Beta #2? Seriously?

Amazingly, my RE wants me to do a second beta to see, as the nurse put it, "if it's going up or coming down".

Alrighty then.

I was prepared to bring a bottle of red to my hair appointment today to drink with my hairdresser as she did my highlights and new cut. She's has recurrent losses (secondary IF) and knows the drill.

Given that I had to test today and still don't have the results, the bottle of wine stayed at home. Sigh. Maybe it's better to not drink and dye/cut? ;-)

Oh well, I'm sure we'll be cracking it at dinner time.

I've been in California since Monday. Today is our first day of sunshine. OMG, it is so wonderful to soak in the rays today. I'll be back on the east coast tomorrow night...apparently it's snowing where we're at.

Ugh.

So not looking forward to the cold, but I miss the BF and the cats terribly.

The Day After Heartbreak

My site has been down for a few days so beta day came and went without a post.

Since my last post on Sunday, any indication that I was pregnant disappeared with those stabbing cramps I hate late on Friday night. Swollen and tender breasts? Gone. Crampy uterus? Gone.

Quantitative bHCG: 3

It's clear as a bell to me that I had one hell of an immune attack on my single blast. It's exactly as my first IVF was 4 years ago. The only difference was the embryos were two days younger last time (but we transferred six) so who knows if one grew really fast or how many tried to implant that time. This time, I had one. One beautiful 5 day old blast.

I am sick over this. I haven't slept in 4 days. I fall into bed exhausted and sleep a few hours. But it's light sleep and the second I awaken, that's it. I'm done for. No chance in hell of falling back to sleep again. It's been like this since Saturday night when I realized what happened. I am sure that I look like shit by now.

So my 1st and 6th cycles I had implantation that lasted maybe 1 or 2 days at most, but it was attacked by something uterine in both cases. What did I do differently this time that might have helped me get this far?

1. I kept very hydrated
2. I tried to regulate my night time body temperatures (I tend to vacillate between freezing and sweating)
3. I took 1g of famivir a day (I have HSV-1 and HPV) to try to keep my HPV under control with all the estrogen that is surging through my body
4. I took 50mg of pycnogenol a day
5. I took 250mg resveratrol a day for 2 months (stopped in December)
6. upped to 8 fish oil pills
7. 1600mg predigested folic acid (double what I took before)
8. 100mg selenium
9. 2000iu vitamin D-3 (didn't take D3 in previous cycles)
10. Acupuncture before/after transfer
11. Day of ET: Near total bedrest. Light bedrest next two days. Really took it easy until Sunday night when it was clear that it was gone.

Most of this I already did before:
12. 400iu natural E (stopped after ET)
13. Whole Foods complete vitamins
14. 1200mg calcium
15. 6 days cipro before/after ER
16. No caffeine
17. No dairy once cycle started (I'm allergic to casein)
18. No slippery foods
19. No raw veggies after ET

I am heartbroken after knowing that this one was "close" but there is this silver lining in that I now know that at 45 I am able to make a good blast capable of implanting. If I had any doubts about my last hour ability to make a child, it is gone now. I may be close to the end of my rope, but I'm not there yet.

You might be saying how do you know you had implantation with a beta of 3. Besides the symptoms and coincidence of the pain, I also have at least one friend with a story.

A fellow IF friend of mine "A.L." said that she had 8 sequential losses with the same exact symptoms as mine. (We are both patients of the same reproductive immunologist). I asked her how she knew that the stabbing pains were from an implantation and she said that essentially in the first few cycles she actually got a BFP when she POAS...the stabbing cramps would happen and she'd lose it. After the first few losses, her body became more and more efficient at killing the embryo. Eventually she would get the stabbing cramps BEFORE a BFP showed up on a HPT. So...there you have it. There are lots of other similar stories in the reproductive immunology world and I have just added myself to the list.

I went to see my reproductive immunologist today. They weren't shocked. My symptoms were all too familiar to them. Apparently there is a lot of talk about "T Reg" cells and how they affect early loss. I will be getting tested for these T-Reg cells between CD9 and 14. They said that I could do three things to try to keep this from happening again:

1. add in humira to suppress my immune system (but stop 6 to 8 weeks before the cycle BEGINS) and
2. do LIT
3. do IVIg

Lovely.

Humira can kill me. Especially with having a high risk variety of HPV which, btw, only popped up during this IVF cycle. I have had clean Paps my entire life. Apparently IVF estrogen levels can unleash HPV as a nasty consequence. It should resolve on it's own in 8 months IF I STOP CYCLING. Stop cycling? They can't be serious.

My insurance doesn't cover IVIg. At $2500 a pop it's out of reach. Might as well get a surrogate at this rate.

LIT means I either fly to Mexico, UK, or Greece ...OR... I buy a centrifuge and set up a lab again.

My vote is for buying a centrifuge. Easiest fix I can imagine. And it works.

I am heartbroken. I prayed so hard for this cycle to work. I begged for my child to come this time, and try it did. The embryo did all the hard work of dividing and surviving to day 5. I was supposed to provide a safe place for it. Instead my toxic uterus killed it. My body let him or her down. There's a lot of guilt in a failure.

So I am picking myself up by my boostraps because it's all I can do at this point. I'm a hard one to beat down. Really, I am. There will be a 7th cycle, and an 8th if that's what it takes.

6DP5DT: This Party Might be Over

Couldn't sleep - it's 5AM and I woke up feeling really warm, overheating despite having the window cracked open (there is snow outside folks), and then I started to THINK. That always does me in. Thinking.

It's early Sunday morning, 6DP5DT. Two nights ago (4PD5DT), on Friday, I had some very familiar cramps - deep stabbing uterine cramps just above my pelvic bone, that lasted all of 10 seconds. They were much like those I felt during my first IVF cycle on 4DP3DT (7 day old embryos). This cycle and that cycle are the only two times I've felt this particular type of uterine pain in my entire life and let's say that it was so intense that it's not something one would easily forget. That first cycle my beta was 2. My RE at that time said I might have had very early implantation failure. I'll never know for sure if he was trying to give me SOME sort of hope with that comment or what but it was potentially my only close call with a possible pregnancy in the years I've been trying.

I recall reading from Dr. B's notes (my Reproductive Immunologist) that he felt that this deep stabbing pain is often a symptom of the body attacking an embryo that has or has tried to take root.

On part of Thursday and all Friday I felt crampy like AF was coming. My uterus felt heavy, crampy, I had sore breasts, and since late Friday night, it's all disappeared. It's all gone. Yesterday, Saturday, not a twinge. Nothing. It's as though this cycle never started.

It's weird, but I think that this cycle with one blast nearly worked...I truly believe it tried to implant...but I feel that it is now gone. I think that something seriously happened on Friday night. The timing was right, too. Transfer was Monday, hatching would have happened Tuesday night or Wednesday morning and implantation should have happened shortly thereafter. The timing was spot on.

Just in case, just last night, I added in another 200mg of progesterone to give whatever might be there a last chance help. I think I should have done this Friday night, not last night, but I also didn't want to mess with my lining just yet.

My RE only has me on 50mg of PIO plus another 50mg in a supp (along with 50mg of E2). 100mg isn't much at all (my RI insists on 200mg MINIMUM) so I don't feel I'm being the least bit risky pushing this to 300mg a day or higher. 400mg would do me just fine too.

Anyways, I hate to be such a pessimist, and I know that you'll yell at me to wait for my beta before reserving judgment but I think that this cycle is done for. I'm not even going off of anything I've seen on a HPT either. I know it would be too early for anything to show there. I'm just going on what I feel.

I know it sounds crazy, but I am really in touch with my body's little quirks and symptoms. When I've had ovarian cysts, I've known it before the U/S found it. I can feel when I ovulate (mittleschmirz). I know when I have a cyst at the beginning of a cycle. My nether regions are really sensitive, unlike my mother's, who swears she didn't have a clue she was pregnant with me until she was out of her first trimester.

I'm bummed. I'm going to keep taking my P4 capsules (200-400mg/day plus the 50mg P4/E2 supps) but I think that I'm taking enough this that I can just skip the 50mg/day of PIO now. My hips hurt really bad from the shots and just last night I read about a gal over on FT.com who developed CYSTS in her bumm from the damned shots. Apparently the oil never absorbed in a few spots where her hubby shot too deeply (how the hell can you shoot this stuff too deeply? The freaking needle is ONE AND A HALF INCHES LONG!) and it just sat there forming pockets of old oil. Ick, ick, ick. I have to say I AM NOT SURPRISED. They found the cysts on an U/S after she complained of pain. They drained them under ultrasound guidance. I think she had at least 6 of them.

So I'm not concerned about flying at this point. I laid low Monday through Friday last week - actually did bed rest on Monday and near bed rest the next two days. I'm hopping a plane to California tomorrow morning and I'll do my beta there (and dollars to donuts it's LOW, really LOW). My new job starts on the 8th and I'm going to take a week off to see my friends and my mom.

Peace out.

4DT5DT

Another snow day...woke up to a veritable winter wonderland outside of our apartment. I love how the snow envelops the sounds of the city and everything is quiet. For once. I sleep so good when it snows because the sound of the light rail at the end of our block is muffled.

*bliss*

I'm not sure about these POAS that I bought off of Amazon (manufactured by WongFo - 20mIU/ml sensitivity). Tried another one this AM and the same faint line persists, hasn't changed for two days. I am certain it's just an evaporation line as it's too early for it to be picking up anything. I just wish that the test area was completely "white" so that there would be no mistake. (For you newbies: it's an area on the stick where the reagent is located that picks up the hCG. In the right light you can see it and be fooled into thinking it's a BFP).

I'm 10 days past trigger at this point, so the damned stuff should be completely gone by now. Maybe I'll get the boyfriend to pee on one tonight so I can use him as a baseline for what NO hCG looks like with these sticks? Or maybe one of the cats?

Here kitty kitty...

3DP5DT: Snow Day

We've got big snow here today. It just keeps falling out of the sky. 4-8" due this afternoon and another 5-9" this evening. If I weren't in my 2WW I'd grab my board and go board in the park until someone stopped me. :-)

My two cats are interested in the snow but have no idea what it is. They occasionally jump into the window to check it out and just stare at it all. My bigger girl, Gigi, is the bolder of the two. Coco is a meek chocolate point Siamese mix - scared of the TV and her own shadow. One day I'll post a picture.

I put a collar on Gigi and attached a leash. When she wakes up I'm going to see if I can walk her downstairs to frolic about in the snow for a few minutes. If she'll stand for that. My cats have NEVER been in snow. This is the first year they've actually SEEN it, in fact, but from the safety of the double paned windows of our apartment. Gigi's bold. I imagine she'll dive right into a pile until she realizes how cold it is!

On the IF front:

After a number of emails back and forth between myself and Dr. Italian, I finally got to the bottom of the miscommunication about my "blasts".

Apparently the nurse (or office person) who conveyed the information to me was incorrect about BOTH being blasts. One was a grade 3 blast, the other was a cleaved embryo (he used the word "cleaved" which I was unfamiliar with - I had to look it up to basically determine that it's an embryo that hasn't gone blast). How she got so far off track is beyond me. So the end result wasn't as good as I'd hoped for...but still one good blast.

Aside from that, I got up at the crack of dawn, 3:30 or 4:00AM to take the boyfriend to the train station so he could get to Boston for two days of meetings. I POAS about 4AM then went back to bed for 15 minutes. I POAS again at 4:30AM just to see if these cheapo things test consisently. One looked liked yesterday's, a very very faint line that is still trigger HCG and one showed nothing. So they're close. FRER showed nothing yesterday morning when my trigger HCG would have been stronger, so they're a POS compared to the cheapos. 50 cheapos that test 20mIU for $11 is a great deal in my book.

I spent a bit of time reading a number of different IF sites last night. Most women who get a BFP after a 5DT saw a positive line no earlier than 5DP5DT and 6DP5DT, so I won't really start to pay attention to anything on the tests until about then. Until then, I love seeing the trigger disappear.