Ac-cent-tchu-ate The Positive

I feel that this may be our new theme song for our journey. Today was one of our final appointments before the grand egg retrieval, and given my test results a few weeks ago, I was dreading it. I knew that we would still be able continue with our mission baby, but I figured today would be pretty negative. I, happily, was wrong. Our battery of appointments started at 8:30am, so we were up bright and early and made it to Northwestern about an hour and a half early. Thankfully, this gave me time to review, and take notes on my injectable medicines for IVF.

Now, I will happily admit that I am my mother's daughter, and the older I get the more I realize I am just like her. This makes me happy most days...but not today. My mother and I both suffer from SPS (sweaty palms syndrome) it's not a real thing, but when I get nervous, it's like a marsh on my hands. Today, my SPS was in full force. I think I had to wipe my hands on my jeans every couple of minutes to clean them off. B found this amusing, I found it annoying. I kept thinking about all that could go wrong today. What if they said we couldn't put in two embryos? What if they changed their minds and they won't let me do this, what if they keep going over and over my poor test scores and I can't find my silver lining? What if, what if, what if. So while all of those thoughts were racing through my head, we sat and waited, or rather, B waited, while I did what I do best. Research.

After taking three pages of notes for my injectables, I felt ready for the appointment. We first met with the IVF 3rd party coordinator. Who was very kind, and quite interesting. During our time with her, we learned more about giving shots for IVF, signed about three forms, and answered some very odd questions to keep Uncle Sam happy. One of the questions was "have you had sex in exchange for money or drugs in the past five years." Checked off no on that one. The questions are all standard for any tissue or blood donors, and as I have never given blood, weird and foreign to me. We then went over the timeline and in detail for how the meds will work. The tricky thing now is that I will not be going back on the pill, so they can't give us an exact date for retrieval or starting my injections, although we know it will be Juneish. The following is a picture of the IVF starting line up: my injectables!

After hearing more information than I can process we went to meet with the RE. By the time my name was called my SPS was in full force again. Thankfully, the RE's fellow was awesome. She walked us through everything, all about the procedures and then we had to discuss some of our pressing questions. First, can we put in two? The coordinator, the RE, and her fellow agreed that it was best for us to put in two, no fight needed for that one! Second good news, with most IVF they need three follicles to proceed with the retrieval, due to our special circumstances, they will only need two from me. Again, winning. Third, if they get two mature follicles from me, there is only a 1% chance that they will be empty (no eggs), that means that if my ovaries do their job, there is a 99% chance we will at least have two eggs to go through with this. Silver lining! Finally, I am not at risk for hyper stimulation, so cardiology is happy. After all this good news, we went to find my ovaries, they were hiding again, but we got the best of them this time, and I gave another three tubes of blood (I really should just open a blood bank for them to pull from). B did his part and got some blood taken too (about time!). Now we are just waiting on my body to do its thing, legal, and for our surrogate to have all of her stuff checked out. :)

All in all today was not the awful experience I imagined. I have to give NW credit for doing everything they can to get us our baby(ies). They have taken a pretty dismal situation and spun it into the most positive outlook they can. They didn't just write us off, which makes me feel amazing, and like this will work. Deep down, I know that the path has had bumps, but I know it will be so worth it, and with doctors, and everyone in our lives rooting for us this way, I feel confident that we will get there. Until next time, thank you for all of your thoughts, and words of encouragement. It always amazes me how many people out there care. Over the past week, several people have come out of the woodwork to root us on, so thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Know that each word you say inspires me to find a silver lining and ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive, just like Aretha says.