Saturday, November 8, 2008
Passing time and wonderful fellow bloggers
So here I am passing time while DH works the late 2nd shift he works and I stay home with my babies (3 and 5 years old) and take care of them all day and while they sleep.I have decided that since the wedding was about 5 months and a week ago I really needed to start scrapbooking like I planned and( I have never scrapbooked before) put the wedding,reception, rehearsal, and honeymoon pictures in albums and frames.Seriously hundreds of photos still in envelopes.I know bad me.Been finally putting more pictures online too.Heck my wedding dress that I just adore is still hanging in the living room to the side as I cannot bare to put it away and still need to get it dry cleaned.I know more bad me.My honey moon formal dress is hanging there too also in need of dry cleaning. I wore it at the reception after hours of wearing my beautiful dress but I really wanted the freedom the smaller dress provided for dancing ( love to dance) and then I wore it again on our honey moon cruise for the formal nights.I am what you would say more than a little behind on these things as I think I am not really wanting it to be over.I loved that day all the glitter and glam and family, friends and fun. It was great.I am sad that it is all done no more planning and shopping for the wedding. I had so much fun.I felt like a princess and to this day my husband calls me his princess ( I love it).But maybe I can relive some of it while I display and properly save the memories. I just wish I had a scrapbook buddy.hmm.Anyways AF has not appeared not sure when I should test if I do test as I really do not lookward to staring at yet another BFN.Well I have to say I have heard from some very delightful sweet women and am so glad that I started my blog.I was a little iffy as I have never done this before.But I am enjoying it thus far.And to those of you that have reached out to me God Bless You and thank you for being so kind hearted.I no longer feel so alone.
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My snowflake items
DH got me these after we officially accepted our set of snowflake babies
1 comment:
Howdy!
Actually, I'm familiar with clinic donation too =) We considered it but just really felt led to Nightlight--it's been a wonderful experience for us but I also have friends who did the process through their clinics with great results!
The nice thing is that without a homestudy, you should be able to breeze through things pretty quickly =)
I can't give you any insight on to the match process, because we self matched and even if we didn't, I think the way Nightlight does it is probably different. But I can tell you what to expect from a medical aspect.
The first thing you'll probably have to do if you haven't already is a Sono-Mock (sometimes called a Mock Embryo Transfer). It's like an HSG, but less invasive/painful because they're only looking at the uterus, and not your tubes and ovaries. They're just checking to measure the position, size, depth, tilt, etc of your uterus so they know the best way to "aim" when it's time for the actual transfer. They'll also take a peek at your lining just to see how it's doing in a sample month. My sono mock was done unmedicated but I have friends whose doctors put them on the same medication that they'll use for the transfer, just to see how her body behaves under the same conditions. I think that it varies from clinic to clinic. Your sono-mock will need to be within the year of your transfer. If you haven't had an HSG, basically in a Sono Mock, they'll place a catheter in to your v@gina and insert saline in to you. They'll use a probe to do an internal ultrasound. They'll also do an external one. At this point they'll determine the size catheter they'll need any any other special circumstances (ie at this point my doctor discovered that my uterus is retroverted). It's pretty painless (not much worse than a pap) and it's over pretty quickly.
The other thing you'll need to do is get the FDA Required tests for you and your DH. They're various blood panels to screen for HIV, STDs, infectious diseases, and to get your blood type if it's not known already. We were able to get my RE to give us the list to take to our Primary Care Physician so they'd be covered by insurance without insurance freaking out by the name "Reproductive Specialists" if we went through the RE. Your doctor may check a few more things on you too--liver function test is what I remember off the top of my head, as well as my glucose levels since I have PCOS. You'll also need a chlamydia test (done via a vag swab). All the rest of the tests are just blood tests--I think it took 4 vials for me (1 draw though) and 2 for DH.
Those two things are things you can work on doing now while you wait, if you want =)
Then you and your doctor will need to determine if you will do a medicated or natural (unmedicated) cycle. I have PCOS and irregular cycles so my doctor decided medicated was best because they could control timing, etc. Once we knew the Embryos were here, they waited for my CD1 to start. On day 3 I went on Birth Control for 14 days. Then I started taking Estrogen. My period started a week after that again. I continued to take the Estrogen and eventually added Progesterone. Around a week later, they did another internal ultrasound to check my uterine lining and make sure it was thick enough. They also did a blood draw to confirm that I had not ovulated. At this point if your lining isn't thick enough they just postpone your transfer a bit. If you've ovulated, they scrap the whole cycle. But it's really difficult to ovulate through estrogen so it happens rarely.
The blood draw checked out and so did the lining check so the next week was my actual transfer. I waited til I arrived there and then they had me take a valium. They said it relaxes your uterus and keeps it from wanting to contract. The procedure is done just like the Sono-Mock, except you're tilted back to where you're head is lower than your body--it's a weird position. A nurse does an ultrasound from the outside while the doctor inserts the catheter and positions it. When it's ready, the Embryologist comes with a syringe and injects the embryos in to the catheter and they travel on up and deposit in to your uterus. They have you lie down for about an hour (still tilted upside down!) and then they send you home to be on bedrest. The amount of days you're on bedrest varies by clinic. 10-14 days later (depending on the age of your embryos), they'll do a blood draw to confirm pregnancy. If it's positive they do a couple more after that and I think they do one ultrasound too. If everything looks good, you're typically released to the care of your regular OB :)
The other part of the process you'll have to do are the thaw instructions. This was really stressful for us because the way the contract was written gave the clinic a LOT of power and we weren't comfortable that they valued the embryos as human life the way we do. The thaw instructions detail how many embryos they will thaw, if there's any wiggle room to that, who decides if they embryos are viable or not and by what criteria, if and when any embryos are ever discarded, etc. All I can say is that once contracts are signed these are YOUR embryos and you have the right to make those decisions. If the contract is not something you're comfortable with, insist that it be revised. Insist that YOUR beliefs and wishes be answered because at the end of the day you are their mom and you will be the one who feels a conscience about it--the doctors move on to the next patient. You have to be at peace with whatever happens.
And then with us, once pregnancy is confirmed we have to notify the agency and they'll notify the Genetic Parents (or we can). We'll also notify them of how many babies take and we notified them when we did the transfer and how many embryos we thawed/transferred. We would notify them of a successful birth and then keep in touch with them occasionally thereafter. But your clinic requirements might be different =)
The other thing I would research is Cord Blood Banking. Because you won't be genetically related to your kids, and likely won't have access to anyone who is (unless you have an open relationship), you are in a tough position if some kind of illness ever comes up. You face the same risk in traditional adoption, but here you have an opportunity to avoid it so it's something to consider. Collection itself can be pricey ($1000-$2000) but storage is relatively inexpensive (a couple hundred per year).
Hope all that helps! Let me know if you have specific questions--I am happy to answer! But for now I've got to get to bed-it's 5:00am!
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