know my estrogen number.

I wish I didn’t believe this cycle was doomed before I even IUIed.

I wish that on top of IF, my body didn’t respond like a freak of nature to the meds.

I wish I had a few good eggs after my month on the bench, my two weeks of injections and my six monitoring appointments.

I wish I wasn’t scared to death that I don’t even have one in the bunch.

I wish I didn’t feel like I’ve utterly let hubs down. Again.

I wish I were the patient who didn’t have an “unusual” response.

I wish my big follies held healthy eggs like they’re supposed to.

I wish I hadn’t gone from feeling 80% filled with hope to 99% not filled with hope.

I wish this chapter of my life would be over.

I wish I could embrace any of the, “you never know/stranger things have happened/it only takes one/maybe there IS an egg in there” mantras floating all around me.

I wish I could think about something else.

I wish I could forgive my body for fracking up another cycle.

I wish a good night of sleep had made me feel stronger, instead of weaker.

I wish I could stop being so sad, scared, jealous, resentful, selfish, envious, angry, and afraid.

I wish I didn’t know my estrogen number.

Starring….LEFTIE!

Hello bloggies. I had an excellent monitoring appointment this morning. My lining is up to 7.0 and….wait for it….triple stripe. HUZZAH! I am slightly concerned that the u/s tech realizes I’m a crazy, emotional fool who will turn into a weeping puddle if my lining report is not good, and that she’s inflating my numbers or taking four or five measurements just to appease me. But, whatevs. It’s totally working, I’m appeased. 🙂

It turns out my left ovary is working some serious OT this cycle. That’s great and all, but….crapola….the same thing happened last time I cycled (a super active left ovary with one to two viable contenders and a ton of little guys bringing up the rear). I’d really love the 14.5er on rightie to catch up. I’m happy with my lining, I’m happy about my follies waking up, but I’m still finding it within me to worry my left side is my….bad side.

Rightie: 14.5, 10.5

Leftie: 16, 15.5, 14, 12, 12, 10.5, 10

E2: 236

LH: 0.5 (it’s kind of ironic how the more consectutive days I take my PURE LH INJECTABLE, the lower my LH number)

I am to stay the course. 75iu of Gonal-F every night and 37.5iu of Luveris every morning. Back on Friday for CD17 monitoring. That’ll be 15 days of stims, folks. I’m going for a record in blog-land!

I swear there is other interesting stuff going on in my life right now, but, let’s be honest, this is all I think/obsess/daydream/worry about. One story for you, before I pretend to care about work for the next five hours. Last night as I was swigging my water while taking my cocktail of nightly supps—three L-Arginines, a Vitamin E, a Pre-Natie, a baby aspirin, a fish oil—dressed in a cropped-ish tank top that exposed my bruised tummy and a baggy pair of drawstring khakis that hubs not-so-affectionately calls my “prison pants,” he came around the corner, paused to examine the visage of beauty in front of him, and finally remarked that I looked “bloated.” What I heard was, “fat.” [Blame it on the Luveris, the inject that not only gives me bruises and stings like a $&*#@ going in, but also lowers my LH and makes me crazy.] Well, he was right. It turns out I am bloated, and I’m glad I finally have some follies that prove it. I hit the gym extra hard this morning but I realize my bod is a bit of a lost cause at this point in the cycle. Just saying….it is a lesson in self-acceptance to look pregnant when the one thing you most definitely are NOT is pregnant.

It was nice knowing ya, Yoda Egg

CD10 monitoring this a.m. My lining went from 5mm to 3.6mm. My jaw sorta dropped in disbelief at this news, which inspired the tech to re-measure it. “4.1!” she exclaimed happily. Riiiiight.

How the frack does my lining go down by 1.4mm when I have the bruises and holes in my stomach from 15 injections to prove that I should be producing copious amounts of estrogen?

I’m worried that my 7.3mm lining was a complete fluke last cycle. I’m afraid that the tech mis-measured it and it was really much thinner. I’m scared that my lining problems are back. I don’t know you guys, this lining thing has me reeling a bit.

It’s like, just when I think I’ve got my body figured out (cysts, okay I can endure them; slow-growing follies, fine, I take a long time to stim), it throws something else at me. Seriously, what the heck body? Geeeeeez.

Then I made the VERY big mistake of texting my Mom an update. She texted back, “You should’ve cycled with clinic #2.” Thanks, Mom! That makes me feel awesome. (Also, I think she’s wrong. Dr. Awesome wanted to use the same dose of Gonal-F and no Luveris. I’m happy we’re giving the Luveris a chance. I don’t think the Luveris thins my lining. This is my body’s fault.)

I feel like going home and just crying under the covers for a couple hours and then taking a long walk to get myself together. But that’s not happening. Work is incredibly busy and stressful on Fridays and I’ll be here late. I’m hoping the nurse has some words of wisdom when I get my dosing update, but I can already see how that convo will go.

Me: “So, what’s up with my lining, why did it thin out?”

Nurse: “I know, we’re surprised, too! Sometimes that happens and no one knows why.”

Me: “I haven’t been bleeding, where does the lining go?”

Nurse: “Hmmm, good question. You’ll have to ask the doctor.”

Me: “Why am I not making enough estrogen to thicken my lining? Should I be on a higher dose of meds?”

Nurse: “I really have absolutely no idea how any of this works and I’m not allowed to comment or speculate or soothe you. My job is to draw blood. You’ll have to ask the doctor.”

Me: “Okay, can you have Dr. K call me back?”

Nurse: “Ohhh, sorry. She’s not on call today.”

The upside of all of this is that my follies are still too small to measure, except for one on rightie, who’s at 10.5mm. So here’s what I’m repeating to myself: Once they start growing and I’m making more estrogen, my lining will fluff up again. It’s much, much too early to freak out or be down. Things can only improve from here….

Giorno otto del ciclo

That post title? Cycle day 8, in Italian. Gotta keep everyone on their toes. Also, I already named a post CD8 and can’t bear to repeat last cycle’s meltdowns, especially the one on CD8. New cycle, new attitude.

Soooo, monitoring. Nothing to see here, folks! I have zero follies over 10mm, none big enough to measure. But it’s okay. I think some little guys will probably wake up and begin growing in a few days. My lining was 1.8mm at baseline and it’s up to 5mm. Which is, you know, AWESOME for a lining-challenged–girl like me. I think my lining is digging the Luveris.

We also got some great news yesterday. Hubs’s SA #2 with Dr. A’s preferred Kruger Test for morphology came back all good. He has some great looking swimmers. So if we can get to IUI land again this cycle, we know we have a shot.

My blood work with clinic #2/Dr. A is also rolling in and everything looks okay so far. TSH (the reason I was referred to an RE last August), is normal. AMH is normal. Dr. A noted some perhaps alarmingly high kidney- and liver-related hormone levels in previous rounds of blood work. So, even though he said it wouldn’t be related to my ferility troubles, he was a bit concerned and ran extra tests on secondary hormones that give a better picture of the health of those organs. Everything is normal. PHEW! Seriously, part of me was awaiting a call from Dr. A to the effect of, “You’re going into premature kidney failure, get to the ER immediately.” (I know, I’m nuts.)

Which begs the question, what the frack is wrong with me and why don’t I ovulate? I know the answer doesn’t matter….it simply is what it is. (Yeah, Yoda Egg is currently in the house.)

Ciao!

The compromise

This post is too long and all over the place (aren’t you dying to read it now? haha), but so are my thoughts so here goes….

We had a great consult with Dr. Awesome at the new clinic yesterday morning. The only downer: I went into the appointment with the mentality that Dr. A was/is our new RE. Apparently hubs missed the memo….for him, it was an exploratory meeting.  Dr. A is smart and mellow and aggressive and honest and chillaxed and positive. I’m hyper and type-A and a little gloom & doom and prone to freakouts and Dr. A’s qualities are an antidote to my crazy. I am ready for a fresh start and some more urgency with my treatment.

Hubs really likes Dr. A, too, but he (hubs) is being all academic and reasonable about the decision to switch doctors. He feels like my reasons for wanting to switch are “emotional and reactionary.” Is that possible? Ummm, yes. But geeeeez. I have been with clinic #1 for 9 months and spent 6 of them sidelined. I took Clomid three times even though it wreaked such havoc on my lining that I couldn’t have supported a pregnancy even if we’d gotten an eggie to meet up with a swimmer. The word surrogacy was uttered at a very premature stage! So. Yeah. I’m over them. And I have been for a long time.

Here’s what I like about Dr. A, aside from his demeanor that exudes confidence/mellowness.

• He does not automatically bench patients with cysts. He considers each one (size, number, whether or not they’re secreting E2) and then either 1) lets you cycle through it, 2) watches it with monitoring every 7 days so you can jump back in if it goes down, or 3) tries to get it to burst (and maybe even release an eggie if it’s a viable follie) with an HCG shot. For someone like me who is SO PRONE to cysts, this is a pretty huge deal. It would theoretically eliminate a lot of my bench time. (And my friendly cyst would NOT have benched me this month. Sigh. Another lost month.)

• He does not cancel injection cycles for too many follies. He lets the patient decide when the multiples risk is too high. He might strongly recommend canceling, but ultimately it’s up to the patient.

• He gives patients the option of converting to IVF if they produce too many follies during injects.

• While he does not employ it often, he thinks I’m a good candidate for a “step up” protocol…which basically means he’s open to tweaking the injects dose to a higher level if the response isn’t great at a lower level. (Clinic #1, as a rule, only lowers the dose. To me that suggests cycles could be a bust, like when I was on too low a dose of Clomid?)

• He is the only doctor at the clinic, which means that he is ALWAYS the one making the decisions about treatment. (It bothers me that Dr. K is “my” RE at clinic #1, but two other docs are often making the decisions when she’s teaching or not on call.)

• He has the best IVF success rates in town.

Aside from those differences, his thoughts about my protocol are pretty similar to clinic #1. He’d stick with the Gonal-F, starting with a lower dose and potentially building over the course of stims. He’s not a big fan of the Luveris, and doesn’t think it’s a big deal that I have trace amounts of LH. So he’d probably nix that part of the stimming. He also wants to repeat hubs’s sperm analysis, because he didn’t love the morphology number from the one back in October. He has a test methodology he likes better than the one clinic #1 used, which will shed more light on that subject. (I really believe it will be fine.) If it turns out morphology is an issue, he’d recommend we move onto IVF sooner rather than later.

Whew! Right?

So, over dinner last night, we hashed out our course of action. We will move forward with all of the testing Dr. A has suggested. (A new SA for hubs, bloodwork for me, including a metabolic panel, androgens, AMH and re-testing my TSH.) While all of those tests are being run and the results come back and Dr. A tweaks our protocol, we will do one more IUI with Dr. K. Hubs feels like she has learned a lot about my body and we should give it one more shot. He reminds me that both of us were sick on IUI-day last time, and maybe this one will go better. Even Dr. A concedes that my last injects cycle “looked great,” so it’s not like we’re wasting a chance by sticking with clinic #1. Plus, hubs feels like it’ll be easier on me to go to them this month…because I know the monitoring drill, I know the nurses, etc etc. And if it doesn’t work, I can jump over to Dr. A on CD3 and potentially not have to be benched as long next cycle since he will manage my cyst differently.

As you all know, I’m ready to pull the plug with clinic #1 rightthisverysecond, but I have been convinced that hubs does have valid points. Plus, it could take a little while for hubs’s SA results to come back and I’d like to move into the next cycle ASAP. It might take a couple more weeks to get the ball rolling at clinic #2. When you’ve been on the bench as much as I have, waiting a couple more weeks is just….ouch.

What do you think? Would you be frustrated that we’re not doing IUI #2 with Dr. A? Or do you see the benefits of sticking with Dr. K for one more go-round? And, isn’t it fun how my TTC life is finally heating up a little? 🙂