Hi.
It's been a while. Sorry about that. The past few weeks have been crazy, but you don't want to hear about that. If you've been following my story, you know that we're in the Czech Republic.. like.. right now. And we are! It's amazing. No, it's not paradise, but it's beautiful here. The people are nice enough the the weather is great, although a tad bit chilly (tho you won't hear any complaints from me).
But onto the good stuff - we had our first ultrasound appointment on Thursday. I met Petra (one of the coordinators) and she was absolutely adorable. She was incredibly sweet and accommodating. She listened to each and every one of my concerns and answered all my questions. I didn't meet Dr. Vrana (who has been my doctor thus far) instead I met the other doctor, whose name slips my mind, and he was also very nice.
My ultrasound showed 15 follicles, which is awesome. The largest of which was 13 but mostly around 8 to 10. The doctor was pleased with my results and increased my Gonal F injections from 225 a day to 250 on Friday and 275 Saturday & Sunday. He also prescribed me Cetrotide which prevents the body from ovulating on its own.
My next appointment is tomorrow at 8:30. I'm looking forward to it. I really hope I responded well to the extra meds and my follicles will be much bigger. I'm also secretly hoping that I have even more sneaky little follicles pop up with the extra meds. The doctor informed me that, even though I have 15 follicles, probably 10 of them will actually contain eggs, and then less than that will fertilize after the retrieval and 4 or 5 will make it to day 5.
This is just an average but pretty accurate. I'm hoping to the be exception and get more than what he assumes I will. Tomorrow he'll also let me know when my retrieval will be. He thinks it'll be on Thursday but we'll confirm this during our appointment.
I'm pretty ready to get this over with. The shots have been making my tummy so bloated. So if my pants aren't stretchy or just way too big, I'm not wearing them. But I realized yesterday that I haven't been eating much. I mean, we have to shop in foreign grocery stores so we don't have a ton of food in our apartment, but I just haven't been hungry. Being puffy really causes my stomach to think it's already full, so I keep skipping meals and not even realizing it. But today we're putting forth an effort to really eat more. I don't want my little follies to be malnourished!
And that's it for now. I've been super distracted so I haven't felt like blogging since we arrived, but I wanted to let you all know how I was doing. Our apartment is super bright and clean. I absolutely love it. The tram is right across the road so it's perfectly convenient and I LOVE public transportation so it's such a treat for me. Today we plan on doing some sight-seeing and touring the city. Altogether we've been taking it easy and really enjoying our time here. It's so nice to have my DH with me 24/7. :)
Hope you're all well! I'll check in after my next ultrasound!
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Friday, September 6, 2013
74 Degrees
Let's talk about my thyroid... (try to contain your excitement ;) It was high - 3.62, to be exact. I had no idea it was that high. So, apparently there's different scales to measure your TSH level, and doctors will argue over what's high and what's not, but for the sake of getting pregnant, my clinic said they wanted it around 1.0. Well obviously 3.62 is not 1, so I had some work to do. They put me on levothyroxine for about a month now and it's been great.
Oh, so the title of the blog.. right. While it's not 74 degrees out at the moment (don't I wish it was), that's the temperature in our apartment. "Okay, so what?" you might say. Before taking this medication, I liked for the temperature to never go over 72. And even that was pushing it. I'd bring it down to 71 or even lower depending on the day. What this meant was that I couldn't tolerate heat. This is one of the classic signs of hypothyroidism.
Let's explore this a little - My basal body temperature (if you're a fellow TTCer, you know you've taken yours every morning for at least a few months), would generally hover around 97.5 in my follicular phase (pre-ovulation) and then 98.1 in my luteal phase (post ovulation). Now that's an average, but I've seen my BBT get as low as 96.7. Yikes. And sometimes it'd get higher than 98.1 but it was usually just for a day or two after I O'd.
I thought for sure this meant that I had a luteal phase defect. I clearly wasn't producing enough progesterone to sustain high temps and therefore I was losing a potential pregnancy each month. But no doctor ever bothered to check my thyroid. And low BBTs are a classic sign of hypothyroidism.
That was until Reprogenesis checked it. And I'm so glad they did because having a high TSH (anything about a 1.5 to 2) can cause miscarriage. Now my BBT has been 98.5 or higher when I wake up. This means that I'm not a giant pool of sweat whenever it creeps above 72 in our apartment. This makes me happy. And it also makes me feel reassured that these doctors just might know what they're doing. :)
So the moral of my story is, have your doctor check your thyroid! You could be hypo and not even realize it!
Oh, so the title of the blog.. right. While it's not 74 degrees out at the moment (don't I wish it was), that's the temperature in our apartment. "Okay, so what?" you might say. Before taking this medication, I liked for the temperature to never go over 72. And even that was pushing it. I'd bring it down to 71 or even lower depending on the day. What this meant was that I couldn't tolerate heat. This is one of the classic signs of hypothyroidism.
Let's explore this a little - My basal body temperature (if you're a fellow TTCer, you know you've taken yours every morning for at least a few months), would generally hover around 97.5 in my follicular phase (pre-ovulation) and then 98.1 in my luteal phase (post ovulation). Now that's an average, but I've seen my BBT get as low as 96.7. Yikes. And sometimes it'd get higher than 98.1 but it was usually just for a day or two after I O'd.
I thought for sure this meant that I had a luteal phase defect. I clearly wasn't producing enough progesterone to sustain high temps and therefore I was losing a potential pregnancy each month. But no doctor ever bothered to check my thyroid. And low BBTs are a classic sign of hypothyroidism.
That was until Reprogenesis checked it. And I'm so glad they did because having a high TSH (anything about a 1.5 to 2) can cause miscarriage. Now my BBT has been 98.5 or higher when I wake up. This means that I'm not a giant pool of sweat whenever it creeps above 72 in our apartment. This makes me happy. And it also makes me feel reassured that these doctors just might know what they're doing. :)
So the moral of my story is, have your doctor check your thyroid! You could be hypo and not even realize it!
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
IVF Timeline
I've been purposely staying away from blogging for a little bit. I've felt a little nuts lately with all the planning and preparations that go into doing IVF across the Atlantic. I had a tiff with my coordinator and ended up requesting a new one. That was a huge, unnecessary source of anxiety. Things are much better now, but I have always been one who can only focus on "the now" so needless to say, I couldn't cope.
But things are fine now. We sent our payment yesterday so now it's truly finalized. All of my medication is here and I've been on birth control and levothyroxine since 8/20 (CD3). It's now CD17 which means tomorrow I increase my birth control dosage from 1 to 2 a day - morning and night. Right now I have a little tenderness in my breasts but nothing crazy. I feel like this will be a little intense. Honestly, it shouldn't be anything compared to the "big drugs" so I'm trying not to make much of it. I also start taking prednisone around the same time, which is a steroid that will tell the body not to attack the embryo. Great stuff.
Just in case you're curious about our timeline, here's a breakdown for you:
8/20: Start Desogen (birth control)
8/20: Start Levothyroxine (thyroid medication)
9/05: Increase BCP to 1-0-1 (morning & night)
9/06: Start Prednisone & Folic Acid
9/08: Last BCP - continue other medication
9/12: Expected Period
9/14: (CD3) Start Gonal F
9/16: Leave for Czech Republic
9/17: Arrive in Prague & take bus to Brno
9/18: First U/S - do not take Gonal until after appointment for dosage adjustment
9/18: Possible start date of Cetrotide (a drug that suppresses ovulation)
9/23: Second U/S
9/26: Possible Egg Retrieval
10/01: Possible Egg Transfer
So as we all know, in the world of IF we can plan to our little hearts content, but sometimes the body does what it wants to, which means some of these dates are tentative. Who knows when the actual retrieval will be. I think they like to stim for about 10 days, so it shouldn't be too far off the timeline above. But I've always been a good responder, so I might be ready sooner. We'll see.
And just an update on the apartment - I know I said that we'd be staying at that super modern apartment in Brno, but we're back to staying at the Vienna Apartment. I'm pretty excited. Tomas (the owner) has been absolutely brilliant in his emails and super accommodating. I feel confident about staying at this place and it seems like it's in a good part of town that's close to plenty of stores and such.
Well that's it for now - we leave in less than two weeks. Holy. Crap. I still need to buy a new purse cuz mine's been falling apart and that's the last thing I need while running through an airport. So off I go to the store! Hope you're all doing well!
But things are fine now. We sent our payment yesterday so now it's truly finalized. All of my medication is here and I've been on birth control and levothyroxine since 8/20 (CD3). It's now CD17 which means tomorrow I increase my birth control dosage from 1 to 2 a day - morning and night. Right now I have a little tenderness in my breasts but nothing crazy. I feel like this will be a little intense. Honestly, it shouldn't be anything compared to the "big drugs" so I'm trying not to make much of it. I also start taking prednisone around the same time, which is a steroid that will tell the body not to attack the embryo. Great stuff.
Just in case you're curious about our timeline, here's a breakdown for you:
8/20: Start Desogen (birth control)
8/20: Start Levothyroxine (thyroid medication)
9/05: Increase BCP to 1-0-1 (morning & night)
9/06: Start Prednisone & Folic Acid
9/08: Last BCP - continue other medication
9/12: Expected Period
9/14: (CD3) Start Gonal F
9/16: Leave for Czech Republic
9/17: Arrive in Prague & take bus to Brno
9/18: First U/S - do not take Gonal until after appointment for dosage adjustment
9/18: Possible start date of Cetrotide (a drug that suppresses ovulation)
9/23: Second U/S
9/26: Possible Egg Retrieval
10/01: Possible Egg Transfer
So as we all know, in the world of IF we can plan to our little hearts content, but sometimes the body does what it wants to, which means some of these dates are tentative. Who knows when the actual retrieval will be. I think they like to stim for about 10 days, so it shouldn't be too far off the timeline above. But I've always been a good responder, so I might be ready sooner. We'll see.
And just an update on the apartment - I know I said that we'd be staying at that super modern apartment in Brno, but we're back to staying at the Vienna Apartment. I'm pretty excited. Tomas (the owner) has been absolutely brilliant in his emails and super accommodating. I feel confident about staying at this place and it seems like it's in a good part of town that's close to plenty of stores and such.
Well that's it for now - we leave in less than two weeks. Holy. Crap. I still need to buy a new purse cuz mine's been falling apart and that's the last thing I need while running through an airport. So off I go to the store! Hope you're all doing well!
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