And here we are

It’s summer!!!!!!! Kids are out of school and I kind of wish I was home for the summer too. It’s been a few weeks now and I’m finding my girl has just been able to decompress. I think she’s just not so mentally exhausted which has allowed her to be in a much better mood. I wish I could say the same for my son. For the past 2-3 weeks he has been really really whiny in the evenings. It starts around 5:30 until bed around 8.
One of his new obsessions, though, is watching wheel of F. He pretends to be vanna and puts on my shoes and finds some sparkly shirt. He touches the tv to ‘turn’ the letters. I’m having fun with it because I grew up loving that show. I even tried making my own wheel out of cardboard and sticks. My mom got me a wheel board game for Christmas one year and even an ornament too. Ahhh, now the next generation obsession begins. My girl tolerates it I think. She keeps asking if this is going to be our forever show now.
This post may be brain dump because I also wanted to capture a few things. First is that my son calls my girl by her name now. As long as he’s been able to talk he would call her sissy (not my term of endearment nanny started that one)....but over the last few weeks he all of a sudden just started calling her by her name. It seems such a small shift, but it just makes him seem like such a big boy now. He’s no longer closer to toddler and much closer to kindergartner. Sigh.
Plus after not hearing him say her name much for a few years it’s so strange to hear him say it.
The second one: as much as my girl thinks and acts like 6 going on 16, she still says ‘Alvin and the chickmunks”. I don’t correct her.
She’s already planning her birthday party in August. She starts months in advance, this one. She’s decided she wants an emoji birthday. Although it was poke.mon last week. We’ve been looking at her emoji pajamas and asking each other which ones we like best during our before bed talks. She’s trying to figure out which one she wants on her cake. That’s kind of our birthday tradition. You get to pick the theme and we do cake, presents, and have small group at house. I like the way we do it and it seems the kids do too. That may change when they go to the over the top parties, so I’m just happy where we are with it. Thus is s big birthday because I’ve told her for years when she turns 7 she can chew gum. Why I picked 7 I don’t know. So I told her all about Hubba bubba and she can’t wait.
We’ve also had some interesting conversations about secrets. Some of her ‘girlfriends’ at school were sharing secrets and she said her friend June told her something but she promised not to tell.
At first I felt like we shouldn’t have secrets at all, said as much, and she still didn’t want to share. So, I went researching to find out how to handle the best way. I came across several articles that say it’s normal development in child friendship building and what’s important is to help them understand difference between safe and unsafe secrets. She may be a bit young, but I kind of liked the idea. I’m certainly not going to be able to force her to share everything with me (as much as I want her to) and I think if I push too hard that will start a wall. So, the thought of saying that if she’s uncomfortable with anything or someone’s not safe, those secrets have to be shared with mom.
In some ways I’m an uber-protective mom and want to start early giving her words/tools to use. For the both of them really.—we all already talk about privates and no one touches them except themselves, mommy, or dr.  I’ll have to see how the guidance on secrets works. Apparently it’s not an issue over the summer, my girl says, because she’s not at school. Okay then.

I’m in therapy with my sister again. I told her we need it. Turns out my sister didn’t end up back in the hospital-but was delayed even getting in touch with dr because they were closed. I just couldn’t understand how she thought the state she was in was ok. What I learned after talking to her during our therapy was that emotionally she’s not in good place. I think her dr had made some changes with her medicine that sent things wrong way. That became very clear to me in the session, as well as her therapist. Therapist suggested that just she and my sister meet for awhile which I couldn’t agree more. I think my sister needs her energy to focus on herself. We are scheduled to talk in therapy again mid next week and haven’t really been communicating much at all. I miss talking.

On the family building side...I did hear back from my known donor.  He was quite open to donating now so I could try for a biological child. What I’ve learned since connecting with him and understanding more from drs office is that using a known donor is more complicated-well it is in my situation. More forms to sign, coordinating whether he would fly in to my drs office, how would I compensate him, etc. it’s so much more to think about besides just calling 1-800 ship.
It had me thinking more about things. I took a couple weeks to just soak on it. He had asked to see the language in the donor form so I did send that finally last week.
I’m not sure where this one will land. I’m kind of waiting to see his response and will decide from there. It just seems tricky to navigate these waters. Not impossible but it’s much more involved.
However, it’s not a decision I can sit on for long.

In what I think is good news (hopefully) is that my beast of a one year renovation project might finally be done beginning of next week. I’ve continued to have delays with the new contractor, pieces and parts of things missing, the ceiling beams not turning out right, landscaping turning out crappy etc. but I just keep pushing along to get it done. My realtor called a few weeks ago and asked if I wanted to sell because she might have a buyer. I initially thought about it, but given the sweat and tears and money in this thing, I couldn’t imagine just selling it to break even. Considering all the things I dealt with along the way,  the fact that I can even break even is something. But, if I hold and rent it a few years I know I could actually make some money on it. Or even live in it! That plan is unlikely because even  though I love the feel of it and how it’s turning out, my financial planning didn’t involve living in an expensive house and the schools are still city schools and are still slowly turning around. I just think renting it gives me time to think about it.
I’m ready to call this one done. I’ll have  to post some before and after. The inside transformation is amazing. The outside still fits in the neighborhood because I left the original brick. It was beautiful and I couldn’t imagine painting or covering it. What’s crazy is that house has much better storage than my current house AND a dedicated office. I’m a bit envious.

Onwards to summer! Swimming lessons and Saturday basketball here we come.

Information

i Can’t believe we only have a few weeks left this school year. My son will finish his pre-k 3 year and my girl will finish first grade. When did this happen?! Physically these kids have both stretched out so much this year and just look like ‘big kids’ now. I looked at my son tonight and I swear he just grew before my eyes. I fully expect both of them to be tall as that is on both sides. It’s not just physically there’s been a big change intellectually with both of them. I really love our dinner conversations and they are practicing what I do. My girl will randomly say ‘mom, what was the favorite part of your day?’. Then my son might throw in ‘what was the hardest part of your day?’ The thing I’m just loving right now is I’m truly enjoying hanging out with my kids. Of course more the moments between arguing, fussing, back talking etc. but it’s so fun to have conversations and see what they’re  interested in, what friend misbehaved at school, what ‘naughty’ words are. Recently my son out of the complete blue said the F word. I didn’t hear it from me! (I don’t think anyway I’m pretty careful about that around them). He insists he doesn’t know where he heard it. Turkey.

I had my son’s patent teacher conference and it went great. They said such positive things like he goes with the flow, such a good helper, listens really well, and redirects if needed. That’s just the kind of kid he is and it made me proud that they love having him in class. Makes me feel like we’re doing some things right over here.

What I’ve spent a good week doing is gathering more information about my fertility. After the first follow up with my dr I was feeling encouraged, even though I didn’t have a plan yet about next steps. Then, after the coordinator emailed she offered for his colleague to call me to talk further about process, etc. in a nutshell, I walked away from that conversation totally deflated. She started out by asking what did I want to hear, what would make me feel positive. Ummm well, just be open. So she then shared that due to my age, even though my amh tested well, my age is a big factor in quality. If they get a good embryo chances are high, however trying to get a good embryo is the key. She threw out on high side 10% chance, more like 3-5%. Oof. Like really? Those odds not so good. 

I told her I still wanted to see what the financial piece would look like so she sent me to coordinator and that was that.

Then, the biggest kicker of all—I have a known donor who donated at a bank years ago. It occurred to me that I should call to see if there was any supply left because if I couldn’t make a biological sibling that would be a deal breaker for me. And I found out the bank closed. Like permanently closed!! My stomach actually sank when I found that out online. Of course my mind raced to—well, the supply had to go somewhere, right? Long story short I reached out to the parent organization, got bounced around a few times, but learned that anything they had went to a ‘holding’ facility and even if it was there or not, laws would prevent them from distribution. Like crap. Double crap.

My only option would be to reach out directly and ask if he would donate some way somehow now. So much more complicated.

So after all that I decided you know what? Rather than just calling it quits I decided I needed to have another follow up with my dr. for my own peace of mind. I wanted to see what he had to say about his colleague’s info, my donor situation, the cost sheet, the protocol, etc.

So, I’m so glad I met him again. When I verbatim told him what his colleague told me that a) in her 3 years they haven’t had any success with own eggs at my age, and some have tried even older and b) the percentages of probable success he basically said no, no,no. He said most of the older women had age plus diminished ovarian reserve like 0.3 AMH that you can’t easily compare. Plus he’s known my history, we’ve had success, and he thinks it’s reasonable to try. I also asked him I don’t mean any disrespect but if I were to pursue, could he confirm that he would be calling the shots and he said yes, he would be. He also said working with a donor is not hard and they have protocols for that. I said sure, the hard part is trying to see if he would donate.

So yeah, if I were cynical (which I’m not) I could say he’s just trying to make money. However, since I’ve known him 13 years, we’ve been successful, and I trust his professionalism, I don’t think that’s the case. In addition, when I showed him the cost sheet that they had discounted some, he said they could work with me more on that since I’ve done so many procedures with them. Don’t know what that looks like but I sent off a note to the coordinator.

And, I emailed my donor.

I’m a firm believer data can only help. Once I know if I have any options I can decide from there. The bank certainly threw me for a loop but I’ll just see. I told the dr that I’m not sure what it is but I thought I’d be fine if the last transfer didn’t work. There’s something inner pushing me this direction so I’m just listening right now. At the end, I may not have a choice due to the donor, but again, will just see.

Besides all that, once again I was getting frustrated with my sister for not reaching out. I wanted to see how long it would take if I didn’t call her. And it had been a week so I finally called today and come to find out, she’s not been doing well. I can always tell when she’s taken some medicine and I started asking questions. Apparently she’s been falling again and passing out. For like a week now. It took awhile to get it out of her but she finally told me she fell in her bathroom last night, was bleeding, and didn’t know how long she had been that way. WTF.

I didn’t want to come on too strong because she would shut down but in my mind I was screaming oh my god what the heck, did you call the dr?? She said she hadn’t called DR even. WTF again. She should be in the hospital not her couch. Something is clearly wrong. I made her promise to call the Dr in the morning and I would call her after. She said she would call my dad for a ride. After we hung up I even called my dad and said he needs to check in her in the morning. He at least said she had called him.

I don’t even know what to think of the situation. She’s had some really rough issues lately and they seem to be more frequent. It’s very concerning. She lives by herself, which isn’t good, and I asked her if she’s been eating and she said no food in house, she was eating applesauce. Omg.

She’s just not thinking clearly if she hadn’t even called her Dr. 

I am just hoping I hear from her tomorrow that she’s on her way to the hospital with my dad.

She just continues to struggle with her chronic illnesses.

Oy vey. I’m mentally tired now. I guess that’s enough update for today.

So sweet

Just what I needed tonight....after a long work week.

My son was quite fussy this evening...I think due to still randomly waking up too early, like 6:00am even though his clock turns yellow and he can get up at 6:40am. It seems that after these last three weeks of allergies and coughing/sick he’s out of sync again. So, when he gets up too early he’s been pretty whiny, crying, and just tired.

Tonight he wanted shower instead of bath, so fine. When he was done he raced out of the bathroom to ‘hide’. One of his favorite things to do.

Then he started getting dressed and as he’s sitting in front of me he just pauses, looks at me, and says:”Mommy you are so beautiful”. I said thank you, gave him a kiss....then he says “just like a rainbow”.  I gave him more hugs and kisses. Then he says, “a hundred rainbows”.

My heart just melted. So darn sweet.

And throughout all that my girl sat quietly watching shows with no fuss herself.

What started out a tough evening simply turned into a great one.
These moments are the best.

Thinking

I’ve had some time to reflect post my transfer not working and it’s been challenging.  On one hand, I feel confident that I did the right thing by giving it a shot, one the other hand, it didn’t work and there’s a lot of thoughts tied up in that. The time, effort, money, hope, resulted in nothing.

And….the hardest part is, I thought I would feel a sense of relief that I was ‘done’…one way or the other.  And that feeling just hasn’t come. I’m just not at peace yet about it all.

 

I did have my follow up with the physician and much as I expected, he didn’t have a reason as to why it didn’t work. He genuinely said he was sorry, sometimes they just don’t work even if everything was lined out right.  We did talk about the fact that we didn’t know whether the embryos were ‘normal’ since they weren’t tested, and he did say he had a bit of trouble with the transfer—but honestly, science and technology can only take you so far.  My biggest question for him was—if I just wanted to explore further with my own eggs, am I too old?  Frankly, I was preparing myself for him to say that yes, my time was up and I was too old—especially after all of the reading I have done. However, surprisingly that’s not what he said. He said it’s possible, and would depend on a few tests, one of those being AMH and the other an ovary ultrasound, I think.

I left that appointment feeling a level of hope, but not really sure about wanting to pursue and ‘start over’.  There are way more hurdles now than 5 years ago, but I told myself it can’t hurt to just do the blood test that day and just see what the data tells us.

 

This is where I get a bit frustrated w/ the Dr.’s office. I had the test Friday April 12. The following Friday, the 19^th I got an email from the IVF coordinator asking about whether I was interested in additional IVF and to let her know. I responded back that the Dr. and I had discussed options but I was waiting for the AMH test he ordered to come back, and the Dr. could advise from there.  Like, do these folks communicate with each other? I know that they have a lot of patients, but after a failed cycle, you would think they would be proactive to make sure they have the most up to date information. It just put me off a bit---not even acknowledging the failed cycle…but asking hey, ready for more? AND, without even checking with the Dr first even after knowing I had a follow up consult with him. It just feels disappointing and very impersonal.

The reality is if I didn’t have such a long history with this office, I’m not sure I would be as forgiving. But, the Dr. is a specialist, he knows my entire medical history, I’ve been seeing him since 2006, and I have confidence in him as a doctor.  It’s not him….it’s his support staff that’s been a journey. For awhile there, the front office people were terrible, now it’s perhaps the coordinators.

 

Aside from all that, I had been logging into the portal daily to see if the lab results were up. The Dr. said that if the amh was less than 1.0 that wouldn’t be great and if it was close to zero, like 0.3 or something, it wouldn’t be good at all.  I had no idea what to expect, but my test came back today at 1.41. The coordinator sent an email saying that the Dr. would move forward w/ that result and would recommend doing 2 rounds of retrieval with embryo testing. The coordinator said I could talk to his other IVF Dr. about what process we would use….if I’m not mistaken, it’s more of a mini ivf of sorts where they try to get fewer, but quality eggs.

 

In a way, this all would have been easier if the Dr. said I was too old.  Some days, I feel old. I’m certainly not in the best shape and without a doubt that would need to change if I wanted to pursue this. It’s kind of a now or…..it’s not ever.  This has been the real struggle for me. While waiting on the test results I’ve continued to think through if I really want to do this, put my mind and body through it, do I have the energy for it, dealing with the hormones, etc.. with of course a possibility of the same outcome I just had. I feel a level of anxiety about it.  It feels like such a bigger decision than even moving forward w/ the embryo transfer I already had. Part of me is leaning towards just getting as much information as I can such as: cost, protocol. Timeline, etc.. then make a decision.

 

Parenting is dang hard at times…..but, it’s in my soul what I want to be doing with my life. I’ve had a great career and it’s what supports our life, but that isn’t my focus and hasn’t been for awhile. I’m certain with my two children we will have lots of great experiences/challenges, and it’s a matter of how far I want to or will go to see if adding to our family is possible.  I don’t have an answer to that just yet.

11 days pa.st Tra.nsfer and.........

Well.....no drum roll this time.....it did not work.  I did the beta at the Dr office this morning.  What I didn't share on here because I wanted to try and stay as neutral as possible and just felt like keeping it to myself was that I did home tests on day 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10 past transfer.  All negative.  So, I was prepped for the call this afternoon.  There was a very small piece of me that was holding out for the final confirmation because of all the crazy stories you can read about people getting positives 10+ days after transfer.
I now understand the difference in tests, however. I could never understand why people would torture themselves with the tests that have two lines, kinda, maybe, was it there a little...test. I've always thought in the past it seems much simpler to use the ones that say yes or no, right?
Well, naïve self, that's because during all my fertility treatments I've never had a negative test before. So, after staring down the digital read that said no, I researched and learned quickly that people use the line testers because they are more sensitive and can 'read' hcg at lower levels, thus why I did the same thing myself and bought ones that would show a line, maybe...sooner.


I think I'm still processing all of this. I kinda just thought since my labs were great, lining was great, hormone levels were great, and embryos were good quality and one was even hatching that this would just work.  Honestly I think we gave them the best shot we/I could. This is where sometimes, it's just not in our hands and truly out of anyone's control.
The one thing I did not do was have them tested to see if they were "normal" embryos....my approach was let's see if it works first, then I would test later. I didn't test any embryos throughout my processes.


I'm supposed to have a followup with the Dr. next week to go over everything, which I will for sure go to....I suspect, though, that there won't really be a conclusive answer. They just didn't take.


Thankfully, I'm not feeling devastated because I have truly been blessed....and I now have an even greater appreciation for the fact that other than the one IVF cycle where I didn't get eggs, everything worked out the way it was supposed to.  So many people struggle and I just never had any insight into it. I can't even imagine going through this cycle after cycle and not being successful. Not to mention all the money, crazy medication, the commitment to take said medication for what seems like all day every day.....just the whole process.  Upon reflection it was a lot. I don't feel like an embryo transfer was any 'easier' than going through the whole IVF cycle.


I'm not sure what now....I truly was envisioning a family of four and in my mind it was a boy. Strange how you can get so far ahead, huh? I do have a small confession, though, that when one of the tests was negative I did feel a small hint of relief. I'm sure it was a day when I was tired from major lack of sleeping and not feeling good. While I had been hopeful throughout, I had also been thinking through the all sorts of crazy it would be with three and I would need to dig deep. It's confusing me because where I'm struggling a bit is the "finality" part of all this. I have no more embryos with 38 year old eggs. I'm 44 now.   I suspect what I am working through is maybe normal?  I (maybe naively) thought that if this process didn't work I'd be fine because I had given my remaining embryos a chance at life. That's the most I could do.  I just don't feel as settled as I thought I would.


In closing, I feel like I need to put a disclaimer that I absolutely do understand how fortunate I am to be a mother of two. I think I worry that someone reading this might think otherwise...especially those who have really struggled.  I think everyone's story/journey is personal and for me, already being a mother didn't negate my hope for this one as well.

6 days pa.st Tra.nsfer

So yesterday and today I’ve had some really bad cramping. I have to say they feel very much like bad AF cramps. I’ve also had some small breakouts on my face, my chest is still sore, however, that ramped up with the additional progesterone. I also feel super bloated. Clearly a lot of symptoms that happen on a monthly basis. I’m trying my best to stay neutral/keep an open mind, etc but it’s been hard. I don’t want to write any hard statements as I just don’t want something black and white in the universe....so I won’t.
I’ve been researching like a fool testing, symptoms, how many Days Pa.st Tran.sfer does everything happen. I’ve had plenty of time to do that because even though I hadn’t had a drop of caffeine since last Friday (until a small bit this afternoon), I have slept terribly. Can’t get to sleep until 1-2 am. Wake up every hour until kids come in around 6:30-6:45am. I’m feeling the effects of that tonight.
I’ve been also researching how early a blood test can be done and since I didn’t have a trigger shot it seems they could maybe test me sooner. I might at least ask if that’s possible.

A nice surprise when I came home late tonight is both kids ran outside even! to greet me. Both of them giving me hugs and saying how much they missed me. Nanny told me my son was counting down the minutes until I got there. If I knew how much love I would get for being really late...might have to do it more often. Ha!
It just felt so nice...so that’s what I will focus on.

3 days pa.st Tra.nsfer

I'm just not sure on this one. I really am not sure.  I've felt some aches/pulling here and there but it has been very infrequent and not very intense or strong. My chest has become pretty tender, however, I've totally upped my progesterone, so I'm not sure on that one either. In the mornings, especially, I feel pretty much nothing. It's hard to not allow yourself to make conclusions too early because as they all say, "you never know", but my mind has been wondering. I'm trying to not focus too much, but c'mon....who doesn't want to know what's going on there, right?!
I've looked back through my old posts from both my daughter and my son to see what I felt and when. For my daughter we did a 3 day fresh transfer and I had symptoms pretty much right away....chest extremely tender that it hurt to change my clothes, regular cramping, noted one really strong twinge 4 days past transfer. I tested for the first time 7 days past the fresh transfer and got a positive. For my son we did a frozen transfer with 5 day. 1 day past transfer I felt some twinges in my lower left part of uterus and it had a 'fullness' feeling. I noted that I felt normal and good. I mentioned I had a lot of twingy crampy zingers the first few days, but after 4 days I didn't feel a whole lot and not much seemed different. My chest wasn't unusually sore although I thought I noticed some blue veining, but wasn't sure. I ended up testing 5 days past the 5 day transfer and got the positive. Apparently the timer took awhile.


So, all that to say.....I just need to wait some more.
Ugh.