Eggs, Milk, and Tears

Paul and I arrived at the hospital at 7:20am. The first thing I did was talk to the financial lady so that she could charge $3,500 on our medical account card and refund that amount to our credit card. It's nice that you can spend the full amount in January even though the full amount won't come out of my pay checks until the end of the year (they're taking out about $130 per check). This is the reason we waited until January to do the procedure (because we'll save at least $700 in taxes and such). If it results in a pregnancy, my due date will be October 3. I went back to the procedure room around 7:30. They don't let husbands come back until after the IV is in. Well that took awhile. Joanie first tried my left hand and then my left arm. She contemplated calling the IV team (which was necessary for my retrieval in 2007), but then she had success on the third try (right hand). They gave me an antibiotic and an anti-nausea medication by IV. I hadn't weighed myself in a long time. I was pleasantly surprised that my weight hadn't changed as I feared I had gained some weight between the holidays and also not getting as much exercise lately.

I asked the nurse what my E2 was on Monday. I was stunned when she told me it had dropped. She said Dr. Z wasn't worried because he cares more about quality of egg than quantity. My first two retrievals my E2 was about 3,200 after 10 days of stimming. Mine was about 1/3 of that this time. I was grateful I didn't know that on Monday as I would have been stressed out about it the last couple of days. My first ivf I was on 225iu for 10 days. The second time I was on 225iu for 4 days and 200iu for the last six days. This time I was on 225iu for 4 days, 150iu for 2 days, and 75iu for the last 4 days. I was questioning why he did things so differently in terms of dosage when my first two rounds were successes. Why mess with success when it's the same woman on the same medications (Follistim and Menopur)? Well one thing that calmed me down was remembering that my egg quality in 2009 was much better, and they retrieved far fewer eggs that time (14 compared to 26). Dr. Z retrieved 11 eggs today. I left the hospital a little more than 4 hours after we arrived. The first time I threw up for 5 hours. The second time I only threw up once, and that was on our way home as I was trying to eat lunch from Wendy's in the car. I learned from that experience and suggested a bagel from Dunkin Donuts was probably a better choice for lunch in the car today. I didn't throw up at all today. PTL! I felt very lousy this afternoon so I turned on Nick Jr for the kids and fell asleep on the couch with Ian in my arms and Nadia sitting beside me. I wasn't able to sleep soundly as Ian kept climbing all over me, but at least I was able to close my eyes for a bit. After some Tylenol and dinner, I started to perk up. I think my blood sugar was part of the problem since I had missed breakfast today. I'm still in a fair amount of pain, but I'm hoping I'll start feeling better tomorrow. I had to skip choir tonight as I was told I couldn't drive for 24 hours due to the sedation. The only place I plan on going tomorrow is the Toyota dealership for an oil change/tire rotation on my car as it's been 10,000 miles (and 9 months) since the last time I had it serviced.

Hopefully I'll be able to sleep soundly tonight even though I'm anxiously awaiting the fertilization report tomorrow. How many embryos we have will determine whether my transfer is on Saturday or Monday. Please pray for our embryos! It feels like part of my heart is sitting in petri dishes at the hospital. In that sense I'd rather do a three day transfer to get them back where they belong two days sooner, but since our one three day transfer wasn't a success, I'd like to make it until Monday if possible. Actually with our 2009 transfer we transferred 2 blastocysts and 1 morula if you want to be really technical. What I keep reminding myself all day long is that it's in God's hands. It only takes one egg so eleven is certainly enough if God wants us to have another baby. Doing ivf definitely helps me to put into practice the habit of praying without ceasing. I pray many, many, many times a day when doing ivf! I've also been praying for my friend who is planning to do ivf (with donor egg) in the next month or two. Just twelve more days until I break out the hpts....

When Ian's patch testing results were read on December 12, the allergist who we saw said Ian's allergist would be calling us back with the next steps. Well we never heard back from anyone since that point so I contacted the allergist on Monday, and she wrote me back yesterday and said that since he hasn't been throwing up and since the patch testing was negative, we can try to reintroduce milk or soy (my choice). I picked milk. Last night I gave him some mango yogurt. Can I tell you how wonderful it was that he didn't cry AT ALL during the whole meal. I fed him 10 bites at a time without any difficulty. Bliss. Please pray that he won't have an allergic reactions because it would be soooo wonderful if he could have milk again. I am going to stick with the rice drink for awhile longer as she said to gradually reintroduce milk. For now I'll just give him yogurt. When we tried in October, it took 2.5 weeks before he started throwing up again; so it might take more than 2 weeks until we know if he can tolerate milk. It was really helpful that he could have yogurt as Gabby was able to feed him a yogurt this morning for breakfast. Otherwise I doubt they'd have been very successful in getting him to eat any solid foods. The allergist wrote me back again today saying she thinks he should have another endoscopy in a few months to make sure he's still in remission. I don't plan on actually doing that. I'll go by whether or not he throws up (which is the protocol the previous allergist followed).

Another thing that made me do a dance of joy yesterday was when Ian peed without crying at 4:30pm and 6:00pm! WOOHOO! I'm thrilled that he's outgrowing this phase of screaming while he pees!! Unfortunately Beth didn't put him in the underwear I asked her to put him in (I mentioned this orally and in the note I left her this morning). She put him in a diaper. Nuts. As soon as I came home I took off the wet diaper and put him back in underwear. He objected at first (which he hadn't done since last Thursday), but he soon got back in the routine of peeing in the potty. Whew. He only cried ONE of the times he peed today. WOOHOO! Several times when he finished peeing he said "good job." Yes, you are doing a very good job, Ian! He had one accident last evening (#2), but he hasn't had any today. He also told me when he needed to go a couple of times today, which was another big step forward.