Gross things

(pic is in FL on vaca, feeding the seagulls)

When I went in & had my first IUI, the nurse told me that my insurance co had called and approved my HSG. Thanks. A bit late now. Sigh...SO if this cycle is a bfn, I can someday have a HSG done. If I have another tubal I will be angry w/them. The dr said I have about a 20% chance of having a second one. One increases your chances of having another. That's crappy, I must say. The HSG would tell us exactly how much damage (if any) that I have, & at the same time clear my tubes out making it less likely to happen again.

So here is some TMI for you...my boobs started having some tingling and zippy feelings today- BEFORE I had my first PIO shot tonight. Yippee doodles! That tells us that I have some progesterone flowin'. My cervix had also closed and lowered this morning. So far all signs are good that we had fair timing. :) We did have a little PIO mishap though. When K gave me my shot I bled. Alot. Like gushed out and all over the bed. I looked back & thought "She hit a vein, I'm gonna bleed to death!", but it stopped right away. Whew. It was scary though & I am worried that she did do my shot into a vein which would mess up the progesterone absorbtion time or amount or something. Please no! Has anyone else ever done that? Is it alright? Will it hurt anythng?

I am on antibiotics & antivirals, :( but dr & pharmacy both say they are safe for pregnancy so we'll see. They are only for a week and low doses. My jaw keeps swelling up and my dr doesn't know why and doesn't seem to believe in testing. She likes to throw some drugs on it & see if it gets better. She said it might be a salivatory duct stone. WTCrap? Like kidney stones but in my saliva duct. Let me explain here, that I get sick and it is usually something weird enough to be annoying or strange or hard to diagnose, but not to the point of being life threatening. (normally) ACK! I hate that! I would love to be sick w/something average and easily curable. LOL Hopefully, none of this will affect any possible implantation or baby, and my face will stop swelling up like a waterballoon. Embarrassing! I can only guess what the people at work think!

Hope you are all having a less messy and gross day! LOL

Here we are

{pic is from camping trip in Feb}

Both IUI's are done! I'm now into the TWW and PUPO, heehee. K is very sternly telling me that we will NOT get excited and NOT tell anyone that we are trying this time. She insists it will jinx us. Infact we will NOT be getting excited, even if we get a bfp, until we get to the 6 week u/s & know that it is in the right place & everything looks ok. Then we plan to continue with careful quiet optimism until well into the second trimester. I guess once we can't hide the belly any more, it will be about time for us to feel ok about shouting it from the roof tops.

My first iui was at 6 hrs past trigger shot, & second was at 29 hrs past. So far I have had the normal crampy bloated feelings. I will start the Progesterone in oil shots tomorrow night, which will be more than 48 hrs past trigger. My estrodial was only 430 so I probably had 2 or 3 real eggs. The other follicles should shrink? or something? I dunno. But 2-3 was my end eggie total.

OH, whew. I can't believe I am here again. I don't want to have to come back any time soon.

eggie update

{pic is peacock in WA, couple yrs ago}

Just a quick eggie update... as of this morning all 3 eggies on left have grown and are ready averaging 20mm. The right side eggie team has a leader at 20mm, one at 18mm and a scraggler at 15 mm. AAHH well, not everyone can make it to first place in the race I suppose! I haven't gotten the estrodial result yet, but hopefully it is close to 1000. I will def get the trigger shot sometime today! Yippee! Grow eggies, grow!

Waiting for the follies to grow

Well Mondays u/s showed 6 follies all averaging around 15 mm each. 3 on each ovary. ( I was hoping for most to be on the right, due to tubal on left. shrug. ) My Estrodial was only about 230 though. :( So I took two more days of gonal-f (for a total of 5 days). I go back in Wed morning at 7 am to check follies and estrodial again. They should be ready to go! Nurse #2 said they should grow about 2mm ev day, so by morning they expect them to be around 19-20 mm. My estrodial should go up too, FX! They want to see roughly 1 follie for every 200 units of estrodial. The less estrodial I have, the fewer of the follies actually contain good eggs. aahhh sigh.

To keep my mind off the waiting, I have kept myself nauseous all week. My tooth had a cap that came off & couldn't be fixed. So the dentist is putting in a bridge. I have a dental phobia and get some sort of sedation when I go to the dentist & I have been having a BAD reaction to the lorazopram stuff. I took it twice this week & both times have left me sick for 2 days! Yucky sick and shaky headed. Fun fun! I keep telling myself it is practice for morning sickness, HA!

Todays pic is a Mexican Blanket Flower from our yard last summer.

Shipping of swimmers

Here is pic of Dewar that our swimmers come in when shipped from sperm bank. This is the dewar with top lifted off and I am lifting the handle up that lifts the canes up so you can reach them. You can see 3 canes showing in the middle. Those are then lifted and on each one a vial (or more than 1) are stuck to them. You can then pull a vial off the cane and defrost it. The dewar (tank) actually stays inside the box the whole time. Everything inside is very cold & you are supposed to wear gloves to touch any of it-including vial until it defrosts. ( My nurse did not wear gloves at last iui, making me wonder about how cold it really is, but that is was instructions say so better safe than sorry! Good thing she didn't see my face when she reached in with bare hand & popped the vial off. I thought we would have to go to the ER for a second!)

HPT's and OPK's my friend & enemy

Here is a pic of the tests I used last time. This was at 12 DPIUI (days past iui). The middle test is a Target brand HPT taken with FMU (first morning urine). You can't really see it, but there is a faint line going up and down too, making it a positive result. It was so faint, I wasn't sure it was real, so I held my pee for 4 hours then tried again with the top HPT which is a clearblue easy digital. It said pregnant, as you can see! Just for kicks because I was all out of HPT, I used a OPK at the same time as the CBE digital test. I think the opk is an Answer brand midstream test. It would read negetive if being used as an opk, but when used as an HPT, it has a clear fairly dark line which tells me that I am either ovulating or have enuf HCG to be pregnant! If you go to peeonastick.com she explains very clearly how opk's can be hpt's. I won't attempt the long explanation here, LOL. SO... all three tests do show + for pregnancy. The next day when I had a beta blood test done, the result was only 12. That is a very low #, but it is a positive result. If my blood test was only 12 the next day, then on CD 12 when I took these at home tests, it would have been even less! That gives me great hope for all 3 tests since that is even more sensitive than they are said to be! So I give all a star. The Target hpt was very faint, but to be fair, my beta levels were bairly pregnant.

Each brand of hpt/opk's work diff for diff people. I didn't like the tiny (less expensive) dip strips that I bought since they were sometimes hard to read. I didn't get very dark + with them, even tho they were Answer brand- the same brand that I do like in a midstream model. I have heard others say they never got a + w/answer and others like them too, so <<>>. You really just need to try a variety of styles/brands and see which work well for you! I am sorry, I know that is never what ya want to hear, I don't anyway. I like clear choices! haha I am sorry to say, but there are very very few clear easy choices when TTC. Ha.

Update on my currant cycle is..... one more day of the gonal-f is down. My sis did it last night while we were out of town. We snuck into bathroom, probably making everyone wonder what in the heck we were doing, but she was able to do the shot squeamish stomach and all! She did a very good job & I barely felt it. I came home and told K that she better be more gentle next time too! K likes to do the shots fast before I start to "panic". I don't know what she is talking about- I don't panic! LOL We will do the gonal-f again tonight then on to u/s and estrodial tests both before 7 am Monday. :) PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me have high Estrodial numbers to go along with 4 or 5 very round and plump and healthy eggies! O O O O O (Hopefully on the right ovary, not left!)