Keeping busy

Well, I finally did get some vague news from my nurse, which I am glad about even though as I suspected it does look like our retrieval and transfer will be earlier than I had hoped. I am not going to freak out about it though. She said that if my progesterone looks good next week (I'm not sure what "good" means in this case...), our donor would be starting stims the last week of July and that we would be needed out there for retrieval and transfer during the 1st two weeks of August. Ugh. I definitely know that beggars can't be choosers, and it is more important to me to be done with the transfer before the semester starts, so we will figure it out. We are kicking up our house-hunting, and might even be able to find something available July 15th, and move in the end of July. Talk about timing! The nurse said that we would know more next week when they see my progesterone levels, so I'll try to relax until then. And then maybe I'll ask her if there is any way to push it a little later. We'll see.

As far as the house-hunting goes, we have almost finished compiling our dossier. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, renting an apartment in NYC is a major ordeal. We were trying to avoid going with a broker, but all the ads you find listed under "by owner" or "no fee" end up being with a broker anyway, so it's kind of inevitable. And they can be helpful. But if you go through any broker, or even for most management companies, you have to provide a huge pile of personal and financial information to be approved before even being shown any apartments. Here's the list of stuff we need to have together from the website of one of the major realtors in NYC:

1. Letter from employer stating position, salary and length of employment (or start date if you have not yet started), and any information regarding bonus, guaranteed or otherwise.
2. Last two pay stubs
3. Last two years’ tax returns
4. Last two months’ bank statements
5. Name, addresses, and phone numbers of previous landlords
6. Two personal reference letters
7. Two business reference letters
8. Verification of other assets such as real estate, securities, etc.
9. Photo identification (driver’s license, passport, etc.)

We have all of this stuff together and have also written up a nice little document, sort of a hybrid between a resume and a cover letter, introducing ourselves. We just need to make copies and put them in the nice little pocket folders I got at Staples yesterday. Seriously, this is like a popularity contest, and it's very competitive!

Furthermore, to qualify for most apartments without a guarantor, your annual salary has to be between 40 and 50 times the monthly rent. Luckily, that works for us so far, because we have a pretty strict budget. But I wonder how long it will be before we start getting upsold, or even want to look at pricier things ourselves since the ones in our budget so far have been scary. Tomorrow we have an appointment to see a few things, so we'll see how it goes. We are going to be out of town for the holiday weekend, so will hopefully be able to finalize something by the end of next week. Things move fast in this town!

In other news, the robot rocket has blasted off! The FedEx guy came to pick it up an hour ago and it is on its way back to South Dakota. We should get the results pretty quickly and hopefully everything will prove to be ok with J.'s sperm. I was interested to see that it was part of the ODWU for LisainSK, because it wasn't for us. If there turns out to be a problem with it, I will be seriously ticked off, since we did 3 cycles with CCRM and nobody said boo about it to us!

Small update

So my nurse is avoiding my direct questions about when we might cycle. Today she wrote me back and didn't address my question at all, but suggested that we might check my P4 next week and then start me on Lupron instead of the BCPs. This way, she said, we could definitely get the cycle in before the end of August. I assume she means that I would start the Lupron after I get AF, but maybe I'm wrong?

When I've done my own FETs, it was exactly one month from starting Lupron to transfer. I am expecting AF in mid-July. My donor got her AF last week, and in my past retrievals it was 5 weeks from AF to retrieval. So how do we get to the middle-ground and end up at that same stage?

Any thoughts?

I wrote the nurse back and said I totally understand that she can't give me a calendar, but that we are thinking of moving at the very beginning of August, and did she see any reason why that wouldn't be a good idea? She is still mum...

And one more update - we have the "rocket" packed up and ready for pick up. J. came home from work today and diligently did his part, then we had fun getting the sample prepared and all packed up and deposited the little tubes into the inner core of the cooler. It was all steamy in there...very cool! FedEx will be here to pick it up tomorrow afternoon for blast off!

Still waiting and more worries...

Well, I'm a little frustrated because my nurse didn't write me back until yesterday, and then only to say that she can't give me a calendar until I also get AF, which won't be for a little more than 2 weeks. I am pretty predictable about when it will come, and wrote her back to ask if I could at least get a general time frame for retrieval, which of course I would not hold her to. I just need to have an idea because we have no idea about when we should be planning our move. We just started looking for apartments yesterday (very depressing and scary!) and there are plenty of places that are available immediately or some time in July, so we are starting to wonder whether we should try to move earlier than August 1, if possible. Of course that would mean paying double rent for a while, which is not ideal, but we would prefer that to missing our donor cycle (which we will NOT do). And I guess we could delay our move into September, but that is very inconvenient for me with the beginning of the new school year. I have a group of first year students I mentor and advise, so they are very demanding during that time of year.

So anyway, she did not write back yesterday and I really hope to hear from someone today. I don't want to be perceived as a nag, but wonder if I am being unreasonable to just get a general idea of when the cycle would be. Like I said before, for my own cycles it was about 4.5 to 5 weeks from me getting AF to my retrieval. I am assuming that it would be about the same time for my donor, but I don't know where I fit in to the picture. I'll be getting my AF about 3 weeks after her, and have to prep for the transfer. Any thoughts? I know that for myself, they wouldn't let me be on BCPs too long before a cycle because they didn't want me over suppressed. Does anyone know how long they will let a donor be on BCPs to time a cycle? Ugh! This is really stressing me out. It is stressful enough to cycle, and to move, but to put both together is a little crazy. We have started to discuss the option of not moving, which was seeming quite possible as the owners haven't had any luck selling this place since putting it on the market in May. But there has been more interest lately since they dropped the price, so it is likely that they will sell it after all. However, as the realtor pointed out to me the other day, even if they get an offer this week, it will take at least two months before they get co-op approval and close, so we wouldn't have to move for at least that long. I wonder if we should wait. I guess it just depends on whether we find just the right place when we really start looking next week.

This post has been quite boring - I apologize. In more interesting news, we received a giant tank by FedEx from SCSA Diagnostics, so we can send in J's sperm sample for the . I cannot believe how huge this thing is. Actually, I'm going to take a picture now to show you... hold on.

Ok, here's the monster. When J. saw it, he said "There's no way I'm going to be able to fill that!" (I put his bass guitar in the picture for size reference...)



And when you open it, here's the pre-cooled dry shipper that's inside. I haven't opened it yet because I'm paranoid about letting it get too warm.


I'm a little confused about the instructions, because I got the impression online that we should freeze the sample before shipping it, but the sheet that came with this just says to put the sample in the shipper. So I'm going to call but am waiting for business hours in South Dakota (I don't even know what time zone they are in!). I'm also worried because this thing is supposed to last for 7 days, but I've gotten conflicting information as to that is from when it was shipped, or when I received it. They sent it out last Thursday, but I saw on the tracking info that it hung out in Newark all weekend, before being delivered to me yesterday. And of course it was out in the truck yesterday for half the day on the hottest day of the year so far. So I'm wondering if I can put some cold packs in there too. We'll see. That's my excitement for today. I want to send this off tomorrow, so I guess I should call FedEx now to arrange for pick up. There is no way in hell I'm lugging that down to the FedEx store!

Waiting...again.

I'm freaking out a little. I don't really know why, but am just feeling overwhelmed, like everything is moving so fast. That is what I wanted, but still, it's freaky. Yesterday I got an email from my nurse that my donor was set to get her period "any minute", and that I should pay Freedom for her birth control pills as soon as they called me. They did call, and had spoken to the donor and knew that she had indeed gotten her period and therefore needed the pills by the weekend. How weird is that, that the pharmacist at Freedom Fertility knows who my donor is and spoke to her right before speaking to me. Anyway, this is moving fast. I never imagined that she would get her period so soon. In fact, it's almost a little too soon. I don't know if we'll be able to stretch things out long enough to get to mid-August, which is what I prefer. I know I can't be that picky, but we are supposed to be moving during the first week of August. Not that we have found a place to live. Not that we have even started looking. I'm feeling overwhelmed about the apartment search and we may just end up going with a broker, even though that will cost us several thousands of dollars more. Money we don't even really have.

So today I have a nervous tummy and have not been feeling so good. I don't know why I'm so freaked out. Also, I ordered the shipping kit to do the SCSA testing for sperm fragmentation through their lab in South Dakota. It's pretty cool because you can gather the sample at home and freeze it yourself and then ship it. No need to go to a local lab. We decided to go this route, even though we have a frozen sample out at CCRM and they could test it there, because we want to keep that as our back-up sample for the coming cycle. I'm freaking out about the sperm fragmentation test too, because what if we find out that there is a problem with J's sperm and maybe we don't need a donor after all?

So now I'm just waiting for my nurse to email me a tentative calendar. She knows the donor's Day 1, and my estimated next period arrival, so she should be able to make up a calendar by now, to at least give us a general idea.

So those are my worries for today! I should be going to yoga in just a bit, but my tummy doesn't feel up to it. But I am going to go into the city this afternoon to meet a friend in the park and catch up. It will be good to get out of the house and out of my head for a while!

We did!

We got her. We found our parking space. I just hope it is long-term parking and not 30-minute only or no standing. I'm starting to worry already because my life is just not complete if I don't have something to worry about. I'm worried that she is too young and will realize she can't handle it and will back out. I'm worried that she isn't a proven donor. I know so many people say to go with a proven donor, but I was too freaked out about my own old eggs to go with anyone over 30. And the doctor himself said yesterday that there was no need to test the donor embryos, as long as they were under 30. So I figured the younger, the better. (Our donor is not quite 20...) And now of course I'm worrying. I'm wondering if I could have gotten a better parking space. Why do I always do that???

Um...did we or didn't we?

Get the donor we just picked, that is. I had it narrowed down to three, and my nurse agreed that they were the three closest matches. We had the same first choice and J. also agreed. But we felt it was too fast - I mean, we just started looking today. But the nurse had told me there was someone else looking at our first choice, and they were serious. So I called my dad to ask him some medical questions about one of our choices (not the top pick) and he really helped me go ahead and go for it. He said that if we had already made the decision to go with donor egg, what else were we waiting for? Was there anything wrong with the donor we liked? No. What did we think we would find that was better by waiting? Nothing. So why not go for it? As he said, you always think you are going to find a closer parking space, but you really should just go ahead and park. So we went for it. We clicked on it together on my computer. I refreshed the page beforehand to make sure she was still available, and then we clicked, agreed to the terms of service, or whatever, and clicked "submit". Got an error message. Went back to the donor page and it now said that she was not available. So did we get her? Or did someone beat me to her by a matter of 10 seconds? I had to put in my email info, so I thought maybe I'd get a confirmation, like you do at Amazon when you buy a book. But nothing. I wrote to my nurse to find out, but I have a feeling they are gone for the day. So I will have to wait to find out for sure.

I can't believe that this morning we didn't even have access to the site yet and tonight we already chose someone. Are we being too rash, or is my dad right? And did we really get our parking space?

Getting close

Well, as far as I'm concerned, we are all set and ready to move on to choosing a donor. I have done all the things I needed to do this week: sonohystogram on Monday (check!), psych consult on Tuesday (check!), follow-up over the phone with Dr. Famous on Wednesday (check!). I promptly wrote to my nurse to tell her I'm all set, so now I'm just waiting for the password. I've already started scoping out the donor database, because you can see limited information about the donors without having the password. I've got 15 possibilities with my hair color. I'm trying to remember my high school biology class, but it seems to me that it doesn't really matter what eye color we go with because everyone on J's side of the family has brown eyes and that should trump anything else, right? I have brown eyes too, as does everyone in my family, so it would be a little strange to have a blue-eyed baby, but I just don't think that would be very likely. Any genetics experts out there?

The conversation with the therapist from CCRM last night was really helpful. It was a pretty intense conversation with her asking a lot of questions and also giving some very useful advice. I was pretty emotional after the hour-long phone call. But also excited. And then I spoke to my doctor today and he said there is no reason we can't get started as soon as we want to, and that he would "light a fire" under the donor team to make it happen as fast as we wanted it to. It all comes down to choosing a donor. Of course I am more than aware that roadblocks can come up at any point. I have learned a lot from R's trials and tribulations, and just pray that I don't have a donor who backs out on me. But as I've said before, I know I need to not get hung up on my tentative mid-to-end of August timeline. It just might not happen. But it would be really nice to start the school year off with everything taken care of.

I need to also be starting to look for apartments for us if we are indeed planning on moving to Manhattan in August. And we are planning on it. It is just such a daunting task and I'm a little freaked out about it. But right now I am obsessed with getting that password and choosing a donor, so that might just have to be my number one priority for this week.

Back to the real world

We made it back from our wonderful vacation in Mexico and I've been slowly catching up on all the things I need to do. First of all, that was truly the vacation that we needed. We had a fantastic, relaxing time. The beach was gorgeous, the water wonderful and the food scrumptious. We did some drinking, but not too much since we're just not used to it anymore. We saw Mayan ruins and went snorkeling and saw huge, gorgeous sea turtles. That's me doing my best Karate Kid moves on the beach in front of our hotel.


J and I bought matching bracelets from a guy selling them on the beach. They represent our renewed commitment to one another and the next step in our quest to bring home a baby. I have said that we are not allowed to take them off until we bring home a baby (or babies), and then we'll take them off and make them into little baby anklets. He thinks I'm being a little silly about that last part, but he's humoring me for now...


Here is the gorgeous beach right in front of our small hotel. It was truly relaxing and straight out of a postcard....


I got a chance to catch up on a bunch of reading, and look forward to doing more of it over the course of the summer. Here I am reading "The Namesake", which I really enjoyed. It might not look like I can see the book in this picture, but I was able to see about 2 inches at a time, keeping the bright sun off my face. I managed to avoid getting a sunburn, which I'm quite proud of.



So now we are back home, but I'm trying to keep these images in my mind. Before I left I set up several appointments that I need to do this week so we can get the log-on information for the donor pool. Today I went and had my sonohystogram, which wasn't too pleasant but not too bad. Everything looks good inside my uterus, so we are good so far. We have a psych consult set up over the phone tomorrow evening. We will talk to the psychologist at CCRM and hopefully make a good enough impression that we will get cleared. And then on Wednesday I will speak to my doctor about our last failure and the decision to move on to donor eggs. I know he won't have a problem with it, since he has been hinting at it for a while now. That is all that we need to do this week and then we should be able to start picking our donor. We need to have more conversation about what characteristics are most important for us, but I think we are mostly on the same page. I am going to try really hard not to get caught up on too many little details. I don't want to be overly hasty, but I also really hope that we can find someone who will be ready to cycle in August, and that the timing works out for us to do it before my school semester begins.

J and I did have some really good talks about things while in Mexico and I think we are both ready for this next step. I would be lying if I said that I am as ready as he is though. I still have this little bit of sadness inside me that I won't be able to carry on the genes of my mother, who died when I was young. It makes me a little sad to see pictures of her right now, but I hope I will get beyond that. I know that she would want me to.

Moving on to Plan B

Well, we are out. All of our embryos arrested at some point after Day 3. It seems like they really didn't grow much at all past the cell counts from our Day 3 report. I have to say that gives me a nagging suspicion that there might be some sperm issues, but when I asked the doctor about that last time, he said it was in 90% probability an egg issue rather than a sperm one. Still. It makes it hard for me to give up on my own eggs, but that is precisely what I must do. I owe it to my husband to move on, as we planned to do. And I do agree that we have wasted enough time already. So donor egg it is.

I checked out the SART stats on my local clinic versus CCRM versus also Cornell. Interestingly, my local clinic (IRMS at St. Barnabas) has stats that are actually better than Cornell's, though not as many cycles performed. Cornell's success rate (live birth) for fresh transfer with donor eggs is 52.1%, IRMS's rate is 60.8%, and CCRM's is....78.8%. Ding, ding, ding...we have a winner. J. and I pretty much agree that we shouldn't mess around with that. It is worth the extra money. And we aren't buying a house anytime soon anyway, so why not go out with a bang.

My nurse already called me today to follow up, and we have a WTF appointment set up with Schoolie after we get back from Mexico. She will also have the donor egg nurse call me soon, so hopefully I can start making arrangements with her before talking to the doctor. We'd like to start shopping! I think we will most likely go ahead and use CCRM's donor pool.

So I got the call while I was at a colleague's house working on a course we are teaching together in the fall. She knows what is going on with us and was very sweet. And then I had to call J. I was so worried that he would lose it, but he did not. He was very calm and rational, saying that he felt ok about it and pointing out that we have a great Plan B. I am so happy that we have gotten past the problems we were having and that we are moving forward. I think this trip to Mexico is going to be just what we needed. We leave on Friday. I'll try to check in before then, but if you don't hear from me, you'll know why.

From no news is good news, to better late than never

Well they did call me today with my Day 3 report from yesterday. Indeed it is their policy to no longer call on Day 3, at least for those of us who are doing the CCS testing. Anyway, here's the news:

All 8 are still going (the 5 originals and the 3 Day 2 ICSIs), though some are probably out of the running. Of the Day 1 bunch, I have 2 8 cells that are both a grade 3 (around 25% fragmentation) and a 7 cell that is a grade 3+ (15-20% frag). Then a 3 cell and 5 cell that she didn't give grades for, but they are probably too slow.

And from the Day 2 ICSI group, these were the cell counts yesterday, which technically was only Day 2 for them: a 9 cell and a 7 cell (yikes! That is too fast, so that is not good) and a 2 cell (a little too slow). I guess they all should have been around 4 cells yesterday. What's with the mutant fast-growers??

Just to put it in perspective, last time my only 8 cell was the only one that made it to blast, and it had 20% fragmentation. It was ultimately graded a 4 BB, so I guess these ones would be not quite as good. I don't know if they can improve in quality as the become blasts. Last time I also had a 7 cell on Day 3 with 0% fragmentation, but it didn't make it to blast.

So now I wait until Tuesday to get the final report on how many make it to blast and will be biopsied and then vitrified. And then the long wait begins. The last two times we have received our testing results in about a month. Sometimes it can take up to 6 weeks, but I hope that won't be the case.

We are also thinking about starting the ball rolling for the donor egg process, because if this doesn't work we don't want to lose any time. I'm not sure how fast that process can be, but I'm sure R. could chime in here. Also, we are trying to decide whether to go to CCRM for donor egg, or go back to our local clinic to do it. We are also near Cornell, but I think it would take too long to get established as a patient there, so the choice is between either our local clinic (IRMS - St. Barnabas, for those of you familiar with this area) or CCRM. If we do a fresh transfer, I don't see much difference. But if we get a lot of extra embryos and want to freeze, I would definitely feel better about using CCRM. Thoughts? (I think I know where the bias in my readership lies!)

No news is good news?

Well, I didn't hear from the lab this morning so I called them this afternoon, and was told by the person who answered the phone that they are not making Day 3 calls anymore. That would be fine, except that they told me after retrieval and also when they called with the Day 2 ICSI results that they would call on Day 3. She said she could leave a message for them to call me anyway, so I waited the rest of the day for them to call. Nothing. I gripped my cell phone, on vibrate, all the way into Manhattan for a small wedding ceremony, only turning if off 5 minutes before the ceremony began. Then turned it back on right after and made J carry it in his pocket. Kept checking it compulsively all day - nothing. So unless they are going to take pity on me and call me tomorrow, I'll have to wait until Monday or Tuesday to hear from them. Monday is Day 5, which is the day where most embryos that are "on track" should become blasts, but sometimes they are a little slow and don't make it to blast until Day 6. And those that were Day 2 ICSIs would definitely take until at least Tuesday. So the waiting continues. Ugh.

3 more!

We got home today, but before we left the embryology lab called to let me know that they were able to mature 3 more eggs overnight. They ICSIed them and all three fertilized! That is good news, though I know that Day 2 ICSIs don't tend to do as well moving forward. But maybe we'll get something. So now we wait for the Day 3 report tomorrow...

It's a numbers game

We got our fertilization report this morning. The phone woke us up, so I was a little groggy at first. But I'm glad we didn't have to wait around all morning to get the news. Anyway, out of the 12 eggs retrieved, 6 were mature. They did the ICSI procedure on those 6 (that's where they actually inject one sperm right into the egg, for those of you who aren't already expert in this stuff...) and 5 of them fertilized. There were 3 more eggs that matured in the lab over night (one of the many tricks they have up their sleeves at the wonderful CCRM lab) so they will be ICSIed today I think. And then there are the remaining eggs that they will check on later today to see if they have also matured in the lab, but I'm not so hopeful for them since they weren't matured 24 hours after retrieval. So now we wait for the Day 3 report. I'm hoping that we will have a good number of them being in the 7 to 8 cell range, which is the optimal cell growth for Day 3. (Normally an embryo will be 4 cells on Day 2, then double to 8 cells on Day 3.) As I think I said before on our last cycle, we only had one that was at 8 cells on Day 3 (and a number of others that were slower), and that was the only one that made it to blast. And turned out to be normal. So I just need to get through the next few days to see what they have to say on Saturday.

We leave for home tomorrow, so we have one more day to relax in Denver. I'm feeling pretty much fine today - just a little sore. We just went out to breakfast at the Original Pancake House (thanks to R. at Oneeggplease) and had an awesome meal. We had never heard of that place, even though it is apparently a chain. Very yummy! Now we are back at the hotel lounging around and trying to decide what to do with the day. The weather isn't so sunny, so no lounging by the pool. We mostly just want to relax. I'm feeling nervous about our results, but also somewhat calm because I know that we have a plan for moving forward. Despite what I said about wanting to maybe do another cycle with my eggs, I am slowly realizing that if this one doesn't work, my eggs really have reached the end of the road. Hearing about R's recent success with donor eggs (congrats!!) has made me feel much better about heading in that direction if necessary. As J. said, it is time to move on with our lives...

Lucky number 12?

Two posts in one day! I just wanted to say that on a silly impulse, I asked J. to buy us 12 Powerball tickets - one for each egg retrieved. I saw on t.v. this morning that the prize is at 260 million, so I sort of joked that we should buy a ticket. Later, before retrieval, I suggested that he get one for every egg. He went out for some errands and I wasn't sure that he would do it, but sure enough, he came home with twelve numbers. I hope I'm not jinxing us, but I thought it would be fun. Of course I'd rather have our IVF be successful than win the lottery, but then again with all that money we could certainly afford to cycle again!

It's done

Just a quick post because I'm really tired. Just got back from retrieval and they got 12 eggs, which is better than I was hoping for. I know we had 8 follicles that looked mature, plus some smaller ones, so I'm hoping some of those smaller ones will be mature as well. We will get the fertilization report tomorrow. I had to ask specifically for them to do Day 2 ICSI on any eggs that they are able to mature overnight if they aren't ready yet. They won't do that automatically unless you have a really small number retrieved, but they will do it if you ask, and I'd like to have as many as possible to work with, especially since this is our last try.
That's all for now - I feel a nap coming on. I'll post the fertilization report tomorrow.