We have been slackers with painting our house once we started binging on One Tree Hill episodes on Netflix haha. Currently, Justin is working on painting our ceiling white. I guess our original owners wanted to save money when building our home and painted the ceiling the same color as the walls (this ugly gold color). We have super tall ceilings so painting it has been quite the process. I will be glad once it is done and I can get rid of these tall ladders in my living room. It is making our house so much brighter. We still have 2 more bedrooms, our office, and the master bath/closet to paint. We better get going before a baby comes!!
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| Our half painted ceiling |
My little 6 year old niece Olivia has been begging for a sleepover so we treated her to a Beauty and the Beast play and dinner at Chick-Fil-A. I think she had a blast! Here she is with her light up rose. She wore us out!
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| Olivia and I at the Phillips Center for Performing Arts |
My mom came up to visit to celebrate the dog's 3rd birthday which was July 7th! We baked them peanut butter cupcakes and meatballs. They were super happy and ate them in 1 minute!
We also went for the first time to the Retirement Home for Horses in Alachua, FL. It was so neat! They have 130 disabled horses that you can pet on 335 acres! Admission is just a big bag of carrots to feed them. I wish we would have gotten there sooner so we could have visited with more of them. I would highly recommend going if you haven't already! We will definitely be going back.
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| My mom feeding the horse! She was nervous haha |
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| Justin loved taking pictures at the farm! |
I have also been attending the Barre Forte classes I talked about in my last post. I really enjoy the work outs and look forward to going on my days off. I have never worked my legs as much as I do there! You use light weights and lots of repetitions to help build lean muscles. You can even do it throughout all of your pregnancy. We hold on to the ballet barre and do so many reps and stretches that my whole body shakes by the end! My mom joined me for a workout while she was here and survived. haha You should check out a barre class near you!
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| My cute socks I use so I don't slip |
So now to go on with the important stuff. On July 12th, I was really bummed because I never started my period and that was day 35 of my cycle. In case you forgot, Dr. Christman said I needed to have a period on my own after the egg retrieval before we could start our frozen embryo transfer (FET). I only had to wait 35 days for it to come on its own and then he would give me Progesterone pills to make it start. I really wanted it to come on its own to know that my body was functioning like it should and it would be less waiting time for the transfer. If I had to take Progesterone to make it start, that would be another 10 days of the meds, and then 3-5 more days of withdrawing from the meds to make it start. That would make my period come right around July 31st! I only have until July 31st to have a period before the clinic closes for a month and the FET would be postponed.
It's been so stressful since I never started my period on my own. I called Melinda on day 35 and got the prescription for the Progesterone pills. I kept feeling like my period was going to come so I even waited until Day 37 to start taking them. 37 days was the longest I had ever gone between cycles where I didn't need any hormones to make it start. I started feeling like maybe this was God trying to tell me my body wasn't ready to hold a pregnancy and that timing wasn't going to work out.
The Progesterone has really affected my blood sugars too and I am having to take about 1/3 more insulin to keep my sugars from going to 300. My anxiety has kicked in thinking about how this is going to be so much more difficult when I have to take Progesterone 3 times a day during pregnancy for I think it's 10 weeks!! I have been praying my a1c won't be affected too bad by this increase. I was doing SO well before this!! Super frustrating.
I have been trying to plan out what we should do for my 30th birthday coming up on July 29th. I feel like my grandma in heaven would be proud of me because we have been on a strict budget since this fertility stuff has happened. I knew we only have about $130 to spend on my birthday but I wanted to do something fun still. Justin's mom will be watching the dogs that weekend so we wanted to go somewhere but I knew there's no way we could afford a hotel. We have decided to go home to Melbourne and stay with my mom. We can enjoy the beach and maybe rent Jet Skis for the river and eat at my favorite places. I know I will feel better in the end having our fertility loan paid off before I get pregnant. We have about $3500 left on it and with our extra paycheck in September, I think we should be able to pay it off that month!
Just when I was number crunching our budget last night, I received a check in the mail from my Aunt & Uncle to help our fertility costs. I called her immediately and thanked her and we talked about how I just wanted my period to come in time to get this process going again and she said she would pray. This morning I woke up to an unexpected surprise, MY PERIOD CAME!!! A whole week earlier than I expected! I had only taken 6 out of the 10 days of Progesterone so I really feel like my body was going to eventually start on its own even if I hadn't had started the pills. Typically it's the withdrawal from the Progesterone that makes it start. What a blessing!! I called Melinda right away this morning to figure out what this means.
Well one thing I am excited about is Melinda said I don't have to take any more Progesterone for a month! Yay!! Hopefully back to good blood sugars again. Also, this means I have an official baby transfer date!!! September 19th!! That means my due date will be June 5th, 2017!
Melinda will call me sometime next week with an official schedule. I will start birth control pills again on Saturday and then Lupron in a few weeks to keep my hormones really suppressed until they go in overdrive. Then I go in on August 8th for consents. They have to re-do the mock transfer where they do a baseline ultrasound and lab work and then measure my uterus again which will be sometime next month. My first day of estrogen patches will be August 23rd which they count as the "1st day of stimulation." I will then only need to go in for ultrasounds and lab work twice and then its baby time on the 19th! Sooooo happy!! Dear God I have waited long enough, please let this work the first time!! I will update again as soon as I hear anything new!
Prayers: A fun birthday weekend away, good blood sugars from now until September, no further delays!
