Eight is great

My sister went for her first monitoring b/w and u/s appointment since starting stims this past Monday evening and she's got 8 follicles - 6 on one side and 2 on the other. Not super fantastic, but it is what it is. The donor coordinator nurse (who's also been calling me directly with info) said the 2 were on the side where the cyst had been - "I think we told you about the cyst at her initial b/w and u/w appointment, right?" Well, no, you didn't. Apparently they did tell my sister but my sister didn't know it could potentially be a problem (and they didn't tell her it would be.) So, anyhow, Mr.Right and I talked it over last night and decided we would have in all likelihood gone forward with this cycle anyhow, even if we had known about the cyst (which was not producing estrogen). First, we've delayed and delayed (first because of my pregnancy, then because of my sister's breast biopsy) and we are just ready to get this thing done - both for our sakes (since putting it off runs us close to babygirl's arrival date) and for my sister's and BIL's sake (we feel we only want to drag out their offer/commitment to this just so long); and secondly while communication from our clinic is not always perfect we have come to trust the judgement of Dr.Dry and feel like if he thought there would have been a better chance in another cycle he would have let us know that.

And, really? Eight is great. It's more than I ever had on day 4 of stims and something must be going right because they decreased my sister's Gonal-f from 150iu to 112 iu per day. She's actually responding to the stims well. And I *never* did that. I mean, I was incredulous when they told me she'd only have to take injections once per day. And we've combined the Gonal-f and Menopur into one shot, so until she adds the Ganirelix/Cetrotide she's only had to have one injection per day! I was always on injections morning and night and was taking max dosage of everything - resulting in, at the most, 4 eggs retrieved.

So, we're hopeful those 8 follicles with have some nicely developed, not overly-drugged eggs at retrieval sometime the end of next week. Meantime, my sister and BIL are doing great with the shots themselves. They're both biologists so they at least have some familiarity with lab-type stuff - measures in iu's, even syringes and stuff. I'm just the drug-runner right now, getting Freedom Fertility deliveries to my house and running them over to theirs (an hour's drive) so they don't have to sit around and wait for the FedEx man to come.

Meanwhile, babygirl continues her gymnastics/soccer goal-kicking routine on a regular basis which makes me nothing but extremely happy. I have been worrying just a tad about my weight - in that I'm not gaining much. But Mr.Right tells me my belly looks bigger and bigger to him and despite the occasional (ok, becoming more frequent) soft-serve ice cream cone habit in the afternoon, I feel like I'm eating well (healthily) and I am walking 3 miles a day. And I have gained 15.5 pounds (or maybe 20.5 if you start from week 4 or so of my pregnancy since I lost 5 pounds from conception to then). And my OB said she's happy with more than 10 lbs and less than 100. :-) And I still have 8.5 weeks to go.

Luckily, we'll be getting a look-see at babygirl again on August 10 which, for some reason, seems like an exceedingly long way off.

Meanwhile, I continue to remind myself (despite my minor day-to-day silly worries) that we are extremely lucky to have this miraculous last-good-needle-in-a-haystack-egg-of-mine pregnancy as well as the possibility of a backup/2nd pregnancy opportunity with an egg of my sister's.

One year to the day

We have a lot to be grateful for 365 days after utter devastation. I'm 30w4d pregnant with a genetically normal baby girl who is measuring right on track for growth. I appear to be a long way from seeing this kid as my cervix is long and very closed and I've not had a whiff of contractions. Plus, my sister is, as of this morning, launched on a stim/retrieval cycle from which she will donate her eggs to us for our future use. How blessed we are.

I teared up a few days ago thinking about where we were last year on this date - having my NT scan which led to having a D&C a year ago tomorrow.

Interestingly, it was just as annoyingly hot last year these days too. How do I remember this? Because 2 days after my D&C we hosted a bbq for my sister and family (including my 2 nephews), Mr.Right's sister and her boys, Mr.Right's best man and family (including two of our flower girls) and one of my bridesmaids and her family (including our 3rd flower girl). Yes, 7 kids running around my house (ok, 2 weren't walking yet) and it was 104 degrees outside. And, the only people who knew about our news was my sister and BIL. It was so hot, we grilled the hot dogs and sausages outside and spent the rest of the afternoon/evening inside.

It was the best of times (our 4 nephews getting to play altogether and our favorite little girls too!) and the worst of times (trying to hold all the hurt and anger and disappointment in about our lost baby.)

Anyhow, I'm so glad to be in a *very* different place this year. It's such a cliche to look at all we went through to get here and say, 'well, it's made us appreciate it more' but, I think it has - at least in some ways. I wouldn't wish on us to have had to go through all that, but it is what it is and I have a different appreciation for being this pregnant than I think I might have had had it been easy. I'm not sure what that gets us - hopefully not becoming helicopter parents because of the preciousness of this baby - but it's worth observing.

I wish the blessing of better days on anyone out there who's still in a similar place to where we were at this time last year.

The Elderly Gravida advantage

Oh yeah, this is my new favorite phrase, "elderly gravida." So much more pleasing to the ear than advanced maternal age, don't you think?!? :-) (I only just realized that the ICD-9 code that gets checked on my monthly growth monitoring ultrasounds at the MFM is labeled 'elderly gravida.')

But seriously, it is an advantage. Monthly ultrasounds (henceforth minus the transvaginal for cervix check since they say it's not worth checking the cervix after 34 weeks) are great! We saw babygirl again this past Wednesday. She's now frank breech (last month she was head down) but there's still plenty of time for her to turn. In fact, given the movement in the last few days, I'm not so sure she hasn't already. We also saw her taking a sip of amniotic fluid.

Next ultrasound in another 4 weeks. And, as mentioned, they'll just be checking growth. Apparently, what they're worried about is that in the latter part of the pregnancy for the elderly gravida (yep, that's me), there can be a tendency for the placenta to start to not function quite as well, leading to a slow-down in growth (nourishment) of the baby. So, far, though, she's right on target. Her head is still measuring a little on the relatively larger side at 30w1d (I was 29w3 days on the day of the scan) although her femur was measuring only 28w4d (we're both short so no real surprises there.) 17 on the amniotic fluid index (which should be between something and 20 apparently) so this is good. Cervix is even longer than past measurements at 4.6

The MFM also recommended that I start weekly non-stress tests at 34weeks. Am going to check with my regular OB whether they do this in their office or whether I need to go the antenatal center (where I see the MFM docs and get my ultrasounds since my OB doesn't have an ultrasound machine.)

We've been fine-tuning my sister's schedule. It looks like she'll be finishing up bc pills the end of this next week and have bloodwork/ultrasound evaluation done next Thursday morning. We've jiggered things enough, we think, that her first stim med injections will be the following Monday evening. (My sister and her family are going to my parents' lake cottage Saturday and driving home Monday afternoon) That way I'll be able to go over and help her with her first injections. Retrieval should be around August 4 or 5. That will wrap things up nicely for us to go on our beach week vacation on the 14th. Of course, as you all well know, count on *nothing* when doing any infertility treatments, so I'm prepared (I think) for this all to go kerflooey. But, I am hoping that my sister's body is much better behaved than mine (at least in terms of IVF med response.)

Still on track with everything

Yikes! It's been almost 2 weeks since I've posted anything. I've been catching up on my reading today, having been without much internet access at my parents' lake cottage all last week. It was a wonderful week, though! Mr.Right was there for the long 4th weekend and then the pup (she's 11 months old now!) stayed with me for the rest of the week (along with my parents). Babygirl was kicking up a storm all week! I wasn't sure if it was because I noticed it more - sitting around more than when I'm home - or because she's just more active now. Maybe a little bit of both.

We had the talk with my sister and BIL last night. They were at the lake cottage over the 4th too, but obviously with my parents there and their two little boys running around we didn't get a chance to talk there. So, last night we were going to drive over to their house, but Mr.Right had a cold and our oldest nephew was going to be getting home later than usual (and therefore getting into bed later than usual) and we just decided it would make for a late night to start out the work week. So, we skyped. Yes, we live about an hour's drive from each other on either side of the city, but we skyped nevertheless. Actually, it worked just fine.

So, the upshot of the conversation seemed mostly to be a concern by my sister and BIL that *we* might feel obligated to go through with paying for an IVF cycle with my sister just because she continues to be willing to do so. What with my being pregnant (29 weeks, 1 day!) and it looking like we actually might have a baby at the end of September, they just wanted to make sure we were still really wanting to do this.

With anybody other than my sister, I might be inclined to take this as a polite, but backhanded way of saying that *she* really didn't want to do this anymore. But I know my sister: if she didn't want to do this anymore, I think she'd feel comfortable in just saying that. And my BIL too. And, as Mr.Right pointed out, my sister has been more than willing to do the follow-up consult with Dr.Dry, is already on birth control pills and is making plans for the last little things she needs to wrap up (getting her latest pap smear results faxed over to the clinic; having a phone consult with a lawyer about the draft donor contract we sent them for their review and input). And, presumably, she would be not going forward with these things - or, at least, dragging her feet on them - if it was really the case that she decided she didn't want to move forward.

So, as Mr.Right said, "leave it to your sister to be concerned that *we* might feel obligated to move forward." That's pretty much just who she is.

They also wanted to talk about a bunch of things that really weren't in our scenario set when we last talked all 4 of us together (when I wasn't pregnant yet - although, as Mr.Right pointed out - we probably conceived the next morning after we all sat together on the evening of January 31 deciding to go forward with this.) Like, we'll probably now have a baby genetically linked to both me and Mr.Right and how is a potential younger sibling going to feel when they find out they were conceived differently? I pretty much have decided that given the number of blogs I follow that have siblings from different avenues of conception and/or adoption, somebody out there will probably have some advice to share with us when/if we get there.

And, frankly, there's *always* something that siblings are aware of that they have/don't have compared to the other(s). For me, it was "why did my sister get pretty red hair (and curls too!) and I got this brown hair that nobody oohs and aahs over?" Or, "why did my sister turn out skinny and me fat?" and I know my sister wanted my straight hair. Ok, maybe these are not as big of an issue as, "why did my older sister get mommy's eggs and I got Auntie's eggs?" but I think they're concerns that are at least along the same lines. And who knows, at certain ages, the hair color thing (or the fat/thin thing) might actually feel more important to our child than where the eggs that made them came from.

I was actually more concerned in the discussion with my sister and BIL about whether my sister will feel like all her efforts will have been wasted *if* we somehow miraculously get pregnant with my own eggs again. Or - although this is really inconceivable (ha ha!) at this point - we decide not to have a second child after having a first (or if, god forbid, something happens to me that makes me unable to carry a second baby.) My sister didn't feel like her eggs would be 'losing out' :-) and really didn't think the imposition of injections/retrieval over ~ 14 days of her life was big enough to warrant feeling regret for having gone through this and then having us not use her eggs.

So, it looks like we're still on track. We're tying up some lose ends (that contract; fine-tuning the stim schedule) but we may be at retrieval as early as August 4.

I remarked to Mr.Right later last night that while I think we were both a little nervous and worried about the conversation last night I just marvel at how much less stressful the whole thing is given the fact that I'm pregnant already. I can just imagine how much more desperate I would have felt having this conversation looming if we weren't pregnant.

Anyhow, regarding that pregnancy: BORING! And I love it that way :-)

Went to the OB today and really didn't have much to talk about. We asked a question about tetanus and pertussis vaccinations and the answer was that I'd get a Tdap at the hospital after delivery. We said we might have more questions after our tour of the hospital tomorrow night and childbirth class (the express version) on July 30. Babygirl's heartbeat was 142 and I'm measuring (fundal height) spot on at 29weeks and a couple of days.

We have our monthly growth scan/cervix check ultrasound this coming Wednesday so we'll get to see Babygirl then. I can't wait!!!