A Room With A View

I've been doing mucho research on IVF and things that may be able to help me in the upcoming cycle, but I also wanted to acknowledge all that Doc has done for our cycles, so in honor of his hard work, I give you Doc's ratings.

Every time we do an IVF or IUI cycle, I ask Doc what "materials" they had on-site to help him in his manly endeavors. It's our (or my) way of getting some laughs out of the otherwise fairly stressful event. He's has been to five separate clinics and tested out five different sets of materials and here is his summary:

• Clinic #1: This was his first clinic and he wasn't sure what to expect. But he came back with a thorough report...Room was a closet with very thin walls where he could hear all the conversations being held in the main office area. So, although there was a TV and DVD player with a fairly good selection of material, he didn't want to turn on the TV, lest someone here the "noises" coming from his closet. It took him longer than he expected because of the distracting conversations outside from the nurses discussing what they were going to eat for lunch, made it difficult to concentrate on his manly duties. Overall Rating: Thumbs Down.
• Clinic #2: Same clinic. Different office. This one was a little bit better and he was a bit more prepared for what to expect. He proudly relayed that he did his duties in record time and was out the door before the morning traffic started to back up. Overall Rating: Thumbs Up.
• Clinic #3: This was for our first IVF cycle. Again, similar materials...DVDs and magazines. He gave me a more detailed account of the materials at this clinic. Seeing as we live in the Bay Area and we have a diverse community, the DVD selection reflected the "equal opportunity" sentiment and thus included everything from "Asian Babes" to "Hispanic Hotties." Doc liked the fact that they were so nondiscriminatory and catered to the broad tastes of their clients, so he gave this clinic a Thumbs Up!
• Clinic #4: This one made Doc go "huh?". And, once he relayed his report back to me, I was a bit puzzled, too. They seemed to cater to the Asian Persuasion. As in everything, all materials, were Asian-centric and the room was actually named....The Zebra Room with name plate and matching zebra decor. Now, I know that our area of the country has it's fair share of Asians, but I'm not sure that having only Asian materials really does it for every man. But, then I started to think, perhaps, they have themed rooms because they have specific materials for each room. Zebra Room -- Asians; Tiger Room -- Caucasian; Gazelle Room -- Hispanics...you get the picture. But, then how do they know which room the man would prefer? Do they go by the race of the wife? The race of the man? Or just the vibes that the man gives? All in all, very strange and a bit too overboard...Just give the man a room, a porno mag, and a cup. MY rating: Thumbs Down.
• Clinic #5: Well, this one was also a bit weird. Doc compared it to a scene from Mission Impossible. He was told to go downstairs to the basement, using the elevator and then to pick up the phone from the wall. The person on the phone would then meet him and direct him to "the room," where he would complete his mission. He was then told to call again to confirm the completion of the mission. As for the materials, Doc was a bit disappointed about the selection. Their commitment to diversity was sorely missing (obviously, not the Bay Area) and he was not very impressed with their magazine selection. Overall Rating: Thumbs Down.

Hopefully, this next round will be his final tour of duty and he'll be able to retire. He's been a trouper and I appreciate his willingness to sacrifice for the cause. :)

11 Days and Counting

Less than 2 weeks until we leave for our South America vacay. I'm pretty excited about visiting SA, but Doc is beyond excited. This will be my first time to South America and Doc's second time (he's been to Peru and Venezuela).

We'll be leaving on Saturday the 13th and staying until December 1st. We fly from SFO to Miami, where we have a overnight stay (we did this to break up the long ass flight) and then from there we fly non-stop to Buenos Aires. Even with the layover, the travel time will be long and painful, but to make myself feel better, I always compare my flight times to when we went to South Africa...Hands down, the most painful 48 hours.

Doc loves to plan vacations, so we rarely ever do the typical "canned" tourist itinerary. He books all our plane flights, hotels, activities, everything...He even packs my passport for me so all I need to do is pack my clothes! This time we're starting out in Buenos Aires, Argentina and then flying down to the southern part of Argentina, to Patagonia where we'll spend several days hiking.

Since Patagonia is very close to Antarctica, we'll be hiking on glaciers and the weather will be pretty chilly. One of the highlights of our trip will be going to El Calafate. Supposedly, it's one of the most beautiful places to visit in the Argentinian Patagonia.

Our next stop after Patagonia will be Uruguay to visit Iguazu Falls, one of biggest waterfalls in the world. I'm not sure if I'm going to do this, but supposedly, you can take a raft/boat very close to the base of the waterfall and experience it up close, in person. I'm not sure if I'm brave enough for that.

And then, lastly, we'll spend the final days of our vacation in Brazil. Lying on the beach, relaxing until it's time to come home and get back to reality.

Hopefully, this will give me the break I need from all the TTC stress and leave me refreshed to start IVF #3 in January!

The Flip Side Of Life

My life revolves around IF 90% of the time, but the other 10% of the time is spent thinking about other things, most notably, selling our current house and moving. This has been a major goal for both Doc and I since we got married. At first it was because we wanted to move into a better neighborhood with better schools for our soon-to-be children (insert mock laughter here), but now, it's just to get our of our 'hood.

Not that our 'hood is all that bad. It's a tract house in a relatively new development, but like a lot of new housing developments, the quality of the residents have gone downhill since Doc bought the place back in 2002. Many of the homes have foreclosed and the new neighbors are not all that friendly nor are they very considerate of their fellow residents. Add that to the fact that although the house is a comfortable 1700 sq ft most of that space is in the 4 bedrooms, of which, we only use 2 and the remainder of the house (i.e., kitchen, living room, dining room) is pretty small and can fit a max of about 10 adults comfortably. And then lastly, there is NO backyard. This was a plus when Doc was living by himself, a lazy bachelor with better things to do on the weekends than prune a yard, but now, we'd like to spend a nice evening BBQ with friends and family, but have no where to do it!

But, wait that's not all! We also have a condo that is currently underwater...My condo, the one that I proudly owned when I was living single. The one that I now regret even thinking about buying. *sigh*

So, with that, we have two properties with mortgages totaling over $800K that are both underwater. We'd like to move into a neighborhood further in the 'burbs that has nice, wide tree-lined streets and friendly neighbors. We've saved quite a bit of money, but not enough to put down 20-30% on a new house AND also pay off whatever mortgage (the amount currently underwater) we'd have remaining on our house and our condo after selling them because God knows we wouldn't get what we paid.

I know I shouldn't complain, but sometimes you just have to. I keep telling Doc that maybe we should consider leaving the Bay Area and move to Nebraska or Illinois or anywhere else besides the Bay because everywhere else (with the exception of NYC) is probably cheaper. But, then I think about the weather (I HATE humidity) and I think about leaving family and I think about living where you can't find a good taco truck to save your life and forget about eating Ethopian food or dim sum or never getting a good bowl of pho and I realize that I should just shut up because I'm never leaving.

Those Genes Look Great On You!

One of the fancy services that CC.RM offers is PGS, otherwise known as Preimplantation Genetic Screening. This type of screening counts chromosomes and tests for certain genetic conditions, thereby confirming whether or not your embryos are chromosomally normal.

So, under this umbrella term of PGS, there are more specific types of testing, like FISH, CCS, and microarray. FISH typically screens for 9 chromosomes and is done on Day 1 after the retrieval (some clinics do this test on Day 3). A small sample of the embryo is taken, tested, and then if the results are normal, the embryos are transferred during that cycle.

CCS, the other testing that CC.RM does, is much more comprehensive. The testing is done on all 23 chromosomes, with the sample taken from the embryo on Day 5 after the retrieval (the embryos must make it to blastocysts for the test to occur). The embryos are then frozen and you wait anywhere from 2-4 weeks for the test results. The transfer is done as a frozen embryo transfer typically about 8 weeks after the retrieval.

Genetic testing is usually recommended for those couples who are either older than 37, have had multiple failed IVFs or who have had multiple miscarriages. Although Dr. S did not recommend this for us, Doc and I are almost positive that we'll go through with it. Our reasons are:

1) We'll be able to determine if this is an egg quality issue. If we get no normal embryos, this will probably be our last IVF cycle.
2) Success with CCS testing is above 70% (considering the group that typically uses CCS testing, this is awesome).
3) Many times your best looking embryos are not your chromosomally normal embryos, so if we have more than two embryos that survive, we want to know which ones will win the Darwinian race.

Alright, so enough of the science lesson for today.

I'm anxious to get this show on the road! Hopefully, with our South American vacay and the holidays coming up, the days will fly by until January.

Year of the Rabbit

I know this is going to sound like a whole lot of hocus-pocus and I wasn't going to write this because, ya know, who wants to sound like an old superstitious Asian lady, but what the hell...I'm already half-way there.

About 6 months into our TTC ordeal, I started seeing a Korean acupuncturist. At one of my sessions, he asked me questions about when I was born, when Doc was born, what time we were born, etc.. At the end of the questioning, he told me that we'd most likely have a baby in the year of the rabbit. Now, at that time, it was July 2009 and the year of the rabbit is 2011. I nearly flipped my lid! He was telling me that I had to wait 2 years for a baby.

Well, low and behold, 2011 is right around the corner and I can't help, but think if that prediction is true. Now he didn't say whether we'd conceive or birth in 2011, but our IVF is scheduled to start in mid-late January 2011, so retrieval would be early-mid February and transfer could be anytime after that depending on whether we do the chromosome testing or not. Lunar New Year is February 3, 2011.

I hate to think I've become *gasp* my mother, by believing in this stuff, but who knows? I've got to have some kind of hope to hold on to. At the very least, it's sort of interesting that I've come full circle and here I am facing 2011 and still no baby.

Welcome ICLW!

It's been awhile since I've joined ICLW. I confess that I needed a break from the blogs and the comments, but I'm back!

I'll start with an introduction to my journey and where I'll be headed in the next few months. Doc, my dear husband, and I have been married for three years and we've been TTC for almost 2 years. We spent our first year, just enjoying our newlywed status and traveling to Europe and Africa. In February of 2009, we decided to ditch the BCPs and start trying for our family. Like most people, we assumed that I'd be knocked up in a matter of a few months, but as the days roll by I notice something strange...my periods are very, very light and my luteal phase is only 8-9 days.

I report this to Doc and he says to just wait, sometimes it just takes awhile and most doctors won't even see you until you've been trying for at least 1 year. This is not a good answer. So, I take matters into my own hands, email my Ob/Gyn and tell a little white lie about how long we've been trying. She's very responsive, orders a few tests and then gets me an appointment with the RE at the Big-K HMO. I pass the tests with no real concerns and begin clomid.

Our plan is to do three rounds of IUI. So we do our first cycle of clomid with a nice big follicle, but very, very thin lining and no IUI because of the Thanksgiving holiday. Second round is letrazole with IUI. Again, one good follie, lining is still thin, so we supplement with estrogen which doesn't help much. Result: BFN. Third round is also a letrazole cycle with IUI. This time around, it takes me a long time to respond to the meds and thin lining again. Result: BFN.

Doc and I discuss matters and decided that we should go directly to IVF. According to the RE, she thinks we'll get knocked up on the first try. So, off we go. Based on our reaction to the meds, the new RE puts me on a BCP with an antagonist cycle. Unfortunately, the BCPs oversuppress me and I take almost 18 days to stim. From there, we retrieve 10 eggs with only 3 mature and 2 that fertilize. We decide to do a 2-day transfer of those 2 embryos which results in a BFN. The doc says that this ratio of mature: immature eggs is really rare and thinks our lack of mature eggs is due to the oversuppression, so he suggests we ditch the BCPs and try again.

For IVF #2, we head to another RE and he places us on a EPP (estrogen priming protocol) with a MDL cycle. We get almost identical results. 10 eggs retrieved, 2 are mature, 1 fertilized and 1 transferred at day 3. The result is a BFN. This time the RE suggests that it's an egg quality issue and that we should look into donor eggs.

So, for our last ditch effort, Doc and I are taking out the big guns. We're headed to CCRM and hoping that they can work their magic on us. We had our consultation with Dr. S and we've done our one day work up, so now it's just a waiting game until Jan 2011 to begin our cycle. We're most likely doing an EPP-antagonist cycle with CCS (comprehensive chromosome screening). Also, based on his recommendation, I've been taking DHEA prior to my cycle to help with egg quality. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Back In the Saddle

Thank you to everyone for all your comments. I made it through the weekend without any more meltdowns and I'm back in the saddle again.

I spent most of this weekend reading about everything and anything associated with CC.RM. I don't think I mentioned this, but my RE at the Big K, told me the secret to CC.RM is their lab and more specifically, their embryologist, David Gard.ner. I guess, Scho.olcraf.t was able to lure DG all the way from Australia to work come and work for him. Prior to CC.RM, he did extensive research on animal embryos and used some of his knowledge and research from that on humans. He's also the one that first successfully did a blastocyst transfer and I guess all the embryo cultures that they now use in IVFs are all called Gard.ner something-or-other.

Anyway, I'm hoping that they'll be able to work they're magic on me.

The other part of my weekend was spent thinking about all the "what-ifs." What if we had gone directly to CC.RM after our failed IVF #1? What if we had started TTC immediately after we got married instead of waiting a year? What if this cycle doesn't work? What if an alien snatched my body and then was able to get pregnant?

So, now, after all that thinking and over use of my brain, I can barely function on this glorious Monday and I'm counting the minutes until I can get out of here. Oh, and AF is now here.