16 weeks

 

Gender – unsure still, will find out in two weeks!

Weight Gain – Down 1 pound

Cravings – Pickles!! And Salt. Everything tastes like it needs more salt! A couple days ago, I stopped at a BBQ place to get my dad some food and the cashier was eating a pickle. And I said “oh, I love pickles. I am pregnant and crave them all the time” so he told them to give me a pint of pickles!! So nice, such a smart boy!! ;)

Movement – felt a little “rolling” in my abdomen on Wednesday, 8/1/12. When I went for my appt yesterday, right where the doctor found the heartbeat is where I felt the “rolling”, so I’m pretty sure that was baby. :D

Clothes – I can still wear some of my normal clothes, but where the button hits, is pretty tender, so I do wear some maternity capri’s and shorts. I also have several maternity tops that I’ve been wearing, cause I’ve waited a long time to be able to do so! Ha!

Best moment – Feeling the movement and we had to fill out a Health screening survey at work and it asked “Are you currently pregnant?” and I got to answer YES!!! Also, as weird as it sounds, making my first pre-payment on my delivery yesterday was pretty awesome!

Haylei

I just wanted to take a minute or two to remember some things about my sweet Haylei. She is growing by leaps and bounds, not just height wise, but maturity and just being a little girl.

She is SO caring and sweet. A couple of Sundays ago, we were sitting out on the front porch, while it was still cool enough to do so. She was playing and decided she needed a drink. So, she went inside to get a drink. She had been gone for a few minutes when I finally heard her coming out the door; she came out three bottles of water, one for Matt, one for me and one for herself. Is it just me or is that not the sweetest thing!???

This past Friday, we stopped at Sonic to get something to eat, well they only gave us one peppermint, and Haylei loves those, so I of course gave it to her, she then looked up at Matt and asked him if he wanted one, I told her there weren’t any more, just that one. So she asked him if he wanted half of it. Seriously…SWEET!!

She is really working on writing her name. I wrote it on her paper and she wrote it out underneath, I did help her with the “e” but that’s it. It’s so cute, because she sometimes gets her letters all jumbled up and not in the right order.

I took her to Urgent Care last Thursday night because she had strep throat, and she weighed 33 pounds fully dressed!!

I just cannot believe she starts school in less than a month. Someone is going to have to give this Auntie a sedative to survive this! I have just been praying that God will watch over her and protect her coming and going. I’ve been working with her on grooming habits, so that she is sure to have her face washed and hair brushed every morning before she goes to school, since I cannot be there to make sure it’s done for her. She is so mature that I am sure she’ll do fine and I know she’ll thrive in the school environment, just praying I survive it!!!

Zoo trip and cousins!!

 6/1/12

Today, most of my family all took a trip to the Tulsa Zoo!! There was 19 of us total…lots of kiddos to keep up with!! The weather started off perfect, then while eating lunch, it began sprinkling….and within 30 minutes it was pouring rain…Cold rain!! All the kids had so much fun and I think the adults did too! Haylei enjoyed seeing her relatives (the monkeys)! Haha!! I just love that kid!!

Since the rain ran us out of the zoo, we loaded up and went to Nana and Papa’s house for some more cousin time because two of our cousins are headed home to Texas tomorrow. L The kids played and watched a movie while the adults napped, visited and ate ice cream!! We all went to eat supper in Wagoner at my favorite Mexican food place and had a wonderful time! It was such a fun filled day with family!!

Lately...

Haven't posted in a while...actually wrote a post on Monday, after the dreaded Mother's Day holiday, and just hadn't published it. So last weekend was a very hard weekend to deal with....I want to celebrate and honor my beautiful Mother, all the while just wanting to crawl into a hole and disappear. All the "Happy Mother's Day" posts and texts...I'm like dude, not everyone is a mother. I was very angry and hurt. On Monday we had the second half of our homestudy, she did the walk through of the house and gathered all the rest of the information needed to make her report to make us available for adoption. However, she told me something that really disappointed me. She said we may need to get recertified 2-3 times before we got our baby...translating to 2-3 YEARS!!! Pretty low blow. The rest of our week was very uneventful although busy with my nieces and nephews extra-curricular activities!!

For the past week or so, I've been having very low pelvic pains, much like a menstrual cramp, but lower. So everytime I went to the restroom, I kept expecting for AF to have shown her ugly face, being that I was already late. AF had last shown up on April 7th. When I saw Dr. Bundren in March, I'd been told to stay on my BC pills and keep all my meds the same to keep my PCOS and Endo suppressed and at bay. But after I finished my last pack of pills I thought to myself, I'm just not going to take the BC pills this month and see if my miracle can happen. So when I began on day 30 with no period, I was dreading making that phone call to his office to tattle on myself, that I hadn't done what he told me. So I just kept waiting being as though I was having the low cramps and just figured AF was taking her dear sweet time. But as I came upon day 42 with no cycle, I knew I better call. So Thursday morning, I made that call to Dr. B's office and told them I was day 42 and having cramping that was really low. First words out of her mouth were "Have you taken a pregnancy test?" and I told her "No, it will be negative and I don't want to see those words". So they called me back later in the afternoon and said to take a pregnancy test first thing Friday morning and if it was negative to let them know and I could come in and get a shot of progesterone.  So I go and buy the digital pregnancy tests.  Friday morning comes and I pee on my stick. Error. Great. I HATE these stupid tests. So I get ready for work and go on in. About 8ish, I ask one of my coworkers if she could run next door and get a pregnancy test from her friend at the doctor's office. She comes back with the test and I just stick it in my desk drawer. At about 10:00, I figure I might as well take it so that I can go get my shot. So I go potty and then do the test. I was putting all the trash in the little bag while waiting...normally I mess these tests up too. I look down and two lines....wait, what??!?! TWO LINES!!?! So I barrel out the bathroom door and get the girl who'd got me the test, we run in the bathroom and shut the door. I said "What does that mean" and she's like "oh my gosh, there's two lines, that means...." and I said "NO WAY!, OMG! NO WAY!". So I grab the stick and run out of the bathroom shaking, literally shaking, I run into my boss' office waving my beautiful stick around screaming "I'm going to have to take time off in January" Needless to say, all work stopped at that point. I just kept looking at my pretty little stick and kept saying, there's never been two lines. I called Matt and said "I peed on a stick and it was positive" He had zero clue what I was talking about. Then he said he was proud of me. HAHA!! I think I caught him a bit of guard!!  I called Dr. Bundren's office and Esther answered and I just said "Esther, it's Erin, it was POSITIVE!!!" She then told me to come in and get blood work but drive slowly and carefully!!!

So I left work, called my best friend, Amber, squealing. She couldn't even understand what i was saying!! She began to cry! So I went and got my blood work, then came on home. I probably called Matt a dozen times on my way home because I was just so excited! I came home and peed on the other digital stick and sure enough the words "Pregnant" popped right up. NEVER in a million years had I expected to see two lines on a stick or that word. This wasn't supposed to happen for me. Especially without lots of medical intervention.

May 18th, will be one of those days I pray I never forget. It was the happiest day of my life so far...

Lots more to come I'm sure!!

new plans

I went and saw Dr. Bundren today just for a regrouping consult...he said that he'd like me to go see an Endocrinologist and get on some injectable medications used for diabetics, in hopes that it will help me lose the weight needed to do IVF in the fall. He told me the optimal weight for doing IVF is between 120-200 pounds, any more or less than that and you dramatically decrease your chances. He told me my PCOS is pretty bad and that the Metformin alone just isn't cutting it. He also said that with the amount of Follistim I was one, along with okay sperm count numbers, that after 3 trys with IUI I should have gotten pregnant and so now it is time for IVF. I am still so excited and hopeful. So now I just have to get an appt with the Endo doctor and hopefully get on the right track. I have been doing Weight Watchers for two weeks now and have only lost 2.4 pounds, he said it should NOT be that hard for me to lose weight, he was pleased that I'd lost and kept off about 15 pounds since summer but it should be more than that. So, I guess we'll see how that goes.

In other news...we are moving right along with getting certified for adoption through Cherokee Nation. Matt just got his physical today and I am scheduled for mine on Monday. We finished up our pre-service training last week and passed our test, we turned in all our paperwork and got fingerprints as well last week. So now, I'm just trying to baby proof our house and wait to be assigned to a caseworker and get our homestudy scheduled. Like I told Matt today, I am NOT ready to give up on being pregnant and giving birth just yet. I just want to work on losing weight while working on getting certified and then if IVF doesn't work or we can't get the financing for it, then we'll be ready for adoption. Surprisingly, my heart feels very open to both. So that is all that is new in our world!

The next move

The last few days have been full of new ideas, new thoughts and new plans. Exciting, scary and sad all at the same time!

When I was praying for my latest cycle to work, probably as much as I prayed for my cycle to work, I prayed for peace if it didn't. I asked God, if it wasn't going to happen, just to give me peace. Peace to move on, peace to do something different, peace in my heart and mind. And that is one prayer He answered. While I know He did answer the prayer for my cycle...it just wasn't in the way I expected or wanted. He simply answered with a No, not now. Wait. I will say that yes, I cried for probably an hour, then I spent time trying to just get my thoughts together and try to figure out how to tell Matt and the tears stopped. We were able to have a great weekend with little Haylei (my precious niece). We did gymnastics and went to another niece's soccer game and then played at the park and then topped it off with grilling burgers!!

But onto the new and exciting....so I've had the paperwork for adoption for several months now, I've never been able to open the packet to begin filling it out. I just wasn't there yet. So I scheduled us for the pre-service training classes, which is the 12 hours of education that you have to have in order to get certified. I cracked open the packet last night and got writer's cramp trying to fill out all the papers! But, we had our first training session this morning. It was actually refreshing to not be talking about fertility treatments!! My plan at the moment is to concurrently work on weight loss so that we may be able to do IVF in the fall while getting certified to become an adoptive home. I am NOT ready to give up on the dream of experiencing pregnancy and giving birth yet. I meet with my RE in a couple of weeks and we'll know more then. But my thoughts are that if our IVF treatments fail, that we'd already be certified as an adoptive home, then we could open our home and hopefully have a child quickly. Again, this is all my plans, not His. I guess time will tell.

My sweet Haylei at the park in between soccer games

This is how Haylei sleeps, with her arm around Matt's neck. Melts. my. heart.

 Haylei's first attempt at writing the letter "B". The last two are hers. :)

 My sister and three of my niece, the girl on the end of the couch is a friend of my oldeset niece.

After church Sunday we went to Rib Crib...this girl loves BBQ!

Another "no"

My eyes are filled with tears as I sit here writing this post...I just got off the phone with my nurse and got the results of my latest IUI...a BFN. Of course. I had such hope and a positive thought on this because this cycle had the best numbers yet. I had two follicles and the sperm counts were good. But I suppose this wasn't God's plan or timing.

I'll tell from the beginning...DH had a vasectomy reversal 4 years ago, his counts have always been good and we were very hopeful. Then after a couple years of nothing, and my cycles began getting crazy, I decided it was time to see my doctor. I just went to my PCP and she diagnosed me with PCOS based on symptoms and then blood work confirmed it. She started me on 250mg of Metformin a day and prescribed BC for 3 months. So I did as she asked and took my last pack of pills in January and immediatley my cycles went nuts again. So I scheduled an appt with an RE here in Tulsa. My appt with him was 3/28/11 and he confirmed the PCOS and increased my Metformin to 1000mg per day and we scheduled another semen analysis since it had been a couple years since DH had one. It turned out okay, needed to take some vitamins, but still was okay. I then had my HSG at the beginning of June and it was normal. My next step was a laparoscopy in August. It showed stage 1 endometriosis, but he lasered it while there and thought that would fix my problems. I went for my post op a couple weeks later and we decided to try Clomid and then scheduled an endometrial biopsy, he said that would tell if the Clomid made me ovulate or not. So we did that, it didn't work. Next step...double IUI's with injectables(Follisitim). Well I had one in November, January and then March. All failed.

My heart is so heavy and burdened. I am surrounded by pregnant people!! My marriage I feel is suffering, though Matt has been great and a trooper, doing everything he was supposed to do. So I think we are going to take some time off and try to regroup, I'm going to go in and talk to my RE and make another game plan, the nurse said maybe try a few months of Lupron and weight loss and then gear up for IVF in the fall. This journey is one that I would never in my life wish on my worst enemy. It doesn't make sense to me, none of my family have ever had any issues like this, and so for me...the one who loves children and always thought i'd have 10...this is really bizaare. I know God is bigger than this and I know he holds me in his hands.

again....

So here I sit again, the morning of one of my final IUI's(I have to do one tomorrow too). I feel a little at peace, but scared also. It took a lot of praying and soul searching to know if I even wanted to give this one last shot. So here I am, 13 days after giving my self shots in the legs and I'm ready to be done with it. I went to my RE on Saturday for my US and I have two really good follicles, one on each ovary and they both measured at a 19, so I was ready to trigger that night. I went to my momma's house at 10:30pm, which is different, because normally I do my trigger shot at midnight, and she gave me my shot in the bootie, OUCH! I've just really tried to focus on the fact that God knows what He's doing...He knows all my tomorrows and what they contain, but I still get anxious at times. My lifelong dream has always been to have kids, growing up and in high school, everyone said that I would be the one with 10 kids! Ha! But here I sit, 29 and 1/2, and no children. That thought scares the crap outta me. Well, thats all for now, gotta get ready to go to the clinic.

So on Friday, the 20th, Matt and I took miss Haylei to see her first movie...we saw Beauty and the Beast in 3D. She was SO excited to be at "her movie" and to eat popcorn and drink pop! She is so silly...she wore the glasses all through the previews but once the movie started she put them up on her head!! I kept telling her to put them on her face but she wouldn't listen :). She made it through the whole movie, which I didn't think that she would. Once we got home, my night got horrible...I figured out through natural things that my IUI cycle had failed. I was devastated to say the least...I haven't decided if I have it in me to try a 3rd time...still praying and thinking on that.

Saturday was Haylei's 4th birthday!! I just love her SO incredibly much! We had a Hello Kitty birthday party and she had so much fun!! A few things about Haylei on her 4th birthday:

She weighs about 32 pounds
Wearing mostly 3T and 4 clothing
She wears a size 8 1/2 - 9 shoe
She sleeps wonderfully at night and would still take a two hour nap most days
She can recognize her name if written and always recognizes the letter H
She talks Non.Stop. :)
She LOVES her uncle Matt more than anybody


Here is the Birthday girl on her birthday in her pretty party dress

 

She thought Nana and Papa's card was funny! Actually she was laughing becuase I was making her sit still while I read to her!! :)

1/19/12

Again with the crazy person emotions...last night I hit rock bottom of this cycle. My bestie, who has struggled with infertility and 2 miscarriages, texted me a picture yesterday morning, bright and early of a positive pregnancy test...while I am elated for her and also scared for the thought of another MC, my heart was crushed. She asked me not to share the news with anyone because of the risk she has for miscarrying, but who in the world am I supposed to cry and vent to?? I feel so alone in this journey, I feel like no one really cares about it and no body ever asks how i'm feeling (physically and emotionally). I do realize people don't care about this nearly as much as I do, but still a nice "how are you feeling" would be nice. Selfish, yes, but still needed. Last night I remembered the song "smile" here are the lyrics:

Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though it's breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You'll see the sun come shining through for you

Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile



That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

************************************************************
Once I listened to the song the tears started and wouldn't stop. I climbed in the hot bath and just poured my heart and soul out to God. I begged, bargained, pleaded and then got a little angry. I feel like this is my last chance. This is it. Yes i have the money for one more IUI cycle, but I don't know if I can handle this again. And if that IUI cycle didn't work...the end. I will never have the money for IVF and so that would be the end of my road, and that thought devastates me. It rocked me to the core. I don't understand how this is fair, yes i realize life isn't always fair, but being a mother is my life long dream. When we were in high school, everyone knew I'd be the one with 10 kids! Thats how much I loved babies. I want to look at a pregnancy test and see two lines or the words pregnant. Then I want to go to the store and buy more tests just so I can keep seeing those words. I want to be able to announce Guess WhaT?? I'm Pregnant!! But no, I feel like I'll never have that joy. I want to listen to my child's heartbeat within me. I want to have morning sickness. I want to experience that fear when I bring my newborn baby home for the first time. Dear God, please let me have the desire of my heart!!!

Is this post sad and dramatic...yes, but this is my heart right now. Its heavy, its broken and its very, very hurt.

So many emotions

Well, here I set, the day of my second IUI for this cycle...I had one insemination yesterday and then one today. Yesterday when Dr. B and MK came in my room, they acted a bit concerened about the sperm count...there was only 2 million sperm. Last cycle there was 21 million both days. They said that stress, sickness or being on antibiotics could cause this. Which Matt was sick last week with the stomach bug. So we went ahead and did the insemination anyway. They told Matt to drink lots of fluids(water and gatorade) yesterday and we'd do it again tomorrow(today). After my insemination, I stayed laying on the table for a good 30 minutes, because MK came back in the room and just talked to me about coding stuff. Afterwards I came on home and was extremely bloated and a little crampy. Today when I went in, there were 13 million sperm...they said that Dr. Wortham washed them in a different fluid trying to help the count out. They seemed okay with that number. There was a med student in the room with us today and so I got to try and listen to Dr. B explain what was going on...the funny thing is that I did not feeling the "high pitched cramp" like the last 3 times they've done it...it really wasn't painful at all, so much so that I wondered if they even did it! Maybe it was the different fluid the sperm was washed in??

After I left the clinic, actually while I was still laying on the table, I just had an overwhelming sadness. I come to think of it like the build up of Christmas, you plan and plan and plan over and over for Christmas, you buy things and get ready for the big day, then after 5 minutes, the whole ordeal is over and you feel so letdown. Thats what my sadness feels like. Since the day I found out my last cycle hadn't worked, which was Nov 23rd, I went into planning mode again, the very next day, AF came and I began my BC pills that night, so I feel like I just jumped right back into "doing something". I did BC for 4 weeks, then a suppression U/S and then the week after started shots. When I feel sad or overwhelmed, I like to get on the web and find blogs dealing with infertility. Its just where I am right now...it consumes all of my thoughts, emotions and time. I am praying with everything in me that this cycle works...this one sticks. I go on Jan 23rd for my BHCG. I am praying for numbers over 25!!! We do have the funds, thanks to Christmas, for one more cycle. I am just praying that I can use that $2000 to buy baby furniture and gear!!!

Whew! What.a.week! Last Saturday night, New Years Eve, we bought a new car!! We bought a '12 Ford Explorer...I had a moment of insanity and went car shopping...bad idea, I should NEVER go car shopping! Then on Sunday morning, Matt woke up not feeling well and then the stomach virus arrived at our house with full force. By Sunday afternoon, I had the vomitting and we were both sick as dogs.

By Monday, we were both feeling better and just spent the day recouperating. The rest of the week was absolutley insane and with me being on my Follistim injections for this IUI cycle, I was a wreck. I fought anxiety all week long and by Thursday night, I was just about ready to go the ER thinking I was having a heart attack! Hormones are NuTs!!

I went yesterday for my 2nd monitoring appt for this cycle, and I had several good follicles still, but needed one more night of injections and so tonight, I get to wake my mom up at midnight to give me my HCG trigger shot and then I am scheduled for my IUI's on Tuesday and Wednesday. I am praying with everything I have in me that it works this time!!