Some Changes...

I cannot believe how busy this semester is already and we are only a couple of weeks in.  I study almost every minute I am not sleeping, eating, or pooping.  Sorry for saying poop but it's true.  I have really had to apply myself and come up with new way to study.  Honestly, I have never had to study very much to do well...so far.  I actually bombed my first test of the semester.  In my program you need an average of 78% on all of your tests to pass the class...I got a 74%.  It's been a very humbling experience for me.  I was completely unprepared for what they were dishing out.  We shall see on Tuesday if my new "I'm-sorry-but-I-can't-(fill in the blank), I'm-studying" method works out.  I hope family and friends do not take it personally that I will be ignoring them all summer.  Hopefully it will be better come August.

On a brighter note, there has been a little change of plans.  Michael is quitting his second job!  This was a tough decision and one that came with a lot of thought and prayer.  See, we actually went to see a therapist.  My work has a free employee assistance program that offers counseling and we took advantage of it because we wanted to make sure WE were okay.  We are definitely okay, more than okay.  But, we did so some prophylaxis on our relationship.  We have been so consumed with our fertility issues that because of the lack of time we have together, it seemed like it was the only thing we have in common lately.  Let me say again, we are more than fine!  We have had no issues in our relationship that caused us to think that we might not be, but we have been warned that infertility can do a number on a married couple's relationship.  I really think we went mostly for a professional's confirmation that we are a cute, loving couple and because we really like to talk about ourselves.  Anyway, she confirmed that we are cute and loving and that yes, we like to talk about ourselves.  She did get us thinking though.  She reminded us that all of the stresses in our life are ones that we have chosen.  She suggested that we think about Michael quitting his second job.  At the time, I thought that was a terrible idea since quitting his job would just be eliminating one stress and adding another.  We still need money to do this so...

I have been thinking about this since then and Michael thinks about it all the time since his job is miserable and he doesn't have a day off.  I love his hard work and dedication to do anything to make this all possible for us. He always has a great attitude, even when he doesn't want to do something.  But, lately he has become depressed and mopey and it's been hard for him to hide his feelings about the job.  I told him a few weeks ago that I missed him because he hasn't been the same guy for a couple of months.  So...no day off, no time together, not being able to go to church, hating the actual work, and basically having no life...it got me thinking.

Up until the today I thought there was no way we would decide that quitting would be the best thing for us right now.  I have been pondering and praying about this ever since the counseling session.  As I was sitting (alone) in Sunday school, something came to me very quietly.  Money is just money.  We will always make more.  Michael needs to quit his job.  The money is not worth sacrificing the most important things in our life right now.  I felt like it's more important for him to be at church every Sunday and for us to have a little more time together.  We have been trying to focus on church, going to the temple, and what's really important.  Money is not one of those things.  I know we will be blessed for doing this.  I just really feel like this is the right thing for us to do and I didn't have to talk Michael into it.  We will continue to pray for other opportunities to make a little extra money for our IVF but either way, it's going to happen.  If we have to charge it then...CHARGE IT!  I'm really good at that.

I Believe In Miracles...

I started school again today.  It looks like it's going to be one busy semester.  I'm excited about it because I'm banking on it flying by.  In just ten short weeks I will be finished with another semester and officially half-way done with nursing school, Michael will be finished with the Census job and baking in the Lake Powell sun, and we will be so close to starting our IVF cycle.  I cannot wait to start!

I have been trying to think of the blessings our infertility has brought me.  Well, one of the blessings has definitely been a good friend, K, whom I was introduced by another good friend, several months ago.  Our mutual friend had read my blog and suggested that K and I become friends on Facebook because she too, struggled with infertility.  Our situations are exactly the same, we are the same age, and after talking to her, turns out we were going to the same doctor.  We started emailing, chatting on Facebook, and talking on the phone.  This woman has been an incredible support to me.  It was so good to talk to somebody who was going through the exact same thing I was.  We can talk about any issue and not worry about getting some lame, hurtful-but-mean-well comment.  We finally met face-to-face when we were at our IVF consult and she was there, getting an ultrasound.  She started her first IVF cycle a couple of months ago.  We went to dinner with K & D last week and Michael said he couldn't believe what good friends we have become in such a short time.  I cannot express how emotionally attached I became to her process.  I have never prayed so hard for another person in my life.  I wanted so badly for K & D to become parents.  I did two fasts for them and was so emotional after her transfer, I broke down.  I prayed so hard right then and asked Heavenly Father to make it be okay.  I immediately felt at peace.

Fast forward to today...K is pregnant!  Words cannot express the gratitude I feel today.  It is truly a miracle that she is pregnant.  Unfortunately, for the infertiles, getting that positive test does not necessarily put us at ease.  It is definitely a huge hurdle left in the dust but then we worry about the second test.  The HcG numbers have to double in 48 hours.  Then, two weeks later, the viability scan.  I know in my heart that this pregnancy will be uneventful for K and she will be a great mom.  Congrats on your miracle K & D!!

D.O.N.E.

Another semester down, just four more to go...ugh.  I just found out I pulled off an A-, which is not easy task in Fundies (Nursing Fundamentals).  No, I didn't cry when I found out it was an A minus.  It's kind of impossible to get a solid A in nursing school when an A is 95% or above.  I know, rude.  You basically have to be nearly perfect on all of your tests to do that.  It was fun getting to know all the people in my class...I mean really, really getting to know.  Bowel patterns, menstrual cycles, urinary continence (it's okay, some of us pee a little when we sneeze), gag reflexes (mainly mine...working on it), and general weird habits and quirks.

These are the people in my clinical group on our last day of clinical.  That was a beautiful day and seems like forever ago.  I'm going to miss them this semester.  I had to switch to another group because of my work schedule.  Boo.

We started a tradition of going to Village Inn after our tests to drown our sorrows and anxiety in pie!  Free pie Wednesdays!

Stefanie, Me, Cori, and Flint practicing in the lab.

 

       This is my lab partner, Marie.

Me and Stef, practicing wraps. Lame but we have become quite good friends.

Stefanie giving me her first shot.  I know it looks like I'm freaked out but I really did trust her.  She was just so nervous.  She did a great job...I didn't feel a thing.

Cori and I with our Shim.  It's half male, half female.

Tuesday night study group in the cafeteria.  I had to come study on my lunch break since I worked Tuesday nights.

This coming summer semester is going to be the definition of crazy.  We have OB and Med Surg I.  I am really looking forward to delivering babies and learning more about the basics of nursing but we are going to be beyond busy.  Eight-12 hour clinicals, weekly test, eight hour class days, preloading the night before said 12 hour clinicals, and the dreaded 12 hours-to-write care plans.  It will be over in ten short weeks.  Bring it on!

 (Thanks, Marie for being our group historian and always taking all the pictures!)

Snow Babies...

Recently, I have been asked many questions about our potential and future embryos and what we would do if had any “left over’s”. I found that in these questions there are a lot of misconceptions about exactly what an embryo is and what we are lawfully allowed to do with them.


First, let me say we have already filled out legal paperwork regarding what we would do if we have more embryos than we can transfer. Hopefully, we WILL have additional embryos to cryopreserve (freeze) for subsequent pregnancies. I like to refer to these little embryos as “snow babies”. If we would like to become pregnant again after the first or if the fresh cycle is unsuccessful, we would do an FET (frozen embryo transfer). These are significantly cheaper than a fresh cycle, costing around $2,500 +meds. Obviously, you need snow babies to do this, so a previous fresh cycle is necessary and the nail-biting comes with the thaw of the little guys. Sometimes, they do not survive. So, firstly, we would love to have some snow babies put on ice for use in the future.


So, what if we have extra snow babies after we are done having children? We went back and forth with this. My first initial thought is that we had to give all the embies a chance. Michael thought I was little crazy with potentially wanting to be Octo-Mom. I mean, what if we have 12 embies? I felt guilty for not thinking we would use all of them, seeing as how badly I have wanted this in the first place. So, with more thought, I knew this was unreasonable. We found out we only have few options:


• Cryopreservation- $600 annually to keep the snow babies on ice, $2500 + meds to do a FET.  They will do this until I am 50 years of age and then they will be "discarded". Hmmmm.


• Donation- we can donate the embies to research or to another couple. Although, donation of embies to another couple is not legal in Utah, they can transfer the little guys to another lab, in another state and they can be donated there. We have discussed this to great lengths and ultimately, we would not be comfortable with carbon copies of us running around somewhere with no claim to them except our genes. It would be rather like putting our own children up for adoption and why would want to do that?


Yes, the research part of this option is stem cell research…GASP! However you might feel about stem cell research let me say, it’s probably not what you think. Most common of misconceptions have come from little knowledge of this kind of research and I want to clear something up…an embryo looks like this:

NOT this!

The second picture is a fetus, not an embryo. The stem cells come from the first picture...what it looks like from days 3-5 after conception. Stem cells can only come from blastocysts in the embryonic stage. They do not come from aborted babies. Embryos are considered to be so during weeks 3-8, after which they are considered to be a fetus. The first picture is what is transfered on day 3 or 5 during an IVF cycle, not what is pictured below that.  I guess it’s up to you to decide when you believe life begins. Some believe it’s the moment of conception, others, when life can be sustained outside the womb. I personally believe a fetus receives a spirit inside the womb but haven’t concluded when that actually happens. I think maybe when it has a beating heart but I don't know?  I guess it up to us and you to decide. And our last option…


• Discard- this is a really soft and fuzzy way of saying, destroy the embryos. I have not asked how this task is carried out but I imagine they just somehow let them die by not sustaining their life.


I suppose it’s not hard to guess which box we checked last week. We have decided that we will be donating our embryos to research. We decided that we did not want to be Octo-parents and if the only other option was to have them destroyed anyway, they might as well be studied for the progression of science. The best case scenario would be to only have as many embies as we would like to have children and have the cycles be successful each time but that is not likely. Think what you would like, judge ye not. It’s not an easy decision.  And, I apologize.  This was definitely not meant to be my platform for stem cell research...I am still very much up in the air about it but for these purposes...well, you know.

We're Penciled In!..

We were really looking forward to Friday because we had our first official IVF consult!  Up until now, it’s just been a lot of testing and consulting with specialists about our test results and where to go from here.  Well, we know where we need to go…so we’re on our way.  We met with Dr. Hammoud last September when he confirmed that IVF was going to be our best option.  He told us when we were financially and emotionally ready to proceed, to make an IVF consult.  So, here we are, officially in the books!  Tentatively, we are scheduled to begin the three month process in August.  We were not planning on moving forward until December or January but because of a long-winded story about school, we feel totally comfortable with doing it sooner.  I can’t believe I feel so calm (calm has not been a quality I have possessed lately) about the probability of having a baby while in my last semester of school.  It terrified me before but if we are successful our baby will be born on or around July 13th.  Weird.  We already know our baby’s due date!  I will still have a few weeks left of school but I am confident that I will rise to occasion of being a student and a mother, successfully.

Anyway, the IVF consult was a bit boring but very reassuring.  Not a lot of new information for me but I think Michael is understanding the whole process a little better.  We were told we have a less than 1% chance of conceiving on our own but it is not impossible.  He likened it to winning the lottery twice in a year.  Not impossible, but probability wise, not likely.  It’s reassuring to know that yes, this is good decision and we really do need it to have a family.  Our chances of success are very high due to the nature of our problem, our health and how young we are (Dr. Hammoud kept saying I was still so young…that was sure nice of him).  Then, he gave a perfectly terrifying speech about high-order multiple births and the risks for mother and baby associated with them.  I warned Michael that he would push us for a single embryo transfer and to have our guard up ready to defend our already made up minds to transfer two, if we have the embryos to do so.  But, then he said, “with all that said, let me tell you…90% of couples will choose to have two embryos transferred and it’s ultimately your decision to make.”  How could we NOT transfer two?  Our chances of pregnancy increase by 15%!  I mean, how could you not take as many of those little percent signs as possible?  We also found out he has two year-old twins!  Natural or IVF, I don't know?  It's still very funny.  My regular OB has one year-old twins also, naturally.

I go back for an ultrasound on Friday to make sure my uterus is a good hostess.  I know we have a while still to think about this process but it finally feels like we are actually putting our plan into action instead of just talking about it all the time.  In the meantime, I'm focusing on getting through the summer and making myself as healthy as possible to prepare for the procedure.  Michael is counting down the days until he can end his second job and I can't wait to have my husband back!

I Am Not Crazy!...

Michael and I were able to go the Utah Infertility Awareness event today.  It was a great turn out for such a last minute event and all I could think about when I walked in was, “dang, a lot of malfunctioning wee-wees and who-whos in here!”  I went thinking I would not hear anything I didn’t already know but I was wrong.  I learned a lot about how to naturally enhance our fertility, even in regard to IVF.  Michael learned, he in fact, has a disease.  He wrote on his notepad, “Michael…you have a disease!”.  Again, infertility is a disease.  A disease is defined by an abnormality or dysfunction of any body system, in this case, the reproductive system.  This bugs me because it's the only disease that is not covered by insurance. We learned that the reason IVF is not covered by insurance is not because of the big, bad insurance companies but because employers opt not to pay the extra $2.50 per year, per employee that it would cost.  Microsoft, Harley Davidson, and Google all offer IVF insurance to their employees because the founders all were infertile. But, the best thing I learned today…I am not crazy, dramatic, or petulant!  This was confirmed by a board certified, 30 years in practice, M.D.  There was doctor that discussed infertility from an emotional perspective.  He summed up 22 months of emotions, thoughts, and heartbreak in 30 minutes and it’s perfectly normal.  I have questioned so many times why I feel the way I do.  I have asked myself if I deserve to feel so let down and question why I am so full of grief.  Is it okay for me to grieve over a child that I have never had?  The answer is yes.  He likened infertility to a close family member dying.  I was so relieved.  He said it is perfectly normal to grieve an unborn child because we are programmed to want to reproduce.  He related infertility to the Kubler-Ross model of the five stages of grief.  I have just studied grief and loss in my nursing fundamentals class and I have already recognized that I have been or am still going through these stages…denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

The speaker challenged us to look within ourselves and ask what we want exactly.  Was it just ultimately to raise a child?  To experience being pregnant?  He says some couples differ in this and I have explored my reasoning for wanting to do IVF and not move straight on to adoption.  I really do want to be pregnant.  I want the puking and the labor pains…I want it all.  Is that horrible?  It makes me feel so selfish but he reassured us that if that was our motive, than it was perfectly normal.  Sometimes, I absolutely do NOT feel normal.  I asked Michael about his motive, knowing he already knows mine.  He knows I desire to experience pregnancy and he said, "I want to be pregnant too, not me of course, but I want to experience you being pregnant".  Michael and I feel very strongly that we need to pursue this option before moving on to adoption, which is a very welcomed option.

I have lately wondered if I have lost myself in this long, agonizing process.  Some days, I feel I no longer have the brain capacity to even think about infertility anymore.  It’s exhausting to think about something every hour, of everyday.  Some days, I convince myself I could be happy just spoiling my nieces and nephews rotten and moving on from this, even though I feel so confident and positive about the entire process.  I learned this about grief…grief comes and goes with life experiences. Some event will remind us of a loss and the feelings return even many years later after the initial loss and grief resolution.  I am afraid infertility has changed me, permanently.  I no longer look at the world the same way.  But, maybe that’s a good thing?  Maybe it will always be apart of me, regardless of whether or not we have a child and however that may come about.  I have been brought so much closer to my husband and to my Heavenly Father, relying on them both to bring me though my darkest moments.

Perhaps no quote better captures the essence of dealing with infertility in a healthy manner than that of a participant in a study simply named, Infertility, where infertility is poignantly personified:

“My infertility resides in my heart as an old friend.  I do not hear from it for weeks at a time, and then, a moment, a thought, a baby announcement or some such thing, and I will feel the tug—maybe even be sad or shed a few tears.  And I think, “Ahh, there’s my old friend.”  It will always be part of me.

National Infertility Awareness Week

  

My friend, Terina, just informed me of this spectacular event put on by the University of Utah.  It is to raise awareness of couples affected by infertility.  To share hope, insight, and seek resolution.  Offer support and encouragement.  It's this Saturday and I really want to go but I am scheduled to work 16 hours.  I am hoping someone will help me out and cover part of my shift so we can go.  Our doctor, Dr. Hammoud, will be a guest speaker.  I also just found out April 24th-May 1st is National Infertility Awareness Week.   If you, or anyone you know might be interested in attending the event, you can click on the "FYI" box on the left for more information.  Thanks, Terina!