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!!)