Wow Where Did The Time Go

Hi to all those new folks and old followers.  It is the May ICLW already.

This week I am 30 weeks pregnant.  I just got a notice that I should be installing the car seat and getting my bags packed for the hospital while I still can bend at the waist.  Tonight when J comes home from work I'll mention the car seat installation to him.  Luckily we have a four day weekend.  J sprained his ankle yesterday at PT during a run.  They run every day.  So he'll be glad to have the heads up since he is moving a bit slower.

I just had a friend on FB ask me how much I've lost.  I actually had to stop and figure that one out.  I'm still 5 pounds under my starting pregnancy weight and if I'm supposed to have gained about 18 pounds by this week that means I've actually lost about 23 pounds.  Yes, I look small.  But the baby girl is growing nicely.  Last week Thursday she was weighing 2 pounds 13 ounces which puts her a bit ahead in the weight department than the average baby for her age.  I'm pleased.

I am eating.  This morning I had two eggs scrambled with cheese.  1 10 ounce glass of 100% V-8 Fusion juice and 1 10 ounce glass of chocolate milk.  Yeah the only way you are going to get me to drink milk since it causes my throat to be coated and I start to itch, is by making it chocolate.  Yes, I'm allergic to milk but nothing deadly.  Sometimes I have a mild asthma reaction to it but nothing that I can't handle with an inhaler.  I'll have a second glass of milk later in the day and try to reach that 32 ounces of milk by the end of the day.  I still eat nuts as a snack.  I guess the high protein diet is really helping to keep off the excess weight and make the baby grow strong.  She is just fine, I'm not but then again I'm old to having my first baby as the doctors like to remind me.  As if I had a choice in when I got pregnant!  If I did I would have had my first child years ago when I started those expensive infertility treatments.

For everyone still in the trenches trying I wish you the best in keeping your relationship with your significant other strong, keeping your sanity, and I truly hope you are soon pregnant with a take home baby.

February ICLW

Welcome to all those from ICLW!

Tomorrow is my OB check up where they will be doing a thyroid blood draw and fetal heart monitoring.  I am currently 17 weeks and 4 days.

Hoping that baby is still alive tomorrow.  Yes I'm just that paranoid.

Yesterday I noticed that I'm having troubles walking and talking.  I end up breathless.  Most likely it is because of the increased mucus and my asthma.

It is also getting to be increasingly hard to bend over without the round ligament letting me know that is it there and quite cranky.  I'll be asking my OB tomorrow about getting a maternity belt since I went into this pregnancy with back issues.

Lying down on my sides to sleep isn't easy.  The spinal stenosis makes for a very uncomfortable sleep.  I'm getting used to the chronic neck pain and arm pain.  As if having carpal tunnel in both hands wasn't enough to deal with before pregnancy.  But yes I was forewarned that with all of my medical conditions pregnancy would be rough on my body.

The puking up has stopped for the most part.  The last two nights I had a brief bout of it when I went to lie down for the evening.  I still have some nausea.

I guess I'm lucky with the weight gain but I don't feel lucky.  I feel worried.  That 0.6 lbs I had gained is gone again.  I'll be weighing in tomorrow with less weight.  I never knew gaining weight would be so hard because I swear before I got pregnant all I had to do was look at something full of fat and calories and I would gain weight.

I'm still wearing the same size 16 jeans I was last year and the year before.  I am starting to have a bump but not a pronounced "oh shit look out she is going to blow" type bump.  My bump is more of a subtle roundness to my abdomen that makes it look like I'm just fat.  However, I can tell you it isn't jiggly fat any longer.  My lower abdomen is hard.

Weird movements.  Not really feeling the baby kick much this week.  I do feel and sometimes watch it move to the other side of my uterus.  Most likely it is just gravity pulling it along as I switch positions for sleeping.  Wishing baby would just kick a bit to let me know that it indeed is alive.  Yes, again I am that afraid that I'm carrying a dead baby.  If you have gone through what I've gone through I'm sure you felt or will be feeling just as paranoid.  Repeat loss messes you up for a happy pregnancy.

So that is where I sit for today.  Hope none of you fell asleep reading this bit of a blog post.

Walking Deeper Into The Woods

This month is almost gone and I have much to be thankful for.  Yesterday I started by thanking God.  He deserves as much credit as any person that helped me on this journey and then some.  Second is my cat, Bugsy, who helped me get through the two week wait.

Well okay I guess my husband does deserve some credit to but he is so full of stress from his job right now that he isn't that supportive until yesterday.  Yesterday changed our lives.

Yesterday I had my first good thing happen during all the years that J and I have been trying to conceive with dual infertility.  I finally got a Beta above zero.  Now I just have to deal with all my other health issues including the wonky thyroid.

Beta was 224 and the TSH was 3.5.

I have to up my synthroid to 75 mcg.

Fingers crossed that tomorrow's second Beta will bring a number double to the first.

Oh and friends, I ask of you this, please promise me that you won't tell anyone in J's family about the pregnancy.  He wants to wait until he is ready to tell his parents; probably Christmas when I'm closer to the end of the first trimester.  So don't mention it on my fb page if you know me there either, please.

The longest I've ever been pregnant, that was way before I met J and back when I married the first time, was 10 weeks 6 days.  I know that I'll end up on bed rest eventually since I have high blood pressure that is difficult to control even with being on a high dose taken twice daily.  I'm going to have to be careful.  Maybe some of you will recall that I had a heart attack in March of 2009.  Yes, this is risky but it is what we want.

Finally some really good news from my blog to share with all of you on the first day of ICLW.

ICLW October

Hello to everyone from ICLW.

Right now I'm on CD 2 of a new cycle and mid deep in Lupron injections.

Tomorrow is my suppression scan.  Really hoping I'm suppressed.  If I am then on Wednesday I'll be starting the estrogen patches.  I detest them because the adhesive makes me so itchy and I end up with a rash.

If all goes well I'll be transferring two embryos, one of which is a donor embryo around mid November.

ICLW March

Hello to everyone out there.

A little about me:

43 infertile with high blood pressure and other physical ailments
2 failed  IVFs
Countless failed IUIs

Moving on to donor eggs.  Paid for donor eggs and just waiting for the embryos to be made.
Feel free to become a follower on my journey.  I'm at 98 followers now.

Now for those of you that are interested here is a bit more on what I've been doing.

Yay!  Started spotting last night.  Maybe a new cycle is soon to be here?

I'm learning more about taking back my marriage.  Really I hate to admit it but sex is the backbone of a strong marriage.  Most infertiles have found this out the hard way.

When men are stressed they need sex more because it is a way for them to dump all their stress and start to think more clearly.

Women want men to meet their emotional needs before sex.  But a guy can't do this with a stressed out foggy brain.

Women need to learn to barter with their husband.  Yes this can mean sex too, especially sex when dealing with men.  If we want something done around the house or for him to fulfill one of our needs we can always promise to give him sex.  You'd be surprised at how fast you get what you want from your husband when you make a promise to give him sex.  That might sound like I'm manipulating my spouse but I'm not because he is getting what he wants too.  He is getting his needs met.

When J and I were undergoing fertility treatments our marriage suffered.  I was on so many restrictions that I was miserable and he was miserable.  Last year I spent a total of 6 months on full pelvic rest to include bed rest with limited movements.  NO SEX!

Now that J and I are going through another planned fertility treatment, this time donor eggs we are taking this little break to find our marriage and find what we need to do to meet each others emotional and physical wants and needs.

J and I both realize that I might end up on bed rest during the upcoming pregnancy.  God, please let there be a pregnancy.  With my high blood pressure and other physical health issues I won't be meeting his needs all that often if at all.  That is the reason we are trying to re-connect now.  We know what we will be facing and we want to meet it head on together.

Okay enough rambling. 

Ttc Ivf Fertility Luck T-Shirt (Google Affiliate Ad)   Cute t-shirt with embryos on it  and the saying:  "think positive"

Starting With Endometrin and

Ending with Prometrium.  I'm using up the rest of my Endometrin this cycle since it expires this month and will move on to the Prometrium after the first is gone.  Not my choice but it is what my insurance covers right now.  I don't even want to think about the discomfort of having to insert the Prometrium.

Happy January ICLW!

To all those tuning into my blog this week I'll give an update as to where I stand, or rather sit since I am currently sitting to type this, in my trying to conceive.

IUI number 6 was done on Friday at the Tacoma, Washington branch of Seattle Reproductive Medicine.  My husband's sperm counts were at an all time high and I was able to produce three follicles of my own naturally.  The smallest is probably rather useless as the day of the ultrasound it was only 13mm though they can grow 2mm in a day so there is a chance.

This I declare will be my last cycle using my own DNA unless some kind of miracle happens at my age which is 43.

If another cycle dares to start in February I will have a SIS so that I can move on to donor eggs.  I have my temporary password for the donor egg clinic and have selected six candidates.  I was amazed to find that the five I had originally chosen last year were still available and I found another possible.  I'm not sure how they provide a match for me but I know that the sixth choice is a different blood type, same Rh factor, and matches my spouse.  The other five candidates match my blood type and Rh factor.  The sixth one only matches me in eye color and is the same hair color as my spouse.  Selfish reason to go with that particular hair color as when my child asks who they look like I can say "your father" and reference the photographs.  I will tell the child about using donor eggs but I think it might be of a comfort for the child to feel like they look more like one parent and preferably my husband not the donor.

But this is still all up in the air.  In the later half of this two week wait I'll be deciding on what to do.  Most likely I'll be giving the clinic a call to set up an appointment.  I have to get all of this done soon because being an Army wife I have to be prepared to move and move we will be doing later this spring.

If you made it to the bottom of this post and read all the way through congratulations!  I realize I got a little long winded and I didn't even get into the infertility factors that I have like the Endometriosis stage III.  There I mentioned it.

Kill The Pumpkin and ICLW

Ride of the Valkyries to the wording of kill the rabbit by Elmer Fudd is going through my mind except Elmer Fudd is singing Kill the Pumpkin in places.  The small pumpkin saw its last days a whole fruit yesterday.

I cooked the pumpkin down, made my own pie shell and baked the beast.  Here are the recipes I used:

From a 1951 copy of Meta Given's Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking vol.2.

Cooking Fresh Pumpkin.  5 lb pumpkin equals a No.2 can of pumpkin meat.  I sliced the pumpkin in half and greased the cut sides of the pumpkin, not removing seeds.  Placing it in a preheated 400 degree F. oven for 50 minutes.    After baking I scooped out the seeds and stringy matter setting it aside.  Into the food mill ( that sieve thing with the wooden bat) went the rest of the pumpkin meat minus the skins.  After a half hour of working it out into the bowl with the orange stuff in it I was ready for the next step.  Oh I had made the pie crust from scratch while the pumpkin was baking mind you and I chilled it too.  Really easy crust using shortening, water, flour and salt.

1 3/4 cups fresh cooked pumpkin puree
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
2 eggs
1 cup cream
1/2 cup milk
First cook down the pumpkin until it thickens which takes about 10 minutes.  Remove from heat and add in the remaining ingredients stirring with a whisk rapidly.  It forms a custard.  Pour immediately into the chilled pie shell and bake in a preheated 400 degree F oven for  35-40 minutes.  Cool for 1.5 hours on a rack.

I decided to make enough for two pies.  One of which I'll take to a party tomorrow.  The other my husband and I got into last night.  The above is for Thanksgiving.

The one in the dark pan to the right is the one I made specially for J.  I made a crushed ginger snap crust for that one.  Mind you he loved it.  He brought some of it into work today to share with his SSG.


Oh and I should tell all of you that I have never on my own made a pumpkin pie from a Pie Pumpkin before.  I've had help as a child making one but this is my first so I was very pleased that it came out so good.

For the ICLW crowd it is CD6.  I'll hopefully be doing an IUI next week.  Ultrasound is on the 27th to see how many follicles in a natural cycle I have going on.  Pelvic region is really achy today and I called off my physical therapy session.

ICLW

This is the very first I Come Leave We in which I have participated.  I'm 43 years old.  4 miscarriages, 5 lost babies that are recorded.  The first pregnancy was a twin pregnancy in 1996 but miscarried at 10wks 6 days.

 I realize that the ones that follow me every day will most likely get bored with what I have to say so I'll include some pictures where applicable.

I have stage III endometriosis.  Surgery was 6/6/2012.  Hopefully it hasn't all grown back now.  And yes these are the pictures of my insides.  I have more and have shared them back in June.

Two pairs of cute socks I bought for myself when I started the IUIs with clomid in 2010.  Nope not even cute socks helped.

"JR", the only embryo from our first IVF.  Ended in a chemical pregnancy.

"Hope" was the name of the single embryo from our second IVF.  This one too ended in a chemical pregnancy.

Inbetween the two IVFs we had a natural pregnancy that ended in a chemical.


I'm back to doing natural cycles but monitored and possibly this cycle I'm currently in will be an IUI with progesterone support.  We are really hopeful that with progesterone support I'll have a better chance of carrying.  Last month I had an undocumented chemical pregnancy.  I ovulated from both ovaries on my own.  This month I'm getting the same twinges from both ovaries I had last month.  Last month was documented with three follicles, one on one side and two on the other via ultrasound imaging with spontaneous ovulation noted through P4 though P4 was on the low side.