A Waiting Game

Waiting. When you're going through fertility treatments your whole life is a waiting game. And the waiting makes you crazy. Seriously. Insane.

When you're on a medicated cycle, using injectible stimulation, your doctors watch everything very carefully. You know, they don't want to cause the next octomom. ;) So, over the course of a cycle, you are in the office about 7/8 out of 18 days. By the time we go in for our IUI, usually on day 16/18ish of my cycle, I know how thick my lining is, how many follicles I have, how big my follicles are, and what all my hormone levels are.. (Estrogen, Progesterone, LH, FSH) Really, there are no surprises. And because I know everything, I am even more involved and emotionally tied to each cycle.

This is one of my injectible cycles...
Day 3 of cycle - blood work, baseline ultrasound to check resting follicles, possible cysts, and begin stimulation
Day 7 - blood work, u/s, check follicle growth, wait for call to set stimulation
Day 10 - blood work, u/s, check follicle growth, wait for call to set stimulation
Day 12 - blood work, u/s, check follicle growth, wait for call to set stimulation
Day 14 - blood work, u/s, check follicle growth, wait for call to set stimulation
Day 15 - blood work, u/s, check follicle growth, wait for call to set stimulation, trigger and IUI
Day 16 - Trigger shot @ 10pm
Day 18 - IUI @ 9am
Day 25 - blood work to check Progesterone
Day 32 - take pregnancy test

I get tired just thinking about those weeks. It is so involved and the waiting is heart-wrenching. You wait to see what amount of meds you are on, you wait to get the call to see how much your meds increase, you wait to see if the meds are working, you wait to see how many follicle you have, you wait to see if your follicles grow at every appointment, you wait until they are the perfect size, you wait until you can trigger, you wait for your IUI, you wait for your progesterone test to be sure you ovulated, you wait for the day you can take that pregnancy test, if it's negative you wait for your cycle to start again... wait. wait. wait. And all the waiting and knowing totally consumes you.

And now my waiting continues. I have 9 days until my next blood work - we're waiting for my hormone levels to get back to 0. Once everything is at 0 I can then do my Repeated Pregnancy Loss blood work. Then I have a 2 week wait for the results. I'm also counting down the days - 17 to be exact - until I'm done my birth control pills. Barring any negative test results, once I'm done the birth control and I start my cycle, we'll be able to begin trying again. So for now, I'm still waiting. And I'll continue to wait and endure. It is hard, but it will be worth it when one day we are able to bring home our miracle. So, I will continue to wait, and hope, and pray...

An Introduction: 10 Things About Me

I've done a few posts. Many of the older ones I've deleted. I've thought about starting from scratch, but it took me so long to post the pictures in the older posts, that I can't stand the thought of deleting. :) BUT I have decided to start over. I really enjoy reading other blogs. I have a whole folder in my favorites of the blogs I check daily, so I figure I should give it a real shot - for the 3rd time.

What better way to start this off - again - than to do a little introduction. 10 things about me...

1. My husband and I live in New Orleans. Well, a suburb of New Orleans. We were both born and raised here. Our families are here. So we are here. We met for the first time about 12 years ago, dated briefly one summer, and 're-met' 6 years later in April 04. We've been pretty much inseparable since then. We were engaged in December 07 and married in March of 09.

2. We have two furry children. One fat cat (like 20lbs fat) named Alice and one little, spunky puppy named Bella. Bella is a Havanese and the best thing I've ever paid money for.

3. I'm a Baptist and my husband is a Catholic. We've been searching for the right church for us as a family, and we're both very excited that we *think* we've found the place! What an answered prayer!

4. I went to college at Auburn University - those were absolutely some of the best times of my life. I love AU football and have made my hubs an AU fan too! War Eagle!

5. We are HUGE Saints fans. I've gone to Saints games since I was little and my family has always had tickets. N and I decided to re-purchase season tickets after Hurricane Katrina. WOW! Super Bowl Champs!!!

6. The amount of time, love, and energy we spend watching football is probably insane to lots of people. Basically, we spend August - February watching football and February - August waiting for the season to begin!

7. Sonoma/Napa, California and Florida beaches are my most favorite places to spend my time vacationing. LOVE!!!

8. Most of my friends live everywhere but here and recently some of our friends that did live here have also moved. I miss them everyday and I wish that they were closer.

9. N and I had been together for 5 years at the time of our wedding so we decided that we were in a great place to begin trying to get pregnant. Once we returned from our honeymoon I got off the pill and that started a terrible and painful battle of Infertility that we are still suffering through.

10. The year 2010 has been one of the toughest years of my life. Only a few days into the new year, I lost my grandmother. She was sick, but not expected to pass away. I was in Dallas, TX for a meeting and I wasn't able to say goodbye. It hurts my heart so much not to have her here. A few months later, the week after our first anniversary, N and I suffered a miscarriage. It was painful, but I we got through it. Two months after we were able to begin trying to conceive again, I got pregnant. Ecstatic doesn't even explain how we felt. Unfortunately, 9 weeks into the pregnancy, we miscarried again. I can't even begin to describe the devastation and hurt we feel, but this is what we're dealing with. We can only pray that God has a family for us at the end of this road...

Home Sweet Home

It has been so long since I posted. In the time that has passed so much has happened in my life. I'll guess I'll start with where I left off! We moved!!!

We're finally settled in our new house. It is so amazing to finally have space. Our condo was 1200 sq. ft. we now have 2500 sq. ft. We went from 2 bedrooms to 4 and our entire condo seems like it would fit in our kitchen here. HaHa! Maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, but it is a BIG difference. We've been in the house since Decemeber 23rd. Can you believe we were brave enough to move right before Christmas!?! It was crazy to say the least!

We have some projects to do on the house and that is taking up all our time. It's funny because we chose this house because we loved the open floor plan, the neighborhood, and because there wasn't much to do. HA! I guess you can always find something to do. It's all part of making it your own, but dang it is a lot of work! :)

One of our first projects was to clear out backyard. We purchased this home from a couple, who seriously love to plant stuff. Don't get me wrong, I come from a long line of gardeners, but this was something else. The lady made a garden in ever spot of ground in the backyard. It was garden after garden and nothing made sense. She saw an empty spot and she planted something. Then she never tended to it or trimmed it up. Ugh! Soooo... we had to pull everything up. We have pulled up years of overgrown plants, weed, trees - everything you can think of. Now that we have most of it out, we have to till the soil, replant a few things that we were able to save, and get some grass growing. That sounds really easy, but it's really about a weeks worth of work if not more. I know that in the end we will have a backyard that we can entertain in, enjoy, and that all the work will be worth all this effort!

We have a lot of projects left for the inside too. I'm just trying to put these off for the summer when it gets to be too hot to go outside. I'm in New Orleans so during the summer it's easily in 100's and there is no way I could work outside. So, that's when most of this work will get done. The only thing that we have really done so far is replace the old, boring ceiling fan in the great room with one that is more stylish and sophisticated. Well, as stylish and sophisticated as a ceiling fan can be. Ha! We also added a medallion to the ceiling to dress it up. That is just a start to the main project coming soon - pulling up tile and carpet and replacing with wood!!!

This is the project I've been waiting to do! The tile in this house is a Spanish Satillo tile. It's a orangish-yellow color. It's not my choice, but I can deal with it. The big problem is that I don't like that this tile is in our foyer and formal dining room! Yuck! I need something with a little more class - dark WOOD! Yay! We finally got our wood picked out - it is a dark handscraped hickory. I love it! We went with hickory because it is more durable - with a higher hardness rating than most. I really had my eye on a antique reclaimed pine wood, but it would just get too destroyed. :( That's okay - I love the dark wood too. I'm so excited to do this project! I don't care how much work it is or how dirty everything gets, I just want it done!!!

As for the rest of the house, I have a long to do list. I guess I'll post it here so maybe I'll be accountable to get it done...

1. pull up carpet and tile - replace with wood

2. get carpets in bedrooms cleaned

3. purchase chandelier for dining room

4. purchase curtains for dining room

5. paint dining room and add wainscoting

6. paint guest bedroom 2

7. buy new furniture knobs for guest bedroom 2

8. buy sheets, pillows, euro shams for the guest bedroom 2

9. find a headboard to paint for guest bedroom 1

10. purchase lights and faucets for master bathroom

11. paint master bathroom

12. replace master bathroom door

13. clean and organize garage

14. clean, organize, empty front bedroom

15. purchase valance for kitchen windows

16. purchase king bed for master

17. purchase bedding for master

18. paint master

19. purchase curtains for master

20. print photos for frames

Notice that there are a lot of "to do's" that require purchasing. Ugh! That's lots of money, so we will slowly do all those updates. Althought when I put all of those things on my to do list, they are always on my mind so I'm able to keep an eye out of good deals!

Brandi

SOLD

We're moving! It is such an exciting time for my husband and I! Nick had bought a condo while we were dating and it has been our home for the past 3 years. We loved this place when we were looking and because I am a crazy HGTV addict, I thought it would be nothing to get it in tip-top shape. I was wrong! Sweat equity is hard, especially with our busy schedules! Not to mention, HGTV can edit out all the really bad stuff that you have to deal with. Anyway, we put in the time and effort and got this place SOLD! Yay! Now we're trying to figure out our next step. Luckily, we don't have to be out of the condo until mid-December.

Here is a picture of our biggest remodel...