This is my life for the next 4+ weeks!
Here is a video I posted for those of you wanting further explanation and how to organize your IVF meds, hope this helps:
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Lupron Injection Video, plus pics of skin reaction from Lupron
This is my 2nd Lupron injection, this time we video taped it! Roger did a good job injecting me, and I didn't have much of a skin reaction afterward.
Here is yesterday's pic of my reaction from the first injection:
Here is today's pic from the 2nd injection and the skin reaction I had afterward, not bad! They pics were taken about the same time after the injection was given. Way better than yesterday! Both of the irritations went away within 10-15 min.
Plus, you can hardly feel the needle! Overall, Lupron isn't bad at all!! Easy Peasy!
Monday, October 25, 2010
My first IVF injection
...was this morning! It went much better than I thought. The first injection that I have to take in this process is Lupron. Lupron is a drug that is for the very beginning stages of IVF and is an ovary suppressant. Basically it prevents my ovary from going into ovulation until we are ready. We have a window of 3 hours that we have to take Lupron in the morning, so I picked 7am, and Roger woke up with me and he gave me the first injection. I will have him do most of my injections unless he has to be at work sooner than 7am. I have two great friends close by that are nurses and will probably have them assist me with the big guns of injections (those intramuscular injections I mentioned in the previous post) so Thank God they are here to help! I still have quite a few weeks until I begin taking those though...phew! The Lupron injection wasn't bad at all, I could hardly feel the needle. What I did notice though was afterward I had a small red bump where the injection site was, it was a little itchy and raised. I was a little scared that I was having an allergic reaction so I called my RE's office (reproductive endocrinologist/IVF doctor) and asked them about it. They gave me some things to watch for (which none of them happened) and that it went away within 15 min. they said it might have been a little reaction my body had to the drug, but nothing bad. I continue as normal and keep an eye one it. We'll see tomorrow! Hopefully it was just a first time thing!
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Seriously!?!?!?!!!! Intramuscular injections!
How on earth can I do this injection myself?! Oh my gosh. I'm so nervous. So "needle"-less to say I got my meds yesterday! I was a little excited until I saw those intramuscular needles...oh boy. I'm so freaking scared to do those! I'm like, they MUST have given me the wrong size needle! I have done some research and...yeah, they're the right size. I'm freaking out. There is no way I can do those myself. I don't even know how I can even let someone stab me with it either! Wow...well I guess it will have to be done...somehow. I must add that not ALL the needles are this size!! But dedication to this process is a must! Its helped looking at other IVF Blogs and IVF youtube videos! Yikes! We women are brrrraaaveee when we know we want something bad enough! And the husbands who stab us, they're brave too! (although mine is secretly a little too excited to inject me with that needle!) Ahh....
Friday, October 22, 2010
Why we had to do IVF, our journey to this point...
This is my story. This is our journey so far to get to where we are now of doing IVF. Everyone’s journey is different, but no matter how it happened, dealing with infertility is painful.
We found out we were pregnant with our 2nd baby and were thrilled! We didn’t even think about waiting till the “safe” period was over to tell anyone, we were so excited we told everyone! Our little boy was ecstatic to be a big brother! Since finding out, I had this gut feeling something might be wrong. I ignored it and went on with the joy of it all. It wasn’t until I woke up in extreme pain one morning that I knew there was definitely something wrong. My husband rushed me to the ER and that is where we found out.
We had discovered I had an ectopic pregnancy. This was not a viable pregnancy. We were told that the baby was growing in my fallopian tube and that they needed to stop the pregnancy from growing so it didn’t burst my tube and kill me. After sometime of absorbing what we had just found out and realizing we had no choice, we got the injection and was sent home, for almost a week we dealt with the loss of our baby.
You would think that would be the end of it. Well, sad to say, it wasn’t. I went for my checkup with my OB Friday morning, when he looked over my ER chart from the last weekend and with my levels he got back from my blood work, he was concerned. I didn't know why he seemed concerned or why he wanted to do an ultrasound, I knew the baby wasn't there anymore, because they had told me the baby was gone in the ER. We just followed orders and did a trans-vaginal ultrasound.
The concern on my OB's face turned to panic and I soon realized why when I looked at the ultrasound screen. We could see our baby, growing, right there in the sack in my fallopian tube, heart beating strong. The methotrexate shot they had given me in the ER had not worked from last Saturday! Over the course of a week our baby had grown very much, and was ready to burst my fallopian tube-which could cause me to die-at any second. We were all in shock, and the horror of having to re-live this entire experience, after I thought we had already lost our baby the last week, this was almost unbearable.
In a matter of minutes, we found out that not only was our baby girl alive, hearing her heartbeat, seeing her hand waving across the ultrasound screen, I’ll never forget that moment. It will be burned in my mind forever. But in a matter of minutes, we found out that I was going to be rushed into emergency surgery to remove this baby girl from my body and save my life. Talk about overwhelming, that was an understatement. Thank God my parents were close enough to help with our son, and they rushed out of their jobs and came straight away to the hospital as they were admitting me for surgery.
I ended up being in the operating room for 3 and a half hours. The doctor said he could most likely go in laproscopically (not sure if I spelled that right) which means they make a tiny opening they can get their tools down in my abdomen to complete the surgery without having to open me all the way up, but when he did that, there was a tremendous amount of blood that poured out of me surrounding everything they saw and they were afraid my tube had already burst, so they ended up having to open me all the way up (like a c-section opening) to see what was going on. When they did that, and cleaned out all the blood, they could see that not only did they have to remove my entire left tube, to their shock they had to remove my right ovary as well. To their astonishment, and in all their years of medicine said they’d never seen this before. My ovary had burst open and been hemorrhaging/bleeding, and had even clotted-which means it had been bleeding for a while. If they had not gone in and done the surgery to remove the ectopic pregnancy, chances are they would have never found that my ovary had burst and clotted which was poisoning me, which then could have killed me. I was seconds away from this happening.
This unborn baby saved my life. Literally. Had I not gotten pregnant, I would have never known about the internal bleeding. So in a way, this was my miracle baby, my angel baby. God had put her there to save my life.
We have named her Clover, for a few reasons. One of them being that it reminds me that God is always with me, through the horrible stuff in life, to the glorious stuff in life. He is always right by our side-sharing in the pain and the joy. Like a year before this had all happened, I was taking a walk where I came upon a Cross in a field by a church behind our house, and I went to the cross and looked down on the ground and I saw patches of clover, I thought gosh...I've never seen a 4-leaf clover, wouldn't it be awesome to find one under this cross?! Right then, I found a whole patch of them!!!! All 4-leaf clovers! I couldn't believe my eyes. I picked all of them! I felt Gods presence that moment. Fast forward a year later and I'm in the hospital and as we're losing our baby and getting horrific, life-changing news I notice the wallpaper with clovers, the nurse with a clover scrub top, and a screen saver with a 4-leaf clover, and it wasn't ANYWHERE close to St.Patrick's day! It didn't even dawn on me until after we got home from the hospital and I'm laying in my bed in excruciating pain, and I roll over and see the framed 4-leaf clover on my nightstand. I broke down crying and remembered all the clovers I had seen that day in the hospital. All reminders of Gods love for me, for us, that he never leaves us. He's always there. That is why we felt the name Clover for our precious angel baby is quite appropriate. One day, when I’m in heaven I’ll get to hold my Clover baby. For now, God has her safely in His arms.
It has been a journey, a process, an emotional one. I am lucky to be alive. I thank God that I am still here and able to be a mommy for our son and a wife to my husband. Although we now will never be able to have any other children together biologically unless we do IVF because my missing ovary and tube on opposite sides, God had opened our hearts up to adopt a long time ago, so we can be comforted in having more children through adoption and/or IVF. We have chosen to do IVF right now for multiple reasons, but still plan to adopt in the future to expand our family. We can’t wait to see all of what God has in store for us revealed…hopefully starting through IVF!
It’s a long one, but phew…that’s my story.
We found out we were pregnant with our 2nd baby and were thrilled! We didn’t even think about waiting till the “safe” period was over to tell anyone, we were so excited we told everyone! Our little boy was ecstatic to be a big brother! Since finding out, I had this gut feeling something might be wrong. I ignored it and went on with the joy of it all. It wasn’t until I woke up in extreme pain one morning that I knew there was definitely something wrong. My husband rushed me to the ER and that is where we found out.
We had discovered I had an ectopic pregnancy. This was not a viable pregnancy. We were told that the baby was growing in my fallopian tube and that they needed to stop the pregnancy from growing so it didn’t burst my tube and kill me. After sometime of absorbing what we had just found out and realizing we had no choice, we got the injection and was sent home, for almost a week we dealt with the loss of our baby.
You would think that would be the end of it. Well, sad to say, it wasn’t. I went for my checkup with my OB Friday morning, when he looked over my ER chart from the last weekend and with my levels he got back from my blood work, he was concerned. I didn't know why he seemed concerned or why he wanted to do an ultrasound, I knew the baby wasn't there anymore, because they had told me the baby was gone in the ER. We just followed orders and did a trans-vaginal ultrasound.
The concern on my OB's face turned to panic and I soon realized why when I looked at the ultrasound screen. We could see our baby, growing, right there in the sack in my fallopian tube, heart beating strong. The methotrexate shot they had given me in the ER had not worked from last Saturday! Over the course of a week our baby had grown very much, and was ready to burst my fallopian tube-which could cause me to die-at any second. We were all in shock, and the horror of having to re-live this entire experience, after I thought we had already lost our baby the last week, this was almost unbearable.
In a matter of minutes, we found out that not only was our baby girl alive, hearing her heartbeat, seeing her hand waving across the ultrasound screen, I’ll never forget that moment. It will be burned in my mind forever. But in a matter of minutes, we found out that I was going to be rushed into emergency surgery to remove this baby girl from my body and save my life. Talk about overwhelming, that was an understatement. Thank God my parents were close enough to help with our son, and they rushed out of their jobs and came straight away to the hospital as they were admitting me for surgery.
I ended up being in the operating room for 3 and a half hours. The doctor said he could most likely go in laproscopically (not sure if I spelled that right) which means they make a tiny opening they can get their tools down in my abdomen to complete the surgery without having to open me all the way up, but when he did that, there was a tremendous amount of blood that poured out of me surrounding everything they saw and they were afraid my tube had already burst, so they ended up having to open me all the way up (like a c-section opening) to see what was going on. When they did that, and cleaned out all the blood, they could see that not only did they have to remove my entire left tube, to their shock they had to remove my right ovary as well. To their astonishment, and in all their years of medicine said they’d never seen this before. My ovary had burst open and been hemorrhaging/bleeding, and had even clotted-which means it had been bleeding for a while. If they had not gone in and done the surgery to remove the ectopic pregnancy, chances are they would have never found that my ovary had burst and clotted which was poisoning me, which then could have killed me. I was seconds away from this happening.
This unborn baby saved my life. Literally. Had I not gotten pregnant, I would have never known about the internal bleeding. So in a way, this was my miracle baby, my angel baby. God had put her there to save my life.
We have named her Clover, for a few reasons. One of them being that it reminds me that God is always with me, through the horrible stuff in life, to the glorious stuff in life. He is always right by our side-sharing in the pain and the joy. Like a year before this had all happened, I was taking a walk where I came upon a Cross in a field by a church behind our house, and I went to the cross and looked down on the ground and I saw patches of clover, I thought gosh...I've never seen a 4-leaf clover, wouldn't it be awesome to find one under this cross?! Right then, I found a whole patch of them!!!! All 4-leaf clovers! I couldn't believe my eyes. I picked all of them! I felt Gods presence that moment. Fast forward a year later and I'm in the hospital and as we're losing our baby and getting horrific, life-changing news I notice the wallpaper with clovers, the nurse with a clover scrub top, and a screen saver with a 4-leaf clover, and it wasn't ANYWHERE close to St.Patrick's day! It didn't even dawn on me until after we got home from the hospital and I'm laying in my bed in excruciating pain, and I roll over and see the framed 4-leaf clover on my nightstand. I broke down crying and remembered all the clovers I had seen that day in the hospital. All reminders of Gods love for me, for us, that he never leaves us. He's always there. That is why we felt the name Clover for our precious angel baby is quite appropriate. One day, when I’m in heaven I’ll get to hold my Clover baby. For now, God has her safely in His arms.
It has been a journey, a process, an emotional one. I am lucky to be alive. I thank God that I am still here and able to be a mommy for our son and a wife to my husband. Although we now will never be able to have any other children together biologically unless we do IVF because my missing ovary and tube on opposite sides, God had opened our hearts up to adopt a long time ago, so we can be comforted in having more children through adoption and/or IVF. We have chosen to do IVF right now for multiple reasons, but still plan to adopt in the future to expand our family. We can’t wait to see all of what God has in store for us revealed…hopefully starting through IVF!
It’s a long one, but phew…that’s my story.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
"You already have a child, how could you know how it feels to be infertile?!"
Oh, why yes, yes actually I do!
The decision to do IVF was pretty much obvious to us if we wanted to have any more biological children. I will explain why we have to do IVF and what happened in detail in the next post. It's a story in and of itself.
As you probably noticed by my "any more biological children" comment, my husband and I do have a little boy, who will be 5 in a few days, yikes! Time goes by so fast. So the most common thing I hear when someone hears my journey thus far and that we long to have more children is, "well you already have one, just be happy with that". To be honest, sometimes I want to slap those people! YES, OF COURSE I am happy that I have a little boy already, of course!! I love him to pieces and am so so blessed to have experienced being a mom to him of almost 5 years! That joy is so great!
So, let me ask you a question. Which is worse?
Is it worse to long for, want, and so desperately desire to be pregnant, have a baby, and be a mother never having had that experience before? To wonder what it is like to go through such an incredible experience of pregnancy and joy, labor and birth, and motherhood, when you see all these other women go through it, whether they wanted that baby or not? To not know what you're missing, but want it so bad.
OR,
OR...is it worse, to HAVE gone through all of that, KNOW the JOY, KNOW the incredible, amazing-ness, awe of it all, and then have the ability to have any more children ripped away from you? Especially when that child you do have constantly asks when they can have a brother or sister?! Imagine your worst day in dealing with not being able to have a baby like everyone else, feeling the guilt, and sadness, and have your sweet faced little boy come up to you asking you to give him a sibling that you know you can't possibly give him. To know what you're missing out on.
WHAT'S WORSE?!?!
I have no idea. I really don't. All I ask is that you don't judge me for already having a child. The pain and experience we go through with infertility is ALL THE SAME, whether someone already has a child or not. The pain cuts just as deep.
*******REVISION TO THIS BLOG POST*********
It will spoil the end result if you don't already know it, so if you haven't finished reading through my journey yet and don't know the result then STOP reading now and come back to this AFTER you finish reading the journey and the end result :)
So after going through IVF, and re-reading this post, I have to say that I disagree with this post now. I don't disagree with it completely because the pain does cut deep no matter if you already have kids or not, but pretty much the above blog post is not how I feel now, and I'll explain why.
So after going through IVF, and it obviously not working for us, as devastated as were and still are, it has been a million times better coming home to a sweet little boy that we already have than coming home to no children at all. It would be sooooo much more painful and harder to not know the joy or have the experience of going through a pregnancy, and not have a child to raise, and it would be so much worse. I can't tell you how having our son around how healing that has been, how much better of a mother it has made me, how much more patient & loving I am, and how much more thankful I am to have him. So yes, although I do have a child, I do understand infertility, I do understand the extreme pain infertility brings, I do understand how it feels to be infertile, but I am so beyond blessed to already have a child and experience pregnancy and motherhood.
The decision to do IVF was pretty much obvious to us if we wanted to have any more biological children. I will explain why we have to do IVF and what happened in detail in the next post. It's a story in and of itself.
As you probably noticed by my "any more biological children" comment, my husband and I do have a little boy, who will be 5 in a few days, yikes! Time goes by so fast. So the most common thing I hear when someone hears my journey thus far and that we long to have more children is, "well you already have one, just be happy with that". To be honest, sometimes I want to slap those people! YES, OF COURSE I am happy that I have a little boy already, of course!! I love him to pieces and am so so blessed to have experienced being a mom to him of almost 5 years! That joy is so great!
So, let me ask you a question. Which is worse?
Is it worse to long for, want, and so desperately desire to be pregnant, have a baby, and be a mother never having had that experience before? To wonder what it is like to go through such an incredible experience of pregnancy and joy, labor and birth, and motherhood, when you see all these other women go through it, whether they wanted that baby or not? To not know what you're missing, but want it so bad.
OR,
OR...is it worse, to HAVE gone through all of that, KNOW the JOY, KNOW the incredible, amazing-ness, awe of it all, and then have the ability to have any more children ripped away from you? Especially when that child you do have constantly asks when they can have a brother or sister?! Imagine your worst day in dealing with not being able to have a baby like everyone else, feeling the guilt, and sadness, and have your sweet faced little boy come up to you asking you to give him a sibling that you know you can't possibly give him. To know what you're missing out on.
WHAT'S WORSE?!?!
I have no idea. I really don't. All I ask is that you don't judge me for already having a child. The pain and experience we go through with infertility is ALL THE SAME, whether someone already has a child or not. The pain cuts just as deep.
*******REVISION TO THIS BLOG POST*********
It will spoil the end result if you don't already know it, so if you haven't finished reading through my journey yet and don't know the result then STOP reading now and come back to this AFTER you finish reading the journey and the end result :)
So after going through IVF, and re-reading this post, I have to say that I disagree with this post now. I don't disagree with it completely because the pain does cut deep no matter if you already have kids or not, but pretty much the above blog post is not how I feel now, and I'll explain why.
So after going through IVF, and it obviously not working for us, as devastated as were and still are, it has been a million times better coming home to a sweet little boy that we already have than coming home to no children at all. It would be sooooo much more painful and harder to not know the joy or have the experience of going through a pregnancy, and not have a child to raise, and it would be so much worse. I can't tell you how having our son around how healing that has been, how much better of a mother it has made me, how much more patient & loving I am, and how much more thankful I am to have him. So yes, although I do have a child, I do understand infertility, I do understand the extreme pain infertility brings, I do understand how it feels to be infertile, but I am so beyond blessed to already have a child and experience pregnancy and motherhood.
The start of the blog
I started this blog in hopes that by sharing my journey through IVF that it will help those of you reading this in some way. By sharing experiences, and having someone who's been there and done that always helps me when I'm charting unknown territories!
Although I haven't completed my IVF journey yet, I will update this blog along the way. A few friends of mine going through IVF told me that having a seperate blog just for IVF was helpful to them. I can see why. Plus, as private as this journey and experience may be, I want to share it. I want to be able to help someone who is like me...scared, walking into unknowns with this whole process, just someone to be "real" and tell you like it is, to talk about all the emotions, questions, conversations, and controversy you may have about IVF. I want to be a source of help, of "real-ness", of honesty about this whole thing, from one momma to another.
I hope you find this blog of some help by sharing my story. This is just one momma drama to another!
Although I haven't completed my IVF journey yet, I will update this blog along the way. A few friends of mine going through IVF told me that having a seperate blog just for IVF was helpful to them. I can see why. Plus, as private as this journey and experience may be, I want to share it. I want to be able to help someone who is like me...scared, walking into unknowns with this whole process, just someone to be "real" and tell you like it is, to talk about all the emotions, questions, conversations, and controversy you may have about IVF. I want to be a source of help, of "real-ness", of honesty about this whole thing, from one momma to another.
I hope you find this blog of some help by sharing my story. This is just one momma drama to another!
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