Special Lady Cocktails

When I first was swept up by the internet infertility tornado, I remember reading forum posts from other hopeful women. Falling on a theme (as I often do), I obsessed over the ridiculousness of women taking all kinds of crazy pills - usually without having a doctor recommend them. OMG! DO YOU JUST TAKE ANYTHING YOU FIND ON THE INTERNET??? Some posts swore by the helpfulness while others confessed that they worried it may have hurt. Once discovered, some doctors gave full-on lectures how it was not appropriate for the poster's situation, only to find out that someone else (usually another doctor) in their clinic had told them to take it. Truthfully, I was personally affronted that such naivety and desperateness could drive women to arbitrarily take anything in an attempt to conceive.

The picture above is from MY house. That's right, Ms. Holier-than-thou is ...well, the same as everyone else.

At first it started small. My first pill was THE PILL, and I was told I would have to take it by my Indian doctor to make sure I was synced properly for my IVF treatment. Fair enough. I called my OB/GYN and promptly got a prescription. Let me mention here that I do not like taking birth control pills (bcp) as not only does it make me gain weight and experience occasional nauseousness, but sometimes I experience additional glum side effects (depending on the brand). Fine - whatever - I set my alarm on my phone to give me a daily reminder; particularly because my history of remembering to take medicine on a daily basis is pretty dismal. Especially BCP. Our local IVF doctor also advised to add a pre-natal vitamin (another item bound to make me nauseous) and I immediately relented as I ran to our local Publix.

Baby aspirin and acupuncture were added to the regime - the latter being something I normally would have scoffed at a year earlier. Doctor semi-recommend it and so I shelled out the cash. My husband gave me the big-eye, but I'm guessing he recognized my fervent look and said nothing. 100 bucks a pop for 6 weeks = not cheap. What can I say except I wanted no regrets.

IVF treatment #1 was dismal. 2 eggs retrieved, only 1 fertilized. Even that 1 took a damn long time to fertilize.

Now I am prepping for treatment #2. In typical fashion, I have been obsessively researching similar cases. Not just blog posts, but academic papers and any type of current research I can lay my grubby little eyes on. A clinic in India recommended 25mg of DHEA for 3 months. I rush to pull up the scientific documentation and realized all of the research is really based on a tiny Tel Aviv study. The study showed a significant difference in live birth rates with women who were poor responders and took 75mg of DHEA for 40 days vs women who did not. A follow-up study had additional encouraging results. Screw the 25mgs -I only had about 40 days till cycle, I was going to go full boat - 75mgs it is! [I would like to make a note here that I was not able to take the full 75mg initially because of side effects. I had to build up and even now I have minor side effects.]

Next I read how melatonin could also help woman with poor ovarian reserve and immediately I was hunting down more articles and recommended amounts. 3mgs seemed to be the magical number, but that amount knocked me on my butt. Still 1-2mg was doable and thus it was added. Combining it with the DHEA means I sleep really well, but I'm groggy as all get-out when I wake up. Heaven help me if I don't get a full 8-9 hours. Oddly enough, my friend says she takes 10mg all the time and it barely helps her sleep. What can I say? I'm a lightweight.

Did I stop there? Heck no! I was on a search that day and after reading some articles (which I can not find at the moment) regarding myo-inositol, my amazon shopping cart increased. Among other things, myo-inositol was suppose to help women with cyst issues and a giant cyst almost caused a no-go last cycle. My OB/GYN found a cyst last year and I began to wonder if some of the pain issues I had felt over the last year were cyst related. GIVE ME MYO-INOSITOL NOW!!!

There were a few other things on the list, but these 3 new items had good scientific data to back them up and they applied to women with similar (if not exact) conditions. The other pills I noticed my fellow women-at-arms were taking were either less scientifically regarded or didn't apply to me. Besides, as I mentioned before, I'm a light weight and I wanted to see how I was going to handle this new concoction.

Which brings me to last week. I'm not quite sure HOW I ended up at the Rainbow (read: hippie) Grocery store - but all of a sudden I found myself at the cashier's stand with CoQ10, some fancy fish oil supplements, and yes even some Royal Jelly that was well hidden in a jar of honey. And some awesome low-sugar dried mango. And a yummy nut mix. And Activated Charcoal that I told myself would be good to have on hand if my dogs ever get into something they shouldn't. Somehow I think my subconscious was trying for an easy excuse to get some for me. You know. Just in case.

"Just a spoon full of sugar..." (or honey) 

Wrap up from last week or so

The good:

To top off my previous birthday week, my hubby also planned a surprise birthday party for me on Saturday night. It was awesome. I'm guessing around 50 friends and family showed up. Brings tears to my eyes because sometimes often I think I'm very socially awkward and it meant a lot to have so many people show up for little old me. 

On the funny side of it, my hubby spilled the beans the night before. While cooking dinner he announces "don't go planning anything for tomorrow night," (I hadn't) "you have a surprise party." LOL. If you know me and my husband, you would appreciate how humorous I found this. The next evening we had to plan me acting surprise walking in. It was doubly and triply humorous because a.) my friends stink at being quiet during surprise parties and I heard the "shhhhh shhhhhh, here she comes!" from ACROSS THE PARKING LOT and b.) my friend's mom stopped us in the restaurant and said in her thick Greek accent, "happy birthday! So many people here for you!"  Truthfully I really was surprised though because I had no idea that many people would be there and the tears that came to my eyes were honest and sincere. 

The bad: 

I am getting frustrated with the communication issue with our clinic. Have done enough research to know that our doctor is super-duper busy, but that begs the question: why doesn't she hire additional staff? A case manager would be fantastic. Actually this deserves an entire separate post: so shall it be.

In other semi-bad news: remember how I was all "acupuncture doesn't hurt at all" the other week? Last week it did. Only in a few places, but YOW! I do not like needles. Which is pretty unfortunate when you think about what I will be going through next month. 

The other: 

I finished my book: All The Fishes Come Home to Roost: An American Misfit in India.  For those of you wondering, it has nothing to do with surrogacy, IVF, or even traveling in India. Basically it is a memoir from a woman whose parents worshiped a deceased Indian cult leader, and decided to move India to live with other followers. Tragedy written with wit, off-color humor ensues in the same style of Augusten Burroughs's Running with Scissors. I won't go into a long review here, but if you liked Scissors (or other tragedy/humor type memoirs), then you will probably enjoy this. I'd give it 4 out of 5 stars. 3.5 on a grumpy day. I look forward to more from this author as this was her first book. 

The other part deux:

Watched Google Baby today. I had seen clips of it before, but had not gone as far as to watch it yet. Mostly because a lot of the comments on youtube and news sites were pretty hurtful. I don't know why I let that affect me as I generally despise the comment section of news articles and such, regardless of the topic. (Makes me depressed that there so many misinformed or hateful people.) Any way, the movie was good. I thought it may make me second guess my decision (based on the trailer), but it actually had the opposite effect. Made me reaffirm that our decision is the right one for us. 

I'm putting the trailer below, but I don't think it's good representation of the movie. There are other clips on youTube you can watch as well to get slightly more. I'm guessing the trailer was designed more for people that aren't going through surrogacy and have prejudgments. The movie isn't judgmental at all. The movie is informative from a practical, medical, and emotional standpoint. If you can get a copy, I would say go for it. 

Porcupines seem fertile...

http://betterthinking-betterlife.com/picts/porcupine-baby.jpg

Today I had my first day of Acupuncture and it was AMAZ... oh wait, nothing special happened.

Actually I didn't expect anything to since my doctor recommended it for fertility and we won't really know how well it worked until... well... ever. There's just too many variables and there's no definitive way to tell what helped and what didn't with all of the new things I am doing. As you may guess, I'm a science gal. Yea, yea, yea, I've actually read the arguments of eastern treatments, and I'm not so bold to discount everything, but I'm kinda a "give me hard cold data I can analyze" type of girl.

That said, I have tremendous respect for our fertility specialist here (also a hard-core science gal) and she encouraged us to consider it. When I asked why she thought it would help, she mentioned something along the lines of blood flow to the ovaries, something something something - oh look shiny object. Ok -if it was good enough for my foster dog years ago - good enough for me! I'm already spending a gazillion dollars to have a baby, it seems silly to nit pick over $500 or so more. We aren't rich, but I'd hate to do the "what-if dance" down the road if things do not go successfully the first time.

Back to the story (as you can tell, I get side-tracked easily): me and some needles. The acupuncturist was really, really nice. She's the type of person that you feel comfortable telling things to: in the land of infertility, this is a relief. Telling people personal crap is not my fav thing in the world, but is definitely this year's theme. She even was really sweet about me being tremendously late - something I felt HORRIBLE about. Truth be told, I had been looking forward to my pricking for a couple of weeks. (That sounded really weird.)

Ms. Awesome stuck me with 6 needles that barely registered on the "something-just-stuck-me" scale. If you can imagine taking a tiny head pin and pricking yourself so light that you didn't even make an imprint, then that would be the equivalent. In some cases I didn't even feel a thing. This coming from a girl that HATES shots. They don't make me woozy - they just suck. The acupuncture needle doesn't even count as a shot in my book.

We talked for about an hour and then she dimmed the lights in our lavender, spa music room. I laid on a heated spa table/bed, under comfy covers, and she put 6 needles in me: 4 in the legs and 2 in the hands. Honestly had to ask how many were inserted because I had no idea. (Except for the hand ones - I could SEE those.)  She then proceeded to leave the room and let me rest.

Here's were it got a tiny bit weird, but keep in mind I have an AWESOME imagination.

I closed my eyes and started thinking about something that always irritates me (my former job) as the new-agey music washed over me. Was able to "catch" my negative thought pattern and tried to shake it off. Breathe in. Breathe out. (Holy cow my breathing sucks.) I think have gas. Nope that passed too. Not literally. Wow this music is great. I wonder if it is a CD. I should ask her if it's a CD. Would that be weird? I won't remember the name anyway. Maybe it would start a long conversation about spa music that would be hard to get out of. Maybe I could type it in my phone. Would she frown on my iPhone addiction? I wish I could shazam it. My phone is right over there. I NEED my phone. The needles would probably all fall out if I moved too much. I'll have to remember to bring my phone next to me next week. But I won't have pockets because I had to take off my pants. That would be awkward. I shouldn't have worn a thong. 

A few more random thoughts flew by and then I was in that half-sleep half-awake place. You know the one - where you are aware of your surroundings, but think really weird things. Ok - EVEN weirder things than normal. And then my stomach grew. Like there was a bubble slowly expanding. (NO, NOT GAS!) Like a baby was growing at some super-speed ala Fringe style. (Keep in mind - I can't actually CARRY a baby.) I could see it with my eyes closed. Then I thought, "wait, twins would be good" and the bubble split and started rising on both sides. Oddly enough, in real life that would be some weird camel looking thing, but hey - my imagination - I can do it how I want. Then I laughed and thought about making a blog post.

And THAT is how I came to the conclusion that doing this porcupine thing is a good idea. Results may vary.