Tuesday, September 6, 2011

What's new?

Oh my, this post is going to be a complete hodge podge. Brace yourselves.

First up: What a difference three years makes. Stim day 4 E2 was 70 this morning. 3+ years ago it was 83. Nurse says 70 is a fine number. I find it interesting (yup, just interesting, not scary or dismal or foreboding or...) to see the difference my age has made on my response to the stims. Apparently there is some truth to that whole business about your fertility decreasing over time. Who knew? I started Menopur tonight which means the pharmaceutical road has diverged and I can no longer compare my monitoring results to my last cycle. Probably for the better.

Next up: What a difference 8 months makes. My local FET buddy delivered healthy twins today at 35w2d. I am happy to report that I did not fall apart as I predicted I would. There was special weight to seeing their pictures on FB this afternoon, but it didn't linger. I am grateful for all of the adventures we filled our break time with. It has certainly made it easier to make peace with being so far behind where I once wanted so desperately to be.

Sperm has been ordered. Delivery should take place on Friday.

I teach a class on Tuesday nights from 5:30-8:30pm. I'm supposed to do my injections between 6-7pm. As you may recall, tonight was the first night for Menopur. Here's a vignette for the baby book: Running upstairs to a secluded bathroom during our 7pm break, frantically reconstituting Menopur, prepping Lupron and Follistim injections, then administering the trifecta, all the while watching the time on my phone like I'm trying to meet some Olympic qualifying time. I'm adding it to the list of bizarre places I've shot up during this cycle. Already on the list: Multiple Disneyland/California Adventure restrooms, the main cabin of an airplane just after take-off, a city park restroom (grossgrossgross), and between rounds of a Bocce Ball tournament M and I played in over the weekend.

My parents are coming into town in a few days. They are going to take E on a mini-vacation while I recover from the retrieval. I'm a little anxious about the couple of days away from him, but if my recovery goes anything like it did last time, I know it will be better for everyone if he's off having fun somewhere else. If we're going through all of the angst of the separation, I wish we were at least getting some kind of a romantic getaway out of it (instead of the ultra-glam couch moaning I expect to be doing) but I guess a shot at expanding our family will have to do. ;-)

E is so freaking amazing and wonderful and adorable right now. His development deserves a post unto itself. In lieu of that (later? maybe?), I will tell you that his music of choice right now is the Jurassic Park soundtrack (in which he does a pretty darn good job of identifying the various instruments, for a 2 year old) and Peter and the Wolf. We've had more than one driveway tantrum brought on by our request that he come inside the house to play and he instead insists on staying in the car to "listen to the cellos." Hilarious. He's all about negotiating doing this or that for "a little bit" or "five minutes" and he says things are "just fine" all the time. A couple of days ago, he started exclaiming "Oh, wow!" in response to things. We have no idea where this came from. Tonight while he was in the bathtub, we played I Spy with different colored things, and in addition to finding things when I suggested a color, he would tell me the colors of things to look for as well. The best new development of all? When we tell him we love him, he will sometimes say "I love you too" in this very genuine, non-reflexive way, and it sounds like he truly understands and means what he says. Those moments alone make all of this IVF nonsense seem worth it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your list of crazy places you've shot up is awesome. Last cycle I shot up in the bathroom at an SF Giants game. J and I ran around looking for a clean enough one and then settled on the handicapped stall in one of the larger bathrooms, and used the purse shelf as my reconstituting table. Definitely an experience. On my first IVF cycle I shot up in the church parking lot down the street from Concord Pavilion on my way to take my niece to an Avril Lavigne concert.

Comparing numbers doesn't do much good. A good friend of mine did three IVF cycles back to back and her best response was not her successful cycle. It's hard, but trust the doctors.

It's totally worth it, and you've so got this. <3

Katie said...

I like the "just fine" that E says...my G says that too! If you ask him how he's doing, he always says "fine" [not sure he knows there can be another response]. If I tell him he needs to wait to eat something b/c it's too hot, he says "it's just fine", except it comes out "just foine", which cracks me up. E sounds so smart and funny! They are awesome at this age. :)