A Toast to The Journey!

So many times throughout this Egg Donor IVF process I've worried that the wheels on the bus that has kept us moving forward were going to some how go flat or fall off. I can't believe we started this process back in May and its almost October now. There have been times along the way that I thought my sister would unscrew the wheels to the bus herself and would run as fast as she could away before I could tackle her to ask for the wheels back. In other words, I didn't know if this was REALLY going to happen for us or not.

But today....my sister completed her LAST screening appointment before we can truly begin our Egg Donor Cycle! She met with the fertility doctor to complete a physical, and I think a family medical history questionnaire-I'm not sure about that part, and some more blood work. And then we met with the IVF nurse coordinator to go over a rough schedule for our cycle. Holy crap-$h!+ just got Real! We are Finally, Finally, Finally...did I say Finally? Done with all the preapproval, precycle testing and paperwork!! And the Angels sang Hallelujah!!!

What do we do now? We wait. We wait for Aunt Flo to pay me a visit so I can start my birth control pills. I expect her to knock on my door next weekend and I will gladly invite her in for a few days. Then we wait some more for Aunt Flo to travel on down to my sisters house...which should occur around October 12th, and then my sister can restart her birth control three days later. We will both be started on Lupron injections to keep our ovaries quiet sometime in October. I have no clue when I will start my Lupron, but my sister should start hers around the last weekend in October. We don't have any more appointments with the fertility doctors until the end of October. That's when my sister has to go back, repeat the physical and blood work she had done today and learn how to give herself injections.

I know she is terrified about the injections. I think everybody is until they do a few of them. Then they realize they aren't terrible, especially if it's only for a short time. Every appointment that she has taken the time our of her busy schedule to accommodate for us and for our cycle, I've given her small gifts to show her how much we appreciate what she is doing for us. I hope that is making this process a little easier for her. Today she got two new scarfs to dress up her outfits with. Her next appointment she will get an extra special gift to let her know she is the best sister a girl could ask for:)

Stay tuned as the wheels on the bus keep turning and moving us forward! For right now, let's make a toast to the journey so far-May the days ahead be brighter and full of sunlight, and may the dark clouds that have been hovering over us the past two years be casted away with an arising Rainbow!

There's Hope in Front of Me

Two day's ago I wrote about how my faith is what gets me through the storms I've been through within the past six years. I had one person comment on Facebook that she's glad that faith "always works out" for me but felt the need to tell me she is an Atheist. My response was that faith doesn't always work everything out for me, because if it did I would not be doing fertility treatments and would not have lost even one baby let alone four. I also simply told her everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. She then felt she should respond by saying "exactly, that's why I don't post anything in this group about Atheism."

I don't know why I always feel like I need to explain myself to people. I shouldn't. But I do. I don't like upsetting anyone honestly, and don't want people to think I'm a know it all or preaching to them. So I want to make it clear that what I write, what I share-it has nothing to do what what I want people to believe and it certainly is not to preach to them. Our experiences in life shape us into the person we are. We get our beliefs from our up-bringing from our parents/family and then we change our beliefs along the way as we grow into adults and experience different situations in life. People who are Christians, or who are spiritual in any way, are not people who have perfect lives where nothing bad has ever happened to them. And they are also not people who have never questioned God's intentions or abilities. I question them...all the time. I am far from the person who goes to church every weekend. I've been angry with God. Sometimes I wanted to believe there was no such thing as a God. Sometimes I've felt like my daughter is just dead in the ground and I would never see her again because there really is no Heaven. These moments of anger and questioning though, for some reason, they don't last long for me and I am always brought back to a position where I can see life for what it has been and what possibilities are in my future. This is my own personal experience, not yours, so I don't expect you to feel the same way as I do.

For those of you that commented with things like "I needed this tonight," I am happy you felt a connection with what I wrote. If any of my posts inspire or help just one person, I feel like I'm doing what I was called to do with this blog.

OK-so now that that's out of the way....I can write about my appointment with my "NEW" Doctor today. I met with Dr. Thie who is the physician that partners with my fertility clinic and who was willing to take over my care and work with Dr. Braverman in New York to ensure that I could get the immunological treatment that Dr. Braverman is recommending. The appointment went rather well I think. We went over my history with recurrent pregnancy loss and failed IVF w/PGD. We discussed the upcoming Egg Donor cycle and how we would manage all of my medical issues that we are aware of at this point.

I feel good after talking with Dr. Thie. She was very nice and seemed to understand how important it is to us to make sure we have done everything possible to make this cycle work for us. She has yet to consult with Dr. Braverman but will be doing so within the next week. She was okay with ordering the medication that I informed her that he told me he wanted me on, but she will check with him regarding the dosing and how often blood work will need to be ordered. Her nurse checked with the hospital where they have sent people for IVIG (intravenous immunoglobulin) therapy to see if they would be able to do the Intralipid infusions that I would be on. They said they have not done those infusions before but believe they would be able to order the supplies and do the infusions for me, which would be more convenient than driving an hour and half out of my way to another part of the state where I thought I would need to go for them. So we will see how that all gets worked out. My first infusion would be in November, two weeks before our embryo transfer.

Dr. Thie does not think I need the laparoscopy completed or does not think it would increase our chances any more of getting pregnant/carrying a baby to term. I am okay with proceeding without it for now. We will re-visit this issue if our first transfer does not result in being pregnant. She does think I have all the signs of PCOS. But did explain that its really a hard thing to diagnosis. She is basing her diagnosis on my Insulin levels, my weight gain, my acne, hair growth (I get to pluck hairs around my belly button, its lovely), and the amount of follicles she saw today on my ultrasound. I had 20 follicles just in my left ovary. I don't think they could tell on my right because I had just ovulated a few days ago so there was a corpus lutium cyst taking up most of that ovary. I find it all very interesting to be honest. All my pain, which I've always thought was ovulation pain, is on my left side. But every time I have an ultrasound after ovulation or while pregnant-I've ovulated from the right side. And then back in March when I attempted to see what a naturalist had to say about my issues and she looked into my eyes (she's also an iridologist, she told me my left ovary was inflamed. And then during my egg retrieval my left ovary was so incredibly painful, since I was unmedicated, that I started yelling that it hurt and the doctor had to stop the retrieval. So there is something up with that left ovary-PCOS or Endometriosis....but something is up. OH well-as far as I'm aware-since we are doing donor eggs, my ovaries won't affect my pregnancy, so I'm not going to let myself worry much about that piece for now.

Other than that-she ordered some blood work to check a few more things out. She told me to decrease my Metformin back to 1000 mg from 1500mg because, well, I have had some not so pleasant side effects that have kept me on the toilet every 10-20 minutes throughout the night several times now. That's not healthy. And it interferes with my sleep. And my husbands. Hopefully going back down to the lower dose will help that issue. I will continue everything else that I currently take. Oh, and I will be starting out on Progesterone injections but will test my level after taking it for 7 days and will supplement with suppositories if the injections aren't getting my level up.

Next week, or the week after, whenever I start my period, I will start my birth control regimen. Then I will wait for my sister to start her next period around October 12th and we will be full force into our Egg Donor cycle! I am sooo ready to get started and see where this is going to take us in our journey to parenthood. After today's appointment with Dr. Thie, I feel like there's hope in front of me. I feel like there is no reason right now to believe this isn't going to work for us. I know the reality is that it might not-but we will cross that bridge if we come to it. I believe we are taking control this time and doing what we can to make this successful on our end, so we just need my sister's ovaries to cooperate and produce healthy, mature eggs for us.

Because I love this song and it came into my life when I needed it the most, I will share it with you. Every last word is perfect for what we have been through. No matter how bad it gets, there is always hope.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KIhYZQ_ovw

Carried by Faith

Yesterday I was sitting in church. I hadn't been in a few Sunday's because life has just been busy between work, my car accident, and the golf outing...and sometimes I just want to sleep in with my husband for once. I found myself doing something I don't normally do yesterday. I love Christian rock worship music, but when it comes to worshiping in public, I tend to me more reserved. In my car I will belt the tune out and cry out of sadness, anger, or even happiness. But in church, I just tap my feet and hands to the beat of the song and sometimes sway a little back and forth. Yesterday though, I felt my arms rising as I closed my eyes and worshipped God with all of my body.

It hit me. It hit me like a ton of bricks. But in a freeing kinda way. Not a weighted down kinda way. For the past 7 years of my life, since I got pregnant with Riley in September 2007 as a senior in college and was terrified about my future, I have been carried by faith. Through the scary, through the joy, through the heartbreak, through the uncertainty, through the anger, through the challenges....faith has carried me the entire time.

People ask me how I have stayed so strong. How I have any hope in the future. How I have managed to make it through the loss of four babies. I've never really known the answer to be honest. But now I do.

My faith is so much stronger than I have ever let myself believe. I've always been more spiritual than the rest of my family, but I don't think I accepted God into my life until I lost Riley on March 1, 2008. The support group I attended had somewhat of a religious component to it. It introduced me the music that I love to listen to no matter the mood I'm in, no matter the situation going on in my life. It is soothing to my ears, my heart, and my soul. I've been listening to it ever since. And just about every song that I hear, I can apply it to my life in some way and it gives meaning to all this crap we've been trenching our way through.

At times I've felt like God is never there for me, especially when I need him. But I realize now he has been with me the entire time. He's been there to pick me up when I'm down, has pulled me from the water when I'm drowning, has been my feet when I felt I couldn't take one more step, has given me shelter when the storm is raging, and has been the voice inside me that says Keep Going, Don't Quit Now.

Along this journey to becoming parents, I don't know what the ultimate plan is for us. Every time when it seems like one option is turning into a dead end, something happens that makes it seem like we are still moving in the right direction. After we lost Logan in January 2013, we thought we would try IVF with PGD. When we didn't get chosen for the Baby Quest Foundation grant in May 2013, we thought we would try to get pregnant again on our own. When we got pregnant again in August 2013 we thought that was the answer to our prayers. When we miscarried in October 2013 for the 4th time, and we re-applied for the Baby Quest Foundation grant...we told ourselves if we weren't selected then IVF was not meant to be and we would adopt. When we got selected for the grant in November 2013, we thought once again it was the answer to our prayers....we were still going to be able to have a biological child. When our IVF cycle went smooth the entire time, we thought it was a sure thing-that we would get a biological child out of the embryos we were about to create, and then the doctors became concerned about my estrogen rising too quickly and possibly having ovarian hyperstimulation....but I didn't and we went on as scheduled. Once we had the egg retrieval and everyday got a phone call with decreasing numbers, I thought it wasn't going to work for us and we were supposed to adopt instead. When one out of four embryos came back with an incomplete genetic result and the other three had confirmed genetic issues, I was sceptical but thought God just didn't want to spoil the gender surprise so early. When our pregnancy test came back negative, I was crushed and thought about adoption again. But within a few days me and my sister talked and she offered us her eggs....which was close enough to having a biological child. When there were doubts of my sister going through with the egg donation, I thought this isn't what we are supposed to be doing. Then we talked and she was completely on board...so I had hope again that this would be it. But then there was a chance she wasn't going to be approved....and once again I thought, this isn't meant to be. Then she got approved. Then I was told my doctor wouldn't do the immunological co-management with the doctor in New York, and I felt stuck, but within a week heard from the clinic that another doctor was willing to take over my case so we could get the immunological treatment.

So here we are. Everything that I thought was going to stop us from going forth with this egg donor cycle has been resolved. Yet I'm not 100% sure this is the path God choose for our life, and I won't know until we are at the end of the cycle and have used up every viable embryo that gets created out of this cycle or until we have a baby in our arms 9 months after the cycle is over. It's either going to work for us, or it won't. It's that simple I guess. And all I can do is let my faith carry me through this wave of hope and fear and wait to see where the wave lets me land. If it works, I will be over the moon. If it doesn't work, I will be devastated again. But either way-my faith will continue to carry me to the child that was created just for us. I have faith that there will be a child at the end of all this. Someway, Somehow.

I will leave you with this song that has become a favorite of mine. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVEqA1hFmls

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Contracts, Contracts, Contracts. That's pretty much all this past week consisted of.

On Tuesday my sister, my husband, and myself met with our attorney to sign our Egg Donor contract.  It was a requirement from our clinic, not something we felt we needed to do to protect any of us from each other.  Once that was signed, our attorney notarized and faxed a letter for our fertility clinic to let them know we had completed this requirement.  One more step down in the books!

On Thursday I purchased my new vehicle, a 2013 Hyundai Elantra.  We got the finalization from our insurance company on Friday that my car was in fact totaled, as if we didn't know.  But we were told I needed to have the rental car returned to Enterprise on Thursday and would need to have my new car purchased by then.  Well with our golf outing on Saturday and dealerships being closed on Sunday and then closed again on Monday for Labor Day...this didn't give me a whole lot of time to explore vehicle options considering I work every day from 2pm-10:30pm and have to leave town at 1pm to get to work on time.  Anyways, it basically came down to a 2013 Kia Optimum Hybrid or the 2013 Hyundai Elantra.  I'm not going to lie....it was a tough decision and I hate car shopping by myself because I hate the pressure that car salesmen and their managers put on me.  The Hyundai won because I saw the most benefit out of it.  While both vehicles had much fewer miles on them than my previous vehicle and both vehicles got better gas mileage than my previous vehicle....and both were newer vehicles whereas mine was a 2012,  it was the price difference that hooked me on the Hyundai.  We are trying to put ourselves in a better financial situation, so considering the loan amount on the Hyundai was smaller than the loan I had to take out to buy my previous car out of my lease, it was the best option. Plus I don't have to worry about a battery dying on me and needing to be replaced for $10,000.

I know I might get some flack for this thought, but whatever.  In a way-this accident is giving us over $2,000 in cash back that we are going to be able to use for our fertility cycle.  We will be getting the sales tax back on the purchase of this new vehicle AND we will be getting money back from an extended warranty that I purchased for my previous vehicle.  I don't believe in the phrase "everything happens for a reason."  I just can't see the reason why we've lost 4 innocent and precious babies over the past 6 years and why we are in a situation where we have to turn to fertility treatments or adoption to have our living children in our arms.  But I do believe this accident happened because of my own stupidity and was not only a wake up call to myself to be a safer driver but it is answering some of our financial struggles too.  We will end up paying the cost in our insurance premiums rising in the long run, but for right now I will choose to see the positive.  Everyone in the accident is still alive, I got a nicer but cheaper vehicle, and we will get money back that will help pay for this upcoming fertility cycle.

On Friday, my husband and I had one of my husband's co-workers notarize another form our fertility clinic had sent to us and wanted signed before we could proceed.  It was an Egg Donor acknowledgement form stating our doctor was approving my sister to be our egg donor despite the results and recommendations of the psychological testing.  I honestly think that testing was a waste of money and time.  If our donor was not known to us, maybe we would have been a little more picky....but since it's my sister-we are well aware of her strengths and weaknesses, her personality and behaviors, so on and so forth.  My sister is very different than me, but she is also very much like me in so many ways,  And I believe that genetics is not the only thing that shapes someone into who they are....it has a lot to do with parenting too.  So I'm sure our child will be a perfect combination of all of us despite not having my exact genetics.  Anyways.....once that was signed, I put it in the mail to be sent back to our fertility clinic.  Once again, one more step completed.

So, what's next?  I'm a bit disappointed to say we won't be able to officially start the egg donor cycle with my sister's upcoming period next week.  Part of the delay has to do with my last period starting on cycle day 40 putting me 11 days behind my sister when we were starting a day apart from one another. So we need to see what day I start my period this month. The other pieces that are delaying us has to do with figuring out the immunological piece.  I am very happy to say my case was discussed with the other doctor at the fertility clinic that I talked about a few posts back.  Dr. Thie is agreeable to consulting with Dr. Braverman in New York and will be the one prescribing the immunological treatment.  I meet with Dr. Thie for the first time on September 17th and she will have hopefully already talked with Dr. Braverman so we can finalize my treatment plan at my appointment with her.  Dr. Braverman is still wanting me to get the laparoscopy completed before the egg donor cycle begins so I will be calling my OBGYN on Monday to schedule that surgery for as soon as possible.  Lastly, my sister will be meeting with Dr. Hofmann, my original fertility doctor at the clinic, on September 23rd to complete her FDA screening.  It's basically a complete physical with blood work.  Dr. Hofmann will continue to manage my sister's half of the cycle while Dr. Thie will manage my half.

Hopefully by the time my sister starts her period in October, we will have everything done and can get this show on the road.  That would put her egg retrieval the week before Thanksgiving and my embryo transfer just a few days before Thanksgiving.  Fingers crossed that we will have a healthy turkey on board before turkey day!

I made a mistake because I am Human

I have posted 73 blog entries prior to this one. All of which are about our journey to parenthood through the loss of our stillborn daughter and three first trimester miscarriages and through our failed IVF with PGD cycle and now on to our egg donor cycle. While yesterday's blog post was not the most read post out of all 73 entries, it certainly had the most comments both good and bad. The majority of the negative commentary was on the blog itself but some where on Facebook as well. I feel the need to address this today.

Reading back through yesterday's entry I realize how selfish I sounded. I did not talk about the other vehicle that I hit, making it sound like I was only worried about myself in this accident that I was the cause of. So I will start there. Here is a picture of the type of truck that I hit:

As you can see, this thing is a monster compared to my car. I am guessing my car actually went underneath the truck when I hit it. After the accident, when I got out of my vehicle and was having my panic attack, I was apologizing profusely to the two guys that were in the truck. Neither one of them had any injuries. By the grace of God we were all able to walk away with all of our limbs and our lives and their truck had very little damage-maybe a dent in the back fender from what I can remember. The guys were super nice to me and had to continue to tell me "these things happen-it could have been worse" because I could not stop crying and apologizing.

For the past three days I keep replaying this accident in my head. I keep beating myself up for making such a stupid decision with the eye liner. I keep thanking God that this did not turn out any worse than me having to get a new car when I really liked the car I had. When it all happened I kept thinking I have the most terrible luck ever...but in all reality I know I am extremely lucky that I did not hit a vehicle that had children in it or caused any injuries to anyone involved.

When I started my blog I vowed to myself that this would be a place where I would express myself in the most honest way possible. I said I wouldn't sugar coat anything. I am not proud of my actions, yet I was honest about them and I owned up to the horrible mistake that I made. Humility and Honesty go a long way and say a lot about a person. I am humiliated by my actions that caused the accident and I will take this experience and become a more responsible person because of it.

I know a lot of the comments came from a personal place. People told me about times when they were hit by another car and the severe injuries that the other person caused them because they were not paying attention or a family member who was killed in an accident. I appreciate you sharing those stories with me, but what I do not appreciate are the comments from people saying I should not have children because I am irresponsible and careless. That is taking things way to far.

We all have personal experiences that shape our feelings and actions. For example, I've lost 4 babies and I think abortion is a horrible thing. But I will never EVER call someone who has had an abortion a Baby Killer or tell them they don't deserve to have any future children because they chose to get rid of one they could have had. I also get angry that women who use drugs their entire pregnancy can seem to be able to pop out one kid after another and I've never done drugs or smoked cigarettes and can't seem to have even one child. But I would never EVER tell them they are a worthless POS mother who doesn't deserve the children she has.

For those of you that do not know me and my story but have passed judgement on me for my bad driving habits-shame on you. No one in this world is perfect. I know that I for one, am not. I know I make a lot of mistakes. I also know that I choose to learn from my mistakes. And more importantly I know I make a lot of selfless choices too and those who truly know me know that about me. I am not defined by what I did this week. I am not a criminal. I am human. And I am resilient. And I am constantly learning how to be better.

You are also not defined by a single one mistake that you have made. You have good qualities and you have bad qualities. We all do. I choose not to judge others based on one thing they did, but based on numerous things they have done. I would hope others would judge me the same way.

Dear Guardian Angels, Thank you. Love, Mommy.

I've been holding off on writing any updates until we had found out if my sister was approved to be our egg donor. It's been a pretty bad eight days waiting on the email or phone call from our fertility clinic letting us know if she was or wasn't approved. I will talk more about that later.

I first feel like I should share that yesterday I was in a car accident and I feel incredibly grateful that I am still here to see another day. I know at times throughout this emotionally painful journey I get so depressed that I just wish God would take me to Heaven, some how in his own way, so I could be with my babies. I would never try to kill myself, ever. For numerous reasons but especially because I could not cause that kind of pain to my family. But I admit, I miss my own babies so so badly and I just want to be able to hold them in my arms for once.

Yesterday I woke up in a bad space. I felt off. I had woken up from a dream where I was being chased through New York City by a black man in a beat up black Cadillac and he was shooting at me with a black gun. At the end of my dream I was running through an ally and found a door which I opened to try to get away from this man. Inside the building was one empty white room after another. I just kept opening the doors and running through one room to another while the man chased me. I woke up right after I locked two doors behind me and was trying to figure out how I was going to actually get away from this man. When I woke up my heart was pounding like I was really running from this man. It felt like I was running from the grim reaper or the devil.

I got ready and headed to my acupuncture appointment. On my way there I was following behind a big black truck. I looked into the mirror and was applying my eye liner. I do my eye make-up a lot while I'm driving. I kinda thought I was a professional at it. But when I looked up to see the road ahead of me it was too late, I was slamming right into the back of the black Chevy duramax diesel truck. It happened so fast that I couldn't slam on my breaks fast enough. All I remember is the squealing of my tires, my windshield busting, and my airbag hitting me. When it was over my car was smoking so I jumped out of my car and didn't even turn it off. I ran to the side of the road and was crying hysterically while having a panic attack fearing the phone call I needed to make to my husband. I was so scared that he was going to want to kill me because I had just gotten a speeding ticket two days earlier and he wasn't talking to me (that wasn't the first speeding ticket I've had in the past year).

My husband didn't kill me. He was just happy that I was able to walk away with a few burns from the air bag and a couple bruises. I felt okay yesterday, just really shaken up emotionally and feeling like the world was just crashing around me. Today I am very sore in my upper body, especially shoulder area. I will say this is the first time that I am glad that I was not pregnant because I know a baby would not have survived a crash like that.

Yesterday my sister and niece came over to see me. We went to a store to see if they had any fall door wreaths for my sister and when we walked in the first thing I saw was a sign that said this:

How absolutely true is that? This was definitely a wake-up call for me. My purpose on this Earth is not done yet. My angels are not ready for me to come to be with them yet.

A few hours after the accident I got a voicemail from the fertility clinic. They said they were able to approve my sister to be our egg donor! What a relief! There was definitely a chance that she was not going to be approved based on her follicle scan last week and her follicle stimulating hormone being just below the required level. All week I've been racking my brain with the "what ifs" and running all our options through my brain just in case she was denied. I am glad we can focus on this option now and get to see where this will take us.

The only snag yet is to figure out how we are going to get the immunological treatment. I spoke to Dr. Braverman from New York twice last week and he came up with a reasonable treatment plan for me. We discussed options such as seeing if the other fertility doctor at the clinic we are going to would be willing to consult with him OR freezing our embryos and having them sent to him in New York where we could do the embryo transfer so he could prescribe the immunological treatment without having to consult with anyone else. We are fine with either option. I met with my OBGYN on Monday and she is agreeable to continuing the immunological treatment throughout my pregnancy as needed. She said she would also be okay with doing a diagnostic laparoscopy if that's what we want to do. So right now I am waiting for my fertility clinic to email me back to schedule my sister's last appointment with the doctor before she would begin medication and to let me know if the other doctor in the practice is willing to work with Dr. Braverman or if they would rather freeze our embryos and send them to New York for us. But I made it perfectly clear that one way or another we will get the immunological treatment. So now we wait to find out how that will be.

This weekend is our golf outing we are organizing for Baby Quest Foundation who will be donating the money we raise back to me and my husband to help us with the cost of this egg donor cycle and will be donating money to another couple in my community. I am looking forward to meeting new friends and people who follow my blog at this event! Thank you to everyone who has been donating also:) We love all the support!

A Day of Hope? Or a Day of Hopelessness?

Carly Marie is a pioneer in breaking the silence around pregnancy, infancy, and child loss. She is woman who lives in Australia and known to woman around the world for her healing projects. She started a project called August 19th-Day of Hope. This project is for grieving parents around the world, giving them an opportunity to speak out about their children who have died and an opportunity to raise awareness about such a sensitive topic in society. The loss of a baby or child is becoming less "taboo" to speak about and the more we as grieving parents speak about our children the more we are able to heal. But no matter the time that has passed...we are always grieving for our children. We will always be grieving parents.

I did not get to participate in the Day of Hope. My day yesterday was compacted with a staff meeting in the morning, a doctors appointment in the afternoon, and work in the evening. To be honest though-I don't know that I would have wanted to participate after my horrible doctors appointment. It felt like a Day of Hopelessness for me, not a Day of Hope at all.

I first thought, how ironic. My sister's bloodwork to be screened to be our egg donor was falling on August 19th-A Day of Hope. It seemed fitting. After our conversation with my sister on Saturday she has been much more open with us and with this process...it made me hopeful that our baby would come from her donated eggs.

Our trip to Cincinnati was fun. We picked on my niece on the way down because she was being so quiet. And my niece is RARELY quit. Then we stopped at a McDonalds that I had read online had a playland hoping to give my niece something to do for a little bit because I knew this was going to be a long day for a four year old. The McDonald's "play land" ended up being two computerized touch screens with games with little kids to play. Oh well. She had fun matching shapes on the bears belly. After we left McDonalds my niece was a hoot. She had us cracking up. She was so good during the doctors appointment too and just as funny on our way back to Dayton where I dropped my sister off to her car so she could take my niece school clothes shopping and I could go to work.

During the appointment my doctor did an internal ultrasound on my sister to check her follicles. She had 17. My heart kinda sank when the doctor told me this. He said "I expected to see more for someone her age but if we get 17 good eggs from your sister then that's a good thing." Well I know from experience not every follicle is going to stimulate (grow) and not every follicle that begins growing is going to be mature enough to retrieve an egg from it. Even when follicles are completely mature, the eggs retrieved from the follicle can still be immature and unable to be fertilized. Going in with such a low number does not give me hope that we will get a lot of eggs that will turn into a lot of good quality embryos to choose from. We won't know until early next week if my sister's blood work is good enough for her to be cleared as our egg donor. This is all very unsettling to me.

On top of this not so great news, comes some extremely terrible news. My fertility doctor is REFUSING to speak to Dr. Braverman, the reproductive immunologist from New York that did $4000 worth of testing on me and my husband. REFUSING. He does not agree with immunological testing or treatment. He does not agree with the few recommendations that I had told the nurse about, such as a laparoscopy to check for endometriosis, and does not care what his recommendations are as far as immunological issues and treatment. My doctor feels a laparoscopy has more risks for me then benefits. He said I probably do have a "small" amount of endometriosis as most women do but it has not prevented me from getting pregnant and has not caused me any issues if it is there. He said he would prescribe me Metformin if I absolutely want it but does not believe it will do any good for me either. He also said he would not start me on Lovenox injections before I had a positive pregnancy test with an increasing Beta result. So basically I would have to be 5-6 weeks pregnant before he would start me on Lovenox. Oh, and, by the way, IF my sister gets approved to be our egg donor and we want to get this done by the end of October so this does not fall around Thanksgiving or Christmas, my doctor will be in Hawaii with his wife on vacation so either the brand new doctor who just joined the practice and looks very young will have to do it or a doctor that my doctor didn't seem to have much respect for will have to do it. FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC!

First of all, this has happened twice now. Both IVF cycles. The doctor we've worked with the whole time ends up being the doctor that can't do our retrieval and we end up getting someone who does not do as good of a job and has lower success rates. Second of all, I am so sick and tired of getting back into a corner by doctors. I feel like I'm beating my head against a brick wall and there is blood spewing everywhere but no one gives a damn. No one is hearing me screaming at the top of my lungs that the chromosome issues is only ONE issue and I am very confident that it is not the ONLY issue here. I'm so sick of hearing that "if we get you a healthy embryo I'm confident you will have a baby." Well I'M NOT CONFIDENT THAT I WILL. AND I CAN'T LOOSE ANOTHER BABY BECAUSE I WAS A HORRIBLE MOTHER AND DID NOT TRUST MYSELF ENOUGH TO STAND UP FOR MYSELF AND DEMAND THE MEDICAL TREATMENT I FEEL I NEED. I could not live with myself if I put my sister through a month work of injections and an egg retrieval and I don't end up carrying the baby she is helping us to create to full term. I could not live with myself if I lost another baby. What do they not understand about that? Reproductive Immunology is a new specialized field and might be the very answer to recurrent miscarriages/stillbirths and recurrent failed fertility cycles that end up leading people to be childless or adopt. Yes, there is limited research right now...but the research is being done and proving there are other issues that are causing these horrible things to happen to women.

I don't know for certain that I need the immunological treatment. But at the same time, what Dr. Braverman explained to us made so much sense. And I need to know that we put 100% into this egg donor cycle. Especially starting out with a low number of follicles which could result in having no embryos available for freezing. If there are no embryos available for freezing...this is our one and ONLY shot at this egg donor business.

I finally broke down crying on my way home from work last night. Life felt so hopeless to me. Between my sister possibly not being medically cleared and my doctor refusing to do the immunological treatments, I felt like I am NEVER going to carry a baby in me again. I'm tearing up just typing those thoughts out. I was so angry that I have to keep backing down and keep getting no where because I back down to doctors. I felt like if we do the egg donor cycle without immunological treatment we would suffer another miscarriage. I felt like if we did not do the egg donor cycle because our doctor would not do the immunological treatment we could be missing out on the possibility of 9 months of pregnancy and my husband having a biological child. I felt angry at myself because once again I started thinking our only option is to comply with what this doctor in Ohio wants us to do when its not the only option. I started thinking horrible thoughts that I'm ashamed to admit because of what I do for a living. I shouldn't have thoughts of wanting to die or wishing God would give me a heart attack or a stoke or terminal cancer so I go to Heaven and be with my children and stop worrying about having other children. I felt like a failure for my husband and then thought how selfish of me to want to die and leave him a widow. He's the only other one who knows how exhausting this is for us. He does not deserve to lose me too. He's already lost his father and three grandparents and his godmother and his only children.

Has anyone ever told you how much infertility sucks? It steals the life out of you. And for me, this is a literal statement. It has stolen four precious lives out of me.

This morning I told my husband I'm over this. I'm over it all. I'm over the heartache. I'm over the uncertainty. I'm over the money we've spent and planned to spend to try to have a child. I'm over the hormone medications. I'm over my newly irregular cycles because of the hormone medications. I'm over no one listening to us. I'm over the doctors who think they know everything there is to know about me. I'm over it. I'm over it. I'm over it.

He told me to "don't worry about anything right now" and once we know if my sister is approved to be our egg donor we will re-evaluate where things stand with all this. So I guess that's what we are doing. And if she is approved, and because our doctor won't be doing the retrieval or transfer anyways, I'm going to ask to meet with the other doctor in the practice who HAS sent a few of her patients to a reproductive immunologist in Chicago and see what she thinks. If she will work with Dr. Braverman, great. If she wants to send our lab results from Dr. Braverman's testing to the doctor she has worked with in Chicago, fine. I'm willing to get another opinion from someone who is a professor at a university and does research in reproductive immunology. Fine. But I need to know we have tried whatever we need to to make this work.

I want to thank everyone who has donated to our Give Forward online fundraiser. All of your support is amazing and getting us closer to our goal! You are not only helping me and my husband, but you are helping another deserving couple also. You are all so wonderful:)