Well, we meet again.
Year 1 with Sophia Lynn has been thrilling, entertaining, stressful at times, but overall extremely enjoyable. She is a darling girl that looks like her daddy with a full head of beautiful curls and a wild personality (at least she got that from me!). She is a fantastic sleeper, full of energy and awesome dance moves.
What has happened in Year 1:
Due to the COVID outbreak that issued a quarantine in March 2020, right after my maternity leave was ending, we had to keep here home with us as daycares were closing. At this point, she was already sleeping through the night 11+ hours with multiple 2-3 hour naps a day. As someone that already worked from home, it wasn't that huge of a disruption to my work schedule. She has become the honorary member of the CENTERS team though.
Now enter July, daycares are starting to open back up but I just wasn't ready to send her off. I didn't like the idea of dropping her off at the front door of a place she's never been to and not being able to show her around. She was just on the verge of crawling and I didn't want to miss that. After speaking with my bosses, and explaining the health concerns I had with the virus, they said as long as I am able to get my work done, if necessary, working after she goes to bed at night to finish projects, they were fine with her staying home as long as I had sitters during big meetings and met my deadlines. Huge shoutout to all the companies out there willing to be flexible with their staff during these hard times. I was able to watch her crawl for the first time, say "ba-ba" then non-stop "da-da" (no ma-ma yet...) and see her personality grow each day, I will forever be thankful for this. As well as our fantastic neighbors and friends around Louisville that were willing to drop everything to come over for meetings and doctor appointments to watch Sophia for us!
August 2020:
Approaching 9 months postpartum and that is when the doctor said we can start again for baby #2. We have two remaining embryos - one boy, one girl. We called in August to get our initial appointments set up and make sure that everything post delivery was good to go for another transfer. Once I was cleared from that ultrasound and bloodwork, we ordered meds and scheduled our next transfer.
Enter Road Block. When ordering my medicine, the nurse called me back and said that the progesterone suppository that I was prescribed was not covered by the insurance. Strange, last year it was... So I called the insurance company to find out what was going on. The medicine, Crinone, a gel suppository for progesterone, is super expensive and because of that, the insurance was only willing to cover the generic brand of it. With my allergy to progesterone, and knowing that using this medicine did not cause me to have a reaction last time, I did not want to take the chance of the transfer not working because we switched medicines. After multiple back-and-forth calls with the doctor and insurance company, we could get the medicine covered as long as my doctor wrote a letter to the insurance saying that the medicine was medically necessary for this procedure for me and it should be covered. Thankfully, they were able to and we didn't have to spend thousands of dollars on this one medicine.
All my appointments in September were schedule for the transfer, including another progesterone desensitization in Cincinnati. Unfortunately, due to COVID, Cheyenne would not have been allowed back in the room with me during the transfer so he elected to stay home for it and hangout with Sophia for that day. #DaddyDaughterBondingTime
I was off to Cincinnati again for another desensitization and after a longer than normal wait, 5 hours later, the desensitization was complete and "successful" - meaning I didn't go into anaphylactic shock or break out. We were good to go and scheduled for our next transfer 5 days later. As mentioned before, we had two embryos remaining - 1 boy and 1 girl. We elected to go with the boy for this transfer.
Our biggest question asked to us was "Do you want 3 kids? What do you do with the final embryo if you don't use it? Won't you be upset knowing that your 3rd kid could be out there?" Ultimately, yes, I would love 3 kids, but with the cost of keeping me on Cheyenne's insurance to cover IVF and the toll it takes on my body, I would be happy with 2 healthy kids. As for the final embryo, we have chosen the option to donate it for a family in need to use if necessary, or for research purposes. Helping a family that may be struggling would be the least we could do considering we understand what they have to go through. And if they did transfer our embryo and it stuck - then that baby would be with hopefully a happy and wonderful family that will love her.
Transfer Day. Since Cheyenne couldn't come with me due to COVID restrictions, he stayed home with Sophia and I headed to Indy for the transfer. Arrived with a full bladder and requested and we were ready to go. This time the Dr who did our first transfer was not in that office so her husband who was actually a Dr at the office as well did the transfer. He said everything went great and it was a smooth transfer. See transfer below (there is a small bubble at the end of the catheter - that's the embryo).
I headed back to Louisville to hangout with the family and figure out how to occupy my time between now and the beta. The beta blood test is 10 days from the transfer date to determine the level of HCG in your bloodstream.
2 weeks later. Well, we saw a small line, but then it faded away... the little one did not want to stick around. We are back to the drawing board for where to go next.
Until next time,
JR
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