Adios, bcp (again)

For the 4th time since TTC, I am tossing out the bcp today! I see these cycles as two phases: the birth control phase followed by the injections phase. Today, I graduated from the bcp phase and, provided I get a period and am (still) suppressed on Tuesday, March 5, will enter the injections phase. This is BIG and I am EXCITED!

Schedule, provided no delays (and you know I'm prone to delays):

March 5: suppression check
March 19: lining check
TRANSFER SOMETIME at least 6 DAYS AFTER THAT (but probably not until the very end of March / early April so as to avoid the risk of a bfn on my due date, April 7).

Start Lupron today!

It's here. The first injection of this cycle. I start Lupron today. During my other two cycles, I've taken my shots first thing in the morning. But we spent this weekend at the coast with two sets of couple friends and I decided I did not want this cycle to bleed into the weekend. Now that we are home, I am about to take my first shot of at least 6 weeks and hopefully about 14 weeks!

Here it goes!!!! Each injection is one closer to my embryos and one closer to success and hopefully a take-home baby!

Liebster Award

So my alter-ego, "Ready for My Turn" was given the Liebster Award. But I want to get this blog out a little more so I can find other donor egg women like me. Hope you don't mind, Invincible Spring!

The idea is to circulate and increase the readership of smaller blogs; so I answer the questions put to me by Invincible Spring, and then come up with questions of my own to forward to bloggers of my choosing.

The Liebster Award is available to bloggers with less than 200 followers. And you get to add this award to your blog! There is a code, but I can't find it, so copy and paste the picture below and add it as a gadget to your blog!

Here goes!

Invincible Spring's Questions

          1. Did you have an imaginary friend growing up?

No, not that I can remember. But my sister and my dogs were my bestest friends.

          2. If you had to pick: Museum/Gallery, or Great Outdoors?

Great Outdoors, hands down. While I love Museums and Galleries, there's nothing like the fresh air and feeling of the Great Outdoors.

          3. City or countryside?

Depends. Am I wanting to explore, walk around, see book stores and stop in for an afternoon hot chocolate? Or do I feel like hiking and reading?

          4. Is there a particular artist whose work really speaks to you?

Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake (ignore the video, it's the music I want you to hear) and the sound track to Phantom of the Opera.

          5. What place have you travelled that you wanted to return to again and again?

Costa Rica.

          6. If you could invite anyone, living or dead, who would be on the guest list for your dream dinner party?

My maternal great grandmother. She rescued Jews in Holland during the war, ran a business when women weren't allowed to and raised children as a single mother.

          7. What made you decide to start blogging?

Infertility and the feeling that I was so underwater and so alone I might not make it.

          8. Halloween/fancy dress costume of choice?

Nope.

          9. And I'm totally stealing Amanda's idea, because I want more recipes for my collection. So pretty please, share one if you can?

Tear up pieces of kale, sprinkle with olive oil, nutritional yeast and some salt, put in the oven at 250 for 20 minutes until the edges start to blacken, then raise heat to 350 for 10 minutes. DELIC!

My questions:

1. Dogs or cats?

2. Favorite season and why?

3. Do you have a green thumb? Does that change depending on whether we're talking about indoor versus outdoor plants?

4. Have you yet found any silver lining(s) in the journey of infertility? If so, what?

5. Are you reading a book currently? What?

6. Do you make lists to keep organized in life or do things just stick in your mind?

7. Favorite scent?

And, the nominees are (ignore if you feel like it!):

Quest for the Golden Egg

Chicks and Eggs

The Elusive Second Line

Submerged

The Moon on a Stick

Here I Go Again
A Place Where I Can Be Me
Project Make A Baby 

Slumbering babies

I often think about our four slumbering embryos. I imagine them, all "warm" (in reality, they're on ice!) and cozy, waiting for us to come and collect them from "day care." It makes me feel all warm and excited inside.

I asked my husband a few days ago whether he ever thinks about them. He told me he does, a lot.

I am getting so very excited for early April. Spring is on the way.

Our beautiful calendar

Here it is. Our beautiful FET2 calendar. We had to do some tweaking of the dates as the lab is doing some construction for a week in early April. My embryos (2 of them, that is) *should* be snuggling inside me by then, fortunately.

My nurse has been wonderful about avoiding April 7. That would have been my due date and I told her I can't handle that date AND a negative beta. So we'll do the transfer a few days before-hand so I can get through April 7 by pretending to be pregnant again.

Without further ado, our calendar:

(I took a screenshot off the laptop and can't figure out how to make the picture bigger, so please click on it to see the full size version)

And the cycle begins!

With the arrival of my period today, so began our cycle! Birth control for a little over a month, suppression check on March 12, lining check on March 26, SIS sometime between now and the end of February, and a hoped-for transfer the first week of April.

HERE GOES ... EVERYTHING!!!!!

(we have 4 beautiful grade A embryos waiting for us in Seattle)

Epigenetics

When we made the decision to "go donor," I always just felt like the kid that popped out of my womb would be my kid. In fact, I have told loved ones "I'll scratch the eyes out of anyone who tries to suggest otherwise." (use of the violent language to convey the point that I feel very very very strongly that my child is my child)

The concept of "epigenetics" is exactly what I was feeling. And now I have a word to use.

Epigenetics.

The idea that the fetus that develops in the womb is actually that womb's biological child.

That sounds strange, right? We were taught to believe that the fetus is 1/2 DNA from the sperm-donor and 1/2 DNA from the egg-donor. Meaning, a fetus conceived through egg donation would not be biologically related to the birth mother.

As far as DNA goes, I think that's probably still correct. I have to look deeper into that, but I'm not really that interested in it so who knows when or whether I'll actually look deeper.

Epigenetics is the idea that the womb grows the fetus rather than just being an incubator to the fetus:

Freedom Pharmacy published this great booklet about egg donation -- here an excerpt:

“Perhaps the greatest myth surrounds pregnancy. Many believe the uterus is simply an incubator. Nothing could be further from the truth. The most important aspect of all pregnancies- including egg donation pregnancies- is that as the fetus grows, every cell in the developing body is built out of the pregnant mother’s body. Tissue from her uterine lining will contribute to the formation of the placenta, which will link her and her child. The fetus will use her body’s protein, then she will replace it. The fetus uses her sugars, calcium, nitrates, and fluids, and she will replace them. So, if you think of your dream child as your dream house, the genes provide merely a basic blueprint, the biological mother takes care of all the materials and construction, from the foundation right on up to the light fixtures. So, although her husband’s aunt Sara or the donor’s grandfather may have genetically programmed the shape of the new baby’s earlobe, the earlobe itself is the pregnant woman’s “flesh and blood.” That means the earlobe, along with the baby herself, grew from the recipient’s body. That is why she is the child’s biological mother. That is why this child is her biological child.”
Here are some links to the idea of epigenetics (I have not read all the info on them but am simply providing them):

http://tpvedo.blogspot.com/2009/07/women-who-give-birth-to-donor-egg.html

http://forums.fertilitycommunity.com/donor-issues-egg-sperm/277949-article-about-donor-egg-dna.html

http://www.allaboutsurrogacy.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=42386

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/embryos-with-three-parents-created/2008/02/05/1202090418896.html

Like I said, I have no doubt that any baby I am lucky enough to push out of my womb (or have extracted through a c-section) would be my baby. I started looking into this idea for two reasons: (1) other peoples' reactions in the future, which I suspect will not always be as supportive as our current friends and family have been, and (2) my husband recently told me, when discussing canceling our last and final "natural" cycle "I want to have a baby with you, not some other woman." He doesn't really mean that and he is excited about egg donation. But when it came down to me saying "let's not even try this month, we have FOUR perfect embryos waiting for us," he thought "but if we have the chance to make our 'own' baby, let's try." I forward all these links and the idea to him and his response was awesome. He said:

That’s pretty good stuff. It’s you that matters here.

 

Love that man.