11 year old Fashion Show

I took Delaney shopping for her birthday. After about 3 hours at Limited T.oo and Ko.hl's, she now has a new wardrobe. Here are some of the pictures of her new clothes.

Broken

Broken. That is how I feel right now. Every morning, I wake up and my DH gives me the damn shot that is bringing me closer to more pain that I'm sure that I will be able to handle. I have zero hope. I am not sure if this a realization of what I have been feeling for awhile, or if the is just one of the emotions that are involved in this messed up game called In Vitro.

I am not one that usually talks about my spirituality. In fact, I am ashamed that I am not able to share this part of myself more. I haven't prayed for a baby in several days. I have started praying for the strength to make it through this. I have begged for forgiveness for defiling God's perfect machine with a tubal ligation by choice. Somewhere along the line, I have realized that it is not His forgiveness that I need, it's my own. I'm not sure I'm in a place to forgive myself. Sure, if I get pregnant that part will be easy. I will no longer be living with the consequences of what I did. But if that is not what happens, can I accept that this is all part of His plan?

My emotions are so raw right now. I don't think that I have ever been so torn down. I am just hoping that some of this is from the Lupron. Now, I have to suck it up, wipe the tears, and put on my big girl panties. Tomorrow is my daughter's 11th birthday. I am taking her shopping tonight. On this screen is where I will leave these emotions. Tonight is about her. I will leave this very depressing post with some pictures of my beautiful baby over the years.
The formatting is a mess, but you get the idea!

Lupron Eve

Tomorrow is officially the first day of IVF #2. I have so many thought running through my mind so bear with me.

My goal is to make it to ET with embryos left to freeze. This would at least still give us hope. With being almost OOP, there is absolutely no way that we can spend the money for a fresh cycle again. I have already felt like we have taken so much money away from my family for this "dream." I play these little mind tricks with myself. It's like I'm bargaining with God. I don't feel worthy enough to ask for a BFP. It's like I don't quite deserve it, but I'm praying for at least another shot at this.

I am terrified about this cycle getting cancelled before the end. I would like to say that we would be able to try again if that happened, but I'm not sure that my DH would be on board. I'm not willing to sacrifice my marriage for this, but I am terrified of resenting him for saying no. Once again, I am praying that this is not where I will end up.

I'm worried about how much the kids are going to find out about our little secret. They each know things on different levels. Tyler, 8, and O&D know very little. We have approached the subject of a baby with them to make sure that nobody had any great objections. I wanted to know exactly how this would impact each child. I couldn't have gotten this far if there were any great issues.

Delaney will be 11 on Saturday. She is my thinking child. She is very sensitive and very aware of everything. I had to fill her in quite a bit more because she would have known something was going on. I definitely didn't want her imagining some much worse medical crisis to go with my symptoms. She knows the basic process. She knows that there is medicine involved that will make me feel not so great, and she know the basics of the ER and ET. I'm just not quite comfortable discussing the timeframe. I don't want to selfish or deceitful about this with her. I just don't want to answer alot of questions along the way. This is a difficult balancing act for me.

Finally, I am terrified that the money will run out before we make it to the ER. We have a little insurance coverage, but not alot is left. I am afraid that our savings and insurance will reach its end. We were told that since we do have coverage, the insurance will be billed and them we will be billed our portion. I am counting on this because we don't have quite enough. Without IRL people knowing, we don't have many options.

Who's Laughing Now???

Today, I will make an admission with pride.......I am a closet bingo player..........Now, why would I make this shameful admission on a public blog? Good question, but I have an answer.

This is why. This is my bff, who also has issues with bingo, holding my winnings from last night. It equals about one whole day of stims, or in English $418. That would be my share. I actually won $875.

There isn't much else going on. I am in the waiting game for Lupron to start. This is what it looks like outside.

And, this is how my wonderful DH is passing his day off. I think that I should probably be helping him, but I'm okay with letting him have it all to himself. I don't think that he ever thinks he should help with making the bed, so I think that we are even!

Officially a Loser!!

So I had this weight loss challenge with my best friend, Amy. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out that I was the loser.

BUT, and there has to be a but because I am such a "cup half full" type of person, I did lose weight this week. I just gained it last week. So overall, I was down 1 pound for the 2 weeks.

I really have to do this. I can't overeat this time, using Lupron as my excuse. I felt so much better about myself 20 pounds ago. On top of that, George has scheduled a vacation in South Padre in August. I can't be the mom that won't go swimming because I won't wear a swimsuit. That will be my focus.

On kind of a related note, I am going to be "freezer" cooking all day today. Before my cycle started last time, I cooked a bunch of stuff and the put it in the freezer. This was a lifesaver because the last thing thing that I had energy to do at the end of the night was to cook.

Finally, I leave you with this picture. My daughter took this last week of some flowers that she got for her teacher. I thought that it was pretty good, so here it is.

Random Ramblings

This weekend has been anything but IVF. It has actually been pretty nice. The boys had my friend Cristina's 2 boys spend the night on Friday, so we had a houseful with 4 boys between the ages of 7 and 11. My daughter D was also here, so we got to spend some girl time while the boys played.

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I have spent alot of time thinking about the risks involved with having a blog. When I started it, I used it only as a private diary. I never thought twice about naming it the McElveen family. Since then, I have used so many other blogs as a source of information. I felt that I should open up our journey to others as well.

I am not sure what to do about protecting our family. I am not an overly paranoid person, but I don't want to be callous about it either. I have since deleted out the names of our children. I hate it this way! I hate referring to my kids as letters, especially since 2 of them share the same initial. I was thinking that it should be okay to put my kids name in, since they do not share my last name. I think that it would be best if I still refer to my step-kids as letters, since they do have the same last name.

What do you think? I would love some feedback on what others think. I know that I can be incredibly naive at times, and I definitely don't want to be stupid about this. How do you refer to your family and what are your reasons for doing it this way?

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Oh, and I forgot to give a diet update. I am a failure!! I have lost nothing in the last two weeks. Not that I am surprised, but it would have been nice to wake up this morning about 20 pounds lighter, even after eating nothing but shit. I have been able to deal with most of the IVF side effects. However, this is pushing it. No one ever mentioned blowing up was part of the deal. Actually, I am not really sure if it was a true side effect. I think that I just used it as an excuse to eat whatever I wanted.

So, from this moment on, I will eat like a skinny person! That is my promise to myself. I so want to be a cute pregnant woman, not one that looks like a cow.

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On a final note, the countdown begins. It is 4 days until IVF #2 starts!

Getting Closer

I got the calendar in the mail for IVF #2. I am a little less than enthusiastic about this working.
For me, it's like learning to ride a bike. The first time up, you just think that it will be magical. You start peddling and the next thing that you know, you are at your destination. Now, I feel like I have just fallen off of that bike, and it hurt, alot. I know that I'll never get where I want to be if I don't try again, but I am terrified about the pain. The odds are that I will fall off again and crash. It's hard to talk yourself into trying again, but ready or not, here I go!

May 29- start 20iu Lupron
June 6- suppression check
June 7- reduce Lupron to 10iu, and start 300 iu Gonal-F, and 150iu Menopur
June 9-b/w
June 18- estimated ER

The Plan

Linda called today with our new plan. I am not positive on all of the details, but they are close. I will be taking 20iu of Lupron instead of 10 to prevent ovulation. I am seriously dreading those headaches! I will also be taking 2 vials of Menopur/Repronex instead of just one.

I am super excited because she also told me that she has some samples of the Menopur, so I won't have to buy any of that. Yeah!! I couldn't be more excited.

Diet Time

The time has come to start dieting again. I lost about 40 pounds over a year ago. I have been pretty good about maintaining my weight until I started this last IVF cycle. I am not sure what caused the weight gain, except for the stuffing my face part, but I am about 12 pounds up.

My best friend Amy and I are great at getting worthless competitions going. For some stupid reason, that is the best way to get me motivated. One would think that my reflection in the mirror, or the fact that I can't fit into any of my clothes would do the trick, but I'm not one to go for the obvious. It all boils down to who has to pay at Bingo. You could call me pathetic, but it would only be stating the obvious.

I rejoined Sparkpeople, and plan on logging my food daily. I weighed yesterday, and then put the scale up. I will pull it out next Monday for an update. I better lose at least 2.5 lbs this week. We will see!!

IVF #2

So, I was doing great at the living my life and not focusing on IVF. Then AF came. It was way early, since I was not expecting it until around the 16 or so, but nevertheless IVF here I come.

The plan is to start Lupron again on CD21. I think that the protocol will be the same, except I will stay on 10iu of Lupron the entire time. Last cycle I dropped to 5iu.

I am totally stressed about money with this cycle. We have a huge deductible that started over in April, so all of the medication will be OOP. I have one Gonal F pen left over so that will help some. I will also be switching to Freedom Pharmacy because they sell Gonal-F 900iu pens for $717, which is over $300 less than anything else that I can find.

I am much less optimistic this time around. I know there is so much that can go wrong. I am trying to stay positive, and focus on the 20 days left to live my life.

More to Life

Yesterday was a very rough day. It was one of the worst days that I have had actually. It was not just the fact that the cycle was cancelled. That actually had little to do with it. It was the combination of several things.

• I realized how much of my life had become obsessed with having a child. I am known to be a very spontaneous person that becomes very focused on specific things. That is just who I am, but this went to an extreme. Every thought that I had throughout the day focused on IVF. I have kinda lost touch with reality, and now I have to struggle to find it again.
• I was blindsighted! That is a total understatement. I went in to the doctor's office beyond confident. I had George take off work, not for the possibility of bad news, but so that he could be a part of the wonderful news. I had no idea that ovulation was even a possibility.
• I spent the rest of the day overanalyzing everything. Looking back I know that ovulation happened on Saturday night. All day Saturday, I was miserable, on the couch with a heating pad. Sunday, I woke up and felt so much better. The bloat and pressure was so much better. After talking to the doctor, I realized that there was nothing that could have been done differently. Yes, they could have done a LH test on Friday that would have predicted ovulation, but it would have not changed anything. Without tubes, there were no other options but to cancel the cycle and start fresh.

So today, I am restarting my life. I have spent the day cleaning my neglected house and cooking dinner. I have not given up on having children. In my sometimes irrational mind, I am positive that it will happen. It just won't be this month. So, for now, IVF is being purged from my head. I will focus on living and enjoying the life that I have now.

New Plan

The doctor just called and I definitely ovulated spontaneously. He says that it is a freak thing that almost never happens, like that is supposed to make me feel better. So now I am waiting for AF, and then I am going to try again.
I'm okay now. The not knowing what happened all day has almost killed me. I think that I have gone through every emotion possible.

It's over

Can somebody please tell me what happened?I started Lupron on 4/13. AF came on 4/18, They moved my suppression check up to 4/21. I was fully suppressed, so they dropped the Lupron to 5iu. They said that it would not change my calendar at all, and I would still start stims on 4/28. When I asked why, they told me that it was a scheduling issue and it would not hurt anything.

My baseline E2 was 24. On 4/30, after 2 days of stims it was 376, my Gonal-F was dropped from 300iu to 225iu. On 5/2, it was 834. We did not do an u/s until this am. They found 1 follicle on the right side, and a couple on the left. They believed that I ovulated.

How could this happen? Was it the delay of the stims? Could an u/s on Friday, or over the weekend have changed something?I would appreciate any opinions.

I have no words for how devestated that we are. The doctor looked confused and ask whether we had take all of our medications. Of course! I am so angry right now. I feel like I was undermonitored, and not a priority. I guess I was right when I said that I just don't do perfect. This really sucks.
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Good Sign??

My dear friend, Melissa, has painted pictures for both my kids of their favorite animal. Before I started IVF, she gave me this painting as good luck. It now hangs on my wall. I hope that this painting is a good sign, and it will one day move to another bedroom.

D and T

This is D and T at the beach 2 year ago. It is still one of my favorite pictures.

T

I posted awhile back about D. Now it is T's turn. I will edit this to add pictures later, but for some reason blogger won't let me right now.

T was the perfect baby. He was a good sleeper and advanced in all of his motor skills. He just refused to talk. After a bunch of tests and hours of speech therapy, we concluded that he was a perfectionist. He didn't want to try to say a word and risk saying it wrong, so he didn't talk very fast.

From early on, we knew that T was very active, much more than his peers. He also had a very short fuse. This progressed for several years, and we acknowledged a problem when T was in Kindergarten. He was just different from most of the other kids. He alot of anxiety, violent outbursts, space issues, and moodiness. He spent several weeks at the day program at Children's Hospital Dallas. It was here that we found our answers. T has ADHD, dysgraphia, and suffers from a mood disorder.

I was very apprehensive to medicate him. We put it off for quite some time. He was miserable and so were we. We found a great doctor through the day program and went forth with medication and therapy.

T is a different person now. He is so passionate in everything that he does. He is a great athlete and a caring and thoughtful child and friend. While he is not cured, he is progressing well.

He does well in school with slight modifications from the special education department. His main issue is the Dysgraphia. They have recently allowed him to start typing most of his assignments and is quickly catching up to the regular class level. He is truly my little angel man, and I couldn't ask for a better son.

I'm neurotic!

Or, maybe it's psychotic. Whatever the diagnosis, I am definitely driving myself crazy. Yesterday, I was miserable. I felt "full of eggs," for a lack of a better term. So this morning I wake up expecting the same. I didn't feel much. Oh shit! Did I ovulate on my own? It had to be because I have not had an ultrasound yet.

Just for the record, once I got up and started moving around the uncomfortable bloating returned. I think that the eggs are safe and sound.

I also have this deep rooted feeling of dread. There has to be something that goes wrong. If it doesn't, then the pregnancy test will definitely be negative. Perfect just doesn't happen to me. My numbers are great, my cysts are small, George's sperm is ok, oh and I am STD free. Surely something will go wrong, right??

Finally, I am terrified of anesthesia. When I went in for my first tubal ligation, I had a bronchial spasm and stopped breathing on the table. They had to give me epinephrine, and cancelled the surgery. This should have been a sign, but my dumb 24 year old self was stubborn. I have grilled Dr. G, and he assures me that this won't happen because they do not use general anesthesia, just IV sedation. That should calm me, but not a chance.

Day 5 of Stims

I went in today for bloodwork. Linda just called with the results. My E2 in 834. She said that was really good. From what I have read, I think that it is a really good number.
I will be going back on Monday for more b/w, and a very anticipated u/s.

Day 4 of Stims

Nothing has changed. I actually feel pretty good. It is kinda strange, but I do have an awareness of my ovaries. I can feel them, especially when I bend over.
The projected ER is May 9. I have more bloodwork on Friday. I am not sure when I will have an actual u/s. That is what I am looking forward to.
Last night I took Delaney and Tyler to dinner with my parents, Grandma, and nephew. Tyler's 8th birthday was on the 28th, and Jacob, my nephew, celebrated his 7th birthday on the 30th. It was all very strange. I have so much going on in my life that is an absolute secret to everyone. Delaney was the only one that the table that knew anything. My mom asked if I felt okay because I was walking a little slower. I just shrugged it off as cramps. It really sucks to not be able to share with everyone what is going on.