We Like to Keep Things Interesting

After my monitoring appointment last Wednesday I heard from the nurses at Dr. Br.averman's office and they said they wanted to see me in Wood.bury Friday for more monitoring. I had expected that and was somewhat happy to not have to work another day last week. On Thursday I was super uncomfortable as I sat in toddler sized chairs. They were not my friend. 

When I called Dr. B's office Thursday around noon to book my Friday appointment the latest option they had was 11 AM. An appointment that early and that far away (5 hours) meant we were in for an early morning.

We packed enough stuff as we expected Dr. B would want to see me Saturday and then we would stay until retrieval. We dropped the dogs off with my MiL on Thursday night and headed home to bed.

We woke up around 5:00 A.M and aimed to leave around 5:30. It had snowed about an inch the night before but we decided to take W's little Ho.nda as it is better on gas and we try to keep the miles off of my Sub.aru. We made it about five minutes down the road when I questioned our car choice. W said it would be fine and that he didn't want to go back to switch the cars.

As W drove I was a bit nervous about his speed. At times he is overly confident when he drives in the snow. 

Fifteen minutes later he lost control of the car. He slipped and turned in one directed and then corrected to slide in the opposite direction. We were headed off the road at about 50 MPH with my side first. 

We came to a stop in a snowy field and took a minute or two or collect ourselves. W realized he could probably drive the car out of the field and successfully did so fairly easily. 

I can't believe how lucky we got that the place we went off the road had no telephone poles, fence posts, animals, big ditches, etc. We were so incredibly lucky to be able to continue on our travels, slightly shaken, but fine otherwise. 

W then drove slowly on the snowy roads. We reached the highway and from that point on the roads were fine. About an hour later I had started to doze off and I heard W say, "Oh, shit!" for the second time that morning. He ended up getting pulled over and got a speeding ticket. All of these things happened before seven thirty. 

From that point on the trip was mostly uneventful. When we hit the George Washington Bridge 2 out of the 4 lanes were closed and we ended up sitting in traffic for about 45 minutes. All in all, we were only about 10 minutes late for our appointment. 

The appointment was fine. When Dr. B came in he said (as I suspected) that we would wait another day to trigger. The follicles weren't quite as large as he would have liked to see them. I know the tech measured twenty follicles on my left ovary and fifteen on the right of all varying sizes. It was be interesting to see how many eggs we end up with. 

Dr. Br.averman told me we would talk the day after retrieval for the fertilization report and then again the next day. By then (day 3) we should have a good idea about quality based on cell division and fragmentation. 

He said he didn't need to see me Saturday so we headed home. We sat in a bunch of traffic but made it home by about 9:15 last night. 

Retrival is scheduled for Monday at 1:30 in Manhattan. I'm a bit nervous about never meeting the RE who will do the retrieval and not knowing any of the nurses. A retrieval in Manhattan will definitely be a new experience too. I'm also a bit nervous about OHSS, as always. We are going to trigger again with Lupron but will also add in an HCG booster shot the day of retrieval. 

A 1:30 PM retrieval means a 3 AM trigger shot tonight. What fun!

I haven't been feeling great the past few days. I tend to get super nauseous close to retrieval and am super uncomfortable. I'm full, nauseous, and have a very small appetite. I'm trying to do my best but feel pretty crappy overall. 

My good friend T who conceived with IVF after 5 years of trying had her baby last night. We actually had plans to hang out with them today and I got a text last night that they were being admitted to the hospital. 

We went to the hospital to hang out for a few hours this evening and got to meet her little guy. He's so ridiculously cute and precious and both T and her hubby B seemed so happy. It really seems like it's all worth it in the end. 

So... trigger tonight and retrieval Monday. I'm so ready to get these eggs out! 

We are headed down to the city tomorrow to stay at T and B's apartment in Queens. If I never have to look at another Menopur box again I will be so happy!

IVF #4 CD 16- Fertilization Report

So I got the call this morning from my clinic. Of our 23 eggs they were able to ICSI 19 of them. Of those 19, 13 fertilized (68%). I'm elated that we have 13 lucky little embryos growing. I know that more could still fertilize because it happened last time, so we will see. 

They told me I won't hear again about them unless I want to call. They will freeze the embryos on day 5/6 and I can call if I want to get more information from the embryologist at that time. 

I'm feeling much better today than I was last night. I didn't sleep great because I was super uncomfortable. I weighed myself before bed and was up 4 pounds from the clinic. I can't say my scale is the same as theirs, but my stomach was definitely distended. I weighed myself again this morning and was down 3 pounds. I feel much better. The lupron trigger shot is amazing in comparison!! I can't believe how much better I feel this time around. I almost feel like I could have gone to work today, but I'm glad to be home relaxing and taking it easy.

I'm glad we have the next few weeks to relax and not worry about anything IVF related. I can get my body back to normal and start feeling better before we transfer any embryos. 

Keep growing little ones! I have such a good feeling about this cycle.

IVF #4 CD 15- Catching Up

I haven't blogged in the past few days because things have been a bit crazy and I've just been too exhausted. I returned to my clinic on Tuesday since I wasn't ready to trigger Monday. Things looked much better and I had about 20 measurable follicles. The NP was quite sure I would trigger that day and gave me her cell number so I could confirm things once I heard from Br.averman's office.

Sure enough, I was told to trigger and my retrieval was set for 8:30 on Thursday (today) morning. On Tuesday my estradiol levels had jumped to 6115 from 4537 the day before. They wrote me a prescription for Dostinex to help prevent OHSS.

I triggered Tuesday night after book club dinner with the girls. It was so nice to see them and laugh a lot (as is always the case around them). I took a 30 unit dose of Lupron and was instructed to return to my clinic following day to check LH and progesterone levels. I guess this was to be sure the Lupron trigger worked. As far as I know, everything was good because I didn't hear otherwise.

Yesterday W and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary. He bought me flowers that were just like my wedding bouquet and took me to dinner where we had our rehearsal dinner. It was really good and nice to spend time together. In addition, he refinished and painted an old window that had lots of window panes and put wedding photos in it for decoration on our bedroom wall. It looks really nice and I can't wait to hang it up.

Since I recently read the book Gone Girl I had the idea of traditional wedding gifts. On the third year it is leather. I bought him a table saw, a new leather belt, a leather bathroom travel bag, and some caramel chocolate squares.

Unfortunately, because I was so tired, I came home from dinner and fell asleep a little before 9. It did feel pretty fantastic to get all that sleep.

This morning we got up early and were at the clinic by 7:45. The nurse helping with the retrieval was very nice and my favorite NP also came in and listened to my heart and lungs and wished me good luck. When the anesthesiologist came in he told me there was a nationwide shortage on propofol so they were going to use something else.

Dr. Gr.eene came in and talked to me. He said he was committed to getting every egg and that I wouldn't remember anything. We talked about the freeze all option and he was super optimistic about it. He told me he recently wrote a blog post about it and that there was an article in the WSJ about it last week (a blogger friend had shared with me and I read it.) I asked him abut the uterine scratching that was mentioned in the article and he gave me further details and said he also blogged about that. The scratching is basically an endometrial biopsy. It's definitely something I'm going to ask Dr. Br.averman about. If we are planning the transfer next month we would do the endometrial biopsy in the next week or so. Here is a link to the WSJ article: Article

Retrieval really sucked today. Although I was out of it, I felt a lot and was in a lot of pain during. Although I don't remember complaining of the pain, W said I did at least 10 times. I'm feeling so much better now than I was at that time. I'm uncomfortable and moving slowly, but planning to take tomorrow off from work. I also have the whole weekend to recover. 

So....the number of eggs retrieved? 23!!! I'm pretty pleased about that number but know they won't all be mature. I will get the fert report tomorrow, so I'm hoping we get a good number of embryos.