Ashlie, Honey, Darlin, Baby - IUI #7



This cycle has been full of all kinds of twists and turns.  From reading the past few blogs, you can see the most of the twists this cycle has given us and in this one, I am going to give another twist that has happened which is where the blog title came from.  We are so very happy that this IUI is done and over with.  I pray that IUI # 7 brings us that sweet little baby we have so long prayed for. 

 

Warning for those men readers that I may have out there and also to those that don't want to hear too much TMI, you may want to skip this paragraph and go straight down to the next.  As I have said in a previous blog, after the trigger shot you are supposed to ovulate 24 - 36 hours later.  I took the trigger shot at 10:15 Saturday night which meant at the earliest, I should have ovulated was Sunday night at about 10:15.  Well, Sunday morning, I got up, went to church, came home, used the bathroom and when I did, HERE IS THE TMI SO YOU BETTER SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY AND DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT.  When I used the bathroom, there was a HUGE glob of cervical mucous.  More cervical mucous than I have EVER seen.  Immediate panic set in.  I get upset and start crying, I get moody, and I must add, I feel sorry for Trent.  After I cry for a while, I just decide to take a nap so I can get my mind off of it.  Now, the reason this upset me so badly is because an egg only lives for about 24 hours.  If I had ovulated previous to about 12:45 when I used the bathroom, today would have been a wasted IUI.  Then I got mad because we had wasted the money on the shot and everything else for that month IF I had already ovulated.  If I did ovulate, that means it would have been only about 12 - 13 hours after trigger shot. 

 

After what happened in the previous paragraph happened, me and Trent decided that before they came to get us to verify the donor information and to thaw the vial today, we would ask to speak to a nurse to make sure it wasn't ovulation yesterday morning.  Well, of course of all people that came to talk to us, it was Lisa.  Now, we LOVE Lisa but I think she thinks I am a little crazy.  She knows I am very picky about this whole situation and knows I like for everything to be perfect.  She also knows I over think things and like to have ALL of my ducks in a row.  I am always asking her a million questions.  Well, this morning when I told her about possible ovulation early yesterday morning she says "Ashlie, Honey, Darlin, Baby, you have got to calm down".  Me and Trent busted out laughing.  She reassures us it was not ovulation yesterday morning that it was most likely my body just preparing for ovulation.  She eases my mind and we go back out to the waiting room. 

 

If I had not ovulated yesterday morning, I knew I was going to be more excited about this cycle than ever before.  I can't help but to have in my mind the fact that we waited about 36 hours this time and this could be the magic trick to getting us pregnant.  Once we found out it wasn't ovulation yesterday morning, we get very excited and are acting totally goofy in the waiting room.  The lady from the lab calls us back to verify our donors information.  While we are there, we ask her not to use the vial from back in March of last year because this was the "one bad vial" that we had left and really didn't want to use right now.  This is the vial we was just randomly going to throw in with another vial.  We keep talking with the lady from the lab and I don't remember exactly what the conversation was but Trent says "Happy Wife, Happy Life" and the lab lady starts laughing and makes a big scene out of it.  She says, "I still haven't been able to train my husband, how in the world did you train him?"  I spoke out of 110% pure honesty and said he was that way when I found him.  Anyways, it was just too funny.  She had a good laugh with us. 

 

We then go back out to the waiting room and wait our approx hour and a half for the vial to be thawed and numbers to be counted.  During that time we are in a good mood, cutting up, acting crazy and being excited for what the day has in store for us.  We are very hopeful that today is the day.  Actually right before they called us back, I had posted on facebook "Today is the day! Today is the day! Today is the day! I am going to keep telling myself that. I am very hopeful and excited for today's outcome. Let go, let God! God is in control and is going to take care of us and supply our wants."  After we wait for our vial to be thawed, they call us back, check our wrist bands and then, the bad news.  I look down and see our chart and see that it says 6.3 million.  I immediately get really sad and asked the nurse practitioner if she thought we should unthaw another vial to use.  She said "well, you only have 2 vials left".  At that point, I about croaked.  No, we should have 3 vials!!!  What happened to the other vial?  I pull my composure together before I speak and I then told her we should have 3 vials left not 2.  She said ok, lets go back in the room and look at this and try to figure it out.  We get to the room and I pull out my handy folder. 

 

My folder that I keep up with EVERYTHING



This folder has stuck by my side through this whole infertility journey.  My folder is part of the reason that Lisa thinks I am crazy.  I always have this thing by my side when we go in there and normally have questions wrote down in it for them.  This thing is like my very most prized possession at this time.  It has everything in it as I have said in a previous blog.  Donor information, our information, vial information, all previous test results, IUI info, ultrasound info, surgery info, calendar, etc.  It has EVERYTHING we have dealt with through this journey in it.  To the point now, today was perfect example of why I carry it around like it is my most prized possession.  When we were trying to decide how many vials we have left, I immediately flipped to that section of my folder and started naming off to her how many vials we should have on what dates they were collected.  When we use a vial, we mark it off on our sheet so we have kept up with this very well and know EXACTLY how many we should have.  She wrote down what I thought we should have and went back to the lab to check with them.  When she came back, she said I was correct that they did find the other vial, it was just stored away somewhere different since it was done on a different date.  Shew, ok, that was a sudden sigh of relief however, this did not solve our problem of only having 6.3 million.  Once we discovered we did have 3 vials, we then continued to discuss with her about using another vial.  We then explained to her that me and Trent had previously discussed using the "one bad vial" in with another vial at some point.  She agreed and thought it would be wise and better our chances slightly to use that "one bad vial" since we won't be paying to use that vial alone.  She then left the room with the thawed vial to put it back in the incubator and thawed the other vial.  We then had to wait in the room for about another hour for that vial to thaw.  When she left the room, I lost it.  The vial that had only 6.3 million motile was the best vial that we thought we had left.  Again, they like to see atleast 10 million motile or higher for your best chances.  Since this was the best vial we had left, we knew that other than the one they were fixing to thaw, the last 2 vials would most likely only have about 5 million motile a piece in them which means we may have to combine those 2 vials.  If this is the case, after today instead of having 2 tries left, we may only have 1 try left.  This is very difficult information for us to choke down.  As much as we are ready for all of this to be over, we are scared for it to all be over.  I am TERRIFIED of only having 1 chance left at this if this cycle fails.  I cried for a while, prayed myself, asked for many prayers on facebook, quit crying and tried to be strong because I knew we had today's IUI to look forward to and try to be strong about.  We was still upset though because we knew based on previous results that the "one bad vial" that they have went to thaw would only have about 1 million to 1.5 million motile which would only increase us to about 8 million motile at the most.  After about an hour, she comes back in smiling and says "I got good news".  We immediately perked up and she then said "We have 9.8 motile sperm count"  That definitely cheered us up and we said "Combined?"  She responds with "NO in the 1 vial we just unthawed.  You now have about 16 million motile total".  What?  Oh my God?  How is this possible?  There is no way that this "ONE BAD VIAL" that we have had since last year and refused to use has gave us 9.8 million motile sperm count.  We even skipped doing IUI in February because that "one bad vial" was the only one we had at that time and we was not wasting money on it.  The only explanation I can give is when I posted on facebook for everyone to pray for us, they prayed, we prayed, everyone prayed, and God heard every single prayer that was prayed and answered some prayers for us.  I want to back up a little bit and say that while we was waiting the hour on the bad vial to thaw, I had called my mom to let her know what was going on and she told me that a story in the Bible came to mind and she didn't know why.  She didn't know if it meant anything or not but she felt like she needed to tell me.  The story was the one where the little boy had a couple loafs of bread and 2 fish and God made enough food from that to feed 5,000.  WOW!!!!  I think God brought that story to my moms mind for a reason.  God sure turned the "one bad vial" into a MILLIONS more motile sperm that what we expected.  Anyways, I used the restroom, she told me to undress, I told her to give us time to pray, then we would crack the door to let her know we were ready.

 

When I got back from the bathroom, Trent was checking out our vials.  He made me VERY nervous that he would drop them.  Boy would that be a nightmare.  They do have a lid on them but what if the vials broke.  Oh gosh, just too much to worry about.  We prayed, I got undressed and she came in, done the IUI and it was done and over with in no time as always.   She set the timer for 15 minutes as always and left the room.  Trent was back to his normal self, he added 5 minutes to the timer to make me lay there for a total of 20 minutes.  While we were laying there, he said he wondered what they done with the empty vials.  He just knew this round was going to work and wanted to bring the vials home for memories.  He waited till the nurse practitioner came back in and asked her if we could have them.  She said yes because they normally just got thrown away anyways.  Now, if we get pregnant on this round, we have the vials and it is just an extra added thing to help us explain to our child how they got here.  I have wrote a story to tell our child to explain everything to them as an infant.  It will be his/her/their bedtime story.  They will always know how they came about even though the story is very different from the norm. 

 Here I am after the IUI with the EMPTY vials.

Us together after IUI #7.  Trent is proud of our vials.

Again with the vials after the IUI was done.

Ok, this next picture is ridiculously stupid but we were in such a good mood after getting the good news on our motile sperm count that we were being absolutely ridiculously crazy.  Trent stuck the empty vials up my nose. 

 

Oh my goodness, I just love us.  I am sure most people think we are absolutely retarded but I am glad that even though we have been through so much, we can still laugh, cut up and have fun with one another.





As if laying down for 20 minutes at the doctors office wasn't enough, he made me lay down in the car on the way home with my hips propped up.  We went to eat at Olive Garden and got a nice full belly so I sat up for about an hour and a half to 2 hours and then when we got home, he put the recliner on the floor and made me prop up like this for 15 minutes.  He is just too silly.  I love him to death and can't wait to make him a daddy.

Today was a VERY emotional day for the both of us but it ended up being a GREAT day.  We will be testing on the 28th so I pray God just blesses us with that little miracle this month.  
 

I am sorry this blog was so horribly long but ALOT took place today so I figured I would share it all.  We are still concerned about the fact of possibly only having 1 try left however, we are trying to remain faithful, confident, and hopeful that this is the time for God to bless us with a child and we won't have to worry about anymore tries.