Bluebells and a BFP!

This past weekend my little munchkin and I went to visit my parents in Northern VA and to see my brother, as it was his birthday this Tuesday. My brother brought over his 2 kids with him so Adeline got to enjoy playing with her cousins all weekend! This is only the 2nd time she has gotten to meet them so I was very happy it worked out. My brother has a daughter who is 2 years older than Adeline and a son who is 7 years old. They all played along really well and it was so much fun watching them run around outside together and all go down to the creek to throw rocks. And then on Sunday, my mom, sister, Adeline and I went to go see the bluebells! It was so exciting that my brother’s birthday coincided with the bluebells being in bloom this year!! It is such a beautiful site to see and I hope to make it an annual tradition.  

When we got back home from my parents, I decided I couldn’t wait until Tuesday to take a pregnancy test and hoped it would be late enough that I wouldn’t get a false positive. It was 12dpo rather than 14 but I figured that was close enough. And I guess I figured right because I got a pretty dark 2nd line!! I took a digital test on Monday just to be extra sure and it read out pregnant too! So yesterday, my 14dpo I went and got my 1st beta blood test done on my lunch break from work. I think they forgot to call me, so I called them today for the results. My 1st beta was 337 and my progesterone level was a 22! I am on progesterone inserts so I guess they are doing a good job. I will continue to take them as well as my Metformin from here on out. And prenatals of course.

My 2nd beta will be on Monday and as long as my numbers double I should be getting my 1st ultrasound for baby #2 very soon!! I guess my doctor wasn’t kidding when she said Letrozole worked so much better than Clomid. I hope this little one sticks and that we are well on our way to getting Adeline a sibling! This time around I know how risky a pregnancy with PCOS can be so we are waiting until at least 12 weeks to announce this pregnancy. With Adeline we told family at 5 weeks because it was Christmas time and we couldn’t wait. I am glad things worked out well with that one even though I went into early labor. Dr. P is going to work extremely hard to prevent a miscarriage and preterm labor with this little one. ❤

Fast Paced!

Yesterday was my 1st Ultrasound for my monitored cycle on Letrozole. I was on cd11 so I wasn’t expecting much to be happening for another week but I actually have 1 follicle that is measuring at 15mm and a smaller one at 12mm. So Letrozole is definitely working for me! 18mm is the ideal size we are waiting for and Dr. C said it should be growing about 2mm each day at this point in my cycle. We are banking on this 15mm one because the 12mm will probably not be big enough in time, but you never know. So I am to do my trigger shot on Saturday night, cd13! On Clomid I don’t ovulate until cd18 or 19 so I am really surprised and caught off guard with how quick paced everything is happening on Letrozole. Apparently a nurse wont be doing my trigger shot for me, maybe because it is happening on a weekend? Either way, I will be having AC inject me. I don’t think I am brave enough to give myself a shot just yet. After this, Sunday and Monday is go time and then Tuesday I have to start inserting the progesterone. Dr. C said she would rather we not wait until I am pregnant to start these and have to risk playing catch up with me producing too low levels of progesterone on my own and risk having a miscarriage essentially. So I will be starting them right away just as a precaution. Then finally in 2 weeks I will take a at home pregnancy test and see if this 1st monitored cycle with Letrozole was a success or not! I still can’t believe all of this is happening this weekend! Adeline could be getting a sibling in no time!

Small Updates

Hey Guys! So just some quick updates. Tomorrow I will be cd3 and will start Letrozole. I had to take progesterone to restart my cycle, of course. I cheated and took it starting on cd30 rather than cd35. Hopefully that doesn’t effect anything…I will be starting with 2 pills of letrozole rather than just one as Dr. P said she wanted to start me off with a medium dose to give it a fair shot. Hopefully it will work a lot better than Clomid. I will go in next Thursday on cd11 to then get an ultrasound to see what kind of follicles we are working with and what sizes they are. I am sure I wont be ready for a trigger shot at that point, as I never have ovulated before cd 18 but who knows. I am glad to finally begin this new journey/cycle though! Wish me luck and hopefully no bad symptoms with Letrozole!

Spending Valentine’s Day at the Specialist’s

I know it has been awhile since my last update but it took some time before I could get back into finally seeing the specialist and actually having an update for sharing. Yesterday was my 1st appointment back at the specialist’s to see my old RE that I had met with just before getting pregnant with Adeline. I love Dr. P, she is the sweetest and most personable doctor. My appointment actually went very well! She really knows how to put my mind at ease and lift my spirits.

Dr. P said because I was able to get pregnant with Adeline without too much intervention, she didn’t see the need for me to get a hysteroscopy or for AC to need a sperm analysis. She went so far as to say she didn’t see my needing an iui or ivf in the future either! I hope she isn’t building me up too much for this all to come crashing down, but I am excited about all of this again!

My new plan of action is 1st, to just call back in 10 days to make sure all of my test results came back normal. I had to give 7 vials of blood at my appointment yesterday. Once that clears, I wait for cycle day 1 to roll back around. Unfortunately, I am only on cd7 today so it is going to  be a long wait! And I am sure I will need progesterone to get it to restart too, but what else is new. Anyway, I will call on cd1 and schedule an ultrasound for around cd10 or so, I can’t remember. And on cd 3, I will begin taking 2 pills of letrozole at night for 5 nights. This will be my first time with Letrozole but my doctor thinks it is going to be a lot better for me than Clomid was. I hope so! Dr. P is going to give me a mid range dose rather than starting at a low dose. Then during my ultrasound they will measure my follicle sizes and once they get one that is big enough, I will do a trigger shot to induce ovulation and then hopefully in 2 weeks I will be pregnant. I am so excited to finally be having a monitored cycle and to actually see how my body is responding to the Letrozole and what sizes my follicles are. I have never had a monitored cycle before so I am heading into some new territory here but I am trying to stay optimistic with all of this.

More new and better things about this cycle, thanks to being at a specialist vs my regular obgyn, if I do get pregnant, I will immediately start progesterone vaginally to help me from miscarrying. PCOS ups my chances significantly for a miscarriage so I am very pleased that Dr. P is going to be so proactive rather than wait until week 14 to start progesterone shots like my regular obgyn was going to do. I will still switch over to the shots regardless though to help prevent early delivery again since Adeline was born at 29 weeks/28 full weeks. Thanks PCOS for all of these stressors! But I am so excited and hopeful with this new plan of attack. I can see Adeline getting a sibling so much more clearly now! Wish me luck!

Oh and I hope you all had a Happy Valentine’s Day! Enjoy the random pictures of Adeline, I promise I will do an update on her soon, as she is 20 months now! I cannot believe it! And how cute is her first little pony tail?! She is getting to be such a big girl ❤

Happy Christmas Eve!

I can’t believe it is already Christmas Eve! December always flies by so fast. Especially because it is busy at my work too and then there is gift shopping and all the holiday parties, plus both my mother in law and father in law have December birthdays! Oh and we also go to Busch Gardens Christmastown at least once this month as well. This year we have actually been twice, so much fun! I, unfortunately, have to work a half day today but got to take off Dec 26th and 27th so that we could spend Christmas with my side of the family! Yes, that is right, it is finally my turn again!!! I am so excited to be at my grandpa’s house for Christmas dinner. What are all of your Christmas and holiday plans?

TTC: So we are officially in the 2 week wait. I ovulated on cd 19, which was this Wed. Dec 19th. I am not really feeling any signs yet, but it is only 5dpo so it is still insanely early to start worrying about it. I am just sooo happy this round actually worked since last month was such a huge fail. Although, I am a little concerned because on the night of ovulation I had sever cramping so much so that it was painful to sit down to dinner…and then Saturday morning I woke up to more cramps! Only these morning cramps were so excruciating I was doubled over in agony and had AC get Adeline packed up so he could drive me to the hospital! I took some extra strength Tylenol which helped dull the pain pretty quickly though so at the last min. I had AC turn the car around and go home. Now I am a little concerned I might have Endometriosis or something on top of my pcos and am wondering if I really have a shot at all for getting pregnant this month. I plan on calling my obgyn after the holidays to see if they can test for that, or look into other causes. I will keep you all posted as always.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Clomid for the Last Time

Well, this is it. I just finished my very last dose of Clomid this past Monday. It is kind of scary knowing there will be no next cycle after this one. If it doesn’t work, we move into a gray area and will have a lot of things to figure out on what our next steps will be. I am going to start testing for ovulation tonight, cd 12, just so there is no possible chance that I miss it. If all goes well, I should ovulate sometime between cd 17 and cd 19. We’ll see! It would be the best Christmas gift but I am trying to not get my hopes up…

Thanksgiving 2018

Happy Thanksgiving my American friends! Yes, I am aware it is almost a week late 😛 Normally every year AC and I rotate whose family we see on Thanksgiving and Christmas but this year we tried something different. We managed to visit both sides of the family! I think it went really well actually and even the traffic driving to Northern Va

and Williamsburg really was pretty great. No major slow downs! We started our Thanksgiving journey out on Wednesday evening after we both got off of work and headed to my family’s house. We had Thanksgiving the next day out at my Aunt and Uncles house. Everything was delicious and we all had a good time catching up. Adeline mostly ate a bunch of cheese slices…and then discovered the cranberry sauce. Which she ate a little of and then immediately rubbed into her hair and all over her adorable little dress that I wore as a baby.  We then moved onto dessert and of course she had to eat the chocolate pudding pie! So that went all over her face and dress as well. By the end of the night, we had to strip her down and just let her run around in her diaper.

She seemed to be having a ball though. Oh and when I say running around, I guess I should throw in that Adeline is now walking just before turning 18 months! Pretty much that week leading up to Thanksgiving she has been taking more and more steps, not running yet but definitely building up her speed.

I think her having to wear dresses for the holiday really helped because crawling in a dress is a huge pain and just gets in the way.

Anyway, then Friday morning we bundled up (it was 30 degrees!) and packed up the car and were on our way to spend the rest of the weekend at AC’s parent’s house.

He still got the majority of the holiday since Thanksgiving is his turn this year. His mother works on Thanksgiving so we always do a 2nd big dinner with his family afterwards. This year we walked around Colonial Williamsburg on Black Friday, it was packed but still a lot of fun to site see and get a nice warm lunch at the pub. And once it got dark, they had trees lit up and their ice skating rink was aglow. Sorry I didn’t take any pictures there! Saturday we  just relaxed most of the day and then Sunday AC’s parents and our little family went over to his sister’s house to have our 2nd Thanksgiving dinner. This was the 2nd year we have had a Thanksgiving at her house with her in laws too, it was a packed house! After dinner, dessert, and playing outside for awhile(much warmer that day, in the 60s) AC, Adeline and I headed back on the road around 5pm to go home. Overall it was a great holiday weekend filled with lots of food and family! I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving as well!

**TTC- and for those of you wondering were I am in this cycle, I just took my last pill of progesterone last night. Yep, I had to resort back to restarting my cycle that way as I am on cd40. Ugh. I am so hoping this very last chance on Clomid works…Also because last month was such a huge flop, I upped my Metformin dosage from 500mg to 1000mg. The higher dose did make the first 2 days on it miserable, my stomach hated me all day but after that it has actually been ok. I hope it stays that way, Metformin is very unpredictable with how my stomach reacts. but hopefully it will all be worth it!

Next Cycle Down for the Count

Well, I am calling it. This month was a bust. As good as the last cycle was, that’s how bad this one is. I am on cd 24 and nothing has happened! I haven’t ovulated and it doesn’t seem like I am going to. The only thing I can do is keep using the OPKs every night until cd 35 when I can take progesterone and start over. This next cycle will be my 3rd, technically 6th round on Clomid, which means it is my very last shot before I am sent back to a specialist/ RE. I honestly think if that is the case, AC and I will probably take a break for awhile and just see what happens continuing on with the Metformin and Myo-Inositol. We are not prepared to go back to the RE since it is 100% out of pocket. Our insurance doesn’t cover infertility treatments and with the holidays right around the corner, we aren’t going to be able to swing that kind of expense for awhile. Ugh, well that’s where I am at for this round, a big nothing. Though I guess it isn’t officially over until cd 35, but I don’t see this turning around. I hope I am wrong

Busy October

October has been a busy month and I love it. Fall is definitely my favorite month (Though Christmas will always be my favorite holiday). October 12th was AC and my 4th year wedding anniversary! It has been challenging at times to say the least, what with infertility, pcos, and all the hormonal mood swings but we have made it another year! This year we decided to head back to West Virginia, up in the mountains where we got married. I was picturing gorgeous fall leaves everywhere and the perfect 60 degree fall weather. Boy was I wrong!! Even though 4 years ago it was peak leave peeping time, it wasn’t even close this year. Everything was still green everywhere! It had been very warm up until that weekend so I guess that delayed things up in the mountains this year. The weekend of the 12th was not warm however, it was in the 40s half the day and then would warm up to 50 in the late afternoon! We did not prepare for such cold temps, I didn’t even bring a jacket only sweatshirts! It was still a lot of fun and we got a lot of hiking in and walked around the cute towns of Berkeley

Springs, WV and Winchester, Va. Adeline is a huge fan of any and all bodies of water. She loved looking at all of the little falls on the hike and would throw a fit when we would drag her away. Such a little water baby. I really hope we can get her into a swim class next summer.

This past weekend my parents came to visit Adeline and I to keep us company while AC was away for an Army conference. I was so grateful to have extra help! It was another chilly weekend but in the 60s so warmer than the mountains of WV at least! So we were able to go hiking together that Sunday before they headed back. I live in more of a city/ beach area so I was really surprised when my dad found us a wooded area with long hiking trails running through it 3 min from my house! How did I not know this existed?! We got a good 4 mile hike in and Adeline slept about 3 of those miles haha. My dad was carrying her and I guess she was super cozy in her warm puffy coat and knit boots. It was so great to see my parents though, they don’t get to travel to my house that often so I has extremely happy with the visit.

 

TTC News: this 1st round back on Clomid paired with Metformin didn’t work. Well it did and it didn’t. I am not pregnant but I ovulated on cd 18 which never ever happens and my period came naturally 2 weeks after I ovulated. Again, never ever happens! So I am actually very pleased with this 1st cycle. I am on the low dose (500mg) of metformin still and after re-reading old blog posts about how poorly my being on the high dose of 1,500mg went, up until the 3rd round of Clomid when I got pregnant with Adeline, I am super pleased and give all credit to Myo-inostol! I now have dangerously high hopes that this 2nd round of Clomid will work…I start the 2nd round tonight actually, so here we go! Round 2 of 3!

A Good Start to October

I don’t know if it was the myo-inositol paired with my Metformin but I ovulated on Friday the 5th! I am so relieved that I wont be needing to up my Metformin dosage yet. I am currently 4dpo, so not much to really report yet but I am hopeful.

This whole last weekend was actually a really good one. Friday I ovulated, then Saturday AC and I dropped Adeline off at her grandpa’s house and we went off to Busch Gardens Howl-O-Scream! It’s a tradition for us to go every October and is so much fun. I wish it wasn’t so humid but it was still great to walk around and see all of the spooky decorations. Then on Sunday we went to church and afterwards stopped at a pumpkin patch. The 80 degree weather was a little off putting so we only stayed to take a few cute pictures. I am not going to lie, we didn’t even get our pumpkins yet! I don’t want them to rot before Halloween in this heat. Luckily, this weekend is calling for 60 degree temps so maybe fall is finally coming…