CD23 - Still waiting

I haven't updated in a while because I've just been biding my time this month, taking birth control. Went in for an ultrasound on Tuesday last week, but the leftover follicle still wasn't gone. The doctor had me take a trigger shot, and I'm taking more birth control this week. I should run out around Thursday or so, which means AF should show up again a couple days later, and I have another ultrasound appointment on July 7th. If we're lucky, the follicle thing will be gone (finally) and we can start an injectable cycle.

In the meantime, Kaitlin and I went to Denver Pride and spent the weekend at my publisher's book booth - I sold out of my stash of both of my books, met some really sweet readers, and got inspired all over again to get back into the swing of writing. Kaitlin went off to a fencing event this past weekend, so I spent the weekend cleaning the house and got about half of the first chapter of the next Ithyria book written. I forgot how much time writing takes... If I could write one chapter per week - which is about 10 hours of work or so - I'd have the book finished in about 6 months. Though I don't know that I could keep that pace up... whew. Still, I'd like to be able to get the next installment finished without making readers wait another 8 years for the next book. :P

Anyway - financially we're going to be OK for this injectable round. If it's another BFN, though, we're going to start building credit card debt pretty fast in August - I have to order two more vials of swimmers, which is going to be about $1000.00, and then with the $800/month price tag of the injectable meds, plus the trigger shot and IUI costs, it's going to be expensive. SIGH.

Maybe we'll finally get lucky this round and all of that won't be necessary? Kaitlin is pretty fired up about planning a wedding for next year, but I want to wait until after the baby is born and I've had at least six months to drop the baby weight - I really don't want to be chubby in my wedding photos. :P

CD3 – Another Roadblock

So AF showed up on Sunday, and I went into the doctor’s office for my ultrasound and bloodwork today to gear up for an injectable cycle.

Only we never got around to the bloodwork, because the ultrasound showed that once again I have three leftover corpus luteum follicle things stuck in my left ovary. Which means… you guessed it… more birth control. I’m about ready to cry, I’m so frustrated. I have another ultrasound appointment for the 23^rd to see if the invaders are gone after a couple weeks of birth control, but I don’t have much hope that they will be; last time it took four weeks of birth control and a trigger shot to get rid of them. Which means we don’t get another TTC attempt until July.

So yeah, that gives me an extra month to save up for the Follistim medication. But I don’t get a BFP or even a TTC attempt for my birthday. I’m turning 35 this week, and I never imagined that I’d hit that milestone without being a mom yet. So I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself today, and really discouraged. In the last six months we have been able to TTC just three times, and our chances don’t look good anyway. I am sorely tempted to just say forget the whole thing, let’s go to Greece NOW and do the donor egg.

Just… very sad. I will go to the drugstore tonight and pick up the birth control – at least it’s free – and I guess I’ll just keep moving forward since there’s really no other option right now. But I may take myself out for a consolation lunch today, since I won’t be buying the injectables this month...

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??