We had alphabet tater tots (yes, they make such a thing!) for dinner, and Sam had the letters S, B, O and O. She put them together and sounded out: SOOB. "What's soob, mommy?" "It's a nonsense word - you just made it up - but you sounded it out just right."
Then she ate one of the Os and I told her I saw a real word she could make (thinking of "sob"). She put together BOS and said with the pride of reading in her voice: "Boss. Just like when I boss you around!"
************************************
Adam's phone made it's low-battery chirp and I looked around in confusion. Taking the phone out of his back pocket, he said, "That was me." Sam said, "No it was not. That was your phone."
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Other Things
So, besides all of this donor egg stuff, there have been lots of other things going on in my life over the past two weeks or so. Let's see if I can summarize:
That's all I can think of for now. It's been a very busy time, but mostly good. I have high hopes for 2011.
- I booked our hotels for Rome and Florence in April. WE ARE GOING TO ITALY! I can hardly believe it, I'm so excited. I hope to write another update about my planning soon.
- We've turned our cat into an indoor/outdoor cat. I have a great story about how he fell into the drainage sewer.
- My dishwasher broke again a couple of weeks ago, and we just got it repaired yesterday. We definitely got a lemon when we bought it a year ago, but it's pretty much been rebuilt now. Going a few weeks without a dishwasher over the past few months really makes me appreciate technology. What an amazing, wonderful world we live in!
- Our six-month-old coffee maker hadn't been working right for months and I finally got around to calling Bed, Bath, and Beyond about it. It was still under warranty, but they exchanged it with no questions asked. I figured I'd have to send it to the manufacturer myself or something. That was a wonderful surprise.
- Adam has grown a beard. He had one when I met him, but I asked him to shave it off. He looks good in a beard, but I'm not a big fan of them, generally. However, I kind of like it this time around. Change can be kind of sexy.
- We paid off our second mortgage and refinanced our house. We actually started off with three loans because Adam's parents lent us the money for the down payment. But after paying off two of the loans and the refinance, our monthly payment is reduced by just around $1000. We have an extra grand every month. Wow!
- I signed up for a creative writing class at the local community college which starts next week.
- We completed our 2010 Adventure Box. 2010 was not a great year for us. I guess the best part was that Adam got tenure. OCON was also a big highlight.
- When we took down the Christmas decorations, Sam was so disappointed (and so were Adam and I!) that we decided that we're going to start a new tradition of putting up snowmen decorations for the rest of the winter after Christmas. January and February are really the most drab months of the year, and the Christmas let-down doesn't help. Let's keep the cheer going until spring, when nature will provide the delight.
- We saw a nice performance of The Nutcracker (but it wasn't a ballet - more like a fancy puppet show with singing and dancing). Sam seems to really love live performances.
- Speaking of live performances, we'll be seeing Mary Poppins during our trip to Manhattan in a couple of weeks. It will be only my second Broadway show, and Sam's first. I'm really looking forward to it.
- We tried to take Sam to an elaborate ice-sculpture exhibit (so elaborate that they charged $25 each for tickets!) but she got so scared she wouldn't go in. I know another mother who physically forced her sobbing, scared three-year-old to go in and I got all judgmental about what a bad mother she was, but then I realized that she has more than one child, and that makes things not quite so clear-cut. The other child might have missed out if they hadn't all gone in. Maybe I'll have to deal with those issues someday.
- My slacker-mom tendencies have resulted in Sam getting a staph infection on her bottom. And I had to suffer the embarrassment of the doctor telling us we should bathe her more often. Okay, so I wasn't really embarrassed. I actually found the whole thing quite funny, except for the infection part.
- Adam and I had a nice adult night out at a party just after Christmas.
- I sent my spit into a company who will analyze my DNA. I'll get the results in a couple of months. Fun!
That's all I can think of for now. It's been a very busy time, but mostly good. I have high hopes for 2011.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
1000
I just noticed that yesterday's post was my 1000th post! And what a good one it was. I have cemented that experience into my memory forever. I've found the themes that ran through my experience, which give it it's meaning. It's writing posts like that that keeps me blogging, even when I look at my tiny readership statistics and think, "why bother?" as all we bloggers do.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
The Transfer
The embryo transfer was a breeze, and in many ways, an enjoyable, exciting experience. We arrived early, but were shown in right away. When the receptionist pulled my file, I noticed two other files in the stack with the same green sticker on them, which makes me wonder if they did three transfers that day. I really have no idea what kind of volume this clinic does, but it makes me curious to find out.
We were shown into a comfortable consultation room. (Last time we sat in one of those rooms, we had just found out that I had had my fourth miscarriage. Wow, how differently we felt this time.) A nurse gave me my instructions, which were basically, "keep taking your meds and stay in bed for the rest of the day." She told me, "one pillow is fine, and you can get up to eat and go to the bathroom, but otherwise, you need to be horizontal." I was surprised. I figured I'd at least be allowed to kind of recline in bed. When I later asked my doctor about why bed rest was required ("do I really need to worry about gravity?"), he said, "Oh, no good reason. We're just being conservative. There are no studies about it so we err on the side of caution. But we used to order two weeks of bed rest and it's slowly gone down with no ill effects." Two weeks! I have to say, a half day was torture. Of course, that was mainly because I was in tremendous pain (which is worst lying down) from those damn progesterone shots. I ended up sobbing (the hormones also have me in a continuous state of near-emotional-meltdown) and having to ask Adam for a tissue and whining, "I can't even get myself a tissue!" Staying in bed all day by choice on occasion is fun. This was not fun.
So back to our cozy consultation room. After the nurse spoke to us, she asked us to go in to the ultrasound room so they could check to make sure my bladder was full enough. (A full bladder helps with the ultrasound, so I had guzzled 4 glasses of water an hour earlier.) I knew we were supposed to meet with the doctor before the procedure, so I asked if we would come back to the comfy room or if he was going to meet us in the u/s room. She didn't have a clear answer, so I told her I did not want to meet with the doctor in that dark little room (which is filled with unpleasant memories for me), half-naked with my cold, bare feet hanging off the table. I wanted to stay put. She said that was fine. I'm very proud of myself for thinking of this and being assertive enough to ask for it. I have a bad habit of being completely obsequious with doctors, but I'm learning to conquer it now that I'm actually paying them directly instead of through insurance.
Now, the main thing that we needed to discuss with the doctor was the status of the embryos and how many we would transfer. But when he came in and asked, "How are you doing?" I answered, "Nervous," but Adam said, "She's in pain from those shots." So we somehow ended up talking to him for at least five minutes about the shots before we got the great news about having at least two viable embryos. I can't believe we didn't pounce on him about that first. I mean, everything depended on that, and it was completely uncertain until that morning. I guess that shows you how horrible these shots really are.
So, as previously reported, we found out that we had three mature blastocysts, two early blastocysts, and one morula. I'm still flying high on our luck with this! We decided to transfer the standard two. The RE told us that the others would need to be watched until the next day to see if any were viable for freezing. I figured that we might get one. In the end, we found out the next day that two continued to develop well, and now we have two frozen embryos just in case. What a wonderful feeling, to have that in the back of my mind! Although, at this point, the main reason I'm desperate for this attempt at pregnancy to work is that I never want to have to do these injections again! Anyway, the doctor then told us that he would inform the lab to prepare the two best embryos, we signed some release forms, and we went into the ultrasound room.
When the doctor came in, there was some setting up of equipment and getting me positioned and ready. (I was extremely relieved that my bladder was plenty full and yet I wasn't dying to use the bathroom. I've learned exactly how to time these things!) At some point, somebody, I think the ultrasound technician, opened a little door in the wall - it looked just like a dumbwaiter door. I had noticed this door on previous visits, but didn't think much about it. (I've been in the u/s rooms at this clinic six times now and have spent some time looking around. Oh, and I thought you should know: I counted them up, and I've had twenty ultrasounds. Twenty.) But I realized now that there really was something behind the door. The tech was talking to someone back there. And then my doctor said, "That's our lab behind that door." I said, "Ah, so that's where our little embryos have been cooking for the past five days." Awesome! I was really excited by that, for some reason. I guess it was nice to know the concrete place where all this science takes place. Then the doctor and some mysterious, half-visible figure behind the door began to exchange some formal communication - something along the lines of:
Well, it was something like that. I again pleased myself by having enough sense of humor at that moment to say, "It's like a fast food restaurant. Order up!"
I suppose I won't give you the gritty details of the procedure itself. You can look it up on the cloud if you're interested. But the cool part was that we could see, on the ultrasound monitor, the little tube that was inserted, and we could see two little blobs of white escaping the tube and landing somewhere inside me. We saw it! Again, awesome!
But then I wondered, and asked the doctor, "how big are those things now?" He said they were still microscopic. What we saw on the monitor was the air and liquid surrounding them. But you could see two separate masses. The technician clicked the mouse and put two little arrows on the screen, pointing to them. I don't think I took my eyes off of those arrows until the screen saver came on a few minutes later.
Then it was done and I had to lay on my back for fifteen minutes. I don't remember feeling any pain from the injections that whole time. The doctor handed us something before he left the room. It was a photo of our embryos:
Aren't they beautiful?
Here's hoping that all my future experiences in ultrasound rooms are as wonderful as this one.
We were shown into a comfortable consultation room. (Last time we sat in one of those rooms, we had just found out that I had had my fourth miscarriage. Wow, how differently we felt this time.) A nurse gave me my instructions, which were basically, "keep taking your meds and stay in bed for the rest of the day." She told me, "one pillow is fine, and you can get up to eat and go to the bathroom, but otherwise, you need to be horizontal." I was surprised. I figured I'd at least be allowed to kind of recline in bed. When I later asked my doctor about why bed rest was required ("do I really need to worry about gravity?"), he said, "Oh, no good reason. We're just being conservative. There are no studies about it so we err on the side of caution. But we used to order two weeks of bed rest and it's slowly gone down with no ill effects." Two weeks! I have to say, a half day was torture. Of course, that was mainly because I was in tremendous pain (which is worst lying down) from those damn progesterone shots. I ended up sobbing (the hormones also have me in a continuous state of near-emotional-meltdown) and having to ask Adam for a tissue and whining, "I can't even get myself a tissue!" Staying in bed all day by choice on occasion is fun. This was not fun.
So back to our cozy consultation room. After the nurse spoke to us, she asked us to go in to the ultrasound room so they could check to make sure my bladder was full enough. (A full bladder helps with the ultrasound, so I had guzzled 4 glasses of water an hour earlier.) I knew we were supposed to meet with the doctor before the procedure, so I asked if we would come back to the comfy room or if he was going to meet us in the u/s room. She didn't have a clear answer, so I told her I did not want to meet with the doctor in that dark little room (which is filled with unpleasant memories for me), half-naked with my cold, bare feet hanging off the table. I wanted to stay put. She said that was fine. I'm very proud of myself for thinking of this and being assertive enough to ask for it. I have a bad habit of being completely obsequious with doctors, but I'm learning to conquer it now that I'm actually paying them directly instead of through insurance.
Now, the main thing that we needed to discuss with the doctor was the status of the embryos and how many we would transfer. But when he came in and asked, "How are you doing?" I answered, "Nervous," but Adam said, "She's in pain from those shots." So we somehow ended up talking to him for at least five minutes about the shots before we got the great news about having at least two viable embryos. I can't believe we didn't pounce on him about that first. I mean, everything depended on that, and it was completely uncertain until that morning. I guess that shows you how horrible these shots really are.
So, as previously reported, we found out that we had three mature blastocysts, two early blastocysts, and one morula. I'm still flying high on our luck with this! We decided to transfer the standard two. The RE told us that the others would need to be watched until the next day to see if any were viable for freezing. I figured that we might get one. In the end, we found out the next day that two continued to develop well, and now we have two frozen embryos just in case. What a wonderful feeling, to have that in the back of my mind! Although, at this point, the main reason I'm desperate for this attempt at pregnancy to work is that I never want to have to do these injections again! Anyway, the doctor then told us that he would inform the lab to prepare the two best embryos, we signed some release forms, and we went into the ultrasound room.
When the doctor came in, there was some setting up of equipment and getting me positioned and ready. (I was extremely relieved that my bladder was plenty full and yet I wasn't dying to use the bathroom. I've learned exactly how to time these things!) At some point, somebody, I think the ultrasound technician, opened a little door in the wall - it looked just like a dumbwaiter door. I had noticed this door on previous visits, but didn't think much about it. (I've been in the u/s rooms at this clinic six times now and have spent some time looking around. Oh, and I thought you should know: I counted them up, and I've had twenty ultrasounds. Twenty.) But I realized now that there really was something behind the door. The tech was talking to someone back there. And then my doctor said, "That's our lab behind that door." I said, "Ah, so that's where our little embryos have been cooking for the past five days." Awesome! I was really excited by that, for some reason. I guess it was nice to know the concrete place where all this science takes place. Then the doctor and some mysterious, half-visible figure behind the door began to exchange some formal communication - something along the lines of:
"Prepare embryos for Amy Mossoff."
"Two embryos for Amy Mossoff."
"Two embryos, check."
"Roger, that."
"Ten-four."
Well, it was something like that. I again pleased myself by having enough sense of humor at that moment to say, "It's like a fast food restaurant. Order up!"
I suppose I won't give you the gritty details of the procedure itself. You can look it up on the cloud if you're interested. But the cool part was that we could see, on the ultrasound monitor, the little tube that was inserted, and we could see two little blobs of white escaping the tube and landing somewhere inside me. We saw it! Again, awesome!
But then I wondered, and asked the doctor, "how big are those things now?" He said they were still microscopic. What we saw on the monitor was the air and liquid surrounding them. But you could see two separate masses. The technician clicked the mouse and put two little arrows on the screen, pointing to them. I don't think I took my eyes off of those arrows until the screen saver came on a few minutes later.
Then it was done and I had to lay on my back for fifteen minutes. I don't remember feeling any pain from the injections that whole time. The doctor handed us something before he left the room. It was a photo of our embryos:
Aren't they beautiful?
Here's hoping that all my future experiences in ultrasound rooms are as wonderful as this one.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Catch Up Day
I know I promised a report on the transfer procedure today, but I'm going to be way too busy with errands and household chores. I haven't been planning well, and we're running out of food in the house, there is a lot of laundry to do, and I have to go to the pharmacy (where I seem to have to go every other day). It's going to snow here this afternoon so I anticipate a snow day tomorrow. This town shuts down if there's more than an inch, so I'd better get going.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Day 5
This will have to be short because apparently, bed rest really means lying horizontally. So I'm craning my neck and typing this on my iPad.
Am I killing you with the suspense yet?
(Adam got me the iPad for Christmas; isn't he sweet?)
Ok, ok.
It's great news! We transferred two good-looking blastocysts. I'll write about the procedure itself tomorrow because it was pretty cool. But the important thing is that all six embryos were still growing. Three were blastocysts, two were early blastocysts, and one was a Morula, which is a stage just prior to blastocyst. We didn't get grades for them, but we obviously transferred the two best ones, according to the embryologist's judgment. Wer're hoping to freeze at least one more, but it is up to the embryologist to determine which are viable, and he'll do that this afternoon or tomorrow morning. I'm a little peeved that we don't get to be involved in that decision, but the clinic does it to prevent wasting everyone's time and resources with embryos that are highly unlikely to make it.
But we have our two chances. Everything is on track. Now we have a 70% chance of getting pregnant. Whew! All of this, just for 70%.
I'll write more tomorrow.
Am I killing you with the suspense yet?
(Adam got me the iPad for Christmas; isn't he sweet?)
Ok, ok.
It's great news! We transferred two good-looking blastocysts. I'll write about the procedure itself tomorrow because it was pretty cool. But the important thing is that all six embryos were still growing. Three were blastocysts, two were early blastocysts, and one was a Morula, which is a stage just prior to blastocyst. We didn't get grades for them, but we obviously transferred the two best ones, according to the embryologist's judgment. Wer're hoping to freeze at least one more, but it is up to the embryologist to determine which are viable, and he'll do that this afternoon or tomorrow morning. I'm a little peeved that we don't get to be involved in that decision, but the clinic does it to prevent wasting everyone's time and resources with embryos that are highly unlikely to make it.
But we have our two chances. Everything is on track. Now we have a 70% chance of getting pregnant. Whew! All of this, just for 70%.
I'll write more tomorrow.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Day 3
We just got the best of all possible news: all six embryos are growing and look great! One is at six cells, one is at seven cells, and four are at eight cells. We couldn't have hoped for more, at this point.
So the Big Day is Monday. We won't get any more news until we go in for the transfer. I'm actually hopeful that we might have something to freeze, but the really important thing is that we have a great shot at two viable embryos to transfer. This is looking really, really good!
In related news, my butt hurts! Those progesterone shots are turning out to be a killer. The pain kicks in about six hours after the shot and lasts for a couple of days. In fact, just when the pain is subsiding, I have to have another shot on that side (we alternate left and right each day). The pain is bad enough that it wakes me up at night when I turn over, so I've been feeling very tired lately. I also suspect that the hormones are causing me fatigue. I get about four or five good hours a day, and the rest is quite miserable.
There are some things we can do to try to mitigate the pain from the shots, but I'm going to ask for some statistics on the effectiveness of the suppositories. I can't imagine doing this for months.
The transfer itself is easy. No painkillers or sedatives are necessary. We go in at noon and meet with the doctor to decide on the number to transfer, the transfer is at 12:30, and we're done by 1:00 or so. We're going to get a sitter for Sam so that Adam can be there with me the whole time. I'll be on bed rest for the rest of that day, and there are a few minor limitations for the next four days. Otherwise, it's business as usual.
I'll probably have another report here on Monday afternoon. Keep your fingers crossed for us!
So the Big Day is Monday. We won't get any more news until we go in for the transfer. I'm actually hopeful that we might have something to freeze, but the really important thing is that we have a great shot at two viable embryos to transfer. This is looking really, really good!
In related news, my butt hurts! Those progesterone shots are turning out to be a killer. The pain kicks in about six hours after the shot and lasts for a couple of days. In fact, just when the pain is subsiding, I have to have another shot on that side (we alternate left and right each day). The pain is bad enough that it wakes me up at night when I turn over, so I've been feeling very tired lately. I also suspect that the hormones are causing me fatigue. I get about four or five good hours a day, and the rest is quite miserable.
There are some things we can do to try to mitigate the pain from the shots, but I'm going to ask for some statistics on the effectiveness of the suppositories. I can't imagine doing this for months.
The transfer itself is easy. No painkillers or sedatives are necessary. We go in at noon and meet with the doctor to decide on the number to transfer, the transfer is at 12:30, and we're done by 1:00 or so. We're going to get a sitter for Sam so that Adam can be there with me the whole time. I'll be on bed rest for the rest of that day, and there are a few minor limitations for the next four days. Otherwise, it's business as usual.
I'll probably have another report here on Monday afternoon. Keep your fingers crossed for us!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)