Antsy!!

My doctor's appointment today went well my estrogen and progesterone levels are looking great so far! I am still giving myself the daily 10 units of Lupron and changing my estrogen patches every other day. I am still at two patches and will increase to three patches on Friday.

C and I are getting a bit antsy! Our RE called C about a week ago and said although her TSH level is normal but he wants it a bit lower in order to respond to injectables better. So he started her on a low dose of synthroid to take daily with her prenatal vitamin and BCP. I feel so bad for her she has been so groggy/tired since she started it, not really sure why... considering it should be the opposite. Who knows but I know she is super siked to stop the BCP tomorrow!! And not so excited to start injectables Sunday only because of the fact that it requires self injectable needles lol. She will be happy in two weeks when the retrieval time is here! And so will I... I feel like we are so close yet so far away!

Anyway aside from my lack of patience, my life, along with my wife's has been crazy. We are both working crazy hours... she started to pick up overtime to start the crazy saving! Lol. I just got done working five days in a row (four of which were 13hr days)! Today I got to enjoy myself a bit, C suggested that I get a Boudoir photography session done (pre-baby lol). So, I did. It was very cool, we used our wedding photographer and she came to our house, so I would feel comfortable in my own bedroom. She made me feel beautiful... but I don't know how I will feel when I see them! I am a bit heavyset now a days, and I haven't always been so seeing nearly naked photos of myself may be a bit of a challenge for my confidence. But I suppose post baby I will appreciate the way I look now....? Who knows!


CRAZY TO THINK IN  MONTH I COULD TOTALLY BE PREGNANT! I hope I am not being too optimistic!

Moving right along

Okay so my WBC count is back in the normal range at 10.3 :)! I'm feeling pretty much back to normal which is awesome. That was honestly one of the worst weeks of my life... I've never felt so much pain and lacked so much sleep. I guess that prepared me for motherhood a bit lol.

Anyway I'm still taking the daily 10units of Lupron. I added to estrogen patches today and will change them every two days. I go for my next appointment 2/27/13. C has her next appointment 2/28/13 where she will most likely stop te BCP and then start injectables after her 3/3/13 appointment. So we are moving right along, and getting very excited!!

What a difference a day makes :)

So I am finally happy to say I feel so much better today. The secret? My wife (being an ER nurse) brought home supplies to get me hydrated. I also have to admit that I felt nauseous all the time and had not had a BM in a week so I took doculax for women and it worked. So now that I am empty and hydrated I can finally eat and walk around like less of a zombie. I have not needed any heavy duty pain medications since early yesterday morning. And so far today I only took ibuprofen and tylenol which I am due for now and don't even feel like I need it :)!

Since I've stopped the birth control pill on the 19th I am bleeding for the first time since January which may be good for my uterus to "vent" lol I can imagine it may be a little pissed off and bloated. I had a visit this morning for blood work and an US I am waiting to hear about the follow up CBC to make sure my WBC count went down (fingers crossed). The US looked good :). I received the rest of my medications today in the mail and I will start the estrogen patches saturday as long as everything looks good on my blood work. C has her next appointment for blood work and US on 02/28/13.

Here is the pharmacy we have in our kitchen lol: C's meds are the 3 to the left and mine are the three on right

Little scare...

So I thought I would be feeling much better by now but to my surprise the past few days have been the worst! My white blood cell count was 11.5 on Friday before I started the antibiotics. So Saturday I called RMA and explained the pain was worse, they told me to hang in there for 24 more hours to let the antibiotics kick in. So, I did. They wrote me a script for tylenol with codeine to take along with ibuprofen to help ease the pain. Yesterday morning after coming home from a night shift I tried to get a warm bath before my usual nap. That didn't help much and gave me the chills (fever). So I was only able to nap for about 2 hours before I woke up in excruciating back and pelvic pain! I said to myself this is ENOUGH! I went to the local ER to get check out. My WBC count was 15 this time, and normal is 4.3 - 10.8. So it was definitely elevated despite oral antibiotics. The GYN resident that saw me in the ER said it was in fact endometritis (a bad case) so they gave me another antibiotic through my IV along with strong pain medication to help ease my pain. She also said to add another week to the doxycycline antibiotic to knock this out fully. PHEW! I got discharged thankfully and I am definitely not 100% but I am feeling much better. Taking a strong pain medication since I am off from work and taking it easy today.

OUCH!!!

The good news in all of this is that this will not set any of our plans back and I should be just fine come transfer time. I took my last birth control pill today, and will take my fourth lupron injection tonight.

Shots, Shots, Shots!

So I had another follow up appointment today for the persisting pain. The blood clots and fluid are gone which is a good thing but the pain is still there. So they put me on doxycycline twice a day for one week just in case. They think it was an acute inflammatory reaction... who knows?????


Anyway I started my Lupron shots today, 10 units daily for two weeks. I stop my BC pill on the 19th of February. And start the patches at the end of next week if all goes as planned (which you never know with me). C miscalculated one drug cost (menopur) by $715 whoops someone was tired lol. But all is good we picked up her medications and we will get the rest of mine Monday or Tuesday of next week.

Whew enough about medications! Any way I am starting to feel a little better but I am still reliant on around the clock ibuprofen. More to come, stay tuned :)!

And this too shall pass

I'm feeling a little better. They did an US and there are blood clots and fluid in my uterus trying to get out but getting stuck. May take a few days to resolve (OUCH). So I'm taking high doses of drugs to help with the pain (Ibuprofen and Tylenol around the clock) which is taking the edge off for now. I had to take off from work tonight :(. Which sucks because I am still on orientation but they were very understanding. I am in no shape to take care of sick babies tonight.

ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS THANK GOD FOR MY WONDERFUL WIFE! She has been bending over backwards to try and make me feel better!

So other than all of that chaos we had our IVF nurse consult this morning and that went very well. Once I was not hunched over in pain and able to listen I started to get super excited. And C is super excited as well. Our IVF nurse is super sweet and spent over 3 hours with us! Needless to say she addressed all of our questions/concerns. She gave us a list with seven pharmacy's to call for the best pricing for the medications we need. They did one more blood test for me to test for my CMV status and to check if I am up to date on my titters. C had her blood taken for an AMH level. So when we got home C called figured out the best way to go about getting all that we need. Since we have some medications left over from me donating eggs our medications combined will be $1080, which is cheap in IVF land. 

We basically signed away our lives today with all of the procedure paperwork etc. C had to sign over the sperm/her eggs to me which seems so strange but it is what it is lol. The sperm is all ready to be shipped so I will do that next week :).

New on the horizon is talk of doing PGD, Preimplantation genetic diagnosis. I just feel like using donor sperm and doing IVF I want to make sure genetically the embryo's are healthy (free from genetic abnormalities or trisomies). Another plus is we would know the sex for all the embryo's :). I see some crazy crazy things working in the NICU and although this is technically the unlucky 5% of babies that have genetic abnormalities I just can't imagine being in that situation myself. I also feel like it would save me the decision to "terminate" if need be in the future if god forbid something was wrong. The bad part about this is of course the expense and potential risks. Cost wise the $3,500 biopsy will be covered by insurance, but the $3,015 for genetic/sex test is out of pocket. As far as risks we could lose embryos in the biopsy process. So, C and I will discuss this further and decide by next week. Any opinions or input???

As far as a definitive time line, things have been pushed back slightly since they want to have our cycles synced for two weeks rather than one. So we are looking to do the egg retrieval, ICSI, and embryo transfer March 24-29th.

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!

Me on the left and C on the right <3

Feeling terrible and scared :(

I have no idea what is wrong with me. I am exhausted, I have only gotten three hours of sleep in the last 44 hours. I got a hysteroscopy done yesterday and have had sharp and unbelievably painful abdominal pain since about 5pm yesterday. I have an appointment in the morning. I am hoping to get some answers. But more importantly some relief and sleep! :(

One step closer :)

C had her blood work and US this morning. The doctor said she was cleared to start birth control :)! We will find out more of a medication timeline tomorrow when we meet with the IVF nurse to order medications.

I had my hysteroscopy and mock transfer this afternoon. The worst part was keeping my bladder full, I am such a wimp when it comes to "holding it." I am a little crampy now but otherwise fine. The tests went very well. I am happy to say that there will be no more tests for me. The only thing I can look forward to now is the embryo transfer and hopefully a pregnancy!

IVF nurse consult is tomorrow morning... nervous/anxious about the cost and details lol.

Let the games begin!

I've never been so happy to hear my wife got her period! She and I go in the office Tuesday (Feb 12th) for blood work and US for her and mock transfer and hysteroscopy for me. Then Weds (Feb 13th) we order our IVF meds! Ironically enough we are looking to do the embryo transfer the week of the anniversary of her mother's death (March 7th will be two years) :(. I feel like that is a sign, we couldn't have planned that if we tried! 

On a side note  my wife and I tried a Unitarian Universalist church two months ago. And although we loved it I feel like we need more structure for our future children. So we found a Christian church that accepts the LGBT community. We will go tomorrow and check it out (for a potential parish for us). If we like it we may look into their baptism process etc. :)! 

Just wanted to share this wonderful video :)

HSG test and donor photos :)

So my hysterosalpingogram went well last week, there are no blockages in my fallopian tubes which is good news! Now we are kind of just hanging in there until C get her period. I have the mock transfer and hysterscopy on February 12th and then we have our IVF nurse consult on February 13th to order the very expensive drugs! C is due for her period around February 11th so if we are lucky we can bang out the bloodwork and US on the 13th as well. Then she will start birth control for about two weeks if those results look good. I am still on birth control just waiting to get the ball rolling :)!

Anyway here are some fun comparison photos of our donor and I. I am on the left and the donor is on the right :)

And just for even more fun, here are some cute photos of C when she was a little girl :) lol

LET'S HOPE THEY MAKE SOME CUTE BABIES! :)