Just waiting!

So much going on! We are closing on our house this week which is a relief for sure. It will be so nice to not have to worry about two mortgage payments! In my weight loss journey I am happy to announce that I am down 9 pounds! Woohooo!!!! I have been working really hard at it and so far it has paid off. I hope to lose another 11 before we start injections. But I know I can't control that. So I will just continue to work hard and hope for great results. Mark had his testing done this past week and we are waiting on the results. The nurse told me to call her next week. Hoping everything is normal. I will post again when I get the results back. That's all that's really going on around here. Just the waiting game.

Test Results

My OBGYN's office called today and said that they got my results from my biopsy and blood work back and everything looks good! Mark rescheduled his appointment for Monday since he has been out of town. I talked with my nurse at the clinic this morning and she said to call on cycle day 1 of my next cycle!!!! Looks like things are moving right along! That is all the news I have right now.

                                       

Down 6 pounds!!!!! GO ME! I guess working out and cutting calories does work. I have cut my calories to 1200 a day and I have been going to the gym everyday!! I am sure the metformin (devil pill isn't so devilish anymore) helped some to. I have not been eating sweets and carbs like I was before because of it. I have been eating TONS of fruit, yummy. Everytime I crave something sweet like chocolate or ice cream I go eat a few strawberries, watermelon, an apple or a plum.

Other than that there isn't much going on. Mark has been in Riverside CA this week and last week. He was supposed to get his blood work done but I guess that will have to wait. I think this is his last week there. I can't wait to have him back home for good. I forgot how lonely it gets when he is gone.

I hope to get my blood results back soon and the biopsy should be in next week.

Biopsy

So I went in today for my endometrial biopsy and blood work (infectious disease). Not a fun procedure!

I'm not a big fan of my OBGYN. He has always seemed kinda shady to me and I could never put my finger on the reason why. Well he recommended a different RE specialist for us to see and after a lot of research I went with the one with the better stats and more well known. Apparently he didn't care to much for that. He almost refused to do the procedure. Really??!!?? He kept asking questions about the Dr. I went to and why he was needing the biopsy done and why he didn't agree. He also asked me if I was sure I agreed with this doctor and his protocol he was doing. WHAT?!? You never ask a patient that!!!! I was thinking, why do you care so much? I think a reproductive endocrinologist would know a little more about this than him! I sat there liswtening to him for about a half hour going on and on about how he would have done it. Then he sprung it on me, "are you sure you don't want to do one more IUI? I'm pretty confident I will get you pregnant." AHHHHHH, so that's why he is mad! He wants me to waist more money with him. What an ass! Anyway, I told him I was sure that I liked the doctor I was seeing and that I trusted him to make the right decisions on my behalf. Sheesh!

The biopsy itself was very uncomfortable. I don't want to go into to much detail so lets just say..... it involves a metal tube going inside your uterus and scraping inside for about 15 seconds. This is done not one but TWO times!! The longest 15 seconds EVER!! I took some ibuprofen before hand but it didn't help much and if it did then I can't imagine what it would have felt like without it. If you want to know the details click here.....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endometrial_biopsy. 

After being violated there I went to the lab to get tortured some more. I told the nurse ahead of time I was a hard stick and I also told her where they usually go, just to help her out. She didn't listen though. She thought for sure she was better than all the rest. She stuck me 3 times before getting the vein in my hand. She took like 10 vials of blood. Not a good day for my uterus, arms or hand. :(

On the weight loss front. NOTHING! I don't know why. I have been going to the gym and I cut my calorie intake down to 1200 a day. Not really eating many carbs either. I guess only time will tell. I'm going to keep going and hope for the best!


                                                      The nurse that took my blood!
                                                       

                                                          My greedy OBGYN
                                                          
                                                        Some infertility humor
                                               
                                                 

Random pics

A few pics of my fur babies and family!

The Weight Battle

Not much to really talk about so I am just gunna ramble a bit! LOL

For a while now I have been overweight. I try different diets and exercise for a while but I always give up before I can get any results. I am very impatient! It's hard work. I don't understand why its so easy to gain weight but so hard to lose it. My main problem is I LOVE sweets! I can't help it. It's a genetic thing, thanks MOM! lol Anyway, ever since I started taking one of my new medicines (metformin) I haven't really been able to eat my favorite sweets. It gives me the "bubble guts". So I have kinda backed away for the most part. With that being said, I have lost 4lbs! Not enough to get real excited about but hey, it's something. I hope to lose at least 10-15lbs before I start my IVF injections. Fingers crossed! I think if I were to start working out more often I would lose it faster. Easier said than done.

In other news, Mark just got back from Riverside, CA. He was there all this past week and will go again next week. Poor guy works his butt off. It's to bad he is salary and not hourly! I just hope this next week is a little easier for him. I hate when he is gone. It gets very lonely around here.

As for a job........ NOTHING!! I can't seem to find anywhere that will hire me! I have tried dental offices, clothing department stores, restaurants and even places like Target. I hope to find something soon.

That's all I got at this moment. Nothing really new. I have a my biopsy and blood work on Tuesday. I just hope they don't have to stick me a million times. I'm a "hard stick", apparently I have tiny veins and the few good ones I have roll. I feel like a pin cushion usually after leaving. Band-aids everywhere.  grrrrr! I will post again then.  


                                               

                                               

Appointments Set

I made my appointment for my biopsy, it's set for Tuesday at 9:30am. I will also get all my blood work done. Mark also has his appointment for his blood work that day. I'm glad that everything is moving along. I called my insurance to see if some of the medications were covered. Turns out ALL of them are covered!!!!! Wow, I can't believe that I got that lucky. That takes our total for IVF down by at least $2-4,000.00!!!! Can you say AWESOME!
I have also been taking the increased dose of Metformin, baby aspirin and prenatals. I lost a few pounds since starting the metformin. I just hope I keep losing more! :)

Moving Ahead!

Got a call from our nurse today saying that my blood work came back and I have not ovulated. So that means that we are good to go to do the biopsy of my uterus lining. It's hard to believe that I did not ovulate at all in 56 days! WTH That just doesn't add up. Anyway I plan on calling my OBGYN on Monday to set up my appointment for that and to get my infectious disease testing done. Mark made his appointment for his testing today. Looks like we are getting everything started that we need done. I really hope that the next two months go by relatively fast. I am anxious to get things going. I am very impatient. 

On another note, Mark and I are going deep sea fishing in the morning! WOOHOO!! I am super excited about this. I have been telling Mark I wanted to do this ever since we moved to San Diego. I hope to catch something big. I also hope no one gets sea sick :-/  

SOOOO Much Information!! IVF Consult.

So today was my appointment with my RE (Reproductive Endocrinologist). There was a lot of information thrown at us in a few hours. He also did a trans vaginal ultrasound to get a better idea of whats going on in there. One thing he did tell me is that I have a tipped uterus. He didn't seem to concerned about that though. He was a little concerned on my lining in my uterus because it showed signs of ovulation but he was not able to locate a ruptured follicle. Because of that he want to do a biopsy of my lining before we proceed. A nurse took some blood to see if ovulation had occurred. They will be calling me back tomorrow with the results. If I didn't ovulate then I will proceed with the biopsy. If I didn't then we will wait for my next cycle to start and then have one done. After the ultrasound we went over the protocol that I will be doing. Here is all the info I got from our appointment.......


For the next two months I will basically be getting healthy. I will start taking some new vitamins and increase the dose of metformin (devil pill as I like to call it) from 1500mg a day to 2000mg a day. Just to clear up why I hate metformin, it make me have the "bubble guts" when I eat sweets or to many carbs. The only thing that is good about it is that it does keep me from eating crap all the time. Also during this two months he advised that we get all of our genetic testing done. We both need infectious disease testing and few other genetic tests. Mark has to do a few "man tests" done as well :). I will need a few other tests as well. One of the tests will be a sonohysterogram. This is where they inject saline in the uterus to check for abnormalities of the uterine cavity. The other is a trial transfer. This is basically a procedure where they map out my uterus so the actual transfer goes smoothly.


After these two months we are supposed to go back for a re-eval appointment. Just to make sure we have all of our ducks in a row. 


Then its time for IVF!!! Instead of a "fresh cycle" of IVF we will be doing it a little different. We will start out as a normal cycle by stimulating my ovaries to produce follicles (a follicle is what holds the egg). Once I have a few follicles of good size we will do a ER (egg retrieval). After the eggs are retrieved they will be injected with a single sperm (ICSI). They will then be cultured for 5 days in the lab and then flash frozen. After the retrieval I will then have a regular cycle or two before we transfer any embryos. The reason for this is to reduce my risk of OHSS. This is basically when the follicles fill up with fluid and it can cause complication. There are a few other reasons for waiting but they are far to complicated to explain. Sorry.


Anyway, that is what we found out today. So I guess its going to be a while or at least a few months before we are possibly pregnant. I really hope that this works cause we basically only have 1 shot at this.   

Happy Independence Day!!

Infertility!!!

I knew all my life that I wanted to be a mom but I had no idea what it would take to get pregnant. I’m starting this blog to let everyone in on our journey to parenthood. There is a lot of detail and fertility talk just so you know what to expect.

So our infertility journey started in January 2011. Mark and I decided that it was time to start a little family and make a few mini me’s!! Scary thought kinda, little Mark and Amber’s running around. LOL I thought for sure that in a few months we would be able to announce to everyone… We are PREGNANT!! So I started reading up on ‘getting pregnant’ and all of its glory. I was so excited and ready to be a mom. Well after it didn’t happen I decided to go in for a little visit to my lady doctor. I told him it wasn’t happening and what we have tried and all the gory details…… He suggested we do a few tests and find out why its not happening.  Well we were not surprised to find out that we both had some ‘issues’. I was diagnosed with PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) and Mark had a few things as well.

Our next step was to try some medications by themselves. After 3 more months… NOPE, NOTHING!!  At this point I’m getting a little discouraged and sad that this isn’t happening the way we had hoped. All our family knew we were trying and of course we got the question “why are you not pregnant yet?” from some. So I decided to address the elephant in the room and let everyone know WHY. I decided that for me it would be easier being an open book about all of it rather than trying to dodge the questions and comments.

So back to the doctor I went. Step two was to try medication with IUI (intrauterine insemination). I thought for SURE that this was going to work. I guess I should go back a little and say that during this time frame I got a job at a local dental office and which was just a few blocks away! I was excited to finally get a job and start working. Not to mention I got my license back AND qualified for car insurance again!!!! Mark was also working hard. He was traveling to Tulsa, OK every week and would return home on the weekends (That made things a little difficult to say the least). Anyway, our first IUI cycle came around in July. I'm going to give all the details so beware haha!! They started me on Clomid 100mg on cycle days 3-7 and prometrium days 17-27. On 7/23/11 I went in for our follicular ultrasound to see how many follicle I had (follicle are what hold the egg FYI) I had FOUR that were of good size; 2-19mm’s and 2-23mm’s!!! So we did our HCG trigger shot that night (HCG is the hormone that tells your body to release the egg) and the IUI on 7/25. Not a very comfortable procedure but tolerable. Next came the 2 week wait. UHHH this is the worst part. Having to wait to see if the procedure worked or not sucks. I turned to a fertility forum for support and it really helped. In those two weeks I was obsessed to say the least at every twinge, every sneeze, every little thing became a symptom. Crazy psycho girl I became. The hormones didn’t help any either. Poor Mark had to put up with my mood swings and hot flashes. I felt sorry for him most of the time lol! So my dreaded two weeks ended with a big disappointment. BFN or Big Fat Negative in other words. I thought I was going to lose it. I was very sad and mad. I couldn’t understand just why I couldn’t get pregnant. We decided to try another IUI in August. Here are my results from that……… Clomid days 3-7 and prometrium days 17-27. Ultrasound on 8/20 showed only 1 follicle at 20mm. IUI on 8/22/11. Resulted in a BFN again. September we did another IUI….. Clomid days 3-7 and Prometrium days 17-27. Ultrasound showed 1 follicle at 19mm and 1 at 15mm. IUI on 9/19/11. Resulted in a BFN.

Our IUI journey was not a success. My doctor suggested that we see a specialist. So we did. This brings us to November 2011. We saw a specialist that basically told us the only way we could get pregnant was through IVF. Wow, really?!? This procedure is really expensive. The only thing we could do was start saving. So we did.

Christmas came and went along with new years and every little bit of money we got, we saved.

With the new year came some news!!! Mark was being promoted to Director of operations at a San Diego branch! Much excitement came and it kinda helped with getting my mind off of obsessing over getting pregnant. It was always in the back of my head but it gave me a little bit of relief.

So we put the house on the market and moved to San Diego. And wow what an amazing place to live. We were so blessed to be relocated here. Family came out to visit and after a few months we were all settled in to our apartment. And once I got situated I started thinking a lot about getting pregnant again. So I made an appointment with a new doctor and went in for his opinion on a few things. He said that the other doctor was probably correct on the IVF treatment. However he did want to do a few things while we were saving up for it just to rule out a few things. He ordered a HSG and a laparoscopy. So we started off with the HSG. An HSG is where they shoot a dye through your uterus and fallopian tubes to make sure that nothing has abnormalities or is blocked. The results… All clear! My doctor then decided we should go ahead and do the laparoscopy. This was a little more invasive. I went under a general anesthesia and they make a few small incisions in you abdomen and look inside. Results….. Endometriosis. It was on my bladder and on my uterus and he was able to remove all of it. At my post op appointment we talked about what our next step would be (another IUI or IVF). Mark and I decided to go ahead with IVF.

This brings us to late June. In the mean time, we got a contract on the house in St. Louis!!! YAY That was an exciting day although Mark was on a business trip in Belgium. Yes BELGIUM!! He had fun but it was a little difficult trying to wrap up the negotiations on the house. In the end though it all worked out.

My next move was to make a appointment with a fertility specialist. After A LOT of research on Drs.  in San Diego we found the top rated clinic with the best stats and made an appointment. Our appointment is set for tomorrow (July 5th) at 1:30pm.

So that is the history of our infertility thus far. We are excited for our next step towards being parents.