21 Weeks....No More Cereal!?! (Lost Emails too...)

And the insulin resistance continues! I must have talked to my doctor 3 times over the past week alone! It is crazy and amazing how one little placenta can cause so much ruckus! My carb ratios have gone down from 1:10 in the morning starting in pregnancy, to now 1:6! And I was instructed very clearly by my doctors today, "No More Cereal" for breakfast! Are you kidding me?!?!?! I've been having a cup to cup and a half a day in the morning and LOVE my plain cereal! LOL. I told them I did a cup of Cherrios a day in my last pregnancy and they told me that if they knew that they would have told me to stop it then too. I had no idea! So now, I must have more protein in the morning *sigh*. If I weren't such a picky eater, this wouldn't be an issue at all...and I don't mind the scrambled egg here and there, but I can't do that every day either....BORING. My good friend is going through Gestational Diabetes in her pregnancy right now, so she's just controlling it with diet. She is telling me how bored she is getting with certain foods too, so I think I'm about to find out what she's talking about! haha.

Overall the doctors said my sugars are looking great though. I may have 3-4 hours where my sugars won't come down, but I'm continually on top of it and working to get it down as quickly as possible. Sometimes my hormones just won't allow it to be as quick as I would like. I'm sure they'll check my A1C again soon, but they feel that it will be great since I'm on top of all of my high sugars.

I'm still having to take Zofran every day. The doctors insist though that it will have no effect on my baby...so what can I say, I'm not a doctor, I'll just trust them.

The baby is on the move! This little one seems to be doing flips in there! Which is awesome! I feel her move a lot more than my first pregnancy. 

EMAILS!! So thinking that most people would leave comments here instead of emailing, I have Not been good at reading emails sent to my account listed here on the site. I do apologize to the sweet people who reached out to me with such kind words. I do PROMISE to be more consistent about reading and responding!! If anyone wants to talk about anything I've discussed in my blog posts or just share their story or ask questions, please feel free to reach out to me! I look forward to hearing from you:) xo

Retrieval..........

We had our retrieval yesterday. I haven't posted yet because I did not feel good afterwards...well actually, the relaxing medication they gave me felt very um...."Relaxing":) The only issue I had with the retrieval was a very sore throat afterwards. This is because of the oxygen being forced through my nose and into my throat while being knocked out. I am also having some minor cramping today, but didn't feel any issues yesterday.

They had me under a heated blanket before and after they put me out for the retrieval. I had my Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) on to check my sugars before and after. Before I kept my sugars a little elevated (140) just so I wouldn't get low during the procedure. It was perfect. Then after I gave myself a shot to bring myself down slightly. About an hour after the procedure I got an ERROR 1 notification on my CGM. After looking this up it means that my CGM is not calibrating and reading my sugars. They also gave me Tylenol for any potential cramping that I might have.  This is also something I found out can effect the CGM Sensor reading. It reacts with the protein that is on the sensor in some way shape or form, I'm not exactly sure how......I waited an hour like suggested from the Dexcom Website and put in a new sugar to calibrate, but after a couple of hours realized that it just wasn't reading correctly. It wasn't following the trends in my sugars, so I had to put in a new sensor. This one worked much better! Was it the heat or the medication that effected the sensor? I'm not sure, but something did!

So from the 3 follicles they only retrieved 2 eggs...and you know what, I was actually VERY excited about this. I was thinking there might not be anything so 2 was AWESOME!!! But then I got a phone call this morning that said one of them didn't make it:( They did ICSI on it yesterday because it was mature, but it didn't fertilize....:( The second egg didn't mature until this morning so they were doing ICSI on it today. I wont' know until tomorrow what happens with this little guy....

I can't say that I didn't have a minor breakdown today....it's hard, you only have 2 so you're thinking both will be awesome quality, right? Maybe I kind of feel like a failure? Why am I not producing more eggs? Why wasn't it good? But then a realization, that it is what it is...and there is nothing I can do to control it. For now I'm still taking my Lovenox and we'll wait to see what happens tomorrow.

Final Decision- Move Forward with IVF

After careful consideration we have decided to move forward with IVF and not an IUI. We figured that we've come this far, right? If the doctor doesn't think that I will respond any better to future IVF meds, why not go for it? If I have to do it again and get less follicle growth, I'll probably regret not going for it when they said I had 3 decent ones! So now, we just pray that there are eggs in each of the 3 follicles and that they are mature. Then that they fertilize and grow! And of course from there that it implants and that we have a baby:) (but I'm pretty sure that was a good assumption of what we want) lol

I go in tomorrow morning for the retrieval. I took a shot of HCG last night. I have seen some mild insulin resistance, but nothing major. I feel like my insulin resistance is more coming from a lack of exercise. I haven't been to the gym since the end of last week. I've been keeping my CGM on and just monitoring my sugars really closely. I have also started taking Lovenox (a blood thinner) They started me on this Saturday night. I've had some bruising from it, but once again no major issues with blood sugar control.

Tonight was the first night I haven't had to give myself a shot in a couple of weeks! So nice! But more will start again tomorrow night as long as things go well. They just had me take a Pepcid to reduce the acid in my stomach today and tomorrow am, as well as Reglan. I'm not sure what the Reglan does. I will ask again tomorrow.

I go in at 8am in the morning and the procedure is at 9am. 30min-1hr with -2hrs of recovery time. Please keep your positive thoughts with us that all goes smoothly!

IVF or IUI?? Even Lower Follicle Count

Let me start off by saying that that Ganirelix is driving me nuts! lol...Ever since I have started taking it I go through a period of insulin resistance during the day. It's usually in the afternoon, after lunch. Where it would normally take me 3-4 units to get my sugar down, I am taking about 10+! This has just been while I have been on the Ganirelix. I mentioned this to the doctor today and he was surprised to hear this because the Ganirelix is just a LH prohibitor.(My LH won't rise so I won't ovulate early)

At my follow up appointment today we found out that I only have 3 follicles that have grown....I really wish it were more. Because of this the doctor has once again brought up the idea of doing an IUI instead. I have been pregnant before which the doctor says that I have in my favor. If I hadn't ever been pregnant before, he would say 100% do the IVF. But because I have, he is thinking that we might be better off doing an IUI (Artificial Insemination), but he is leaving it up to us. The biggest advantage of doing an IUI would be that we would get up to 50% or more of our money back...and if it didn't work, we could put that towards trying again starting in April. But there is still a chance that the follicles that I have produced have at least ONE viable egg in it! And after that there are more variables against us....Is the egg mature? Will the egg fertilize? Will it grow? So it's a big decision....what do we decide to do? We've come this far, do we just go all the way?! I have until tomorrow to decide......

The Journey Begins....Why We Are Chosing IVF

This is a blog about being a Type 1 diabetic, getting pregnant and trying to get pregnant again...and hopefully it will be about being type 1 diabetic throughout pregnancy...everyone's story is a little different and this is me chronicling mine.

When I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes almost 27 years ago, I didn't at the time quite realize how diabetes would change my life, nor did I think about getting married, or even having children in the future. I just always assumed that because I had Type 1 diabetes, that I probably wouldn't have kids. Way back in the "olden" days, that's what you heard about Type 1 diabetics. I am happy to say that is one of the furthest things from the truth. It IS possible....but it doesn't mean that the path to get there was not and is not frustrating, and the whole process...sheesh! You think pregnancy is tough...add on being pre-gestational diabetic! It's a whole other world of frustration and worry....but it is possible to get through it!

So some people might look at this and think "IVF, that means you must deal with Infertility". In my case, no. My husband and I were diagnosed with "Sub Fertility". Almost 2 years ago I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. But that was after over a year of trying and going through surgery to remove endometriosis from my ovaries and slightly blocked tubes. After the surgery and another 4 months of trying we conceived naturally our beautiful baby girl.  3-4 months after having her we decided to go for the next one. Since that time we had 1 miscarriage (at 9 weeks), which was completely heartbreaking. No, it was devastating to me.

It's been just about a year now with no luck on conceiving again. This is where the doctors tell us that the "Sub Fertility" comes in. Thank goodness for decent medical insurance right now because we have gone through thousands of dollars worth of blood tests, immunology tests and fertility drugs. My FSH is over 10 (10.7 to be exact...and this was tested more than once), my 21 day progesterone is a little low (so they say it would make it hard to sustain a pregnancy) and some of my immunology tests were Mildly off (which means, potentially, that if I am getting pregnant naturally, it's possible that my body might be fighting off the pregnancy....seeing it as a forigen object) And oh yes! To top it off...my blood type is O negative....Rogam here I come! And fertility drugs....*sigh*. Those were even frustrating before I took them! Scared on what they were going to be doing to my insides, how they would make me act, wondering if this is too far out of the relm of not "natural"...and I haven't even gotten to the IVF drugs yet! We started with Clomid...and clomid alone. No success. Then we did another couple of rounds of Clomid with the HCG Trigger shot. (Watch out hormones! My poor husband....I was definitely not "non-emotional" throughout all of these processes). But once again, no success. So after multiple OBGYN's, blood tests, sperm tests and different opinions left and right we have decided to do IVF. Before coming to this decision for sure, we got the opinion of 2 different IVF doctors as well. They both agreed that I have Sub Fertility and that my Follicle count was lower than it should be for somebody my age.  Here is a little time line of how things have gone:

• July 2008- Started tying for a baby
• May 2009- Surgery for Endometriosis
• September 2009- Pregnant!!!!!
• May 2010- Delivered Healthy Baby Girl
• October 2010- Started Acupuncture with herbs
• December 2010-Pregnant
• December 2010- Severe allergic reaction to Medicine after conception
• Feb 2011- Miscarriage at 9 weeks
• August 2011- Begin Clomid 100mg- still doing Acupuncture and herbs throughout all
• September 2011-Tons of blood work. FSH 10.7
• September 2011- up Clomid to 150mg with IUI and HCG Trigger Shot and Progesterone Supplement
• September 2011- OBGYN suggests IVF after we get blood work back
• October 2011- Clomid again with 2 IUI's and 3 HCG trigger shots and Progesterone, Acupuncture and herbs
• October 2011-OBGYN suggests IVF again- have phone consult with IVF doctor
• November 2011- still not pregnant, Obgyn suggest IVF Again
• December 2011- FSH 10.7...Again
• Jan 2012- Still not pregnant...Starting Plan 1 of the IVF process. Still doing Acupuncture and herbs.

Deciding to put myself through the process of IVF, especially because I'm a Type 1 Diabetic, definitely has me freaked out! Hormones, fluctuating sugars, moodiness...is this all what is going to happen to me?! Most importantly, how will this all effect my sugars? Also I wonder, am I just not being patient enough? Because we can get pregnant...we've proved that, but the docs say that with certain blood tests results that came back, failed IUI's, having had surgery for endometriosis, along with having diabetes for so long, that I should just go for it!

So OK, I'm going for it!! I've looked online and have tried to find websites/blogs with more info about being Type 1 diabetic and doing Invitro Fertilization. There are some, but I want to share how these drugs seem to effect me because of my diabetes! They may do nothing at all! But my purpose is to chronicle my fertility journey. I remember some things from before, but this will be a whole new adventure...and like they say, "no two pregnancies are ever the same!". So wish us luck, we start the first shots in about 8 days.... and here we go!!