Overwhelmed

Well, we are no longer just talking the IVF talk... we have officially taken the plunge and are now walking the walk. And I must say, it's much easier and way less scary to just talk about it than it is to actually do it! Last week once the financing was finalized and some of the medications (there are 9 total!) were ordered and delivered, my stress level felt like it quadrupled. IVF suddenly became very real. Below is a picture of the delivery of just 4 of the medications... AGH!

I was super nervous opening those boxes! Anyone that knows me knows that I HATE needles! I've gotten a little better about them as I've gotten older, but it will be by no means even remotely easy for me to give myself all of the injections each day. After opening one of the boxes and seeing one of the needles, I literally felt sick to my stomach and had to sit down. I immediately called Dr. Kathy to ask her about it (it's HUGE... and thick!) and she laughed at me. Thankfully, it's just the needle that I will use to mix one of the medications. It will NOT be puncturing my skin! Yay! And within an hour of the wave of nausea and panic, my friend Emily came over to help calm my nerves with a tasty adult beverage :) Thanks Em!

Now that the IVF ball is rolling, to say that I am overwhelmed just barely scratches the surface. Luckily though, I have another great friend, Jill, that put me in touch with one of her college friends, Mandy, that I had met a couple of times a few years ago. As it turns out, Mandy and her husband went through IVF this past year, and now have a wonderful baby boy! Over the past week, Mandy has given me some advice to somewhat ease the anxiety. It has really helped a lot having someone to talk to that has gone through IVF. Some of her suggestions so far are:
1. Acupuncture - My first appointment with The Texas Center for Reproductive Acupuncture is next Thursday, and I'm actually pretty excited about it!
2. Yoga - My membership at Dynamic Power Yoga starts Monday, and I'm really excited about this too!
3. Alcohol swabs for diabetics - they have a little bit of numbing agent that will help with soreness from all the injections.
4. Ice Pack - to also help with soreness from all the injections.
5. Eating pineapple after the embryo transfer - it is supposed to help with implantation. And since pineapple happens to be my favorite fruit, this part will be a breeze!

Next week, the last of the medications will be delivered and I will have my appointment with the nurse to show me how to administer all of it. And then the week after next, it's showtime baby! In my last post I mentioned something about how quickly time passes... so I'm expecting these next two weeks to happen in a flash. Even with the overwhelming anxiety of IVF, I really want to make the best of this journey... and start by thanking all of the wonderful people in my life for praying for us and supporting us. I am truly grateful to God for being so incredibly blessed to have the best family and friends in the world! I don't know what we would do without you all :) Until next time...

Catching Up

I knew this whole blogging thing would get the best of me :) I think about posting an update often, but never seem to get around to it! Everytime I get on here I end up reading other blogs instead. So prepare yourself... this one could be long! We've got some catching up to do!

The whole month of May has really been a blur. We've been so busy with a million different things... doctor visits, traveling out of town to visit family and friends, and then finishing up the school year. Man has it all flown by... I thought as you aged that time was supposed to slow down, not speed up?!?

The thing that has taken up the majority of our time though has been all the doctor visits... but at least we finally have some answers to our fertility issues! At the end of April we went for our first appointment with Dr. Kathleen Doody (Reproductive Endocrinologist) at the Center for Assisted Reproduction. That appointment resulted in what felt like endless testing... for both Travis and I. One of the first tests that Dr. Kathy did on me was to test my ovarian reserve... the results of this test were really discouraging. It turns out that I have a significantly lower ovarian reserve than the average 40 something year old woman (0.8% is normal for a 40 something and mine is 0.3%), and this apparently is a result of all the years of severe damage caused by the Endometriosis. Bummer. And unfortuantely, the bad news didn't really stop at my results... Travis's sperm morphology test (how his swimmers are shaped) came back abnormal as well. A lot of his boys have curved tails, and get this... two heads!!! So with my low egg supply and quality, and his abnormally shaped sperm, it makes it really difficult for the egg to become fertilized. So there you go... a double whammy explaination... in which there is no cure for :( Neither condition can be reversed or fixed. However, in spite of all the test results, Dr. Kathy is optimistic at us being able to concieve... through in-vitro fertilization. We officially start our IVF cycle at the end of June, and hope to have good news at the end of July. In the meantime, I will be finishing up the school year and then fully embracing the laziness of summer! I will have no excuse not to blog the IVF journey, so check back soon for more frequent updates! Until next time...

Home Improvements

Spring Break started a whirl wind of home improvements around the Cook household... ranging from painting and outfitting the office to redoing the landscaping in the back yard, as well as outfitting the arbor with new furniture! During spring break I obviously had lots of time on my hands :) so I decided to finally start fixing up the office. I started by painting it and then by buying office furniture and getting it organized. I still have some decorating left to do, but here are some pictures of the progress so far!

After Bella's foot injury on our metal landscaping, Travis and I decided to do some changes in the backyard as well. We spent one weekend ripping up all the metal edging surrounding the yard... that stuff is really a pain in the rear! We replaced the edging with stone which looks really nice. We also ripped out some bushes and made a stone pad for the smoker... that way I could have my arbor back :) After adding new arbor furniture, a chimenea, pool loungers, tiki torches, and another palm tree, I can honestly say that it's just about perfect. Each spring we have to replant some of our tropical plants that didn't make it through the winter... we have just a few more of those to replace and then our backyard paradise will be complete! Take a look at our tropical oasis!

As with most homeowners, it seems that updating and remodeling never end, but I feel like we have at least put a good sized dent in our list so far this year! My late spring/early summer projects will be to get two of the upstairs bedrooms painted. So keep a look out for pictures of those once they are done! Until next time...

Roller Coaster

What an emotional roller coaster the past couple of weeks have been!!! Unfortunately, the two IUI's we did last month in hopes of getting pregnant didn't work. The pregnancy test came back negative, and to say that I was a little disappointed about it is a major understatement... which is why it's taken me a little while to feel like writing about it. But, as always, I've seemed to rebound just fine with my wonderful husband at my side! Travis is so supporting and patient... he really does amaze me! However, with all the emotions of last month, we've actually decided to take a "break" from the baby obsession this month. I wasn't sure if I could handle the procedure not working again... so, taking a month off to try and relax and relieve some of the anxiety surrounding the issue seemed to be the best idea.

About the time we decided to take a "break" from the baby drama, our precious Bella got injured. She was running in the backyard and cut her foot on some of the metal landscape edging. We took her to the emergency vet where they had to put her to sleep so that they could stitch it up. The edging had cut through three layers of skin and through about 1/3 of her tendon. Thankfully, the vet was able to fix it without her having to go to a surgeon to repair it. The vet recommended that she stay confined to a kennel for the next few weeks in order to limit her activity so that it could heal properly. This has been VERY HARD since she is such an active dog! She went yesterday for the vet to check the stitches and to have her foot re-bandaged, and we go back in five days with hopes of getting the stitches out.




So now you know what I mean by emotional roller coaster! It's funny though... even with everything that has happened recently, it never ceases to amaze me how God makes the things in our life work out... like putting a peaceful calm in me about not trying for a baby this month just before Bella got injured... Bella's injury cost just about what the IUI would have cost... so it turns out that we wouldn't have been able to afford the IUI anyways! I've been told before that God never gives us more than we can handle, and I now believe it with every fiber of my being. Until next time...

Patience

For those of you that don't know, Travis and I have been trying to have a baby for about two years now... After charting my basal body temperature every morning for a year to track ovulation, and no luck getting pregnant, my doctor started infertility testing. He started with doing blood work first to check my Estrogen and Progesterone levels. When those came back normal, he then wanted to have an HSG dye test done on me and a Semen Analysis done on Travis. The HSG dye test is an xray in which dye is entered though a catheter into the uterus to see if there is a blockage in the fallopian tubes. This was the most painful thing I have ever felt in my life!!! The results of this test weren't good, and Travis's test results weren't that great either. The xrays showed that my tubes were blocked, and his analysis showed low sperm count and motility (how well they swim). So no wonder we weren't getting pregnant, right?


Unfortunately, the next step for me was surgery. My doctor had to figure out what was causing the blockage, and boy did he! What he found was very advanced stages of Endometriosis and scar tissue that had completely blocked one tube and then totally covered everything else. My uterus, my fallopian tubes, my ovaries, my bladder, and small intestines! It was nuts! But with Dr. Godat being the fabulous doctor he is, he got me all "cleaned up" in just a couple of hours. During this same time period, Travis was referred to a specialist where more testing was done on him. Another Semen Analysis, blood work, and even an ultrasound. When all was said and done, Dr. French confirmed that there was an issue of low sperm count and motility, but nothing came back to pinpoint why. His blood work and the ultrasound were fine. The doctor said that the sperm count and motility was on the very low end of normal, but was in his eyes technically capable of causing a pregnancy.


So with me being good to go and Travis all checked out, it was back to trying... but this time with the help of medication. Dr. Godat said that because of the aggressiveness of the Endometriosis, that we were on a time crunch to get me pregnant (otherwise I would have to have the surgery again in a year). I started a regimen of Clomid, Estrogen, and Progesterone two weeks after my surgery. After the first month on Clomid, Dr. Godat could tell by my temperature chart that it wasn't working right, so he doubled the dosage for the next month. But after six months of this regimen with no pregnancy, it was time to try something else.


And that brings us to Wednesday, February 9 and Friday, February 11. That week we had our first two Intra-Uterine Inseminations (IUI) done. IUI is where my doctor takes a sample of Travis's sperm, spins/washes it to separate all the good ones out, and then inserts the good ones into my uterus at the openings of my fallopian tubes through a catheter. With Travis's sperm having trouble getting to where they need to be, this procedure is supposed to increase our chances of conception since the sperm doesn't have to travel near as far (they are deposited right where they need to be). The only thing was, is that the analysis didn't look good when Dr. Godat was spinning/washing the sperm. Within the last nine months it appears that his sperm count and motility has decreased even more... so to say the least, it was a bitter sweet two days.


Now where does that leave us you ask? Well, waiting. We have to wait two weeks (until Friday, February 25) before we can take a pregnancy test. And man have the days drug on. I've tried really hard not to get too excited about the results, but it's SO HARD not to since we've wanted a baby for so long and it's our first real chance of conceiving. If it doesn't happen this month, we go back to the drawing board for more testing with Travis. But keep your fingers crossed!... maybe it worked! I know that if we don't get lucky this month that we will both be disappointed, but thankfully, we have so many people that are praying for us, love us, and will be there for us, that we will make it through the ups and downs of this adventure just fine. God has a plan for us, and I'm trying my best to be patient while waiting :) Until next time...

Destiny

And so the journey began... I met Travis on June 9, 2006, thanks to our mutual friends Sean and Brandy Atnip. I had just recently moved back to the Dallas area from Beaumont, and my friend Brandy was coming up for the weekend to visit me. Since Sean had a friend that had just recently moved to the Dallas area too, he decided to come with her. Once Sean and Brandy got to town we met up with his friend, and it was all over from there :) We went out to The Quarter Bar in Uptown and had a blast! From the first night we met we were pretty much inseparable. I never thought I'd be lucky enough to snag such a good looking awesome guy, but look at me! I did!

The next year and a half flew by, and before I knew it, it was February 8, 2008. It had been a long day at school and all I wanted to do was just go home and do nothing. Travis had other ideas though. He insisted that we had to go to dinner with his cousin Kim because he had been promising her that we would go for weeks. So, I reluctantly gave in on the condition that we would go home early. We pulled up to Trulucks (with me still not being in the mood to be out) and went inside just in time for Kim to call and say she was running late. Great. They went ahead and sat us at the table, we ordered some wine, and then Travis started acting all weird and nervous. The next thing I knew, he had a ring in his hand and was asking me to marry him! I was so excited and in major shock, that all I said was, "Really, you want to marry me?" He laughed and said, "Of course I do. So is that a yes?" And as soon as "yes" came out of my mouth my whole family walked up to the table. Another surprise! We weren't meeting Kim there after all. The phone call of Kim being late was my dad calling from the parking lot letting Travis know that they were there! Six months later, on August 9, 2008, Travis and I were standing on the beach at Magen's Bay in the beautiful St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, getting married. It was absolutely amazing! Ever since I was a little girl I had wanted to get married on the beach, and that day all my dreams came true. I married the love of my life and my best friend with our toes in the sand! And all of our family and close friends were there to help us celebrate in paradise! It was truly perfect!

In January 2009 we sold our condo in Uptown, and moved into our new home in Carrollton on February 26. We had been here only a couple of months when we added another furry child to the mix. Our sweet little rambunctious Bella. Bailey, our first furry child, thought her world was ending. We had totally ruined her life. But now, two years later, I can honestly say that they are buds. It's actually kind of funny to see people's reactions when I take them walking and people see a doberman and a little bitty weenie dog enjoying each other's company. They really are quite the combo!

Well, I think that should just about bring you up to speed for now. Until next time...