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Text of the page (random words):
asound to see how the follicles were doing i went in and things just went into overdrive after that we had a good number of follicles we scheduled a meeting with the re to talk over our options the short of it was ivf with pre implantation genetic screening pgs insurance approved all but the icsi and the testing it all began i started the pill and had two weeks to squeeze in my first bit of color on my tattoo natasha did the frog and then began the ultrasounds the blood tests the daily injections and eventually the egg retrieval first bad news we went in with 16 17 sizable follicles we came out with only six eggs next bad news a day later only 2 eggs were healthy mature both fertilized but we had too few to do pgs we did a day 2 transfer more shots this time progesterone and lovenox two agonizing weeks of waiting thank god for the estrogen pills those little blue pills provide a real pick me up friday the 24th i go in for the blood test four hours later we get the call unfortunately it was all for naught we re not pregnant moreover there is little chance of us ever getting and or staying pregnant with my eggs twenty four hours and numerous tears later i call to schedule an appointment for the next stage of my tattoo i can t get in until october 17 but there s nothing else happening until then so i can wait my doc wants me to come back in a couple of weeks to talk about our options at this point we really have two options donor egg or giving up we ll keep talking about it and i ll keep swinging back and forth from one extreme to another but i really think it s done now i am just stuck on how to give up posted by unknown at 8 32 pm saturday june 19 2010 it s a boy not ours of course but i have a new nephew and eliot has a new cousin on that side of the family there are now three boys and three girls spanning a six year range everyday it looks more and more like eliot is going to be a singleton so having cousins with whom he can be close and share history becomes increasingly important i only have three cousins two a few years younger than me and one decades younger whom i never met all three of them are singletons growing up i shared more in common with one cousin than brothers we re not super close now but still comfort in having each other i can wish for the same or better for eliot regular summer reunions should help ground those relationships posted by unknown at 8 06 pm thursday june 10 2010 running on empty i donated blood last tuesday somehow in the thick of it last year between missy 2 and missy 3 i managed to donate 3 times donating 3 times in a year at the blood centers of the pacific bcp earns you a personalized desk calendar it s a clever idea the calendar marks the days that you donated in the previous year as well as your birthday mostly what it does extremely well is to make me feel guilty every day when i look at it and realize that i haven t donated in months so last week i finally reached the blood letting inertia escape velocity why because on saturday i finally got my first tattoo getting tattooed makes you ineligible to donate for 12 months the guilt was is intense still i m thrilled that i finally took the first step in the body art process on saturday i started the first part of a multi part piece i had a catfish outlined on my lower right leg next will be a dragon fly a frog and a lilly pad eventually i want an entire pond scene my tattoo artist laughed that for my first tattoo i wanted an entire lower leg sleeve but it makes perfect sense to me i have been planning and thinking about this tattoo for several years but like so many other things i ve been postponing having it done in our effort to have another it s insane how many things that i ve deferred or balked at in case we got or actually were pregnant vacations graduate school career pursuits and of course getting a tattoo likewise there are so many things that i ve held onto for the same reasons eliot s closets have been stuffed from floor to ceiling with baby stuff our storage area overpacked with the stroller tricycles the bike trailer and more none of which eliot uses i m not sure what it was exactly but i think it was the failed round of iui we did in april may i did all the injections and ultrasounds and only managed to produce two mature follicles and barely even that so after i got my period i packed up all of eliot s baby stuff and gave it to a coworker boxes and boxes of stuff i even gave away his mountain buggy after that i got up the nerve to schedule an appointment for the tattoo i can t say that we ve decided to quit that s not the case my coworker knows that we are trying and won t give away anything without asking us first it s just that i m so tired of the waiting i need to get on with my life sustaining hope in the face of repeated and relentless failure is exhausting posted by unknown at 1 01 pm thursday april 1 2010 april fools yet another large window has gone by since my last post with much news to share after the last described failed round of iui we began a new regimen this began with going on the pill for two weeks huh you say you re trying to get pregnant so you are going on the pill well it would seem that we do very well getting pregnant after we come off the pill back in 2005 we went off the pill and instantly we were pregnant with eliot in 2008 we went off the pill and bang so to speak we were pregnant with missy 1 we got pregnant with missy 2 immediately after we lost missy 1 so that one was a little different but still follows a pattern then after missy 2 in mar of 2009 nothing until my last post in november of 2009 it turns out that my cycle goes wonky when left to its own devices but the pill gets the rhythm right with my cycle so we begin the pill in november i m not working at all at this point because i don t know when i m going to need to drop everything and run to get an ultrasound or blood test on a whim i decide to apply for a job at uc berkeley extension instead of doing classroom technology training i would be using my mlis to help design and develop online courses by develop i don t mean coding but rather i would be working with subject matter experts to determine the best delivery mechanism for the content i d collect and edit the content and i d direct the creation of the online course pretty cool stuff lo and behold i get the job i would begin in january in spite of some reservations about the salary and the state imposed furloughs the prospect of working close to home and leaving coding behind me is tempting and i accept the position after two weeks on the pill the doctor takes me off a new refrigerated box of medicine arrives at my door when i start a new cycle the regimen of daily shots and every other day visits to the doctor for bloodwork and ultrasounds ensues meanwhile i m visiting the acupuncturist once or twice a week and taking herbal supplements that have me constantly flatulating i m walking somewhere fart i get on the bus fart i m at the grocery store you guessed it and i m getting a vaginal ultrasound and trying my damnedest not to fart i actually went to see a gi doc who had no idea why i was farting every minute of the day before i traced it back to the tang kuei evodia i m taking still the embarrassment is totally worth it when it becomes evident that the iui cycle is going to go perfectly i ve 5 mature follicles the extra shot that i m taking ganirelex is keeping me from ovulating too soon and we re ready to use the ovidrel trigger shot to stimulate my ovulation exactly 36 hours after the ovidrel i go to the doc for the iui earlier that morning sandy had gone in to make his deposit his numbers are stellar those boys can swim there s not much to say about the iui itself i had to show id to pick up sandy s specimen and i had to hold the little test tube next to my skin to keep it warm the procedure is quick and painless the waiting for 2 weeks after the iui is cruelly long but on december 25 at my parent s house in indiana we get a positive home pregnancy test a couple of days later we go to chicago to quest labs for a blood draw and gestational table that is reported back to our re in the bay area congratulations we re pregnant here s where i m going to summarize a bit as soon as we get the go ahead from the re i begin my daily shots of lovenox in order to keep my blood thin in case that s why i m miscarrying these shots hurt a lot more than the hormone shots still we re pregnant mid january i start my new job at uc i m wringing my hands over the fact that i m pregnant and starting a new job i confess to roxanne my boss who is a real mensch about the whole thing i go to the re for an ultrasound at 7 weeks instead of 6 and 8 weeks because i don t have a lot of time off accrued at uc yet all is well and we see a heartbeat i m feeling nauseated and we re elated i go to the ob at 10 weeks for an ultrasound fetus seems a little small but the doc isn t worried we still see a heartbeat we re almost out of the woods we go to the perinatalogist at 12 5 weeks for the cvs the final hoop to mix metaphors no heartbeat baby died in the last week we re devastated and needless to say i don t go back to work that thursday friday i stay home and am on the phone to various doctors to figure out what we do next my ob cannot perform a d c because after 12 weeks it s considered a d e so we have to see a specialist in lafayette we get an appointment later that day to meet with him he walks us through the procedure i ll come in the night before for the insertion of laminaria sticks that will begin the dialation process we schedule it for monday afternoon march 1st yes ladies and gentlemen i m having a procedure to remove my dead baby on my 40th birthday happy happy birthday the weekend the procedure and the couple of days that follow the procedure are a blur of emotions and tears in the last month we did a lot of soul searching and discussed our options with this new ob as well as our re insurance will cover another round of iui so we re going to proceed with that again i m 40 now there s no time like the present posted by unknown at 10 08 pm tuesday november 3 2009 avoidance i ve been avoiding writing something here for a while now i guess i thought that if i didn t write then there was a chance we d get pregnant it s amazing how easy it is to walk that ridiculously thin line between skepticism hopelessness and fantasy hope i think this is why people become addicted to pregnancy tests you take a test and it s negative yet somehow that doesn t compute you rationalize that the test could be wrong something else could be going on you take another test still negative but your breasts are sore you must be pregnant test 3 you guessed it negative and so forth i vacillate endlessly between rationality and absolute snap crackle pop insane regularly when it comes to whether or not i might be pregnant this last cycle i was still secretly convinced that i was pregnant in spite of having started my period because my period came so early and was so short 2 days evidence staring me in the face and i still held out hope crackers so the update is this we saw the reproductive endocrinologist re more tests nothing super obvious showed up my fsh levels were borderline which is an indication of my age but not so high that i m out of the running for getting pregnant we discussed over and over again what our options were the best bet would be to do ivf with preimplantation genetic testing pgd to rule out any bad embryos of course this comes with a pretty steep price tag after investing with our insurance we discover that we have infertility coverage theoretically enough to cover one round of ivf hopes rise another cycle goes by as we work through the insurance hoops with a new cycle on the immediate horizon insurance was still balking in the end the protocol for covering ivf with pgd requires first having failed 3 rounds of iui so no go on the ivf my cycle began a little sooner than it was supposed to so with just two days to figure it all out the folks at the reproductive science center manage to switch me to iui with insurance approval i received a large refrigerated package in the mail filled with needles syringes and injectibles on oct 23 i went in for my first follicular ultrasound and began giving myself nightly shots ultrasounds again on the 26th 30th 1st of november 2nd and 3rd until nov 2nd all looks well then a funny thing happens my uterine lining stops growing the blood test shows that my estrogen is dropping the doctor calls me today nov 3 to tell me that this mornings blood test and u s show that i m likely ovulating prematurely before i can develop follicles and or a uterine lining the iui is off for this cycle we ll have to wait 2 weeks and try again with a different technique beyond the sheer devastation of another failed cycle i find myself incredibly frustrated that in order to do all of these last minute ultrasounds and blood tests in orinda and san ramon i had to turn down classes for the next month at the end of november that will work in my favor with the advent of the next cycle but it s frustrating to be out of work without a good reason i ve some development work i can do from home but the best part of my job is the teaching i ll miss the interaction of the classroom immensely i suppose the good news is that we are finally beginning to understand why i have not gotten pregnant in the last year easy pregnancy after coming off of birth control makes sense and will likey be one of the approaches we take in the next cycle in the meanwhile another month slips by posted by unknown at 7 19 pm thursday august 13 2009 slippery slopes and incredibly bad timing so another cycle went by with a big old negative result on the inhumanely expensive early pregnancy tests i can t help but think that we ve been plagued with horrible timing in our attempt to have this second child we really didn t have any difficulty getting pregnant the first time with eliot or the first two times this time around then the personal tragedies just started piling up as if having 2 miscarriages wasn t already traumatic enough in the 6 or so months that we ve been trying since the second miscarriage at least 4 of the 6 or 7 times i ve ovulated something has happened the first cycle that we tried after our second miscarriage one of my dearest friends and aunt died the next cycle my great aunt with whom i had been close as a child passed away somewhere in there i received my graduate school rejection letters then kenzie one of our dogs became gravely ill there was a reprieve in early summer and i believe we did get pregnant if only briefly due to the symptoms i experienced and to the fact that my super regular period came abruptly 5 days early not sure what our excuse was in july for not getting pregnant but my cat died this last ovulation period it is entirely possible that our infertility perhaps not the miscarriages but the mont...