Monitoring the Ordinary and the Extraordinary

Today I am so full of big ole eggs that I can barely sit up at 90 degree angles.  I got the official go-ahead to trigger tonight at 4:15 a.m.  So retrieval will be Tuesday at 4:15 p.m. I didn't get all my numbers this time around, but the docs said it looked very good.  They said I had seven or eight "above 18" and lots of others, so we'll see how many eggs it renders.  I've gotten so used to this process that I hardly wonder any more.  I know that's a luxury that comes with having good quality eggs.  Still, on IVF #3, I do wonder when that good quality is going to actually render a baby. This time the protocol never changed.  It started at 75 units of Menopur/Repronex, and 225 of Follistim.  Once those started, they were accompanied by a measly 5 units of Lupron.  That didn't change the whole time.  So apparently I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.  This time I have had zero conversations with the doctors about what happened (or didn't) last time, and how we would change things this time around.  I guess that's because we wouldn't change things this time around.  What we are doing is just flipping the same coin, over and over.  When I signed up with this clinic they gave me a 50% chance that I'd get pregnant.  That was personalized with my stats, age, success record, number of eggs, etc.  So here we go again. Heads. Two, please.  Twins. Meanwhile, in the extraordinary news, we had my pregnant sister-in-law (in addition to other family members I'm not afraid of seeing) over for dinner last night.  I was hoping she wasn't showing, but she was.  I don't really know how far along she is; I try not to think about it.  She's due November 19.  With my swollen body and otherwise gained-weight body, I was amused to find that we finally look the same.  Normally she's trimmer.  But now, not only does she have the protruding belly, she also has a puffy face and generally swollen body.  Poor thing.  But really not! When they first arrived, I watched out the window to see her getting out of the car, to see how pregnant she looked.  When I saw that it was visible, I tensed up.  I welcomed them in, as cheerfully as I could, and then went to go get them lemonade in the kitchen.  James walked in to the kitchen with me and I almost started to hyperventilate.  I started crying in a frantic, trying-to-be-silent style, and tried to stop before my eyes started looking like crying eyes.  I wiped my face off on the dish towel then stepped back into the living room, smiling, with two lemonades. As the evening went on, it got easier.  Once when I had left the room again, I returned to find my mom whispering a pregnancy-related question to Erin, and I felt like I "busted" them.  But I tried to continue the conversation so they would feel comfortable.   By the end of the evening, the rest of the relatives had left, and just James and my bro and SIL and I sat in the living room.  They very sweetly asked what they could do to make the IVF easier.  I said I was just planning on sleeping, so I didn't really need anything at this point.  We were talking about the movie "Dan in Real Life," where a big extended family with lots of siblings, grand-children, etc. gets together at a house for a week vacation in Rhode Island.  I said that's what I would want in a family: lots and lots of participants; certainly enough to perform skits.  They said that they were going to see how this baby went, and MAYBE they would have another.  That makes total sense because Erin has a brain tumor and Lupus, and all sorts of reasons to keep it to one baby, if that.  But I said, "THAT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.  OUR CHILDREN WILL HAVE MULTIPLE COUSINS!"  Humph!  James is an only-child, so David & Erin are our only chance for a big cousin family!  They laughed. At the end of the evening, I told Erin that I was really glad they had come.  I said I hated that it all included so much happiness and sadness at the same time, and she said she felt the same way.  Then for some reason she stuck out her stomach; I don't remember what she was getting at with that.  Maybe I'd said I wanted to rub it or something.  So I stuck out my swollen egg belly and rubbed mine against hers, much like the chest-bump zealous men do at sports events.  And that was so funny that I think we finally erased the tension completely.  Maybe not the sadness, but at least the tension. And that is that.  After my monitoring appointment, I came home and have spent most of the day in bed.  My eyes are having a hard time sleeping any more, but my body is just fine with it.  Tomorrow starts the first day of my not-working life, and I will be glad for that.  Actually, I'll just be resuming my quilting business life, so I won't be completely idle.  I have a contract that I made 15 months ago, and that the people had to put off and put off... now I have one week to make a family tree quilt.  And my printer, which I use to print onto fabric, doesn't work.  Hm.  Seems like I'll actually be earning my money on this one. And that is that.  I hope everybody is doing well and getting closer to mommyhood, from wherever you're standing.  Take care!