ER scheduled

After only 6 days of stimming, my body is ready for the ER. During my two monitoring appointments, I have about 4-5 follicles on either side. Personally, I thought this was a little low and very quick, but as someone in my infertility group told me, I need to trust my doctor, he knows more than me. I guess she is right. I had to take my ovidrel shot last night at 8, which I basically slept through with Mr. Planner bud helping me. I go into the clinic Sunday morning at 7 AM. We are hoping for a three day transfer on Wednesday.

My clinic doesn't believe bed rest is necessary and recommends I be relax the day of transfer. However, I am such a worry wort that I putting myself on modified bed rest for the day of the ET and the day after. If nothing else, it will give me two days off of work and I missing the last class of two different graduate classes.

I will definitely post about my fert report when the information comes in, but now I need to go write a paper that I thought I would have Saturday and Sunday to write.

Where on earth did the second tri go?!

Hellllllllllllllo third tri!!! Wow, that really snuck up on me! 27 weeks!

It's been an eventful few weeks. I caught a nasty stomach bug that landed me in the hospital. They gave me 3 bags of IV fluids, 2 doses of Zofran and a dose of Reglan and nothing helped. And wouldn't you know... it happened the day before we were due to fly out to FL for vacation! They wanted to keep me overnight but I declined and asked to go home after being there for almost 8 hours. If I was going to be miserable, I'd rather be miserable at home where I could go to the bathroom without being unhooked from everything every time and sleep in my own bed. The next morning, things hadn't subsided much and I called the OB begging to take some Immodium so that I could at least get on the plane. Thankfully, she relented and we made it to FL!

We had an incredibly relaxing 8 day vacation. We spent most days out in the water on the boat and swimming in the pool. One day, Mr. Sunflower Bud surprised me with an entire date day for just the 2 of us. It's not usual for me to not do the planning for us and it was awesome to not be in control of our day for a change. We had lunch at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co, played mini golf, went on a chocolate factory tour, visited a jewelry store where he bought me a beautiful diamond and pink flip flop necklace and then finished the evening with dinner at a local Italian restaurant.

Yesterday, I had my OB check up and everything looks great! Baby SB's heartbeat is healthy and great (it was 170 yesterday and he was full of energy moving around in there). My OB is thrilled with my weight gain (only up 15lbs so far) and said I'm doing great. Blood pressure is great as always (110/70, I think it was).

Baby SB finally moved up out of the deep depths of my uterus where he's been making himself comfy on my sciatic. So I've finally gotten some back pain relief.

He's very active and kicks all day long with short periods of rest. I'm hoping that he'll tire himself out in there so he sleeps a lot when he comes out. :)

I'm still getting a lot of Braxton Hicks contractions so I'm hoping that's good news as far as working towards a VBAC, as I never had any BH with my daughter that I can recall and certainly not as early or often as I'm having this time around.

The nursery is completely finished and we're out of things we need to buy so all we've got to do now is just relax and enjoy this final trimester!

~ Sunflower Bud ~

Good To Be Back

I had a great visit with friends and family back in New England. Pretty much the Baby Tour of Massachusetts. I got to see my best friends 3 week old daughter, three of my nieces (ages 14, 6 & 6 months) and my nephew (15 months). Also got to spend some time with my extended family and some good friends. I even got to color Easter eggs! Mine is the pink one with the tulip, the rest are the two eldest nieces.

Seeing the newborn was a good reminder of just what we'll be in for come October. Sleep, Eat, Poop, Eat, Squawk Like a Pterodactyl, Sleep, Look Cute, Poop. Sweet little girl. Its good to see my friend adjusting so well to motherhood, and its even better that they have their little IVF miracle home in their arms now.

The nieces & nephew are all growing like weeds. I hadn't been home in 6 months. Its amazing how much they change. The 2 day old (in Sept) is now learning to crawl! Crazy.

It was great to be around family and friends with regards to the pregnancy as well. There was so much excitement, it really was catchy. Several of my aunts mandated I show them belly pics as things progress. Not too fond of that idea, but will probably send enough to appease them. My MIL and SIL took me on a maternity clothes shopping spree. The were soooo generous. I'm really glad I got over my issue with being ready for maternity clothes and was able to embrace the situation. My parents were honestly a little luke warm with regards to the pregnancy. They are excited, but having issues with the 3,000 miles between us. They want to be there for our little family and spend all the time they can with their grandbaby...but distance & finances are throwing a wrench in that. We'll make the best of it.

I did get some unexpected news on Easter. I'm not the only one in my immediate family expecting. I'm going to be an aunt again! My brother and his wife have a baby due in late November.

For those curious about air travel while pregnant: One of the airports I went thru security at had back scatter and one didn't. I just went through the metal detector. For the back scatter, the sign said it had the equivalent of two minutes in a plane of radiation exposure. If I'd been running late, I'd have just gone through. I mean, I was flying clear across the country...two minutes of exposure isn't going to make much difference. I wasn't in a hurry though, so I asked for a pat down. TSA was pretty good about it, though the pat down was a little more intimate than I'd have liked (running hand under and between breasts, getting inquisitive about the band on my maternity jeans). All in all it wasn't a big deal.

Probably should include my 15 week update since I'm at 15 weeks 5 days already.

Been feeling pretty good this past week. My biggest news is that I think I'm starting to have the beginnings of a bump! I was putting on my PJs one night on the trip and noticed my belly was sticking out further than my boobs. Glance at a mirror & sure enough! It seems to be more in the evenings when my muscles are tired. This timing also coincides with when my back tends to ache and when my lower abdomen muscles ache (both recent developments). No new cravings or aversions assuming I told y'all about the pork aversion issues that began last week. I've been hiding from the scale...will face that one in the coming week. No appointments this week, so nothing to report there. Best moment of the last week was spending time with family and sharing the excitement of the pregnancy with them. Worst was dealing with my parents issues with the distance between us.

19 weeks already!

I cannot believe how fast time flies during 2nd trimester. I've been traveling almost every week for work, and on the weeks I'm home (about once a month), we've been doing *something* baby related. I'm writing to you today from my hotel in Asheville, where I'll be until tomorrow. This might get long, I apologize!

Here's where things stand:
Today I'm 19 weeks, 3 days. My last doctor's appointment was at 15 weeks, and my next appointment is on Tuesday (20w1d). (I'm supposed to be going every 4 weeks, but the last two have been 5 weeks apart thanks to scheduling limitations on my part--I'm hoping to schedule the rest of my appointments at Tuesday's visit--24, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41). Baby is now the size of...something. The fruit tickers seem to be off. Apparently this week is a mango but next week is a cantaloupe? Seems like a large jump to me!

I'm feeling great--energetic, my appetite is back, I've lost most food aversions and am not having too many cravings (and none for weird foods), and I'm physically comfortable. Emotionally, I'm doing well too. Mr. Magnolia Bud and I still worry about the financial aspects of having Baby MB--especially daycare--but we're budgeting and will make it work.

Speaking of daycare, we decided a few weeks ago to put off looking for a placement until we'd each hammered out our leave options at our respective jobs. This week we were able to do that--he'll be taking a full week once the baby's born, and then working half days for the next two weeks. I'll be taking off from the time the baby's born (sometime in September) until work resumes after the New Year (Jan. 3). Most of my leave will be paid, except for December--which is do-able for us financially. We're both so excited I'll be able to stay home for almost four months, and that the baby won't have to start daycare until he/she is a smidge older than we originally thought.

We had our anatomy scan on April 20, and everything looks great. I was 18w2d, and baby was measuring 19w2d--a full week ahead. Femur and humerus were measuring 19w4d...so we're hoping that means we're going to have a tall baby, just like us! Baby also weighed in at an estimated 10 ounces last week. Here are our favorite pictures--the first is baby with his/her hand behind head, and the second is baby pointing which direction is "out" {it was head down, heehee}:




I've also finally started showing! Some days I still just look a little chubby, but here's a pic from this week:


Mr. Magnolia Bud finished painting the nursery, and we finished our registries at Babies R Us and Amazon. If you have any suggestions for registry *must haves,* please let me know! Almost everything on our lists came about as a result of recommendations from other moms and mommy bloggers.

I think that's it for now. Hope you're all having a great week!
Love and baby dust to everyone...
Magnolia Bud

Juggling Life's Craziness

photo credit
My life is a bit crazy right now. For starters I had my doctors visit and I am NOT pregnant..... ugh. On top of finding that out my husband and I also found out we are moving... not a side I will often share on here... but my husband is in the military. So with all of that and trying to get things together to move it's been a mad house in here.

I seriously meant to write last week, but the week got away from me and on top of that it was an emotional crasher for me... so much so my body went in shut down mode. I slept almost a whole day and then some. My body had had enough apparently.

And other news that is not fertility related is that I am going to be in a wedding come next year (my sisters --- I am the maid of honor)... so I really need to loose this weight. So I am hoping this will give me the extra push to keep up with the weight loss. I don't want to look fat in the dress I have to wear... but if I have a baby bump I'll be more than a 100% fine with that.

So I am getting back on track of getting my weight down and getting PCOS under control.... hopefully this will be enough distraction to help keep my mind off of wondering if I am pregnant or not.... I just need to go with the flow to reduce my stress level.

So between packing, moving, making wedding invites, jewelry pieces for wedding and other preps for the wedding... along with loosing weight... I should be more than distracted :)

On with the show... I will keep you posted on how my weight loss is going and hopefully I will get my next cycle... yeah I never got that yet either, but they said it might be due to stress. Nurse is probably right... cause now that things are starting to calm down I feel like I might get it.

Hope you all are doing fabulous. And I am sorry about being so late with posting... my life is doing a 360 on me something fierce. But I am strong :) and I can do this.

V-Day & GTT

Tomorrow I will be 25 weeks pregnant. I know everyone says this, but time really does fly. I think weeks 14-18 were sort of slow and boring but now that the weather is getting nicer, I'll be keeping very busy until August.


I passed the 24 week "viability" day last week, which was a huge milestone. I also had my glucose tolerance test yesterday. The glucola drink wasn't the greatest tasting thing, but it wasn't all that bad either.

Photo Credit

The worst part was sitting in the waiting room forever. So boring! My OB does a 2-hour test per the new guidelines so I got to sit there for 2 hours and 3 blood draws.

The good news is, I passed the GTT! No gestational diabetes here. I was very relieved to hear that.

Mr. Sassy Bud and I have been working on the nursery, so hopefully I'll have pics of that to share soon. We set up all the furniture and painted the walls. Things are really starting to come together!

Implantation bleeding 3dpo?!

I am a bit confused... Is it possible to have implantation bleeding 3dpo?! Tonight, we went out to dinner, and when I used the restroom and wiped, I had a tad of light blood on the paper... How is this possible? Has this happened to anyone else before? Very strange...




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

My Miscarriage

I want to preface this post by saying that this IS NOT about my current pregnancy. It is about my first pregnancy, which occurred in November 2010. I purposely backdated this post (it's really May now) so that it would not appear on the front page of Bloomin' Babies and alarm people. I feel like it's important to get my story on here though for those going through similar, particularly since I referenced this blog when I was going through my loss, so here goes...


Please be warned that I am going to speak frankly, and sometimes graphically, about the experience. If either of those things bother you, please scroll on by this post. For those living through a miscarriage, knowing the nitty gritty details is important...and this post is for them.


I got my first BFP on November 9, 2010. For a few glorious days there were the first few signs of pregnancy. The slight nausea, super smell, exhaustion beyond words. That all changed around 2am on November 12.

I was woken up around 2am by excruciating cramps. They whipped around my right side, felt like they were following my abdominal muscle. The pain was so intense that it woke me from a dead sleep and had me crying out in pain. The cramps moved like lightning. There were two or three waves of them, then they disappeared. I never felt another pregnancy symptom after that moment. Not one.

The next morning I felt totally normal...which made me really uneasy since I'd been exhausted in days prior. Around noon, the spotting started. At first it was brownish red, by bedtime it was pink. When I woke up that morning, there was absolutely no question what was happening. Bright red blood. Lots of it. This was on November 13th, a Saturday. Since it was a weekend and we had company in town, I wasn't able to get to the doctor until Monday morning. I knew there was nothing they could do to save the pregnancy at that point, so I didn't feel it was urgent for me to get checked out. Nature was taking its course.

On Monday the 15th, I was able to reach my doctor and they got me in as soon as they could. By that time I was passing clots in addition to the heavy bleeding. Cramping was present as well, though it was never horrible, moderate mostly. There was tissue passing as well, including **graphic warning** the embryo. I'd never heard nor read that they embryo would be recognizable at the gestation I was (5w1d). It passed completely intact within its amniotic sac. That was the single image of the whole miscarriage that was burned into my brain. It literally looked like the 5 week image from the Pregnology website (www.pregnology.com), except with the sac. All told, it was about the size of a ping pong ball.

At my appointment on Monday, the doctors office was awesome. I didn't realize this until I went in for my current BFP, but they got me in immediately (so I didn't have to sit amongst the visibly pregnant ladies) and brought me in to a neutral exam room (as opposed to the one with Tinkerbell stickers in it I went into for this BFP). They asked me to describe what I'd experienced and I could tell by the look on the doctors face that my thought of miscarriage was right...especially when I described the embryo. She did a pelvic exam and confirmed an open cervix & heavy bleeding. The diagnosis given was "partial spontaneous abortion". (Don't even get me started on how awful it is to have the word 'abortion' given to you when you are having a miscarriage...) She said the 'partial' part was because it was still ongoing. She gave me paperwork to get an ultrasound done to confirm the progress of the miscarriage a few days later. They needed to make sure all of the "products of conception" got out so that there were not further problems down the road.

The ultrasound a couple of days later was not AT ALL like I'd imagined my first ultrasound would be. For starters, I kicked things off by warning the tech that things were a bloody mess down there when he asked me to get into the johnny. I have no idea how I held myself together in that ultrasound room. I think being a scientist helped...I found it fascinating that he could tell what was my ovaries, see the fallopian tubes, even see the bleeding. Physically there was some discomfort, particularly when the vagcam bumped the cervix. As it turned out, I was experiencing the best case scenario for a miscarriage. I completely fell apart when I got out to the car.

The doctor saw me again a couple of days later and confirmed that I'd now experienced a "Complete Spontaneous Abortion". My bleeding lasted 7 days total, with the worst happening in the first 3-4 days.

There were all sorts of aches that went with the miscarriage that caught be by surprise so I want to be sure to mention them. For a couple days in the thick of the miscarriage my cervix and uterus felt really irritated. For about a week after that, my ovaries just ached and ached.

My cycle returned exactly on time, 29 days later...though as charting post miscarriage would show, the ovulation date and length of my luteal phase changed post miscarriage (changes in your cycle are common, as it turns out). For the first couple of post-loss cycles, things were haywire physically. One month my boobs ached excruciatingly during the 2ww. Another month my ovulation pains were intense (I occasionally feel them, but never more than a twinge...this was waaay more than a twinge).

Emotionally during the whole miscarriage experience I just felt broken. When I got the BFP it felt like it was my job to protect this little life and I'd failed. I felt like I was apparently incapable of doing something that women have been able to do since the beginning of time. There was an incredible amount of fear that subsequent pregnancies would have the same ending and that this was the first sign that we would have a much more difficult road to having a family. I'd never realized until I was experiencing it how incredibly hard it is to go through even the earliest of miscarriages.

I realized that most likely there was something wrong with the baby from the moment of conception (~50% of all miscarriage prior to 6 weeks are due to chromosomal abnormalities rendering the baby incompatible with life). Thing is, hearing that there was probably something wrong with the baby and it was probably for the best wasn't comforting. My first thought when I was told that (and I'm being completely honest here) was, "Great, so you're telling me we can make little mutant babies..." Hearing that there was likely a chromosomal defect to my 34 year old eggs was far from a comfort.

One of the only things that really gave me comfort, was thinking of the people I know who had a loss of their own and had gone on to have one (or more) healthy babies. People like my friend K, who had a late 1st Tri loss and went on to have three kids. Or my friend S, who had a chemical pregnancy and at the time of my loss was 20 weeks pregnant (she's since delivered a little girl). Or my mother, who had a miscarriage just before she conceived my youngest brother. The hope that their stories gave me is why I'm sharing my story with you. I feel that its important to talk about pregnancy loss. Its important to remove the taboo. Its important for those going through it to know that they aren't alone, that this is (unfortunately) quite common...and most importantly that it is in no way their fault.

Beginning Stimming

After willing and begging AF to arrive, the biatch showed up this morning after I called the RE's to say she didn't arrive. After waiting by the phone all day (I haven't done this since my days trying to find a guy), I just talked to the nurse. I can begin stims on Saturday. This is actually beginning. I actually have a good chance, at least 50%, of being pregnant in a month. This is the best chance that we have had in months. BRING IT ON!

I am very lucky that my friends know about what is going on since I have to take my very first shot during our HP 7 girls' night celebration. Mr. Plannerbud is actually secretly excited that he gets out of one night of helping me with the shot. He will probably be planning lots of events right around my 8 pm shot time.

I will be taking 150iu of Gonal F. From what I have read the side effects are not truly that bad. Many people had harsher side effects with clomid than with the injections. I hope it is the same for me. I am already on edge and snapping at poor Mr. Planner bud and the cycle hasn't really even started.

Fingers crossed that I stim quickly and can get in and out before MCAS testing so my boss doesn't kill me!

I hate swallowing pills. I am sure I over think if I can swallow them and if they will get stuck in my throat and all sorts of nonsense. So I am swallowing 17 pills a day and chewing one pill, that is my favorite way to take them. Mr. Explorer Bud is the complete opposite, I laid out 7 pills for him to take at dinner since he is terrible at remembering to take them, and he says, "watch this" and pops them all in his mouth at once and swallows with a little sip of water!! The only problem he has is realizing that he must eat a meal when he takes them so he doesn't feel neauseous afterwards, I have no problem remembering that since I hate being neauseous! In short he is taking to swallowing the pills better and I am better and eating with them.

I have noticed that I am feeling more awake and energetic during the afternoon and evening when I would be crashing and looking for food to give me a little pick me up. I am falling alseep without a problem and actually staying asleep even when Mr. EB has come to bed late. So far the Experiment is going well and hopefully it continues. It will be interesting to see if AF arrives in a month or so.