2 Week Post-Op Appt.

I was all geared up for this appointment today. Yes! The doc can look at my incisions, see I'm healing and give me the blessing to start our IVF cycle. Of course, that wouldn't be how my appointment went.

We were pressed for time since the doc was running late and we had to pick Jack up from school. He started in talking about the endometriosis he found. I was supposed to be able to see pictures, but the pictures hadn't made it over from the hospital where I had my surgery yet. I had relatively superficial endometriosis on my abdominal walls which he said may or may not cause me pain (it really doesn't), but that the endometriosis nodule that I have on my rectum causes it to tent up toward my uterus, and he is sure I am in pain (I am around my periods especially when I go to the bathroom-I hold my breath and try not to scream). His honest recommendation is for us to go ahead, get pregnant, have this last child, and then have a hysterectomy leaving maybe one of my ovaries in so I can still have the hormones, etc. I'm not real upset about this as I look forward to not having to deal with periods anymore, and no more shooting pain my rectum when I go to the bathroom. The only reason it does upset me is that it requires major abdominal surgery. My mom advised me to have it done during my maternity leave since it will require an 8 week recovery period, so then I'm thinking maybe just do a scheduled c-section and have them do the hysterectomy then. This will of course probably screw up our Disney plans, but we could always do it last minute if I was healing well and felt up to it, or we could plan it for late Winter/Spring 2012. This is all IF we get pregnant, which is a big IF. If we don't, I may wait after our IVF cycle to see if it happens on it's own (despite it being unlikely) if I'm not willing to give up just yet, and if it doesn't then schedule the hysterectomy.

That was the surprising news of the day. The other not great news was that Dr. Moro wants us to wait until I get my second period post-op to proceed with our IVF cycle. He advised me that the first will be unpredictable, I won't know when it's going to come, and it will be messy. The second one will be predictable in that it will come about 28 days later. At that point, we can proceed with our cycle. This does not make me happy. I want it when I plan it, and it's all jumbled up now. So, I guess I'm asking for prayers that the first period comes very soon (like if you could pray for tomorrow, that would be awesome, but I know God doesn't work like that) so we can get this show on the road. I guess we'll be looking at the second period sometime in January with any luck, so the procedures part of the IVF cycle maybe in February?

The good news is we can use our healthcare FSA I just enrolled us in to pay the copay!

Follow Up to Question

Believe me guys, if you follow my blog and I have a way of contacting you, you'd be on the email so long as I have it. No worries there. It wouldn't be fair to tell you about all of our IVF stuff, and NOT tell you the results! It could be a depressing email you end up receiving, and a rather short one at that, but you'd know one way or another. I have no idea what I'm going to do. I don't have a large family-I think if I don't count the young children in the family who could care less if I was pregnant anyway, I might have 20 people to tell. All I would have to do is tell my mother, and the rest of the family would know in minutes. If you're reading this Mom, it's meant in the nicest way-you'd be so excited you wouldn't be able to keep it to yourself.

Maybe I'll just email the followers I have contact info for, and tell my family until it's noticeable at work that I'm sick. I do have a couple of close friends at work, and a couple of close coworkers who have been really supportive that I would probably tell, but I know I can trust them to keep quiet. That's probably 4 people on a unit of 100+. And dude, if you have me on Facebook, PLEASE do not mention the IVF or maybe pregnancy on the wall, just message me. It's easier that way!

In other good news, I think the bleeding may be stopping. It may only be for a few days since my next cycle is due to start end of this week, but I'll take what I can get at this point! Here's hoping my next cycle is nice and quick so we can move along to IVF!

Question???

I stumbled across another IFer's blog. She was posing the question about how or if infertile bloggers censor their blogs. Would we delay posting about a BFP (aka big fat positive for my non-trying to conceive friends) until a specified date or event? It made me think. I refuse to censor my blog in so much as my feelings about things, what happens in our travels, etc. I try not to discuss arguments I have and things like that, but I will discuss conversations we have regarding our treatments, children, etc.

I've thought alot recently about posting that we were pregnant. I want to be able to tell all of my family, friends, and followers. But because my blog was evidently so interesting to my coworkers who wanted to talk about me, I really hesitate. What is one to do in this situation? I've changed the blog name, but I saw on that nifty little "stats" tab where you can track the audience, etc. to the blog that someone googled my blog with what I have under my "About Me" section of the blog. I have since changed that, but despite that, they could have it with the name or address of the blog at this point. I refuse to start a whole new blog for the pregnancy. It's just too much. So, what do I do? I guess I could say if you want to know our beta results, email me your address and I'll include you on the email I will send out, but not post it to the blog. To be honest, if the cycle doesn't work I don't know when I'll feel like posting that it didn't. And lets be honest, if I get as sick as I was with Jack, everyone at work will know it anyway, there won't be any hiding it, and it won't matter, I'd only be able to keep a pregnancy secret in that situation for a couple of weeks.

I don't know. Everyone knowing that we were doing a cycle last time, and knowing when our beta was ended up working out ok and I was so glad it was a sticky little embryo in there, but I did think about what if something awful happened? Then I'd have to tell everyone, and then you'd have people who didn't know what to say, just gave you a look, etc., and I didn't want that. So it would be easier if everyone didn't know right away at work. After everyone knew, I just remember thinking, wow, I still have another 8 weeks to go to get to the second trimester, that's alot of time for something to happen.

I worry too much, I know this. It's one of my flaws. If you've been in this situation, I'd love to hear what you did, or any ideas you might have about how to best approach this!

November ICLW 2010

I haven't done ICLW in a while. If you're here through IComLeavWe, then welcome!

I am 30, my husband is 34, and we have one son who we conceived with our first IVF cycle. We needed IVF due to MFI, endometriosis, and one patent fallopian tube. After our second IVF cycle which was cancelled due to "genetically abnormal embryos" (all had multiple nuclei), we were moving onto adoption. We'd run out of money in our insurance cap for infertility services, and we wanted another child.

We had chosen our adoption agency, decided we wanted a domestic adoption, and next was to come up with the money for this endeavor. We did the fundraising thing with one successful fundraiser (a huge yard sale by donation only), and one very unsuccessful one (Longaberger basket and Vera Bradley bags Bingo)where we lost everything we had made on the first one, and money we had put into it ourselves. You can read more about that disaster here. We had alot of negative comments about fundraising for the adoption (I mean, we don't know anyone who has $20K sitting in their bank accounts but ok), and we decided we weren't going to go that route anymore. If we adopted it would be through grants, saving for a few years, etc. Then we got news that our fertility clinic was merging with another major clinic in the area, and that it would be less expensive to do another IVF cycle. You can read about that here.

The plan at that point changed to saving up the $5000 it would likely cost us for another IVF cycle and hopefully doing it sometime this year. However, I fell off of a ladder in March and broke my wrist in 4 places, required surgery for it in May, and didn't return to work until late July, so that got put on the back burner. Murphy's Law every time it seems. While I was out on short term disability for my wrist, I got our open enrollment info for our insurance. The good news was that our insurance was increasing our cap for infertility benefits, the bad news (for some) was that IUI and IVF benefits would be grouped together in that cap. It wasn't bad news for us because we'd never been candidates for an IUI, so we'd only used the insurance money towards IVF. This meant we should be able to do one last cycle. You can read about that here.

It came to October and we began our precycle testing. We did the semen analysis, cd 3 bloodwork, and next was my HSG. Of course, Murphy's Law came into play again. On my previous HSG back in 2006, they determined I had either a hydrosalpinx on the right side or a blocked tube. After further investigation with an ultrasound they thought it was just a blocked tube. This was great news, it wouldn't require surgery before we could do an IVF cycle, and the cycle resulted in a beautiful boy that December. We didn't require an HSG before our last IVF cycle in 2009 (it only has to be done every so often), but we did have a sono-HSG done, basically done by ultrasound only, not under fluoroscopy. Nothing had changed as far as we could tell, the right tube was still blocked. So when I went in for my HSG this year, I prayed that it would be the same, that nothing would have changed. Of course, as I said before, thank you Murphy's Law, something had. It turns out that all along we did have a hydrosalpinx, most likely caused by my endometriosis. Our first child was even more a miracle than we'd thought given the research we read. This post covers it. Our fertility specialist believed we could do another cycle and have the same results as our first cycle, but if you've seen our luck, you wouldn't trust it. We decided that to be able to feel comfortable with whatever results from our next IVF cycle, we had to make everything optimal, including removing my right tube. I had this done November 16th laproscopically and all went well.

Unfortunately, it seems my period never stopped from the end of October as I've been bleeding since the 27th, so I'm hoping after my next one is due, this bleeding stops, maybe we can try on our own this next cycle, and if it's unsuccessful, we will continue with our IVF plans in late December.

We appreciate all the support, prayers and thoughts we can get! Thanks!

More Baby Talk

We let Jack sleep with us last night, and as we're laying in bed, done our prayers, he asks again to make sure it wasn't a baby that the doctor took out of my tummy. I told him it wasn't. He wanted to know if there would be a baby because he wants a baby. Then he wanted to know if we could have a girl or a boy. I said that either was possible, or no baby was a possibility too, but that we hoped there would eventually be another one. This is awesome. He wants to know if we want a boy or a girl. I told him we want a healthy baby, it doesn't matter if it's a boy or a girl. I asked what he wanted, first he said, "A girl like you." Then he said he wanted a boy too. Then he wanted to know what their names would be. I start asking, "Well, what do you think about____?" What it came down to is that Jack loves the name that I love for a girl, but he didn't like either of the two names we had for a boy. I was trying to come up with other boy names to see what he would think, and I mentioned "Sam". His response, "Like Peter Sam from Thomas?" I couldn't help but laugh, it comes down to what he can relate to-Thomas the Tank Engine. I told him no, not Peter Sam, just Sam, which he also didn't care for. I came up with another one and he did like that one. Who knows if there will even be another child, but if so, I guess we can give serious consideration to the boy name Jack liked. It's a nice normal name and not unheard of.

My baby is home!

My baby just came back from his 5 day cruise with his Grandmom. I've heard all about the plane ride, the trolley in Key West, the butterfly farm, feeding the turtles (with the bad fish eating the turtle food), Coco Cay, the pool, what he ate on his ship, etc. It sounds like he had a blast. We love cruises!

I showed him my "boo-boo's" on my tummy where I had a boo-boo that was inside my tummy taken out while he was gone. He asked if it was a baby that got taken out. I told him it was not a baby, but that hopefully getting the boo-boo taken out will make it easier for God to put a baby in there for us. He's been very sweet, a little afraid to hug me close because he doesn't want to hurt me, but very sweet nonetheless.

Thank you God for letting him have fun with his Grandmom, for showing us that we could live without him for 5 days, and for bringing him and his Grandmom home safe!

Post-Op

My surgery went well. I have a small amount of endometriosis on my rectum and abdominal wall again. I got a shot of pain meds before I left and they did prescribe me darvacet, but I didn't get it filled. I'm having mild cramping, but I was having that along with heavier spotting (like a light period) before the surgery (now 20 days that I have been bleeding, not impressed). I am having incisional pain around my belly button, but it is bearable with ibuprofen.

Surgery in the AM

Well I'm ready. I've taken my antibiotic, have had nothing but clear fluids all day, and started the nasty bowel prep. I'm starving!!!! Believe me, all I can think about is dinner tomorrow night, and yes, I am sure I will be eating.

I'm really not too worried about the surgery. If I had to say one thing made me nervous, it would be between my ovary not being messed with, and hoping my hubby will get the answers to my questions post-op. I've controlled the one that I could as much as possible by writing down my questions for Archie to ask Dr. Moro and left room for him to write the answers for me. I can't control what happens with my ovary tomorrow or anything that may come up related to my endometriosis, so I won't even try. I've prayed about the surgery alot lately, and I know that I just have to trust in God that everything will be as it should.

I probably won't update tomorrow (if I do it will be very brief), but I will update in the next few days post-op.

One Step Closer

I went for my pre-op stuff today, you know, history, bloodwork, etc. Nothing exciting.

TMI Warning:

In the meantime I placed a call to my OB/GYN to make sure there won't be any concerns about spotting I've had for two weeks now. I always have some for a couple of days before my period arrives, and that was no different this month, but generally my period lasts no more than 5 days and I'm done. Everything stopped after I had my pelvic exam last Monday with Dr. Moro for one day...I thought my period was over, but I've had spotting everyday since and today is day 14 if you count the spotting pre-period. Fun, right? It's really annoying and I'm sure it's nothing, but I want to make sure I shouldn't be concerned about anything. And yes I'm 99% sure I'm not pregnant given the fact that I had a normal flow for my period. Regardless, that is part of their standard pre-op bloodwork anyway. I'm sure I won't be getting any exciting phone calls to tell me otherwise. I would however appreciate a phone call from my OB/GYN with reassurances that everything is probably fine and it will probably stop in another day or two because this crap is for the birds!

Etsy Seller

Ok, so a shameless self promotion, but I thought I'd pass it along that I have a little space on Etsy. You can visit it here. Most of what I have on there is hand-embroidered onesies along with some cloth diaper burp cloths (the price reflects how much those bad boys cost before even adding in the cost of the fabric or ribbon to adorn them, but they are so absorbent that they were my faves when Jack was a baby), and those are samples of what I have done and have currently available. Keep in mind that for the burp cloths-if you want a particular type fabric design, for example you want something with John Deere, let me know that and I will see what I can find at the fabric store, send you pictures, and you can let me know which you prefer. Some designs are seasonal and may not be available, so check with me before you order!

For examples of what I have available for other designs you can visit my other website. These are the things I started making when I was out with my broken wrist (yes I did them with a cast on one arm with no movement possible in that arm!) in the hopes of supplementing our income. I can also do kids shirts, hand towels, just about anything, if you have an idea, let me know! If there is a design you want that you don't see, or different colors you want used, we can work together to come up with something. I'm flexible.

Some of the products you see are ones that I had a design for already, some are done from my drawings free-hand like the dinosaur and the bees, and if I do a custom piece, it will vary slightly each time. Below are a few pics of other ones I've done as well so you can get a feel for it. I can customize and personalize. I think I need to change my shipping, but I have to package one of the onesies up in the padded envelope and take it to the post office to see what it would cost to ship to whatever point is furthest from here. LOL. We shall see, if it is less I will update it on the site. Please feel free to pass it along to friends or family if you're thinking they might like something as well. I don't currently have any orders pending (but wish I did), and it takes me a few hours to do each one, and I'll ship as soon as they are ready. Christmas is coming up so order soon!!!!




This one was done to make it look like a Siamese cat.

Below are some of the cloth diaper burp cloths:




Hope you like what you see!!!

Dr. Moro

I had my appointment with Dr. Moro today with regards to having my tube removed. He is the doc at the hospital where I work that I was referred to so my insurance would cover my surgery. It was a rough start, you see, I have to work tonight and tomorrow night, and here I am with an hour of sleep under my belt on my first 12 hour shift in. I was sitting in the waiting room at 1:50pm for a 2pm appointment, and that is where I remained until 3pm. I guess he was running late, but I didn't appreciate the fact that the patient taken before me was late for their appointment and not made to wait until after mine. My mom said it's my fault that I didn't speak up-what could I say really? I just wanted the doc to see me, and I certainly didn't want to piss him off, especially after he'd been called on his cell phone last week to try and schedule me for surgery without having ever met me.

While I sat in the waiting room, Dr. M passed by and had to give me a second look after he thought he was done seeing patients today. Then it clicked and he asked if Dr. Moro was doing my surgery. I said yes he was, and I'd be calling him to get our cycle going again mid-December. My period following my surgery won't be expected until Christmas Eve (lucky me) so we'll be actually starting lupron, etc. in January sometime. Now that I think about it, I'm supposed to be on BCP's the cycle before we start our drugs. I guess I need to give Dr. M a call and find out if I will go on BCP's when I get my period later this month.

Anyway...surgery is scheduled for 11am on Nov. 16th and I have to be there at 9am. I was planning on working the two nights before surgery, however, what I had forgotten was required for a surgery like this is a bowel prep. Oh yeah, fun stuff. So, I will now be working that Sunday night, off on Monday, and pretty much confined to my bathroom all night. I will learn to like chicken broth as well that Monday as I am only to have clear fluids all day.

Dr. Moro seemed pretty sure that my ovary will be left undisturbed except in the event that my endometriosis is back and extensive enough to have plastered my tube/ovary to the pelvic wall in which case we'd have to see what happened. I'm hoping that the endo is minimal and that this surgery goes off without a hitch and removal of my tube takes all of 5 minutes as the doc thought it would.

Archie and I were planning (before surgery crept up on us) to go to Atlantic City on the 17th and 18th while Jack is out of town on a cruise with my mom. They leave the day before my surgery and come back that Friday. This seemed like a great time for us to get away as normally we're not willing to leave him. It is also a good time for a bowel prep and surgery, LOL. No little one wanting to know what I'm doing running to the bathroom every 5 minutes, and only a dog to worry about post-op. We're putting plans for AC on hold until we see how I'm feeling post-op. I'm thinking the 17th isn't going to be a good night to stay in AC, but maybe we can go up on the 18th and come back on the 19th as planned. We shall see!

Otherwise, maybe we can just lounge around our house, I can make him clean (LOL as if!), and we can rent some movies to keep us occupied while I recover.