Still hanging in there

Hi every one, lol Ok I know no one reads this but it's nice to pretend.
So anyway nothing has really changed since I last wrote, but i figured its been over a month I better check in so I can remind my self that we are moving forward. Only 119 days until we start IVF. I know that is a very long time but when I first started writing it was over 8 months away.

I have been filling my time with reading Cafemom.com posts and reading other people blogs relating to IVF. They give me so much inspiration to know that this process even though its hard as hell to go through, both physically and mentally it works.

I know in my heart that its going to work. I can feel it i just have to get through the next 119 days. Talk about a 2WW lol.

In the mean time I have starting to really work on crafting. I enrolled to sell Stampin up stuff. Not so much to sell it but so I could get a discount buying the stuff myself. I have already spend over 200.00 buying stuff. I have these wonderful little stamps I will be able to use for the baby shower when that finally comes. I will also make all the Christmas cards this year. I'm excited about that.

Some thing that im excited about coming up is the Largest Christmas Bazaar here in Portland that will start the weekend of Thanksgiving. I love that place and usually buy half my Christmas presents for people there. They also have a lady there that sells the best embossing powers there. I stock up every year.

On the baby mission: We have paid off one of the 2 credit cards I talked about in other posts, so just one more left. I have it figured out that it should be gone the 1st or 2nd week in December. So as you can see things although slowly are moving.

Working out you ask well I'm still doing it. I had a set back but we are back on track and doing well. I'll Write more some time soon. I hope every one (if there is any one out there) is doing great and I wish any and every one trying to get their BFP gets them.

Work Out for that baby!

I would like to start out with OUCH! Bill and I have been working out but today was our first session with a trainer. I did my treadmill like normal then we went to our apt. Rusty was all like you ready and we where all YEA let do this. By the time we where done we where all Rusty you A** H***. lol
So we did these stretches, that wasn't so bad for me, but Bill had a hard time with it. I did have a harder time with one of the stretches that you have to balance, so I guess I need to work on that.
Then we did weights, that was interesting. We only did 6 different machines. I had been doing more on my own but I learned why we needed to do these, and not the ones I had been using.
We learned how much weight to lift and the setting we need for the different machines.

Then after we had our ass' kicked we had to go and do more treadmill. Rusty wanted us to do 20 mins but said that if we start feeling sick then just do what we could. We did like 5 mins before I feel like I was getting a migraine and I was about to hurl.

Both of agreed that we have never sweated so much on our own so we must be working out harder. We where going to work out 5-6 times a week but Rusty said that 4 times is best because the body does need a rest. We all agreed on every other day.

The nutrition is the hardest for me. After they had taken my measurements and body fats, He said that I need to eat like 2600 calories. No thank you. With my lap band I couldn't eat that if i wanted to. So we'll see how this goes.

That's about it. Oh I did get that collections job. It's ok nothing to wright home about. It will do for now. I think with it I should be bring home about 1500 a month. I have decided to save half and through half on to bills and get those paid off faster. Once those are gone, I get all Bill's left over money for the baby fund. His extra money is between 800-1000, so once I can add that everything will come together fast. March here we come!!!

Not much going on

Well like the title says there is not much going on with me. I was very sick the last few days, stuffy nose, and a very sore throat. I'm alot better now though. I should of went to the Dr. I have a wonderful Dr that I know would of given me just the right thing. To bad for me Bill's new insurance didn't start until Sept 1 and we still haven't gotten our cards yet. Oh well I'm feeling much better today.

Last time I wrote that I got a new job. well it was a Temp Job and its almost over. They are going to restart it but I'm going to try and find something that pays more. I mean I have tons of customer service experience. I am a hard worker, I'm smart and usually figure out what im doing before anyone else does. For example this job im at now. They are so slow they only kept 3 people and I am one of them. But due to them being so slow they are only giving me about 2-3 hrs a day of work.

Well I got a call yesterday to go do collections. God I hate collections. Im good at it just like everything else I do but I still dont like it. I took their tests and they said I did very well. This surprised me though lol. they had fractions. I dont even remember how to do those. its been like 15 years since I had to do them. I dont know what fractions had to do with collecting credit card debt but what ever.
So I go in Friday for their interview. I figure if I get it great thats more baby money. If not thats ok the other job im doing is going to have more hrs starting next week anyway.

On the weight loss side I havent checked since last time I posted about it but i think i have lost some more. I have been too sick to go work out for the last week. As soon as I can breath with out it wheezing or coughing I will get back to it.
In the mean time im still trying to eat 5-6 times a day like I was told. I tried on a pair of jeans that were really tight a month ago and they fit really good now.... to band the zipper is broken. My old jeans are very lose and im always pulling them up. My friends say thats great but its very annoying too lol

On the money side. Well I got paid 600 something and we had to repair the struts on the car that was 657.00 plus we got a flat tire, and we do not have a spar so I called less swab and they said its after hours and I would have to buy a brand new tire and rim. I didnt have a choice we only have one car. The total for that was almost 300.00 then I went to get the old tire fixed and wanted the new tire put on my rim that matches the others, I thought that would be cheap. it was 60.00. So it was safe to say that I didnt get to put any of my check away this time. My next one I should be able to keep baring anything else happening. But it will be small due to missing a few days from being sick and cut hrs. Oh well money is money even small money right? lol

Well thats it for now. I hope every one is having a good week. Congrats to all the Cafemom ladies that got their BFP's and Baby Dust to all those trying this month.

Alittle update

Hello my reader's.
I thought I would update you. There is not to much to say really. lets see I have started a weight loss ticker so you can see how I'm doing. My friend Brandon went to school for health and training, to be a coach. anyway he is helping me with the proper diet. He said that I do already eat pretty good but their was a few tweaks like change eating that to the morning and things like that.
He also told me what to do in my work out. I was just doing stuff to do it now i have more of a plan. Like he said to do the weights first then do my walking. I was doing it the other way around.
He also makes me eat like 5-6 times a day. this was not as easy as i thought since i have my lap band. I have found out the hard way that i can no longer eat things that i loved. Like bread!!!!!!
more then 2 bites not matter how well i chew it sends me to the bathroom. and Carrots. i loved carrots and dip :(

well all for the better anyway. Good news is i get to eat more fruits, which i love. So my goal is to lose another 30 lbs by the time I'm ready to do the IVF. now 30 is a low goal. Brandon thinks as long as i stick to his plan i should lose that in like 5ish months. so maybe ill lose like 50 which is even better. I'm trying really hard to do this. For me its hard my eating and working out.
You see i still get migraines when i workout and eating is hard for the above reasons.
but I'm committed, I haven't even had any Ice cream or peanut butter M&M's and if you know me you know they are my weakness.

I have also started my prescribed prenatal vitamins. good thing they say to take them at night they make me have a lot of nausea, but again all worth it. besides when I'm finally pregnant i will have a lot of that anyway may as well get use to it.

So on the work front. I am to get paid next Friday whats the good news. the bad news is my car needs some work so i wont get my check like i thought i would. but that's ok because i cant go with out my car!!! The 6am shift is growing on me. I like getting off at 230pm. i go work out after work and then go pick up Bill so it works out perfectly. only problem is i will only be working there like 1-2 more weeks :( its a temp job. oh well, make the best of it while i can right? :)

ok I think that's it for now. this was longer then i thought it would be, wow do i know how to ramble or what? LOL
Anyways i want to end this thanking my support team, Jennifer and Mom. oh and of course my wonderful loving husband Bill. With out you i don't know if i could do this, your faith in me gives me faith in me. I love you all!!!

I hope this will be me some day

Bad Days and Wonderful Husbands

So last night I had a bad day. I have been reading alot about IVF and have joined a on line support group called cafemom. Its a really a good thing, but i read about all the couples that did their IVF like right away. I was feeling sorry for myself for having to wait so long.
I want a baby so bad all i can think about all day is when am I going to be a mommy and give my wonderful husband the baby he deserves?

So anyway i read this book last night called Pregnancy wishes and IVF dreams, this got me thinking. This lady had a different problem then me. She had a problem on the males side. it wasn't anything he could do about it he was born with a issue of his sperm tube (i don't know what you call it) connecting to where it could be released.

So anyway the only way for him to be able to fertilize an egg is to have it injected into the egg. The only way for that to happen is IVF. So anyway they did IVF and it worked in the first time, with twins too. this gives me high hopes that it will work for me the first time too. if not i will have to wait another year before we will be able to try again, this depresses me because i will have to again wait a long time. Im so stressed that it will not work or worse yet that i will get pregnant and lost the baby for some reason or another. God please don't let that happen. I don't think i will be able to mentally handle that.

I called the Doctors today to find out more on pricing so i know what and when things will come up. it looks like this.
Medication 2500-3000
Mock Transfer 155.00
Dopler ultrasound 368.00
Sperm function test 105.00
Class 1 30.00
Class 2 55.000
Apt to hear the risks of IVF 168.00
To freeze any good unused eggs 850.00 plus 315.00 a year storage.
Then I have to pay a deposit of 7175.00
total 12,221.00

And that doesn't cover actually having a baby or any appts after I'm actually pregnant. As you can guess im pretty stressed out about the whole thing.

So anyway i thought the agreement that Bill and I had about this was we where gonna wait until June. which is almost a year out. this also freaked me out because i know this is a very time sensitive thing here. the older i get the harder its going to be. all the books and websites say this.
and as we all know if its on the Internet it must be true right? lol

I thank god all the time that I have a husband that know how to calm me down. He came home and could tell right away that i was not having a good day. he said what have you been reading? i showed him and he said that he thinks i like to torture myself. I told him that alot of the times reading all this IVF stuff gives me hope. but some day like that day make me sad.

so he cuddled me up and said whats the problem? I told him that I didn't want to wait but i know we have to and that it was tearing me up. He reminded me of all the reasons why we are waiting. All good ones because as you can see from the list above its alot of money. He reminded me that no matter how much we save up we are trying by my birthday next year. I told him that is soooooo long away. almost a year since my birthday is in the end of June and its the begging of Aug.

I also told him and my stresses. So here is what we agreed on. We will try by march so that i will be pregnant by my birthday next year. I will work and every penny that i make will go to IVF. The hope is that i have collected 7000.00 or more. but he assured me that we will try then even if i only have 3000 or what ever, and we are going to finance the rest. I told him i was also worrying about that because we don't have good credit anymore. what if we cant get it financed.
he said that we would have to cross that bridge when we came to it.

I can see the light now. 8 months away to start my treatment. 8 is alot but its alot better then 12 :)

I'm going to keep reading the information and book i have. I told him i will probably still have some bad days but that right then he made me feel like we are moving on this and that i can make it.
I will work and take what ever i can get to start saving for our baby. I got a job today matter a fact. its only a temp job but hay its 1000.00 or what ever for our baby fund :)
I will also focus on working out and losing more weight as i know this will also help me and the IVF treatments. 8 months lets see how much i can lose.....

How it all started!

Well here it is. My doctor let me read her blogg about going through IVF. She said that it helps her and it keeps her friends and family up to date with the good and bad. I haven’t under gone IVF yet but I will soon I hope. IVF is in-vitro fertilization. This is a process that is the last step for people that have infertility problems. So here is my story so far.

My husband and I have been together for over 10 years now and we have never use any type of protection. Know that we figured when it happened it would be fine. But through out all that we never even had a possible pregnancy to report.

About eight years ago when I still lived in Texas I went to a doctor there, a fertility specialist. He looked at me and said I will do a scan but don’t even bother to come back until you have lost 50 pounds. He did the scan and said that my walls where a little thick but that shouldn’t be a problem. I cried for a long time after that. I went into a depression that lasted along time. Instead of losing the 50 pounds that he wanted I gained like 80.

So about a year ago I get the lap band operation. So far I have lost about 60 pounds or more. So with the encouragement of my friends and family I went back to my primary doctor the one I talked about above. She ran a TON of tests on me. She said that larger people have healthy children all the time. Then she told me that she is undergoing the same thing right now.

The tests that she ran said that everything was fine. I have great blood pressure, and all my hormones are at normal levels. She said that I am perfectly healthy as far as the test she could run said. She put me on a medication called clomiphene. It’s an oral pill that is suppose to make your egg production increase so you are more likely to get an egg fertilized. So I tried this for a few months with no success. Dr Carr did warn me that if this didn’t work she would have to refer me to a specialist. I told her about my past experience and she assured me that this would not happen. She said that she was sending me where she goes.

I made an appointment that day for Dr Bankowski. He saw me and said that he was very hopeful for me. He said that depending on the treatment that I have to go through would depend on my success rates. He said there are 3 stages that they can do. After hearing my past he said that I was having about a 1% success rate. Step one would give me about a 12% success rate and cost about 500.00 a pop. Step 2 is called IUI and that is about 3000.00 a pop with a success rate of about 25%. Step 3 is called IVF that is 12000.00 with a 75% success rate.

So he said that he wanted to run yet more tests. He did an ultrasound to see how big my eggs where. He said that for step one he can do it when my eggs are 18-20cm. he did the ultrasound and we found out I had a couple with in that range, he said ok we are going to try step one right away. I cant tell you how excited I was because he told me that from what he see in my past test I should have to go further then step one. But that there are more tests that he wanted to run but could not due to my cycle dates.

He gave me a shot to take home and said to give it to myself at 10pm that night and make an appoint to come back in 2 days with my husband and he would inseminate me. I did the shot. Any one that knows me knows that I hate needles with a passion. But I did the shot and it didn’t even hurt so I felt that was a good sign. Bill and I went in and we gave them his sample.

Poor Bill I could tell he was nervous. We ha never had his tested and so far all my tests said I was fine, he was worried that it was him. They tested his sperm and they said to his joy he was fine, really good in fact. They said that his sperm couldn’t have tested better.

So he took the concentrated sperm and put it directly into my uterus. Had me wait on the table for a few mins and said to make an appoint to come back in two weeks and see if I was pregnant. I was so excited. I knew that this was a last minute thing and may not have worked the first time.

But I was progressing into my dream to become a mother. The next day was my day off and my sister and mother took me to babies’ r us. My mother didn’t want me to go she was concerned that I would be very disappointed if I wasn’t pregnant. But I told her that I know that if this time doesn’t work that next time would since next time I would be able to have the rest of the test done and have a better idea of my problem.

My sister was almost more excited then me to pick out baby things, we found the stroller and the pack n play that I wanted. One that I loved, and would work for a boy or a girl. I took pictures with my cell phone to remind me what I found. Oh yea and to show Bill what I liked.

So finally it was time to go and see if I was pregnant by this time I knew I was not. They said it didn’t work and to call them the first day I got my period to make an appointment. So I did. They had me go in there on day 3. They did an ultrasound and found everything growing great, they told me to go ahead and start taking the clomidphane that night. They also had me make an appoint to get the rest of the test done.

One of those tests was a test they shoot dye up my uterus to make sure my tubes are not clogged. I went in for this test on day 6 of my period. It was painful but necessary. They put the dye in and I watched the dye inter the tubes. One went in really fast. The other seemed blocked. She said that it’s not uncommon and for me to move to my side, that didn’t work so she had me move to my lay on my tummy. This got the dye moving and it went in. she said that was a good sign that the dye moved and that she would forward the results to my doctor.

I left feeling positive. I made an appoint to see Dr Bankowski. I saw him by day 9 of my cycle. He said that he had some bad news for me. He said that the test results for the dye test showed that my tubes have grown to twice the size they should be. This causes the fluid in the tubes to be too much for the eggs to live through. He said that they have to be removed and that the only way I will ever be able to have a baby is by IVF treatment.

Now remember that this was the 12000.00 one. My first thought was Billy will never let me do that. I will never have a baby. I freaked out. I mean I went crazy for a little while. I called Bill at work and told him what the doctor said. He said that I needed these tubes removed right away. I told him that I would not be able to give him a child with out IVF and all this crying so hard he had trouble understanding me.

He asked me if I needed him and I told him I did. He said that he would tell him boss and I was to come and get him. I was only about 5 mins away at the office anyway. I called my job and told them I wouldn’t be in after all and that I wanted able to handle things right now. My boss told me if I didn’t come in I would be written up. I told her I didn’t care; I couldn’t take it right now.

After talking to Billy for some time he told me that we could try IVF since it’s the only way. He said that we had to save up half the cost and we could finance the rest. He said that we would try in a year no matter how much we where able to save up. That made me feel a little better.

So the next step was to get those damn tubes take care of. I went back to my Doctor. Dr Carr said she understood my problem as she has a tube problem too. She was actually going into egg collection that week. I wished her luck and she gave me a number for a doctor to do the extraction. I called them and they said that they do not do that any more.

Despair hit me. I called my sister and told her what happened. She told me to use her doctor. Most of my family has used this guy now that my sister has insisted and he is very good. So doctor sargent said that he could do the operation. But after he talked to Dr. Bankowski he said that a clamp would do instead and that would mean less recovery time.

So I went in and got that done. So now all I have to do is get my IVF done. We are working on saving the money for this and it will probably take a few months. The good this for me is that Bill my husband makes enough money to pay all the bills so all my money I make will go to my baby fund. Oh yeah I did lose my job in the end and am currently not working. I have to pay about 3000 to the doctors and place I had my operation for getting my tubes done. After that all my money will go for IVF. I will keep you all in the loop as things happen.

Once I start my treatment I will also blogg that so you know what it was like for me. Please know every one is different and my experience may not match yours.

If you have read all this, thank you and please feel free to comment or ask questions. I am not in anyway in bad spirits or feel like I don’t want to talk about it, matter a fact sometimes I think people wished I would stop talking about it J

Love always

Amy and Bill.