Slacking

Well I apparently fell off the blogosphere but with good reason. It's crazy busy at work and I have to say it's starting off worse that what I thought it was going to be during the months of Feb-May, and the travel hasn't even started yet! I will survive this, of course, but taking care of myself becomes more and more essential.

My laptop is in the shop so that explains my slack with Spreading Grace and I'll try to catch myself back up here shortly. I've managed to run off with Hammer's work laptop that he brought home this weekend while his back was turned to be able to do some quick catching up on all your blogs as well as drop a post here too.

Reason, we had our IVF consult this Thursday! So much to post about it. First, I am sooooo thankful for our practice. Just sitting in the office and hearing their policies and treatment preferences and accommodations proves that we are in the right place. Hammer and I already have IVF preferences that if not accommodated for will make our break our even doing IVF. We are not comfortable fertilizing tons of eggs and then freezing them because we don't want to end up in the dilemma of making a decision on what to do with them. For us, we could not destroy them or give them away - it would be like giving up your child for adoption. And we've waited so long just to have our own.

So it was really comforting for me to know that they feel similarly about certain things. First, they prefer to do natural fertilization and only do ICSI if they absolutely have to. They only transfer a maximum of three embryos. period. They feel the risk to the babies and mother beyond three embabies is too great. I have to agree having worked with those babies. They also prefer to keep the numbers low because my doctor does not believe in selective reduction. Other docs at the practise have performed the procedure but he does not. When he stated that they can take a few embryos at the two cell stage and freeze them as back up we didn't feel comfortable knowing that there could be additional embabies waiting in addition to possible 3day or 5day embabies. We asked if they could just freeze 'extra' eggs that were unfertilized rather than risk being put in that situation. He said that was not a problem. You see I feel that my eggs sitting in a freezer that we don't end up using as being equivalent to a cycle that goes by without getting pregnant but actual embabies awaiting a decision on their fate, not so much. Those are just a few of the 'major points' of IVF that we needed to feel comfortable with before moving on.

As far as when we would start...well it appears that we will actually have three natural cycles before even beginning protocol for IVF (including this one). So in between Hammer has asked that we try going to a Chiropractor because a guy he knows and respects did it and he and his wife got pregnant. (I know, I know...it breaks my "I'm not your friend's sister's cousin's niece who tried x and got pregnant" rule but I love this man and this is the only thing he's asked me to try on our TTC journey - and it's probably the one thing I haven't tried so at least I can say I did try EVERYTHING, right?) That would put starting BCP around the third or fourth week in April for an estimated transfer in late May/early June. We have the standard blood work that will need to be done in the meantime.

Hammer: another SA with strict morphology - to see if we would need ICSI, freezing a back up sperm sample (apparently they do this for every cycle i.e. not optional), H.IV, He.p B, H.ep C, RP.R

Mrs Hammer: FSH, TSH, H.IV, Prolactin, H.ep B, Ru.bel.la, H.ep C, and RP.R

They also require us to see a fertility counselor which, while I don't think we need, is actually not a bad thing. It does weed out the crazies and the practice will delay or refuse a couple treatment that the counselor deems as not ready/appropriate.

I think knowing the results of the SA and FSH will be very interesting but hopefully normal, of any of the tests these are the ones that scare me a bit. So [deep breath] the count down begins!