Un-Crosshairs, Acupuncture, and Good News

So, I have a variety of things I wanted to talk about today. I'll start with the weird/bad news first. Well, it's not necessarily bad, but it's disappointing. This morning, my temperature dropped low. 97.27. I was so excited to get crosshairs yesterday on fertility friend, but when I put in my temp this morning, my crosshairs disappeared. Very disappointing indeed. :( I know they say you can't base anything on one day's temps, but still, it's odd. This has never happened to me before. Does this mean I still haven't ovulated? I got the positive OPK's though, and the EWCM to indiciate it last week, though, so I really thought I did. Implantation usually doesn't occur until 7-10 days after ovulation, so it's way too early for an implantation dip. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to see what happens to my temperatures then, but it's not necessarily looking so good for this cycle right now.

On a good note, however, I am meeting with my new acupuncturist today! After the bad experience with acupuncturist #1, I'm a little bit leery, but also cautiously optimistic. This doctor was recommended by my therapist and is known to be one of the best in the area. Unfortunately, he's also one of the most expensive, but it's all going to work out (more on this in the good news section below!). I have printed out all my fertility friend charts for him, and Friday I went to our clinic and got copies of my husband's SA and also all the follicle information from my Clomid cycles, etc. He will have lots of information to look at! He told me on the phone he loves working with infertility patients and has had a lot of success with IVF patients, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will make all the difference for us. This first consult with him is two hours long and costs $170. I'll know more later about how many sessions I'll do with him and how often, plus I think he's going to special mix some chinese herbs and powders for me to drink. I've heard bad things about taste, haha, but I'll try anything! His sessions after today will be $85 each. I do wonder how this stacks up with acupuncture costs in other areas in the country. Too bad it's not covered by my insurance! All told, we'll probably spend more than $1500 with him I'm guessing.

But now on to the good news!! Our clinic requires us to do a consult with the financial coordinator. I did this back in April when we first starting thinking about IVF and back then, she told me the embryologist was out of network for our insurance and would have to be paid up front. $4778 out of pocket two weeks before our cycle. After the cycle is complete, we could then file it with insurance (which then takes another 2 months or so to get paid). I know we're already extremely lucky to have such amazing fertility coverage. The company my husband works for was ranked in the top companies for fertility benefits and we have a lifetime max of $23,000 coverage. This was one of the deciding factors for us in moving on to IVF. We figured we might as well get the best chance of conception while we still have money left in insurance.

Anyway, I emailed the financial coordinator last night to ask if the charges would still be the same and she said, no, they have changed. I braced myself for the price hike, but it wasn't! Instead, now the embryologist is IN NETWORK! That means they can bill insurance directly with no out of pocket expense for us!! Yippee!! We will only have to pay for SA and freeze ($650), embryo freeze if needed ($400), anesthesia and facility fee ($1759) and medications (unsure how much we'll owe here, but I'm thinking less than $1000 copay). The only parts of that which won't be reimbursed are the embryo freeze and the meds, so we are in good shape! That's basically #3000 less that we'll have to pay up front! Now, that gives us more wiggle room to pay the high price of the new acupuncturist. See how it all works out!!

Everyday, I feel so thankful that we have this insurance that is going to help us bring our baby (babies?) into the world. Without it, we would be struggling for sure. I feel incredibly blessed and hopeful.

First Acupuncture Appointment

Yesterday, I had my first acupuncture appointment. George went with me even though the appointment was mostly for me. His swimmers are above average, hehe, so not much work needed there! (thankfully!) Still, he's always so supportive and tries to go to as many appointments with me as possible. The appointment was an hour and a half long and we started out by talking about basics like nutrition, my cycle, our plan moving forward, etc. I really liked the guy. He seemed very knowledgeable and easy to talk to. He wasn't pushy or judgmental in any way, which was also good.

It's no secret that my eating habits need to change. I typically skip breakfast and only eat twice a day. He was telling me that is a huge no-no. I should definitely be eating a healthy breakfast and then eating at least every 3 hours to keep my blood sugar levels stable. I have heard this before, but hearing it again just makes it sink in more. He also gave me some herbs to take that he said will help control my blood sugar levels. It's called Gymnema leaf extract and I'm supposed to take it 20 minutes before my evening meal. What's exciting about this for me is that he said I should be able to stick with just the 1,000 mg. of Metformin I'm taking now without going back up to the 2,000 mg. This is very good news for me. My stomach tolerates the 1,000 mg. pill just fine right now. It's the 2,000 that literally kills my stomach. He said that while metformin is good for regulating the blood sugar levels, it also works to keep some other minerals from being absorbed properly into my body. I'll do whatever I can to minimize my metformin intake but still get the benefit of the controlled glucose levels. Yay! Good news there.

After we talked for a bit, he gave me my first acupuncture treatment. I laid on my stomach, face-down on the table. He put needles near my ankles somewhere and in my calf, then in several spots on my lower back. I was nervous about how the needles would feel. Sometimes it pinched a little going in, but it didn't hurt, which was good. Then, he hooked up these little wires to the needles and put 15 herz through them, making them vibrate. He said this is good for getting the blood moving. He explained how this will work to bathe my ovaries and send blood flow to the uterus, stimulating the follicles to grow and mature the eggs faster. With PCOS, one of the major problems is that eggs take so long to mature and cycles are so long, by the time the egg is ovulated, it isn't any good anymore and pregnancy can't happen. He hopes to get me ovulating a little bit early and make the eggs stronger and more mature. Do I really feel this is possible through acupuncture? I'm a little bit skeptical, to be honest. Clomid seemed to do the same thing, but it still didn't get me pregnant. On the other hand, I would be beyond thrilled to get pregnant naturally before we start IVF!

After about half an hour, he came back in, took out those needles and had me turn over. Then, he put needles in my ankles, feet, arms, hand and one in the center of my forehead. He felt my "kidney pulse" and at first said it was a little bit weak, then after about twenty minutes, he said it was much better. I didn't really feel particularly different, but I'm going to trust the process and hope for the best. I go back next Monday afternoon for another follicular treatment and to discuss a total plan for my health coming up.

One thing he did say that gave me pause was that he recommends at least 3 months of acupuncture for me before we move on to IVF. Right now, there are only two months planned before we start. I really don't want to put it off any longer, to be honest. Still, I want to give this the best shot, so I feel torn. Who's to say one more month of acupuncture would make the difference? There's no way to know that. On the other hand, I want to come through IVF knowing I did everything I could to make it successful. No regrets, you know? We'll see what his plan is for me when I go in on Monday. Overall his fees are very reasonable, so I should be able to do whatever he thinks is best as far as continuing treatments and herbs. I'll keep you updated! It just feels good to be getting started and moving in the right direction for our miracle baby!

CD 1

AF came this morning. While I was working out, of course, lol. I got home from the gym and it was on. Cramps full force, which only adds insult to injury when you're TTC. It's like, not only do you have to deal with the blow of not being pregnant yet again, you also have to deal with feeling like complete crap and being in excruciating pain. Ugh. I am going to take another tylenol and hope it goes away by this afternoon.

The good news is that I was finally able to schedule my CD 5-9 ultrasound. It's one of those pre-requisites to IVF, so this will be a very good step in our journey. I had one of these done last year, but the clinic requires it to be done within a few months of IVF just to make sure there are no fibroids or tumors in the uterus that would cause IVF to fail. I feel confident that everything will be fine, so this is just going to get us one step closer to the good stuff. Dr. T is going to put some kind of "bubbles" in the saline this time around so we can get a clearer look at the tubes. I realize this seems strange since we're doing IVF and the tubes will be bypassed, but for my own peace of mind, I want to know if my tubes are blocked in any way or not.

So, the saline ultrasound is scheduled for 3:15 PM on August 9th. That's next Tuesday. On the phone, the nurse told me to be sure to take some tylenol or other pain killer about an hour before I come in. Nice. I hadn't been thinking about the pain of it, lol. I've been so focused on the process, I had forgotten to think about how the saline u/s felt. It does kind of suck for a few minutes, but I don't remember it being awful or anything. Hopefully this time will be the same.

I also left a voicemail for the nurse I work with most directly. I'll just call her Nurse C. I asked her to please call me back when she gets a chance so we can discuss my IVF protocol and whether I need to come in for a specific "plan" sort of meeting with her and Dr. T. Today marks the officially 2 month waiting period before we start our IVF cycle on October 1st. I'm very excited and very nervous at the same time.

Oh, and today is my first acupuncture appointment! 6:00 PM tonight. I had to fill out a ton of forms. Think I will print out my charts from FF too and take those with me. We'll see what he has to say tonight, but I'm hoping it will help me relax and also help us conceive. I feel like even though IVF is still 2 months away, we're finally starting to take real steps towards it, and that makes me very happy. On CD1, I usually am feeling depressed and wondering if I will ever feel the joy of seeing those two lines on a home pregnancy test. Now, though, I can truly find hope that I just might see it in 3 months or less!