Drained

I just feel emotionally drained. Jack asked me in church the other day while I was holding him, "Mommy, are you sad that you don't have any babies?" Such a sweet boy. I told him that I was a little, but I was VERY glad that I had him. Thank God for that sweet little boy.

My mom is right, this is a loss no matter what others say. I HAD 2 babies in my belly that had been growing and developing as they should, but for whatever reason, they didn't stick around. I don't think of it as a miscarriage because they never stuck, but they were there. That said, I've chosen to move on. In cleaning out my van this past weekend, I threw out the pictures I had of where they were put in my uterus. Why keep them? It's not that I don't want to remember this cycle (seriously, how could I forget?), but it's not like in a few years I can show that picture to my child/children and say, that's the day you were put back in my tummy. I have those pictures for Jack, of the two embryos we put back, one of which was him, and of the sono pic where we see where the embryos were put on day of transfer. But with no children to show this picture to, why keep it? To be honest, I didn't feel bad throwing it out either. I'm done with that cycle. I'm ready for the next. Which is why I am so frustrated...

I spoke with our financial coordinator at our clinic yesterday. A frozen embryo transfer (FET) is $4000, not including meds. I THINK we may have that left in our insurance cap, however, the lady I spoke to at the insurance company today was even less helpful than her counterpart on Friday and wouldn't go through and give me amounts that are pending. She told me I can call back in 10-12 days to see what's been processed. I called our financial coordinator again today to ask when our copay for the cycle would be due, and it will be due 10 days prior to starting any fertility drugs. My nurse called me yesterday and told me that if we wanted to do this cycle, Dr. M could start me on BCP's Thursday after our follow up. I have no idea when any fertility drugs would actually start, and he was pretty hazy on any meds when I spoke with him on Friday, so I'm hoping to get a clearer answer on Thursday about that so I can decide if starting pills this cycle is even worth it. If we have at least 10-12 days before any fertility drugs would start, then I guess we will start on BCP's. Worst case scenario, we find out that we don't have enough between insurance and our savings for this cycle right now and I stop the pills and we wait. We waited 7 months to be able to do our first IVF cycle, and we got Jack. We waited 2 years to do our second IVF cycle which was a bust. We waited 7 months for this third IVF cycle which at least gave us 4 embryos to save for later. And waiting for a FET sure won't kill us after all the previous waits, right?

I just wish I had answers. Or that our clinic had someone who could say, we billed this amount to your insurance company, they're processing it, and so you will have AT LEAST this amount left for whatever treatment you decide to do. Ugh.

I think God is trying to teach me patience. It sure isn't a trait I was blessed with, so I need to learn it. I'm working on it God, I am. Thanks for keeping me on track.

If all of this isn't draining enough combined with my frustrations in my professional life, I'm going to visit my grandmother this weekend. I'm driving up with my dad, and it's going to be like 11 to 12 hours probably roundtrip. We only stay about an hour because I think it's hard on us to have the same conversation about 15 times in that hour, and I can only imagine that it's hard for my grandmother when she isn't even sure who we are, or at least who I am. She thought I was her neice last time, and she thought my grandfather was still alive. That was really hard to take. I just feel beaten down emotionally, and I'm trying to amp myself up to get through this weekend without getting torn up too much more in this fight called life.

God's Will

That is the only thing I can come to when I think about this cycle. Seriously, how else could a cycle go so well, with such beautiful embryos, and it still not result in a pregnancy? God has something else planned for us. I saw this beautiful quote last night, and I can't remember where, but it said something to the effect that God answers prayers in 3 ways- "Yes" and gives you what you want, "No" and gives you something better, or "Wait" and He gives you the best. That was profound to me, I know it sounds lame, but seriously. It's true. I don't know at this point whether He is saying "no" or "wait". We had to wait with Jack, and he is the best gift Archie and I have ever received. And believe me, we can't even begin to tell you how often we will look at each other and say Thank God for Jack. For all we know He is telling us "no", and our gift is that we get to do more with Jack and for Jack, the gift He has already shared with us. When I look at it like that, it doesn't seem so bad.

AF arrived today just before work. Yay. I called and left my nurse a message to find out what our next step is as far as they are concerned. I will be calling our financial coordinator first thing tomorrow morning to try and make sure financially we are a go for this cycle, and we're praying that we'll have enough to get out another cycle this year. We shall see!

I Don't Know

I was frustrated, until I started to think about things more. I've been asked if I'll switch clinics. No, I can't if I want insurance to pay for it, not to mention that our doctor merged with this clinic because it is renowned in the region for being so good at what they do. I just can't seem to wrap my head around this. I asked my doc if he would do anything different, and he's right, you can't argue with how well the cycle itself went, and the fact that for the first time in 3 fresh cycles, we had embryos that made it so far, and some that are frozen. As I was explaining what Dr. M said on the phone yesterday to my mom this morning and I told her that he said that our embryos "weren't ready" to transfer on day 3 or 5, she asked, "What does he mean ready?" Great question. Seriously. I mean, to her I explained away that they weren't at the stage that the clinic wanted them to be at, maybe they have a protocol for where they need to be based on day to be able to transfer them. But really? Before we merged with this clinic, we put back day 3 embryos that weren't great quality... so what in the world did these have to look like to put them back earlier? You can't tell me that people have embryos that are hatching on day 3. I'm so irritated.

And I thought I was over crying until I got into the shower for work and as I was drying off, I found myself in tears because Jack unfortunately had to know that we were trying to give him a sibling, and that I had to explain what happened to the ones we put back. He went to all of my appointments with me for the most part, and Archie told him the day we did our transfer that there were babies in my tummy so that he wouldn't run and jump on me or headbutt me like he does sometimes. So I did it as delicately as I could, but I hope it was enough. He still is asking questions about how they physically got into heaven and unfortunately that's too complicated for even me to explain to him. He's seen me have blood on toilet paper before, and asked why, and he was worried, and my simple explanation was that when mommies don't make babies, we bleed and it's ok, it doesn't hurt and we're ok. I couldn't very well explain that instead of heaven, these babies will just come out with everything else. How morbid would that be? Not to mention, what in the world would the kid think later on in life. So the heaven explanation was better in my opinion, but I wish he didn't have to KNOW how everything works. I swear he'll be an engineer one day.

Jack is going to know the next time too, because when you have to be at your appointments at 7:30am, and you don't get off work until then, and you already have your child with you (my mom watches him at night when Archie and I both work and then we trade off in the morning at work), it's just something you have to do.

I can't say I'm ready to go through all of this emotionally again. But this is the second time, and I feel like I've been handling things better-whether that's because I know we're not "done" since we still have 4 embies on ice, or because unfortunately it's not our first time going through this-I don't know. It sucks for sure. But, I almost feel like if we can just continue this sucky roller coaster ride and keep on going, MAYBE something good will come of it. I feel like if we take a break and wait until next year, I may be even more apprehensive. I don't know. It terrifies me to think that not only will I possibly have to deal with "being done", and "not having any more", but I'm most terrified about how to explain to Jack, good enough to satisfy him, that he won't have a brother or sister when I know that he wants one so bad. Crap, I'm crying again. Ok, I have to be done, it's time for dinner, and I have to get my stuff together so I can work tonight.

Processing Bad News

I guess now that the initial shock has passed, I find myself just irritated. How could we put back supposedly good looking embryos that were already hatched and NOTHING happen? I was supposed to trust the lab to make the call on when to transfer them back, and what I wanted didn't matter, and NOTHING happened. I tried to look on my clinic's website to see if they post their IVF results by day of transfer and they don't. That said, I can't imagine that they would continue to do day 6 transfers if they didn't have a decent success rate.

Archie said he wishes he had stopped me from drinking the iced tea I had the night of our anniversary. ICED TEA!! I didn't even realize I had iced tea until I sat straight up in bed that night thinking, "Holy CRAP, I cannot believe I did that!" I told Archie that if I can have a baby at work whose mother did PCP, heroin and cocaine and can still get pregnant, two glasses of caffeine was not the deal breaker.

I just got off the phone with my doc. He said the only way our cycle could have been more perfect was if we had gotten pregnant. He said that it was a great cycle, and if we did another fresh one, he wouldn't change anything. He said we couldn't have elected to do a day 5 transfer because the embryos weren't ready. I asked about our frozen blasts, what they looked like and their quality. We froze 2 hatching blasts, and 2 expanding blasts which are evidently further along than early blasts but not at the hatching stage. 1 of our embryos was good quality, the other 3 were fair. This doesn't worry me much as our first cycle was all fair embryos and we got pregnant with Jack.

I asked Dr. M what to expect for a FET since we've never done anything but fresh cycles, and he said that they do injectable estrogen which is IM, but it's only given every 3 days. They sometimes do lupron, sometimes do BCP's, and they do injectable progesterone IM but that won't start until a few days before the transfer. I asked about thawing the embryos, how far in advance they do it and they thaw them the day of the transfer. I told him we'd want to put two back, and he said that they would start by thawing two, and if both survived thawing then we'd still have two frozen but if they didn't both survive they would continue thawing until we had two embryos to transfer or until we ran out. So it's not a guarantee that anything would even be transferred back. I'm just glad we decided to freeze some since this cycle didn't work out, at least I don't have to deal with the fact that "we're done".

My mom is upset. She asked if I was really going to put myself through this again emotionally. Yup, I am. I can't believe that I've dealt with this blow as well as I have, but I think it's because we're not "done". We still have a chance. If insurance won't cover it, we'll wait until we get our taxes back next year instead of taking Jack to Disney. If it will cover it, than we'll do it, and use our taxes to take Jack to Disney next year.

Archie is just as disappointed and confused as I am. And of course, Jack went to all these appointments with me and knew that the bloodwork today was to see if there were any babies growing in my tummy. So when we picked him up from school, and I was upset, he wanted to know why. I was on the phone with my mom and she was upset that I told him how I did, but he needs to know. He knew that we had put babies back in there, the logical question is what happened to them? So he asked and I told him that I was upset because there weren't any babies in my tummy and that meant that we had more time for us to have him all to himself. He was fine with that and gave me hugs and kisses. Then a little later he asked me where the babies went. I explained that they went to heaven because God was ready for them. He asked how they got there, and I told him that it was like God gave them a big hug and just wrapped them up in His arms. He asked me if it was like a sliding star that slid up to heaven from earth, and I said sure. However he can understand it and process it is fine with me. So, Archie told me that when they went over to Jack's best friend's house, A's mom asked how I was doing. Jack said, "My mommy's babies died and they went to heaven." like it was no big deal, and I'm glad that for him it's not. I guess we handled it the right way or he'd be more upset, right? I don't know. There certainly isn't a parenting book that tells you how to deal with this.

Negative

That would be my result after putting back two beautiful looking blasts on day 6. It doesn't make me feel great about the ones we have frozen. My doc hasn't called me yet, but my nurse said he will later. She said we can start again after I get my period if we want to and have the funds available for our frozen transfer. I can't even get myself together enough to call the insurance company to see what we have left. All the meds are stopped and I should have AF in about 2-4 days supposedly. This is just freaking beautiful, but I realize that it wasn't meant to be for whatever reason. It's just not much of a consolation at this point. Oh well, Jack gets us to himself for a little longer. That's not a bad deal, at least we have that sweet, funny boy to love on.

7dp6dt

I want to test so bad!!! My mother almost got me to do it today before work, but I just don't think I am ready to handle a negative and have to wait 2 more days for results. I called my nurse this morning and begged to do my test tomorrow morning instead of Friday, simply because my doctor's office is right across the street from my work, and I work tonight. It means I have to get Jack up early in the morning on Friday (earlier than I normally have to for school anyway) and drag him into the doctor's office for a 2 second blood draw. My nurse told me I really needed to wait, if I wanted to come in on Monday instead of Friday that was fine, but they've had numbers be low doing it a day before, and then they have to wait 4 days to retest and in the meantime the person is all stressed out and worrying. I don't want that either. So it's killing me, but I will wait.

Friday is going to be a long day. When we did our beta for cycle #1, I had worked the night before, and my mom was having surgery that day. So I was busy trying to keep my eyelids open while waiting for news from the surgeon and I had my sister and husband to entertain me while we waited. That was long enough. But I don't work Thursday night, so I *may* (I say it like that because who really thinks I'll get much sleep before this test?!?!) be well rested on Friday morning, and after my blood draw, Jack will go to school, Archie will probably go to the gym, and I will be sitting at home twiddling my thumbs. Waiting for the phone to ring...I have got to find some trouble to get myself into that day! Maybe if I can't sleep Thursday night, I can sleep on Friday?!?!? I know, I'm slowly slipping into delirium...only two more days of putting up with this from me!!! Then it will be a whole other box of worms we open up!

6dp6dt

So it is 6 days since our transfer. I keep getting asked how I feel, a totally normal question, especially since our beta is only a few days away now. For the most part I feel fine. I'm really irritable. I don't know how much of this is mentally induced because I'm getting more nervous as we get closer to the test date, or if it has to do with the progesterone/estrace combo. I'm having hot flashes which interfere with my sleep so I feel like I'm tired all the time even when I've been off of work for a few days. The estrace is supposed to help with this (at least in menopausal women), but I'm not so sure it has. The crampiness I was having has for the most part subsided, however, every now and then I'll have some. I'm not complaining, I'll take all of this if it means we're pregnant. I'm just answering the most common question at the moment :)