Aw, shucks....

Jill from Desperately Seeking Spawn has given me the "I Heart Your Blog" award. Jill has truly been an inspiration to me. She is one of the first blogs that I started reading and I love her sense of humor and truthfulness.

Now, the way this works, is I answer the following questions with single word responses, and pass the award on to 7 other bloggers:

1. Where is your cell phone? Purse
2. Where is your significant other? Work
3. Your hair color? Brownish-blond
4. Your mother? Strong
5. Your father? Dead
6. Your favorite thing? Beach
7. Your dream last night? None
8. Your dream/goal? Motherhood
9. The room you're in? Office
10. Your hobby? Cooking
11. Your fear? Childless
12. Where do you want to be in six years? Rich
13. Where were you last night? Friends
14. What you're not? Mother
15. One of your wish list items? Children
16. Where you grew up? Virginia
17. The last thing you did? Painted
18. What are you wearing? Clothes
19. Your T.V.? Off
20. Your pet? Three
21. Your computer? Laptop
22. Your mood? Balanced
23. Missing someone? Grandparents
24. Your car? Ford
25. Something you're not wearing? Shoes
26. Favorite store? Pottery Barn
27. Your Summer? Long
28. Love someone? Yes
29. Your favorite color? Pink
30. When is the last time you laughed? Today
31. Last time you cried? 15th

Now, I'd like to pass this award to the following bloggers. I recently started following their blogs and was immediately drawn in:

Tiffany at Our Slow Journey to Parenthood

Erin at Pieces of Me

Andrea at Pre-Heated Oven: Where Is My Bun?

Leah at The Cole Family Journal

The following have already received the award from one or more bloggers but I just have to do it again. They are my constant source of strength, support and inspiration.

Brenda at No Regrets

Wendy at Our Story

Kathy at Busted Babymaker

Am I Willing To Gamble? Part II

Thanks to everyone who provided their advice.

Just a few areas that I wanted to clarify...

Anna had asked if IUI was a possibility. Unfortunately, it is not for me. As a result of the ectopic pregnancy last year, my left tube had to be removed. My right tube is partially blocked and I have about a 50% chance of having another ectopic if I were to conceive "naturally" (this would include IUI).

So, I am left with only 2 options - IVF or adoption.

When we started down the proverbial infertility road, DH and I discussed our options and decided that we wanted a biological child.

We chose the IVF route and at this point, that's the road that we'll stay on - no matter where it takes us.

While I'm not against adoption, I'm not sure it's right for us, right now. I feel like we're already so invested in IVF that I don't want to backtrack and start down a new path.

So, I guess the real decision becomes the length of time and money that we want to invest in IVF.

Leah asked about getting a 2nd opinion. To be honest, I haven't really given that a lot of thought yet. I'm not ready to give up on the clinic or my doctor because I still think they are doing the best they can for me.

Realistically, I've only had one fresh IVF cycle and with the exception of the end result, it was a good cycle.

My FSH levels weren't wacky, I stimmed well, had a good retrieval and ended up with almost 50% of my embryos getting to blast stage.

I really only count the frozen cycle as a 1/2 cycle. Partly because we didn't have to "make" new embryos and partly because the success rate was only 30% for my age range.

Erin - I really liked your comment about which would be more painful - buying treatments that might fail or buying 2 more opportunities.

If I were to answer that question, my answer would be that I'd want to buy 2 more opportunities. I think I would always wonder "what if" if we didn't try again.

Hmmmm....

I guess I just answered my own question, didn't I?

So, the bottom line is that we'll wait to see what my RE has to say at my next appointment.

Am I Willing To Gamble?

My "post cycle" follow up appointment with Dr. B is November 18th.

I have to say that at this moment, I'm fairly complacent about the whole thing.

An "Eh" (shrug shoulders) attitude, if you will.

I don't think she'll provide any earth-shattering revelations and I'm fully expecting the same response that I got last time.

"Sometimes it takes a few tries".

Well, that would be great if my father was Donald Trump.

So, I'm at a cross roads.

I don't feel like I'm ready to quit yet. That's a good sign.

What I'm having a hard time dealing with is the very real possibility of failing again.

I have 2 major obstacles...

1) My clinic has a Shared Risk program. Qualified patients pay one flat rate and receive up to 6 cycles. Unfortunately, I no longer qualify because the patient has to be able to complete all 6 cycles before her 39th birthday.

Guess who turns 39 in April?

2) I mentioned before that my insurance is tapped out which means we'd have to take out a loan. If we took out $25,000, that would give us one more fresh cycle and god willing, another frozen. Sounds promising?

What if those 2 cycles don't work?

We're stuck paying the loan back with nothing to show for it.

That's a bitter pill to swallow. The sting and anger after writing that check each month would be unbearable.

So, that leaves me in quite a pickle.

Do I gamble?

Do we take our chances that it will work on what we know would be our last one, possibly 2, chances?

I need some advice. What would you do?

A Few of My Hobbies

Since I don't have anything IVF-related to share, I thought I'd share some of my hobbies.

I've mentioned before that I like to decorate and I'm admitting it for the first time here...

My name is Suzanne and I'm a Pottery Barn-aholic.

Fall is my favorite time of year and as soon as it starts getting cold outside, I love to whip out my autumn decorations and then I run around like a crazy lady.

So, here are a few photos of my decorating...

Living Room / mantle



Close-Up of Mantle



For those of you familiar with Pottery Barn, they had a really cool frame with black/white photos and keys in their catalog about 2 years ago. I refused to pay $180 for it, so I made my own...



And, lastly.

I mentioned that I would be painting my bathroom this week while I was off. I started at 9:30 this morning and I just finished enough that I could take a break.

Before

It's hard to see but the stripes were done with paint.

Lots of tape and paint.





After






I can't believe what a huge difference it made!

And, with that....

Kisa and I say "Good night"!

(I just took this while I was typing)

Healing

It's been almost a week since my last post and to be honest, I've been staying away from my blog because I just don't have much to write about.

I feel like I am starting to heal from the bitterness and pain that I felt after hearing the beta results.

So, here's what been happening over the past week. Hold on your hats, it's not very exciting...

We celebrated our 4-year wedding anniversary. We've actually been together almost 20 years so the wedding anniversary doesn't seem very monumental. We went to Ruths Chris for dinner and shared a bottle of wine. That was actually before I got the beta results so I was fairly certain of the result at that point.

I've been throwing myself into work. My job is very cyclical and thankfully, this past week was one of the busy ones. It helped me take my mind off things - atleast until I get home.

I put away all of my ivf medications and wiped anything ivf-related off my calendar. I'm operating off one basic assumption - out of sight, out of mind.

I still had 14 vacation days left so I decided to take this week off. I plan to re-paint and re-decorate my bathroom.

Yesterday, my husband and I took a day trip out to our college campus of West Virginia University. It's about 3 hours from our house and always a beautiful drive through the mountains during the fall.

It was a nice getaway. We got on the road by 8:00 am and arrived in Morgantown by 11. Walked around campus, bought some new sweatshirts, had lunch at one of the restaurants we used to go to and got back on the road around 2:30.

It happened to be Fall Family Weekend so there were lots of parents in town. I was at the cash register buying our shirts and the cashier asked if I had my Parents ID.

Of course, my husband thought that was the funniest thing EVER. Here we were thinking we were going to "blend in" to campus because we don't think we're that old and it turns out we look more like the parents visiting.

There is one thing that surprised both of us. The campus seemed so much smaller to us. It's not a huge campus anyway but everything just seemed small - the student union building, the town, even the restaurant.

It was weird.

I also decided to move forward with our "annual" Halloween party. We started throwing a party about 5 years ago and it just turned into an annual thing, except for last year.

The ectopic had just happened a few weeks before and I didn't know at the time, but I was heading toward emergency surgery that same weekend.

So, we're doing it this year. And, now, I'm kind of excited that I can atleast drink.

I pulled out the costumes that I bought last year and never wore so we'll see how it goes.

I'm going to be a cave woman and my DH is going to be The Hamburgular.

I don't know... he has a thing for McDonald's.

If the pictures are "post-able", I'll share a few afterwards.

I guess that's about it.

Are you still awake?!

The Last 24 Hours...

The following depicts true events of the last 24 hours…

Monday


4:30 – 6:00 pm – Got home from work and decided to re-arrange my home office because I needed to have control over something

6:00 – 7:30 pm – Made chicken flautas and Mexican rice for dinner. Yummy!

7:30 – 8:00 pm – Finish dinner dishes

8:00 pm - Decided to get my mind off things by watching TV. Land on Discovery Health channel and a show called “Medical ER”

8:05 pm – Commercial break. One ad about diapers.

8:08 pm – Show returns

8:15 pm – Commercial break. Another diaper ad AND a pregnancy test ad thrown in for good measure

8:18 pm – Show returns

8:30 pm – Commercial break. This time Brooke Shields shows up and tries to hock Volvos by using babies as a marketing tool. F* YOU!

8:33 pm – Show returns

8:50 pm – Commercial break. The diapers are back.

8:53 pm – Show returns

8:57 pm – Commercial break. Wanna guess? Yep, another pregnancy test.

Alright, assholes! You want an idea for a pregnancy test ad? Here's one for ya!

How about if you feature a woman who has been trying to get pregnant for the last 8 years? You show her going to the drugstore daily to buy pregnancy tests in the hopes that this time, it might, just might be positive.

And the end of the ad? It shows said woman sitting in the bathroom crying because she got another f'ing negative.

And do you know what your slogan could be?

Do ya?

How about "Brand X. The official pregnancy test of infertile women".

9:00 pm – Decide to watch “Dr. G Medical Examiner” on the same channel

9:10 pm – Commercial break. Diapers again.

9:13 pm – Show returns

9:30 pm – Commercial break. Hey! It’s a new ad – no wait, it has a baby in it.

9:33 pm – Show returns

9:47 pm – Commercial break. Any guesses? Yep, Brooke Shields is at it again.

9:56 pm – Show ends and I go to bed where I cry myself to sleep

Note to self: Apparently soon-to-be and existing mothers love shows about weird illnesses, afflictions and autopsies because the advertisers were all over their asses.

Lesson learned? Discovery Health not infertile-friendly.


Tuesday

8:25 am – Driving to work and see 2 women pushing strollers with their oh-so-cute babies inside.

8:35 am – Arrive at work and ride up elevator with pregnant lady

11:15 am – Speak with client on phone and make small talk. She tells me she’s 7 months pregnant with twins.

I did manage to make it home from work without seeing anything baby-related so I'm hoping the last 24 hours of baby sightings was something like seeing locusts. It only happens every 7 years.

Because, seriously.

How many times can one person be exposed to THAT many baby-related things in the 24-hour period after receiving a negative beta?

Oh. I guess the answer would be TWELVE times!

Either I'm being punked or someone is trying really, really hard to get me to lose my freakin' mind.

Well, to whoever you are....

I'm throwing up the white flag. I give up. You win.

Strike Two

Beta was negative.