Our TTC Timeline

Our TTC Timeline
April 2006 - Stop taking birth control, not actively preventing.
Summer 2006 - Timing conception to coincide with the school year calendar.
Fall 2006 - Use OPK's.
April 2007 - Visit OBGyn to talk about options and why not yet?
April-July 2007 - Chart BBT religiously.
July 2007-February 2008 - Take Clomid in ever increasing amounts up to 200 mg to increase luteal phase length. SA's come back ok, but morphology at 21%- Urologist and OBGyn not overly concerned. Add Prometrium, 200 mg.
February 2008 - Endometrial biopsy comes back fine, HSG comes back fine. Trying OV Watch.

March 2008 - Initial RE appointment to begin process.
April 2008 - Complete initial BW.
May 2008 - Complete Krueger's SA and meet with RE, 0% morphology makes RE's only recommendation IVF with ICSI.
May 2008 - April 2009 Pop lots of herbs and vitamins in hopes of achieving a super miracle. Search for a way to afford IVF with ICSI since our insurance covers nothing.
April 2009 - Refinance house to get enough $!
May 11 and 17, 2009 - Complete initial b/w for IVF cycle.
May 21st - Initial meds delivered: $2,013.
May 22nd - Start acupuncture
June-July 2009 IVF with ICSI
June 4th - Injection teaching, sign consent forms, start Norethindrone, 5 mg. lining: 8.9
June 6th - Begin Lupron injections, 5 units.
June 17th - U/S: lining at 5.5 and B/W: E2:124, i.e. too high Increase Lupron to 20 units, twice a day
June 19th - E2 B/W: 169- still too high, continue 40 units of Lupron
June 21st - Celebrate 6th anniversary.
June 22nd - recheck E2 B/W: 104. Still too high, but dropping
June 24th - recheck E2 B/W AGAIN: 30.2 (<40)>

June 26th - After 2 days of stims: u/s: 10 follicles approx. 4 mm in size, lining at 6, E2 at 73.4 Follistim and Lupron stay the same
June 28th - After 4 days of stims: u/s: 16 follicles (6 on left, 10 on right) ranging from 7-11 mm, lining at 8.9 and E2 b/w at 195, Follistim and Lupron stay the same- so everything must be right on track!
June 30th - After 6 days of stims: u/s: lots of follicles at around 14 mm, lining at 10.5 and b/w E2 at 450
July 2nd - After 8 days of stims: u/s: lots of follicles at around 18 mm, lining at 12 and b/w E2 at 1711, Progesterone at 1.49, last Follistim and Lupron injections today!!!
July 3rd - HCG trigger shot!
July 5th - Egg retrieval- 22 eggs retrieved, 18 mature, 6 fertilized
July 6th - Begin PIO injections, 1/2 cc daily
July 10th - Embryo transfer- transferred 3 (one grade 4AA blast)
July 11th - Begin PIO injections 2ccs daily (my nemesis)begin Estrace 2mg 2x a day.
July 16th - Progesterone and E2 b/w check- both fine med amounts stay the same
July 18th - Positive HPT!
July 20th - Beta #1 204 at 10dp5dt
July 22nd - Beta #2 432 at 12dp5dt
July 24th - Beta #3 1,015 at 14dp5dt
August 7th - First u/s- TWO amazing heartbeats! Both babies measuring at almost the same size and right on track for 6 weeks, 5 days.
August 21st - Second u/s at 8 weeks, 5 days. Sweet Pea measuring 1.7 cm, heart rate at 164 bpm. Little Bean measuring at 1.8 cm, heart rate 170 bpm.

September 3rd - 3rd u/s at 10w5d

October 29th - Find out genders!- one precious little girl and boy!

March 9, 2010 - Samuel Jacob and Annabel Marie were born!

Summer at last!

I'm finally done with school for the year! Yesterday I was feeling ecstatic... but also a mix of feeling a little lost. Ecstatic to not have to THINK about my co-workers for three months. (if you were wondering, I didn't go atomic on my co-workers after all. The opportunity never presented itself) Ecstatic to get to sleep in and not wake up at 5 am every weekday.

However, my classroom is my home-away-from-home for nine months of the year. On the last day, I have to turn in my keys and I'm not "allowed" back in my room until August 17th. To me, it feels a little like moving to a new home. You're ultimately happy and excited about what new and better things are ahead of you- but a little sad to be leaving something behind. I know, I'm weird. I don't think most teachers feel this way. But what can I say? I guess I was born to teach and I just miss it when I'm not doing it (most of the time).

There's another side to it as well: I am used to thinking about school most of my waking hours- and spend most of my time doing work for school. When summer rolls around, all of a sudden my schedule is wide open. It can be a bit overwhelming to go from not having enough time to do it all- to having all the time in the world to do anything. And it gets boring really fast when every other person you know (except your co-workers) still has their 8-5 pm job on weekdays. There's no one around to do much with. And without LO's in our home, I have more time to fill than the average teacher in the summer, all by myself.

This summer I don't have summer classes to take (last year I took 7 grad credits which kept me busy) but I do have a huge schedule filler: our IVF. Right now I'm shooting up Lupron nightly and the side effects aren't too bad (right now). I'm twiddling my fingers waiting until my next cycle starts (and thanks to the Norethindrone, could be anywhere from tomorrow to 7 days after that. I don't really know how it may have altered my cycle length and the word is that Lupron can delay it as well). After cycle day 1, things will be a small flurry of activity. One call to the RE to make the day 3 appointment (which should also be the day the Follistim starts if all goes as planned) and one to the acu lady, who doesn't think I need to come in again until then. Then, I'll have a better idea of the dates for our next steps. But until then, I'm twiddling my fingers (and sleeping in).

Where to start?

Can just good news ever come out of an RE visit for us? I am starting to wonder about that...

Here's the summary of today: I am no longer a u/s virgin. Everything looked good on there... she said the lining is at 8.9 and I have one follicle that looked like had just released or was about to, so then we were on to the injection teaching. We left feeling pretty good about all of that- both of our stress levels were lower and things were good. I was rarin' to go with my 7 pm date with Lupron and a needle. We decided to stop by the good mall on our way back (1 hour away from us) while waiting to get a call about the progesterone results. I even got a cute new skirt (on sale originally $44 at Gap- bought for $20) as my treat o' the day.

Then the nurse called and guess what? I haven't O'd yet- so no Lupron tonight for me. I have to take Norethi.ndrone for a week to induce AF. (I'm not happy about that, b/c I know I would O and get AF on my own without drugs) But, I can start Lupron on Saturday instead. So it is only a 2 day delay.

My good mood instantly faded however- I know that this process is dependent on a lot of things happening just right- but darn it- something went wrong before we even got started! It was just another glaringly obvious reminder at how delinquent we are at makin' babies. I also know that that is only pushing it back two days, but see- I've spent a lot of mental effort preparing for this first injection happening tonight. Now I have two more days to agonize about it and now I have an added worry that I'm going to forget what she showed us. Plus- I'm not really looking forward to telling people, "thanks for asking how it went... I actually didn't get to do the shot yet...blah blah blah..."

On a positive note: Norethi.ndrone is not strictly an IF drug, so it was covered by my insurance. Which was excellent considering we had to pay everything for the RE's end of the IVF today (we are satelliting the monitoring locally- so that isn't paid for yet). Ouch! It's hard to suddenly have $11,692 less.

Earlier in the week I added a running total on the side of my blog that shows about how much moola has been devoted to this endeavor so far. I was amazed that before paying for the IVF we were already at over $10,000. Wow. After paying the IVF fee today- we're at over $22,000- and we're not done yet. It's hard to believe that much has almost literally flown out our window in three years. It's also hard to believe that we don't eat ramen for dinner every night... or live in a cardboard box down by the river. (We're not rich, people- I am a teacher and Jake is a writer- two occupations notorious for being low-paying jobs.)

Eyes on the goal, Katie, eyes on the goal.

Ok! Here we go!

Although today I still feel like we are waiting, again... yesterday progress was made! I was able to schedule my Day 3 B/W (LH, FSH and Estradi0l) for tomorrow. I also was able to call the RE's office to schedule our Day 21 appointment, which will be June 4th- NARROWLY missing the all day field trip to the zoo by only a day. Whew! I also managed to avoid the last day of school. Now, being a busy time of year, I will be missing our school's Family Fine Arts Night and my students will be going swimming in the afternoon without me... but it could have been much worse. And for that, I am grateful.

So this is the summary of what is now in progress: After the RE gets the results from my Day 3 B/W, they will order my meds. The med company will call us to schedule a delivery, since one kind (F0llistim) needs to be refrigerated. We will need to bring the slew of meds (minus the F0llistim) to the appointment in 20 days. On June 4th we will turn over our reproductive selves to the RE by handing over a multitude of signed forms. We will be taught how to give my poor body injections. There will be more B/W, etc. and I will start Lupr0n injections that day! (For my non-IF friends, this will be shot into my abdomen daily). And that's the extent of what I know right now.

Since my cycle this time was slightly shorter than my norm, we are now looking at ER/ET in the last week of June, probably. Since our anniversary is June 21st- I told Jake that we will be giving each other a very expensive present this year. But if it works- what an amazing anniversary present it will be!

IVF Timeline

Houston, we have a timeline. Instead of just saying we are planning on doing IVF "sometime this summer," we now have a definitive timeline to follow after Jake called the RE to get the scoop this week. I can breathe a little easier now.

To give a little background info: we have a very narrow window of opportunity to do this. Being a teacher, I am lucky to have summer months off which will make the frequent monitoring and last minute appointments very do-able, on my end at least. However, that also means that nine months out of the year- IVF just isn't possible because I just can't go in late to work- and I need to focus 100% on the 17 kindergartners in my classroom, not on me. So..... that means timing is very important. I also know that this all needs to happen asap after school gets out, so I have some time to recoup before the chaos happens at the beginning of the school year and I hit the ground running. Ever since the plan was to go ahead with IVF in the summertime, I've been stressed that the timing wouldn't work out. Getting the specifics this week helped ease a little of that stress. Now if my internal time frame can get in line with the IVF timeline, we'll be good to go.

The Timeline

• Received b/w paperwork- my appointment is April 17th. Both my and Jake's b/w results need to get back to the RE by May
• May cycle- get day 3 b/w completed (should be mid-May), meet with RE on day 21 (about the beginning of June- please pray that this is not on June 5th because my class will be at the zoo for an all day field trip or June 8th because this is the last day of school for the kindergartners) for injection teaching and to sign consent forms
• June cycle- start stimulation medication (should be mid-June). -As long as this happens after June 12th, everything will work out fine
• Mid-July- tentative egg retrieval and transfer
• Beginning of August- find out the news
• Rest of August- time to celebrate (hopefully!) and rest or time to heal emotionally before school starts

Hopeful estimated due date: April 2010.

Aaaaahhhhh! I can hardly believe that our chance at IVF is almost here!