Someone PLEASE, knock me up!

I have 12 vials of meno.pur available to anyone who wants them.   The expiration date is 09/07.   I spoke to an ob/gyn about expiration dates on medicine.  She told me that the expiration date doesn’t mean the medicine no longer works — it only means that the pharmaceutical company only tested it’s efficiency for that period of time and then stopped testing it.  So, if you are cycling anytime this year, it would probably be fine.   Send me an email if you or someone you know is interested.

Not much happening here.  After I spoke to A on the phone last week I sent her an email just reiterating our conversation and telling her we definitely wanted to pursue the adoption with her.   She hasn’t responded.   While a part of me is hugely excited, a part of me thinks she might change her mind.   I don’t have any indicators from what she said on the phone so maybe it is just my pessimistic nature taking over.  It is just so early, and I can only imagine it is so hard to give a baby up, that of course she will change her mind.   We are supposed to find out if it is a boy or a girl late next week as A goes back in for an ultrasound and some other tests that she couldn’t remember what they were called.   Right now, I am not yet invested but I know as soon as I hear the gender I’m done for.   There won’t be any way I will be able to stop myself from dreaming…and naming the baby.   Once I put a name to it I will lose all perspective and will no longer say “it” when talking about it.  It will be human and real and hopefully mine and my SBs someday.  But, oh how I fear wanting it so much and then it all falling apart.    I have to find some way to keep distance (at least a little bit.)    It is still so very early, only 14/15 weeks.   Please don’t let her change her mind.

 
Kleb.siella – oh yes, the title of my post.   Kleb.siella is a bacteria that lives in our bodies (along with so many others) and is helpful to our digestion and bow.el.  However, I have been told that if it gets into the pros.tate (where it normally doesn’t reside) of men it can have a negative affect on fertility.   Guess who has Kleb.silla in his pros.tate?   One guess, yes you are correct – SB.   This came up in the cultures our RI did two weeks ago.   Guess who is now on a potent medication called ?cithro? .    I actually don’t know what it is called but both SB and I are on it.  I have to take it 2 times per day for 7 days and SB has to take it for 14 days.   It is yucky and makes you feel sick to your stomach along with giving you gas.  Oh yes, it is a joy.    We don’t know if this is an Aha moment for us but we are willing to give it a try.

 
You might ask why we are still working with an RI when an adoption is imminent.  The answer is that I’m too scared the adoption will go tits up and then where will we be.   I think it is wise for us to continue on our course with the RI.    Testing is only testing.   We don’t have any plans for another IVF (although I haven’t told my clinic yet) nor do we have any plans for an IUI.   We will take this slowly.  We will take the antibiotic and DIY at home and see what happens, but really, we know what happens – nada, zippo, zilch, etc.

 
That’s all I’ve got people.   I hope you are all well.

Okay, I can’t remember if I blogged about this in the past or not.  I had written a post but can’t recall if I actually posted it or just thought to let it go as it was SUCH a longshot.  Anyway, about a month or so ago, during the middle of my two-week-wait for IVF#3 I got a phone call from my sister asking me if SB and I had ever thought about adopting.  I asked her why she was asking, did she know someone who was going to need adoptive parents.  She said yes, she thought she might know someone but she wasn’t 100% sure.  The story is that she knows of a young lady (18) who had just found out she was pg.  She had broken up with her boyfriend and was ready to start college this fall.  My sister told me she didn’t know what the young lady (we’ll call her A) had decided.  Was she going to abort it?  Was she going to have it?  If she did have it was A keeping it or giving it up for adoption.  My sister just didn’t know but wanted to know if SB and I were interested if she could tell A about us and then A could have us in mind as she went through her decision process.   At that point, although I was totally focused on IVF#3, I told my sister yes, we would be interested in at least talking with A about it if she wanted to explore the option.  Long story short, I let it go out of my mind b/c what a longshot right?  And, I was hoping one of the seven.dwarfs would make it.   Anyway, my sister called me today and told me that A had decided she does want to give her baby up for adoption.   I was really surprised as I had truly forgotten about it.   My sister said that A had asked us to call her to talk about the possibility of SB and I adopting her baby.  I was totally surprised and happy and scared and well, everything.  SB and I talked about it a bit and we have a couple of areas of concern — well really, just one area of concern — since this would be an open adoption how much (or how little) contact does A want to have in the child’s life.  I feel very strongly about the idea of open adoption, but I don’t know what my limits would be.  I think a letter and photos every year would be great but I am a bit scared about the idea of actually meeting and hanging out together periodically.   SB is very nervous about open adoption b/c he is scared that although this 18 year old young lady seems very sure right now about adoption, how will she feel in 10 years.   Will A have such regrets that she arrives on our doorstep or at one of the meetings tell our child that she is his/her real mom.   SB and I would both be so nervous that something like that could mess with a kids mind.   We would always want our child to know he/she was adopted and we’d love to know that if the child wanted contact at some time in the future when he/she was older (16ish +) that he/she could contact A.  SB is just so nervous about her showing up on our doorstep — that’s what he keeps going back to.   I think as much as you can make it a part of the childs consciousness the less traumatic it would be overall and if the child knows that he/she could contact bio-mom that would be even better.   But is it better to let there be real contact over the years?   Does the bio-mom decide 10 years down the road that it was all a terrible mistake and she wants our child?   How does this work?   These are the questions we have and I love SB so much b/c after A and I spoke he got on the computer and started researching open.adoption, how it works, and what studies have been made to see if the children fare better or worse.  Because although he is totally nervous with the idea of there being real, face-to-face contact over the years he really would want what was best for our kid and would try to put away his fears if it really is better for the child.  He is good that way - v. open minded about most things and not afraid of having his mind changed if it is the right thing to do. 

Anyway, that is where I am tonight and why I am up posting at 1:00 a.m.  I can’t sleep b/c there is too much going on in my mind.   A wasn’t sure what she want’s regarding how she would be a part of our child’s life so we left it with her planning on thinking about what would make her comfortable and getting back to us and with us doing our research to see if we could  make it all work in the scheme of our whole family life.

Quietly freaking out over here.

Well, it looks like this non-assisted cycle is about to be a bust.   On Friday and Saturday night both I have had some dot-like cramps.   Also, my temp has dropped 3/10th of a point over the past two days.  Oh well, I knew it was wacky to think it was actually possible for it to work for us.  The weird thing is that starting this morning my ( Y )s became a bit more tender — oy!  this is soooo confusing.

Other than that all is well so far.  I saw the in-laws last night for dinner and my MIL only said two things to me that made me cringe.  One was that she reminded me about her closest girlfriend who is 9 years younger than she is and now has a third great-grandchild.   And, she said to me that I needed to finally tell her my secret about how old I am going to be on Tuesday (41 btw), but really my age has NEVER been a secret to her or to anyone.  I think she was just trying to remind me that my time is running out and by virtue of that her’s is too.    Did I tell you all that within 3 minutes of our VERY FIRST MEETING, while still standing in the entry-way of their home, she put her little old lady finger in my face and asked me when I was going to give her a grandchild.  Hahahaha - lots of real (not) laughter followed that little statement.  Talk about an awkward moment.   Well, she hasn’t let up since and that was in 2003.  Now she has a long-awaited grandchild (thanks BIL & SIL) and I thought she would be happy with that and not say anything to me — boy was I wrong.  

Oh well, SB and I get to take them out to lunch today.   The one nice thing about having them here is that we get to eat out in a lot of restaurants and in NYC there are some great restaurants.  The rest of the time we eat at home as SB likes to cook (weird I know).   The weather here is beautiful in the low 70s and I think SB and I may go order a new sofa after lunch.  Woo Hoo.

Take care everyone.

Hi everyone:  Sorry for the long hiatus.  It doesn’t feel like very much has been happening in Knock Me Up world but that isn’t the truth of it. 

Last week I went to the RI for a post.coital test and some cervical cultures.  My SB also did another semen.analysis and they are also doing some cultures on that.  The post.coital didn’t happen as I ovulated a day early so we may have to do it next cycle.  I have also gone for every-other-day progesterone blood draws and yesterday I got 12 vials of blood drawn for the Thrombo.philia panel.  We should have results on all the cultures and the Thrombo.philia panel by late next week.   Tomorrow I go for another progesterone blood draw and my first beta for this cycle.  It is only 9dpo and CD21 overall and I’ve never had a beta this early but this is the way the RI says we’ll know if I’m getting pg and miscarrying or not. 

This doctor is very different than other doctors.  When we realized I had already ovulated and we couldn’t do the post.coital I said oh well, we’ll do it next month he smiled and said maybe there won’t be a need to do it next month.  It was quite sweet and I wistfully recalled the days when I believed there was a chance of spontaneous pregnancy.  Ah yes, I remember it well.  I think I just said umm hmm to him though.  I mean how naïve can a person be!  Sweet and annoying all at the same time.  Who knew.

Anyway, that’s the story of my life right now.  The in-laws are coming this weekend to see their first grandchild so I have that JOY (not) to contend with.  What makes it worse is that it is my birthday next week and we have to spend it with them and it is my FIL’s birthday too.  I do not enjoy spending time with my in-laws.  They are very nice it’s just that my FIL tells the same stories EVERY SINGLE TIME I see him and my MIL speaks in English and Spanish simultaneously with a little bitty voice so I can barely understand her AND she is hard of hearing but won’t use a hearing aid b/c they are for old people (she’s 79).  So it is joy joy joy for my birthday next week.   Oh yeah, I’m sure they’ll be asking us over and over again when we are going to give them a grandchild too.  They’ll be sure to let us know we are losing the race and need to get on it. 

I’ll let you know if anything comes up on the beta but I don’t think I’m really expecting anything at this point.  I only have tender b(_) (_)bs and that is all.

So, I’m going to give it a try and jump back into the blog pool.  I haven’t been completely gone as I’ve been checking on some of you.  Such great news going around right now for a few of you.  Of course, there is also the sad news of negative betas still going on.  When will the negative beta epidemic end?  I’m so sorry to all of you ladies out there struggling with bad news.  It is so hard and so sad.  I’m still in the midst of it myself but trying very hard to keep moving forward.

As for moving forward, I have to send a shout out of thanks to Linda over at I’ve got bad plumbing.  She mentioned something in one of her comments that helped me get a second wind.  She said after 3 IVfs and 12 embryo transfers that I should think about implantation failure.  Duh, big light went off over my head (I’m a bit slow somedays).  It would seem that as she mentioned to me, even if ALL of the embryos were chromosomally abnormal wouldn’t it make sense that something in all of those IVFs and all those embryos would stick even if it turned out to be a chemical, blighted ovu.m, early miscarriage.  She made some great suggestions and this afternoon I saw a Reproductive Immunologist. 

It was great.  After he introduced himself (hi call me “by my first name”) he said, I’m so sorry you’ve gone through 3 IVFs.  And then he launched into our history.  After giving him all the info (took an hour) he suggested to us that based on our history and all my symptoms each cycle he thinks I may have gotten pregnant several times over the past two years and lost it by day 27 or 28 of my cycle.  Among many things he wants me to do beta’s on CD23 or CD24.  NEVER have I heard a dr. suggest such an early beta.  He gave me blank blood work orders for me to get the blood test on any month I feel anything might be even a little bit different.   We are going to do a throm.bophilia panel and a partial milla.nova panel.

Who knows if we will find anything, but at least we are trying to do something else to stack the deck in our favor as much as possible.  It just seems we could keep doing the same thing with Dr. 10YO and possibly continue to have the same negative affect but why wouldn’t we at least turn over a few stones if we can. 

Overall, I feel much better than just contemplating one more IVF and a spectacular 7 dead embryo failure.  I know that if I do do one more IVF and it fails as badly as this last one, I would be DONE DONE DONE.  I have been in so much pain — I didn’t know I was capable of feeling so horrible while still being alive.  I really would not be able to continue.  I think working with this doctor for a bit is worth it b/c I’ll feel at least we didn’t just keep trying and failing at the same old thing each time.

I will try to make a sweep of everyone’s blogs and check in and comment but in the meantime take care.