MRI #9 - Updated!

Yesterday was Finn's 9th MRI.  We seem to be on a trend lately of each MRI being worse than the last...let's hope that's not a trend that continues, because I'm not sure I can handle another day like yesterday!  And, to add insult onto injury, I still don't have the results of the MRI yet.

I started off the morning by oversleeping.  It was only by about 20 minutes, but it meant that I had to rush, and I left with my wet hair up in a ponytail.  Finn was asleep when it was time to leave, so I picked him up still sleeping and he didn't wake up until we walked outside.  Two Canadian geese flew overhead as we walked to the car and Finn woke up to their honks: "Birds!"  He was happy in the car and easy to entertain while we waited to meet with anesthesia.  We had the same anesthesiologist as last time, and Finn took the Versed like a champ (the first time he's taken all of it).  He was so stoned by the time they were ready for him.  He was watching Diego on my phone and giggling like a loon, and when we lost signal, he giggled at making funny faces on my camera phone.  Finn happily went with the nurse and doctor back to the MRI, and I gave myself my morning Lupron shot before going to the waiting room.

It was just about the fastest MRI ever (which increases the chances that it all is stable), but Finn was still really sedated when I went back.  He had the same nurses he's always had before, and they were all giving him tons of love and attention.  I considered rocking him until he was a little more alert, but decided we'd go ahead and head over to the oncologist's office, hoping we'd then manage to get home earlier.

What a nightmare.  He wiggled and squirmed in my arms the whole walk down to the car.  And then when we got to the car, a meltdown of epic proportions started.  Screaming.  Yelling.  Crying.  Nothing worked to calm him down.  I tried to cuddle him for a few minutes, but he continued to scream, so I got him into his car seat and we drove over to the oncologist's.  He calmed down when we first got out of the car, but that didn't last.  He was so doped up he couldn't stand up on his own, but wanted to stand up.  He didn't want me to put him down, but he didn't want me to hold him.  He wanted to play with the train, but he didn't want the train.  He wanted his pacifier, but threw it across the room when I gave it to him.  And the screaming.  Oh my god, the screaming.  There was a couple with a small child in the waiting room, and they completely avoided even looking at us.  I could feel their judgement, their criticism of my parenting skills in the looks they gave each other as they studiously avoided looking in our direction.  At one point, Finn threw his pacifier across the room and it landed right at the woman's feet.  She looked at it, and then looked away.  Finn was hitting and spitting and being just awful, and I was about to lose it.  I know it was all the anesthesia, but I didn't know what to do to make him feel better, and the silent (underserved) judgement from the well dressed couple in the room was just about more than I could bear.

And then Hannah, our nurse came out to call Finn back.  She took one look at us and came rushing across the room, "Oh Finn, you're never like this after anesthesia!  Poor boy!  Oh, the medicines really made you upset this time. Mom, let me help you!" and she grabbed our stuff, including picking up his pacifier, as the other parents looked on with what I hope was guilty expressions.

Hannah was wonderful, and as soon as we got to the exam room she got out toys she thought would distract Finn - we finally settled on bubbles.  She was in there blowing bubbles for almost 10 minutes until he was calmed down and was actually giggling.  He was great after that, and even let her get blood from his toe without fuss.  He was still off balance and fussy, but the meltdown was over.

Our usual oncologist was out, so we saw someone else - who wasn't really sure about what the plan was, and who assured me she'd call as soon as she got the MRI results.  When it was 4pm and I still hadn't heard, I called their office.  And they were closed already.  I spoke to the answering service, but the oncologist I saw wasn't on call, and they won't give out results after hours.  So we wait until Monday.

While this was a pretty crappy day thanks to Finn's epic post anesthesia meltdown, it's amazing how much worse an MRI day is when there's no news at the end.

I'm really wondering if the Versed is the cause of his bad reaction, as he's never had a full dose before and this is the first time he's had such a bad reaction.  I think next time (which is hopefully 6 months from now, instead of 4 months!) I'll see if we can just give him half.  Just enough to take the edge off - it's only to make it easier for him when they take him back and not really necessary for the anesthesia.

We have no big weekend plans, which is good, as I now have a horrible headache.  At least Finn is fully recovered from his anesthesia and back to his usual happy self.  

***Update***

The doctor called me earlier today to give me the results of the MRI.  The primary tumor is nice and stable, which is good news!  There was one lymph node they've been keeping an eye on that looks a little bigger, though.  As she's not Finn's primary oncologist, she didn't want to give me a finalized plan.  So we're still waiting to hear back from Dr. B on Monday or Tuesday about the plan for the next MRI.  Lymph nodes can get bigger for all sorts of reasons, so it's most likely nothing more than something that's going to buy us another MRI in 4 months and a little more worry for me.

Let's Get This Party Started!

I got my next round of TTC underway this morning with a bang.  First, I gave myself my first shot of Lupron.  I was sent 28g insulin syringes.  Really?  Really?  What is the deal with that?  Those things HURT!  Maybe not like progesterone in oil, but still, they hurt.  They make 32g insulin syringes - so tiny that you can barely see the needle, why the 28?  Is the thought that those of us going through IF treatments are tough?  That we feel stronger because of the pain?  Or is it because reproductive endocrinologists never prescribe insulin, and therefore realize there are better options out there?  At any rate, after confirming that there was no real reason to use such a huge needle, I brought home samples of the tiny syringes and used that this morning.  I didn't feel a thing, but Finn was very worried about my boo-boo on my tummy.  I will have to find a way to inject next time when he's not looking.

Immediately after my first shot, I got in the car and headed to my RE.  I had a little bit of a wait, and then Dr M was there to do my endometrial scratch biopsy.  They don't do them there routinely (the theory is that when you take some tissue from the endometrial lining, it stimulates various chemicals and growth factors that improve implantation the following cycle), but he's read the literature and is considering doing it for some women with unexplained IF.  He talked to me about the studies, and then talked to me about RBA and sang their praises.  He was thrilled I had chosen to go there, and knows all about their data, their egg vitrification process and agrees this was the best choice for me.  He also confirmed what I suspected, that this route was cheaper than doing the DE route with his office.

Then he did the scratch biopsy.  I'd read varying reports on what it felt like, so I was feeling pretty nervous.  He put the speculum in, cleaned it off with betadine and then said, "Ok, you'll feel a little pinch." We chatted just a bit, and then just as it started to feel uncomfortable he said, "We're done!" And that was that.  He showed me what the endometrial lining looked like (bloody snot) and we chatted for another minute or so, "I hope you'll come here to have your viability scan done when you get pregnant!" and I was on my way.

I'll be on Lupron every day for just about the next 5 weeks.  I'll stay on birth control pills until next week, then stop, wait for my period and then start estrogen patches right around the beginning of May.  My failed IUI cycle in January feels so long ago; I can't believe it's finally time for me to take medications to get this DE cycle going!

Storytime

This past week hasn't been as easy as the first with getting Finn to sleep in his own bed.  It's not been a complete bust, and I've stuck to it, but there's been a lot more crying.  There was one night last week that he cried so much when I left the room that I had to go back to give him hugs and calm him down so he would fall asleep.  He was still in a great mood the next morning; the first thing he said to me was, "Mommy work!  Then Mommy sleep!" (guess I must have said that a lot when trying to get him to go to sleep the past few weeks!) and I said, "Yes, and you went to sleep all by yourself like a big boy." His little face got really serious, "Yeah, I crying."

Most nights he still asks me to rock him to sleep, and he starts crying as soon as I put him down.  He has been awake upstairs for as long as 40 minutes before falling asleep, but it's usually a mix of talking with crying, so it's bearable for both of us. And finally, the past few nights, crying has only lasted about 10 minutes, before he's fallen asleep.

Tonight he picked out a book we haven't read in a while, Night-Night, Little Pookie, and we snuggled on his bed while we read it.  Pookie the pig and his mommy get him ready for bed.  He brushes his teeth, washes his nose, and then his mommy tucks him in with three kisses, one for his Pookie ears, one for his Pookie nose, and one for Pookie eyes that are about to close.  When we got to the eyes, Finn touched Pookie's eyes and said, "Pookie?" The next page is a good night poem that ends with "I love you and love you," and then Pookie says, "Night-night Pookie mommy."  And with that, Finn burst into tears, hard, sobbing tears.

I pulled him into my lap.  "What's wrong? Why are you crying?" "Pookie crying, too!" he sobbed.  He was crying because he thought Pookie was sad that his mommy left him to go to sleep.  Oh, how that made my heart hurt!  We had a talk that Pookie wasn't crying, he was happily going to sleep, because he knew his mommy was downstairs and would come up if he needed her.  I'm not too sure he really believed me, or if he fully understood me.  He did only cry for 5 minutes once I left the room tonight.

I see a few more books about bedtime in our future.

*******

I heard from the donor coordinator and she confirmed that the guarantee does apply to me.  The comments on my last post were so great - thank you guys.  I was feeling pretty stressed out overall, but I feel much better.  Even before I heard from the coordinator, I wasn't worried about it anywhere near as much. And I know I've picked out the best donor for me, too.  Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

Over and Under Thinking

When my grandfather died, my sister and I both went down to Florida for the funeral.  We stayed with my Aunt Linda and Uncle Clark, who live just a short drive from my grandparents.  (Aunt Linda is my grandmother's sister, but is only 4 years older than my mom.)  One night we stayed up too late, drinking wine and telling stories about my granddad, and Aunt Linda told us about his mom.  "I loved her so much.  She used to let me comb her long black hair for what seemed like hours.  She was Native American, you know."

My sister and I were floored.  We had no idea we had Native American blood, and we felt like this whole new vision of our identity as Americans changed with this knowledge.  The next day, my sister and I went to lunch together, and we kept on coming back to Aunt Linda's revelation.  My sister said, "I feel like we need to learn more, so we can truly get in touch with our people."

That evening we had dinner at my grandmom's and we said to her, "I can't believe you never told us that our great-grandmother was Native American!"  "Who told you that?" she asked us.  Aunt Linda replied, "I did, I remember combing her long black hair.  I loved her." My grandmom looked at her with disbelief and said, "She wasn't Native American!  She had red hair!"

We still laugh about that now, 10 years later.

So imagine my surprise when I was looking back over my ED's profile and discovered that her paternal grandfather was Native American!  How did I miss that????

I'm actually fairly happy about this, but I'm so surprised that I missed it.  And that surprise has me feeling very stressed out all of a sudden.  I'm worried I rushed into choosing a donor too quickly. I'm worried that I was wrong when I decided not to go with the donor from RBA who had less than 6 eggs (you get a "lot" of 6 eggs when you chose a donor) and instead went with a donor from an affiliate site.

RBA is the center that pioneered egg vitrification, and has since taught multiple sites how to do it, including the sites they've partnered with in creating their donor egg bank.  I've read on the boards that many women chose to only get eggs from RBA because they do it better, but this is all anecdotal.  Dr. S told me that while he thought the screening criteria was more rigorous at RBA and some of the East Coast sites (as far as education level, height and looks), he felt that all the sites did equally well with their egg freezing.  So when I didn't find another RBA donor I liked, aside from the one that didn't have a full 6 eggs frozen, I felt comfortable going with a donor from another site.

But then another SMC friend of mine had her consult with Dr. S last week and felt he implied that the egg quality wasn't as good from other sites.  And I'm so second guessing my decision.  I'm so afraid that this won't work, and I won't get pregnant, and I'll have spent all this money and have no baby to show for it.

Before now, I'd been wondering if I'd made the right choice of donors just based on looks, personality...was she the right fit for my family.  I was usually able to remind myself that I would love the baby no matter what, that once I was pregnant, the donor would no longer really matter.

But now I can't stop worrying about the donor egg quality now, and I'm not really concerned about the donor's characteristics (other than thinking it's really cool she's part Native American!)

I never worried if my donor sperm was good enough to get me pregnant.  I'm not liking this worry at all.  And there's not much I can do about it.  It's a valid concern, but still my chances are good that all will work out fine.  Just not as good, apparently, as they would have been if I'd gone with the donor with less eggs.

Oh how I envy those who are able to complete their family easily, the old fashioned way.

ETA:  I forgot one huge thing: RBA has a guarantee that you will get two high quality embryos (or a live birth) from your batch of 6 eggs.  If you don't get that, they'll do another thaw, free of charge.  Earlier today I read on a discussion board that just a few weeks ago they amended that guarantee to only apply to donors from their site.  When I chose a nonRBA donor, I also thought I was covered by the guarantee.  I just went back and looked at the consent/contract I signed, and it does not say anything about it being limited to just RBA donors.  I think I'll email my coordinator for clarification.  Because if the guarantee is still in effect for me, I'm much less concerned.  And if it's not in effect for me, they should allow me to choose a different donor, since they didn't tell me this up front.

It's way past my bedtime.

A Sleep Update

I finally did it.

I let Finn cry it out.

And it wasn't that bad.

Cut back to last Monday night.  Finn had a fever.  I felt like crap.  I'd been rocking him for TWO hours.  And he was still awake.  He was tired, and fighting it like a champ, just flat out refusing to sleep.  I'd given him more Tylenol around 9, and at 10 I was about to lose my mind.  I finally decided that our stressful evenings with me snapping at him to go to sleep, or putting him back in his bed over and over as I got more angry, could not really be any worse than him crying for 45 minutes.

So I put him in his bed, kissed his forehead, told him I loved him and left the room.  He screamed.  He cried.  He threw a fit.  For 5 minutes.  Then he talked to himself for a few minutes and fell asleep.  Almost every night since then I've repeated the process, though I limit the rocking to about 10 minutes.  He screams and cries, "Mommy, lie down! Lie down, Mommy!" as soon as leave the room.  That quickly turns into talking, punctuated with lots of "Yeahs!" Tonight it was more "Mommy, lie down?" a couple of nights ago it was, "Mickey Mouse? Yeah! Mickey Mouse!"  Most nights he's asleep in 10 minutes, and only once or twice has he cried at all after the first minute or so.  (The nights I didn't leave him still awake were when he was so tired he feel asleep before I'd finished rocking him, and last night when he fell asleep in the car on the way home from a family dinner, in case you were worried I'm not being consistent enough! :))

When I tried CIO before, when he was younger, it was awful.  Nonstop, hysterical crying for over an hour before I finally gave in and got him.  I'm glad when I tried it again, we were both finally ready for it.

While it's given me my evenings back, our battles over sleep the past month have led to a backslide in behavior.  He'd just about stopped hitting and spitting when he's mad, but now he's back to doing it on a regular basis.  I do think it's because he just doesn't know how to handle his feelings of being mad or frustrated, and our nightly battles were making things worse, so I'm trying to help him with that, but so far it hasn't clicked.  Now that we're not fighting every night, I'm hoping it improves.

On the flip side, he's SO silly.  He really likes just being goofy and making people laugh.  When he's not mad at me for something awful like not letting him play with a butcher knife, he's a lot of fun to be around.

Here's hoping the good sleep continues.  I'm starting out this week feeling pretty healthy, and have lots of plans for the extra hour I've gained every night.

Long Week

This has been a long and horrible week.  Last Friday, my coworker (Patti) who has been battling ovarian cancer since before Finn was born, passed away.  She was an amazing woman, always ready with a smile, even when she felt like crap from chemo and all that comes with it.  She'd been out for the past month, and we were expecting her death, but man it just sucks.  Her funeral was last night, and it was lovely and sad, and Patti would have hated us all sitting there crying.  So we tried to laugh some, too.  I got up and spoke, and made it to the very end, then started crying.  At least was able to say some things about her that made people laugh before I broke down.

That would have made this week bad enough, but then Finn got thrush, and woke up with a fever on Easter (this makes the 3rd major religious holiday in a row that he's had a fever.  What's up with that?)  He's also been stuffy and just not feeling well most of the week, and even though it's clearing up, his mouth hurts.  So he doesn't eat much during the day, but then wakes up at 3am demanding food, "Eat! Pouch! Eat!" He loves those organic squeeze pouches and I'm sure they don't hurt his mouth the way other food does.  I know he's really hungry, so I have to give in and get him something.  But that means that we're up for at least an hour, if not longer every night, as he's wide awake after he eats.

Monday morning I woke up with the allergies/sinus crud, too.  I've felt horrible all week, and only today have I managed to not feel as though my head was about to explode.  Add to that, our cable went out, our hot water heater stopped working and yeah, this week has been a crap week.

Nanny M texted me earlier today to tell me that Finn was still being really difficult.  She couldn't get him to nap (which never happens), he had multiple meltdowns and was just miserable.  But then I got home and he was happy and cheery. We went for a walk, we visited the neighbors, he ate almost two whole yogurts for his evening snack (I finally wised up and gave him a snack before bed), and we danced.  He was a little grumpy when he first got in the bathtub, but then that passed and he and I had fun throwing his toys and making big splashes.  We read a few stories, and then he was asleep within 5 minutes of me turning out the light.  I held him for another 15 minutes after he fell asleep, enjoying the clean baby smell and the fact that there was no bedtime battle tonight.

After a really crappy week, it made me feel good to know that Finn just needed his mommy today.  Tonight was one of those warm, snuggly times that make the bad times of parenting worth it.  Nothing spectacular, just a happy evening.