The Aftermath

I would hate to admit that negative pregnancy tests are becoming somewhat routine, but I fear this is the truth. The devastation of the negative was no less severe, but this time the sting didn't last as long. It was more of a slow burn after the initial jab to the heart. I know what I did wrong, I got ahead of myself, like way ahead of myself. Because this time I hadn't started my period yet, I started to get pretty freakin' hopeful that the bloated-ness and mild cramping were pregnancy symptoms and not period symptoms. I started looking up one syllable girl names. I started thinking about how I was going to tell Vance that it was positive. I started thinking about when that would make my due date. I started doing everything I told myself I wouldn't do.

I could tell immediately that the test was negative by the "Hi, Stephanie, it's Ashley from Texas Fertility." Didn't even have to listen to the whole thing, the "Hi," said it all. I got the call at work, hung up the phone and walked outside to call Vance. Before the phone even started to ring, I was sobbing. We had the same conversation we have with every negative test and then did our best to continue about our day. I ugly cried the entire car drive home and by the time I was home it was mostly out of my system other than a few misty eye situations at dinner.

So the next step is on us. We decide if we want to go immediately into the next cycle or take some time off. As of this afternoon, we have decided to take some time off, but for a purpose. I'm not sure how much I've gotten into this on here, but I have decided to be tested to Gluten sensitivity. I will spare you all the not fun symptoms I am experiencing that have led me to be bested and just saw that I have read enough articles that link Gluten and Infertility that I think it's time to invest some serious effort into changing my eat habits. Today I had my blood work done and will be receiving the results in 3 weeks. Until then, I am to start removing the Gluten out of my life. I think this is nothing but a positive change. I've talked on here before about being Obese and Pregnant and how I would love to change that, so here's my chance.

I was always under the impression, if I were to take some time off from the Acker making to work on my weight, it would be something like a year or more. My heart couldn't really bare that sort of wait. But after talking to the Dr this morning, she said I would be surprised at what kind of progress I can make in a few short months. So that's exactly what we're going to do. We are going to take a few months to better ourselves and make a few positive changes and then give it another go.

Thanks for listening and hoping and praying. I'd love to hear from those of you who are reading, so send me an email or leave a comment. I will keep you posted on how the Gluten mission is going.

Until next time...

Negative

That's all I can muster for now.

The Waiting Is Horrible

Apparently we will have to endure the dreaded 6 hour wait. I left the lab at 7:30 am and it is now 1:00 pm and still no call back. And yes, I did email my nurse this morning to confirm they would be calling me and not the other way around.

So, I am here...nervous and waiting...

Test Day So Soon!!!!????

We had our second transfer on the 11th! This one was so easy, it was ridiculous. We had three frozen embryos left from our last retrieval and decided to just transfer one. Our thought process was to maximize the number of frozen transfers. One, the process is way less painless and shorter and two WAY less expensive. Plus, one embryo at a time will keep the multiple chances down. I'm not really sure if that's true or not, but that's what we're going with!

We had to do some rearranging of the schedule due to a 30th birthday celebration, more on that another time and due to our Dr's availability. I honestly couldn't figure out when test day was. I emailed my nurse for confirmation and sure enough we go in tomorrow. FRIGHTENING!

I have not started yet. If you remember I started on a Friday and test day was Sunday. I have been feeling very bloated and heavy. Mild cramping is kind of coming an going, but absolutely no spotting. Today, I was so hungry at lunch that I was nauseous. But if I'm being honest with myself , that happens all the time, hahah. I am literally hovering between being super excited and hopeful and preparing myself for the negative results. The last time we tested was on a Sunday. So the only open lab was in the hospital downtown. If you follow the blog, you remember that horrid story. If you don't follow, you can re-read the disaster here. Testing was done at 8:00 am (was supposed to be there by 7:30 am, whoops!) and we didn't get the results until 1:45 pm. So now I am wondering if we will have to do that dreaded 6 hour wait again, or if since it's during working hours, we will have results sooner???? Am I rambling...I feel like I am rambling...Have I mentioned I'm nervous?

Last night I spent the evening thinking of ways I was going to tell Vance if it was positive. Vance KNOWS test day is tomorrow, but given our current situation of moving into our new house, we have been pretty preoccupied and I wouldn't blame him if he had forgotten. Hell, up until two days ago, I ALMOST FORGOT! So I was thinking how cool would it be if he DID forget and I got positive results back and called me for a random lunch date and was able to tell me in person and surprise him!!!!!! And then I quickly yanked myself back down to reality. STOP PUTTING THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE, STEPHANIE! If this process has taught me anything, you would think it was to NOT GET AHEAD OF MYSELF. And yet hear I am, getting ahead. So, I am putting all ideas of how this whole thing will play out until we have something to play out.

Please wish us luck and if prayer is something you do and believe in, please send them our way. I am taking any and every offer of positivity and love and support we can get. This round has been hard because we opted to tell no one. We each got one person to confide in, should we need to vent to someone other than each other, but it kind of feels like because of that, we don't have everyone rooting in our corner like last time.

I will do my best to report back tomorrow. Last time I couldn't bare to put the bad news in permanent blog world yet. I was still trying to process the disappointment myself. Again, I will do my best. Thanks again for listening and hoping and praying for us. If it's not tomorrow, it WILL be another day. I know it.

:)

We're BACK Baby!

It has almost been exactly two months since my last post. I just finished re-reading it to see where we left off. That was a sad post. I guess in reality, a lot of these posts are sad. The whole concept of infertility is sad. But infertility is like riding the waves and today we are riding high. Let me bring you up to speed on how we used are non baby making down time over the lat two months!

Our vacation to the Cayman Islands was unbelievable! The rest and relaxation is just what the doctor ordered. The highlight for me was swimming with the stingrays! They were so cute, just like kitties. They swim up and brush up against your legs and body. And they love to be fed! So fun! Other than that, my spa visit with my mother in law was amazing and just having no agenda for 3 days straight was perfection! Here are a few of my favorite shots.

Our view front our condo!

Swimming with Stingrays! So cool!!!!

Cheers to paradise!

Pier view!

The Ackers!

In the middle of our vacation, we decided to finish the last room in our house, the master bathroom. It was nice going without any construction in the house for a while, but if we didn't move quickly, we would probably never do it! In the middle of this "little" renovation, we found a house we liked. We like to stalk the Austin home market, it's one of our hobbies. The home was gorgeous and exactly what we were looking for. We held back every desire to go see it for as long as we could, about two weeks and then we caved. We called up our real estate agent, took a look around and fell in love. Then we did something crazy, we put in an offer before a.) our bathroom was complete and b.) before our house was even on the market! CRAZY KIDS, I know. They didn't even really respond to our first offer. We were heart broken, but as I mentioned before, we had time. The house had been on the market for over 50 days and we weren't quite ready to move forward either. Another couple weeks went by and while stalking again I noticed they had lowered their asking price. So again, we submitted another offer and this time they accepted! We had 3 days to get the bathroom done and get our current house listed! This one experience was a whirl wind, but it was probably the best decision we ever made. We listed our house on a Friday afternoon about 3:30 pm. We accepted an offer, over asking on Sunday morning about 11:00 am. Isn't that INSANE?! Less than 48 hours! So now we are packing and waiting for our close date.

Update: SOLD!

                                          

Your Uterus vs The Labs Uterus

Yesterday we had our cycle review appointment. I don't know if I was expecting to feel better or worse afterwards, but we left feeling very, "well that's that,". Honestly, it was an appointment we could have done without because we didn't really get any ACTUAL information. I think we were  both hoping for a, "This is why you guys didn't get pregnant," and that simply never came. But then again, we should have known better with unexplained infertility. We haven't had any answers as to why in the last year and 8 months, why start now!!!

Doc said everything went accordingly and if he had to give an explanation it would be they picked the wrong blastocytes to transfer. We had a Day 3 transfer and on Day 3, the two blastocytes they choose were the best on that day. The other blastocytes that didn't get transfered were allowed to continue the growing process, so all said and done, the 3 frozen blastocytes we have are the most viable out of our last cycle. He says the reason they don't just wait and do a Day 5 transfer for everyone to be able to better tell which blastocytes are best is that,  that would be admitting the labs uterus is better than mine and that's just absurd! And although I do understand the reasoning, my uterus, the labs uterus, hell even the chiuaua's uterus next door...at this point, I might not even care!!! Bottom line, everything else looked good and we are hoping that out of the 3 frozen blastocytes we have, one we be our little Acker next time. Which leads us to our next topic, the next cycle.

So the bad news about not getting pregnant on the first IVF is that, we didn't get pregnant on the first IVF. The good news, because there has to be a silver lining in all of this SOMEHOW, is that we took care of the hard part last cycle. This time we can skip at the stimming and after a few weeks of Estrogen and progesterone we will be able to go straight to a transfer. So, that makes like a little easier for everyone. So for now, we wait for my next start date and hopefully will be doing our next transfer towards the end of May!

This timing gives us enough time to mentally prepare ourselves again and to actually ENJOY our vacation next month. I also have to do a little traveling for work next month, so we can get all that behind us and be back and ready to try!!!! We also have decided to limit the number of people we are going to share this cycle with. Getting the negative test result is hard enough, but then having to let EVERYONE else know as well is just heart breaking. And even worse, you have to listen to all of their, "it will happen," "this just wan't the right time," stay positive". I know it all comes from the most sincere place and we appreciate all the prayers, but sometimes, you just can't hear it. It will be easier to keep it between us this time, because there are less appointments involved.

So that is where we stand. I feel like this closing paragraph is on repeat. We wait, we get back to a place where we can be hopeful and positive and have MORE FAITH THAN GOD HAS EVER SEEN! And we just keep at it. :) Thanks for listening!!!

Numbers Game

In more ways than one, the infertility game is also a numbers game. I do my best to stay away from statistics because the ugly truth is the statistics are UGLY! There is no treatment that is 100% guaranteed to get you pregnant. But as hard we we try to avoid the negatives, there is one numbers game we have not been able to avoid, the cost of IVF.

Vance and I are EXTREMELY lucky to have insurance coverage for infertility. (I am covered by a company based out of NJ, in case you were curious) So since we started this journey, all of my ultrasounds, sonograms, triggers, etc have been 100% covered along with my co-pay. All 12 of our IUIs were covered as well. When we started the IVF cycle, I called insurance about 20 times to make sure things were going to be covered and I was assured, 20 times, they were. Fast forward to a week before March 18th. The loop hole we'd been so desperately trying to avoid finally showed its ugly head.

So Dr. Silverberg (We are with Texas Fertility Center, http://www.txfertility.com/) is definitely a in-network Dr. We are totally covered with him and his office. However, the company they use here in Austin for fertility laboratory services (semen analysis, freezing semen and embryos, egg retrieval, ISCI, transfer etc.) is NOT in-network. So what did that mean to us exactly??? That meant that Any service they provided would have to be paid for out of pocket and then we would file for a reimbursement from our insurance company. Doesn't that sound like the most fun EVER!!!

So here's how the cookie crumbled for us. We started shelling out the dough on February 18th for this first cycle of IVF and today, April 19th, I made the final balance payment. All in all this round cost us $7,804.74. And just as a little reminder, that's with nothing to show for it. I know that sounds pretty bitter and it's exactly how I felt a couple days ago seeing where as Sunday I found out the test was negative and Monday I found out I owed an additional $2,785.00 before they could submit our reimbursement paperwork. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Sunday was rough, but my Monday I was starting to feel normal again...until that call! I immediately lost it again. I started thinking HOW IN THE WORLD are we going to be able to shell out about $8K for each try. Giving our IUI track record, if I did the quick math that would equate to ninety six THOUSAND DOLLARS! It was like a sucker punch to the face and I don't even know what that means!!!!! Now please don't misunderstand me. I know how lucky we are to have coverage for the rest and how lucky we are to even be considered for reimbursement, but having to come up with $8K is not an easy feat for us. It makes me sick to my stomach. And although this is priority #1 for us, we still have a life to live and things we want to do. There has to be happy things to look forward to in between all the not happy things. Not sure I have shared this with you guys, but Vance and I (99% Vance, 1% Me) have been renovating our first house since we moved in June of 2011. We have our master bathroom left and the front and back exterior before we are 100% done!!! My husband rocks. :) But it's hard to be able to budget for those projects while budgeting for baby making. It can very easily get discouraging! Again, please don't take as me complaining about ALL the things we have, this is just the thought process we go through as we are living this journey.

So for now, we wait. Our MOST FAVORITE thing to do in the whole wide world! We wait for the reimbursement, we wait for our next appointment (April 22nd), we wait for our next cycle and we wait for our hearts to heal and for our jar of hope and faith to fill back up. We have faith that all these things will happen in time. Again, thanks for lending your ear/eyes.

*One thing I wanted to share with you, just in case someone reading along is from Texas, is Maverick's Miracle Babies. This awesome non-profit was started by a couple who went through infertility treatments themselves and saw a need and a desire to help those who have to follow in their footsteps. They have put together a grant you can apply for, as long as you meet all the eligibility requirements. I think applications are due pretty soon. Here is the link to eligibility requirements and the grant application, http://mavericksmiraclebabies.org/qualifications/.