Appointments

I have two appointments on Monday.

• 10:00am - Meet with my IVF coordinator Peggy at the RE office. We will go over my protocol and calendar, sign papers, and talk about the IVF process. I am excited to have a plan!!
• 12:00pm - Acupuncture @ Well Body in Maplewood with Christine. She is 9 months pregnant and will be giving birth any day, so this might be the only time I see her. Her husband is a chiropractor who also is also licensed in acupuncture, and he will be taking over for her while she is out on maternity leave. I am usually sceptical of this holistic approach but figure its worth a try especially since it helps eliminate stress.

I need to be on BCP by March 10th, which actually gives us one more month to TTC naturally. I am currently CD 21, but am not stupid enough to think that we will get pregnant on our own but we did BD around fertile time...just in case!!

ABC's "The View" had an entire show dedicated to infertility yesterday. I haven't watched it yet, but I thought you might want to see it! Click here to watch.

It's official...

I just heard from the IVF nurse coordinator about our test results.

• DH's DNA fragmentation test came back "high fertility potential", which is the best result!! YAY!!!
• My CD 3 blood work came back normal

I paid the $2000 deposit to officially put us in the April IVF cycle!!!

The next step is to call on CD 1 (I am on CD 14 today) and they will call in the BCP's which I will need to start by CD 5 or March 7th. Then the rest will follow from there, they will be calling me soon regarding my calendar for IVF. I also have a phone consult on March 11th with the RE to go over everything in detail.

I am pumped!!

End of the road

No, I'm not talking about IF...........I'm talking about Boyz II Men!!! My cousin called me at 6:30 on Sunday night telling me that he had 2 extra VIP tickets to see Boyz II Men at a local casino. I really wanted to go because (I am embarrassed to actually admit this) they are my favorite group of all time!!! DH had to work...but my sister was in town!! I had gone to Mardi Gras with her the day before so I guilted her into going to the concert with me. It was AMAZING!! There were only 200 people at the concert and it was so intimate. I was freaking out the whole time and we all had so much fun!! I even got a rose from Nathan while he was singing "I'll make love to you"!!

I'm in the bottom left holding my rose!!

Look how close we were!!

On Saturday we went to the Mardi Gras celebration in downtown St. Louis. The St. Louis celebration has continued to grow in popularity to the point that organizers bill it as the second largest Mardi Gras celebration in the country. Our local celebration has become a regional event, drawing people from out state. They estimated that there were over 100,000 people at the event this year!! This is normally not something that I would go to unless it was nice weather, but this was one of the reasons my sister came in town so I went with her. It was a very cold and LONG day (8 hours), but we had fun!!

My sister and I

I am still recovering from this weekend!! I waiting to hear the results of DH's DNA fragmentation test...hopefully we will hear so good news Friday. Once we get those results we will be ready for IVF in April.

FREE IVF MEDS!!!

Any of you getting ready to do IVF are going to love me!!! I have been googling the crap out of IVF since we are about to embark on this foreign journey. I stumbled upon an IVF forum where a girl said she got her IVF meds free from Fertility Lifelines, so I had to see for myself. This website offers a "word of mouth" (it is not advertised) program called Compassionate Care.

I called 1-866-538-7879 and left a message asking for information and an application for the program. Someone called me back a couple days later and explained to me that there was criteria we had to meet before we apply.

• No insurance coverage for fertility medication
• Currently undergoing fertility treatment
• US citizen
• Household income of less than $100,000 (This is a grey area, so I would still call if you make over this)
• Have never received fertility medication from this program before
  

We qualified so I gave my contact info and insurance information and was told I would hear from someone soon. I got another call yesterday stating that they were faxing me the application. I filled it out and also sent in receipts of money we had spend out of pocket for fertility treatments in the last year. DH faxed the application at 5 am this morning and they called this afternoon to tell me...

WE HAVE BEEN APPROVED!!!

I started crying as soon as she said congratulations!! We will receive 3000 iu's of Gonal-F, one HCG shot, and Cetrotide. I am so stinkin excited!!!!!! This will be enough for 2 cycles because we are doing Low Stim, so if the 1st IVF doesn't work we will have left over meds. If the 1st one works we will donate the meds to another couple.
What a huge chunk of money ($3500) that we don't have to spend now. They are faxing Dr. A the order form and they will call me once the meds have been ordered.

What are you waiting for....call them!!! You can thank me later!!

Excited!!

I am excited about TTC for the first time in a LONG time! Our RE appointment was fantastic. Dr. A is so great and knowledgeable. We started with the fluid ultrasound which didn't hurt at all. My uterus looked great, so no problems there. Then he did an ultrasound to check the antral follicle count. I had 15+ follicles on each ovary!! He gave me an "A"!!

We asked him a few questions about the process of IVF.

• Our concerned about DH's recent SA showed low morphology - Dr. A actually said that the morphology wasn't too bad, it is an issue but with IVF it can definitely be worked around.
• Would we need to do ICSI (single sperm is injected directly into an egg) because of the low morphology and does that cost extra? - Yes we would do ICSI on most of the embryos and it doesn't cost extra...yay!!
• When is the soonest we can proceed with IVF? April 2010!! I am pumped at the possibility of being pregnant soon!
• Do we qualify for Low Stim IVF? YES!!!! Since I have so many follicles he suggests doing low stim (less meds and monitoring). This cost much less than full blown IVF so of course I am thrilled. He strives for 15 follicle when doing low stim.
• Should we purchase a single, 2 or 3 cycle plan? He said since we are doing low stim it's cheaper to do (2) single cycle plans rather than the buy a multi-cycle plan. He is pretty confident we won't need more than one cycle. At first I was concerned that he just tells all of his patients this, but I have spoken to a few women that have gone to him and depending on their history some of them were told to buy multi-cycle plans because it might take a few times.

When Dr. A left the room I was jumping up and down with excitement. I usually cry at the RE's office, and this time DH and I couldn't wipe the smile off our faces.

I also had CD 3 blood work done. They took 8 vials!! That was the most blood I have ever given at one time.

We are waiting for the blood work results and DH's other half of his SA test(DNA fragmentation). I also have a financial consultation on Thursday and then by next week we should be signed up for the April cycle!!

CD 1

No miracle baby here. I wanted to be that girl that got pregnant on the break cycle before IVF, but I'm not. I didn't have much hope, but it would have been nice.

I called the RE office, but they were not open and the recording said "If you are calling about CD 1 call back during regular business hours". The RE told my once AF shows I need to call and get in for blood work and an ultrasound. Well as we all know testing is time sensitive, so I was concerned if I waited to talk to them on Monday they wouldn't be able to get me in that day (CD 3).

I decided to e-mail my RE directly and see what happened. To my surprise I received a response from him in 10 minutes!! He sent his response to me and two other women in his office stating that he was aware of the situation and that I will be contacted by someone in his office. Can I just tell you how awesome it is to be able to talk directly to my RE!!! Five minutes after his e-mail I was contacted by his office and I set up an appointment for Monday at 9am.


Plan for Monday's office visit:

• Antral follicle count - a good predictor of ovarian reserve, egg supply and the response to ovarian stimulation with medications
• Sonohysterography (SHG) aka fluid Ultrasound (FUS) - a procedure where a sterile solution of saline is injected via a catheter through the cervix and into the uterine cavity. The fluid-distended cavity is then examined by vaginal ultrasound for any irregularities that might point to surface lesions such as polyps, fibroid tumors, scarring, or a uterine septum.
• CD 3 bloodwork - maybe??? I recently had it done with my old RE so we will have to see what he says on Monday.
  

I am excited to meet Dr. A and get this IVF ball rolling!!!

Found an ISSUE!!

I am not in the writing mood so I am going to bullet point what has been going on:

• DH's morphology has been borderline 29% (30% is normal) the last three SA's, but the old RE and urologist said this was NOT the reason we are having issues TTC!! Dr. A (new RE) suspected DH's morphology is a reason if not THE reason we aren't getting pregnant. He wants DH to have a $500 SA, which is much more detailed than the previous ones. Dr. A specializes in male factor infertility, so I trust him.

• DH had the SA the day after my phone consult with Dr. A. There are two parts to the test. 1st part- DNA fragmentation, which we have never had tested. We won't get the results of this for a week and a half. 2nd part - Measures the same things as a regular SA (count, morph., ect.) but is done at 1000x magnification thus some more subtle abnormalities are seen unlike in a standard SA only has 250x magnification. We got those results the next day. DH's count and motility are great, BUT his morphology is 3% (5% normal). We clearly have an issue.

• DH is devastated and feels like this is ALL his fault. He feels horrible that I have had to go through tests, surgeries, injections, and heartache because of him. I told him it is not his fault, he has no control over it and I do NOT blame him. We are in this together and no one is to blame. It is what it is and we are going to move forward. It breaks my heart that he feels responsible!!

• I am pissed if this ends up being THE reason because we have been TTC for almost 2 years and no one has told us this. If we would have known this back then we wouldn't have gone through all the IUI, injection, and heartache. We would have gone straight to IVF!! Oh well, I can't live in the past. We know now, so we are going to do something about it.

• Morphology can't be fixed, but we can get around it by doing IVF. The woman in that lab told DH that we are great candidates for IVF because over half of his sperm are normal, so they will just pick the good ones when we do IVF. This made DH feel much better!!

• We are waiting on the results of the second part of the SA. I am waiting for AF and then I will go in and have an ultrasound and antral follicle count. Once we have all of these results we will move forward.

• Our tentative POA is to do IVF in April which means I would start taking BC in March.