Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Decorating for Christmas

That's what my time off from work has consumed. Wednesday I spent the day cleaning the house and getting ready for thanksgiving. Thanksgiving Day i had dinner at my house. And it was awesome. My turkey was great! Stuffing was awesome! And noone fought! woohoo!! I even got a 2 hour rest/nap/tv relaxation in before we had to leave for my mother in laws for dinner. Yes we still have to do 2 dinners every holiday but having one at my house makes it much easier on us. We only have to leave the house once, not twice.

Friday morning mom and I headed out Black Friday shopping. We didn't leave my house until 7:30 and got to the mall about 8:30 and it wasn't packed. I was shocked. This is the 6th year we've done this and I was amazed. We got a close parking spot, there were plenty open. Walked in and barely waiting in line. Got all our door busters we wanted. Went to lunch around 12:00 and walked right in to a table at Max and Ermas. Even Target and Kohls were manageable. Normally we don't get home until 6-7 pm and we were home by 4! It was an awesome day.

Well...almost awesome. Princess Daisy got into a fight with some animal at the farm and her ear got cut. Ear cuts on dogs are like head wounds on people. They bleed and bleed and bleed. Just when we thought it wasn't bleeding, she'd shake her head and voila more blood. Right now her head is gauzed and taped to she doesn't get blood everywhere. Going to be a LONG winter with her I have a feeling!!!

Today I have been puttering around decorating for xmas. I have a bunch of stuff on a list to get at Michaels tonight to finish up. Pictures to follow! :)

Thanksgiving Week

Seems crazy that Thanksgiving is this week. I can't believe how fast 2011 has zoomed by us. Probably a good thing considering all the shitty stuff we've gone though. 2012 WILL be better, it HAS to be.

I have started my Thanksgiving food list. This year we are having lunch here and then dinner at my mother in laws. She doesn't want to be in the same room with my father in law so she does her own dinner. We are having the basics, turkey, stuffing, mashed taters, butternut squash, cooked carrots, pie, and cranberry sauce. We'll also be having Birthday Cake since my brother is 37 TODAY and we'll be having his birthday cake with Thanksgiving. He is getting to be an old man. Seems like just yesterday we were fighting like crazy in our teens and now he's a dad. Doesn't seem like we can be this old!!! :)

The day after the big negative news

Today was much better than yesterday, I only cried ONCE! I told my dad and my brother both and didn't even tear up. I am still a little bitter over the whole deal, but it's more that we have to go through it, not that it didn't work. All these pieces of trash have tons of kids, don't take care of them, the state pays for them, and they can get knocked up like it's nothing. The people that CAN AFFORD a child and REALLY WANT ONE, have to pay for one. Where's the justice in that? The state of PA is one of many that doesn't require ins. companies to pay any amount of fertility treatments, but yet will pay for people on welfare to have 3 kids and pay for them for 18 years of their life. UGH!!!!

The good news is - The next chapter - 2012! My dr. is awesome too. He personally called us last night at 7 pm to express his sincerity in that it didn't work and hopes that we will not give up hope. UH Cleveland really is a wonderful place!!!! I recommend it to anyone that is going through this process or has to go through something similar.

My main goal in the next month is to enjoy the holidays, relax, exercise, and enjoy being "hormone free" for a while. And then we can start full force after the first of the year. Hopefully by this time next year I'm typing to you all on my laptop with a baby sleeping in my lap!

Negative

:( Just doesn't seem fair!!

Thankfully I have an awesome wonderful husband, a great family, and some kick ass friends to help me through this.

Well Crammit!

I'm spotting. Not cool. I have my first blood pg test on thursday morning. But I can pretty much tell by the spotting, this cycle didn't work. I'm not entirely devastated, but I'm pretty upset. So upset that I left work at 2:00 pm today. And I'm never that way. I've worked through alot without getting upset. I find myself to be a pretty strong woman. But this...just kicked me right in the gut! I know this happens to 30% of women that end up pregnant, but i can tell by the way my body feels, it's not going to happen this time.

But I still have to wait until thursday for the big "blood test" to confirm what I already know. Which really really sucks!!! 3 more nights of shots in the ass for nothing. DH said that if it ends up positive on thursday he's going to kick my ass. I highly doubt that. I know I seem to be a little negative, but after everything we have gone though, this just seems like one more dart on our dart board.

Trying to think good thoughts....but it's hard!

6 Totsicles!

Yes I said totsicles. lol. We were able to have 6 of our embryos frozen for possible use later down the road. I am very happy with this. If our first fresh cycle fails, we have the option now of trying another fresh cycle, or trying to transfer one of our frozen ones. Frozen transfer is alot cheaper than the fresh cycle. That's probably a leading deciding factor if this one doesn't work.

So far I am 5 days past transfer and can't test for another WEEK. I've done ok this past 5 days but this is going to take alot of strength to get by until next week when I can test and see if this baby stuck!!!

Dustin's been wonderful but a little too overprotective. He thinks that if I move too much the embryo might fall out. Yeah that's not going to happen. Atleast I hope not! :)

Boring Sunday

I am supposed to rest all day today and yesterday and I am bored out of my mind. I have watched about 3 movies and tried to read but nothing is keeping my interest. I know it's for a good cause but holy crap, what I wouldn't do to be able to go to the store!!! lol.

I haven't had a whole lot of symptoms over this whole time frame, except tiredness and today out of the blue I got extremely nauseous. My friend tells me it's my body preparing myself for when i do get pregnant. The worst part is the shots in the butt Dustin has to give me. They are a pain and they hurt if you don't heat them for a decent amount of time afterwards. And with Dustin harvesting corn at the farm all day and night, he's had to run home at 9:30 every night to "shoot me in the butt"

Seed has been Planted

Now Grow Baby Grow!

We had our embryo transfer this morning and it went very well. The Dr's told us our embryo was BEAUTIFUL. It was a very interesting experience, but i have nothing but great things to say about the UH Macdonald Facility in Cleveland, OH. They are a wonderful facility and have some great people that work with them. Everyone makes you feel very hopeful that this really could work. We decided to only have one embryo transferred. My dr is very against multiple births as they can cause many problems for the mother and children. We have trust in our Dr. so we went with his suggestions.

Now it's a waiting game. I have to rest all weekend, blech!!! I don't do well resting when I feel fine. But it's for a good cause!!! Then after this weekend I have to wait until the 17th for my first blood test. The only thing now is to not go crazy and think "stick baby stick" thoughts!

Retreival Done...Next stop Transfer

Well I made it through all the meds and through Retrevial. We did the retrevial on Monday. It went very well. Only minimal pain and i slept all afternoon & evening on monday. They called and told me of the 14 mature eggs, 12 of them fertilized. As of today all 12 had divided and were growing. We are having a 5 day transfer on Saturday and transferring one egg. I know that's a gamble, but with my history of twins in both families, we run the high risk of triplets if we transfer 2 and i'm just not willing to go that route. Plus with me only being 31 years old, they feel that one good one is as good as 2 good ones. The % on a 5 day transfer from 2 to 1 is only a 5% difference. I'm willing to try it with one. Hopefully we have a few to freeze too so that we have something in the future without having to go through it again.