BFP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m still in SHOCK!

It’s only 8 days after a 3 day transfer, which equates to testing  at around 11 days past ovulation, or 3 days before a missed period which is still pretty early. I wasn’t expecting the line to turn so dark so fast. With Jasper I tested on the same day and you could barely see it!

My Beta HCG test (blood test to confirm pregnancy) wasn’t scheduled until Monday, but there was NO WAY I was going to wait until then a) because I’m too impatient and b) because it means going into the office early in the morning and waiting around minute by agonizing minute until they call you with the results that afternoon.  When I think of being told I’m pregnant or not pregnant by a nurse on the other end of the phone, and then calling Jeff with the good or bad news at work.. it’s just so CLINICAL.

I know that’s an odd thing to say because the whole IVF process is clinical, but this part, this one little part I wanted us to experience at home like a normal couple and either celebrate together or cry in each others arms.

Of course it still didn’t work out exactly as I had it in my head..

I woke up at 6am and had to pee SO BADLY that there was no way I could wait until Jeff and Jasper woke up at their usual 7am or so.  But I also knew that was early to test so it would be essential to use first morning urine.

So I tested.. and then when it turned positive I ran and dragged Jeff out of bed into the bathroom where I presented him with the two lines..

He was so bleary eyed it took him a good minute or so to register what I was showing him… those two lines that we’ve only ever seen one other time and probably will never see again!

I emailed my Dr. who told me to come in for the Beta blood test today, I will go back again Monday to see if the Beta HCG is rising appropriately. If it doesn’t, that means bad news for this being a viable pregnancy.  He also cautioned me that it’s still very early and I should only be cautiously optimistic. And my head KNOWS that.

But the fact is that with our BFP with Jasper I was SO scared in the beginning that I actually burst into tears at the Dr’s office getting my blood drawn for the second Beta test.. so scared that I couldn’t let myself enjoy the good news.

So yes, I KNOW there is SO much that can go wrong still, particularly at my age.  But I feel joyful, so even if the wise thing to do is guard my heart against disappointment, I want to enjoy this feeling of being pregnant knowing how hard we worked to get here and just bask in it for at least the weekend.

THANK YOU for all the positive vibes, prayers, well wishes or whatever you have offered up on our behalf.  Whichever way this goes, I am so very grateful for your support!!

PS: If you are the betting kind, when I was pregnant with Jasper the Giants and the Patriots played in the superbowl and the Giants won. I had a good feeling about our chances for this cycle when I found out the same teams were playing this year and I’m pretty sure we are going to have a repeat performance from the Giants. Being Giants fans that could all be wishful thinking, but we will DEFINITELY be placing some money on them to win – we are feeling very lucky :)

UPDATE: For those of you who know what these numbers mean, I just got the callback with my Beta. 112! OMG. With Jasper at 12 days (not 11 like today) it was 31.  GULP!

But, I did want to write briefly about the transfer itself..

Out of the laundry list of procedures I’ve had done, this one doesn’t rate as particularly eventful, other than that it has to be done on a “full bladder” which makes it easier for them to view the placement of the embryos via sonography.  The problem with full bladder is that it has to be full, but not TOO full that you can’t tolerate them pushing down pretty hard on your stomach with the sonography wand and then lying supine in the recovery room for 20 minutes. It’s always some little fun twist like this just to keep it interesting.

The transfer of the embryos themselves is done via a catheter inserted through the cervix right into the uterus which in theory is not painful (no anesthesia) but in practice I felt QUITE a pinch when the catheter passed through the cervix (OUCH!) which I’d never felt with my IUIs. Not sure if the catheter is larger for embryos or if the Dr. doing the transfer is just less gentle than my regular Dr. but anyway, it was over in a minute and I got to watch onscreen as SOMETHING happening in the petri dish.

It was all very scifi and surreal and I honestly didn’t even know what I was looking at half the time except when they first showed me our three embryos and then made me identify our names on the petri dish plate.

After it was over (a few minutes) one of the embryologists came out and gave me a photo of our little embryos.  I guess I’d better post it in case it’s the closest thing we ever have to baby #2!

I’m not 100% positive but I’m pretty sure that the one in the center is the “textbook excellent” 8 cell embryo and the one on the left is the “very good” 9 cell embyro. And then there’s the wonky dividing too quickly messy looking guy on the right..I think so anyway. I’m no expert!

After leaving the clinic I went home for a bit and picked up Jasper from preschool. On our way home he asked me what I did at work that day..

So I told him that I didn’t go to work because I went to the “baby doctor” to which he asked, as he always does, if he gave us a baby yet.

I don’t know WHY I decided to go into this much detail (blame it on the fake hormones) but I told him that today he put two eggs inside mommy, kind of like how dinosaurs come from eggs and if we are really lucky they will hatch into babies (OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?)

Now Jasper thinks that maybe mommy is going to have baby dinosaurs.

Then he asked how the doctor got them in there.

Uhhhhhhh..

I tried to be vague, but “through mommy’s belly” didn’t cut it so I told him it went through my belly button. He seemed to accept that as a reasonable method of entry and stopped asking questions.

Yeah, this poor kid is going to be ALL sorts of confused.  And you thought the REGULAR birds and bees discussion was going to be hard – try adding IVF in the mix!

So, fingers crossed in a week or so we’ll get some good news that maybe one of those “eggs” decided to hatch and become a baby. Or a dinosaur.

Whatever, I’m not too picky at this point.

;)

Mommy's little sweetheart!

Just got a call from my Dr. – all three embryos are still alive! And two of them are “excellent quality!”

One of the two is 8 cell and the other is 9 cell. The third embryo is 15 cell and not compacting, so a lower grade. But it’s still viable so all three are going in at 1pm today!

Last night’s PIO shot went much better than the night before.. I think Jeff was too far in towards the spine the first night because that one still hurts more than last night’s more recent shot.

I was telling him as much this morning while he was getting dressed and Jasper and I were still cuddling in bed.   All the sudden Jasper got this really concerned look on his face and said:

“Mommy, are you OK?”

“Sure baby, why?”

“Because the shots hurted you!”

I reassured him that mommy was FINE and he started sulking and said he was sad because mommy’s shots hurt :(

I reassured him again but he looked over accusingly at Jeff and said “Daddy- you need to be more gentle!”

MELT.

Seriously, if we don’t screw him up too much my son may be the sweetest human being to walk this earth…I just hope we can give him a sibling to love too.

I guess I completely misunderstood what they count as day one, I thought it was retrieval day = day 1 because that’s how they count everything else in infertility. The day you get your period= Cycle day 1, not the day after.  So yet another waiting game begins – this time the waiting is to hear if our little embryos survive until Thursday and if so, what grade/quality they are.

Last night I had the dubious pleasure of experiencing my first Progesterone in Oil (PIO in infertility lingo) shot.  I have to say that having to take 2-3 shots a day during the stimming part of the cycle is a lot easier than it sounds because the needles are really tiny and just go in the skin around your stomach.  But the PIO shot is intramuscular and is administered , well in the ass. Which in and of itself isn’t SO bad, but for whatever reason they have to “suspend” the progesterone in Oil, sesame oil to be exact, and it’s so thick that the needle itself has to be wide for the oil to be able to pass through.  And it HURTS. Not only going in, but also afterwards… it throbs and felt burnt around the injection site, though I may be allergic to the sesame oil which could be making it worse  ( I had a red mark that looked like a bite around the site all last night!)

The whole thing is just so barbaric, I just seriously can’t believe they can’t find a better option than giant needle in the ass. I swear, if men needed to take the progesterone shots to have babies you can bet your (sore) ass that someone would have figured out a way to suspend progesterone in beer or something a hell of a lot more pleasant and less painful.

I’m aware that there are other options (like suppositories) but crinone sounds disgusting and I know from first hand experience how unpleasant endometrin just for the mess of it. However, I’m seriously considering asking to take endometrin instead – I guess I’ll wait to see how I tolerate the PIO moving forward. (My Dr. said if the redness happens again tonight we will switch oils or to suppositories.)

The worst part of all this is if you actually get pregnant, you have to take these shots for 6-10 weeks!! Maybe they do that so that if you find out you are NOT pregnant, at least you have the consolation prize of being able to stop those damn shots. Geeez.

The funniest part of all this is that due to Jeff’s schedule we could only do the shot while Jasper was awake, and so he was with us for the whole thing including while we were watching a youtube video of where to do the shot.  This morning I come upstairs to find Jasper in the office by the computer asking to watch “the video where the lady gives herself a shot” and having a temper tantrum when I told him that wasn’t really a movie for kids!

Thank you all so much for you well wishes throughout all this, if I can ask for your continued positive thoughts that our little embryos make it until transfer tomorrow that would be fabulous.  It’s so weird to think that the closest thing may ever have to another child is sitting in a petrie dish somewhere in Manhattan. Grow embies grow!

Even my Dr. was surprised and he called me yesterday afternoon to tell me so.  It means there were “empty” follicles as he put it. Which I realized after some research is actually a bit of a misnomer as no follicle can actually be empty, but what can happen is that the egg has not released itself from the follicle and is not ready or is too damaged at the time of retrieval to be flushed out and taken.

I read there are a few reasons this can happen, really crappy egg quality and that the HCG trigger that is supposed to make the eggs ready for retrieval just doesn’t work for some reason.  Although I certainly have reason to doubt my egg quality, I am now beginning to suspect that for some reason my body doesn’t respond to the HCG trigger like it should.  The reason I suspect this is that when we conceived Jasper via IUI 4+ years ago I was charting (taking my basal temperature religiously) and distinctly remember that my temperature did not rise (signaling ovulation) until AFTER the IUI which would also suggest a trigger delay.  I questioned my RE about that and he told me that there are very few certainties in reproductive medicine, but the fact that someone will ovulate 36 hours after an HCG trigger is one of them.

Well, turns out this is not entirely true according to my research.. some people require a different type of HCG or double the dose. It’s rare, but completely possible. It would be something to consider if we were going to be able to do this again – but, having exhausted our IF insurance coverage I don’t think it’s in the cards to do another cycle.

So, today I get the call to see if any of those 4 eggs actually fertilized.. and if any do, we get to wait on pins and needles hoping they live until tomorrow and are decent quality to transfer. I’m waiting until tonight to have Jeff do the dreaded progesterone shot because if none fertilize at least my butt won’t be sore!

On the plus side, the ER was pretty painless. A few mild tinges and cramps but nothing serious. The anesthesia caused no ill effects, not even the shakes like I got the last time I went under.

So, that’s all the news – hopefully we’ll have at least on survivor out of those 4 sad lonely eggs…thanks for all your well wishes, we will take every little bit of positive energy we can get!

Yesterday I went into the Westchester office of my fertility clinic fully expecting to be ready to trigger (take the injection that makes your eggs ready to release in 36 hours) and have the Egg Retrieval (ER) on Sunday morning. But, that would have all worked out MUCH to perfectly.. what actually happened was that Dr. K felt my follicles needed one more day to mature, which meant I had to scramble around to get an extra dose of the Gonal F I’d run out of (and $252 to boot).  But that wasn’t the worst part, the worst part came when I was leaving his office and said OK, so I’ll trigger tomorrow night then?”

“Well no, we really need you to come back in for monitoring tomorrow to be sure..”

Tomorrow being today (Saturday) and his office is closed on the weekends so that means having to go into NYC instead.. which, while not super convenient, is not a huge deal on the weekends because at least there is no rush hour traffic to contend with. However, they were forcasting about 1-3 inches of snow in the city, due to fall RIGHT as I would need to be driving.

I really had no idea though until I got on the road this morning at 7:30am just HOW much snow and how bad the roads would be. The palisades parkway was COMPLETELY unplowed..I saw several cars that had skidded off the road into the woods that abut the highway and I was slipping around like mad. I honestly felt  like it was a big risk for what seemed like a “cover our bases” visit.

After all, he’d almost declared me ready to trigger yesterday, so how could I NOT be ready today after an additional day and dose of meds? Besides which I HAD no more meds left, now being out of both Gonal-F and menopur.

After a particularly bad skid, Ipulled off at the rest area and called in to ask do I REALLY need to come? Of course they couldn’t reach my doctor, so I kept driving and by the time they got back to me that my Dr. had said I should stay home I was already in the city and just went in.

Guess what? It was time to trigger (no, really?)

At least they are letting me skip the other visit tomorrow where they would just check to see if the HCG trigger had absorbed into my system (I can just do a home pregnancy test to assess the same thing.)

We also got our time for the retrieval on Monday morning. 8:30 am. Yikes! That’s awfully early to get into the city on a commuting day… not to mention inconvenient given that daycare doesn’t open until 8:00am which is cutting it too close. So, arrangements will need to be made.

But you know what is freaking me out even more about Monday? They said I can’t wear makeup because of anesthesia (they need to know if I’m getting too pale I guess?)  But what they DON’T realize is that my natural skintone is whiter than paper and most likely when confronted with my natural skintone with NO MAKEUP they will think I’m in organ failure or something.

You think I’m joking, but it happened in the hospital after having Jasper. The nurses kept asking me or Jeff if I was OK because I looked so pale! Finally after I got up the energy to put on some makeup they stopped pestering me.

Anyway, I have no idea when I’ll feel up to blogging again after the ER, so any fertile thoughts you can send my way Monday would be appreciated!

The snow today wasn’t all bad though.. here’s my little snowmonster after having a snowball fight with Daddy:

Coming home to a big hug from him telling me that he missed me makes everything always feel better!

I have a terrible time saying no, so I shot three newborns in one week. To give you an idea, I usually do one maybe two per month, so this was quite unusual for me and a little bit terrifying.

I have a confession – I don’t really LOVE  newborn photography. There, I said it! Partly though I think it’s because I’m just not that GOOD at it.  I mean I’m good at lighting and shooting them, but the posing and handling part I just don’t feel 100% confident in.  In fact, after EVERY newborn session I swear that I’m not going too book another one until I take a newborn workshop! But then, some time passes and I get a little amnesia and get excited about the challenge again and I cave.

So, there I was with three newborn sessions, each more difficult than the one before. But then I realized I was using the same techniques to try to salvage what I could from the shoots and that those techniques might be useful/helpful to anyone else who is photographing a less than perfect sleeper!

First, what follows is assuming you are employing all the BASIC techniques of newborn photography including keeping the room as close to 90 degrees as possible, using some sort of white noise app, making sure blankets and surfaces are warm before placing baby on them etc.  What I’m talking about here is when you are doing everything “by the book” and it’s STILL not going well -what can you do to make sure you get enough variety for a gallery?

1) Swaddle. Duh, you knew this already right?  But, there’s a twist.. I find that the types of fabrics that I was using to swaddle sleeping newborns to be completely inadequate for swaddling awake babies that are moving their arms and legs and tend to break free much too easily from any fabric with slip.. so I went out recently to BRU and bought some semi-attractive looking regular type of receiving blankets for this purpose.  Before my next session, I’m going to order these stretchy knit scarves from Van Klee instead.

2) Move to the parent shots. I find that even fussy babies are usually OK with doing parent shots for at least as long as it takes to fire off a few frames!

And, if not, see #1! During the session above, I only BRIEFLY shot this image before baby lost it. So we fed him, tried to come back later but he still wasn’t having any of it, so as a last resort we swaddled him for the family shot:

3) Staying on the topic of parent shots for a second, there is one pose in particular that I find can usually be achieved even when baby is not sleeping or even that calm, partly because you can’t see baby’s face that well, but also because the frog-like leg position and hand around baby’s head like this keeps the baby well contained even when awake. Plus, often the interest of looking into their parents’ faces will hold their attention long enough to get them to calm down a bit:

This baby was also pretty fussy when this shot was taken:

4)  Enlist one of the parents to help you hold the blanket up vs. having it clipped to a stand.  This is something I recently started doing and it has made a world of difference in how free I am to rotate the beanbag’s angle towards the window to get my lighting just how I want it.  But as it pertains to a difficult session, this will also allow you more freedom to shoot the same pose from different angles.  For example, after this shot:

I tried pulling him up over the “bump” I had created in the blankets expecting him to keep his head angled the same way, but then he turned it.  Instead of trying to make his head turn the way it had been (and risking him waking up in protest!)  I rotated my whole beanbag so that his body was no longer at a 45 degree angle but instead at a 90 degree angle from the window.

I can’t tell you how much this freedom from “blanket clipping” has helped me with getting more optimal light and angles throughout my newborn shoots!

5)  Shoot the details. When you REALLY are struggling to get the requisite number of shots, details shots will add some much needed variety:

It’s not just a gimmick either, parents LOVE these shots! The mom told me that this smooshy lip thing he’s doing is his signature move, so you can BET that’s something the parents want to remember!

6) Accessorize Accessorize Accessorize.  Often, I end up getting 90% of the shots from a session during one 15 minute stretch of REALLY deep sleep.  When that happens, I will literally switch out hats and bows like a mad woman trying to get some variety before I risk a bigger move like changing blankets.  This little guy REALLY gave us a run for our money until literally the LAST 10 minutes of the shoot when he finally feel into a super deep sleep.. so once we got him in the bucket I just changed up the hats and kept shooting!

7) Prioritize. I always set expectations with the parents that we may not get through all the shots they want, so I ask them what is MOST important to them and shoot that first. I had one client that REALLY wanted a swaddled shot. Normally I swaddle when baby isn’t cooperating as a plan B, but it was so important to her that we actually swaddled this little girl even though she was deeply sleeping:

If left to me, I always assume that baby on blanket and baby with parents are most important, but sometimes the parents have other ideas (they might want that prop shot more!) so it’s ALWAYS a good idea to ask!

8) Don’t be too hard on yourself, you probably have more than enough.  The second to last newborn I did was my hardest one EVER. I seriously could not move her fingers without her waking up screaming. By the end of the session we were all a little stressed out and I was just really down about it.  But then I realized that the shots we did get were great.  In fact, this is one of my favorite newborn images I’ve ever taken:

And in the end, even though we didn’t have enough variety for say a huge album, we had covered all our bases.  We had some beautiful wide awake swaddled shots, a few full body shots as above, a shot of the whole family and a shot of mom with baby and dad with baby.  Honestly, that’s plenty to choose from when it comes to the parents ordering products.. often times parents order  multiple copies of their favorite one or two shots anyway, and all it takes is ONE great shot printed on a large canvas to make an impressive statement:

Or just the three parent/family shots to make a fantastic grouping:

And two are all you really need for a beautiful birth announcement!

So while you may be beating yourself up about the lack of variety,  you are probably the only one. The parents were there -they KNOW how difficult the session was and they are most likely just incredibly grateful that you were able to get ANY wonderful shots and will be pleasantly surprised!  That’s how this family was – in the end we laughed about it, they got what they needed and everyone was happy.

Hopefully all your newborns are good sleepers and you won’t ever need any of the tips above. If so, you are luckier and probably better at handling babies than I am :)

CD3, first day of meds for IVF cycle

At my parents’ new year’s eve party Jasper told my friend Janaki  “Mommy hasn’t gotten me a baby sister yet. It’s very hard to do.”

Yes baby, it is.

I was lucky enough to get to take a peak at it pre-release and here are my top five highlights that I took away from that quick look:

1 ) Major changes to the develop module including a complete rethink of the local adjustments in the way highlights and shadows are handled. The adjustments are much easier to make independently of one another and there is no more confusion as to what is the difference between increasing exposure vs brightness etc.

There is also the ability now to do LOCAL noise reduction!

2) Support for light video editing and playback! This includes jpg capturing, trimming (thank god), exposure, WB controls and more! Here is a little list of what develop adjustments you can make to video clips:

Unfortunately, much to my disappointment the ability to add video to the slideshow module is NOT included in this release.

3) A LOT of geotagging functionality so that organizing your photos by place taken is a snap. Tagging can be done after the fact via an easy to use drag and drop interface in the new “MAP” module.

4) A NEW “ALBUM” MODULE! Yep, a whole module devoted to creating albums with text, images, tons of different layouts and the ability to save them by project! Yipee!  There is also an automatic send to blurb functionality for those of you who are blurb fans.

5) Soft proofing. WE will actually be able to see what our images look like in sRGB BEFORE opening them up in Photoshop – no more nasty blown red channel surprises :) There are other uses for softproofing, that was just the one that jumped out at me as most useful for pro photogs.

But don’t just take my word for it, go get yourself a free copy: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom4/

I’ll be back too in the coming days with more thoughts once I’ve had a chance to download and play for a bit!