And we are off!

I used to be a marathoner.  My mind could never get around that I had to run 26 miles.  Even 15 sounded like a lot! So to get through it, I would break the race up in pieces – 10 miles, 15 miles, 20. If I get myself to each leg, the next chunk didn’t seem so bad. Of course, six more miles after running twenty is never easy but that is a different story.

So with this third round of IVF, I decided to take to go back to my marathon approach. Unlike my past two rounds, we wont be doing a transfer right away. In fact, there are so many hurdles to even getting to that point that I have to focus on the here and now. So far, I made it past the first three legs. 21 days of BCPs check. A period, check. And thankfully a successful baseline – cysts ,low E2 and progesterone levels. Last try, I didn’t even make it past this point. And today, I start my stim meds. Two units of Menopur in the morning and twelve hours later, 225 units of Gonal F plus 5 units of Lupron. The next goal post is my first monitoring appointment on Tuesday at a local clinic. Assuming that goes well, Miles and I will fly out to Denver on Wednesday. From there, we hope for continued growth and retrieval. After that, its about fertilization reports, how many (if any) make it to blast and then two weeks later, if any of those are normal. If we are lucky to get a normal, the next step is a FET but I am getting ahead of myself. One step at a time.

Surprisingly, I am pretty relaxed about the whole thing. I am more nervous about flying solo with Miles than my response to the meds. What will be, will be. We had our second and final homestudy meeting with the social worker today so nice that we are also moving forward on the adoption front. I’ve been reading several books to gain a better understanding of what we can expect. Sadly, I have yet to find a blog story or book about adoption after a biological child. My best example is my own brother and his wife who foster adopted a 10 month old boy after having twins who were 6 at the time. All I can say is that I don’t know who is luckier my brother and his wife or their son. There is so much love, its pretty much impossible to see a difference between him and his big sisters.  Just one big happy family which is all that Dave and I want to have, regardless of who births the baby.

But one step at a time. We will get there by staying strong, breathing and not trying to go to fast.