Hsg

On Monday night we put N to bed at his regular time but for some reason he decided he wasn't tired. I think he was actually overtired and overstimulated after his first day back at school and work after the holidays. It was after 10 when he finally gave up and went to sleep. Needless to say Tuesday morning was not pretty. He was up before 7 and I didn't have to wake him up like I usually do, but he sure was cranky. He decided that he wasn't in a listening or cooperating mood and that whining and kicking was the way he was going to communicate. Somehow we made it out the door and to school just about on time, even with a couple of time outs thrown into the mix. I felt bad for his teacher, but had a feeling that he would probably be fine there and save all the not so nice stuff for me! 

When I picked him up from school the report was all good, little monkey! But he was still a crank so I was kind of relieved to leave him home with J and go get my hsg done! As much as I was not looking forward to the test I was happy to head out for some alone time, pretty sad really!!

I'm not sure what the deal is with our RE now but many of the tests that they used to do in the office they are now farming out. J had all of her HSGs done in the office and dealt with all her genetic testing stuff there too. I have been dealing with outside places for all of this stuff. I ended up having a whole gene sequence done, which I wasn't really interested in having done in the first place. I have no family history of anything and J and I have always been in agreement that we welcome any child we get, even one with any challenges. Insurance covered 80% of the genetic tests but we still have to pay the rest - which wasn't cheap. So we could have saved ourselves and the insurance company some money there. Mine showed that I'm a carrier for some rare and obscure condition that is basically an allergy to anesthesia. I'm pretty sure that most people have something if you look closely enough.

The hsg test was a little bizarre. The radiology center isn't really set up for gyno stuff so I had to do some serious maneuvering on the X-ray table. I had to scoot up the table and roll left and right, all with a speculum and catheter in my lady parts!! It's kind of unnerving when everyone else in the room is covering up with lead and you're lying there half naked, ready to get x-rayed.  The Dr was from South Africa and once he found out I was a Brit he asked how I explained cricket to the Americans, my reply was simple, 'I don't!' Just because I'm a Brit doesn't mean I know anything about cricket, or any other sport for that matter! 

I heard today that it looks like both my tubes are blocked :-(  so our crazy TTC roller coaster continues. I have to pick up the films tmrw and drop them off at the RE's office. Then we will need to go and meet with him again, this time to discuss IVF. While I'm grateful to know this info before we invested time, money and effort in any IUIs and I'm pretty sure that now I'm officially 'infertile' insurance will cover my treatment. I would be lying if I didn't say that I'm more than a little upset and not totally sure what I want to do. I'm not excited about the prospect of  IVF and not convinced that I'm going to be able to handle it as well as my wife did. Never mind the fact that there is only a 1 in 4 chance of IVF being successful.....and I'm terrified of having twins, even though I am one. Argh...think I need more ice cream! 

Thanksgiving

I started Thanksgiving day bright and early at the RE for day 3 blood work. Thanks to their holiday hours I didn't have to be there quite as early as usual but I wasn't the only person who thought 8 am was the perfect time to be there. It was packed. I was in and out in under 10 mins as I am not planning to insem this cycle I only needed to give blood.

We had a nice quiet morning at home watching as much of the parade on TV as N could stand before he wanted to watch 'his show.' Then we played, took naps and got ready to head to J's cousins for dinner. 

N had a great time playing with his 14 year old cousin. They ran around the house, played hockey and cars all while the moms got to relax, eat and drink way too much! This is the first year that we were the last to leave. Usually we are heading out with a cranky N at bedtime. But this year he was having so much fun that he didn't want to leave! It's so nice that he and his cousin played so well together and N needed much less hand holding from us. 

No long after we got in the car to start the 1.5hr journey home he was out. As he was sleeping J suggested that we stop by the outlet mall and so I could pick up Christmas presents that need to be mailed to England while she stayed in the car with N. I thought it was a terrible idea and the last thing that I wanted to be doing. After bitching and complaining I eventually saw the wisdom in the idea, hit the stores and got some great bargains for my siblings. Thanks honey!! 

On Friday we took N to see Disney's live pirate and princess show. N loved it and it was so great to watch him take in the magic of it all. He interacted with all the action on the stage and danced along to all the songs that he knows a little to well ;-) He actually seemed to enjoy the princess part of the show most so I was a little taken aback yesterday when he told me that girls like pretty colors (pink and purple), while boys like awesome colors (red and blue). We don't talk about boys and girls colors or toys but sadly he is already getting that information from others. 

Transitions

Poor N is having such a hard time leaving work at the end of the day. He's really been loosing it when I tell him that it's time to go home. Last night he threw a pretty impressive tantrum about leaving and cried for a while in the car before falling asleep. I transferred him to bed when we got home and he still woke up crying for the big boy this morning! He is seriously in love with those kids and they definitely play a sibling role for each other.
I always give him lots of warnings that we are getting ready to leave and even the promise of seeing mommy isn't enough to get him to go without a shedding some tears. The other day he said that he wishes J and I could live at work with him, the kids and their parents. Not sure I can convince the rest of the adults about that plan, but the kids would all be for it :-)
Tonight the kids Grandma is coming to stay for the night, before taking the kids to her house for the weekend. She doesn't like it if N and I are around as the kids only want to play with N, so it usually means that we have to leave. Poor N is probably going to be so sad, me on the other hand, I'm looking forward to 3 days off!

RE appt

I had my first visit with our RE on Friday. I'm still waiting for the blood work results - they took 12 vials! Only the second time I've had blood taken, when I told the tech he started to get worried that I would pass out, he kept checking on me which I thought was funny!  I ended up being the only person is the lab so it was much more relaxed than I imagine it is during regular morning monitoring hours.
The meeting with our Dr went as I expected. He told us that it sucked that J lost the last pregnancy and that she'd given it a really good shot and then turned the attention to me. We talked a little about my medical history, marriage equality in NJ and insurance coverage before getting down to the ultrasound. I was at cd15 so knew I was about ready to ovulate and was really relived to see a 19mm follicle. I also had 10+ follicles on the right and over 20 on the left. I didn't realize how worried I was about whether or not I had any eggs until I was trying to make out the fuzzy picture on the monitor. 

The Dr started to say that I would get lots of eggs from an IVF cycle and then changed directions and said that unmedicated IUI should do the trick. I'm hoping he's right as we still aren't sure whether I'm covered by insurance. Our insurance contact told us I would be, our Dr said I wouldn't, the finance lady said I would and then called half an hour later to say I wouldn't. We will have to see what they cover when it's submitted and will pick up the rest. 
I'm pretty sure that the next thing they will want me to do is go in on cd3 for blood work and then have a HSG which is standard testing for them I think and will make sure I don't have blocked tubes. We still haven't decided exactly when we will start IUIs and how we are going to cover childcare for N, but wanted to make the most of J being off work to fit in the appointments so that we could go together. 
The next thing we have to do it pick a new donor. N's donor isn't available anymore so we have narrowed down our choices and will pick a new one soon. I'm slightly freaked out by all the attention that sperm donors are getting right now. There is that new movie coming out and a series on MTV where a group of half sibling set out to find their donor. Using a sperm donor is the way we picked to create our family, but is not something that I want to discuss with every Tom, Dick and Harry.  I haven't dealt with many questions about it since N was a baby, but wonder if we will start hearing some more now. 

School days

We had N's first parent teacher conference last week and I think it went really well. We were glad to hear that he is doing well in school and is proving to be a leader and a bit of a rule follower. He will remind the other kids of the schedule or the teachers instructions if they aren't following along. His teacher also said that he's a cerebral kid that likes to take it all in and think things through before acting.

The kids in his class are between 3 and 5 years old so letter and number learning is part of everyday activities and not learnt through letter of the week. The teacher keeps track of what the kids know and says that N is doing really well for his age. There is one formal evaluation that she does on the kids and he was one of the only kids that got it all correct! 

N still hasn't picked a dominant hand for writing so I asked his teacher which one she saw him using more. Interestingly she said left, while we have seen him using the right more. She said that he may never pick a dominate hand and that we can hand him things at his mid line and let him pick to see if it gets more consistent.

The only area of concern is that he needs to stick up for himself a little more. She told us a story of him being pushed over by another kid and when she encouraged him to talk to the other kid he told them not to push him....with a huge smile on his face! We hope that he will get better with that as he feels more comfortable with the kids, as we've seen with a friend's little girl who used to push him around all the time. We don't want him fighting back physically but we do want him to be able to stand up for himself and not be pushed around. 

N isn't signed up for any extra curricular activities right now and hasn't been for a while. He has tried soccer, tumbling and music class but none of them really held his interest. We aren't sure if it was because of his age or a lack of interest but we ended up feeling like it was a waste of time and money. I resisted signing up for anything in the fall as he got used to school and our new work schedule but he has talked about playing soccer again so we will see. J is thinking about taking him to try out karate so maybe that will be something he will enjoy and I often wonder if he would like gymnastics with all the jumping and tumbling he does. It's hard to know which activity he will like, especially when all he seems to want to do is stay home and play with his toys! 

After hunting them down we finally got his class pic. We weren't that impressed, but it does make him look very grown up already! 

Halloween

N couldn't make up his mind which costume he wanted to wear this Halloween so he ended up in 3 different ones. 3 days before Halloween he started saying that he wanted to be a mouse...but sadly I couldn't come up with a mouse costume without more notice so told him he needed to pick from the mountain of dress up clothes we have at home.

For school he was a dragon who spent lots of time growling at the other kids and staff. I tagged along to watch  the school parade and then helped with his class party afterwards. His class doesn't get to participate in the parade which is at least an hour long. The kids in kindergarten through 8th grade follow the band into town and along Main Street before looping back to school. It's quite a walk for the little ones so they got to trick or treat around school instead and I was surprised by the loot he got.

The party was fun. They made a little pumpkin beanbags, which were so cute and easy to do thanks to the sewing one of the other moms did and had a snack. Before I knew it the morning was over and we had a quick lunch before getting the big girl and bringing her to the Drs for her physical. Why yes, I am the mean nanny that schedules appts on Halloween! She wasn't happy about missing recess and was even unhappier when I took her back to school after her appointment! :-)

We ran a few errands and before we knew it were back at school to pick up the big kids. It was back to their house to change into costume number 2 for N and trick or treat with the kids for a while. N and the big boy had matching transformer costumes for this round. We only trick or treated 3 places but it was certainly not your ordinary trick or treat. First we went to the kids great aunt's house and then headed to the farm to visit the horses and then the cows! We've done the horse barn in previous years but the cow barn was a first this year. The kids love to get involved with milking but were all about the candy this time.

After dropping the kids off with their parents for more trick or treating N and I headed home to meet Mommy, change costumes and met our neighbours to trick or treat our street. There are about 10 houses on our street so it's the perfect number and we spent an hour walking around collecting lots of candy before the rain came. This time N was his favorite superhero Iron Man, minus the mask. 

He got so much candy and we had lots of leftovers as we didn't get that many trick or treaters here. We were actually surprised that the bowl we left out still had some in it when we came back from trick or treating with N. Now I am slowly working my way through it all.....It's so much fun to see N getting more into the holidays this year. He is already adding things to his Christmas list daily so Santa will have plenty of ideas this year :-)

Big week!

It's been a big week in our household. After far too many years of waiting I finally have my green card. It was a complicated process with lots of paperwork and a scary interview where we had to prove we 'live as husband and wife (had to let that one go, this time)' but it all was worth it in the end. I can stop looking over my shoulder all the time and I guess it means we really are staying in the US!

We also got marriage equality in our state on Monday! I was a little surprised that Christie gave up without more of a fight but the writing was definitely on the wall. It was a fight that he had little chance of winning and sadly he has bigger goals that I'm hoping he's not successful with.

The death of my Nanny last month has put the fire under me to get back on the TTC roller coaster. I scheduled our appt with the RE for next month and lined up a sitter for N. It's strange to be technically starting at the beginning while feeling like I already know all that stuff already. We  may be using a different uterus but we've both put in our time there. Here's hoping that we will get that BFP quickly.

N is loving his new school and other than some issues with the early morning starts its going really well. He has already been in the nurses office twice so I'm hoping that this isn't a patten he plans to keep while he's at school. We are scheduling parent teacher conferences in the next couple of weeks so it will be good to hear what his teacher has to say about him. So far I've heard that he's a mellow guy that likes to assume the super hero poses on the playground!! Not sure about the mellow part but I'm not surprised about the super hero part. As stereotypical as it sounds he's all boy!! 

We feel so blessed to have him in our lives.