Today is Monday. I am currently four days past embryo transfer, and feeling curious about whether I am pregnant, though not anxious. How far we've come in all of this, that I could have such a deep and yet such a loose hold on the outcome of this cycle. More on that in a moment.
First of all - what? You didn't know that we had started another cycle? Oh right. Because I never mentioned it. Maybe all of this has become routine enough that I haven't felt the need to chronicle it all? Maybe frozen cycles are more of an obnoxious and tedious process rather than the excitement of a fresh cycle? Maybe we've just been busy? Anyway, we started a cycle mid-March.
Protocol was birth control pills for a month, then pills and Lupron injections for five days, and then Lupron injections and estrogen pills for a couple weeks, transitioning to just estrogen pills and progesterone up until transfer, and continuing through my pregnancy test this weekend (or beyond, if it is positive). Really nothing too different than previous frozen cycles except that Mayo starts you with double the dose of Lupron for the first week than Dr. Morris did. Lupron sort of made me a crazy lady this time around. I didn't sleep well while on it, and had lots of headaches. I was also sick with a cold or allergies or something that made my nose stuffy. The combination of sick and Lupron made me a very functional version of miserable, but as soon as they decreased my dose and added the estrogen, I felt fine again.
Transfer last Thursday was mostly uneventful. They had to do a little repositioning of the catheter because on first pass it got caught on my c-section scar, but apart from that, the procedure was easy. The Vicodin that they gave me pre-transfer (like the did in November) hit me harder than it did in the fall. Mostly just made me really sleepy in the short run, and then intermittently sleepy throughout the day. When we were done, Matt and I grabbed quick breakfast at Starbucks...and then donuts at Dunkin' Donuts...and then we did a little wandering and shopping before date lunch at Mango Thai, which is so so so delicious.
But in the midst of all of this baby-creating business, we also are finding ourselves with an increasingly adorable, increasingly amazing, increasingly stubborn, increasingly chatty two and a half year old.
Sam is getting so tall, and his wispy blonde hair always looks shaggy, no matter how recently it's been trimmed, washed, or combed. He hates haircuts, by the way. Except that last time, we let him sit in his high chair in the living room, watching an episode of Daniel Tiger and eating raisins and jelly beans while I (!!) cut his hair, and it worked pretty well. We might have to try that again. For the record, he also HATES getting his fingernails and toenails cut. He doesn't mind brushing his teeth. He isn't the biggest fan of getting his hair combed, but he deals with it.
Other dislikes these days: loud noises (hair dryers, hand dryers, blenders, food processors, coffee grinders, power drills, starter pistols at track meets), vegetables (except peas...sometimes), getting out of the bath (he'd stay in there for days).
Loves: Ice cream (especially with sprinkles!), running, bubbles, bath time, cars and trucks, playing in his pretend kitchen, snuggling with the kitty cats, cuddling with us in the big bed every morning, Trader Joe's blueberry oatmeal, helping daddy pick out clothes in the morning, reading books, singing songs, taking walks, going to see the waterfall at Dunnings Spring.
Perhaps most amazing to me right now is his ability to talk and reason. He loves to ask, "What are you doooo-ing?" and loves when you give a straight answer, even about basic or obvious things. He likes it when you ask him the question right back to him, and he, also, gives you a straight answer. He has an incredible memory, and will spontaneously break into storytelling about the time that we "went to the aquarium in Camden" and how we went in a tunnel there where there were "big huge sharks swimming over my head" and "teeny fishes" and "there was a big hippo and a little hippo and their faces went up and down." He plays with cars and trains ceaselessly, and more often than not, he tells stories about those cars and trains driving to Magpie (which is where we eat breakfast every Friday." He talks freely about going on an airplane to Grammy and Pop's house in New Jersey, and he looks at the painting of the praying man that we have in our dining room and continually identifies the man as "Grandpa" or "Papa" (referring to my dad, who he barely knew). He knows the names of ALL THE CATS in our families and extended families (and there are a lot!). He said yesterday that, "Emme and Hilde (our cats) are my best friends."
He recognizes lots of letters, and they do a lot of letter work at daycare, so on the bulletin board outside his classroom where there's a listing of everybody's name, he can look at it and "read" the names to us based on his memory of the first letter. O for Owen. S for Sam. And S for Sadie. W for Wyatt. N for Nora. C for Cora. And C for Cece. K for Keira. B for Bethany.
Speaking of which, my sister Bethany is due with their first baby (a boy!) any day now! And Sam is a little obsessed. We ask him where Beth's baby is, and he says, "In her belly!" And then he says, "soon, the baby will come out." He is convinced (all by his own imagination) that the baby's name is Charlie. A few weeks ago, he pulled out a couple of his dry washcloths off the shelf in the bathroom, and called them blankets for the babies. When he got up from the bathroom floor to go his room, he picked up the two "blankets" and handed them to me, and then he pretended to scoop up two tiny babies into his hands. We got to his room and he laid the "babies" down on the footstool to the rocking chair, and then covered them up with the "blankets." He told me their names were Charlie and Emily. Seriously, I don't know where this kid gets this stuff.
Sam loves to sing. He knows a bunch of songs in their entirety - the ABC song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Away in a Manger, Jesus Loves Me, Five Little Monkeys (both the swinging in the tree and the jumping on the bed versions), The Wheels on the Bus, lots of others that I can't think of right now...and he also makes up songs. All the time. Usually with nonsense syllables. Sometimes I don't think he even realizes that he's doing it. He'll be playing and singing and dancing, in his own little world. He sings songs when he wakes up in the morning, first thing. He'll sit in his crib and sing for up to an hour some mornings before starting to ask for one of us to come get him.
He can walk up and down stairs like a big boy, he loves cars and trucks and anything that he can throw, he can jump, he loves his kitties more than anything in the world, he loves to laugh and knows how to be intentionally silly (as well as how to identify when we are being silly or facetious), he still loves hugs and kisses and tickles and snuggles, but is also growing more independent in that regard. He has a kid-sized chair in his room, and a couple weeks ago, instead of curling up in the rocking chair with me for bedtime books, he pulled over his chair to sit next to me. It's been that way ever since. He LOVES books and reading, and he has tons of books memorized so that he can "read" along with us.
He is energetic, and he keeps us busy, and he can have some pretty awful tantrums, but they are few and far between. Sam is the reason, I think, that we can go into these subsequent IVF cycles with so much more peace.
Because I very much want another child. I want another chance at being mama to a tiny baby. I am desperately curious to see whether a second child would be a lot like Sam or totally different. I want Sam to have a sibling, because my siblings are so huge a part of my life, and Matt's siblings are an important part of his as well.
But Sam also fills all the space that we'll give him, which means that our schedules and our hearts and our lives and our family are very full as it is. And we are complete. So we'll see what the next week's news turns out to be for us. We have five more embryos after this, so there's still room to march onward.
Right now, I'm playing the "crampy, sore boobs, exhausted: pregnancy symptoms or medicine side effects?" game. Not my favorite game to play, but I have plenty of work and family business to keep me busy until we get the news. And plenty of peace right now to deal with whatever the outcome.
I think that's probably about all for now. I need to remember to stop by here more often and post about Sam, because the days go by so fast, and he changes and amazes me more and more every day, and I hate that I might forget any of these precious moments simply because I didn't think to write them down. Here's hoping to show up here more often and catch up on him and on all of our ongoing plans for growing this little family of ours!
P.S. Have I mentioned that Sam is super sweet????
 |
| Probably our best pre-transfer selfie ever! |
Protocol was birth control pills for a month, then pills and Lupron injections for five days, and then Lupron injections and estrogen pills for a couple weeks, transitioning to just estrogen pills and progesterone up until transfer, and continuing through my pregnancy test this weekend (or beyond, if it is positive). Really nothing too different than previous frozen cycles except that Mayo starts you with double the dose of Lupron for the first week than Dr. Morris did. Lupron sort of made me a crazy lady this time around. I didn't sleep well while on it, and had lots of headaches. I was also sick with a cold or allergies or something that made my nose stuffy. The combination of sick and Lupron made me a very functional version of miserable, but as soon as they decreased my dose and added the estrogen, I felt fine again.
Transfer last Thursday was mostly uneventful. They had to do a little repositioning of the catheter because on first pass it got caught on my c-section scar, but apart from that, the procedure was easy. The Vicodin that they gave me pre-transfer (like the did in November) hit me harder than it did in the fall. Mostly just made me really sleepy in the short run, and then intermittently sleepy throughout the day. When we were done, Matt and I grabbed quick breakfast at Starbucks...and then donuts at Dunkin' Donuts...and then we did a little wandering and shopping before date lunch at Mango Thai, which is so so so delicious.
But in the midst of all of this baby-creating business, we also are finding ourselves with an increasingly adorable, increasingly amazing, increasingly stubborn, increasingly chatty two and a half year old.
 |
| Loves: Ice cream with sprinkles |
Other dislikes these days: loud noises (hair dryers, hand dryers, blenders, food processors, coffee grinders, power drills, starter pistols at track meets), vegetables (except peas...sometimes), getting out of the bath (he'd stay in there for days).
Loves: Ice cream (especially with sprinkles!), running, bubbles, bath time, cars and trucks, playing in his pretend kitchen, snuggling with the kitty cats, cuddling with us in the big bed every morning, Trader Joe's blueberry oatmeal, helping daddy pick out clothes in the morning, reading books, singing songs, taking walks, going to see the waterfall at Dunnings Spring.
Perhaps most amazing to me right now is his ability to talk and reason. He loves to ask, "What are you doooo-ing?" and loves when you give a straight answer, even about basic or obvious things. He likes it when you ask him the question right back to him, and he, also, gives you a straight answer. He has an incredible memory, and will spontaneously break into storytelling about the time that we "went to the aquarium in Camden" and how we went in a tunnel there where there were "big huge sharks swimming over my head" and "teeny fishes" and "there was a big hippo and a little hippo and their faces went up and down." He plays with cars and trains ceaselessly, and more often than not, he tells stories about those cars and trains driving to Magpie (which is where we eat breakfast every Friday." He talks freely about going on an airplane to Grammy and Pop's house in New Jersey, and he looks at the painting of the praying man that we have in our dining room and continually identifies the man as "Grandpa" or "Papa" (referring to my dad, who he barely knew). He knows the names of ALL THE CATS in our families and extended families (and there are a lot!). He said yesterday that, "Emme and Hilde (our cats) are my best friends."
He recognizes lots of letters, and they do a lot of letter work at daycare, so on the bulletin board outside his classroom where there's a listing of everybody's name, he can look at it and "read" the names to us based on his memory of the first letter. O for Owen. S for Sam. And S for Sadie. W for Wyatt. N for Nora. C for Cora. And C for Cece. K for Keira. B for Bethany.
Speaking of which, my sister Bethany is due with their first baby (a boy!) any day now! And Sam is a little obsessed. We ask him where Beth's baby is, and he says, "In her belly!" And then he says, "soon, the baby will come out." He is convinced (all by his own imagination) that the baby's name is Charlie. A few weeks ago, he pulled out a couple of his dry washcloths off the shelf in the bathroom, and called them blankets for the babies. When he got up from the bathroom floor to go his room, he picked up the two "blankets" and handed them to me, and then he pretended to scoop up two tiny babies into his hands. We got to his room and he laid the "babies" down on the footstool to the rocking chair, and then covered them up with the "blankets." He told me their names were Charlie and Emily. Seriously, I don't know where this kid gets this stuff.
Sam loves to sing. He knows a bunch of songs in their entirety - the ABC song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Away in a Manger, Jesus Loves Me, Five Little Monkeys (both the swinging in the tree and the jumping on the bed versions), The Wheels on the Bus, lots of others that I can't think of right now...and he also makes up songs. All the time. Usually with nonsense syllables. Sometimes I don't think he even realizes that he's doing it. He'll be playing and singing and dancing, in his own little world. He sings songs when he wakes up in the morning, first thing. He'll sit in his crib and sing for up to an hour some mornings before starting to ask for one of us to come get him.
He can walk up and down stairs like a big boy, he loves cars and trucks and anything that he can throw, he can jump, he loves his kitties more than anything in the world, he loves to laugh and knows how to be intentionally silly (as well as how to identify when we are being silly or facetious), he still loves hugs and kisses and tickles and snuggles, but is also growing more independent in that regard. He has a kid-sized chair in his room, and a couple weeks ago, instead of curling up in the rocking chair with me for bedtime books, he pulled over his chair to sit next to me. It's been that way ever since. He LOVES books and reading, and he has tons of books memorized so that he can "read" along with us.
He is energetic, and he keeps us busy, and he can have some pretty awful tantrums, but they are few and far between. Sam is the reason, I think, that we can go into these subsequent IVF cycles with so much more peace.
Because I very much want another child. I want another chance at being mama to a tiny baby. I am desperately curious to see whether a second child would be a lot like Sam or totally different. I want Sam to have a sibling, because my siblings are so huge a part of my life, and Matt's siblings are an important part of his as well.
But Sam also fills all the space that we'll give him, which means that our schedules and our hearts and our lives and our family are very full as it is. And we are complete. So we'll see what the next week's news turns out to be for us. We have five more embryos after this, so there's still room to march onward.
Right now, I'm playing the "crampy, sore boobs, exhausted: pregnancy symptoms or medicine side effects?" game. Not my favorite game to play, but I have plenty of work and family business to keep me busy until we get the news. And plenty of peace right now to deal with whatever the outcome.
I think that's probably about all for now. I need to remember to stop by here more often and post about Sam, because the days go by so fast, and he changes and amazes me more and more every day, and I hate that I might forget any of these precious moments simply because I didn't think to write them down. Here's hoping to show up here more often and catch up on him and on all of our ongoing plans for growing this little family of ours!
P.S. Have I mentioned that Sam is super sweet????
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