IUI#3 CD28 17DPI – BFN. Waiting for AF

And… BFN is confirmed by yesterday’s blood test. I stopped the progesterone last night, so AF should show up again any time now… last month it showed up two days after stopping the progesterone, so my guess is that it will show tomorrow. I’m supposed to call the RE’s office on day one of AF, and will have an ultrasound and blood draw on day 3 to begin the injectable protocol. Then I have to go from the RE’s office to the pharmacy and pick up the Follistim prescription, which will run about $750 (supposedly.) I did get approved for a discount, albeit only a 5% one, so I take my coupon thing with me and that should make the cost $712.50. Still crazy expensive, but I’ll take all the discounts I can get.

If I’m lucky, I’ll respond well enough that I won’t need all 900iu, so that I can hopefully use some of it for July’s cycle if June’s isn’t a BFP.

In the meantime, Kaitlin and I both have my birthday off of work next week. I’m debating what I want to do – we could go to the zoo, or Water World, or we could go for a hike or something. Whatever we do has to be pretty inexpensive, since every penny I’ve got is going toward TTC right now. It’s also kind of sobering to realize I am turning 35. It feels like one of those milestones that, when you’re younger, seems an eternity away. I don’t think I ever really thought I would turn 35 without being a mom yet… and I never thought that at 35, I would have this much trouble getting pregnant. Even if I do get pregnant this year, I’ll have a five-year-old when I’m 40, and that just seems… well, it’s not how I imagined it.

Still, one of my staff had a child in her early forties, and that child is 5 or 6 now, and he seems to be doing okay. So it probably isn’t the end of the world. But I ask myself if I can really keep up with a 5 year old when I get to that age. I’m already noticing so many signs of aging in my body – changes in shape (grr) and I can’t wear heels anymore because of leg cramps… I am really going to have to focus on staying in shape so that I can keep up with a kiddo and give them the active childhood they deserve.

Assuming, of course, if I can even GET FRICKING PREGNANT.

Sigh.

On to the next round…

IUI#3 CD27 16DPI - Pretty sure it's BFN#3

Haven’t had much to report in the last week. Pretty much zero symptoms, and negative pregnancy tests every day. I had blood drawn this morning, as today’s the “official” test date, so I’m expecting a call this afternoon confirming I’m not pregnant so that I can stop taking the progesterone. At this point I’m ready to call it quits with this cycle and move on to the next… I was pretty much certain, after meeting with the doctor last week, that this round wasn’t going to work either.

Luckily, the blood draw this morning was the easiest one yet… I literally didn’t feel the needle go in or come out at all! Much nicer than I was anticipating. I faxed in our “FirstSteps” enrollment form earlier this week to see if we can get some kind of discount on the injectable meds for this month. Hoping that whatever dose of Follistim we need is in the range of $750 or less. I don’t know how much faith I have that the injectables are going to work either, sigh…  The RE didn’t seem super optimistic about our chances, and injectable cycles are pretty much the last resort before donor egg IVF becomes necessary. I’m also concerned that if my egg quality is equivalent to someone in their early forties, it might also mean an equivalent risk of genetic problems for any embryo that might actually be created from my eggs.

Sigh.

On the plus side, I am feeling pretty good about my situation at work right now, and I’m looking forward to the Bold Strokes Books author table at Pride in the next couple weeks. I’ve actually spent way more on supplies for the event than I stand to make, even if I sell every one of my stash of books… but honestly, I write stories because I want to share them with other people, not to pay the bills. Writing is a passion and a hobby, and I don’t ever want it to feel like a job.

So anyway, just waiting for the doctor’s call so we can move on to the next battle in this TTC war. :P Fighting!! 

IUI#3 CD18 7DPI – Stepping It Up

We had an appointment with Dr. Trout this morning to talk about our progress. She let us know that basically, if we don’t get pregnant after three Clomid IUI attempts, the chances that subsequent attempts will work are substantially reduced. So she is recommending that if this cycle is a BFN, we try three injectable cycles (as opposed to the clomid) to see if we have better luck.

She agreed that my fertility is really more on par with someone 41-42 years old, which I think is why she’s willing to be aggressive with the treatment. Given that fact, she’d like to see 3 – 4 developed eggs per cycle under the injectable treatment. She believes even with that many, the chance of twins is pretty low.

The bummer is that my insurance won’t cover the cost of the injectable meds, and they’re super expensive. She had her nurses get me a form to apply for a discount on the drugs, but my guess is that the company’s not likely to cut me much of a break. And, she doesn’t want me ordering the drugs from overseas… she doesn’t believe the overseas ones are reliable. From what I can find on the internet, Walgreens charges about $250 per 300iu of Follistim. If that’s accurate it may actually not be that much more expensive than the ones I could order from overseas… but it could still be up to $750 per cycle if I need a lot of it. And, I’ll still need the $80 Ovidrel trigger injections (unless my body will play nice and ovulate on its own. :P)

Also, injectables mean I’ll have to have a shot every day,  I think maybe twice a day, for at least a couple of weeks. Ugh. At least the injections are done with a tiny needle. But, we only have one vial of swimmers left after this cycle. Injectables also mean ultrasound visits every 3-4 days until we’re ready to trigger, bringing the cost of a June cycle to around $1350.  If that one is also a BFN, we’ll be looking at $819 for two more vials of swimmers in addition to the other monthly costs, so that makes a July and August cycle about $1767 each.

If three injectable attempts fail, then we have to see what Dr. Trout recommends in terms of IVF. She actually said today that because of how expensive IVF is, she won’t recommend it for us if she doesn’t think we’d have an okay chance of success with my eggs. I told her if it comes to that, one of the options I’m seriously considering is overseas donor egg IVF, because it would be about 5000 Euro at the Embio clinic in Athens ($6800) whereas it would be closer to $20,000 here. She wasn’t too excited about the idea, though she said she’s never worked with a patient who went to Athens before… she’s seen some disastrous results from folks who went to Romania and Hungary, though. She did say she would help do blood tests the Greek clinic might need. I also asked if she’d be willing to review the clinic and materials they send and give me her thoughts on their reliability/safety/expertise, and she said she would.

The other option we talked about was the possibility of donated embryos. That would have a price tag of around $5000, but the waiting list is 1-2 years long unless there are available embryos that those at the top of the list don’t want… she said she had a couple of Chinese embryos that went almost to the bottom of the list before finding takers. I told her if she has that again to just call me… I would happily take them. :P But anyway, she made a note on our file to have us added to their adoption waiting list, just in case.

So I guess now the plan is this: If we get a BFN this cycle, we move on to three injectable IUI cycles. If we don’t get a BFP from those, then I’ll spend a couple of months paying off the cycles, and we’ll gear up for one great big donor egg attempt in Greece – the overall cost of which will be around $6800 (procedure and egg) + $680(swimmers) + $500(estimated meds) + $3000(flight and hotel) = $11,000. That’s basically going to be a last-ditch attempt. Their success rates are so high with donor eggs (70%) that I’ll have to decide whether to have them put back two or three embryos.

If, in the meantime, a donated embryo were to come our way, we’d likely try that before the Greek trip.

So we’re going to have to buckle up and start really watching our pennies now, because this is about to start getting really expensive. *sigh* Still hoping against hope that we might get super lucky and end up with a BFP this cycle…?

IUI#3 CD16 5DPI - Sick

Apparently the bug Kaitlin had on Monday was not food poisoning, because whatever it was, I got it on Friday. Spent most of the night camping out in the bathroom, throwing up. Ugh. Kaitlin is at an SCA event this weekend, so I spent all day yesterday sleeping, trying to force myself to eat, and trying to stay awake long enough that I'd be able to sleep again that night.

Today I feel better... the nausea is gone. But I still feel very weak and tired, and my stomach is cramping. I can't tell if it's leftover from being sick, or if it's gas, or if it's implantation cramping. Obviously, I'd be very happy for the latter. However, it's frustrating because I had so many plans for this weekend, to keep working on getting the office set up. I'm doing some work today since I got nothing at all done yesterday, but it's slow going... I get through a couple of steps and then have to stop and lay down for a few minutes because I'm so tired. Ugh.

I hope being sick isn't going to hurt our chances of getting pregnant this cycle. Not that it's all that likely anyway, but it's frustrating...

IUI#3 CD11 Maybe Third Time’s A Charm?

Our third vial of swimmers should now be happily scooting around in my uterus. Hoping that there’s an egg in there waiting for them. Hoping that this cycle is the one. Not particularly looking forward to the next five days or so of cramping that is pretty much inevitable. :P

Poor Kaitlin was up most of the night with food poisoning, so it turned out she couldn't come with me to the IUI appointment after all. I told her that if this is the cycle that works, we'll just tell our kiddo that Mommy was having sympathy morning sickness on the day Mama got pregnant. :P

I have to go to the drugstore tonight after work and pick up a progesterone refill… I’ll start those on Friday. My goal for the next two weeks is to take my prenatal and vitamin E religiously, drink a ton of water and do 30 minutes of walking every day.

Everywhere I look right now, I see babies and toddlers. That’s somewhat to be expected, given that I work in a courthouse. Every day, I see parents walking around with their little ones, and I feel envious. While I’m doing my best to stay occupied with other things, it feels like the biggest and grandest plans I have for my life can’t be made into goals until we know when and if we’ll become parents.

However, where the thought of IVF used to be a huge worry, I actually am feeling somewhat better about the idea since I learned that I could combine a vacation to Greece with an IVF procedure and save almost half of what I’d spend doing the procedure here. I am still a bit daunted by how much it will cost – probably around $8000 with travel and all – but compared to the $15-20K that it costs here, it’s actually more reasonable.

Anyway, on to the TWW! My test date is June 5^th, and my birthday is June 12^th. I’m hoping for a BFP for my birthday, maybe?? 

IUI#3 CD10 Another round tomorrow!

The blog’s been quiet lately, so here’s the scoop: AF showed up on May 10th, about a day after the BFN blood test.  I did my five days of Clomid last week, Monday through Friday, and today (Monday) I went in for an ultrasound. I have several good follicles, one that’s 19mm. They also did a urine OPK, which they didn’t do at my last ultrasound, and sure enough it was a smiley. That means I’m going back in tomorrow AM for the IUI.

I asked Kaitlin if she wanted to come to this one, since she’s working 4 10 hour days this week and it would put her at work very late tomorrow. She decided she’ll come anyway, and just deal with the late hours, because if this is the round that works she’ll be really disappointed if she wasn’t there for the conception of our kiddo.

I’m feeling good about this one – my signs have always shown that I ovulate pretty early on in my cycle, around Day 11. Our two rounds of IUI thus far have always taken place later, like around day 13 or so. I took OPKs myself for the first one, and didn’t get a positive so they had me trigger… but you have to wait 36 hours after trigger for an insem, and I can’t help but wonder if I was triggering around the same time I was naturally ovulating, and maybe the insem was late. Last month we didn’t do any OPKs at all, so for all I know I had already ovulated by the time the IUI happened. So as of this morning, my follicles are definitely all still in there, AND I’m naturally ovulating without even needing a trigger – so it seems to me that maybe our timing with this one will be better and we save $80 on a trigger shot. :P

The only bummer is having to tell my boss I’ll be late to work two days in a row this week, as well as Tuesday next week in order to have our consult with Dr. Trout. I haven’t given her any details as to why I’ve had so many doctor appointments lately – I really don’t want to have to answer questions about whether the procedure has worked yet or not, etc…. It will be awkward enough to tell her that I’m pregnant, once that happens. But I’m sure she has to have noticed how frequently I’ve had doctor appointments this year.

Anyway, this round will use up our third vial. If it works, I’d be getting the good news just in time for my birthday next month. I would really, really love to be pregnant before my 35^th birthday. :P So I’m really hoping maybe this one is our month?? If it doesn’t work, we’ve got just one vial left. I guess we see what Dr. Trout says when we meet with her next week, as to whether she’ll be recommending IVF at that point.

If this round works, EDD would be February 10… close to Valentine’s Day. That’s Kaitlin’s mother’s and sister-in-law’s birthdays also, so hey… maybe it will run in the family? :P Fingers crossed!

In the meantime, over the weekend we did more work on our office storage closet. We put in the top shelf, built the internal “ladder” shelves, and then painted everything. We have some paint touchups to do, and then the “ladder” gets installed and we paint the remaining shelves. Once that’s done, I can start sorting, boxing and shelving all of the junk that’s currently cluttered all over the floor. I really can’t wait, as getting all that stuff tucked away out of sight is going to make me feel a million times better about the state of the house in general; the STUFF has just been in piles everywhere for almost two years, and with the new storage space we’ll be able to have a place to store not just office stuff but all the other little knickyknacky things that don’t have a place.

I have a three day weekend coming up. Kaitlin’s going to spend it at an SCA event – I’m really not in the mood. I may day-trip it up there for one day, but I’ve basically spent every three-day weekend I’ve had in the last two years at SCA events, and I want to be able to do something else with this one. So the plan is, while Kaitlin’s at Crossroads, I’ll start boxing stuff and piling it into the new closet, and will move her bookshelves to the opposite wall of the room and re-sort all her books onto them… I’ll need to go buy another bookshelf, too, as we’re going to need at least three.

Once the bookshelves are moved, we’ll have someone come help us move the gigantic desk that Kaitlin got from Craigslist upstairs. Then she can bring her computer up, get it hooked up, and we can build shelves overhead for her various knickknacks  and display things, hang up the art she wants to hang, I can clean and re-sort my own desk area, and we’ll actually have a real, useable workspace. Excited!!

Now if only the pregnancy thing would come together as well… then we’d really be making some progress. ;)