San Francisco is always a good idea!

So this will go down in history as the best idea my husband has ever had.

While laying in bed one night soon after our first follow up appointment with our Reproductive Endocrinologist, listening to me cry over the excruciatingly long timeline for our frozen embryo transfer, my husband brilliantly says "lets take a trip- lets go to San Francisco!" At that moment my sniffling stopped, looked up at him and said, "really?" and seconds later  I was on my phone looking at all of our airline apps to see which airlines we had enough points with to book the flight! 

Next up was calling my roommate from college, Kelly, who just so happened to move there 5 years ago and just so happens to have a spare bedroom. 

The trip came together quickly but we had to wait to book until aunt flow arrived so I could have my follow up appointments completed, blood draw and sonohysterogram -I only mention this because i want to document that all looked good and we were given the go ahead for our Frozen Embryo Transfer at next cycle - HOORAYY! But this post is not about my infertility, it's going to be about SF. See life still can happen even when 99.5% of the time you are only thinking about making babies. (that sounds kinky, but its not.. my baby is a science baby, made with love and SCIENCE!) 

After some minor inconveniences with our flight we arrived in SF at 2 AM on Friday and proceeded to hit the hay at Kellys!

Friday AM we actually made it out the door before 8:30 AM. Yay me, I'm still really not even sure how I pulled off dragging Eddie out of bed. Kelly lives in Russian Hill which is a great central location, we were able to walk to the Embarcadero where we had a trip scheduled to Alcatraz at 10 AM.  We stopped for breakfast at a cute bfast place 8 AM. 

Avocado Toast 3 Ways, paired with the yummiest fruit. We haven't quit hit yummy fruit season on the east coast so this lil bowl of fruit made my morning. 

The only downside of the weekend was RAIN. It was literally 70s and sunny the week before we got there. But I knew rain was in our future all weekend so we didn't let it get us down!

Ferry over and touring Alcatraz....

After our tour was over we headed on back to the mainland and decided on some lunch. We made our way to Brixton in the Marina . Then walked around the Marina for some shopping and coffee @ Wrecking Ball. I mean I had to get a pic in front of this wallpaper!!!

But lets talk about what transpired before this picture... I ordered my mocha in a pretty little "for here" cup knowing full well I wanted to get a pic with it in front of this Pineapple Wall. Drink comes I pull it up to my face smile for the camera then BAM. Mocha down, all over my only pair of leggings I brought for the trip! #fail. 

I somehow convinced Eddie we needed to stop in Lululemon for a backup pair of leggings. #score

Which brings me to lulu leggings - this is my first pair and holy cow where have these been all my life. I got the High Times full on, and holy suck in. I've read there is a pilling issue, so the jury's still out with last ability. Good thing lulu has the best exchange policy ever. 

Once Kelly got out of work we met her back at her place to get ready for the night out.

Can we talk about this view from her apartment? NO that is not us photo shopped in there! 

Our first nights dinner did not disappoint! They brought us to Tosca, and it was heavenly. We ordered 2 orders of the Chicken dish. Which I would eat every day for the rest of my life if I could. It takes about an hour to prepare so if you go order it right away!

Us prior to devouring our chicken... what not all of your husbands carry clutches out at night?! ;)

The night ended with lots of cocktails and bouncing around the city. 

Day 2 started with brunch at Original Joe's SF. YUM. we then made our way over to AT&T Stadium so Eddie could see the park. It was pretty neat and I wouldn't hate if Fenway was surrounded by water. Looks like a really awesome place to catch a game or just watch from one of the nearby bars.

 Now its right after noon time so we feel its appropriate to get a wine tasting in @ Bluxome Street Winery. A few drinks later and we are on way to a boozy SF day of fun.

At this point we are brainstorming our next food break. With so many options in this city it was a bit overwhelming for me, loving food the way I do.. ha. 

We decided on Mexican but we weren't quite ready yet so we headed over to the Haight for some cocktails at Alembic. 

Our last full day, damn that went quick.. we headed over to Sonoma. The weather looked promising as we crossed the Golden Gate!

Our first up and only outdoor tasting was at Gloria Ferrer. Which just so happened to be our cheapest since Visa Signature members get free tastings.. just an FYI :) 

Second up Jacuzzie, where you could taste wine, olive oil & shop! I loved the Olive Oil tastings here at the Oil Press. Wine was equally delicious, we ended our visit with port in chocolate "shot" glasses.

Last up Imagery & Benzinger, sister wineries. We ended up becoming members at Imagery and I'm already dreaming of our first shipment in April, however, on second thought I HOPE I can't drink it!

and that my friends, was the result of the best idea my husband has ever had.

Staying occupied: Bedroom Update!

So there are a TON of projects I want to get done prior to bringing home our baby to this house. I am making the best of this in between waiting time to start on these projects. Hey make lemonade out of lemons right?! I have some more months on my hands to get these things done! 

A few weeks ago we finally starting tackling our bedroom. We live in a small cape house so our ceilings are slanted on the upstairs of our house. This makes room arranging very difficult! 

When we moved into the house we had the room flip flopped so our bed was facing the window vs underneath it. And with this set up every morning when I woke up I banged my head on that damn ceiling getting out of bed. So for about a year I talked about switching the room around and FINALLY Eddie agreed to the project!

And since we were moving things around, we might as well paint right?!

Lighting is awful in these pics. Still using my iphone camera for everything even though I purchased a fancy new DSLR a few months ago! 

So here's the progression:

Paint: Benjamin Moore Cashmere Gray... has a green undertone as you can see!

Now that we had the bed under the window we needed a headboard so we headed to the Boston Interiors warehouse sale and picked up this tufted beauty!!! 

But still I was not finished! That gross blind had to go! I loved the look of the wood plantation like shutter blinds so we got some affordable faux wood blinds from Home Depot

Next up! Walk in closet redo!! 

The Shittiest post ever

I've been putting off opening up this blog for the past week. The fact that I had already started my 5 week bump update post makes me cringe. CRINGE. because I only made it to 6 weeks before the baby just stopped growing so there's that. Well at least I never hit publish.. I really don't want to have to look at that post again. I will share this picture... 

So what happened.. I'm currently waiting for that answer. Praying it was chromosomal and not me. If its chromosomal I get to have the reassurance that our baby really wasn't meant to be. If its something with me, then man, we have a lot more problems than I thought. We should find out by today.. so I've been on pins and needles all week. 

This IVF cycle was text book for me, I felt GREAT the whole time, barely minded the shots. Now I miss those damn shots. The day of my egg transfer I had acupuncture done then again a week letter, to really send the message home to my body. At the second appointment my acupuncturist said, wow you are SO lucky to have this worked your first try, text book! And as the weeks progressed I really kept thinking about how lucky we really were, too lucky. Part of me just had a gut feeling. I got through Christmas sober (no easy feat as we went away to NH skiing with my family) skiing without Apres.. is it even skiing at all? Luckily there wasn't any snow so that made life a little easier. Because man do I love a good Apres. 

We planned a trip to Park City Utah for New Years with my brother to ski. The day before the trip I was able to get into my RE for my 7 week ultrasound, I was SO happy to get this done prior to getting on a plane to set my mind at ease. At this appointment we were going to even get to hear the heartbeat. 

I settled into the usual position, had Eddie snap a pic, and you know what, in my head I said to myself, well this picture is going to be awful if we find out the baby didn't make it. See that gut feeling, creeping back in. Always trust the gut.

The ultrasound tech found the yolk sac showed us the baby all looked good but then she measured and she said just about 6 weeks. But wait that's a week behind, we should be 7 weeks.. man I have to wait another week for everything. weird.. These are all my thoughts. To think I was worried that I was going to have to wait an extra week to meet my baby. When really I should've been thinking... we did IVF the baby's "weeks/days" are down to a science, legit science, there is no way he should be measuring a week behind, that means somethings not right. 

But still that didn't hit me, we went back to the waiting room to wait for our RE. Oh did I mention it was the first sloppy snow of the season on this day. So our RE was running behind, we were the first appointment that morning. When we finally sat down with him the first words out of his mouth were I'm sorry, then it was slow motion from there. He said the baby stopped growing at 6 weeks and would not be progressing. I cant really remember a whole lot more from that convo, it wasn't very long. I did know that I had a trip plan to Utah in less than 24 hours. What the heck was I going to do. Well per the RE's suggestion we continued the progesterone shots so my body wouldn't miscarry while I was away. Makes sense, so we continued those damn butt shots every day while in Utah and I didn't miscarry there, thank god (gotta find the silver linings). But let me tell you, nothing made me more angry than continuing those stupid shots when they were all for nothing. We made the best of Utah, I really did let myself have a good time there and drinks were plentiful, putting life on hold back in New England.

Proving that I did enjoy my drinks while in Utah! :)

The story gets worse. And I keep asking myself is this real life? We got back from Utah on Tuesday early AM - i'm talking 2 AM. We walk into a freezing cold house. Heats broken, awesome. we go to bed anyway because we need to sleep, we had to be up at 6 AM to get out the door and head to our follow up ultrasound to confirm the baby is still not growing, a formality before my scheduled D&C.

Eddie followed me in his car to the appointment, but I didn't make it very far before getting into a 3 car accident on the highway. Seriously I can't make this up!

I wish I took a picture of my face, which face planted the steering wheel. And you know what I said when the a EMT came, I'M PREGNANT, but wait I'm actually not. Well luckily Eddie was close behind and helped get through the police questions and EMT checks. We decided we could still make it to our appointment. So we drove on, and received the confirmation that in fact our baby was not going to make it. We were more prepared this time with questions, and Eddie was really good at making sure we got them all asked. 

So the D&C happened  a week ago  on Thursday January 7th, its been ROUGH. A very emotional week. I'm finally starting to feel OK emotionally and pain wise. My nose is finally not swollen anymore and my black eye went away so that helps too. Talk about a LOT to process in a week. 

So there's that. I had a successful blissfully ignorant IVF cycle for up to 6 weeks. 

What's next? Well we wait. It could take up to 6 weeks or so until I get my period again. Then assuming my body checks out we will start the process for our Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET). We are SO lucky to have 4 frozen embryos waiting for us.  And I really hope our doctor recommends that we implant 2 this time. I just don't know if I can go through this again or go through a failed FET. With the 2 embryos it will up our chances, and of course up our chances of having multiples as well. But hell the negative Nancy in the back of my brain keeps creeping in.. what if those little embabies don't survive the thaw??!! god I can't let myself think those thoughts. not now. 

But hey, its a 3 day we weekend, and I'm still alive. things could be much worse.

XO

2 WEEK WAIT

Today was probably the only time I was looking forward to a Monday! But today brought me 1 day closer to my first BETA to see if our embryo decided to stick around or not!!

A lot has transpired in the past few weeks. I had all intention of updating as I was going along but then before I knew it I was getting wheeled in to get my eggs retrieved.

As seen here...

I can't believe how fast November went by, along with all those shots and blood draws! It all seems like a distant memory. That egg retrieval day, that day does not however! It was scheduled the day after Thanksgiving so  it was hard to think of much else on turkey day. 

I was absolutely petrified to get the IV in and be put to under anesthesia. 

The nurses at my center are nothing short than amazing though, and really treated me SO well. The poor nurse had to put in the IV as a sobbeddddd!  Yah that pic up there was all for show! 

The next thing I knew I was waking up asking Eddie "what did my mom and Collette [best friend] say when you sent them the picture?" yah thats what I was concerned about...

My second question however was the correct one, how many eggs??? Well I was very happy to hear 18!! That was a good number for me. Considering my follicles were a little late on the uptake to get to the perfect size around 18 MM 

For education sake, here is my last Ultra Sound Follicle numbers the day I triggered (shot in the heanie that allows for ovulation)

The day of and the day after the egg retrieval were ROUGH. The couch was my bff and it hurt to move an inch. Luckily I had 2 full days to recover. By Saturday we got the report that 15 out of the 18 eggs were Mature and of those 15, 14 fertilized with ICSI. This was GREAT news however I knew that as the days went on some eggs would  not progress to the next stages. 

Long story short we had 1 beautiful embryo ready to head on back in this past Wednesday 5 days after retrieval. 

I just got the news this afternoon that 4 have made it to the freezer! Happy tears flowing over here.  Although I am optimistic that the beautiful embryo pictured above is making itself home, just knowing we have some embryos on reserve without starting the whole IVF process all over again, to make *more* babies makes me so relieved.

So here I am today 6DP5DT (6 days past 5 day transfer) and PUPO (pregnant until proven otherwise) man do we love our acronyms. 

In other news we are living life as close to normal around these parts as well. Sans my glasses of wine at night of course! 

We got our tree up!

And I got my Christmas cards out nice and early, with all the extra time I had on my hands..

Day 1 Baseline - Cleared to Begin!

Happy FriYAY!

Today is a good Friday indeed!

Yesterday I got a call from my RE that the US tech wasn't available for my scheduled appointment Sat AM so I needed to come in today! (a day early!) ummm heck yes, music to my ears, another day less that I have to sit and wait and anticipate those bloody shots, LETS DO THIS!

So bright and early this AM we made a pit stop on our way to work for a lil blood work and ultrasound to kick off my baseline appointment!  

Clearly excited about this!

And get this, I am a HUGEEE (understatement) baby when it comes to needles. I know I know, there's going to be a lot more needles in my future so going into this I knew I needed to man up!

Upon entering my doctors office I see my good ol' friend who did my initial blood work - who was AWESOME, so I immediately get all excited and relieved and say "YOU DID MY BLOOD LAST TIME, THANK GOD!" no good morning, no Hi how yah doing... Well she laughed, and now I think we are BFFS.

Moving on.. Eddie's all "want me to come in" and I held my head high and went in myself! bing bang blood work DONE!

Next up Ultra Sound, it was actually kind of neat the tech was awesome and showed my how cool my uterus was on the screen. Then I even got to hold the clipboard and right down the size of my ovaries and follicles as she shouted them at me! AWESOME. It was actually a good experience and I said I would prefer an Ultra Sound over Blood Work any day and she kinda looked at me funny like that wasn't normal? 

So it's kinda frowned upon when injecting yourself with ovary stimulating hormones to consume alcohol. So apparently my ovaries are the only ones having any fun around here! 

This especially doesn't help when  around 2 pm today my boss set this frosty on my desk

And since I'm keeping this IVF stuff under wraps at work I had to pretend to drink this thing then throw the precious gods milk away. WOMP. 

Which brings me to tonight, the night Stims begin! 

Eddie had to work late so my parents came over for moral support while I injected my very first shot of Gonal F. I took it like a champpp if I don't say so myself! I definitely don't think I could've done it alone. Thank goodness for my family.. seriously it takes a village people!

So here I am now, in my first shot over with glory, and one step closer to getting a baby up in there. 

XO

Getting Real.. IVF.

So I'm gonna go right ahead and dive right into the most important thing that is going in on my life right now!!

I chopped my hair off!!

Kidding... although that was pretty life changing for me ;)

We've started our 1st (hopefully only) IVF cycle..

This pic has no relation to the post but it shows the excitement I feel!

The cycle began with 3 weeks of birth control, which of those 3 weeks I have 1 more pill to take so it ends today and I can't even tell you how thankful I am to not have to take these pills hopefully EVER again! I know it probably pails in comparison to the side effects I will feel once I start the injections but something about the BC pill just made me feel like I was reverting backwards from baby making... although I know that's silly as usually all IVF cycles begin with this pill!

Side effects from the pill: 

ACNE like CRAZY, HURTING I WANT TO HIDE ACNE

Mood swings

anxiety

DEPRESSION

The last time I was on the pill was when I was in college where I had bouts of depression and now I'm fairly certain these pills had at least something to do with it. 

Demon pills chased by wine:

We received our HUGE package of meds & supplies. Not gonna lie this was INTIMIDATING. I let it sit here on my dining room table for a good week before I even looked through it all. (I did make sure to find out which ones had to be in the fridge!) 

This is 7k worth of fertility meds people! 

I feel so bad ass having all of these needles and a sharps container in my house. HA. 

Ok a few things.. I am finally feeling GOOD and EXCITED about this process. That didn't come quickly for me though. I was mad at first. How is this fair?! Then I was scared, needles for 10-12 days up to 3 needles a day, 1 in the rear for 10 weeks assuming our sweet baby sticks! That shtz got me feeling queasy! And now finally EXCITED,  I can not WAIT for my baseline appointment which is scheduled for this Saturday @ 7 AM! If all goes well I will begin Stims that night or the next day.

So this is where we are now. If you would've told me 3 years ago that we would be here I would've never seen it coming.  Would I give anything to not have to go through IVF to bring our baby here? Yes. But honestly we did start trying just bout 3 years ago now and I am thankful that we had those 3 years to spend as newlyweds just the 2 of us. We both have grown and gotten to know each other more and more with every year (obviously) but now more than ever we both feel SO ready emotionally to be parents. Not to mention we had a heck of lot of fun traveling and doing whatever the heck we wanted the past few years!

Ok LASTLY, I've chosen to go public with this journey, personal preference. I am not that private of a person and I thrive off the support from my friends and family. In the past month of deciding to move ahead with IVF social media and blogs have been my bff I have spent countless hours reading what others have gone and are going through to help prepare me for this. I honestly don't know what I'd do without it! 

XO

I'm Back!

I never intended to let this little blog and outlet of mine go unattended to for so long. 

But I'm back! and hopefully I don't take another 3 year hiatus again anytime soon!

What's been going on with me since we left off. After moving back to Mass from Washington we had to wait about 6 months before our renter left our house so we continued to bounce between our parents' houses. Getting an apartment just didn't seem logical since I loathed the idea of unpacking and packing again!

When we moved back in the projects began, we painted, and repainted, updated the kitchen, fenced in the yard, added a patio, refinished the finished basement after a flood.. the updates to our little cape have been non stop but I've loved every second of it! 

What else, Eddie & I both have switched jobs since the move back. I lasted about 2 years with my first job in Boston and I really did love it and made some of the best friendships but I had to make a move to better my career. Same with Eddie, so we both took jobs out in Worcester... slightly less appealing location than Boston, and slightly is an understatement! But the jobs have been great for both of us. 

We've traveled, traveled traveled!!! 

Puerto Rico, Austin, Orlando, Ireland, South Carolina, France, Spain and lots of mini vacas within our home sweet little New England as well. 

PR - June 2013 (1 year anniversary!)

Christmas in Austin 2013

October 2013 in Disney!

Ireland August 2014

South Carolina April 2015- traveled with both our parents! 

France & Spain July 2015

and oh yah, I turned 30! and most recently 31! Yikes!!!

I commemorated my 31st with my first half marathon, the South Shore Half in Norwell!  at mile 11 I vowed to never run one again but right about the time of this pic holding back tears of accomplishment on beating the time I wanted, I could definitely seeing myself run again to beat my PR!

So that my friends is the past 3 years in a nutshell. Theres a lot more life updates that I will be sharing as well! So stay tuned! 

P.S. NO Idea what to name this lil ol blog of mine, word to the wise never include things that could change in your blog title (from Seattle with love just doesn't make sense anymore so I no longer live there!!)