Ok, so the results are in and tomorrow, 9am is GO TIME!  I am so excited and so anxious it’s ridiculous.  I am so very hopeful that this will be it and on the other hand so scared to get my hopes up in case it does not succeed. My E2 was 280 which was significantly higher than the 154 it was on Saturday.  Also, my LH soared to 43.6 today, from just 9.4 on Saturday.  They told me to administer the trigger shot and show up with a good sample in the a.m.

OK…administer the trigger shot?  Myself?  Hhmmmm.  Yeah, not so much.  I figured I’d be able to wait for my husband to get home to do it for me, but the nurse told me it would be best to do it now, since I’m surging.  I called my girlfriend, whom even though she had never given herself or anyone else a shot, said she would do it for me.  That’s the kind of friend she is…will do anything for you…even if it means sticking a ½ inch needle into your subcutaneous belly.  I decided to give another friend a try before making her do this, one whom went to nursing school but has since decided to become a teacher.  Nevertheless, I thought maybe she learned to give shots in school.  No luck.  But, her mother is a nurse up at the local hospital and was on her way over…S-C-O-R-E!  What luck?  So I dashed around the block to her house and she was there waiting to stick me.  It was nothing and I could have done it myself, but I was a nervous wreck; between learning that tomorrow was the day and then thinking of sticking my belly.  I mean, yeah…no.  I’m the kind of person that if I don’t wear earrings in my second hole and then try to put one through, I get freaked out about breaking that tiny layer of skin.  That little pop sound, ewwww!

Anyway, so that is taken care of and now tomorrow is the big day.  I called my acupuncturist immediately and let him know that I have my appointment tomorrow morning (as he wanted to see me immediately following the IUI) and he told me he would come into the office early to treat me.  I thought that was super awesome of him.  So I will come home, lay low for a bit, and then head up there for a 2pm appointment.  Then back home to lay low some more.

Exciting day coming up folks, really exciting day!

Ok so I had another monitoring session this morning at 7am.  My lil’ 16.5mm follie has grown to 19mm since Saturday!  Woot Wooot!  I am so attached to this freakin fluid filled sack…God help me when I find out there’s actually a baby in my uterus.  It’ll all be over then…talk about LOVE. He didn’t want to trigger this morning.  He told me that I would get a call this afternoon (protocol for monitoring sessions- they always call by 3pm that same day with your levels and follow up schedule) letting me know if I will be having my IUI tomorrow morning, or another monitoring session and the trigger.  It all depends on my levels.  Basically they want to see my estrogen at around 200.  A few days ago it was 154, with the 16.5mm follicle.  If they see that my LH is elevated, surging on my own, then I will definitely have the IUI in the morning.  He handed me a sterile cup so we are prepared.  I’m really hoping that tomorrow is the day.  I’m so anxious at this point.  I just want everything to work out…but I do know deep down that whatever is meant to be will be.  Especially in this case. 

So now we sit and wait.  I’m sure I don’t have to tell you just how far away 3pm is, right?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Walking into the office this morning was a relief…there was only about 8 women in there.  On Saturday it was a nightmare, to say the least.  Our wait wasn’t actually that bad, only about an hour and 20 minutes so I really can’t complain.  But it was pretty amazing.  You see we planned on leaving the house at 6:30am, to make it to Plainview (about 20 minutes away with no traffic) by 7, and wait on line if we had too, as the monitoring is first come first serve starting at 7am.  We actually didn’t leave until 6:45 and still had to stop for our morning fix, so we actually got there around 7:15…not bad.  Although the parking lot was already packed, with the exception of about 5 spots.  Holy crap!  I was freaking out.  Remember I had my acupuncture session at 9:30, so everything had to go pretty according to planned (in my head).

There were about 4 cars following us in to the lot, and 1 in front of us, so you could only imagine the angst trying to beat the other 5 ladies to the door.  I mean come on, 5 ladies in front of you equals about 40 minutes extra wait time…easily!  So we get into the office and it’s packed but we get a seat.  They called me in immediately for my blood. 

They actually had 2 nurses doing the blood, to make it go faster.  I couldn’t have been behind the doors for about 5 minutes, not even, for blood when I walk out to find our seats taken and about 6 more women in there!  Damn!  So we are standing off to the side and the number of women pouring into the office was just incredible!  Some serious operation they run over there…very well orchestrated I have to say.  By the time we went in for the sono, there were women standing everywhere.  By the time we came out, 10 minutes later, there were women sitting up the stairs and in the upstairs waiting room.  It was crazy! 

So yeah, this morning was nice, only 8 women.  In and out…literally.  I’ll update later!

It has definitely been one of those non- stop weekends for sure.  It was a long time coming since we’ve been pretty lax about our weekend schedules and have had no real structure, which kind of kills me. There are many thing to be done around our house; things like purging our bedroom, spare rooms, and hallway closets; painting here and there, both upstairs and down; and finishing some moulding work throughout the living room/ dining room areas of the house.  We have been saying that we are going to start working on all that is unfinished in the house, to get organized and have things finally be complete.  That is very important to me.  So we decided to sit down with a calendar and pick projects to be completed for each month.  We will spend some time each weekend to complete our projects and still have time to enjoy ourselves.

That being said, if I had one word to describe how I feel right now, it would be “accomplished”.

Today I purged and completely cleaned our downstairs coat closet.  Now you may not think that this is a big deal, but it is.  It’s not your normal hallway coat closet, it’s almost the size of a bathroom, it’s pretty big.  We had a ton of shit in there to be thrown out and / or donated.  Now it is spotless!  Also, yesterday when we finally returned home from our myriad of doctors appointments, I began going through all of our Christmas decorations that until now, were always stored in our downstairs spare bedroom closet.  I also still had about 6 boxes of crap in that room from when I lived at home with my parents to go through.  I ended up having 7 huge bags of garbage, a billion empty boxes to recycle and 4 boxes of donations- Christmas decorations, stuffed animals, clothes, you name it.  There are also a few items that I’m going to put up on eBay. 

So, yeah…accomplished…both my closet and spare bedroom are looking good.

**And now for the good stuff**

We had a monitoring session yesterday morning and I got to meet Dr. Kreiner himself!  For those of you who live on Long Island you have probably heard his name on the radio amongst other sources.  It was kind like meeting a celebrity…a celebrity who was going to look at my hoo-hah 2 minutes after meeting me…what a whore I am!  He prefaced the exam by telling us that he couldn’t find the last 2 patients’ ovaries.  LOL.  Anyway, so he does the sono and says that I have 1 dominant 16.5 mm follicle on the right side.  I asked him where the other follicle went (remember on Thursday I had 1-11mm and 1-13mm follicle) and he told me it went to small follicle heaven.  LOL, again.  He definitely lightened the mood for us, the fact that he was dressed in jeans and a button down flannel helped a bit too.  So they called with my hormone levels later on and told me they wanted me back for monitoring Monday am.  Basically I’m hoping the follicle will be around 19-20mm by then, so they can administer the trigger shot that I’ve been carrying to every single visit since day 10 (we are now on day 16). 

After the monitoring I had my fist acupuncture visit.  After just one session I can tell you that I absolutely L-O-V-E it!  I felt like it almost put me into this trance like state.  It was pretty cool.  I had about 20 needles in me- I think there were 6 below the knee in each leg, 4 in my belly under my navel, 1 in each hand and 1 in my ear.  He started the visit by taking my husband and me into his office and doing a brief medical history (my husband sees him too for shoulder/neck issues and has given him background on our fertility journey).  He explained that expects to be able to improve the quality of the dominant follicle and possibly help some others to grow larger, giving me more of a chance.  During the treatment, I laid there with heat lamps on me for probably about an hour and it went by so fast.  Probably because for once in my life, I felt relaxed; so relaxed!  After he was finished taking the needles out, he placed a tiny seed in my left ear.  He said to leave it in until after the IUI.  It is supposed to combat uterine contractions.  He also wanted me to call him with my hormone levels later that afternoon.  I did and he told me to let him know what my levels are from Monday’s monitoring session as well.  He also wants to see me immediately following the IUI.  He is a young guy; super nice and so easy to talk to and get along with.  I’m happy.

So pending my 1 dominant follicle is between 18 and 22mm when I go tomorrow morning, we will be set to trigger and then hopefully rock the IUI Tuesday morning!  Which reminds me, I have to leave myself a note to get a sterile cup and maybe prepare a performance of some sort ;-)  We’re looking for a big count here!

I’ll be back in the morning with an update!

On Friday’s my husband works from home because he has his recurring appointments to deal with his neck / shoulder issues in the morning hours.  He has been having neck / shoulder issues for about 2 years now and it is finally starting to improve.  After seeing an orthopedic surgeon, a physical therapist, a spinal surgeon, a neurologist, back to the physical therapist, a chiropractor, an acupuncturist and now physical therapy yet again, he is experiencing significant leaps and bounds due to the later three ‘techniques’.This morning he comes home and hands me a folder of information from his acupuncturist.  He tells me about the wonderfully informative conversation he had this morning with the guy in regards to acupuncture for fertility issues.  He tells me to read through the info and if I want, call and make an appointment for a consult. 

Being the super excited little school girl I am, I take the folder, run to the kitchen, make myself some soup for lunch and dive into the folder choc full of info!  I read everything, picked up the phone, and scheduled a consult for TOMORROW morning, immediately following my monitoring session. 

I have to say, I have it my mind that I will have some acupuncture and than literally float out of the office I’ll be so relaxed.  See, there go my crazy ass expectations getting the best of moi again.

Hopefully a little acupuncture can help balance out all my imbalances and pump some extra blood into my baby making organs!  Let’s go qi!

Have any of you loyal readers had acupuncture for fertility issues?  Or for anything for that matter?

I have once again so not been around my own blog for the past few days.  I want to take this moment to apologize to all that I have let down over the past week; I know how much reading my blog means to you all! 

No, but in all seriousness, I want to genuinely thank each and everyone of you who visit my little blog on the giant WWW and care enough to comment and share your advice and opinions.  Since I started this site back in November, I have met so many wonderful people and never knew how accepting the blogosphere inhabitants could/ would be.  I am elated by everyone’s kindness and general sense of compassion.  So go visit each other if you haven’t already (take a peek at my blogroll but keep in mind there are so many blogs that have not yet been added- I will get to that as soon as I can).  A HUGE THANK YOU GOES OUT TO YOU ALL!

Now an update on my follicles:

I went yesterday for another monitoring session, blood work and the ‘dildo-cam’, as I’ve heard so many women refer to it as such.  Although I’m not sure I should use the term ‘dildo-cam’ because a ‘dildo’ would usually imply a sense of pleasure, and I can tell you from my gazillion experiences having transvaginal sonogram, that there is absolutely ZERO pleasure to be gotten here.  It is a doctor’s visit, one, and two, IT’S A DOCTORS’S VISIT.  Not to mention the wand is super skinny and oh I don’t know…maybe some people like that sort of thing?  Twisted is what I have to say about that.  And every time he’s about to “perform”, he says to me, “Ok, you’re going to feel a little pressure.”  Do you think he says that to his wife before they, ya know, do it?  LOL!   I had my husband rolling with that.  Anyhow, see how easily I go off in the opposite direction.  I think I will use the term v-cam (easy enough). 

So the v-cam showed that my left side looks to be out of the game for this cycle, unless they miraculously catch up by go- time.  And my right shows two follicles, 11mm and 13mm.  I have to say I was immediately disappointed because I expected to have like 3 (which is the max he will work with in the case of IUI, for fear of high risk multiples) 20 mm follicles ready to trigger.  High hopes I suppose.  So he said “You know it’s still very early in the game so we are in a good spot right now.  The last two cycles you didn’t ovulate until day 23- 25 and today is only day 13, so hang in there and we’ll call you back later today with your blood results to let you know when to come back for monitoring again.”

So I left feeling a tad defeated.  But they called yesterday afternoon to tell me they want me back for monitoring tomorrow (Saturday) morning, so we will see where my lil follies are at then!  I have much love for my follicles…I never knew one could feel this way about tiny, fluid- filled, egg containing sacks.

That’s all for now kiddies! 

Woot Woot!