Nothing to see here

I’m nearing the end of the 2ww.

I don’t have a lot of hope for this cycle since I’m not really sure I ovulated. But I’ve been very tired and had some wicked nausea for the last few days, so who knows?

In less than two weeks, all of our stuff will be on a slow boat to Israel.

There isn’t much going on right now in our place except preparations for moving overseas. We leave in one month. Our house is a disaster area and everything really needs to get sorted, sold or packed. So you’d think we’re very busy cleaning, etc.

But we’re not. We’re total bums. We really need to get it together for these last few weeks.

But enough about me!

Join me in welcoming a new little princess!

PG rating. Insert irony here.

Snow White and Seven OPKs

I’ve been remiss about posting and feel like a real no talent ass clown for it. So Mel goes and creates a fabulous week to encourage posts and comments and what do I do? I get bogged down in stuff at work and take up golf. More on those life lessons in later posts.

Ah sorry. Here’s a real IF post.

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Snow White and the Seven OPKs (which were also fairly snow white)

When we left our noble heroine, she had taken her five Clomid pills and was eagerly anticipating ovulation. She approached the blessed event with mucus relief pills regularly in her system, hoping to thwart the evil menace Bad Mucus.

While fumbling through her Target store one sunny afternoon, the good lady stumbled upon a pack of seven First Response OPK sticks. She purchased the kit with joy and alacrity, in hopes they might help her determine when to do the deed.

And so on CD12:

“Hi ho, hi ho, it’s into pee we go…”

But the stick returned a snow white negative. The testing continued every other day until on CD16:

“Hi ho, hi ho, it’s into pee we go…”

The stick was less negative, but far from positive. Daily testing continued.

“Hi ho, hi ho, it’s into pee we go…”

Until it was back to snow white on CD20. A positive test never happened.

The End

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Discussion questions:

1. Why is it that I can ovulate when I’m really not supposed to (during an IVF cycle) but can’t pop and egg for love or money when I need to?

2. How do you determine when to have a progesterone test to see if you ovulated?

3. What if I did ovulate and (since I never had an ultrasound) I get pregnant with dodecatuplets? I do believe the implications of that would mean that Mel must move not only her family, but significant portion of her shul congregation to Israel.

In other news:

I think the apartment is for sure now. And thanks to everyone who came to my blog for Commentathon and were kind enough to manufacture a comment when all the crap I had posted really didn’t have jack to do with IF. Very bad planning on my part. Sorry and I do really appreciate it and hope you will come back for more tales from my uterus.

When embryos attack

Found this on the Web page at work. It looks like it’s going to attack him.

Home sweet home (hopefully)

I know, I know it’s supposed to be an infertility blog. But I’m so excited about us finally getting at apartment. Only a few more hoops to jump through!

Our real estate agent took some photos of the apartment we are hoping to rent. If all goes well, everything should be handled by the end of this week. Here are the pics!

The kitchen.

The two main bedrooms.

Bedroom No. 2.5. Very cute. I think we’ll try and make it into an office/reading area.

The pool and commons area.

The mirpeset (patio).

Three shots of the living room.

The kitchen again.

And the view from our mirpeset.

Gentlemen! Start your ovaries!

It would appear a challenge has been presented. It would appear that on signing up for the Commentathon, I caused all kinds of numbers to fall perfectly into place.

From recent e-mail relay with her highness, the Stirrup Queen Mel:

“If anything happens in duplicate later in life…achem…I would like some credit in whatever story you tell at the simchat bat/bris.”

To which I replied:

“No doubt — only you’ll have to share the seat of honor with a representative from Teva Pharmaceuticals — the makers of our five lovely clomiphene pills.

You realize, of course, that this would require a) your presence at said simcha which will b) likely be taking place in that fab land of milk and honey? Sounds like a damn fine reason for a vacation, no?

Tell you what — I promise to get pregnant if you promise to come visit.”

To which Mel said:

“Funny you should say that because tonight we were eating falafel for dinner and talking about going to Israel. My family lives in and around Tel Aviv. But I haven’t been over for a visit in a loooooooooong time. Perhaps–you produce the twins and I’ll produce the plane ticket “

To which I said:

“It’s on!

Does it work on a sliding scale? So if I get quads, you make aliyah? And if there’s just one, we have to meet you in like, London?”

Gauntlet thrown! Milo and Rose are back in action! We’ve got quite a game on our hands here people!

So you read it here first. If I (re)produce, Mel makes like Moshe and visits the Promised Land. Okay, actually, G-d willing, she’ll do better than he did. He never actually made it in.

Over the pond

I think the vast majority of my Israeli readers are or are related to Rachel Inbar. But I do get some pings from around the rest of the country. If you’re here and just haven’t commented, that’s fine too, cause this post is for you.

We’re moving to Modiin on July 31, with the help of Nefesh B Nefesh. Since we are on a charter flight, there will be a big fancy ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport when we arrive.

We don’t have any family in Israel, and the only friends are those we have made inside the computer. Ergo, we are without anyone to come and meet us. Which really will be fine, but it would be fab if anyone wants to come visit.

Again, no pressure: But if you’d like to come see us at the airport, you need to register with NBN here.

But couldn’t you just…

Okay, so this is going to sound horrifically naive. But I am dead serious here.

I don’t get the whole donor embryo thing. Here’s how it is in my head — or how I thought it was going to work out.

You see, we did an IVF cycle — and it was canceled, which sucked, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it went swimmingly and we got 14 good fertilized embies.

Under no circumstances were more than two of those going back into me. In which case — we would either have to freeze the dozen leftover or choose to disgard them.

By this point, we knew we were going to be moving overseas, so we weren’t going to freeze them. It doesn’t really matter how you get to this part of the equation, just go with me here.

A dozen happy embies ready to be discarded.

Why would someone have to freeze them in order to donate them? Why couldn’t someone in need of an embryo just cycle along with the rest of the folks in the clinic and take a spare when the time presented it? I know that some women are very picky about the genetic material going in, but for the rest that really just want a baby and cannot afford IVF (or for whom it would not work), why not just transfer a couple fresh ones in when you do mine?

Couldn’t you just have someone take the same drugs a surrogate gets and then have her pick up a few spare embies?

I know the answer is probably “It’s not that easy…” but could someone please explain why?

Cause I’ll tell you right now — if I had to pick between some discarded embies and adoption, I would totally go the discard route.

Bawling my ass off

I don’t know how I found this — just that I did.

It is a good read as long as you’re willing to cry a bit.

Two more sets of sextuplets on the way

Like Karen, I’m really getting angry about the doctors’ roles in all of this.

The Morrisons and Masches aren’t the only ones.

Karoline Byler and Gracie Soldani are also expecting sextuplets.

From Soldani’s Web site:

“February 2007, we took it up a major notch. Stomach injections that brian had to inject into me every night for about a week followed by an ovulation shot and insemination. I was numb this time around. To afraid to have hope, but somehow strong enough to have a little faith. Brian was great, I really think he saw the intensity I had to have a baby during this process. We got through it with laughter and unsaid
hope that this would do it. I did the normal scans and the Dr. said ok it worked we had 5 viable eggs and 3 semi viable eggs. “Lets inseminate.” he said. The following week Brian made his deposits and I raced it to the lab in my bra. I felt like I was a pro by now, not even needing a bag to hide the cup. I went in for insemination later that day and the next. My Dr. was cautiously optimistic but still ever so kind. After he injected the sperm the I was instructed like always to put my feet together or up for 15minutes. While you are alone in that room so many things go through your head. In mine all I could do was be hopeful, pray and be positive I actually envisioned the egg being fertilized and attaching to my uterine wall. We had to wait about a week to see if it worked. I bought a home test and tested before the week was over, before I even peed on it, I got a strong blue positive line. Looking back I remember thinking, “wow so strong must be twins”, never did 6 enter my mind.I went in and the Dr. confirmed via blood test that I was. I was admitted to the hospital for HyperStem- which meant that my ovaries were over stimulated. I gained 30 lbs in 4 days and my stomach area was filled with cysts that were bursting, my waist grew 12 inches. My Dr. said the pain was just like labor, it was intense, i was given pain meds and hospitalized for a week. During this time i had ultra sounds, my Dr’s first scan in his office before this happened showed 1 baby, however the 1st scan in the hospital showed 5. When i was discharged my Dr. did another scan, his 2nd scan showed 5 and the 3rd scan showed 6! I know reduction was an option, maybe even a smart decision to some. At first we thought about reduction. We just feel in our hearts that after seeing the ultra sound with all the beating hearts as strong as a Vegas strip that we couldn’t go through with it. I feel that all I wanted was to see my first babies heartbeat, and now I have 6. I don’t believe God would have given us something we couldn’t handle. So onward we go, blessed with 6.”

From the Byler Web site:

“Karoline soon met with her obstetrician. He prescribed both Melaformin and Clomed. After an unsuccessful six months of treatment, Karoline’s doctor recommended she see Dr. Sanchez, a fertility specialist. After reviewing Karoline’s blood work, Dr. Sanchez determined her hormone levels were out of balance, and the her Polysistic Ovary Syndrome had worsened to a metabolic disorder. He prescribed follistram (FSH) replacement hormone. After following her doctor’s instructions, and taking the daily injection for one cycle, Karoline discovered she was pregnant.

At eight weeks Karoline was given a sonogram by Dr. Sanchez. After studying the sonogram for a few minutes, Dr. Sanchez told Ben and Karoline he could see four sacs, but could only see heartbeats in two of them. Ben and Karoline were shocked. The thoughts of possibly having twins more than surprised them. Dr. Sanchez then told them he was referring them immediately to Dr. Rammer at Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersberg for advanced sonogram testing. The next day Ben and Karoline traveled to Bayfront to meet with Dr. Rammer. The results of the testing unbelievably revealed seven sacs with six beating hearts. Dr. Rammer, herself shocked at what she’d seen, informed the couple they were having sextuplets. Ben and Karoline’s reactions mirrored the couple’s personality differences. Karoline began screaming and Ben sat in silence.”

When are insurance companies going to realize that the costs of sustaining a sextuplet pregnancy and six children with profound health complications will always outweigh a few rounds of IVF?