It's been a hot minute...

Scenes from couch potato rest...

So the countdown to the end of couch potato rest is on!! I know it's for a very good reason and if I had a crystal ball and a guarantee that sitting on the couch for a solid 10 days would help this baby stick - I would sit here and love every minute of it. But as it stands, I'm antsy and ready to get back to the land of the living :) Hubby and I have had some fun the last two days...

Flowers from the hubby after my post transfer acupuncture, chinese delivery for dinner, my daily 1/5 of pineapple including the core, and the babies begging for whatever we decide to throw at them :)

Me sending a non showered high five around the world, writing some encouraging notes to some of my fave ttc sisters, candy crush (now totally addicted) and scary redbox movies (word to the wise - if you ever want to sleep again do not watch Mamma or Sinister...)

So it's back to work for us tomorrow but I thought I would fill you in on IVF Round 1 to catch you up! We first saw the doctor in late January and were told IVF was our only option. Each IVF cycle is 2 months with about 28 days of birth control being the first month in order to regulate your cycle and the second being when the magic really happens - the injections, retrieval and transfer all in the span of 2 weeks followed by the dreaded TWW. Our first cycle started in March with birth control and moved to April with injections. The first round I was on an antagonist protocol and was only on 10 days of injections. Very early on during stimming my Estrogen rose very high and they had to drop my meds drastically as I was a good responder. I was terrified but decided that I wanted to do all the injections myself - here was our first injection ever - and I equate it to having a baby - I was terrified and I am sure it hurt a little but I don't remember anything bad about that moment - I only remember being super psyched and hopeful and feeling like superwoman!

Holy heck that's a lot of meds!!

Fast forward to retrieval day and my first ever IV and 11 eggs later here we were! We were so hopeful and on top of the world that day! After the egg retrieval, the lab calls the following morning to let you know how many of your eggs are mature and how many fertilized. Normally when they ICSI your eggs (inject a single sperm into your egg) the fertilization rate is around 70% or so we were not prepared to get a phone call saying only 1 fertilized! We were distraught and I know, I know, it only takes 1 but..a girl needs options!! So that little one made it to a 3 day embryo which we transferred on April 23rd.

 Post retrieval - we did it!

 So excited to officially be "preggers" for the first time ever!

Our beautiful little embryo

We had high hopes for that little guy but unfortunately on May 6th we got the call that we were not pregnant. We had both poor egg quality - which we didn't know - and poor sperm quality - which we did know - which led to the perfect storm of a not so strong little embie. The doc told us to switch to organic, natural/free-range foods, ditch plastic to store food or drink out of, and load up on supplements (L-arginine, CoQ10, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, micronized DHEA, melatonin...just to name a few) and see if that made a difference. That round ended in a lot of tears, a lot of cries that I didn't think I could ever do this again, and a one month break. We took the month of May off and started round 2 in June...details to come!!

XOXO

K