Twenty four

Just got the call--our donor's egg retrieval is Tuesday, our 3rd anniversary. I hope this is a good sign. What's definitely a good sign is the number of mature follicles she has--24! Wow wow WOW!

In the meantime I've been drinking POM juice and thinking thick thoughts. I was trying to remember what I'd done differently in past cycles and I realized one major difference--I was taking baths almost nightly right up until embryo transfer. For whatever reason I hadn't been taking baths this time, so I took one last night. And I'll take another tonight and tomorrow and then see what Tuesday's ultrasound brings.

I also found a great blog post from an RE, Dr. Licciardi, that talks about how lining thickness might not be that critical (scroll down to The Endometrium Part III). It gave me a lot of hope.

Til Tuesday,
Golden Bud

I spoke too soon

In my last post I said my uterus rules.

Apparently, it does not.

On Friday I went in for a lining and estrogen check. As soon as the vag-cam was in place I knew something was wrong. I barely recognized my own uterus. Turns out my lining is thin, which is yet another new problem for me. Can you believe my terrible luck?

The nurse called in the doctor and they checked all my old lining stats and pictures from my last hysteroscopy (during my D&C). The doctor doesn't think it's a physical issue, like scarring, just a poor cycle. Last time (my previous donor cycle) by this point my lining was 9 something. This time it's 5.6. They want at least 7, and the nurse told me she'd seen twin pregnancies on a 6 so that's the bare minimum. Fortunately my transfer is over a week away, which they tell me is plenty of time to build my lining. The doctor gave me estrogen suppositories and I've been drinking POM juice and raspberry leaf tea, two home remedies to build lining. My estrogen test came back at 441, which is a good number (they want >150), but at this point I think lining thickness is more important than estrogen level.

In other news, my donor had been in earlier that morning for her Day 8 ultrasound. The nurse gushed that the donor looked great and was doing really well. She had 15 measurable follicles plus another 40 or so. Our donor is going in for another ultrasound on Sunday and they may have her trigger then, which means her egg retrieval will be Tuesday, which happens to be our 3-year anniversary. I love the thought of our children being conceived on our anniversary--it would be a fitting beginning to the next step of our journey.

I go in for another ultrasound on Tuesday to check my lining again. I hope hope hope it's thickening up. I don't know what else they can try...I've heard that Viagra suppositories also work...maybe I'll end up on those. I was also thinking of making an acupuncture appointment. It never did much for my follicles by maybe it'll work for my lining (ironically I threw out her business card on Friday. Serves me right). Thank goodness we are planning for a 5-day transfer to buy a little more time. Worst case we'll have to freeze everything and start a frozen embryo transfer ASAP. Fortunately I think we have a really good chance of having a good number to freeze, so my lining issues aren't the end of the world, but still, talk about stress I don't need!

I've also been shopping for my donor gift. Mr. GB will deliver it to the clinic when he goes in to give his sample. Her favorite color is teal and she likes yoga, so I got her a teal notebook, votive, and an "OHM" necklace. I still need to write her a note...I'm so not good at that part. I'm sure I'll think of something.

Til Tuesday!
Golden Bud

No news is good news

Photo credit: Golden Bud

On Monday our donor had her suppression check. My coordinator didn't call me with the results, which I assumed to be a good sign (this time anyways). A quick email confirmed that our donor had no cysts and would be starting her stims this Friday.

I've been on Lupron and estrogen patches (the square patches weirdly known as "Dots") and am popping Tylenol daily to deal with the annoying Lupron headaches. I go in for an estrogen test this Friday. That'll be our next hurdle -- we need a good number to show that my lining is increasing. I've never had lining problems in the past, so I expect smooth sailing.

As our donor's egg retrieval draws near, I've been shopping on Etsy for donor gifts. It's common to deliver a gift for her to receive after her surgery. I'm collecting a few goodies in her favorite color (teal) and ordered a necklace that I hope she likes.

Things are pretty boring right now, but that's ok. No news is good news.


Til next time,
Golden Bud

Gene shopping

Thank you for rejoining me on my TTC journey. 2010 has been a long, trying year for us, the worst of our lives, but I truly believe our luck is about to change.

So where was I? Ah yes, I was talking about donor selection.

It was so painful picking a donor last time that I didn’t want to start looking too soon, so I waited until about a week before my second D&C. A history of frozen embryos was my number one criteria, followed closely by a history of recipient pregnancies. In other words, I was excluding all unproven donors and a lot of proven ones, too. My RE’s database doesn’t show these stats by default, so I picked out 5 donors who were available (which is more than I expected to find) and asked for their stats. I found out that a few had maybe 1 or 2 frozens per cycle, and one had a recent BFN. Not good enough. We need frosties not just for siblings, but for insurance in case of failure. Having to pay for a third fresh donor cycle is something we want to avoid at all costs. 

The donor coordinator sent me 2 additional donors who had stellar stats and would be available when I was cycling. She also said that another couple was deciding between these two, so we might not get our first choice if they picked first.

This was an interesting dilemma. We would’ve been thrilled with either donor, not just because of their stats but also because they had great profiles and each had some features that resembled mine. And at the time I thought if the other couple chose first, then we wouldn’t even have to decide—the decision would be made for us. Piece of cake, right?

Put yourself in my shoes: if you looked like me (blonde wavy hair, blue eyes, fair skin, O+ blood), which of these two donors would you choose?

Donor 1: Blonde straight hair, brown eyes, fair skin, A- blood, both parents and brother have brown eyes.
Here are her stats:

• 1st cycle-25 eggs retrieved; 3 transferred and a gestational carrier and none frozen; recipients delivered healthy twins
• 2nd cycle-43 eggs retrieved; 1 transferred and 10 frozen; recipients had a negative fresh cycle but did get pregnant from a frozen cycle and delivered healthy twins
• 3rd cycle-29 eggs retrieved; 1 transferred and 15 frozen; recipients delivered a healthy child
• 4th cycle-30 eggs retrieved; 1 transferred and 11 frozen; recipients have a viable pregnancy
• 5th cycle-49 eggs retrieved; 1 transferred and 16 frozen; recipients have a viable pregnancy

Donor 2: Brown wavy hair, blue eyes, olive skin, O+ blood, mom has hazel eyes and dad has blue eyes.

• 1st cycle: 16 eggs retrieved; 1 transferred and 4 frozen and it resulted in a miscarriage and 2 negative frozen cycles due to poor uterine lining from the recipients and they will most likely need a surrogate.
• 2nd cycle: 21 eggs retrieved; 1 transferred and 7 frozen and recipients delivered a healthy child
• 3rd cycle: 26 eggs retrieved; 1 transferred and 12 frozen and recipients delivered a healthy child
• 4th cycle: 33 eggs retrieved; 1 transferred and 11 frozen and recipients have a viable pregnancy.
• 5th cycle: 25 eggs retrieved; 1 transferred and 14 frozen and a positive pregnancy. 

At first I was leaning towards Donor 1 because she had blonde hair and fair skin. She’s a bit taller than I am, but I didn’t care. There were a couple things about her that bothered me though: someone in her family has gout (as does Mr. GB), and she has brown eyes. Gout was a gamble, sure, but when I started researching eye color more closely, I realized that with her as our donor, we had a 100% chance of having a brown-eyed baby, which would be a dead giveaway for a donor baby because Mr. GB and I both have blue eyes.

Here is how the genetics would work based on the eye-color calculator at TheTech.Org. All screenshots shown were generated from this tool.

Donor 1 has brown eyes, which by itself doesn’t rule out a blue-eyed baby, but the fact that both her parents have brown eyes means that Donor 1 does not have any blue-eyed genes, like so:

(Screenshot courtesy of TheTech.org)


So if you combine her genes with Mr. GB’s, you get brown-eyed babies:

(Screenshot courtesy of TheTech.org)


Donor 2, on the other hand, has blue eyes, which she inherited from her dad. Her mom has hazel eyes, like so:

(Screenshot courtesy of TheTech.org)


But no matter what color eyes her parents had, she only has blue-eyed genes to share, and thus our babies would at least by plausibly mine:

(Screenshot courtesy of TheTech.org)


So I started to fall in love with Donor 2. Luckily for me (finally, some luck!) all of my testing for our first donor cycle was still valid, and we were ready to place our deposit ahead of the other couple. Mr GB paid the deposit while I was having my uterus scraped (again). I was so incredibly happy that day. All of the horrible things that had happened to us were pushed from my mind, and I knew we had a great chance of getting pregnant again this year, with lots of frosties to spare!

Anyway, we get home from the surgery (on a Wednesday) and I have email from my donor coordinator saying she’s contacted the donor and will have a schedule put together as soon as she hears back. Then Thursday rolls by, then Friday, and then I start to worry. I hear back from the coordinator, who says she’s still trying to get in touch with the donor.

Talk about a long weekend.


Fortunately things worked out. She called back the next day in a much better frame of mind and said she would cycle. The coordinator had her meet with their psychologist a week later, just to make sure she was fully on board. So we had about a 2-week delay, which in the scheme of things wasn’t actually a delay because I had to be on the pill for that long anyway. I could have lived without the drama but eventually I did get the blessed donor calendar in my hands, and I have real dates and real drugs and we are READY!!!

I’ll go over the donor process next time.
Til then,
Golden Bud

Can't get pregnant, can't get unpregnant

I don’t want to spend too much time talking about the D&E itself. I will say that if you take away the heartbreak, the procedure is fairly simple and painless. We hadn’t told anyone about the pregnancy except my mom and my best friend, so we only had to break the bad news to two people. My mom had apparently told her friends, so she got to untell them as well.

My RE’s office needed to know if the defect was genetic in origin, so we had karyotyping done. Neural tube defects (NTDs) aren’t typically genetic, and ours was no exception (meaning it wasn’t the donor’s fault). I never did ask if the donor was allowed to cycle again. I did find out the sex of the baby, which I’ll refrain from sharing. (Mr. GB didn’t want to know.) I also received tiny footprints, which are tucked away safe for now.

(We don’t know what caused the defect. They say that NTDs can be prevented with folic acid. I’d been taking prenatal vitamins for years, but it wasn’t enough. At my request I was tested for MTHFR (a disorder that can cause difficulty in absorbing folic acid), and I don’t have that mutation. My homocysteine levels were also normal. I read NTDs are more common with IVF…I always wonder if the lengthy embryo transfer was the cause. I also read that hot tubs and saunas can cause NTDs, and I wonder if sunbathing was the cause, even though I sunbathed after the window for NTDs closed. It was probably just horrible bad luck. I’m taking 4 mg of folic acid now, just in case. I have a 1% chance of it happening again. I hope it doesn’t.)

As I was recovering from the D&E, I was more determined than ever to try again. In fact, I was filled with an odd sense of hope that’s really hard to explain. Maybe it was just a coping mechanism. I did have bouts of sadness and grief, but I was ready for AF to arrive and start a new donor cycle.

Except AF was nowhere to be seen, and my HPTs were still positive. And I was still bleeding, like for a month. Went back to the MFM’s office for an ultrasound but nothing looked suspicious. She gave me Cytotec/Misoprostol to try to flush out my uterus, but nothing happened. Mentioned the bleeding to my donor coordinator, who talked to my RE, who told me to come in for a hysteroscopy to look around. The camera showed that my uterus was filled with cobwebs (aka “products of conception”) and a second D&C was needed. My RE said I could get the procedure done at the RE’s surgical center, but we’d have to wait a month.

So we commenced waiting. Again. We’re talking 77 days between the first procedure and the second.

Surprise surprise, AF arrived 58 days after my D&E. I will spare you the details but let’s just say it was the worst period EVER. My RE still recommended the D&C, but the good news was that I got to go on the pill, which meant I’d finally have control of my cycle back and we were finally ready to start looking at donors again. YAY!

I had my second D&C on August 11, the same day we put down our donor deposit. In the next few days I’ll talk a bit about our selection process (my criteria changed dramatically), a slight setback, and where we are today. But for now, I’ve got to run upstairs for a Lupron shot!

To be continued…

Golden Bud

And the journey continues...

Thank you readers and Buds for the warm welcome yesterday. It feels good to be here.

So back to my TTC journey. A quick review of the Golden Bud TTC timeline thus far

• 12/07: Start TTC
• 10/08: RE visit, fertility tests
• 12/08: IVF #1: cancelled on Day 8 due to no response
• 3/09: IVF #2: 2 follies, 2 eggs, 1 embryo, BFN
• 10/09: IVF #3: 2 follies, 2 eggs, 1 embryo, BFN
• 12/09: Start the donor egg process
• 3/10: Donor cycle

A lot of women talk about how hard it was for them to move on to donor eggs. For me the decision was a relief. I could finally stop throwing good money after my bad eggs, and the odds were so good that I couldn’t help but be giddy about the whole process, which goes a little something like this:

• Month 1: More testing. Most of my tests had expired after 1 year, so I needed an SHG (less painful than the HSG) and blood work, and Mr. GB needed a new SA and blood work. We were also required to meet with a psychologist and a geneticist. Not sure we go sure we got our money's worth in return, but the $350 for both was just a drop in the bucket so I didn't complain.

• Month 2: Mock cycle, which is basically a trial run of using the estrogen patches to test my lining. Mr. GB also had genetic tests done because we thought we were getting good pricing on the testing (we didn’t--long story). No genetic issues turned up, so we decided not to test the donor.

• Month 3: Donor selection & cycle—yippee!

Now it was time to select a donor. I admit I was a little naïve about the selection process. I thought I'd make it fun by booking a date for Mr. GB and me to bring our laptops to Panera and look at donor profiles over dinner. What I discovered was that most of the donors I liked were already booked. This process was actually the hardest thing about IF thus far and I was unusually cranky for a few days. At the time I really wanted to find a donor just like me—looked like me, built like me, personality like mine. It wasn't until this process that I think I finally mourned the loss of my genetics and any coincidental resemblance to me. Fortunately a donor I liked became available, and my whole outlook changed. It takes some women months to find the right donor. It took me about a week.

So why did I choose our donor? She had blue eyes (like ours), fair skin (like ours), brown hair (like Mr. GB), wavy hair (like me), and 0+ blood (like ours). I also really liked her personal statement—she sounded just like me. She looked more like Mr. GB than me, so I figured at least our children would strongly resemble Mr. GB and not some other woman. I admit I did not obsess over her family health history, her occupation or grades, or her ancestry.

I put down our deposit before I even asked about her donation history. Another terribly naïve thing to do. Turns out she had 4 successful recipient pregnancies and I was thrilled! But I misunderstood the stats and thought that “0 embryos frozen” meant that none of the recipients had done a frozen cycle. What that really meant was that despite her successful recipient pregnancies, she’d never had embryos survive to freeze. But I let the 100% success rate go to my head and thought we’d have twins and be done with babymaking. Did I mention I was naive?

From the get-go I had a bad feeling about the cycle. I tend to be very intuitive and a little superstitious. My feeling of dread was caused by these events:

• Day 5 of stims: Donor coordinator calls and says the donor is responding great and her meds have been reduced. My intuition says OVERSTIM! Immature eggs! Failure!

• Day of ER is the day of the “spring forward” time change. I was paranoid that they would get her retrieval time off by an hour, and either the eggs would be gone or immature.

• Day after ER: Embryologist calls. Bad news. Of 20 eggs retrieved, only 8 were mature. Her worst cycle ever. So I was right about my fears of overstimming. The embryologist was happy with the fert rate though—6 fertilized—but all I could think was that we only got 4 more eggs than I can produce myself.

• Day of ET: Day 3 transfer of 2 embies. Saw a different RE than the one who’d done my previous 2 transfers. My bladder was overfilled and the RE had difficulty doing the transfer. So much so that the embryologist started to get worried. The RE put the embies back in the dish and kept trying. The second time was successful, but I couldn’t help but think that the embryos may have been damaged in the shuffle.

• Freeze report: Nothing made it to freeze. I wasn’t surprised, but I was still devastated. This was the most upset I’d been to date.

Call me a Debbie Downer, but by this point I was really worried. I spent a few days on the couch pouting and I was convinced we’d failed.

I think I'll wrap this up for today.

Til then,

Golden Bud

Not a Goodbye, but See You Later

I will be the first to admit that I haven't been around much. The past few weeks have been a bit crazy, both with TTC and just our lives in general. We've had two weddings, a shower and bachelorette party (that I planned and hosted), a bad car accident and having to buy a new car, crazy work schedules and trying to sell our house. Oh yeah, and IUI #2. Needless to say, I feel like we've been spinning in circles. And the trying to conceive part hasn't gone too well.

Photo Credit

In my last post, I talked about my injection class. I learned how to use the follistim pen, and was gearing up for my first injectable cycle. I will say now that the follistim injections were a piece of cake, and after the first couple of days I couldn't even feel the needle when I gave myself the shot. I ended up doing six days of shots, and at my final ultrasound I was told that I had five mature follicles. Yes, you read that correctly...FIVE mature follicles. The nurse said that my RE would cancel my IUI cycle if we had six follicles, but with five the choice was mine to continue or cancel. Mr. Chef Bud and I had many conversations about our options, and I talked to a close friend that has dealt with IF, and we decided to continue with the cycle. I didn't want to look back and have any regrets. I triggered, had a lining that was thicker than ever before (7.4), had 37 million sperm post wash with five follicles. Everything was lining up for a perfect cycle and a BFP...



Until AF arrived. I started my period 9 dpIUI, and honestly, I was devastated. If 37 million sperm and five follicles couldn't produce one baby, there had to be something else going on. I stayed home from work on Monday to get myself together and made an appointment with my RE for Tuesday to talk about what happened and what to do next.


She had no explanation for why it didn't work, which is what I expected with an unexplained diagnosis. What she did suggest is for us to move on to IVF. The way she explained it was that she would have more control with IVF, and would be able to look at other factors including egg quality and fertilization to see if those might be something that is affecting our ability to get pregnant. I understand the rationale behind moving to IVF, but I will be honest when I say that I was really scared. I just never thought I would be at this point, and it was really hard to deal with. Mr. CB had a really hard time with it, especially the financial aspect. He is the money man at our house, and thinking about the cost associated with IVF just blew his mind. We knew we definitely had some long converstions ahead of us.

Photo Credit

We ultimately decided that we needed to move forward in our journey to start a family, but we needed to be financially smart as well. Lucky for us, our clinic offers what is called a split donor cycle. Basically, we will be matched up with another couple who needs an egg donor. I will do an IVF cycle and donate half of my eggs to this couple, and in return I will have a reduced rate for my cycle. In my eyes, this is a win-win situation. Mr. CB and I are able to pay about half of what a standard IVF cycle costs (really important since we are 100% OOP) and we are also able to help another couple whose only shot at having their own child is with an egg donor. I feel very strongly about this since I have seen firsthand on my message board the heartache that women face when they are told that their own eggs are not good enough to create their baby.

Right now we have filled out the donor paperwork, I have talked to the coordinator and we are waiting for them to go over my chart and decide if we are accepted. Once we get the approval, we have to make sure we have all the preliminary testing done, and then we wait for a match. To be matched, a couple has to choose our profile as their donor. It is all anonymous, and I've been told it takes 2-3 months. Once a match has been made, we will do genetic and psychological testing and if all looks good, the recipient and I will go on BCP's to make sure our cycles coincide and then we are on our way. I am hopeful that we will be on our IVF journey sometime this summer. That thought is both exciting and scary.


I have decided that for the next couple of months I will take a break from the blog. We won't be doing much other than waiting to be accepted and then to be matched, and I think it's important for me to focus on other aspects of my life. I have pushed so many things to the back burner since I've been TTC, and now that I have a plan in place and know I have a break ahead of me, I think I should focus on some of those things that have fallen by the wayside. I hope that you will still be interested in my story when I return, and I promise that as soon as I have a match and my IVF cycle is underway (hopefully soon!) that I will be back to let you all know what the process is like. Thank you so much for all of your support and love as Mr. CB and I embark on this next part of our journey!