Still Waiting…

I called every hour and was told that there were still no results.  I finally asked to be connected to the advice nurse who connected me to the local lab.  I spoke to a lady in the lab.  She was very nice.  She went and checked for me.  Then she told me that my OB/GYN DIDN’T order STAT like the last few times.  The blood got sent to a regional facility (probably in the same area) instead of the lab across the street from where I got my blood drawn.  SO WE DO NOT KNOW WHEN THE RESULTS WILL COME IN!!!

I do not understand why my OB didn’t order STAT like last time.  So I will have to call my insurance’s 24-hour line hourly to check if the results are back yet.  And I WILL BE CALLING every hour.  This is nuts…..

This is seriously one of the longest and more torturous wait ever.  I have hardly done any work today.  My calm and peace went out the window.  But now that I know I will have to wait, I just wait.

Please pray that I will be at peace and calm until we get the results.

Fortune Cookie

I had lunch with a friend at our favorite Chinese restaurant today.

I picked up one of the fortune cookies.  There were two different slips there.  The first one I saw was this:

Wow!  Again, I don’t believe in these things, but out of all the many many thousands of fortune cookies out there, it is for sure very timely to get this particular one!

The second one in the same fortune cookie says: “Long life with blessings of family and friends is yours.”

But I like the one in the picture much much better!

Tomorrow is the day!  May it be an exciting time for me and Bob!

Welcoming Lucy Home

Praise the Lord that today was a great day.  🙂

I woke up to my Fac.ebook friends showing pictures of themselves and their children all wearing red and hearts on their nails, socks, shirts, pants, and even underpants!  The love was overflowing with all these pictures and notifications on my page.  I am just so grateful for them.  The happiness continued for the rest of the morning.  The possibility of Lucy failing the thaw crossed my mind a couple of times.  But majority of the time my thoughts were calm and happy.  After breakfast, I made bone broth and dinner for tonight, cleaned the kitchen, cut my pineapple, wiped the floor, did bible study, and even did yoga!  I finished all of this before noon!  It was such a productive morning and a great way to help myself focus on other things.

Look at my bone broth and Thai curry cooking.

I took my Val.ium at 2pm and emptied my bladder at that time before I started filling it again.  I saw Dr. Dry Humor going in and out of transfer rooms.  I then remembered that my nurse and I never confirmed Dr. No Nonsense doing my transfer.  However, I was feeling at peace with whoever it would be to do my transfer.  It’d be great if my RE did it, but if not, Dr. Dry Humor would be equally good.

My trusted acupuncturist was on time and pleasant.  She took such a good care of me with the pre-transfer session, laying blankets on me and making sure that I was comfortable.  My pulse felt great and strong to her, and I didn’t feel anxious at all.  As long as I didn’t get a phone call prior to the transfer from the clinic, I knew that Lucy must have thawed well.  She said that my pulse showed that I was calm and happy.  Unlike last time, the transfer room was silent without any light jazz.  I was lying there, being still and all by myself with the dimmed lights.  Only me and God.  Well, and also the embryology lab separated by a door.  They are a happy bunch.  I could hear so much laughters coming from that closed door.  Anyhow, God and I had a conversation.  I was talking to Him about how happy I was that we got to that point, with gratitude for my peace and strength.  I drifted in and out of consciousness, listening to the people next doors, and talking with God.  My acupuncturist came in a couple of times to adjust the needles for me.

Transfer time came.  Bob and I sat and waited, both at peace and happy.  He was still sporting his Batman shirt but I had on my ridiculously pink heart socks, and I didn’t care!  I was proud of them.

Even Dr. Dry Humor was commenting on how cute they were. Haha.  Oh yeah, so no Dr. No Nonsense, but I wasn’t disappointed at all.  Was just going with the flow.  Lying there, I felt at peace.  Dr. Dry Humor was very different from Dr. Scrubs last time.  She explained everything.  But he didn’t.  He did tell me that he was cleaning the mucous away.  The nurse’s ultrasound probe was on my bladder.  It was then that I knew that I did drink enough water.

Here is Lucy the embryo:

In Dr. Dry Humor’s words, “It’s looking good!”  We told him that the embryo was called Lucy.  When he was done cleaning my mucous, the green light came on above the door that led to the embryology lab.  On the overhead screen, my name showed up on an enlarged petri dish.  Lucy showed up on the screen:

Then the screen was zooming out.  A catheter came into the picture and sucked Lucy into it.  Moments later, the embryologist came in and handed Dr. Dry Humor the catheter.

Lucy was placed inside my uterus.  She is safely home.  I was very relieved and pleased that the procedure went so well.

After it was done, we waited for a few moments before the green light above the door went off.  Dr. Dry Humor congratulated us.  He placed both his hands on my legs and said he hoped that we didn’t have to name any more embryos with a name that starts with “M”.  I thanked him for his thought.

Lying there for my post-transfer acupuncture session, I was full of gratitude.  I spoke with Lucy about how about we love it.  How much we want it to join us in about 38 weeks.  I visualized a baby that was just born and was placed on my chest on the first time, all gooey and needing some cleaning.  But I didn’t care.  I just held on to him/her.  This was what I was thinking lying there in the dark.  I also prayed to God that I would raise this child to love Him.  It was a sweet, private, precious time that I got to spend with God and Lucy.

Bob and I celebrated by going to our favorite coffee shop.  He got his coffee and I got a hot chocolate.  I still went to my bible study tonight.  The most touching thing was when I walked into my room and saw all the ladies that I lead, they told me they wanted to pray for me. So they surrounded me, laid their hands on me, and prayed for God’s will for Lucy and for me and Bob.  I just felt so loved by people surrounding me.

So here we are.  Day one of our Lucy being home.  I hope that she stays there for the next 38 or 39 or so weeks.  May God’s will be done.

Next (And Hopefully the Last) Frozen Embryo Transfer

Somehow I have been putting off writing about this.  I can’t explain why.

When my period started in December, my nurse gave me a calendar.  I started taking birth control pills on day two of my cycle.  Exactly 21 days after I had been on the pills, I started spotting, just like the previous cycle.  But unlike my reaction last time, I have been very chill this time.  I know that it is not a big deal that I bleed while on birth control pills.  I didn’t even write my nurse.  I just continued with the pills until the last dose without fussing about it.

My last day of the pill was yesterday, January 7th.  I am supposed to start the estrogen patches next Tuesday if menses have already begun.  I have been bleeding more and more heavily, almost like a full flow.  I have been instructed to call my nurse to schedule for an ultrasound if full flow doesn’t come.  So I believe that I don’t need that ultrasound to make sure that my lining is thin.

My nurse called me out of the blue yesterday to check on me.  I was both surprised and touched.  She really didn’t have to check on me because she had already given me a calendar and I should just be following it.  But since she hadn’t talked to me since before the holidays, she wanted to make sure that everything was good with the pills, Lu.pron, and all the other meds.

I ordered my meds before the end of the year so I can count the medical expenses for 2015.  I was shocked to learn that the original pharmacy I ordered Lu.pron from jacked up the price from $189 to $295.  Instead of ordering a refill from them, I had to contact my nurse to put in a script for another pharmacy.  As for my other meds, I feel fortunate that I got help from others.  I recently met a lady who got pregnant with twins at my clinic using frozen donor eggs.  She only got six eggs (unlike the 10 eggs that I got).  Five thawed and four fertilized.  She transferred two day-three embryos and both took.  The other two day-three were frozen.  She is going to be a single mother by choice.  The interesting thing is, I wasn’t jealous of her at all.  I  was actually very happy for her that she found success and she could end her 8 years of fertility journey with babies.  She mentioned to me that she had some estrogen patches leftover from her cycle that she could give me.  On top of the leftover ones I had from last cycle, her patches, and the sample that Jane will give me, I only needed to order 7 patches instead of 32.  Call me lucky.  😀

Oh yes.  I started my Lu.pron.  Very uneventful except for me spilling some on the table.  Bob is usually the one who draws the liquid for me because I am always scared of spilling.  I decided to practice drawing the liquid on the first day of Lu.pron in preparation for my girls’ getaway weekend (which starts today after work!).  I successfully drew 10 units of the liquid but forgot to invert the vial right side up before I took out the needle.  Gravity pulled the liquid out and it made a line of it on the table.  Duh.  I should have thought of it, but I didn’t.  It freaked me out.  After that one incident, I shied away from drawing the liquid for a couple of days.  But knowing that I eventually would have to do it myself over the weekend, I finally gathered enough courage to practice again, this time pulling out the needle while the vial is firmly pressed on the table.  No spillage.  Phew.

My lining check will be on January 25th.  If the lining is good, we’ll do a transfer.  I did see on the calendar that the transfer window is between February 1st and 5th.  When I  saw that, I was a little puzzled about the dates because I always thought that transfer would happen five days after the lining check, which should be January 30th or 31st.  However, those dates are on the weekend.  My nurse clarified it for me.  Since we have the embryo already, the IVF nurse will look at the clinic’s schedule on the lining check day to see which day between February 1st and 5th the clinic can accommodate my transfer.  I didn’t know that it works like that.  So from the start of my birth control pills, it takes more than 7 weeks before we can transfer.  It just seems like many many weeks.  But I won’t fret over it.  It is whatever it is.  The timing of things doesn’t really matter in the big scheme of things.  If we transfer on February 1st, beta could be the day before Bob’s birthday and second beta could be the day after.  Hmmm…..  Maybe I’ll give him the best birthday present ever?  I just hope that it won’t be the repeat of our first transfer also around Bob’s birthday two years ago.  I really want this to be a great birthday present for him.

For now, I won’t think too much about it.  I will focus my energy on my girls’ weekend.  One day at a time, yeah?