Fight On

There was a minor setback. I thought we were going to cycle in September and implant in October. I was prepared. I was ready. I called to confirm the schedule and it took two days before I actually got a person. Not a good start....again. She said that time was now full......sigh. I did not want to wait another month. I had prepared for a quick start. So we officially signed up to cycle in October and implant in November. You confirm that schedule with the financial counselor. I have absolutely no idea why. So the IVF nurse called me a few days after and said we could actually go ahead and cycle in September and implant in October.....what. the. he!!. She said in order to do that I would need to go ahead and start birth control pills the very first day of my period. And that just happened to be the day I had started. SSCCCREETTCHHHHH. Put the brakes on. Start immediatly??? My state of mind was not ready. For me in-vitro is so much mental preparation that to throw our new schedule out the window and immediatly start was impossible. I just couldn't do it. I could have done it the week before but not now. It sounds crazy I know. And then to top it all off you start thinking well what if I don't get pregnant now and I would have got pregnant if we had immediatly started. You can drive yourself NUTS.

I am trying to stay in a neutral state of mind. Since we were successful the first time it is hard for many to think it will not happen for us again. Plus it is not like people can say "you know you might not be so blessed this time". It is a catch 22. Wish I could turn my mind off but I want to talk about it. I want to discuss it but I don't want to get my hopes up. How do you do that? To be optimistic but cautious. To think you are going to be able to expand your family but say you will be completely ok if you don't. And to know your chances are limited. Very limited. Maybe only one or two more chances at the most. I guess it would be the equivalent for all the healthy sexually reproductive couples out there to say "ok we only get to have sex during ovulation only two more times in our lifetime". How horrible would that be? How slim their chances would be to have children. It sounds so sad in those terms and that is what we face. BUT I know we do have Kiyah. Our reality is not as harsh as some. To think she started out in a petri dish and grew in a lab until she was five days old is insane. I look at her sometimes and think "how did you survive". It breaks my heart to think about it. She was a fighter from the beginning. Will we be blessed with 1, 2, 3 more fighters. Or will we have the reality of finding out that none of our children will be strong enough to make it. And have to think for the rest of our life about who they would have been, what they would have been, their features, their laugh, their smile. Sometimes I wonder if it is more mentally exhausting knowing you have seven created children. I know I will mourn the loss for each of them. I just pray that some of them hang on and make it. Our little fighters.

Off we go....I think

So we had our appointment on Friday. It was weird but successful. We were the ONLY couple there. This practice is huge space wise. It takes up an entire floor of a hospital. And we were it. That was weird. Plus most of the staff was different. I was hoping to work with some of the same people we had worked with before. The new ones were nice but I was expecting the same. It is kind of like when you go to the gyno for a pap smear. Would you want someone else doing that if you were not expecting it? I don't think so. I am sure I will get used to the new ones though. We will see them a zillion times over the next few months.

My Dr was in surgery when we arrived so we waited and waited and waited. This is a slow form of torture for Karlis. He gets where he cannot sit still. So he starts exploring. I somehow feel it is in my best interest not to put on the internet what he does while waiting in a room. It is kind of like search and rescue and anything is fair game. I will leave it at that. He did at one point turn to me and say he wished that they had an eye chart available. I asked him if he even knew what doctor we were visiting that day. But by the end of our appointment I was surprised myself that we indeed did not have to do an eye exam. They asked some of the most irrelevant questions. Since we are using our frozen embryos a genetic history is null at this point. They are fertilized already with our sperm and eggs. What can they do at this point if they find out Cousin Eddie has only 8 toes and barks like a dog on occasion. What difference does it make if Karlis takes a multivitamin? Will this help my uterus be a happy place and except the frozen 3? And probably the craziest thing they did was take his blood pressure and weight. If his blood pressure had been high would they have provided counseling to calm his nerves? Will they monitor his weight from here on out just to make sure he is the one who is not pregnant? I swear some of it was just a waste of time. Maybe they were stalling until the Dr came out of surgery. I would have rather played hop scotch down the hall.

After speaking with the Dr we have learned that 80% of our embryos should survive the thaw. We have chosen to implant three. This is what we did with Kiyah's cycle. They will thaw three on the day of implantation and if one, two or three does not survive they will thaw one, two or three more. Surely we will end up with three to implant if 80% should survive. It takes 2-3 hours for them to thaw. I told him my concerns if we end up with only one left after we have 3 implanted. I was hoping he would say he would implant four just so we did not have to go through another cycle for one embryo. Instead he looked at me like I was nuts. So we will let the cards fall as they may.

I will begin the cycle in September and we will implant them sometimes in October. Although the cycle is not as long and they do not harvest eggs it sounds really similar. They will suppress my hormones and make me go through a menopausal state. This is with the shots in the stomach. Then they will jump start my system with a period and slowly make my body think it is pregnant. This will be a 21 day time span. The two weeks up to ovulation and then the week after. They have to do my drugs perfectly to match what it should be for a five day old embryo. These 21 days will be the hip shots. Then if I do get pregnant the hip shots will continue until my body knows what it is supposed to do. I am sure there are other things thrown in there for fun like the drugs I take by mouth, the cream that had to be inserted you know where, etc. I can sense my readers slowly dropping off one by one at the thought of this.

So after you see the Dr you get to see the.....dum da da dum............financial counselor. They do not let you leave the place without stopping here first. They get your mind full of the thought of having another child and how it can be a possibility for you and then they LOWER THE BOOM. It is awkward. I still hate having to pay for my children. I know they are worth every penny but DANG. So at this time we have decided to accept any and all donations. We know how you all hate you did not have to pay for your unborn child upfront so we are giving this opportunity to you now. We are anticipating how excited you all are and what a great investment this will be. The gift of life, right? Ok, ok, I am joking........sort of.

I will post again as soon as I figure out more of our schedule. They do not share any of this info until they have money in hand. Karlis and Kiyah will be washing cars and selling doughnuts at 4 way stops to pick up a little more change. After all Kiyah knows the value of how important this is. It is as simple as this.......it gave her life.

Round Two

We are at it AGAIN. This is the day I have been excited, nervous and anxious about since we had Kiyah. Tomorrow we go to our in-vitro doctor and discuss our "options". A flood of memories come back. The constant questions of what if it happens again for us and what if it doesn't. What if we do all the preparation and our seven (five day old) embryos do not survive their frozen state. What if we go through it all and get nothing and we have wasted all that money. To be honest, I am so sick of asking these questions. There is one good thing about doing this now. Maybe we will be successful and never have to do it again. Then the questions will stop. Finally. Silence.

I called and got my appointment and the receptionist said that I would be considered a "new patient". This immediately ticked me off. Me, a new patient...are you kidding me? I gave these people a good 6 months of my life. I gave these people a great amount of money. These people have our seven babies hanging out there in a frozen state.....and I am new? I don't think so. I have been there, done that and have a child to prove it. I am family. I am a repeat VIP guest. I am someone that boosted their success rates. I am anything but "new". New is scary. New means you have no idea what you are facing. New means anything I am not. So.....this is starting out great, huh?

So I will try and post tomorrow what we find out. I know there is a complete physical, woo hoo! Not sure about blood work but I imagine so. Not sure about looking at the woman bits but that could be expected too. Really anything goes at these appointments. I wouldn't be surprised if they asked me to do the splits. I could sense this was something they wanted to ask before but never did. I am ready this time.

My hips have silently started screaming. They are scared, frightened and asking me to consider my thighs instead for hormone injections. They are not team players. I don't blame them. Karlis will have to polish up on his shot giving ability. Maybe it is like riding a bike. Let's hope so cause I will be the one to test this theory out.

On another note Kiyah is great. Karlis and I are greatly enjoying this age. She does have some of the drama that goes along with 2 year old children but for the most part she is a lot of fun. Talking up a storm and repeating everything you say. LOOK OUT! We do live with a hockey player with broken English at times. She has learned a lot of Latvian. It is so cute to hear her count. Such a joy and blessing she is. I would do in-vitro 100 times over just to have her again. I hope I can say the same with this next cycle and that we will reap the rewards of a new little one(s).