still...

still looking for home for the kitties...
still waiting for september to come to start ivf (come ALREADY!)...
still eating WAY too much chocolate...
still eating way too much crap of all kinds...
still eating way too much...
still love my girlfriend more than can be imagined...
still avoiding exercising (i think i really need an exercise buddy)...
still (and continuously) impressed and moved by fellow IVPers stepping up over and over again...
still getting over jetlag...
still crazy after all these years...
can't seem to sit
still...

while we are on the kitty theme

we need your help...

two little kitties were abandoned near us and our roommate shenendoah found them and brought them home till we can find a place for them... we wish we could keep them, but dakota is allergic - and though she says she will take allergy shots so we can get a kitty someday, she can't do it now while we are gearing up for ivf meds and all...

they already seem to know how to use the litter box quite accurately :) and they are very very friendly and comfortable with people, the little grey and white one is on my lap as i type this...

if you live in NYC and can take these absolutely adorable little siblings - please please please email me as soon as possible, so we can arrange for you to come get them. we need to place them tomorrow, monday.

email me at mulberrymail@gmail.com

no kitties...

turns out that my folks were not quite ready to get kitties... we went to two pounds and at one there were not very many cats and the second there were SO many my mom was overwhelmed with all the little faces she couldn't imagine taking one home. and they really miss their kitty who just died... they were just not ready :(

[so, sorry, no pictures of new kitties for travelher and pufferfish but here is one of their little kitty at 17 years old, about a year ago. she still looked like a kitten]



the second pound was one i used to volunteer at when i was about 14 years old... it sounded and smelled just the same! was a wild gig helping people pick pets to take home, washing the really grungy ones so someone would want to take them home... i do love critters :) we don't have any because dakota is allergic, the poor thing!

yay vacation days!

i am feeling much less stressed, thanks for the comments online and off...

work events are over, they went well... and i have been officially *on vacation* for 2 days! the weather is beautiful and i have been visting with family and a couple friends and relaxing. i am going with my parents this afternoon to help them to pick out a kitty (or maybe 2) at the pound. their kitty died a month or so ago and they really miss having a furry companion. i don't think they have been without one since, wow... i can't think of when that would be... there has been overlap with every pet back to since i was born! no wonder my mom is so out of sorts... well in any case, it should be a good day :)

ovulated today - nice to see that my body is getting back in the swing after last month's 60 day cycle :) dakota is going to accupuncture while i am away and getting her eggs in tip top shape and the train moves slowly on.

so excited to see all the pink lines and digital exclamations out there is babymakingblogland. you all are an inspiration!

perhaps i will have a chance to write more later... off to go shopping!

anxious, unsettled, impatient - or - how to spend two weeks in sunny california

i am finding it really hard to be in CA this week. our events are going well, though i am distracted. did i mention that i am *responsible* for producing our events?? turns out it is much harder to do while distracted.

in my last post i talked about the shift i have been making in my community organizing and the ways that i am finding it unsettling, even as i know it is what i want to do... a big part of my distraction this week and one source of the unsettled feelings is because i made a significant shift right before i took off for CA and resigned from major duties. once you do that kind of thing, word moves fast and i have been trying to reach by phone several people i am close to, to let them know ''in person'' before they hear the news some other way. (hard, but so far very lovely conversations.) i am anxious now in my down time - instead of relaxing - and am having a dog of a time negotiating the 3 hour time difference and the long hours of events. i keep missing people.

on top of all of that:
- i REALLY miss dakota (it was only two weeks between my two CA trips and she had to work late most of the days i was home) and i miss my roommate shenandoah too!
- i am feeling impatient, we thought we were going to do our first ivf cycle in august, but now it looks like it might be more like september cause our accupuncturist wants more time to create good egg health (we just started accupuncture)
- my last cycle was *60 days* and they think i ovulated somewhere in there, but my monitor lost track of it along the way (a first) so i thought i hadn't ovulated, but the blood tests said otherwise

am hoping that writing this all down will help easy the anxiety... but, even if it doesn't. now you all are with me in it ;)

the joys of tracking two cycles :) and exploring new terrain

two little clearblue montitors sit on our dresser, side by side... mine has a small sticker on it that translates the time to pacific time, for my trip to CA - i am leaving in 3 days. i am excited that we are about to start down the trail to harvesting dakota's eggs. don't quite get yet how we are supposed to get me in sync with her, but one thing at a time i guess. the day after i get back from CA should be day2 of dakota's period and time to start shots and other meds. good news is that i will be home to cheer her on while she gives herself the evil shots and to enjoy the mood swings that will likely follow ;)

while i am in CA (after i finish my work events) i will visit with my parents for a week. i am looking forward to spending some time with them. they are very excited that they may be grandparents in the next year (hope, hope). they had given up on that possibility years ago. my younger sister is also queer and she and her long time partner (my sister-out-law) are not interested in having kids, though they are keen on having nieces and/or nephews. as for me, i never gave up on the desire to have kids, but i did spend the last 15 years, or so, focusing my energies on community organizing. it did not seem like there was room for a family, so i didn't think about it. over the last 6 years i have been shifting things around to make room for this piece of my life i had put on hold. i am excited to be in the thick of pursuing making a family (the most important part being that dakota and i found each other - yay!), and at the same time, as i make even more shifts, it is kind of hard and unsettling to be in such a new place in regards to what was so central to my life before. it is good i think, just such a different terrain.

some gems we have found along the way, yes i mean you!

what an interesting time this has been... i am preparing to travel to produce a meeting for work and realized that last year when i went on this same trip, i packed my clearblue ovulation monitor for the first time. it has been a year now (12 months!) that i have been POAS almost daily, more for dakota. we started the spermification process in earnest january '08, so we are now 7 months in (a mere drop in the bucket, i know). mostly we have been focusing on getting dakota pregnant, and she has gotten pregnant twice and lost them both early on, and it is the second round, as she also tried a few years back - before we met - and had 2 other pregnancies heartbreakingly lost, though she says it must have been because *our* children were waiting for her to find me... is there anyone better than her??

we both have really been loving reading everyone's stories in blog land. it's so nice to meet you!

in our endless googling and digging about on the web, we came across some interesting items i wanted to share with y'all... even though you all are the biggest gems! [and frankly, you have probably seen all of this before]

i came across these images of what ovulation actually looks like - you can see the difference between the follicle and the egg - something i was never quite able to grasp.
pictures of ovulation occuring

and a video description of what happens in an ivf harvest and transfer... strangely more instructive than our own RE was in the first 3 conversations about ivf.
video description of ivf

stirrup queens blog - if you've been there, you know what i mean! if not, well check it out...
amazing blog with more ttc info than i have ever seen in one place

and for the lingo, mrs. bluemonts house of things - no better list of ttc lingo out there :)
ttc lingo

thanks for welcoming us to the neighborhood.
xo mulberry

slowing down, deep breaths...

well, i feel like this last week has been a good lesson in clarity... the wish for it, and lack of it, and that it is possible to slow down, take a deep breath and live through mud...

over the last weeks we all watched the soon to be 6 mommies at veeandjay, romancingthestork and joulybeansbabyblog... flap around in the muddy waters and happily come out of the chaos pregnant!

as for our current unclarity, we talked to our regular RE and she did not completely agree with the dr we saw the other day. she did not think we absolutely should not do the simultaneous stimulation, but she did think that we might be a little better off with a more simple protocol. she also did not feel strongly about us needing to do the blanket genetic screening at this juncture which is good, cause we were not comfortable with that.

we have much more talking to do with each other (dakota and i). to start with, we have decided to do nothing at all for july, as i am traveling for two weeks at the end of the month. we will regroup in august. we are going for ivf for sure, but still trying to get clear on if we should find a way to collect some of my eggs before we try to do implant one of dakota's embryos in my uterus so that my eggs don't age another year before we try to use them. we are of course hoping that i will get pregnant with her embryo so that would mean about a year before i would be trying for baby #2. i am 41 now, so that is all a bit daunting...

we did get some good advice (on-line and off) not to second guess ourselves and to trust that we can do this. so we will be keeping on :) with deep breaths...

we will keep updating as we go...

(confession, i have such a hard time with the waiting... i am really trying to do what i am writing - deep breaths!!)

overwhelmed... would love your thoughts

our regular repro endrocrinologist is out on mondays so when i went in this monday to see why no period for 56 days, i saw another doc that works with her in the practice.

seems somewhere along the way i did ovulate and period should follow at some point soon so they will not be putting me on progesterone to '' bring down'' my period. we will just wait for it to arrive.

here is the thing... we had been planning to pursue the plan i outlined in last post... we each stimulate, each do egg retrieval and then put her embryo in me...

turns out this other doctor i saw monday thinks that is a terrible idea. he says that i am much more likely to get pregnant carrying her embryo if i do *not* also go through the stimulation before the implant. that was surprising to me... our doc never mentioned that and i never would have imagined it true. most ivf happens just that way - first you stim, then do retrieval and then grow the embryos and then put back in the gal who just stimed. he said that in europe, sometimes women get a discount on ivf if they will agree to donate some of the embryos, but the fact that - % wise - the woman who gets the donation is more likely to get pregnant than the woman who's embryos they are, creates an ethical dilemma... and that is why they do not do that in the states. again, never heard any of this before...

the other thing he felt strongly about was that he thought we needed to do the three rounds of ivf egg harvesting from dakota that our insurance will pay for, and then when we have the three batches in dish, that we do genetic testing and determine that way which ones are good to go. this because of maternal age and the fact that the fact that she has had four miscarriages. at first this seemed sound... then i saw a couple articles that seemed to be saying that there has been no shown correlation between screening and higher birth rates in older moms (link to one below)... and it will cost $3-5K that our insurance will *not* pay.

http://www.ivf.net/ivf/bfs_issues_new_guidelines_recommending_limited_use_of_pgs-o3469-en.html

arrrgh... what to do? maybe we do not stim me, we collect her eggs, do not screen and just try ivf on me with her ''donated'' embryo. or do we collect her eggs, fertilize and save them for later and try IUI on me so we have higher chance [maybe] of us having two kids over time - one related biologically to each of us? have any of you out there dealt with any or all of these issues?

our regular doc was supposed to call us yesterday to talk about all this and she didn't...

sorry for the rambly post, we could really use some input and words of experience :)