Failure

On the day that I gave birth to Davy I was asked when I thought I would try getting pregnant again. My response? "Give me a year to get over this." And sure enough by October I was contacting my OBGYN to see about getting things rolling, I knew that getting pregnant would take time. And sure enough it did. We really didn't get started until early January, Kevin moved his frozen vials of semen from one facility to another, I got things set up with my new fertility doctor, and everything was getting ready for my January cycle. When it hit everything got moving. I started taking shots, I started taking pills, I started going in on a weekly basis for blood tests. Everything moved along quickly. But the truth was, we could barely afford it all. Just the gas to drive to and from my appointments was something we had to carefully plan out. And the two drives to Chicago nearly killed us. But we made it, I even got a ride to the Pregnancy Test. That isn't counting the toll that the shots took on me, my rear end is currently black and blue from progesterone shots. But it was all worth it for the shot at getting pregnant, except, we didn't get pregnant.

Each try at IVF is $10,000 but with our insurance they pay for three attempts. Davy was our first attempt, and this was our second. We now have one last attempt left. And I am really scared that it won't work. If we can't afford gas to get to appointments, how in the world would we afford IVF without insurance? Answer is, we can't. After all our IVF attempts are over we have Artificial Insemination left, three more attempts of that left, and then we are done.

It is really difficult, I was planning this out, discussed it with Kevin. We were going to get pregnant again right away, because fact is I am not getting any younger. And this seems to be the year of babies, my sister is pregnant, my sister in law (brother's wife) is pregnant, my sister in law (Kevin's sister) is pregnant, heck even one of my cousins is pregnant. Everyone seems to be pregnant, except for me. And it really hurts, I know it will get easier over time, and I know, or at least hope that we will get pregnant again. But at this point I really don't know when. To sacrifice so much just to find out that your one in three chances failed.

Any of your who read this and have a child that you got easily through sex, don't you dare take that child for granted, because there are people out there who go through hell to get what you have. People who would love to have your child, no matter how difficult they are. And I am one of them.

Pregnancy test

Today was the day, the anticipated Pregnancy Test Day. I went in early this morning and they took my blood, and then told me that they would call me with the result around 1 pm to 1:30 pm. At 1:28 they called me with the news...we are not pregnant.

It has been a rough day, I don't know what else to say.

Toddler

Davy has been walking with assistance since January 2nd of this year, however as for walking on his own he hasn't really done much. Every so often he would go short distances, like from Daddy to Mommy and back, but extended walks on his own, not so much. Instead he has preferred to hold our hand while he walks around. In fact this has been his favorite activity for quite a while. I knew he would eventually find his courage and start walking on his own, but as the time passed Kevin got more and more anxious for Davy to be walking. So much so that just yesterday morning he asked me to see if I could find exercises or techniques we could use to get Davy to walk on his own. But that was not at all necessary because Davy started walking on his own yesterday afternoon. Kevin was practicing with him on walking and Davy just started taking off. Then when Davy and I went to Nana and Grandpa's house last night after Daddy went to work Davy walked all over their house. He is a walking maniac! He hasn't figured out how to get up after he falls down, so he just crawls over to something and pulls himself up and then goes walking again, but again, I am sure it is something he will figure out soon. In the meantime though we now have a toddler, and a proud Daddy.

The Name Game

Currently we are in a holding pattern, also called that excruciating 10 day wait until the pregnancy test. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow for blood work, but after that nothing until the 23rd. In the mean time I figured that I would talk about names.

On our drive to Chicago yesterday Kevin brings up the name conversation. Names have been a head butting point for the two of us for years. When it comes to the boys, we are pretty much ok. We have decided to use family names as first names and then the name of the next boy sibling as their middle name. So far we have the following in order that we would name them for the boys.
David Isaac
Isaac Knight
Knight Alexander
Alexander Andrew

Davy already has his name so now we have at least three names ready to go. Girl names are not so easy. Kevin and I disagree on girl names at almost every turn. I hate the girl names he likes, he hates the girl names I like. Every so rarely we find a name we can compromise on. On the way to Chicago Kevin decided that we should discuss the girl names as well. So we start listing off any girl names we can think of. This is faulty though because most of the names we think of are not names I particularly like. We did come up with a few names we both agreed on though. So currently here is what we have for girl names.
Evangeline Faye
Aria Juul

Andromeda
Elizabeth
Sariah

The last three we are not completely certain yet, but they are in our top five currently. Yesterday I had Kevin go through a name website and list the ones he likes. Then I will go through the list, which includes names I like and the names Kevin likes and we will decide how much we like each name by giving it a number. 1 means you hate the name and 10 means it is your favorite name of all time. That way we can narrow down names to our most favorite.

Embryo Transfer

Today was our Embryo Transfer, or in other words where they implanted the embryos into my uterus. The drive into Chicago was not too bad, except for some of the traffic. The worst part was when we got there. In my instructions for pre-transfer I am instructed to drink water/liquid when we were halfway there. I had Gatorade in a two liter Gatorade bottle, I ended up drinking most of the bottle. Meaning I really had to go when we got there. It took 30 minutes for them to bring me back, but thankfully once they did they let me empty my bladder a little. Yay!

Then the embryologist came in and talked to us about the embryos, one was in early blastocyst and the other two were compounding, which is pre-blastocyst. The optimum is when the embryo is in blastocyst, but the embryos were good for implanting as they were. They took the early blastocyst embryo and the farthest along compounding embryo and implanted those.

Some neat things:
1. Kevin got to stay in the room and watch the embryo transfer, last time he wasn't allowed in the room
2. They showed us the embryos on the TV in the room before the transfer
3. We got to watch the ultrasound and see the embryos placed in my uterus, we even got our first picture of the baby/babies if they end up taking, the gave us an ultrasound picture of the embryos in my uterus

Now is the waiting time, on February 23rd we will have the pregnancy test that will tell us if this worked or not. I really hope that it will.

Eggs -> Embryos

Yesterday we got a call from the Fertility Center where I had my eggs harvested, out of the 13 eggs they harvested only 7 were viable, and of the 7 that they fertilized only 3 made it to embryo status. It is difficult for us to know that we lost 10 eggs out of the whole process, but 3 embryos is better than none. They called me today to verify that they are going to implant the embryos on the 5th day. They could have done the implantation on the 3rd day if the embryos were not looking too great, but they must look good for them to be planning on implanting on the 5th day. Fifth day embryos are much more aggressive and have a greater chance of implanting and becoming a successful pregnancy, so they will not be implanting all three but will only implant two. There is a high chance that we will get twins out of this.

Either way I am currently on a bunch of meds, and getting daily shots in the bum from Kevin. Yay fun! It is all for a good cause though, so it is worth it.

The Harvest

Today they harvested my eggs, this time they were able to harvest 13 of them. Last time when we got pregnant with Davy they were only able to harvest 5 eggs and only two made it to embryo status. Hopefully this time we get a lot more embryos so we can put them away for our next try. Tomorrow the clinic will call me and let me know how many eggs made it to embryo status. Next Wednesday is my implantation date, so we will drive back in for them to implant two embryos.

The clinic is in Chicago, which was quite a drive. We had to wake up at 4 am to make it to our 7 am appointment. Thankfully Kevin drove us into Chicago, and then he had to drive us out as I am on instructions not to drive the rest of today. I am also on a 5 lb lifting limit. Which means I can't pick up anything over 5 lbs, so no picking up the baby and I can only hold him if he crawls into my lap, which thankfully he does quite often. Love our little boy. I hurt today and feel quite under the weather so I can't really do a lot of walking without it hurting. I think that is what upsets Davy the most, Mommy can't get up and walk around a lot with him like I usually do.

Nana and Grandpa watched him yesterday and today because I had to drive into work and today we drove into Chicago. Nana sent me lots of cute pictures of Davy having fun at her house. I guess he spent a lot of time watching videos on her iPhone. I am on a new set of meds, and Kevin has to inject the progesterone in oil into my backside again. I will post more about my meds and the update on the embryos tomorrow. I think I am going to take another nap.

Tooth Brushing

So now that Davy is eating solids I feel like I really need to be getting down his bedtime routine. Complete with brushing teeth, reading a story and then going to bed. Currently I have a little finger brush for Davy, and some baby safe tooth paste. So I take him into the bathroom and put some tooth paste on the finger brush and start brushing the few teeth he has so far. And he loves it! He thinks it is great to have this weird little brush thing moving around on his teeth and gums. He likes to bite on it with his gums, where his molars will be growing in. He thinks it is funny when Mommy brushes his teeth with it. This is great for me, because it means that teeth brushing is fun and not another type of torture.

Story time is also getting better, before he was not so interested in the story, more in trying to eat the book. Now he actually looks at the pictures and likes it when Mommy reads to him. He wants to be the one to flip the pages, good thing we read books Mommy knows the words to so she can continue the story even if the words are a few pages back. Davy is such a fun little boy, it is so exciting to watch him grow up. I wish it didn't happen so fast so I could spend more time with my little boy.

Walking and Schedules

Lately Davy's favorite thing to do is walk around the living room with someone holding his hand. He can walk between us but he doesn't seem to feel comfortable with his new walking skills to go walking on his own. According to his doctor he should be able to walk now, he has great muscle tone and good balance but he is just chicken and will walk once he gets up his courage. In the meantime Mommy and Daddy have become his walking companions. He does not do so good when it comes to walking with Mommy or Daddy outside the living room area, because he wants to see all the things he doesn't usually get to play with. Davy has also started to climb, which is giving us all sorts of fits as he likes to climb up on the couches but has not realized that falling off the couch could seriously hurt him. There is a part of me that feels like I should let him fall once to let him learn that he needs to be careful on the couch. It is difficult letting my baby learn tough lessons.

On the fertility side of things I have begun to give myself shots. I started on Monday January 30th. Here is my schedule: Monday January 30th to Thursday February 2nd (today!) inject 200 Units of Follistim subcutaneously, Friday February 3rd inject 200 Units of Follistim, 2 pills of Estrodiol and one syringe of Ganirelix, continue all three until Monday February 6th when I have a doctor appointment and will be given a new schedule by the nurse.

Speaking of doctor appointments I am full of them for the next few weeks. I have the appointment on the 6th, as well as an appointment with my General Practitioner on the 7th, and another with the fertility clinic on the 8th. On the 9th I will be driving in to work for a meeting and then on the 10th we will be driving to Chicago for harvest of the eggs. We will be returning to Chicago on the 15th for implantation. Just thinking about next week makes me feel tired. Davy will be spending the 9th and 10th with Nana and Grandpa while I am at work and in Chicago. I am sure they will have more fun than I will.

I exercised last night and the night before. Turned on a tv show and exercised for the duration of it. I need to do more of that.