I am so very sorry I took so long to post!  Motherhood is busier and more wonderful than I could have ever imagined.  Ever.  My sweet wonderful little man was born on November 18, 2008 via c-section.

My pregnancy was far more eventful than expected.  I failed every test during my pregnancy except the Strep B which didn’t matter because I was doing a c-section.  I had high blood pressure (VERY high), gestational diabetes, major unexplained bleeding on and off, I was pulled out of work a couple months early, was on bed rest of some sort the entire time, the last couple of months I was really only supposed to sit on the couch or bed except my 2-3 non-stress tests/ultrasounds a week and in general was so very nervous the entire time that I couldn’t get excited.  I didn’t want to take the tags off anything “in case it had to be returned” – I cried when we washed the bedding- I am just now feeling like I can take the tags off the clothes we have for the next stage of his growth. 

We had our c-section on a Tuesday the week before Thanksgiving – my husband was snapping photographs of the prep like a paparazzi.  No one needs to see my getting an iv or watching them put the fetal monitor on.  Turns out my little guy decided that was to be his birthday anyway because I was having contractions on my own.  The doctors asked if my husband was going to want to see when they took the baby out and we had agreed that both of us were too afraid to look until we heard a cry.  So a few minutes in I heard the most wonderful sound I have ever heard – and am tearing up remembering it- my sweet perfect son’s first cry.  More on the birth and hospital stay later.

Christopher is a sweet, good natured, very much loved and loving little boy.  He sleeps through the night (mostly), eats like a champ(breastfeeding is hard but totally totally worth it!), loves his puppy, gives the best smiles and hugs and loves his mommy.  I am the luckiest person on the planet and I have thanked God every single day since Christopher arrived.  Every. Single. Day. Usually more than once.  I will NEVER forget what it took to get here and the wonderful people who helped get me here.  My journey to motherhood was long, rocky and exhausting and I thought many times that it might not be a road I would get to walk on – but here I am- correction- he WE are. 

Now I am on the bumpy path of motherhood.  I have a lot to learn – and can’t wait for all the challenges ahead of me.  Thanks for sharing the journey with me. 

ok.. so I am now 18 1/2 weeks pregnant…with a boy according to the emergency amnio I had recently…the reason I am not posting though is that I am too scared to put any of this in writing for the fear that I am tempting the evil fates who will snatch this amazing precious gift away as soon as I get too cocky and start assuming it will work out.    (Heck…half of my family doesn’t even know yet!)  The current due date is November 28, 2008 and I promise I will come back afterwards and give the low down on the long scary trip it has been so far and whatever is till to come in the future.  Till then.. thanks for checking on me and I’ll see you in December!

Ok.. so at 6w 3d all was well and both of us were doing fine.  Well- nothing is EVER that easy! More bleeding over the weekend… another “emergency” appointment on Monday.  Does it EVER get easier?  I can handle cramps, yucky old blood, morning sickness (not that I have had much of that yet), boobs that hurt so bad that I want to chop them off, and generalized unfocused fear – but this focused fear because I am bleeding is bullsh*t!  I went from being on top of the world on Friday (WE SAW A FREAKING HEARTBEAT) to sad, depressed and hopeless on Saturday. 

So Monday’s ultrasound looks good the baby measures where she should and it all looks good..until…(imagine Jaws music here..dun duh dun duh dun duh dun duh AAAAAAH!) there is  problem.  I now have a sub chronic hematoma.  There is a collection of blood in the uterus.  HHmm.  What the hell does THAT mean.  But the “good news” is that “if I have to have one it is in the best place it can be”.  Wow- what a relief.. I am bleeding but at least it is below the baby so if it gushes out it is less likely to take my hopes and dreams with it- yippee.. I feel lucky.  So I try to look on the bright side – they warn me that more bleeding is imminent, they put me on very modified bed rest (no walking, standing or lifting and put my feet up every moment possible) and come back in a WEEK!  Again with the week thing..

So I get back to work and start googling like mad.. it seems an SCH is pretty common and if not resolved can cause miscarriage but that sometimes it just goes away.  Let’s hope mine is one of the type that disappear and never returns.  So from my research I now know what to ask them so I call the doctor and ask  how big mine is.  Today it is 1cm- which is smaller than my peanut at this point so I am going to stay as positive as possible, move as little as possible, and pray that this week is over FAST.   The reason I am to move as little as possible is that if the bleed moves between the placenta and uterine wall I am far more likely to miscarry and since I have been there three other times I don’t want to visit that again so I walk as little as possible but if I am walking I must look like I am walking on glass I am slow, gentle and I refuse to twist or turn around.

As bad as it is to worry about the bleed, I don’t want to tell my co-workers what is going on yet so I keep coming up with stupid reasons I am walking as if I just turned 180 years old.  Good grief – they must think I am totally nuts.

It is going to be a loooooong week.

OK When last we spoke I had just gotten my best BFP ever!  I think I am still in shock.  This is my fourth pregnancy and I have never made it past 7 weeks without disaster.  So my first u/s was at less than 6 weeks – we didn’t expect to see much and since I had never really seen more than a sac I wasn’t expecting to see anything at all.  Two days before my “pre-natal” ultrasound – (I have to put that in quotes because it just seems so unreal) I started spotting- not a lot- but bright red scary spotting.  My hopes are being dashed with every drop of blood I see.  But my ultrasound is in 2 days and since it is soooo flipping early anyway they really can’t see me early because we will be lucky to see anything Friday anyway.  So two  l o n g horribly stressful days later I go for my ultrasound.  And.. well- we actually saw a sack- how crazy- I was only 5 weeks pregnant – but there it was – tiny and you couldn’t see anything inside but it was there and it was mine!!

So they said to come back in a week and we will check again.  A WEEK are they kidding me?!?!?!? How about tomorrow?  I suddenly decided that since I don’t know how long this is going to last so I want to be “IN” it every minute this time.  I don’t want to try to stay detached so it might hurt less when the miscarriage happens (like that works anyway -NOT).  I want to see every minute of life that my little one has.  But not owing my own machine like Tom and Katie I guess a week it is.

Well.. my little one is already giving me issues.. I didn’t make it a whole week because of…you guessed it.. more spotting.. so I went in on Wednesday- I am a couple days shy of 6 weeks at this point.- I didn’t really want  to go in early because they said I might see a heartbeat at 6 weeks.. and I wasn’t there yet.  But I went in because I was terrified and if it is going to result in a miscarriage I want to know immediately and not find out a few days later that  “Oops- it’s gone”  I want to know now.  So we go in…shaking and scared… and holy crow..it is still there, measures exactly where it should and it appears all is well.  Whew… but guess what.. come back in a week!!  AARgh!

Alright- it is Saturday night now and I suddenly had a ton of watery red blood- honestly I had been lying on the couch and when I got up I found blood all over the couch.  Needless to say I was flipping out – I was in the bathroom crying, my husband was trying to clean off the couch before it stained – and the doctor’s office is closed until Monday.  I called and they said it could be a broken blood vessel and I should stay on bedrest until Monday.  Great… so.. is THIS the end?  All of these stops and starts are freaking me out – I am TRYING to be zen and calm and “enjoy my pregnancy” but how the hell can you do that when you are bleeding every 2 days!

Ok- so Monday morning I go in- scared and shaking and honestly I could hardly even breathe … and holy mother of god…there is a heartbeat!!! A little flutter on the screen that was just chugging along.  It was too early to hear it but wow…it was a heartbeat and it was inside me!!!

I am 6 weeks, 3 days pregnant and for the first time in 6 years of trying to conceive and 3 previous pregnancies.. I saw a heartbeat.

Wow.

All right- miscarriage number three is over and it is time to get back on the horse.. well actually it is well past that time because I had to sit out for a month with a freaking cyst.  These are the hardest times for me because all I want to do is get back to “trying” because “healing” from the miscarriages is too painful emotionally.  I can’t truly put the miscarriages in the past until I have begun a fresh cycle.  I know I am odd but that is just who I am. 

So now I have a dilemma – New York State offers a grant program to help pay for ivf through certain clinics.  My clinic is one of them the only catch is that I have to go to the one that is three hours away – but to save thousands I am willing to do it.  The grant program only allows you two bites at the ivf apple at the cost-share amount and we used one last year.  So I had decided, as soon as I knew the last cycle wasn’t going to work out, that we would do one more iui then ivf again.  The only reason I wanted to do that was because I couldn’t imagine after as many cycles I had done that I would get pregnant two times in a row and I didn’t want to “waste” the ivf.  I know there is no rational basis for this thought but a healthy dose of superstition and “not counting my chickens” has gotten me to this point without too many regrets.  Well the cyst took that away.  The grant money must be used by April I believe and due to the fact that an ivf cycle is over 2 months I didn’t have enough time for an iui now.  Aw geez, I don’t like going into something when I am already feeling like it won’t work but I need to bite the bullet and go for it. 

So I am to start stims on February 24, 2008, my cyst is gone and we are a go.  Well, as you all know, on February 22, 2008 my father and his wife passed away in a fire.  So this cycle is becoming less “ideal” by the minute.  But…we have already paid so we just have to keep going. 

My plan for this cycle had been to basically cocoon myself from as much stress and irritation as possible and have the more relaxed cycle I could, I was going to take a little time off after the transfer, do Reiki every other day, and just spoil myself in general to try to get the best results possible (especially since I already felt like we were digging out of a hole).  Obviously, there was snowball’s chance in hell that I would be able to do ANY of that now.   During stimming – we planned funerals and wakes, picked through debris at the house looking for a will, got a Court Order to search a safe deposit box, called umpteen attorneys to see if they had my father’s will, dealt with insurance people, try to be nice to family friends who judged my relationship with my father, tried to open the communication lines with a brother I haven’t seen in years, brokered an agreement between siblings and step-siblings as to how to share the estate since we never were able to find a will, and tried to deal with my own feelings of loss, sadness and anger.  Pretty much the total opposite of what my “plan” was. 

Well oddly- I was responding very well to the stims.  It feels like an “easy” cycle – maybe that is because I have given almost no thought to it.  I even had to stop for an u/s and bloodwork on the way to the funeral.  I don’t even remember exactly how many eggs I had – I think maybe it was 14 or so but from that we got 6 beautiful embryos. 

Those six little potential babies allowed us our first 5 day transfer.. and all six were still beautiful on day 5.  Both trips out to western NY and back were easy and uneventful- that part of the state is known for major lake effect snow and we saw nary a flake.   My transfer was the easiest procedure I have ever done.  My iui’s etc. since my surgery for the ectopic have caused me a lot of left side pain and the speculum feels like a bear trap – not that day.  I never felt the rod going through my cervix- I ALWAYS feel it.. I know exactly where to put my hands on my stomach to reduce the spasm I always get but I didn’t have to this time.. no spasm… all of a sudden he takes out the speculum and he is done.  I swear it felt like 30 seconds when it usually feels like 6 hours.  No cramping on the way home – nothing.  It was “perfect”.  It was even my RE’s birthday so he was dressed in all his new birthday gifts and everyone was in an even better mood than they usually are. 

We put in three and we had the other three frozen…. Well good golly all three froze!  I actually have frosties!  I am telling you..maybe this unbelievable stress thing is actually good.

Ten loooong days later… I got my best BFP ever.  My hcg level was almost three times higher than any previous positive.

Holy crow.  It worked. 

But will it stay?

Well pregnancy number three was only one failed iui cycle after my scary ectopic pregnancy.  It would have been great timing if it had worked out.  I got my blood test results back the day of my husband’s awesome office Christmas party.  Happy results- crummy timing =)  I suppose it truly was my turn to be the designated driver.  So my hcg levels were on the low side but nothing to cause alarm…. They rose appropriately for about 2 weeks.  Which, by coincidence,  was the time frame that ALL the Christmas parties we were to attend that season were in.  Now, of course, I don’t mind not drinking if I am pregnant but I just had a feeling.  So less than a week before Christmas I got the news…my betas were falling.  I should expect a full blown m/c any day.  That was a Friday, Sunday was the Church luncheon and the day we decorated the church for Christmas- it is usually one of my favorite days, carols, friends, the smell of the greens..it is wonderful.  Except I just found out about my latest loss…oh..and that morning during the service..the cramps began.  AAAHHH!!!! I swear I totally felt like I was being punished for something totally horrible I did in a past life.  Maybe I was Hitler or something because it is getting really bad.  To make matters worse we had fewer volunteers that usual and my best friend wasn’t there because she was sick – I really wanted to talk to her and tell her what is going on. 

So I bled/cramped for over a week – on Christmas Eve when we had the big dinner at my house I was still cramping and bleeding.  Now almost no one knew we were pregnant at all, and therefore, certainly didn’t know about the loss in progress so I had to play happy hostess.  Yick.  I have never had such a stressful and upsetting holiday ever.  If you knew me you’d realize I am generally brimming with holiday spirit.  My Christmas cards always arrive in your mailbox the day after Thanksgiving, my tree goes up the same day, I am done shopping usually by Columbus Day and I LOVE the month of December.  One of the hardest things was pretending when I was not cocooned in my own safe haven that I was still cheerful and my heart wasn’t really shattered into a million pieces.

I am sure I don’t have to even say it.. but New Year’s Eve I drank more than enough to make up for what I missed earlier in the month and I couldn’t WAIT for a new freaking year!

So I was going to start from the beginning of my journey and write until I “caught up” but the fire has changed things.  I don’t really want to look too much in the past right now so I am going to talk about now. I am going to catch up really quick so you understand where I am now and then we will talk about my current state of being “a little bit pregnant” and the fears that I think/hope will be here for another 29 weeks.  

This is pregnancy number 4 and I still have nothing to show for them except some scars on my abdomen.  It took 12 months of cycling to get the first one.  As you may remember, that was a “low positive” and my introduction to Beta Hell.    

The second pregnancy took…you guessed it.. 12 more freaking months!!!!  That one I had a much better beta and I was told all was well.  I didn’t believe it though – something inside me just felt it was not right.  I kept going back to the doctor over the next couple of weeks and they would do u/s or blood work and all was well.  Still I knew- I knew I did not turn into a hypochondriac overnight.  I knew I was nervous but not insane – I knew it wasn’t right.  So at my 6wk u/s – before we went to the track for a relaxing afternoon of horseracing all was allegedly fine.  U/S showed exactly what it should have.  Life was good.    

Monday’s u/s was awful- I had been spotting and when I went in my little sack was gone.  Thank god my husband showed some sense and met me unexpectedly at the doctor because I was a mess.   Remember..it was “all ok” right?  See I KNEW I was always right!  It sucks to be right this time though.    

So we go home to grieve another loss, a couple of hours later the pain started, REALLY bad pain.  I was actually screaming in pain.  My husband called the RE and when she heard me screaming she told him to get me to the ER ASAP.  We walk into the ER and there are a slew of people waiting – Craig has me sit while he checks me in..and I am still screeching intermittently – I am trying not to and keep apologizing to those around me but it is just flying out.  Primal pain.  A horrible noise I never want to hear escape my body ever again.  So between the fact that I told my husband to tell the ER it could be ectopic and the fact I was scaring the rest of the patients they took me right in.  Finally, I could get some relief.. give me some damn drugs!  Well when I finally got drugs we realized I must have been allergic to the first set.  I was still in pain but now felt I could no longer breathe, I was freezing and threatened that I would die immediately if they didn’t let me stand up (I don’t know why but I felt I HAD to stand).  So now wee try some others.. all too the tiniest edge off but none even came close to touching the pain. 

It was determined that I have an ultrasound at the hospital.  So they pumped more drugs in my iv (that still didn’t work) and sent me downstairs for what would be the longest more horrible ultrasound EVER.  The freaking girl took FORTY-FIVE MINUTES with that wand all the way up to my throat while I tried not to writhe in agony so she could take her damn pictures and get me the hell out of there.  Guess what she saw…. Not a damn thing… boy THAT was helpful. 

So back to the ER.. they took an hcg and it seemed my levels had plummeted in the 3-4 hours since I had been at my RE’s office.  They decided that it was just a “simple miscarriage”.  Um, simple? Are you KIDDING me?  I knew it had to be an ectopic- I KNEW IT WAS- u/s or no.  I begged for methotrexate.. BEGGED.  I was a little loopy so I knew I was talking too much and I told her that since it was obvious that anything in there did not want to be anymore then it was prudent to do the shot.  That I knew the child I had inside me was not to be mine yet and needed to go and I didn’t want to risk losing a tube for something that was not viable.  I kept bringing it up and they said it was not necessary.  So they decide to admit me because my blood count is low and they don’t know where it is going or why. 

Guess where I go.. the freaking maternity ward.  Can you believe it?  I had been promised a private room because I was still in agony and the drugs were not working.  We get upstairs and they decide they are going to try to “save” the private room and put me in with a woman who had a baby by c-section that day.  I tried to deal with that until they said my husband had to leave.  Oh no- they were not leaving me in agony, bleeding internally where they couldn’t figure it out in a room with a woman who just had a baby.    I made them get the floor nurse who heard me moaning before she even came in the room and they wisely decided to let me move and let him stay to take care of me.  I couldn’t move at all now without incredible pain- not even to breathe.  So overnight the pain (with the help of a lot more meds) began to settle to where I stopped moaning.  The next morning it was decided since my hcg was waaay lower than the night before and that the pain was tolerable with oral pain medications I could go home…even though my red blood count was very low but no one seemed to worry about that.    

Remember this was now only Tuesday.  All week I felt “off” and still knew something was not right. Friday I went back to the RE’s office for yet another u/s.  They realized then that it appeared I had an ectopic (really? Who could have predicted).  The look on their faces was scary even though they tried to hide it.  They told me to go home and wait for a call but to prepare myself for possibly having to have surgery.  I am now terrified.  Not even two hours later my regular OB/GYN calls (who is also a patient of the RE) and says my hcg levels are very high and I need to immediately get to the hospital for surgery.  Holy crap.  I call my husband, my mother-in-law so she can take the puppy (I was still feeling guilty about the fact he had been alone all night on Monday) and my brother so he was aware of the situation and so I could tell him I loved him (can you tell I was thinking the worst?).  I took off my jewelry, packed a bag for the puppy, found my healthcare proxy and my living will and off we go as soon as my hubby walks in the door.    

My mother-in-law is awesome, she was waiting at the hospital so she could be with me while my Father-in-law took the dog back to his house.  We went to my room where I was cracking bad jokes with my doctor (she asked about Rh factor and I told her hubby and I were both A-negative and when she commented how unusual that was I told her it often runs in blood relatives –HA! You should have seen her face at first).  So my MIL took care of my hubby while my doctor took care of me.  They took my baby and my tube.  In once short week I went from undiagnosed to down a tube.  They think I was pregnant with twins and the first one m/c over the weekend which is why the sack was gone and the hcg dropped and the second one was hiding in the tube.  It was horrible to find out that I was carrying twins and lost them in the same day.  Damn that ER doctor for not giving me the methotrexate!  Who knows it may have been too late to save the tube by the time I got to the hospital on Monday – but now I’ll never know.  

The nurses were wonderful – when I left they gave me a guardian angel pin and an angel bear (the bear still sleeps on my nightstand) and were just so kind. 

And. It. Was. Over.  Again.    

Wow- that was a lot about m/c #2.  I’ll have to write about number 3 later. So we can catch up to “currently in progress” scary pregnancy number 4. 

I am back.  Worse for the wear but back nonetheless.  I have been through some of the hardest ordeals of my life and that is saying a lot.  No one should ever have to plan dual funerals.  No one should ever have to pick though the rubble of a burned out house for a will, or family pictures or any such thing.  No one should have to stand in a shell of a house and look over and know where the exact spot your father burned to death .  To walk by the bathroom and know his wife of  20 years died on that floor of smoke inhalation.  To know that all the pain and hurt and anger from your childhood will now never be resolved.  It is over.  Then you find out that chances are your own family member caused his death and the death of his wife by selfishly smoking while on oxygen.  So now it is his fault we are going through this.  More anger but now it feels so inappropriate because he is dead- and in such a terrible way.  The first time I was ever at this house (other than just driving by) was at 4:30 am on that terrible day – my brother’s birthday- to help the firemen try to figure out where they are.  My father was so badly burned that the firemen did not realize he was a person. The call from the police said they were missing and the house was in flames.  100 foot flames at times. Horrible – it has been over a month and I still think I smell like that awful smoke.  Making those phone calls.. telling the other children… writing his obituary….planning his funeral…overwhelming.  Sorting out what you can because the insurance company requires to list everything down to the number of socks they owned and hoping we have enough recognizable items to meet the policy amounts.  Trying to decide how and when to tear down the house – to eradicate the physical remnants of lives lost.  Then the legal baloney- no will = a lot more work. Being the oldest and most levelheaded sucks.  Thank god one of my brothers is also responsible and levelheaded.  Trying to keep everyone happy and everything fair.  Finding my babybook wet from the fire and trying not to cry too hard in front of my brother because he is so close to that also.  The end of what could have been.  No chance now of reconciliation – of closure.  Just soot and crushing sadness.   

Did I mention that my stims for my current ivf started the day after the fire?  So much for a calm, relaxed, stress-free cycle.  It was my best responding cycle so far- 6 beautiful blasts – three transferred – the other three made it to freeze.  A big fat positive last Friday.. best beta I ever had.  Monday’s beta- amazing! It more than tripled!!! 34.5 hour doubling time!  Could this be my dad’s way of making everything better?  Of showing appreciation for how hard I am working on his behalf?  Of giving me something I so desperately want since he took so many other things away?  I almost feel joy.  I almost believe that THIS is IT!  I actually looked at nursery decorations on line to “get ideas”.  And then.. yesterday… the spotting and here I am.  Crushed .. again.. hoping for the best but expecting the worst because that is where my life is right now.  In a deep pit of gloom and I am trying so hard to climb out—truly—but I keep getting slapped back in.  Tomorrow I find out more about my baby- if it is still there and if it looks like he/she wants to snuggle in for a while longer. 

I’ll let you know.

In the early hours of this past Friday my father and his wife passed away in a horrible fire that ravaged their home.  I will be taking care of my family obligations but will write again as soon as I am able.  I am also at the beginning of a new ivf cycle so I am going to try to stay as calm and cool as possible over the next few weeks.  Thank you for understanding and I look forward to talking to you all again soon.

Alright- now I am officially, frighteningly, actually, doing ivf.  What the hell happened?  I have no idea how I got here but on I go. 

My protocol didn’t change much due to the switch so in all honesty it isn’t much different.  This is actually something I regret about switching in the middle.  Even though they don’t care if I have a flock of follicles for my iuis they do try to slow them down a bit so it doesn’t get too out of hand so for ½ of the time I have been on stims they have been trying to make sure I don’t get too over-stimulated – what I learned is that you can’t really catch up.  The 6-8 strong follicles I have this month cannot and will not wait for me to make even more.  I hear other peoples statistics, “15 egg, 10 fert, 8 embies, 2 transferred, 1 or 2 frozen”, etc. and I get really worried I have less follicles than they even have embryos.  I think that if I had started differently from the beginning I would have had a better turnout and thus made better use of my “discounted” ivf. 

The night prior I take my hcg trigger so that my eggs are mature.  I have been doing shots for 10 months by then and feel pretty confident…until they showed me how.  They made such a big deal about how some people wind up injecting the saline rather than the drug, and to make sure I use every drop! I was so nervous… by the time I went to mix it I was shaking.  If I screwed it up I would have no eggs and would have wasted all that money.  When I tell you that I got  every…..last….drop….. I did.  It was absurd the lengths I went to to totally drain the vial.  I think about it now and laugh but there was no laughing then – I even had gotten my poor husband in a totally tizzy about getting every last drop.  Methinks it was also an accumulation of stress about the next day but I didn’t see that then either. 

Suddenly the day arrives that we have to drive the 2.5 hours to the clinic for the procedure.  I think I forgot to mention this important tidbit.. to get the grant I have to go to the branch of the clinic that has been open longer than mine.  There needs to be 3-5 years of statistics for the clinic to qualify and my branch has only been open for a year and a half or so.  So.. off we go at 4-flipping-am.  I am so keyed up I drive.  Otherwise I think I’d go nutty.  Due to the fact that I am being put under shortly I am not allowed to eat or drink anything.  If you knew me you’d know how awful it is for me not to drink anything.  I ALWAYS have a beverage with me.. always.  So it was a loooong dry ride.

We get there and it is obviously a clinic that has been open longer than mine.  For one, I had to wait for than 5 minutes for them to take me in which at my office is the longest I ever wait (and yes, I do know I am spoiled).  And two, it doesn’t look like it just fell out of a pottery barn catalog.  My clinic is very soothing and pretty.  Nothing ever out of place, comfy leather couches, and a great chair that I will take home with me one of these times. 

It is funny, even though I have never been there most of the staff knows my name and my husband’s name.  Nice and weird at the same time.  Off I go.. they send me to try to pee which I do about 100 times a day (all that water you know) but because I am nervous I can’t.  GGGrrr.   So I go and put on my little ugly gown, booties and hat- man I look HOT!  Let’s make a baby- oh wait – I won’t actually be here for that part.

Alright, so under I go, cracking jokes the whole time.  I wake up and I am alone except for a nurse- I tell the nurse that my left side really hurts for some reason and maybe she should tell the doctor before they start?  She laughs as she informs me that it is already done and that is why my left side hurts.  Oh- duh! 

Here is my favorite part…. They bring my husband in to see me before he goes to do his part – alone and without needles – so I say good bye and good luck, and then remember that I had just read something that says a man’s sperm is much more vigorous after watching porn- kind of a survival of the fittest or one-upman ship or something- so as he is on the way out the door I (not as quietly as I thought) shout “THINK PORN”.  I see the shocked expression on the nurses face and hear the laughter in the hallway.  Um, yeah… waaaaayy louder than the speaking voice I thought I used.  I am sure they know me a the porn woman or something. 

Well, they only got 4 eggs in the end.  Not nearly as many as I was hoping for.  This goes back to the regret that we didn’t start out the cycle as an ivf so we could have been more aggressive – who knows how many I would have had – during the stimming we even had a couple of days where I took only Lupron because I was reacting so fast.  The “what ifs” will really kill you if you let them.

On the way back home in the car I believe I sang and sang and sang to my poor husband.  Usually I have a pretty decent voice- that day was the exception- even I could tell I wasn’t on pitch but I felt so “relaxed” I could have cared less-

Since we only had 4 eggs I knew it would be a three day transfer and just held my breath (once I was done singing) until the next day.  Well three of the four fertilized and looked good.  I’ll take 75%.  In my mind the alleviates my worst fear- that my eggs were hard-boiled and ruined.  If I had that good of a fertilization rate and they said all looks good than I must be ok.  A HUGE sigh of relief and hope flood through me that someday I might actually get my take home baby.

Bright and freaking early (again) we are on the road.. this time we will come home pregnant – sort of.  I am afraid to take my valium too early so I am holding on to it and, of course, this time there is no wait once we arrive at all.  I take it as fast as I could and just willed it to start working.  Apparently they were swamped with retrievals and transfers that day  so I ended up in an odd procedure room underneath a huge x-ray machine I assume is the for the hsg testing- not very comfortable and more than a little intimidating. 

Dr. K comes in.. says hi..blah blah.. whatever..get to the good stuff.. he says all the blasts look very good and he is going to put all three in.  My husband almost fell over at the thought of triplets and needed to be talked off the ledge with the very important fact that the chance of triplets is incredibly low – ok.. back on track. 

So Dr. K is getting everything ready. I am in the stirrups and he has the drape up so high I am in full view to the world.. then he leaves and goes to get my embies..and leaves the door open…did I mention that I am facing the door? Yeah- luckily almost all of my modesty was sucked away after the first year of thrice weekly vaginal ultrasounds.

The rest of the transfer is pretty standard.  Nothing exciting to report.  The only annoying thing is my husband.  We have gone through over a dozen iuis at this point and I always ask him to talk to me about anything while they are inserting the speculum and catheter – you would think that he has gotten the hang of this right? Um… sorry to say.. but no.  I keep asking (actually begging) him to talk about something so I can focus on his voice instead of the pain I know is coming and so I can try to relax but all he does is oh so freaking quietly ask me questions.  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD I DO NOT WANT TO TALK RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  That is what he is there for.. I even try to give him a list of topics and he doesn’t talk, just prompted question after freaking question.  (My next transfer will be hopefully in 2-3 weeks and I am going to call him right now and tell him to think of a list of topics now to TALK to me about.. not ask if I think we should replace the furnace this year.)

Ok— so other than THAT- which I am obviously more annoyed about than I thought I was – it was pretty uneventful.  After the transfer and before I am allowed to get up the doctor comes over and holds my hand and my husbands hands and places them all on my stomach and tells me to believe or something to that effect.  Oddly enough I found that to be more intimate than when he had his head between my legs a few minutes earlier. 

So I go home..with the picture of my little embies…and wait.