An Unusual Birthday

Nadia's baby doll is wearing the same dress as Nadia.

As I was contemplating how to celebrate Ian's birthday, it hit me how much "food" usually plays a part in birthday celebrations. I don't just mean the cake. Usually I'd try to serve the birthday boy his favorite foods at each meal. Ian doesn't have any favorite foods. His party isn't until Saturday. I am not sure that he'll want any frosting. I know he won't want any cake. I haven't picked the menu for the dinner, but it won't be based on his taste buds whereas at 2 years old Nadia's meal was definitely based on her preferences. So the only ways this day felt any different from any other was that we gave Ian some presents and sang Happy Birthday to him many times. I actually let Ian open one present yesterday during Nadia's nap because I was feeling badly over the trauma of having all that tape peeled off his back. He loves the Little People garage . Unfortunately Nadia also likes it. It's large enough that they both could play with it at the same time, but Ian wasn't wanting to let Nadia join him.

This morning I fed Ian his 2nd meal at 9:30am. Usually his second meal isn't until 11:30am, but I knew we'd be at the hospital then. We left the house at 10:00am as we were first stopping at Adria's house. She has 2 girls (ages 1 and 3), and she offered to watch Nadia during Ian's appointment. Her house was 10 minutes out of the way. It only takes 30 minutes to drive to the hospital from our house, but when you include time to go to Adria's house, time to park, and time to walk to the right part of the hospital, it took a full hour to get from our house to the Allergist's office.

We were in and out of the Allergist's office in 40 minutes, and that included our appointment with the dietician. The allergist we saw today wasn't one we had seen before. She said what I already knew to be true - the results of the patch testing were negative. So this was much ado about nothing. The first allergist was correct that this type of testing isn't useful with EE. Everyone agrees he is allergic to milk even though the blood test, prick testing, and patch testing all say he's not allergic to milk. The allergist we saw in October will be calling us with what the next steps will be. The Allergist we saw today spent less than 5 minutes with us. The meeting with the dietician was pointless since no new allergies were discovered. She just basically told us to keep doing what we're doing, especially as he had gained a lot of weight since we had seen him last. With a heavy sweater, turtleneck, jeans, socks, and wet diaper, Ian weighed about 27.75 lbs. I weighed him at home without the jeans and with a dry diaper and he weighs about one pound less than that.

Ian fell asleep during his appointment with the dietician. I got my exercise carrying a sleeping 27 lb baby with one arm while pushing a stroller with the other arm. It was a 10 minute walk from one end of the hospital to the other to get to the pharmacy. I had asked the nurse 2 weeks ago to have my ivf meds called in by Dec 9. When I went to pick them up on Friday, they hadn't been called in yet. The ivf nurse wasn't in on Friday so I called her at 8:30 this morning and asked that they be called in so I could pick them up at noon.



I showed up at the pharmacy at 11:50 and was told that my meds weren't ready because they had only been called in 30 minutes earlier. I made a HUGE mistake. I decided to wait for them to fill the order. I should have known better. The last time I had meds filled there I said I'd never come back. I thought I had solved the problem by requesting them to be called in ahead of time. The other times I had brought over the prescriptions in person. If I could go back in time, I would have had the fertility nurse call in the order to an online pharmacy.

I waited for a full hour and still didn't get everything I needed. I got all the syringes, Follistim, hCG, and Prometrium. They didn't have enough Menopur so they gave me Repronex instead. I've been on both, and I greatly prefer Menopur. They didn't even ask me if I was okay with the substitution. When I objected the called the nurse, and she told me she has some Menopur, and if I buy the Repronex she'll trade with me at my first appointment. They didn't have enough Ganirelix, and there's no other option for that one. I am either going to have the rest of that Rx filled online OR see if my local CVS can get it with plenty of advance warning. I am not going back to that pharmacy at the hospital if I can possibly help it! I paid $93.64 for these meds. The insurance paid $4,359.80. One nice thing is that they ordered ALL my meds for the whole cycle. They haven't always done it that way. They authorized some refills, but unless I need a higher dosage than the last two times, I won't need any refills, except of the Prometrium if we see two lines on a hpt.

By the time I picked Nadia up and drove home, it was almost 2pm. Ian cried most of the way home. I fed him as soon as we got home, which upset Nadia because it meant I put her in bed without reading to her. After I finished feeding Ian, I read to Nadia as she was still crying. At that point I decided to skip ballet. It's the first class she's missed. If I really wanted, I could take her to another one of the baby ballet classes this week to make it up, but I'm just going to skip it. I think part of the reason I was so drained when I got home was because I stayed up until midnight last night cheering Paul's Giants on to victory. I'm going to bed early tonight! The wait for the meds would have been much worse if it weren't for the fact that Ian slept through 40 of the 65 minute wait. He napped for 50 minutes at the hospital today. Why can't he do that in his crib? Nadia didn't nap today. She was only in her bed for about an hour. I usually have her stay in at least 2 hours, but I put her down over an hour later than normal.

The good news is that the gifts were a hit! The gift he played with the most today were two little vehicles that Aunt Wendy gave him (see the last picture). He didn't get to try out the vehicles for the bathtub yet (the kind that stick when wet); he's studying the box (above). Both children enjoyed the hat and vest that Aunt Yvonne gave him and the drill set that I got him. He gave Spot (a puppet) several hugs. Spot books are some of his favorites. The first birthday that Nadia really anticipated was her 3rd birthday. Hopefully Ian's 3rd birthday can include some food he likes to eat and won't include any doctor appointments. Ian sang the birthday song a lot today, but otherwise I don't think he gets the concept of birthdays yet. Nadia is already greatly anticipating her next birthday. Oh my goodness. I don't think she has any comprehension it's more than 6 months away from now! Hopefully her 4th birthday celebration will live up to her grandiose expectations! I'll do my best to make it extra special!