Just To Be Sure…

(Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise continued)

… I didn’t sleep much on Saturday night and so we were up pretty early and had time to spare before we were getting ready to go to church.  We were lounging around and I couldn’t stop thinking about my beta test which was to be the next day.  I had one more home pregnancy test upstairs and for some reason I felt like I would be more at ease if I saw another negative this morning.  So I went back upstairs, peed on the stick, and waited.  This particular test was digital; the first digital I had ever taken.  It flashes a little sand timer/hourglass while you’re waiting.  When it changed from the hourglass to the words (it displays either “pregnant” or “not pregnant”), I realized that I hadn’t put my contacts in yet and so I had to bend down closely to read it.

When I bent down and looked  closely, it said “pregnant”.

Yep, pregnant.  It was 8:30a.m. on Sunday, October 3rd.  Honestly, the first thing that went through my mind was, “Crap, it can’t be right.”  I dug the box and instructions out of the trash like a raccoon and sat down on the floor.  I was searching for the possibility that it would malfunction… it was digital after all!  After a few minutes I realized that it might actually be correct.  I might actually be pregnant.

Not quite sure what to say or do, I stumbled back downstairs and sat down on the couch to watch tv with Lenny.  After only a few minutes I figured out my next move and I went back upstairs and dug out the NY Giants baby booties from my dresser that I had ordered two years ago.  I had been saving them to give to Lenny when we finally got pregnant (when I ordered them, I still didn’t realize how long they would stay in my underwear drawer).  I threw them in a gift bag and stumbled back downstairs.  Yes, by this time Lenny figured something was up.  I handed him the bag and almost shouted “I have a present for you”.

After opening the gift his first response was “you took another test?  It was positive?  Can I see it?”  We ran upstairs together and I showed him the test; we hugged and cried together.  It’s not the way that I had always dreamt of surprising him with this news, but it was perfect.  I had wondered through over 30 negative pregnancy tests and 2.5 years of trying to conceive what it would feel like to finally see a positive on the test…now I knew.

After church we stopped and bought a few more tests, just to be sure.  I got another positive, and so we were content until the beta the next day.  Knowing we were so far from being in the clear still it was another restless night, but a better restless:

I WAS PREGNANT!!

If you’re reading this – thank you!  But please don’t say anything on facebook until I do…

Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise (i.e. The 2ww)

(Part 2 of “Our Baby Transfer”)

…after about 45 minutes one of the nurses came over and told us that we were free to go whenever we were ready, just stop by to see her after we were changed.  I stayed 30 extra minutes, just in case.  But by that point I was STARVING and knew that it was in God’s hands.  I dressed and stopped by the nurse’s office.  She wrote my prescriptions for the drugs I was to continue and then gave me one last shot in my upper hip (fingers crossed that it’s the last).  I walked out of New Hope Clinic silently hoping that I wouldn’t be back any time soon.

I stopped and grabbed a bite to eat at the first place I saw and then boarded the subway, walked to Penn Station, and boarded the train “home”.  When I arrived back at the train station I hopped in Len’s car and drove the five minutes back to the house.  Too excited to rest too much I used the next 45 minutes to finish packing the last of my belongings.  Knowing that I needed to rest I laid down for a quick nap.  By a little after 5p.m. I was on the road home to Indiana.

Now some people may judge me for not lying around for at least 24 hours.  Some may say I too hastily jumped in the car to head home.  Had I known that I would sit in TONS of traffic trying to leave the city that Sunday night, I probably would have agreed with them.  I was planning to take it easy, listen to my body, and not push too hard, but I wanted nothing more at that moment in time then to go home.

I drove for about six hours that night and ended up stopping at a hotel in Pennsylvania for the night; partially because I was getting tired, partially because it had started raining pretty hard.  I was in bed by midnight and didn’t set an alarm.  I was too excited to sleep though… I watched the Kardashians for over an hour before finally dozing off.  I woke up around 3a.m. to the E channel and an excited feeling to be headed home and when I remembered that I was “pupo”.  I left the hotel around 11a.m. the next morning and drove the rest of the way back to Indiana.  I was so happy to be home.

I had planned to rest the rest of that week, but life quickly went back to normal and I needed to stay distracted so I jumped back into work and the unpacking that needed to happen.  On Wednesday morning I took a home pregnancy test – not because it would show yet whether or not the procedure had worked.  Rather, I was testing to make sure that I wouldn’t get a false negative further down the road.  The “trigger” shot that I was given on Sunday is a small dose of HCG; the chemical that tests measure in your body to determine a pregnancy.  I wanted to test it out of my system to erase any possibility of false excitement.  On Wednesday the test was negative.

The waiting time between an IVF procedure and your first beta test (the blood test to determine whether or not a pregnancy has occurred) is probably one of the hardest times in the cycle.  On message boards and in the infertility world it’s known as the 2ww; the two week wait.  Luckily for me, because we transferred two five-day old embryos, I only had to wait eight days for my first beta.  Each day dragged on as I waited for the slightest feeling of nausea or that instant moment of just knowing I was pregnant.  That moment did not come.  Aside from a pretty persistent headache which I attributed to my cold-turkey quitting of caffeine that week, I had no symptoms of anything.  On Friday, five days past our transfer, I took another home pregnancy test.  It was negative again.  Although I knew that was still early, I did lose a little bit of hope.  Our beta was scheduled for Monday.

Saturday evening we had two parties to stop by and I couldn’t take my mind off of the fact that our transfer hadn’t work.  I asked Lenny if we could leave the second party early because I just couldn’t be social; we were home by 10p.m.  That night in bed I apologized to Lenny through tears for not taking it easier, not praying more, not resting more, for leaving on Sunday and not waiting until Monday, and for everything else I could figure I had done wrong to cause the transfer to have not worked.  Lenny reassured me that we still have frozen embryos left and this wasn’t the end of the road.  I only slept a few hours that night, I couldn’t stop tossing and turning.

To be continued…

Our Baby Transfer! (i.e. frozen embryo transfer)

My posts have been much fewer and far between because the past few weeks/month(s) have been a bit of a whirlwind and while I have loved sharing our experience with everyone, there were parts that I’ve held off blogging about out of respect for Lenny’s wishes.  Mainly, we figured that if something did work out and we were to get pregnant, it probably wouldn’t be best for our parents to find out via my blog…

So now I’m going to start catching you up, and there is a lot to catch up on.  We’re ready to share.

The last updates I had given on our cycle we were “delayed”.  They had found cysts in my ovaries (results of the hyperstimulation last cycle) and my body was taking forever… no ovulation and nothing from the docs as to what was going on.  Then, out of no where, we had answers and we had a plan.  On September 20th I finally ovulated (sorry if this is TMI), and I started medications to pursue a frozen transfer five days later.  We were ecstatic – I was convinced the cycle was going to be cancelled again.  That was a Monday.  I started estrogen supplements (estrace) once a day, and progesterone supplements (crinone) twice a day.  P.S. I HATE crinone more than any of the other meds that I had to take, including all of the shots.  Don’t want to be too descriptive, but if your doc prescribes this I strongly recommend you ask if there are any alternatives… send me a message if you want more details  🙂

I went back for monitoring on Wednesday and Friday.  On Friday they determined that our transfer would take place on Sunday, September 26th.  It was really going to happen!!

On Saturday I spent a majority of the day packing my car- I had decided that I was driving home after this cycle and if we had to come back I would just fly.  I wanted to move my stuff back home regardless of the outcome.  My car was packed and ready to go on Sunday morning as I drove to the train station.  I ate a small breakfast and had a cup of decaf coffee on the train.  On the subway I was so nervous I had to get out my phone to mess around and pretend like I was doing something (no cell signal in the tunnels).  When I arrived at New Hope I was beaming and was the most nervous I’d been since we started the journey.  Imagine my excitement when I saw the largest group of people in the waiting room I had ever encountered…

So the way that a frozen embryo transfer works is this.  They selected two of our six snowbabies on Sunday morning and took them out to “thaw”.  The thawing process takes a few hours and my transfer was scheduled for 11a.m. but they had asked me to arrive at 10a.m. so there I was.  At 10:50 I had yet to be acknowledged.  At 11:10a.m., in tears, I walked out of the waiting room to make a few notes on my phone for my blog.  I was convinced that neither of the embryos had survived the thawing process.  At 11:15, my name was called and she was smiling – THANK GOD!

I followed her upstairs, changed into my gown from the waist down and went out to the waiting room to wait my turn.  There were five other women there.  Two were in the recovery chair, looking still very drugged.  Two were waiting with me.  One tiny asian woman and another chatty woman who would become my “buddy” for the day.  Both went back for their transfers before me.  The wait was the hardest part.

My name was called, I verified my information, they checked my medical bracelet to make sure everything matched, and I was led back to the chair from hell (unfortunately one that I had gotten all too used to).  I think I mentioned it in an earlier post, but forget the regular stirrups (again, sorry if TMI)… this baby has holsters for your thighs.  There were two nurses and the doctor in the room waiting for me.  I positioned myself, the most unflattering lights in the universe were shown on my most unflattering parts, and another doc walked in to assist.  Then the most magical and scientifically amazing thing took place…

On a screen above my bed I was able to watch the entire process.  (The doctors chose to transfer two embryos to increase our chances of achieving a successful pregnancy.  The average success rate of an IVF cycle is less than 30%, so I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much.)  The second doc asked me to verify that the name and birthday on the screen, NEXT TO THE TWO MICROSCOPIC EMBRYOS matched mine.  He then used a tiny syringe to extract the first embryo from the microscope slide and carefully handed it to the doctor, and the first embryo (Baby A) was transferred; it took all of 2 minutes.  Then he repeated the process with the second embryo (Baby B).  It was all over in less than 10 minutes.  I was then escorted to the recovery chairs and my legs were propped up.  The woman next to me, clearly also in recovery, grabbed my hand, squeezed it, and druggingly said “we’re Pupo!” It was approximately 15 minutes later that I figured out that Pupo (pronounced pup-o) actually stood for p-u-p-o, “pregnant until proven otherwise”.  Wow, I was pregnant until proven otherwise…

To be continued…

IVF Meds – A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

A lot of people started reading my blog to understand better what the process of IVF entails.  I have now learned that is just the beginning.  Hopefully I’ll be able to elaborate on that in the next couple of weeks…  In the meantime… Today we’ll elaborate on the meds.  I have talked about the multiple shots and I tried to take a picture of all of the supplies.  My picture on my camera phone was so-so. But then one of my IVF pals on the forum that I contribute to uploaded a great, much more artsy picture.  See below:

Yes, this wide array that could be considered your own personal pharmacy are the meds (and subsequent needles for administering) required for one IVF cycle.  Makes you cringe, right?  The craziest thing is that as you progress through the cycle the needles get longer and bigger  🙂

But honestly, they’re not that bad.  Especially when you consider the possible results of taking the meds.

An Update on our Status

Hi Everyone!

I’ve gotten quite a few questions lately as to our status with our treatments since I haven’t posted much lately… that’s because not much is going on.  We’re kind of waiting to figure out what the next steps are but I’m feeling really good about everything.

I will keep you all updated, it just might be a bit delayed as we try to figure everything out.  In the meantime, you might just have to read about my life without the treatments  🙂

Sorry for being absent…

I apologize for being absent for a few days – it has been a long few days!

On Sunday I had my last appointment of this cycle.  In a few weeks I will find out whether or not I need to go back to New York… So Sunday after my appointment I took the subway/train home, took a nap and then got on the road to head back to Indiana.  I had packed my car on Saturday so that I would be ready to go.  I drove for 1.5 hours and went 18 miles and half-way considered turning around!  But after that I was home free.  I drove until around midnight and finally stopped off in Bedford, Pennsylvania and spent the night at a Holiday Inn.  The next day I drove the whole day and finally got back to Indiana around 6:30p.m.  I’m home!

Since then I have been working on unpacking and getting caught up with “life”; it’s so hard to be gone for so long with so much still going on back home.  Especially with starting ICFI….

ICFI is the organization that Lenny and I founded.  The mission is to provide support to families struggling with infertility; raise awareness about infertility; provide a comprehensive website of local (Indiana) specific information; and provide fundraising opportunities to families struggling with infertility.  It has been such a whirlwind getting things off of the ground.   I finally was able to submit our paperwork/application to become an official 501c3 and we are now just waiting on that approval.  We have started to form the board of directors, which has already met two times, and we only need a few more members.  We have also formed a committee that will help to plan the events and the first committee meeting was this week (the day after I returned from New York).

Our website is up and running but there is so much left to be added to the site (www.MyICFI.org).  I’ve been advocating for the organization for a few months now, meeting with anyone I know to let them know what we’re trying to do.  Infertility effects between 1 out of 6 and 1 out of 10 couples (the numbers vary depending on who’s reporting).  With statistics like this, every one I talk to has personally experienced, or knows someone who has personally experienced, struggles with conceiving a child.

Overall I think everything is going really well.  There are some struggles – the main one being that most of the time I feel like I am doing this all alone and it’s a lot of work!  But it will all be worth it  🙂

My Fertility Doc

I thought it might be appropriate to talk a little bit about our doctor and our clinic.  Funny thing is, I’ve only “met” our doctor a few times, and most of those times it was right before I was put under via anesthetics.  And yet, I really do love it and have really liked most of the people we’ve worked with there.

A few things about NH: Most of the patients are Asian, I am most definitely the minority there.  They specialize in mini-IVF and so their “freezing” and “thawing” techniques, along with Frozen Embryo Transfer, are great and their success rates are very high.  Also, compared to the real estate docs in Indiana can get, the place is tiny, cramped, and old; and yet it’s the best office I’ve been to.  Many of the staff members are foreign and it appears some speak English as a second language.

Also, they don’t always have “scheduled” appointment times.  During your cycle, while monitoring, you just go to the office anytime before noon and sign in, and when they get to you they get to you.  They call you in and draw your blood.  You go back out and wait and they eventually call you in for your ultrasound.  It can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2.5 hours – you need to be flexible for sure!  Then depending on what was happening that day, you might need to go back after 2:30p.m. and wait to speak with the head nurse.  This was when they would give us our meds or further instructions and answer any questions we had.  Sometimes they would instruct me that I didn’t need to come back in the afternoon and so they will just call with the results.  It’s all a very different experience than what we were used to with our other doctors.

When you are having a procedure done, things are a little different.  Firstly, you have a set appointment time, usually first thing in the morning.  They take you upstairs where you undress and put on the gown in a room 1/8th the size of a normal dressing area.  You lock all of your belongings into a locker, take the lock, and go and wait in the communal waiting room. There’s a small tv, regular chairs, and then “recovery chairs” that recline and have armrests.  Men are not allowed on the second floor unless they’re staff (so no husbands, kids, etc.).  When it’s time for your procedure you’re taken into one of the operating rooms, quickly given anesthesia, and the procedure is done.  The next thing you know, you’re being wheeled in a wheelchair back to the communal waiting room and placed into a recovery chair.  Your vitals are monitored for about an hour, depending on the procedure and type of anesthesia you were given (all in the communal waiting area).  This was a very awkward part at first but now I love it.  You should hear some of the things women say as they’re coming out of their daze, and I’m sure I’ve said things just as funny.

New Hope must see an average of 100 patients a day, on an average day.  They probably perform 20-30 procedures (D&Cs, Hysteroscopies, Egg Retrievals, Egg Transfers, etc.) before noon.  They literally whisk you in and out.  It took probably 15 appointments before some of the nurses started to know who I was.  It’s craziness.  Half the time that I’m there the receptionist pulls extra folding chairs out of the closet so that there are more seats for everyone waiting in the waiting room!  (I uploaded a pic from one of the corners this morning of the waiting room)

I think that if we had gone to this clinic first, we never would have gone back.  But after having seen two of the best doctors at two of the most renowned clinics in Indiana and leaving with a sense of emptiness – something was missing from those experiences.  I didn’t feel like we were going to get the results we were looking for at those places.  I didn’t feel like the doctors, and even more so the nurses, cared that much about us.  I felt like a number, not a person.  Which is funny, because most of the time we were in the waiting room with only a few other people at those places.  But now, being at New Hope with tons and tons of people I feel more “at home”.  The nurses really care about us and want us to get pregnant – they tell us all the time!  And even though most know me as a number, I feel more like a person at NH than I felt at the stuffier places.  

A Tough Time

I can’t blog and lay everything out there without addressing the other things that are going on in our lives.  A few posts ago I mentioned Lenny’s grandmother being ill; on Saturday night she passed away.  There is no easy way to talk about the loss of a loved one, and yet it plays such a large role in everything that is happening.

Nan was an amazing, talented, strong and independent, and beautiful woman.  She lived to 92 years old, and she leaves behind Pop, one of the strongest 91 year olds I’ve ever met!  I can only pray that God is with Pop over these next few weeks as they will no doubt be the most trying he’s ever experienced.  It’s been a whirlwind, and quite the experience, being here in New York for the whole thing.  Living with Lenny’s parents and watching them slowly lose a loved one left me feeling so powerless; it’s so hard to know that there is nothing you can do to ease that pain.

Please pray for Pop and all of Nan’s family this week.  Rest in peace, Nan.

Mantras

You have brains in your head.  You have feet in your shoes.  You can steer yourself, any direction you choose.

~Dr. Seuss

Since starting on our journey I have had many mantras that I repeat over and over to make it through the day.  Right now, my mantra is the one above.  Leave it to good ol’ Dr. Seuss.  But he is so right – we choose where we head.  We choose how we view each day and what we do each day.

I’m not going to sugar coat it, things are hard right now.  In addition to being in limbo with our second cycle, Lenny’s grandmother, our dear Nan, is very ill; it has been an extremely upsetting time for everyone.  I’m trying to start a state-wide nonprofit from five states away, by myself, without a paycheck.  I’m living without my husband and without my friends.  But I choose how to wake up in the morning, how to handle these tough times, and how to face the challenges.  Thank you, Dr. Seuss, for that wonderful daily reminder.

Meet, Date, Love, Marriage, Baby(ies), Happily Ever After

And so goes life.

I feel like every time I go to the city I have 10 more things to talk about then on a regular day.  So the next few posts will probably be about all the things that came about during my visit to the city yesterday.

I did my regular wake-up, get ready, drive to train station – except that I missed my train because I couldn’t find parking.  Not a big deal, just taught me to leave a little bit earlier now that they’ve cut the train schedule back.  When I got on the next train it was FULL.  I did manage to find two vacant seats next to each other, so I took the one nearest the window.  On the very next stop a guy sat down next to me; he smelled like an Axe commercial.  I was holding my nonprofit management book so he started the conversation by asking where I was going to school and we talked for the rest of the train ride.

As a side note, I have recently changed my approach to “strangers” and the city; I am mirroring a good friend of mine, Josh (from the Journey).  On one of our retreats, which took us to Chicago, our entire group was pretty mesmerized by Josh’s ability to strike up a conversation with anyone (even a really tall guy on public transp.  The conversation literally started “Wow, you’re really tall”).  He also had the ability to find amazement, excitement, and revelry in everything we did, every building we passed, and every sign we read.  Why not live life like this?

As this stranger and I became quick friends, the conversation trickled to Lenny in Indiana while I was here in New York, and eventually to “John” and his new wife (married in July).

John: “You are very lucky that he is there and you can have some time to yourself.  You are also very lucky that you were given so much time to make sure that he is the one that you want to spend the rest of your life with.”

Macara: “I suppose so, but I would definitely prefer to be in Indiana as well.”

John: “My wife, I have only known her since the new year.  It was an arranged marriage; you know, her mother and father and my mother and father met a few times and then they had she and I meet.  We went to a backroom and talked, only twice before we were engaged in February.  She was in Canada so we talked on the phone a few times, you know, to get to know each other better, and then the wedding was in July and she moved in with me.  In my culture, I am from Pakistan you know, we live with our parents so we now live with my parents and my older brother and his wife and their new baby.  I am a new uncle.”

Macara: “Wow.  I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who was in an arranged marriage before!  How has it worked out?  Do you get along?  Are you happy?”

John: “It is okay.  You know, we still don’t know each other that well.  But she does not work so she does my laundry, irons my shirts, cooks our meals, and is there whenever I need something.  This is our culture, she now takes care of me so that I can take care of her and our future children.  We are pressured, um asked, to have children soon.  So now we focus on having children.  This is my culture.”

Macara: “I don’t think it’s just your culture that wants babies after marriage (with a chuckle).  But are you ready?  Is this what you want?”  -(side note: yes, I realize I was asking extremely personal questions to a stranger – hell, people like to talk to me and I can be a bit nosey 🙂 )

John: “Sometimes it is not about what we want, but about what we are supposed to do.  I am, was, happy being bachelor.  But I am turning 27 next month, it was time that I settle down and become a man.”

As we exited the train at Penn Station and he headed one way with a wave as I headed the other, tears came to my eyes.  I cry pretty much all the time now regardless of the situation, but John had me thinking about so much.  Can you imagine being in an arranged marriage?  Knowing you are spending the rest of your life with this person?  And what happens, in their culture, if they struggle to have children as we have?  Can a marriage built through arrangement withstand the test of infertility?  Would the marriage be abandoned?  Would she take on the blame without any actual explanation?

It made me again thankful to have Lenny.  The first year and a half of our marriage was extremely trying, more so than a normal newlywed couple.  Would we have made it through all of that without the six years of foundation we had slowly built before our marriage?

Yesterday was a rough day.  I was missing home, missing Lenny, missing my life. But even on bad days, I am so thankful to have an amazing husband, wonderful friends, and a great support system to help me through things.

My new best friend

is a forum.

Lenny and I found a forum about a month ago that was started two years ago and is a discussion among women that are going through the exact same procedures, under the exact same circumstances, with this particular doctor’s office!  There are 351 pages of posts and I’ve read them all.  Today I mustered up the courage to create a name and make a post!  Seriously, you’d think that pressing submit wouldn’t be that hard considering I’m already laying it all out there in my blog but I was sweating like crazy!  Weird.

Regardless of my fears though, I would highly recommend that everyone find a forum to follow and contribute to that is relative to what your life circumstances are.  Looking for a job?  There’s a forum for that!  Want to lose weight?  There’s a forum for that.  Secretly addicted to Jersey Shore and America’s Next Top Model?  There’s a forum for that!  It’s like happy hour with your closest friends at any time of day.  And, you’re as anonymous as you want to be…

And on Sunday, we rest

It has been a pretty crazy week.

I’m still in New York, and Lenny’s entire family came into town this weekend.  It was Poppy’s birthday (his grandfather) and Nan (his grandmother) is ill in the hospital, so it was a good time to get the family together.  Lenny flew in Saturday morning and left this evening (after the Giants game of course!); both of his sisters came in on Saturday and left today as well.

And my most recent doctor’s appointment was… interesting.  Last Monday, while still in Indiana, I started having some weird pains and knew something wasn’t quite right.  When I got to the doc I explained what had been going on and my suspicions were correct.  The doc found three cysts on my left ovary and one on my right…and now we just wait again.  Not sure what the next steps will be, but I am pretty sure that they’ll cancel this cycle and I’ll come back again next month.

Since Sunday is a day of rest – I’m going to take advantage  🙂  More tomorrow!

Snowbabies

Have you ever heard the term “snowbabies”?  I had not, until we started going through IVF treatments and I really started scouring the many forums and online discussions for advice, tips, and any other information I could get my hands on.

Snowbaby is just a cute term used to refer to your embroyo(s) once it/they are frozen.  Quick summary: in any IVF cycle, a woman can produce between 1 and 20ish eggs (in extreme cases even more…).  They’re retrieved and fertilized with her husband/donor/other’s sperm (creating embryos) and then you wait to see how and if they grow.  Once they reach a certain state the doctor will implant one or two embryos (also dependent on the situation) back into the woman’s body where it hopefully attaches to the uterine lining and continues to grow.  If you have additional embryos, after that transfer happens, those embryos can be cryofrozen for your future use.  I hate to be so lacking in emotions when describing this process, there is obviously so much more that goes into it.  However, for time’s sake, that’s a decent enough summary.

Lenny and I currently have six snowbabies (frozen embryos), just waiting.  In our particular case, our “fresh” transfer was cancelled because of the way my body was responding to the drugs; the doctor did not believe that the transfer would work for multiple reasons, so he did not go through with the transfer.  We are now anxiously awaiting a frozen transfer… they will thaw one embryo at a time (fingers crossed that the embryo survives this process) in order to implant during my next cycle.  IF we were to get pregnant, with embryos still frozen, the doctor will hold on to these embryos for us, or ship them to a local doctor if we preferred, so that if and when we are ready to have another child, we have our snowbabies waiting for us.

This could launch into a very heated religious and ethical discussion about the entire process including our snowbabies and what other couples choose to do with their “left-over” embryos – but I do not want that to happen.  I just want you to know that Lenny and I see all six of our snowbabies as our babies and we agree that as long as we have embryos we will attempt to carry them full term.  There are many different views of what we’re currently doing and that is okay – to each their own.  I am sharing because I want others to understand this process.  I want you to know what we went through to become parents, so that as you or your friends or family members bring children into this world you are able to better appreciate the sweet gift that it is.  But also so that as you or your friends or family members struggle with the same or similar infertility issues that we have, you do not feel alone and you have a better understanding of the process.  It’s not scary, it’s life.  And it will all be worth it  🙂

Our infertility journey update – a quick one!

It’s 7a.m. And I’m writing my blog entry from the airport.  I’m on my way back to the “concrete jungle where dreams are made of”, and I can’t help but hope that song lyrics really can speak the truth.

Our last cycle was canceled because my body didn’t respond well to the drugs.  The bad news: we missed our only chance at a fresh transfer.  The good news: I got to go home!  I was home for almost two weeks, got to attend a close friend’s wedding (congrats again Emily and Jack!), was able to visit with my family for a day, went to Chicago with some of Lenny’s family for the holiday weekend, and made my tennis team’s first practice!  And the great news: I was allowed to stop ALL of the meds while I was home and we waited for the next cycle to begin.  While I was disappointed that our cycle, and our chances at a fresh transfer, were canceled, I was also elated and really enjoyed the “time off” (even though much of it was spent working).

Cycle number 2 started 12 days ago.  The doctor was gracious and was able to e-mail me the requisitions and orders for some of the blood work and monitoring so that it could be done in Indiana.  Finding a doctor that was willing to do the monitoring in Indiana though, since I’m not their patient, did turn out to be a challenge!  We finally found an amazing ultrasound tech who helped us out, and I was able to stay in Indiana for the first part of the cycle. But now it’s back to the grind!  As soon as I land I’ll head, via public transportation, to the city for a morning doctor’s appointment.  Then I’ll do my “usual” and find a whole in the wall (albeit amazing) restaurant for lunch, will head back to doc for afternoon appointment and then will take the subway to the train, and train to the station nearest home where Lenny’s mom will pick me up.

I think that tomorrow I am going to tell you about our embryos – our babies that were scientifically made possible, grown in petri dishes and now frozen.  When I first started blogging I didn’t think I wanted to disclose all of the details of this entire process; but since starting the blog, and working with ICFI, I have received so many questions, and opinions, and advice that I think it will be beneficial to talk about all of it, including the part that no one wants to talk about…

Sex (but no baby) and the City

“Living” in New York after spending my first 26 years in Indiana is like throwing a child who’s never played a sport before onto a field of professional football players mid-play.  Probably not a very good analogy but I can’t think of anything else to compare it to. It’s unlike anything we’re used to or have ever seen.  The people alone are all so unique, so individual, and so diverse!  It really is an eye-opening experience.

Right now my “average” day goes as follows: Up around 6a.m. to shower and get ready for the day.  I then drive to the train station to make the 7:22 or the 7:55 train from Little Neck to Penn Station.  I usually have to park about 4 blocks away and walk there, so I am very much lying when I say the 7:22, I’ve only made that train once.  🙂  Oh, and every other day I have been stopping at starbucks and allowing myself the wonderful sensation that is a nonfat grande white chocolate mocha (with no whipped cream)… that’s gotta stop!

When I arrive at Penn Station I exit and walk to the subway, take the F uptown.  I ride for about 5 stops to 63rd and Lexington and then walk 11 blocks (10 north, 1 west) to our doctor’s office – arriving almost like clockwork at 9:20a.m.  Between appointments I walk.  I’m only blocks from central park.  I’m only a block from the rodeo drive of New York (gucci, prada, etc. etc. etc.) which makes for great window shopping.  Sometimes I walk approximately 30 blocks to Times Square to be bombarded by the crazies selling bus tours, bike tours, other tours, and knick knacks.  Sometimes I walk down side streets to discover ma and pa places to add to my list of places to eat. There isn’t usually enough time for the museums or attractions, but when there is I take full advantage.

I also eat – each trip to the city is a welcoming and exciting temptation to try new things or indulge in old.  The pizza, on every block, is my biggest weakness; at $2.50 a slice can you blame me?  I’ve also ventured into unknown places with no tables and loud, obnoxious and sweaty cooks -those are often the best finds.  I’ve eaten at the Tao, the chinese restaurant in Sex and the City 2.  I’ve eaten at three restaurants for one meal; a salad from here, a sandwich from there, dessert from a third.  I always eat alone and I always eat slowly, savoring the flavors and sensations that nothing in Indiana can come close to.  Often I spend up to an hour carefully choosing my next venue.

I am proud of myself for quickly falling into the mold of being a New Yorker.  I walk quickly every where I go, even if I’m not in a hurry.  I don’t ever make eye contact.  I talk about the train, the subway and public transit in general as if I grew up riding the rails; the other day I even pointed tourists in the right direction!  Under normal circumstances I avoid the busier streets and I’m no longer afraid to walk on the grates.  When I drive, which is now rare, my horn is my best friend and I accelerate faster than the average scion.  I cut people off all the time because it’s the only way to make it into the lane you want and I very rarely signal.  New York is the only state I have ever driven in where you can race past a police car and they could care less as long as you’re driving in a straight line.

But there are parts of me that will always be from Indiana.  I don’t like rude people, the ones that cut in front of me or bump into me without saying excuse me; I’m probably the most polite subway rider ever, giving up my seat to almost anyone.  My heart still aches for the homeless and I always try to have leftovers or grab an extra granola bar that I can hand out to at least one of them.  Sometimes my feet beg me to slow down since we’re not in a hurry, and my legs cramp in anger at my newly adapted walk-run.  I still say “Ya’ll”.  My eyes still tear when I see people spending $30,000 a month in rent, knowing damn well that that amount of money could save lives.  I still pride myself on buying most of my shoes for less than $25, and I absolutely refuse to ever wear some of those ridiculous fashions like 80’s inspired neon leggings or those hideous jackets. Oh, and I will never carry a small dog in my purse – ever.

My mission for this week is to channel my inner Carrie and really start using the city as the blank canvas of my life that it could be.  I may be here for one reason with one goal in mind, but I am bound and determined to make it one of the best experiences I’ve ever had; why harp on the bad when I have the opportunity to turn it in to something good?

Where We Be

So… my post last night left off in June with Lenny and I making the decision to stop trying to have a baby for a while and just enjoy life.  Bring on the next day…

I receive an e-mail from Lenny while I’m at work and the subject is “interesting story”.  I open the e-mail to find “Wanna live with my parents for a while?” and a link.  Hmm… exactly what I was hoping he would send the night after such a serious discussion.  But I click on the link for kicks any hoo.  It was a link to a doctor’s office in New York that regularly performs mini IVF, the same procedure but with less medication and is less invasive than normal IVF.  At first I was furious with Lenny for not making it longer than 12 hours on our not-trying-for-a-while pact, but the more I read and researched, the more I realized that he may have stumbled upon something that might actually work for us.

Flash forward to July.  We’ve already flown to New York and met with the nurses and doctors (all of which we loved!).  I’ve put in my notice to leave College Mentors at the end of July, and they want to start working with us the first week of August.  We’ve had all of the pre-screening tests completed and the results sent to their office (we’ll call him Dr. Z) and we’ve been accepted as patients.  The pre-screening tests included screening for all STDs, HIV, and random things like chicken pox.  We also had genetic testing done, to determine that we were not carriers of the gene that causes cystic fibrosis.  A few other tests are done as well.  The second week in July, on a Thursday, I fly to New York on a Thursday morning to spend all day at the doc’s… I return again the last week in July for one day for another visit.

(One thing I did not mention: this is a MUCH less expensive option for us due to the circumstances therefore making the flights, etc. doable)

So, where are we now?  I started lupron injections in July, with the hopes of working towards an eventual round of IVF.  Lenny and I drove out to New York last Wednesday and I have had appointments just about every other day since then.  I’m now “living” with Lenny’s parents, Peggy and Len.  IVF, and infertility in general, is a lot of work!  Last Friday I had two procedures done (Hysteroscopy and a D&C), there are now more injections (of menopur), antibiotics, and lordy there are ridiculous hormones raging.  🙂  I won’t go into a lot more detail because I’m sure if you want to know, you’ll ask.  Just know we’re making progress, and I’m bound and determined to be the Carrie Bradshaw of married women.  Afterall, this is New York!

Our Infertility Journey

I decided to dedicate one entry to detailing our infertility journey – mostly because I think I have many friends and family members who are not sure of everything that we have done or where we’re at, and since I’m not great with spoken words it will be a lot easier to give the details this way.  (P.S. This is going to be a LONG entry.  You’ll probably need popcorn, maybe a beer, and you’ll probably need to take occasional breaks!)

Lenny and I have both always wanted to have children and after dating for almost six years, we felt ready to start trying right after our wedding.  The first few months were pretty normal, we just figured it would take a couple of tries.  By the time Thanksgiving rolled around we started talking about how exciting it would be to be able to tell Lenny’s family in person while we were in New York.  At Christmastime I was six days late – five negative pregnancy tests later I started and there was a little more disappointment than there had been in months past.  Lenny agreed that we’d give it three more months and if we weren’t pregnant by March we would see a specialist, just to make sure everything was okay.

March rolled around and we made an appointment with a doctor that a co-worker of Lenny’s had recommended.  When we called his office though, he was booked for two months; so we saw his associate, Dr. M.  Sitting in Dr. M’s waiting office was strange (“are we really here?” thoughts rolling through our head); we waited about 45 minutes before being called into his office.  He sat behind a monstrous desk, talked a mile a minute, and asked us the most personal questions I’d ever been asked.  After our “conversation” he assured us that with our history, ages, and health there was very little to worry about but he ordered a few labs and a sperm analysis just to make sure.  He also asked us to start using ovulation tracking tests since we had only been timing before that.

After a week when we hadn’t received the results to our tests we called the office.  “Oh, Dr. M is on vacation and won’t be back for 10 days.  He’ll call you then.”  So Lenny asked if she could just give us the results and we could discuss them with him when he got back.  She told me that all of my tests were normal and everything looked fine and she read Lenny his sperm analysis numbers.  Not being the type to wait almost two weeks for what those results meant, Lenny and I did some research and were able to figure out ourselves that his numbers were not very good.  Two weeks later Dr. M called and wanted to schedule a follow-up appointment with us.

Sitting in his office he said there was no easy way to give couples the news that things were not perfect, yada yada yada.  He thought it would be helpful if I went on a medication to stimulate my ovaries and regulate my ovulation.  Nearly all women take chlomid for this purpose but Dr. M prescribed me Femara – a drug used to treat breast cancer in postmenopausal women but that was also being tested as an infertility treatment.  He said with a laugh that he was sure we’d be pregnant before our three month follow-up.  In addition, he recommended Lenny see a good friend of his, a urologist, Dr. U.

A few weeks later we met with Dr. U.  He examined Lenny (I’ll leave out the details of  the exam that I was in the room for!) and he found that Lenny had a vericocele vein.  It has not been proven that this is directly related to infertility, but there is a higher percentage of vericocele veins in men with infertility than those without.  But he wasn’t ready to do a vericocelectomy just yet (to repair the vericocele vein), instead he recommended he try a vitamin called L-Carnetine for three months while laying off of the hot tub use and biking.  For three months we “patiently” waited to see if there would be any change. P.S. We didn’t like this guy either, he was good friends of Dr. M and accepted only cash payments so they weren’t trackable.

In May, and with no pregnancy, we went back in to meet with DR. M and Lenny had another test – his numbers came back lower than the test before.  Dr. M took me off of Femara and we decided to meet with a new urologist, Dr. T, in June to get a second opinion on Lenny’s vericocele vein and our infertility. We really liked him, and he ended up being the doctor to perform Lenny’s vericocelectomy later in the year.

In the meantime, we had had about four other appointments with Dr. M; I hated Dr. M’s office.  We had to wait at least 45 minutes every time we had an appointment to be seen.  Any time we called the office you HAD to leave a message and they would call you back when they felt like it.  The nurse was not nice, Dr. M was not personable, compassionate, or sane in my opinion (on another note, he has since left that office).  We sought out another clinic and schedule an appointment for a second opinion with Dr. R.

We met with Dr. R in July and I loved her.  She was compassionate, saw us at the actual time of our appointment, and didn’t rush us.  After our appointment, she sent us a handwritten note saying she was looking forward to working with us and helping us to build our family.  I was sold.  At that appointment she was upset to discover that I had been on an infertility drug for three months without ever having been given an HSG; she did an ultrasound that day and immediately scheduled an HSG for just a few days later.  The HSG examines the uterus and the fallopian tubes to make sure everything is clear and looks okay.  Luckily, that all came back normal as well.

Dr. M had felt that Lenny’s results were too poor for us to be candidates for IUI (i.e. artificial insemination) which is why he had sent us to the urologist.  Dr. R, on the other hand, thought that his results were border-line acceptable for IUI, so we scheduled our first IUI attempt for August.  I started on chlomid that month and in the middle of August we went in for our first IUI.  Lenny’s sample used for the IUI was so poor that a few days later they called back and told me to not even come in for my bloodwork, there was little chance that I was pregnant.

After that experience Lenny decided to have the vericocelectomy to repair his vericocele vein even though it was not required by the doctor.  My emotions and hormones were running wild and I was swamped at work, so I decided that we would take September and October off from trying (although I can 100% attest for the fact that it is nearly impossible to completely stop trying because you can’t stop thinking about it).  Lenny’s surgery was scheduled for the end of October.

**As a side note, at this point we had been trying for 14 months, had spent a few thousand dollars (maybe a little more), and I had taken too many pregnancy tests to count.  Looking back, I was in a really bad place and had lost myself (mentally and physically).  We didn’t have anyone to talk to besides each other, especially since we weren’t telling our family all of the details yet (really, we had told them next to nothing…) and my two closest friends were pregnant.  Most of that talking was actually fighting or arguing or crying and we were both drained.  My job was pretty stressful (fall was the worst time for us) and Lenny was having second thoughts about how quickly we actually needed a child.  We were both hurting and just didn’t know what to do about it.

In October Lenny had his surgery and they actually found five vericocele veins once they were in there so they repaired all of them.  The doctor seemed hopeful that this would make a big difference; we needed to wait three months for a follow-up appointment to see if it had helped.  During that time we went through our second year of holidays without the news we had hoped to deliver and I was suffering from depression and anxiety (most of which I am now learning is associated with the drugs I was taking!).

In January I became sold on the idea of becoming licensed foster parents, after attending a conference and speaking with individuals who worked for DCS and another organization that placed children in foster homes.  Lenny hesitantly agreed because at that point he was willing to do anything to improve our relationship.  We made a few calls only to discover that we were pretty much “not needed” as regular foster parents.  Our county just happens to have a high number of available foster parents and a low number of children in need.  However less than 10 minutes away is a county that I worked with for three years which I knew was in incredible need of more foster parents.  The only way we could foster those children, though, was to become therapeutically licensed, meaning we would work with children with extreme needs (abuse victims, mental or physical handicaps, etc.).  We started trainings in January.

In February Lenny had his three month follow-up appointment; the results were that there had really been no change in his sperm quality, quantity or shape, which was disappointing news to say the least.  However the doctor reassured us that we should come back at the six month mark because he had often times seen remarkable changes between the three month check-up and the six month. 

One night, as we were driving back from visiting my family, Lenny and I came up with the idea for a non-profit that worked with families struggling with infertility, to help people just like us.  We needed support, we needed resources, and we needed information – and we couldn’t find it anywhere.  Granted there is a lot of information on the internet, but a lot of it is negative, irrelevant, and/or hard to filter.

Just a week and a half later I left home for three days and headed to southern Indiana for a leadership retreat in the middle of no where with 19 strangers.  I have been accepted into a group called The Journey, and this was our first meeting.  I had no idea what to expect or what to bring or what to do… but you’ll hear me talk about The Journey in other posts – this one is already too long to expand any more than that!  The most important thing to know was that this was when I came to fully accept what we were going through, when I realized I needed to change and start caring about myself and Lenny again (and not just about getting a baby!) and when I knew that I needed to start the Indiana Collaboration for Families with Infertility (ICFI).

March, April and most of May flew by.  We met with Dr. R one more time in April to talk about IVF, which we could see might be one of our only options if his results did not improve at the six month mark.  We also went to Italy in May, which helped us to relax and reconnect.  It’s also where we decided that I would put in notice to leave my job with College Mentors for Kids; where we were with our marriage and our infertility we couldn’t afford for me to continue working with that organization (there were many other factors that played into this decision, but again, too much already to delve into this).

At the end of May, when we returned from Italy, we met with the urologist and Lenny’s results had still not changed.  In June we scheduled a consultation with yet another doctor – the one that had originally been recommended by Lenny’s co-worker.  We decided that when we were ready to take the next steps (IVF) we would most likely go with his office.  In addition, this was the month when I jumped in head first to starting ICFI.    This is also the month when Lenny and I had a life-changing discussion.

Shortly after Lenny’s follow-up appointment with his urologist, we were sitting on the screen porch with a bottle of wine when he confessed that he wasn’t ready to take the next step.  He said he wasn’t sure he was even ready to be a father, let alone ready to invest the thousands and thousands of dollars it would cost to pursue IVF treatments.  There were a lot of tears but no yelling or fighting.  I felt that if we were not willing to take the next step than we had to take a break completely – no ovulation tests, no tracking, nothing to do with getting pregnant.  That night we came to a mutual decision that we were going to stop trying for a while and just enjoy life.

So…. this has actually gone even longer than I anticipated so I will write about our New York doctor and where we’re at now, tomorrow.  🙂