Hormones? What hormones?

So I guess I haven't kept my promise to keep the blog updated, but I AM trying... it will get better. So this is what has been happening.

We had a great Thanksgiving. It was like our other holidays. One place after another. Has anyone seen Four Christmases? Well that is kind of what it is like, except for less crazy family. We also had a group of friends over the following Saturday for a friends' Thanksgiving. I was reminded of how lucky we are to have such great friends. I think God has truly blessed us and I am working on being more thankful everyday.

On Moday we went to the Dr. again. The nurse said we were going to just check the heartbeat with the doppler and then we would see the doctor. So we start with the doppler, but she couldn't find anything. So off to get another ultrasound. The heartbeat was 158 bpm and here are the pics...

We actually saw the baby dancing and moving around. It was amazing!

So the rest of the week went by and I was on cloud 9! I was so happy to see my baby! We decorated the tree and got ready for Christmas and here is where the hormones come into play.

So we finish the tree and Joey puts the angel on top. If you know anything about me, you should know that I LOVE LOVE LOVE Christmas. I don't care about the gifts or all the material things. I just find so much happines in the lights and the colors and the love! Ok so it is basically one of the most important thing to me. So back to the angel. Joey puts it on top and it's crooked so I say, "FIX IT!" He tries and it is still crooked and he tells me that is won't get any straighter. So I burst into tears! I don't mean a little teary eyed. I mean a blubbering fool. Then joey starts laughing because, well, it is pretty ridiculous. So I cry even harder. About 15 minutes later I come to my senses and try to figure out where all that came from.

Then today it happened again. We went to eat and when we left the parking lot there was a stray dog. I pointed him out to Joey and told him I thought it was sad that the poor little dog didn't have a home and that he was going to be hungry and cold and you guessed it. I was bawling my eyes out! I was crying to hard for that dog that I couldn't breath. Joey didn't know what to do and he asked me if I was crying because of the dog and without skipping a beat I say, "NO! I am crying for all the puppies in the world!" ... and i was serious!

So I ask you. When are the hormones supposed to kick in? People keep telling me that they are going to be a heck of a rollercoaster!

Desperate for GUMMYS!

Ok things are very very boring around here. Basically I wake up and contemplate actually getting up or not. The progesterone is making me so sick. I think I have to keep taking it until week 14 so let the countdown begin... BLAH! I am in denial about cravings, but last night we went to Wal-mart with a friend and I told Joey I HAD to get some gummy worms. So i head over to the candy section and I saw the gummy worms and my eyes lit up! YEAH for gummy worms! But them I saw the sour patch kids and I thought, "well those are gummy AND sour... yum!" BUT then I saw the sour bright crawlers and I thought, "Well those are gummy WORMS AND are sour... YUM YUM!" So basically i walked back to joey with three bags of candy in my hands. I felt a smart comment coming on about the amount of candy I was buying and I quickly shot him a look telling him to BACK OFF! Then it occured to me... maybe I have a few minor cravings... maybe! :)

Ok here are the sonogram pics. (We got a scanner-yippee!)

Here is the first one from the 20th. I am measuring 4 weeks, 6 days...

And here is the second one from Halloween. I am 6 weeks, 3 days and this is when we heard and saw the heartbeat!

Getting excited!

Now I am going to try to rest up so that I can go to church tonight.

I'm a bad blogger!

Well Erica said I was bad at updating this thing so I had this hope that I would be a blogging fool! I was going to update everyone on our little monkey's progress and all the things in our life. Well the truth is I am one pooped petunia and to be comepletely honest... I am SHOCKED that I am still awake right now (it is 7:09pm). So I am going to do my best on updating, but don't expect much until my 2nd trimester... we are counting down!

So here is my update. We went for another appointment last Friday, Halloween. We were so excited because the Dr said we may be able to hear the heartbeat. So we go in and start with the ultrasound. The baby is growing right on schedule! A huge sigh of relief! Then we heard it... our little baby's heartbeat! It was faint, but quit strong and we were in shock. It was probably the most beautiful thing I have ever heard in my entire life! It was amazing.

Well the purpose of the appointment was mainly to keep an eye on my progesterone. A lot of women who have PCOS have low levels of progesterone during their first trimester which can lead to pregnancy loss. My Dr. wanted me to supplement just in case and as it turns out my levels were a little low. It wasn;t too low, just on the lower side of normal. The decision was made to keep my on the progesterone until my 14th week . Everything else was great. My BP was a little higher than it was just 10 days ealier, but it was still normal. I was basically told to get more rest. So that is what I am going to do! :)

I don't have scanner here at the house so I can't scan the sonogram pics yet, but I will just as soon as I am able to.

And now it is time to bed. It has been a long day and this little monkey wants me to get some shut eye!

YEAH!

So I think everyone knows by now... we're gonna have a baby! :) So here is the first blog that I didn't post the day the doctor confirmed it...

10-17-08
This morning I got up around 7 and for some reason I did a silly thing I have been feeling “off” lately and for some unknown reason I decided to take a pregnancy test. My only coherent thought was, “why did you just waste that?” Still half asleep I glanced over at the negative test guess what… it wasn’t negative!!! I just stared at it trying to make sure that it wasn’t just my mind. When I was convinced I called Joey at work and told him “We have a situation!” He thought something was very wrong so he sat on the floor at work and then I told him! He was glad he sat on the floor! J So I make a Dr appointment, but I couldn’t get in until Monday so on my lunch break I went back to Walmart and bought four more boxes of tests. Four different brands couldn’t have the same defects, right? Well my lunch hour consisted of peeing on one stick after another and yes, all positive! So now I am sitting here completely shocked and excited and I quite don’t know what to do with myself. About 6 weeks ago I was praying and praying and praying and now I can’t help but say thank you over and over again. The Lord has truly taken care of us. So now I begin this journey and trust me, I am going to need a lot of help! J

Update

Well we immediatly tried again. We did the shots and the bloodwork and the ultrasounds. Well you all know I'm not pregnant so obviously it didn't work. I went in to get an ultrasound and the tech said she wanted the Dr to speak to me. The Dr said that the new dosage of the meds weren't working. My follicles were growing too fast so when we lowered the dose, the follicles stopped growing all together. Basically I have too many follicles that are too large with one dosage and if we lower it by one step it doesn't work. The only thing that we could do it IVF since they would take out all my mature follicles and decide how many to put back in. Well that costs roughly $13-15K and I don't even think I could emotionally handle having to go through all that. When the dr told me this she saw me beginning to tear up and she asked if I needed to be alone. She was very supportive, but I had to get out of there as soon as possible. As soon as I walked out the door of the dr's office I burst into tears. It was over. We had been trying for so long and my body had been through so much, but in the end it was all in vain.

So now we are just letting things be. We aren't going to stop trying, but we aren't very hopeful that children are in our future. I decided that losing some weight may help. So far I've lost 20 lbs, but no ovulation yet. All of my friends have children or are pregnant or have children AND are pregnant. The hardest part has been going to church. When I imagine our family, I always imagined going to church and sitting with my joey and I kids. I always wanted to have my little canvas bag with books, crayons and crackers for church. I'm not sure if that is ever going to happen. I keep getting told to adopt. Well adoption is roughly $20-40K+, and it is higher if you want to adopt an infant. Basically that is where we are in the baby situation. Maybe one day I will be pleasantly surprised. Now on to better things....

We are all safe and sound after hurricane Ike. We were without power for only 5 days though we didnt have water or sewer until 5 day later.

I am hoping to have better blogs now. The holidays are coming which always makes me happy! :)

Thank you to everyone who has supported and loved us.

The results

So I went in the following day to check on the follicles. The largest one was now 18mm, but the there was also 6 others that were large enough to have eggs in them and then another 20 that were under 10 mm and probably just full of hormones. The problem was that with that many large follicles, there was a chance of multiples... too many multiples. The nurse asked me how I felt about "reduction" and I immediatly said NO! For those of you who don;t know, reduction is like selective abortion. If I became pregnant with 4-6 fetuses, they would abort one to three so that I wouldn't have too many. That was not even an option and I wanted to make that very clear. Well she said that if my blood test showed too many eggs than they may want to cancel the whole cycle since I wouldnt consider reduction. So Joey and I waited the whole day to see what the next step was. It was so hard waiting. I got the call that afternoon that they decided to trigger early. The bloodwork looked good and they wanted me to ovulate before too many got too big. We were so excited! I triggered that night and I ovulated about 36 hours later! So the next thing was just to wait to test.

Two weeks of waiting. We were so sure that it worked. The doctor was so sure that it worked! Joey had all these plans for Mother's Day. Needless to say we were already planning for a new addition to our family. Well I went in thursday morning for bloodwork and got the results at 2pm that afternoon. It was negative and i immediatly burst into tears. Joey and I talked and I just wanted to take a break. It has been so hard going through all of this. Tests and shots and more tests. My veins now have scar tissue from all thebloodwork and we are constantly getting our hopes up. I want a child more than anything, but I just didn't want to go through all this again. The nurse called back and she offered to help with the cost of some of the medicine. Joey thought this was just a sign that we needed to try again. So we are going to try one last time.

So now we are just waiting. Maybe we will get good news soon.

Keep praying for us, please!!!

Exciting news

Well my mom started giving me my three shots. Im still take the 225 iu of the Follistim, but now we have added the other two. I went in for my second u/s on Monday and it looked good. I have 6 follicles on both sides ranging from 6-11mm. We want them to end up being 20-22mm before we induce ovulation. So we continued the injections and today I went in for another u/s and then we got a little shock. I now have 11 folicles on my right side and 7 on my left... count it... that is 18! Well most of them are under 10mm so they may just be insignificant, but I actually have one that is 16mm! That is almost the size we want! WOO-HOO! I have to go back tomorrow morning to keep on eye on the larger cysts. I may get to trigger sooner than I thought!

WOO-HOO!!!

Shots shots and more shots...

Ok so I started my Follistim last thursday. I went in that morning for an ultrasound (u/s) and bloodwork (b/w) and everything looked good. No cysts and my lining was good. My mom has been sick so she wouldn't be able to give me my shots so I had a friend do it. An AWSOME friend who actually came over just to give me a shot. Friday she was out of town and my mom was still sick so I decided to do it myself. It took a little time for me to get the nerve to do it, but I did. I gave myself 225 iu of Follistim and it was honestly the hardest thing I ever had to do, BUT I felt so good that I did it. I actually did it on Saturday too! Sunday came and I decided I could keep doing it. I told Melissa that I would be able to and so she didn't have to... until Tuesday. Tuesday I will be doing 3 shots a a time and I KNOW I won't be able to do it. Baby steps... baby steps!

So tomorrow morning I go in for my next u/s and b/w. THey have to see if I have any follicles growing and what size they are. They also have to check my estrogen and other hormones. This is what they will tell me if I need to change my dosage or keep it the same.

We're keeping strong!

Our story...

Ok, I decided to start this blog because it is easier for my family to read without having to have a myspace (which Joey hates). This is a better compromise i guess!



Some of your know Joey and I have been trying to concieve (TTC) for some time - since January 2007 to be exact. About a month later I was diagnosed with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome). There are a lot of symptoms and problems that come with it (weight gain, hair loss, acne.. the list goes on), but the most devistating is infertility. Basically I don't ovulate on my own so that was the beginning of our problem.

We started on a drug called glucophage. It is a drug to help with the insulin resistance (IR) that come with PCOS. The theory - fix the IR and then the ovulation will just happen. Well the side effects of the glucophage are horrendous and in August I had to stop taking it. The next step was the clomid.

After months of testing I started the clomid (in January 08). So one cycle on the clomid and the verdict was... clomid didn't do a darn thing and it was just not going to work for me. All our hopes and dreams were depending on a little pill. Well we had a choice - go to a higher dose of clomid or start injectables. Now the problem is, once you are diagnosed with infertility, insurance will only cover one 100 mg round of clomid and then insurance stops completly. The clomid is less expensive, but less likely to work. After days of considering and praying about it. We decided to start the injectables.

So here's the deal... i am TERRIFIED of needles! I just can't handle them so this was a HUGE step for me, but at the end of the day it was all worth it to me. I'm still a big baby about it!

Month one... the regime... Day 1 and 2 I take 100 iu of Follistim, then on day 3-10 i drop to 75 iu. On day 6-10 I add Menopur and Cetrotide (the units I'm not sure of because I have one full vial for each). So that is 3 shots on the last 5 days. Then I take another shot called Ovidrel to make me ovulate within 36 hours. Within the 10 days I have to go in to have an ultrasound and bloodwork every 2 days to monitor me estogen levels and to see the growth of my follicles. Ok so that is the plan.

I go for my first ultrasound (u/s) so we can see if I have any large cysts before we start injections. I started my injections that night. I go in for my second u/s and i have 5 follicles that are 8-9mm on my right side and 4 that are 6-7 mm on my left! AWSOME right? So we continue (keep in mind we want them to be 24-28mm) and then I go in for my third u/s expecting large change in size. No change. The lower does of the follistim is not working. So we decided to cancel the whole cycle and try again the following month with larger dose. I cried the whole way home from the dr.

So now we are going to start again. I go in for my base line u/s tomorrow and then I start with my injections tomorrow night. I'm not sure the dosage of the Follistim, but the other meds will be the same. The scary part is that this is going to be our last try. Since insurance doesn't cover any of this, we really can't afford to pay for thousands of dollars of meds and bloodwork every month.

We are praying this will be our last time.

~keeping hope!~