2 days until it all begins.......

Well everything is chugging along as it should. We go to the RE on Thursday morning to get started. Its baseline day for IVF #3 !!! Hopefully my ovaries are REALLY quiet being on all this Lu.pron. I mean it has made me soooooo mean this time- I am so agitated sometimes I even want to get away from myself- weird I know but its how i feel sometimes. I will be so glad to stop taking this stuff.

And the state law in Virginia says that you need an STD panel on both husband and wife once a year- but NO NOT MY CLINIC- they want it every 6 months!!!! Do they realize how much this junk costs???? I mean we already have all negatives from July '10 but no.......we have to get it again. So I told the nurse how much it costs and she told me we could go to the health department and they will do it for FREE!!! Really???? Ive never been to the health department, but Sweetness and I are going there Thursday morning before we head to the clinic for baseline day. the tests take 2 weeks to get back but as long as we have them to the clinic before the transfer we are good.

And one last thing, I called my acupuncturist to set up my appts for next week while stimming. She was so condescending and rude that I can not afford to come as much as she wants me to (at $85 a pop), I called her back and told her that she was creating stress for me in this situation and that I feel like I am going to decline any further treatment. She was apologetic but I still just feel like it is a waste of money that I really don't have. I am trusting the Lord for the outcome of this IVF, not whether I've had acupuncture or not.

Speaking of stress......my job is so stressful that I really can not hardly wait to be off the whole month of March. My job is making me take FMLA to be off, so my doc is filling out the paperwork and I can pick it up on Friday- hopefully my work will approve it. I just really can not work for this place any longer- the lady that is over me is so nasty and rude. She literally has me in tears most days. So I have some leads on new opportunities, please pray that something will come through and I can get out of this very unhealthy environment.

Other than that, Sweetness is healing, and improving everyday from the fall 3 weeks ago, its still a work in progress but we appreciate all the prayers! I will update as soon as we find out on Thursday what our real plan of action is for this our final attempt at a family through IVF!!!! thanks again for all the love and support- we love you all!!!

An update!!

Yes well as the picture says, my birthday season is here (or should say has gone). My birthday was this past Saturday and it was really a nice day. Sweetness and Mom took me out to a very nice restaurant and had some real upscale dining, and really enjoyed the piano player right near us! Awesome place to enjoy a birthday!!! Sweetness gave me some Armani perfume and lotion! Smells divine! Mom took me shopping for several blouses etc. Just a very nice day!

We arrived home and my precious friend Tara had sent me some beautiful pink roses to my house. She is truly one of the kindest, most thoughtful friends I have. She is always thinking about everyone but herself!!! Love you Tara bell!

But thank you to all my friends who sent cards and little gifts to make me feel loved!!!

In other news, life has been pretty tough lately. Sweetness slipped and fell on the ice outside his office and hit his head, among other things he cracked up. We were at the hospital and he was diagnosed with a severe concussion. It has been a rough past week since all this occurred. Please keep him in your prayers that he would not have lasting effects from this, because this is not his first or even second concussion.

In other news, my job has been stressing me until I am physically ill. I can no longer take the issues and unethical behavior I feel like I am subjected to, so today I was prepared to resign, and Sweetness and I would face this head on. Well...... my boss agreed that instead of that option for me to finish teaching this mod (end Feb. 24) and take the next one off (of course without pay, but off nonetheless). So I am feeling the relaxation coming over my oh-so-stressed-out mind. I still have my job if I want to come back in April, but I have the chance to look for other things and most importantly focus on my family.

Speaking of family.....lets talk about IVF. Our desire for a family is really so great that sometimes it can consume you. But I am trying to do a lot of things different this time, ie- acupuncture, no caffeine, pineapple, meditation and a 5-day transfer. Of course reducing the extreme stress I am under is going to help. But I am excited to tell you that in ONE WEEK from today we have our baseline visit. We will begin stimulation that day, and hopefully the embryos will be put back into me on or about Feb. 28th!!!

We are really hoping this is our time and praying praying and more praying!!

This has gotten to be a very long post, so not to bore you any longer, I will wrap it up!! Thank you again for all the support and encouragement! I will be much better about updating here as we proceed!!!

Still employed

Thank you ladies for all the prayers and support this last week as I had one of the most stressful in my life. As of now, I am still employed but I will be "written-up". This really peeves me because I did nothing wrong!!! And when they do give me the form to sign I WILL be writing my side of the story there- I will not be blankly signing a paper admitting guilt when they will not even hear me out.

But needless to say I am actively looking for another job because I can not work for these people. But I need income so I am not quitting. And of course the stress is not healthy for me right now either.

But tomorrow I will begin a new semester at school and a whole new group of students. Hopefully it will be a nice 5 weeks section. And on Tuesday I will go back to my 2 nd acupuncture appointment. I am also doing a special IVF/IUI mediatation series of DVDs. They are great and I highly recommend them for anyone going through IVF. I will blog about them next time with a picture of them and how to order them.

Hope you all have a nice week and will update again soon!!!

Still hangin in.....

To say the last two days of this week have been tough is an understatement. But suffice it to say I am being reprimanded at work for something I did not do, and it is creating a lot of stress. I don't think I will loss my job over this, but I might. I am trying to go back to my faith that has never let me down before- and TRUST that He knows what is happening. He will see me through, and Sweetness and I are together forever and that's all that matters.

I would appreciate your prayers and I will update more when I can. If you are real interested in whats happening, you can private message me and I will tell you..... I just don't want SOME things to be out in the world's cyber space!!! (If you can believe that)

I have taken 2 BCPs, and will begin stimming on Feb, 10th!!! So excited!! Trying to build that hope back up one more time.......

Thanks for your support....... I know you ladies all understand who have gone through multiple IVFs.

Low levels= green light!

Okay ladies, I got my levels taken this morning, and just as I suspected, both my E2 and Progesterone are low, and that means we can begin the IVF cycle. I learned today that if I am not bleeding, then I did NOT ovulate. Maybe this is why we are not getting pregnant on our own, becomes at times I am not ovulating. So I took my first BCP tonight, I will do this for three weeks, however in 7 days I will begin Lup.ron injections. All of this is in an effect to suppress my ovaries from maturing any follicles until we want to mature many at the same time.

I will keep you updated!! Also..... today I went for my very first acupuncture with a highly recommended acupuncturist. This is a link to her website, and those of you following my website and also dealing with infertility may find what her website has to say about acupuncture interesting.

It may even help this chronic neck nerve damage injury that I have been dealing with. That gives me a great deal of hope! It did not hurt and it was very relaxing. I actually felt a sense of heat pulsating from the actual needles. It was really a unique feeling......

I will update more later in the week. I have had a very stressful evening, I will fill you in more later.

Thanks again for all the love!!!!

Happy Anniversary Sweetness!

Well today is my second wedding anniversary!! It was a beautiful day with the love of my life. When I think back over the last two years, we have had so much fun, so much laughter and so much love. But at the same time we have had sooo much heartbreak, enough for a lifetime it feels like.

But I would not change it at all if it meant not having this incredible man. He truly loves me in a way I need to be loved and did not even know. He makes me believe in myself and the impossible. He treats me with such kindness and compassion. I need him in my life to smooth my rough edges. He truly completes me.

We went to dinner tonight. We celebrated our love and our marriage. I asked Sweetness at dinner, in all of our 2 years married, what was his favorite day..... and after a lot of thought, he said it was the day we went to Babies R Us and bought baby stuff and got our nursery together. It really broke my heart. I want this so badly for him, for me, for my mom.......Lord please give us a baby........ please don't leave my husband aching this way, he will make an INCREDIBLE father. I cant wait until next year on our anniversary and hopefully I can ask that same question and he can say the "day our baby was born." That truly is my dream.

I am feeling pretty good these days. I am feeling better about our upcoming cycle. I still have not started, so I will go to the clinic tomorrow morning and get Progesterone/Estrogen levels and figure out when we are going to start Lu.pron if I have ovulated or not. So lets get this started, we want the prize at the end.....

I'll let you know tomorrow when I find out when we start. But for now, good night blogger world from a very happy WIFE!!!!

Hope renewed....maybe?

Wow! Have we sure done a 180 this week. So Monday starts off terrible, BM tells me she has basically changed her mind, and she is confused. I still have not heard anything from her. Not counting on it either really.

And thankfully I already had scheduled an appointment with my RE after my last failed IVF cycle and it was for yesterday, Jan. 11th of all days. But I was actually really glad, because I needed some hope to keep me going. So yesterday, Sweetness and I made the trip again to the RE, and boy am I glad we did. Dr. O was so nice and sweet, and he really felt so sorry for us, being so close only to have it yanked from us again.

So we decided on how to proceed on our last and final attempt at IVF. The plan is as follows: If I have not seen AF by next Tuesday- I will pop in for a quick Progesterone/Estrogen check. If both are low we will go ahead and start BCPs. If progesterone levels are low, it means I ovulated, we will begin that day also. IF my estrogen is still low, then we will do a course of Prover.a and thicken my lining so i hopefully will start. Then.... whenever the day that I start is we begin BCPs for 2 weeks, with Lupr.on overlapping one week with BCPs, then we start stimming for 10 days or thereabout. Then we trigger and have the egg retrieval, then on to a 5-day transfer hopefully. I have never had a blast transfer so I am looking forward to doing something different.

He said I have to really reduce the stress, and be positive- so I will get pregnant! He was so supportive- He said there is no reason why I am not getting pregnant and can not get pregnant. That made me feel better. So that is our plan. Basically I think this will take us to end of February for the transfer.

We have a renewed sense of hope and are cautiously optimistic. Hopefully we will have a girl, because now I have a beautiful girl themed nursery...... I had taken all these pictures of us as we painted the room, and decorated it so beautiful with all the hopes and dreams in front of us, but somehow I cant bring myself to post them here. For now we have all the baby stuff in the nursery and have the door closed. I told Sweetness last night that soon we will be able to open that door and be excited about being in there. I just know we will.

I am still struggling spiritually. I have always been the girl who held on to my faith- but I am really struggling with what I believe- is there a God or not??? and I'm embarrassed to say I really don't know anymore. What good can possibly come out of us in this pain, and despair and longing for a child when everyone else has one and some have no means to care for them etc. I just want to understand. And no one has any answers for me. This has really brought me to my knees and I am hoping to have some peace about all of this soon.

I really thank you for your prayers for our upcoming cycle and for me as I search. You ladies are so wonderful. Thank you for standing by us in such a difficult time. At least I have my Sweetness......