Turned Over

My days of waking up at 4:30 in the morning to get ready for a 6-hour round trip to The IVF Clinic are over! Well, at least for this particular pregnancy. Woo hoo!

Mama and I hit the road at about 5:45 yesterday morning with coffee for her and an orange coolatta and breakfast sandwich for me. The first-trimester nausea has hit full-force, so coffee is now out. With Pooka, the only thing that calmed my stomach was Lipton’s green tea with honey. With Wiggle-Worm it was predominantly strawberries. Teapot Tempest seems to prefer orange or other citrusy things.

We had a marvelous chat all the way down to The Clinic’s Satellite Office! This is a marked difference between her and Hubs. Much as I adore my sweet, wonderful husband; he inevitably falls asleep on long car rides, which does very little to help me stay awake. Mama, on the other hand, can not only chat and keep me company, she can read and crochet in the car too! This is me being seriously impressed. Sorry, Hubs.

We checked in with the receptionist and waited around for quite a while before realizing that I needed to put my name on their little sign-in sheet. I should have known, but pregnant-brain has also settled in. At The IVF Clinic’s main office, I always have to sign in for blood work and ultrasounds, but being in a different location, it completely slipped my mind. Once I finally did that, it took very little time for me to get in to be seen. They let Mama come with me too. Apparently she’s never been subjected to internal ultrasounds; and has never seen an embryo via ultrasound – only a fetus.

Anyway: Teapot Tempest looks about like this right now (this isn’t from the clinic; it’s an estimate I nabbed from Wikipedia of a 6-week old embryo.):

It’s a little behind dates for its size, but The IVF Doctor said that’s normal for a frozen cycle. Its heartbeat was measured at 112 beats per minute, which is normal for its size. I have to go to The Big Hospital in the next week or two, for a follow-up ultrasound. At that time, they’ll be looking for Tempest’s heartbeat to be over 120 beats per minute.

This is the actual ultrasound picture (some info removed for privacy’s sake):

I’m stuck on the hormones till January 4^th, but all things considered it’s a pretty small price to pay for a healthy baby; and I've been turned over to regular OB care. P.S. My due date is July 19, 2013.

We stopped off at Quincy Market on the way home, since Mama had never been. Wandered around; got a Fanueil Hall penny for Mama; a Solstice present for Wifey and a yummy pretzel in the food court before Mama got a hankerin' for Taco Bell. DarkForce never showed up, so we took off for home; hitting Taco Bell on the way. Mama managed to finish her blanket before we arrived at her house - she's a crocheting machine!

Hubs helped me drop off the car and we picked up dinner on the way home, since our cooking facilities appear to me malfunctioning, and the repair guy seems to be dragging his feet. Harumph. Oh well. Watched "Reaper" till bedtime and crashed around 9:00 with a CatButt on my feet.

Jumping Bean and Weekend Shenanigans

Now that we’ve established that the little Teapot Tempest is definitively stuck in my womb, I get one more trip down to The IVF Clinic for an ultrasound to confirm that Tempest has a viable heartbeat. Basically this means looking at a blurry, gray, bean-shaped spot on the monitor and making sure it’s behaving like a proper jumping bean.

I’ll be doing this on the 28^th at 9:30 in the morning. Hubs has to work, and dammit it’s a long, boring trip. So I asked my friend Mama to go with me instead. She’s never been down to Beantown, so we’re gonna stop off at Quincy Market to poke around for a while, and then catch lunch with an old college friend. (I’ll call him DarkForce. My gamer-nerd college friends will know who he is, but the rest of you won’t. Ha!)

This past weekend was, I must say, a BLAST! Xaotl and DarkForce and Rotorhead came over on Saturday, and OtherWife Skyped in from the west coast, and we played my homemade tabletop game (“Mutants”) for the vast majority of the afternoon. Then when Xaotl and Rotorhead and Hubs took off to meet their various obligations, DarkForce and I hung out and caught up with one another. We hadn’t seen each other in over a decade, with one very short exception over the summer when I got to meet his lovely wife and their adorable daughter, and got to see his mother again.

Sunday morning I failed spectacularly in my attempt to recreate the Hobbit Hole Breakfast from Denny’s. The rolls I bought were too small to accommodate a whole egg, so the over easy part was kinda messed up. They tasted alright, but it was NOTHING like Denny’s. Oh well. I’ll try again some other time. After breakfast, we saw DarkForce off, took Pooka up to visit friends in the Queen City area, then rushed home and put together vegan, gluten-free stuffing for our friends (Fifteen and his lovely wife) “Friendsgiving” event. Lovely Wife can’t have wheat gluten, and last year I made vegan stuffing, so I was challenged to make vegan, gluten-free stuffing this year. It wasn’t bad, but I’d tweak it a little more, I think.

Then last night, since Pooka has no school today, Hubs and I took her up to The Queen City to catch a movie with said same friends. We bummed around Barnes & Noble for a while, then went to Texas Roadhouse with Rotorhead and Bamf and ate ourselves stupid in honor of my brother’s thirty-first birthday.

There. I’ve spilled my guts, Auntie-Dearest, as promised.

Preggosaurus 2: Return of the Baby Bump Is Back In (Re)Production

I didn’t want to post a new blog on Friday. Admittedly I was still a bit gun-shy after the last cycle’s miserable beta-hCG results, and the relatively low results on Friday. The levels are expected to be between 50 and 85 or so (if memory serves) on the first test. With Wiggle Worm they were around 84. With the last cycle, they were in the 70’s. Friday they were 66; which is within the expected range, but still lower than even the failed cycle.

Well, I went up to the local hospital yesterday morning at 6:30 for my follow-up blood draw. What do I find at registration? The IVF Clinic didn’t send in the lab orders. So I spent almost half an hour trying to help the registrar re-create an order, having informed me that I needed to contact the IVF Clinic to ask them to send in the order. We ended up having to do it twice, after pulling in another registrar to help, because the order the first woman created had the results going to my primary care physician who has nothing to do with the process; and hadn’t been ordered STAT; which is standard procedure for the IVF Clinic.

Finally I got in to see the same friendly phlebotomist I had on Friday. We had a chat about her hairdo (which looked lovely and complex, even though it apparently is her “I have no time to do my hair properly” hairstyle), her new puppy and her slew of geriatric cats. She and her husband foster cats for their local animal rescue, and have given up hope that people might want to adopt old cats with health problems.

Anyway, my levels have more than QUADRUPLED. As of yesterday morning, my beta-hCG levels were at 297. I guess that means Teapot Tempest (thanks for the inspiration, Xaotl!) is here to stay.

I managed to pop off at Dunkin Donuts to grab a quick breakfast for Hubs and Pooka and get home in time for Hubs to scoot to work. Did I mention he got a long-term sub gig at the school where he did his student teaching? I’m so proud of him. Tossed quick lunches together for my little family and kissed them out the door. Aaaand proceeded to veg-out and try a new show on Netflix, since I had the day off.

(Thank you Veterans; not just for the day off, [kidding!] but for your dedicated service.)

I did manage to drag my fat, lazy arse off the couch long enough to do the dishes that I had let pile up over the weekend, and tidy up the rest of the house. I skipped vacuuming, but Hubs promised to do it for me today anyway.

I’m not normally lazy, I swear – I just wound up doing a lot of driving around this weekend. Pooka attended an anime convention with my stunning, dread-locked, goth friend (I’ll call her DreadGoth until she tells me not to), and had not planned to be invited to spend the night with her, so I had to bring the next day’s cosplay along with Pooka’s girlfriend on Saturday. We had a lovely brunch at Denny’s (OMIGOD MUST EAT “HOBBITHOLE BREAKFAST” EVERY DAY FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE) and then I popped over to Casual Male and Michael’s for suspenders and Solstice present makings, respectively. Pooka’s girlfriend (not to be confused with friend-who-is-a-girl) had to be back in Central Vermont at 4:00, so I picked her up from the con and met up with her Mom at my house, then took a short, snuggly nap with Hubs before he had to go to work. I hadn’t expected him to still be home when I got back, so that was a nice surprise.

Sunday Hubs and I got to spend the whole day together, which was marvelous. He let me sleep in, and then we watched Game of Thrones for a couple hours before deciding that it was time to head out. We popped over to Hubs’ second job to pay our friend Nate for the brake job he did on our car; then drop off some winter coats at a Yellow Box; stopped off to visit Wifey for a minute, and then have a lunch date and pick up some necessities in and around the Queen City before picking Pooka and her friends up from the con.

So all in all it was a long, lazy, happy, reproductive weekend.

The Oncoming Storm (50 Nerd Points If You Get The Reference)

Still four and a half days until I'm scheduled to go up to the Little Hospital for blood tests to check my hCG levels for pregnancy, but I'm pretty sure I know what the results will be.

I'm intermittently queasy - not full-on nauseous like I was with my Pooka or with WiggleWorm, but still a little green around the gills here and there throughout the day. Eating a little bit usually takes care of it. I'm consistently low on energy, but I'm me, so I push through it most of the time anyway. The weird thing that's going on this time that I've never experienced during early pregnancy before is my boobs. HOLY MACKEREL do my knockers ache! It's not too bad when they're supported (i.e. my trusty over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder), but they're still pretty sore. The doom comes when I set them free for the night. No matter what I do - stand, sit, lie down - it's pain. Not unbearable pain, per se, but a deep, constant ache - almost like being engorged, but without the part where my over-sized melons hang off my ribcage.

I'm thinking this is going to be "the one" for this cycle. As I mentioned before, WiggleWorm was deposited into my waiting womb on Yom Kippur. We'll see what this one brings, but my "intuition" tells me I.F. is in for his own little storm with this baby. Transferred during a hurricane; causing new and uncomfortable sensations for its Gestational Carrier (me); this baby's gonna be a little 9th Doctor (Who. Pardon the geekery) The Oncoming Storm.

So for now, I'm calling him/her Tempest. I also think this one's gonna wind up being a boy.

Might Have To Call This Baby "Sandy."

Wow, what a day! It has definitely not qualified as one of the most normal ones I've ever had. Perhaps this is the aforementioned "event" about which I spoke in my previous post.

Hubs and I got up and got ourselves and Munchkin going; got Hubs off to work and scooted back home to bring in the last couple things that still lived outside. As I was settling in to futz around on de Facebooks for a little while before I had to leave, I got a phone call from The IVF Clinic's cheery receptionist, asking if I'd be willing to make it in between noon and 12:45. Being 9:00, I figured sure, I could probably do that. So I headed out early. The wind and rain picked up about an hour and a half south of home. It tried to push me around a little, but I've driven in nasty windy blizzards before; it's far easier to compensate in warm rain than freezing rain or snow.

Half an hour out from The IVF Clinic, I got ANOTHER phone call from them, asking me if I could come in even earlier. Seriously? The receptionist was clever enough to note that my home address is THREE HOURS AWAY - How does that somehow change from one staff member to another? *headdesk* I told the woman I was already en-route and would be there within half an hour. This did not seem to please her, but I wasn't going to speed into the outer edges of a hurricane, thank-you-very-much.

Once I arrived, however; the staff were as pleasant and welcoming as if I had handed them each a million dollars. They pretty much always treat me that way (which is why I was so jarred by the brusque treatment I got during the second phone call.) The transfer was done by a different IVF Doctor, but he was just as confident and reassuring as My Normal IVF Doctor.

They transferred three embryos. One was 9 cells; one was 8 cells and one was 4 cells. The IVF Doctor said it went very well, and that the embryos look good. I'll be calling The IVF Clinic probably tomorrow or Wednesday to ask them to sent a requisition for blood work to The Local Hospital for a pregnancy test on November 9th. WOO!

Outside the IVF Clinic, the wind was so strong it whistled past the doors, and several gusts were strong enough to almost knock MY fat @$$ over. I made it home safe and sound though, with one pit stop at Cracker Barrel for lunch. I learned an important lesson there: Eating lunch by yourself in a sit-down restaurant makes you look sad and pathetic. From here on out, I'm gonna stick to drive-thru.

Once back in my neck of the woods, Hubs and I picked up various alternative light sources; some extra water, and dinner since the power was out. Of course, about two minutes before we turned to go downtown, the power came back on. Better that than extended outages before the thick of the storm gets here anyway. I also found out that state offices are on a delayed-opening schedule, so even if work DOESN'T get canceled, I get to sleep in! WOO!

Embryos and Hurricanes

Friday I went down to The IVF Clinic for blood tests and an ultrasound to make sure that everything looked good for another embryo transfer. I tried to get them to let me do this part up at The Big Hospital here at home, but alas; the cycle is a package deal, and would have cost I.F. whether I went down to The IVF Clinic or not. So I got up at 4:00am, showered, grabbed my stuff, gassed up the car and popped over to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast so I'd be on the road by 5:15. Turned out to be a good thing I did leave a little early, since of course traffic down that way at the beginning of the day is always congested.

Some pokes and prods later, I was informed unofficially that the lining of my uterus was at 10.4mm on one side and 9.75mm on the other. I drove home, still nervous about what that meant; what if it was too thick? I knew that the preferred thickness for transfer was at least 8.5mm, but I didn't know if there was a maximum.

I'm not gonna lie; I'm a little gunshy about this cycle. Wiggleworm was unanimously successful from the get-go. The first cycle on this attempt was a pathetic failure. Maybe it was because Wiggleworm was transferred on Yom Kippur? Maybe this one is waiting for something memorable too. If so, I guess that being transferred as a massive hurricane makes landfall in the Northeast would certainly be memorable. Let's go with that.

I got a call on the way back home, informing me that everything looks great, and I'd get a call from the scheduler for an embryo transfer on Monday. Long story short: 1:30 tomorrow afternoon. WOO!

After I got home from The IVF Clinic; tired and a little cranky (driving 6 hours by myself while on hormones can do that to me, I guess), I decided to take a nap before I had to pick Hubs up from work and then drive another two hours south to my grandparents' house, since it was my weekend "in the barrel.*" It was not to be. Hubs wanted to chat, and then wanted to be picked up early. Shortly after we got back home and I tried to lay down, since Hubs had to go to a meeting for which he needed the car; Munchkin got home and wanted help getting ready for a dance that evening.

Once I finally got Munchkin and her friend into their costumes for the dance, it was too late to try to nap, so I packed up and headed out. I stopped at the store to pick up cookies for Grampy, who's in a physical rehabilitation facility for a broken pelvis. I had intended to visit him before going on to his house to hang out with Grammie and Eldest Uncle, but there was no way I was going to arrive at the facility before visiting hours were over. I also learned that he's not allowed to eat solid foods; only pureed ones, for the time being.

I had a lovely visit with Grammie and Eldest Uncle Friday evening, and stayed up chatting with them till 1:00am. I hadn't pulled a 21-hour-day for years, so needless to say I slept in a little Saturday morning. Eldest Uncle and I popped over to see Grampy for a couple hours, and we brought Uncle's little white dog, who is beautifully behaved and absolutely adorable. The older folks just love him; Grampy especially.

After our visit, I scooted over to the grocery store to pick up dinner fixin's. Made bacon-stuffed chicken breasts, rosemaried carrots and rice pilaf, which met with approval from Grammie as well as Eldest Uncle and Next-Up-From-Dad Uncle. (I've got three on that side. They rock.) Played cards and got totally stomped by Grammie and Eldest Uncle, but had fun nonetheless.

Today has been all about cleaning: Grammie's house and mine. Grocery shopping; lunch-making; dinner buying, etc. Breakfast was scrambled eggs with mushrooms, onions and peppers, and a little Montreal steak seasoning (a family staple), and bacon. Grammie and I made some egg salad for Eldest Uncle. Both Uncles and Grammie were highly complimentary, which obviously makes me feel special. (See? They rock.)

So yeah. Embryo transfer tomorrow. I'll let people know how it goes.

*I have learned that many people do not understand what I mean by this phrase, so I shall expound. Earlier this year, a schedule of sorts was established amongst the family that lives in state, so that every other weekend, one of our little nuclei would be responsible for visiting and doing the bigger household tasks at Grammie & Grampy's house. This would ensure that they were not left wanting for company or for help around the house, since they're both in their mid-eighties. My "weekend in the barrel" is therefore, the weekend for which I am scheduled to visit.

Giant Leap Forward, Teeny Steps Back

Menses numero dos has come and gone, and I am finally back on surro-meds. These last six weeks or so, I have learned that miscommunication can be an interesting thing, and it happens to even the best people.

After menses number one, it turned out that the financial details were never sorted out, and so we had to wait for me to have another one before anything could move forward. Menses number two started, and The IVF Clinic still had nothing in the fiscal department. I contacted The Agency and I.F. to find out what was going on. Turned out I.F. was WAY out of town and was having trouble faxing in the necessary paperwork. So my favorite Carrier Coordinator (seriously; I love her; she's fabulous) at The Agency contacted The IVF Clinic and set things up to move forward. Unfortunately, the other nurses at The IVF Clinic weren't aware of the arrangements that had been made, so when I called into report the beginning of my cycle, they couldn't give me my instructions for starting the meds again (which is kind of silly, because I already know what they want me to do; but timing is key, so I had to wait.) I did finally get in touch with our IVF Doctor's nurse, who gave me instructions and said she'd check in with me on Monday, because...

Much as I adore being able to pop off and visit Xaotl and her littles on the way back from The IVF Clinic, I really can't afford to take two or more days off of work, for a twenty-minute appointment (including the time in the waiting room.) It's a three-hour drive down and a three-hour drive back, if the traffic is good both ways. So I got permission to do my pre-transfer monitoring at The Big Hospital, rather than at The IVF Clinic. This should save me lots of time, and keep I.F.'s reimbursement obligations down, too.

So we're on the move again. Hooray!

As a side note: I'm still absolutely loving our little apartment! It's close to downtown, it's cute, it's warm and it's quiet.