Failed

Early Friday morning I got the call I was dreading. I was a nurse at my drs office calling to "discuss some lab results". I knew it didn't mean good things.  

She first told me the "good news". My platelets continue to remain low, but they haven't changed. The fact that they're staying stable is good. Apparently being below 100,000 may mean I can't have an epidural if I so decide. Mine have been staying around 125,000 and hopefully will continue to. Being on blood thinners is not helping to improve this. 

The "bad news" was that I failed my 1 hour glucose test. I wasn't surprised, just super disappointed. 

The cutoff at my old drs office was 140. My new office has a much lower cutoff of 130. I got a 145 on the test. 

The nurse gave me two options: take the three hour test, or start testing my blood sugar levels four times a day. 

I had gestational diabetes with my last pregnancy so I wouldn't be surprised if I failed the three hour test. In all fairness though, I think I had a false positive on the test. My blood sugar levels were a never high when I was eating a somewhat altered diet. I don't think they were ever above 130 and that's after a pasta dinner. 

As of right now I'm scheduled to take the test on Thursday. I'm planning to take it locally where I know I can at least walk between the hours. It's just so unrealistic and feels like it's setting me up for failure. Who really wakes up and drinks 100 grams of super processed sugar and then sits around for three hours? I know I pretty much never get the chance to sit for three hours. 

I still haven't completely decided, but all of it is stressing me out big time. I'm debating cleaning up my diet and asking to retake the 1 hour test. That was what my chiropractor/nutritionist recommended. My diet really isn't too bad but I need to be better about more protein and less sugar. Either way, I obviously need to make those changes. Wish me luck! 

Frozen Embryos

I used to joke that I had embryos all over the state. We have 5 here locally in Syracuse with Dr. K and then we have 2 that are currently residing in Manhattan at Dr. B's clinic. 

When we first started with Dr. K we bought a package IVF deal. For $7500 we purchased 3 fresh IVF cycles with unlimited frozen cycles. We signed a contract that all of these cycles had to be completed within a certain timeframe. 

After our second fresh cycle with Dr. K resulted in my third early miscarriage I met with one of the doctors. He told me I just needed to keep trying and that it was a numbers game. He didn't think my history warranted recurrent pregnant loss testing despite me practically begging for it. He was willing to treat me as if I had problems without actually testing for them (using intralipids, lovenox. etc). That didn't sit well with me so that's when we first scheduled a consult with Dr. B. At that point I had completed 2 of the 3 cycles we had paid for. 

Dr. B had different ideas for medications, protocols, etc for me. The thing was, I didn't want to jump in to that with a cycle already paid for. So, I got Dr. B to manage my last cycle with Dr. K. We did a freeze all since I used a Lupron trigger. We froze 7 embryos. The next month we transferred 2. Although I had faint positives on tests my HCG came back at below 5, so negative. At that point I was exhausted and so discouraged with treatments. I wrote Dr. B an email and he told me I needed to give it one more try before I decided the treatment didn't work. 

We thought about it for a while. Since I had transferred 12 embryos with that clinic without a take-home baby we decided if we were going to give it one more try we were going to go all in. We decided to do our last cycle with Dr. B at his clinic. I got pregnant with twins and we froze 2 embryos. 

Last year around this time I got a bill to continue to store our 5 embryos here in Syracuse. I called to speak with an embryologist because we were supposed to pay $600. I thought about keeping half of them so we didn't have to pay the full amount. When I spoke with them they told me they could put them all into one spot and only charge us $300. So, we paid it. 

The thing is, another year has passed. We once again got our $300 bill and W said, "I just can't picture paying it." 

If we decided to try for more children we would definitely use our 2 embryos in Manhattan first. As much as I'm not thinking any of those 5 embryos could be my future child/children, I hate the idea of just giving up on them. I went through so much to get them. I don't think I'd be comfortable donating them to another couple. Although it's not set in stone, both W and I have said we wouldn't want to go through another fresh cycle. 

So, we have to make some decisions soon. I'm hoping that W will agree to continue to pay to store our 5 little frosties here in Syracuse but we will see. I'll likely just put it off until they send me a final notice like last year. 

I know it's not a bad problem to have, but it really is difficult to make these decisions. 

Fluoride

Now that the girls have teeth I've started thinking about fluoride. Our first pediatrician prescribed a multi-vitamin that contained flouride to use around the time the girls turned 6 months. I never gave it to them because they didn't have teeth so I figured there was no rush. I do know that our water isn't treated where we live, hence the supplement. 

I went to a baby expo around the time we were prescribed the fluoride and there was a pediatric dentist there. She highly recommended using it and said you can tell the difference with children who have had it. She also have us some really cool baby toothbrushes for free that we've recently started using. 

I read a few articles this morning about fluoride use and I think we will likely use it. I have horrible teeth and have had 2 root canals and really need to get a second crown. I don't want my girls to have to get as many fillings as I did as a child, but I'm pretty sure my mom hadus fluoride, so that's not the reason I had so many cavities. It was probably my lack of consistent and good tooth brushing and flossing. I did read though that flouride is linked to neurological damage (although not significant). 

So, I ask you, what's your take on fluoride? Do you give it to your children or is your water already treated? Are you skipping it altogether?