Green Light!

Well today I had my baseline u/s and b/w. Basically they want to make sure you don't have any cysts. I got the "all clear" from the u/s, and my E2 was only 22 which is VERY low. And very low is very good! It won't be low for long though, lol. I just hope it doesn't go TOO high (meaning TOO many follies are developing). Tomorrow morning I will decrease my Lupron to 10iu (I have done 20iu the past 14 days), and I will also have 75iu of Repronex tomorrow morning. Tomorrow night I'll start taking 150iu of Follistim. I will do those same amounts on Saturday and Sunday as well as Monday morning (3 shots a day for about the next 10 days or so). Then I will have bloodwork done Monday morning. My dosages might be modified depending on how high my E2 is on Monday.

I am very glad they are going to monitor me after only 3 days of stimming as I am nervous that this might be too much. I was on 225iu a day once before and the cycle was cancelled. They normally start IVF patients on 300iu so they have already backed down in light of my previous track record. Dr. A feels that 225iu will be fine this time since I am still on Lupron and that is supposed to tone down my response a little. Anyhow I am very glad I'll have b/w on Monday morning so they can lower my dosage if needed before things get out of control. Then I'll probably go back on Wednesday for b/w and also an u/s. So tomorrow starts the main part of the IVF process. This part will likely take about 2 weeks (my egg retrieval will likely be around August 1). So I really covet your prayers each step of the way!!!

Earlier this week I emailed Cathy Harris to let her know that we weren't updating our dossier. I knew we wouldn't get back $1,500 of the money we paid her/Valentina, but I was hoping we'd get the other $1,000 back which was called a "prepayment." I thought we might get that part back since our dossier wasn't submitted etc. She told me it cost $1,500 to get the dossier translated and certified which has already been done. She encouraged me to create a 2nd dossier and suggested ways for doing it more inexpensively (such as only apostilling one dossier instead of two which would save $360). I had figured it would cost about $1,200 to update the dossier. She is estimating we could cut that down to $600. I asked if we would have to pay the $1,500 again, and she said she would try to work a deal with Valentina. She said maybe Valentina would waive the translation fee for the new dossier, and we would only pay an additional $1,000 to the SDA as an expiditing fee to get our dossier in ASAP. She's saying if we got a new dossier to Valentina in 4-6 weeks that Valentina would submit ours in September (through us paying this extra $1,000 "fee"), and we would have our SDA appointment in early December. December would be an ideal time to travel in light of me not missing work (and thus not getting docked say $10K in pay) and Paul not missing classes.

There's a tiny part of me that is tempted as in some ways this seems a more "sure" thing than IVF or domestic newborn adoption, but of course I was told before our first dossier would definitely be submitted by June at the latest. And that obviously didn't happen so I guess none of these options are "sure" things. Paul just wants to stick with domestic newborn and IVF. So I guess for now that's what we'll do. I am sure I don't want to pay the $1,000 fee until we know if the IVF worked or not. But we'll know if it worked in 4 weeks or less. So I am thinking maybe a compromise would be to pay the $43 for the child abuse and criminal record clearances so that IF we decided to do a second dossier we could do it quickly. Those are the documents which take the longest to get. The child abuse clearances are just for the social worker so she'll write an addendum for our home study. The criminal record checks are for her AND our dossier. Well I'll talk about it with Paul tonight, but I think this is a reasonable plan as we're only investing $43 to enable us to have the OPTION to send a dossier to UA in late August and possibly travel there in December. If I get pregnant I am certain we wouldn't send a dossier, but if the IVF doesn't work and we don't have any frozen embyros, maybe we'll revist this if we could truly travel in between the fall and spring semesters. I would still want to adopt a baby through Cathy M as we won't get a baby from UA if we go there, and I really want to parent at least ONE child from as close to newborn as possible. And I truly don't ever expect Lifetime to come through, but I'd love to be wrong about that!

Well again please pray about the IVF - that just the right amount of follicles will develop and that I won't get anywhere near having OHSS. Thanks!!