Baby Aylanna

Well, Amanda had her baby on 4/13 at ~12:05 am. She weighed 6lbs 7 oz. and was 19'' long. Had she been born just 6 minutes earlier she would have been considered premature. Amanda had been having pretty strong contractions but would probably have went a while longer except she was trying to step over a baby gate and fell right on her belly, scared James to death! This started very strong premature labor that was not able to be stopped.

Baby Aylanna was born with so much dark hair, completely opposite of baby Daren with his platinum blond curly hair.

I was so unhappy that I had just been told to stay in bed the day before and was not able to be at the birth! However, the next day I had to go to the hospital for bloodwork anyway so I hopped in a wheelchair and went to visit!

Just five days earlier our cousin Bre gave birth to a baby boy, Tyler James on 4/08/06 at 3:56 A.M he was 7 lb 1 oz., 21" long. Still waiting on a picture of the little cutie.

OHSS continues

Well, today is day # 6 of OHSS, things are not really improving for me. I started taking a medician yesterday which should help with the complication of acid reflux I have been having extremely bad and is part of what is preventing me from eating solid foods. I have had to start drinking ensure shakes to get some nutrition, have to love being reduced to the diet of an 80 year old! I am losing weight during pregnancy ! -- but the fluid is packing into the ole abdomen and ovaries to make up for it so I still look 3-4 months pregnant! Right now we are in a holding pattern and I continue to check in with my doctor day by day.

I will have to fill out a short term disability claim through my work today. Luckily, my work has been very great and flexible with all of this and I get paid for the time off and it is covered under FMLA. Unfortunately you get 12 weeks FMLA a rolling calendar year meaning my maternity leave will not be all covered under FMLA. I will still get to take the same amount of time off but I won't be guaranteed my job back, I will however be guaranteed A job back so I am not too concerned. As it stands now, when I go back to work I will not be doing my normal job anyway. My doctors and I agree that the laboratory is a dangerous place for a pregnant women, no telling how much chemical is safe exposure limit for a fetus so I will be taking a desk job for the remainer of my pregnancy. At this time I have no idea what I will be doing but it sounds like I will remain under my manager thankfully as he has been extremely accomodating and understanding. My only fear is that I am starting a trend here and now that other pregnant women realize they have a choice the management is going to be looking at me like the ring leader! On one hand I hope that other pregnant women talk with there doctors as I dont' feel the lab is at all safe for pregnant women but on the other hand I am afraid of being a 'trouble maker' even just on my own case. Oh, well, I have new priorities now and it is whatever is best for this child(ren).

OHSS (Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome)

I had scheduled vacation wednesday to allow whatever news we received to settle in. Boy am I glad I did. Wednesday morning I was uncomfortable but my IVF coordinator was out of the office so I said I would call her the next day, by the afternoon was in distress and called the main clinic in Grand Rapids. It felt as though someone had lifted my ribs and stuck a basketball under them, I was having stomach pains, not to mention I could not eat anything without more intense pain and a very hot acidy feeling in my stomach. My stomach was all puffy and distended and I had severe nausea. The clinician diagnosed me with Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome (OHSS) which is supposed to only happen in about 1% of cases. Well when I had surgery for my gallbladder 3 years ago I suffered from severe internal bleeding which is also supposedly a 1% chance of happening so I guess I am either the world's luckiest person or a glutton for punishment!

The next day, thursday, I went to the hospital and they ran a complete bloodwork on me to get baseline levels of kidney function blood levels etc as moderate to severe cases can reak havoc on your system. All checked out fine and as mentioned the pregnancy level was looking great.

I was taken off of work due to the OHSS and have to do bedrest, fluids restricted to 4 glasses (32oz) a day -- those of you who know me realize how serious this is for me of all people, I normally consume at least 15 glasses of all water! Now I could not even drink water, I had to drink everything with electrolytes like gatorade, propel water etc. I have to weigh myself 2x daily, measure my abdomen, and report in to the IVF coordinator daily. At this time I was thinking it would be over with soon!

In some sadistic way I am thrilled with the OHSS because this generally happens when you have had a really successful cycle meaning ... .... .. A) you were a high responder to the meds and they retrieved many eggs (I had 25) B) your estrogen level gets above 4000 (mine was 3600 2 days before retrieval) C) your pregnancy hormones are on the rise!

Beta Test Results

As mentioned in the previous post the dr's office was supposed to call me to let me know that they had left the results of our test on the home answering machine so that we could get the results at the same time and so that I would not find out at work. Well, that didn't work out so smoothly, when the nurse called me she blurted out the results before I could stop her. So, there I am tuesday trying to concentrate on completing some training and all hopes of concentration were shattered. I was very unhappy and decided to have her call the home phone so I could feign ignorance and still listen to the result with Jared. Well, we made a couple stops on the way home and I was being WAY to patient so the gig was up Jared knew I had found out. But, with such great news who can be unhappy?

So, on 4/11 our result was 40 miu HCG (pregnancy hormone) anything above 15 is positive, and we were told our number was 'good', they took another test on 4/13 at which time it should have increased by about 80%, ideally doubling, our second result was 99 miu HCG! That is a great result so our next test will be an ultrasound on 4/27 at which point they will be able to see if there is one baby or two growing.

Possibly Pregnant?

Picture this, I had been taking a home pregnancy test (HPT) each morning for 4 days in the hope that the first one would be negative (ensuring when I got a faint line developing we would know we were pregnant) then obsessively taking them each morning - just incase, so finally tuesday, the morning of the beta, I did the same routine, get up, do a hpt and then there were 2! Yep, two lines, actually a line and a + sign! It showed up right away and I was so excited I jumped on the bed and woke Jared up. We had a little celebration but agreed not to get too excited until we got back our beta numbers. Yeah, right!

I had been having symptoms but because we were injecting progesterone hormones every night I had convinced myself I was stark raving mad that I couldn't possibly be having symptoms within the first two weeks and decided to not trust my instincts -- even though by tuesday mornings positive test I was pretty sure I was correct! Oh, and alot of IVF'ers experience symptoms way earlier than in normal pregnancy because a) you are looking for every little symtom and b) you are already so hopped up on hormones.

So. we would have to wait all day to get home and hear the results of our blood test, which were to be left on the answering machine so that we could find out together, and to confirm whether or not I was indeed sane.

I am sure you can see the positive on the hpt, right? Ok, so it is was hard to see but it is there, had to photo shop a more distinct+ onto it. Yes, I took a picture of it, come on I had been waiting three years to see one of those things light up!

2 Week Wait

Well, our embryo transfer was 3/31 and our Beta test to check the levels of hormones in my blood, i.e. pregnancy test are scheduled for 4/11 & 4/13. They check the levels two days apart to ensure the hormones are rising appropriately. The tests are so early, that in the 'normal' cycle a woman may not have even been late yet so it is will stillbe a very early pregnancy.

This time in between the transfer and the tests is referred to as the two week wait (2ww) and is torture: waiting, wondering, hoping, and praying.

I have come up with a short term 'game plan' to either relieve stress or celebrate!

Right now I am drivng myself crazy trying not to overanalyze each twinge, and sensation that I get, we will see.

We got our report from the laboratory regarding our embryos, stats are as follows:
23 eggs retrieved(plus 2 cysts)
19 were mature (that is great, normally there are alot of immature when so many are grown)
Of the 19, 14 fertilized and started dividing
best 2 were transferred back
11 embryos were frozen so we have 11 'totsicles' or 'snow babies'
5=4cells (grade B & B+) 3=3 cells (grade B) 1=5 cells (grade C) 2=3 cells( grade C) Grades A & B have the same success rate for implantation with the grades C being slightly reduced and they didn't freeze one so it must have been of poor quality.

11 frozen is alot more than I was hoping for, now if these first two take we are going to have 11 on ice to figure out what to do with. Better than none, no complaints here.

Embryo Transfer

Well, today was the day, what this whole long journey has been leading up to. We arrived at 7:45am for the 8:30 embryo transfer, once again I was already loopy on valium, not so much for the pain today, just to make sure I was relaxed which we all know can be a BIG challenge for me :-) The procedure today was very simple, 5 minutes tops, they transfer the emryos via a small catheter and then check the catheter under the microscope to ensure they were delivered and voila -- 2 back in the oven just that quick. So our chances of one of them sticking around is about 65% and our chances of BOTH of them sticking around is about 10-15%!

The exciting part is that we got a picture of our perfect, wonderful, miraculous looking little 'babies to be'. They were both perfect 4 cell embryo's. They actually get grades and these two were and A and A-, success rates remain the same for all grades A through B so our little embies were excellent. It was very emotional for us and I think this picture was worth the entire journey and every ounce of being uncomfortable.

Fertilization Report

Well, I am sore today, no valium now. Doing well, taking it easy, when Jared gets home from work he is going to take me to get some movies and a few last minute 'bedrest' essentials. Doctors office called today and out of the 25 eggs that were retrieved we had 19 that were mature, that is great. Out of the 19 mature size eggs 14 fertilized, we utilized ICSI which is where they put the best sperm inside of the eggs to give them a head start. We won't know anymore until we go in to have two little ones 'transferred on home'.