9dp3dt... The Darker the Better!

The darker the better, and I'm not talking about chocolate! Finally! Our BFP is showing up right away now!  I've decided that the "getting darker" is conclusive evidence that the numbers are getting stronger.  Time will tell.....specifically 7:45 tomorrow morning....my second beta... will tell!  Having some wierd achy pain when I move quickly on one side or the other.  I've decided that is my uterus stretching.  See how much "deciding" I do?  Really I don't know anything AT ALL for certain.  It's like we are all working toward some twisted merit badge for stepping out in faith...moving foward even though the ground beneath our feet is shakey at best. Apparently this girl needs extra tutoring....10 years of tutoring! Speaking of certainty, I will be asking my RE to take some extra diagnostic steps for me this time around.  Already so thankful for this early beta.  Knowing the number while those sticks took their sweet time darkening up really helped me worry less.  The first time around my first beta was 122 at 14dp3dt, the second was almost five times that number. These were pretty exciting numbers, and we all stopped worrying.  Until the worst ultrasound ever at 7 weeks.  To be honest, I have never had a "normal pregnancy" ultrasound.  Each one has been more devastating then the last.  If I'm going to make it through this pregnancy with any sense of peace, I am going to need a normal ultrasound as soon as possible.  Back to the "certainty"....In the name of certainty, I have asked that my RE break protocol and look in there earlier for me than he does for others. His rule is ultrasound at 7 weeks. I want one a soon as you can see a fetal pole/sac just so I know that the baby is in the uterus this time.  It doesn't sound like he is willing to consider such rule breaking.  He is brilliant, but he's a man, and a man on the spectrum of autism at that (him having high functioning autism is another thing I have decided). He has made a rule, and it would take an act of God for him to break it. We shall see how it all shakes out.  I will report back:).  I also want extra betas.  I want to know if the numbers start dropping before I get to the US.

Also, PRAISE GOD, I finally slept through the entire night last night!  I now know I was way low on estrogen after the BW they did wednesday.  I had to slap on two more patches.  I have the most expensive sticker collage on my tummy known to man. At 4 10$ stickers every two days, I'm going to need a second job!  But at least I will be better rested!  And maybe there is a little girly in there stealing my E2?  I sure do hope so.

Ok sisters, yes darker is better, I will take it.  Please pray for good strong numbers.  I should know something by tomorrow afternoon.  I am thankful for each day this baby (or babies) spends under my heart.  I'm feeling fuller with each passing day, and each day heals "my momma heart" just a teeny bit more.  Please Jesus, let me see this sweet little face (or these little faces)!

PS. Just a little shout out to the circle of sisters who physically and emotionally surround me each day. I may not hear your voices each day, but I know your hearts are yearning to scream with glee, and giggle, and toss names around, and kiss baby feet right along side me.  There will be time for that, I promise.  We will get there.  Thanks for sensitively following my lead as I navigate this slippery slope.  I love you, I can never thank you enough, or find the words to express what it means to me to have you come along side me all this time.  They say that God loves you through your friends.  No one knows that to be true more than me.

One more thing...my man.  My honey wants to know if we can trade unnecessary pregnancy tests for estrogen patches?  And, he actually said to me today "ok, I read your blog, now can I go back to building my miniature Death Star?".  He'e been lost in some iPad game lately....it looks like he's building a Star Wars themed barbie house to this girl!  Oy vey, this man is in for it when parenthood hits him. Really, I know this slippery slope is hard for him, he wants to protect me from pain, and, for him, for anyone, It's hard to predict where I am in this at any given moment.  He's doing the best he can and letting me lead.  I know this is all hard for him too. I know the face of his little one will heal wounds that he doesn't even know that he has.  He's doing a really great job with the shot, and with the shot intervention (aka, the butt rub).  I love that man, even when he's hiding in the Death Star.

4dp3dt...Here is my plan

So, this time around I'm way less frantic.  I even made a med mistake that didn't send me into a tail spin (6 extra days on 5 of lupron)....whoops...don't worry, doc said it was fine. Don't get me wrong.  I have analyzed what I could have done differently between the first cycle and this one.  I have employed a problem solving process.  I have logically and rationally decided the following (caution, I am about to totally geek out with IVF language/acronyms, who else cares to hear this stuff besides my sisters who also know to google "4dp3dt"):

1. My endometrial biopsy (the procedure that makes things more "sticky" in there) would be way closer to the embryo transfer this cycle...so points in the "+" column  (I was overstimulated the first time around and couldn't transfer until months after the endometrial biopsy...perhaps the stickiness wore off?)
2. Since last time there was no sign of the babies in my uterus, first beta was 122, second was 643, we didn't bother with a beta after that we were so happy with the results.  You would expect to at least see a sac....but nothing.  This time, whether it makes sense to anyone else or not, I am really resting the prescribed three days, and then adding two for good measure.  So implantation is covered!My friend, a sister to me, questioned the source of this important information.  I challenge her to either verify or offer a replacement, and until then I intend to pour over it at will.
3. This time I will be with my blogging sisters where they are.  I will not look ahead to see if things worked out.  I will not read rambling posts of panicked people about symptoms or no symptoms on TTC support sites.  I will emotionally engage with bloggers where they are, and allow this to be an outlet to me, and I will contribute with supportive comments and also do the work to provide my own support by sharing...thus this blog.  I'm done just browsing and taking.  I am thankful for the support these blogs offered me the first time around.  There is nothing more isolating that this process (see my post re: the poem....line 1)
4. POAS....This time I will only POAS on 7dp3dt, and 9dp3dt with tests that measure 25 or less miu.  Here is why:
• I learned last time that tests vary greatly in sensitivity, gotta make sure that I only use tests that measure the smallest amount of HCG....otherwise with this early testing there is much unnecessary disappointment.
• If I get a positive on 7dp, this will mean to me that I have stronger beta HCG earlier than I did last time, the first positive with the first cycle was 9dp3dt, and those fizzled after the exciting 122 beta, and 643 second beta, I was not aware of said fizzle until the awful empty uterus scan at week 7, worst day ever.  So although it means almost nothing, I will feel illogical comfort if I get even a faint positive on day 7.  
• Also lots of people with multiples report BFPs on day 7.  Since I will not know until week 7 (which is a crime! if they can see a sac at 5 or 6 weeks they should show it to me!!!!! waiting until week 7 is unnecessary torture, especially after my empty uterus last time). If they want me calm, logical, and less stressed, and altogether more pleasant, they need to frigging give me information.  Sorry for the rant. Wait, no I'm not...
5. PIO....here is what I learned about this particular method of torture

• the secret is the a deep 10 min rub of the area before and after the stick
• My hubby uses Palmers to grease the area (dual purpose...if it will possibly ward off stretch marks I am so in)
• I limit heat to no more than 10 min before rub down
• the walk is also a good idea after the shot, but we have thus far failed to implement this step
• my goal is to manage to be in less build up of pain as we (hopefully) progress through the first trimester.  Last time by week seven receiving the shot was awful because of the build up of bruising.  We did not manage to keep up with a system, and I paid for it.
• Giving the shot can be traumatizing to your partner, they need encouragement, they need to know they are not at fault for the evidence before them (your cries of pain, your colorful booty, etc.)
• Do not give a PIO directly after the 10 min on the heating pad, you will have a bleeding geyser on your hands!!!! Not pretty, and traumatizing evidence to the shot giver.

So sorry sisters, about all of the detail.  I hope something useful can be found.  Either way, 4dp3dt, I have my little plan in place.  Through it all though I am absolutely aware that I am not in control of whether or not I get to gaze into the face of one of these babies.  That is up to my Jesus.  I can't mess this up, I can't perform perfectly to get the desire of my heart.  All I can do is rest in the knowledge that right now, they are nestled under my heart, and they know on some level that they are loved by their mother and father.  We are already mothers, each and every one of us.

INFERTILITY....an Acrostic Poem

I is for isolating, infertility will feel like an island....but thankfully there are cocktails!

N is for "naive hope" its the place we all visit at the beginning of a new cycle, a new leg of the journey, I call it the "hope upswing", each time the fall to reality is a bit less painful, which worries me.

F is for friend, yes ladies you can't do this without at least one real friend who "gets it" who has been there, who lets you feel your feelings and be where ever you are (thankful to God for mine, they know who they are)

E is for expensive, just think of it like an extra car payment or three.

R is for "Relax it will happen" aka. really annoying advice, platitudes, well meaning people that you may or may not want to smack regularly (I just imagine little miniatures of their faces in place of the bruises on my tummy when I'm going in for yet another stick!  Take that!)

T is for trust, trust your God, trust your doctor, trust your partner to torture you with PIO shots, trust seems to be a theme through out the whole process, trusting someone else and giving over control you never had in the first place.  I don't know about you, but when I meet my maker, I'm going to assure him I would've learned this lesson with a LOT LESS practice.

I is for intimacy and ice cream, my marriage has suffered during this almost 10 years of struggle, dates are extravagances we can't include in the budget (please see the "E"), we chose a local "twistee treat" as our regular date spot, our marriage is a work of art, a masterpiece in the making.

L is for loss, no one completely escapes this, the loss of a child or the loss of a dream (love+sex=baby HAHA hilarious)

I is for intense, yes everything about this is intense, it's not for the faint of heart, when you've been at it for 10 years, you will watch the weak fall away from you one by one, God let that happen to us so that I would learn it is only He who will walk with me, carry me, no matter what.

T is for truth, ladies, we gotta be willing to tell the truth about this to the world.  There are way more of us out there than we think.  We have to shine light in dark places to receive the love God has for us through his own hand and the hands of those around us.

Y is for "Yes it sucks", so so much of it sucks.  We are trudging though mud while other couples are skipping through fields of daisies (aka, preggo on frigging accident, on the pill, on the honeymoon).  It's also for "Yes you are allowed to strongly dislike these people, and any others who expect you to participate in baby showers"

Once upon a time: In the beginning and a bit of history...

DH and I met at a college bar called "The Mill". We've told the story a million times. Every time little things about it change. Who said what, who made which move, when we saw each other next, etc. etc. blah blah blah. What has stayed exactly the same, what was true then, and remains true today, 15 years later, is that my heart recognized that DH was the man God had formed just for me. That sounds ridiculous, I know it, I was 20, what the **** did I know? I think that my age, and the simplicity of my life during that season, the way I lived out loud, purely by feeling, is the exact reason why when I met this man, when his face became etched in the deepest parts of my heart, I didn't have any guile in me to refute it. It was the most real confirmation to any course of action in my life. It had to have been the sovereign hand of someone who knows and loves me better than anyone, my Jesus. Here is a pic of the napkin that started it all, yes we met before you just saved your digits in some else's phone (circa 1999) !

I had rules about giving out my #...so I got his.
Control issues? Um yes.

We got married on June 18, 2004.  And were open to the idea of parenthood from the get-go!

I can still remember that feeling of total hope and trust. Like a new world of submitting to God's plan for our family really felt like freedom to me.  I could see my life so clearly.  I had such certainty in my heart for what God was promising us.  I remember the beginning when I was nervous with anticipation that it could happen at any time!  I remember thinking those first two years, "It'll happen! We have plenty of time!  We are so young!" and "We aren't quite perfectly ready yet anyway..." (hilarious....who is ever perfectly ready?!?).  Now, almost ten years later, I reserve the right to kick anyone directly in the shins who dares spout off one of the above platitudes. Those and the hated "just relax, go on vacation".  Those people are in real danger.

Little did I know that our road to parenthood would be paved with more downs than ups...more blood, sweat and tears than "baby" steps forward...more loneliness and isolation than the feeling of building a family through the foundation of our love of God and each other.    

So here I sit, on my heating pad, at the end of 3 days of bed rest post our second three day transfer. I'm 35, and under my belt, literally, I know of 6 babies that DH and I have loved and lost.  One angel baby got to live under my heart for 9 weeks, and now rests near my grandfather at Calvary Catholic Cemetery   We lost two others at 7 weeks on July 15th, 2013.  We named these two Melanie and Max after the two children that Mary appeared to in La Salette France hundreds of years ago.  Another name for Mary is "Our Lady of La Salette" or "Our Lady of Sorrows".  After losing them to an ectopic (the end of my first IVF cycle) Mary became a great comfort to me.  During the first IVF, two babies didn't make it to blast/refreeze.  This made me so sad, to think of them never spending a moment under my heart.  My niece named these two angels Simon and Peter.  With each loss we struggle to find ways to remember those we have lost.  I want their little lives to mean something, and I want to hold onto the joy and the hope that I had when I held them, in the only way that I have ever been able to.  Still waiting for the day that this journey toward parenthood actually ends in the weight of a sweet little one in our arms.

Our first angel baby, buried in a special site for miscarried and aborted babies.  Gabriel was named after the angel Gabriel, who first let Mary know she was pregnant with baby Jesus.  Gabriel taught me that I could get pregnant, so the name made sense.

After the first IVF, we thought this would be a good way to remember those we had lost, there is a stone for each little one from left to right: Gabriel, Simon, Peter, Melanie, and Max.  Pretty huh?  The metal is real, but the stones are not.  Please, friends, we are way in debt with all these fertility treatments.  The stones are as real as they need to be to sparkle in the sunlight, just like the eyes of a child filled with laughter and play.