Alison was FS4SB surgery #154 at Vanderbilt. She was 22 weeks gestation at the time. Hers was the first of two surgeries scheduled that day. Surgery #155 was Isaiah. He was 24 weeks at the time. We had run in to his parents a few times during the course of our consultations and we had our meeting with the head of Vanderbilt's NICU and our NICU tour together. The doctor basically told us that having FS was going to do nothing for Alison and he wouldn't take the risk. Isaiah's parents were told that the surgery would be of benefit for him. We both made the decision to have the surgery. We didn't see Isaiah's parents again after that tour. I did walk past his mom's hospital room a couple of times when I was doing laps around the floor, but her door was always closed. One of the residents did mention that she was not doing as well in her recovery as I was. That was the last I heard about her or them until earlier this year.

Isaiah's mom came across an entry I had made in another FS baby's guestbook and she e-mailed me. I was thrilled to hear from her because my whole family had often wondered how they were doing. I told her Alison was doing great, much better than we ever thought she would, and directed her to Alison's webpage. She wrote back and said Isaiah was doing good, too, and she would send pictures of him. She never did. I never heard anything more from her. It wasn't until we got back from the FS4SB reunion and joined the mail list that I found out that Isaiah wasn't doing nearly as well as we thought he was. (It was at this time that I finally did see a picture of him in our reunion scrapbook. He's adorable.) As is turns out, he was born just a month after the surgery. He has had many problems with his hydrocephalus requiring lots of shunt revisions and he now actually has two shunts in place. At nearly 2 1/2 years old, he does not sit on his own or crawl. He is unable to say any words or close his mouth. Monday afternoon he underwent Chiari decompression surgery. Because his hindbrain has slid down into the top of the spinal column, his scull is putting pressure on his hindbrain. By removing part of the scull, the hope is that it will relieve the pressure and improve his ability to function "normally."

It's times like these that I really feel schmucky. I've been upset for over a week that Alison, who's only outward signs that there is anything wrong with her is her intoeing right foot, the bump on the back of her head from her shunt, and the scars from her surgery, is going to have to wear a brace on her right leg for a few hours each day. Alison, for whom FS was supposed to do nothing, is as close to a "normal" child as you can get without actually being one. And Isaiah, who had such a great prognosis at the time of surgery, has gone through so much in his short lifetime. It really puts things in perspective.

Two weeks ago I started a big update entry on how things had been going in our in vitro cycle. I never finished it, and I think I'll probably just delete it. The in vitro didn't work. As usual, my doctor is at a complete loss as to why. As he said, we know that my system works (at least to some extent) because we have Alison. The only "good" news to come out of the whole thing is that we have 2 embryos frozen. Today we learned that they are blastocysts, the highest quality you can have. So we have decided to go ahead and try another frozen embryo transfer. The funny thing about it is that it will be almost exactly 3 years since the last one. Will we possibly have the same luck as the last time? Kevin says he feels more optimistic about this cycle than he did the full cycle. I'm not so sure. Of course, I wasn't so sure about the full cycle either, apparently with good reason.

We'll be following almost the exact same protocol as our last FET. I'm starting BCP tonight, to help quiet down my ovaries after having them hyperstimulated. On Dec. 2, I will get an injection of DepoLupron. Then I'll start estrogen and progesterone. We're also going to throw a 5 day course of steroids into the mix and wrap it all up with Lovenox (2x per day, instead of just once) and baby aspirin after the transfer. I think about the only thing that will be different is that we're going to transfer blast embryos and we have to pay for it this time. Last time we got a freebie due to a mix up with our 3rd full cycle. We had paid for assisted hatching of the embryos and, for whatever reason, they did not do it. The only question, aside from will it work or not, is will the embryos survive the thaw. Dr. Shamma feels it's highly unlikely that we won't have at least one to transfer. So here we go.

In other news, we have finally talked to both of Alison's doctors about her foot. Once we get the order from Dr. Craig, the orthopedic surgeon, she will be casted and fit for an AFO. The funny thing about this is that Kevin initially talked to Dr. Hurvitz on Monday to find out what had been decided. He told him he had gone back and forth with Dr. Craig about whether or not she needed it and finally agreed to it. After Kevin and I talked about it, we decided we wanted to know what made him change his mind, since he had been inclined to leave her alone. Kevin called him back and we were waiting to hear back from him. On Friday, we got a call from Dr. Craig saying that Dr. Hurvitz wanted to brace Alison. Ok, whatever. The strange thing about it all is that Dr. Craig said she only needs to wear it for an hour a day. Which leaves me wondering what is the point of having her wear it all. I suppose he might up the amount of time in it after she's worn it for a while, who knows. But, at least he answered some of the other questions we had for Dr. Hurvitz. We were concerned about how putting her in a rigid brace and immobilizing her foot was going to help correct what we've all agreed is a muscle problem. The answer is that it will be an articulating AFO, meaning it will keep her foot straight, but she will still be able to point and flex it. So, in about a month or so, Alison will be in a brace.

I'm trying to get a jump on my holiday preparations, and am not doing a very good job. We need to have all the presents we're sending to our family in Maryland ready by Thanksgiving so we can give them to my brother to take with him when he goes to my aunt and uncle's to go hunting the following weekend (thus saving us some money on shipping). Unfortunately, we have nothing bought/made. I do have ideas, though. I've also managed to get a very small start on my holiday baking. Alison and I made a batch of cookie dough this morning. Unfortunately, I didn't check out how well stocked my baking supplies are before we went to the store yesterday. So instead of whipping up a double batch of dough, we just made a single batch, because I'm just about out of flour. :( Looks like I'm headed to the store tonight.

So that's my life....or something like it, right now.

This racing around in the morning is going to get really old really fast. I had to be at the doctor's office between 8 and 8:45 again this morning for bloodwork and ultrasound. I got a little smarter today, though. I gave Alison her milk to drink in the car (which I had done on Wednesday) and brought half of her breakfast with me so she could eat it while we waited. That way, all she still needed to eat when we got home was her oatmeal. That worked out well. There weren't all that many ladies there this morning, but it still seemed we had to wait forever. We didn't get home until almost 9:30 again. After Alison finisher her breakfast, I vacuumed the house (including the basement) and ran around with a Swiffer duster finishing up the cleaning I didn't get to yesterday.

The ultrasound went well. I've got a couple of more follicles, and the big one is measuring at almost 20 mm. Laurie said she thought I'd probably stim through the weekend, have bloodwork and ultrasound again on Monday and time for prodecure on Wednesday. That would have been fine with me. When she called with my test results in the afternoon, she told us we'd be timing for procedure on Monday. Ack!! All righty then!

Traci and Kevin got her at about 12:45 this afternoon. They had a much better drive today than they did yesterday. I gave them the 50 cent tour and they really liked the house. (Phew! As I said before, I don't know why that was such a big deal to me, but it was.) Traci liked what I did with the bathroom. Our shower curtain has a seashell/underwater jaquard print to it, so I got some seashell stamps and stamped the bathroom walls.

We've pretty much spent the day/evening just hanging out and watching Alison bounce off the walls. It was nice to have someone to keep Alison occupied while Kevin gave me my shot. She does pretty well staying in the living room while he's doing it, but every now and then she'll sneak down the hall and poke her head in the bedroom. While he's not doing anything bad, I just don't think she needs to watch her father jamming a needle in her mother's rear end. After tomorrow night, we get a slight break on the injections. That will be nice.

Oh my gosh, what a long day. We had to be in Ann Arbor for Alison's appointment at 9:30. We left in plenty of time to be there, or so we thought. At 9:00 we were about 10 miles away from our exit off US23 when we suddenly came to a stand-still. The right lane was closed three miles ahead. It took us 25 minutes to go those 3 miles. I called the doctors office at about five after nine to let them know we were stuck in traffic and would get there as soon as we could. We ended up being about 15 minutes late. The appointment itself took most of the morning, running from here to there and lots of waiting. You can read more about it here.

We put Alison down for her nap when we got home and I started my cleaning frenzy. I took about half an hour off to talk to my mom about how things had gone. Traci and Kevin were supposed to have been leaving Nashville at about 8:30 their time (9:30 our time) and arriving at our house around 7:30. I had precious little time to finish up all the picking up and dusting and stuff. Traci called around 5:00 to tell us they were at her parents' (near Dayton) and would be staying there for the night and coming the rest of the way in the morning. Geez!! I could have taken a nap this afternoon instead of killing myself cleaning. Well, at least I'll be able to go to bed early tonight.

Well, all those shots really are doing something. I had bloodwork and ultrasound today. The bloodwork came back fine. The ultrasound showed 10 follicles, one of which is already at 15mm. Wow! Because that follicle is big, it's time to start the Antagon injections. They will keep me from accidentally ovulating on my own, which would really suck. It also means we have to up my Repronex from 5 amps to 6.

I commented to the nurses today that I don't remember being this tired the last time we did this. It's been like early pregnancy without actually being pregnant. We all came to the conclusion that it's because there's a toddler in the mix that wasn't there the last time. I can't just take a nap whenever I feel tired and I can't just sleep till 9 or 10 if I'm still tired when the alarm goes at 7. If we're successful, the fatigue passes quickly because this is a real drag!

I've been finishing up odds and ends of projects this week. I'm thisclose to finally finishing the slipcover for one of our living room chairs (which I started more than 2 years ago). I've got most of the laundry done and the sheets on the guest bed and the guest towels have been washed. All I have left to do tomorrow is dust and run the sweeper. Oh, and take Alison to Ann Arbor for her appointment with the orthopedic surgeon.

My MIL is finally gone. I am so glad. It was not a pleasant visit. For the last week I've been made to feel unwelcome in my own home. And I've also been made to feel that I could not interact with my own child. All this because my MIL lives far away, doesn't get to see Alison very often and wanted to be able to "bond" with her. As a result, my fairly well behaved child is gone and I have a spoiled brat on my hands right now. How on earth did that happen in only a week?

Now the work of getting my house back in order and my daughter back under control begins. We are having company in again on Thursday. My best friend from college and her husband are coming. This is a visit I'm really looking forward to, but am also slightly dreading. They've been to visit us once before, but they've never been to our house. That's where the slight sense of dread is coming in. What are they going to think of our house? I'm not sure why it really matters, but it does. It probably stems from the fact that they built a brand new house a few months after they got married. I've been there twice now, and in reality it's not that much bigger than our house, and they haven't really taken such great care of it. We been working like crazy trying to get odds and ends projects finished up around here before they come. There's still a lot of things I'd like to do, but I think the house is looking pretty good.

Oh well, whether they like the house or not, it's going to be fun having them here. I just hope Alison cooperates. :)

What a busy day. I got myself, Kevin, and Alison up this morning and we all raced around getting ready to head off to the doctor's office. Kevin had the day off because his mom is still here, so he wanted to come with me, since it's probably the only appointment he'll be able to make it to during the stim phase, since he's going to be taking most of next Thursday off when we take Alison to U of M for her appointment with the orthopedic surgeon. I suppose we could have left Alison home with grandma except that 1) she wasn't up yet and 2) Laurie had been disappointed that she hadn't gotten to see Alison when we were there the last time, so I thought we'd take a chance that she'd be there this morning and bring Alison in to see her. Besides, I'll have to bring her by myself a couple of times next week, so having help keeping her occupied this time was nice.

I had to be at the office between 8 and 8:45. There are no set appointments for this, since the nurses are the ones doing everything. It's first come, first served. I was trying to get us there as close to 8 as I could, in the hopes that we wouldn't have to wait too long. We got there at 8:15. Not too bad, but we still had to wait half an hour. They can zip right through the list when it comes to drawing blood, but they get a little backed up when it comes to the ultrasounds. We got home at about 9:30. Since we didn't feed her before we left, Alison wolfed down her breakfast! I'm happy to report that, with a history of being hard to draw, Julie got my blood on the first try without even having to dig around. Hooray! My ultrasound was good, too. My uterine lining was .5 and I had about 6 follicles already. Laurie was tickled to see Alison. She had seen her once before, when she was about 11 weeks old, when I stopped by to donate the unexpired leftover meds that I wanted to clear our of my cabinet. She's still just about the only person who thinks Alison looks like me.

Before we left, I talked to Laurie about the problems we were having getting in the Repronex and she told me that she knew they had it in stock at the Walgreens in Saginaw and at Meijer in Saginaw, so if my Walgreens couldn't get it, they could either get it from the other Walgreens or call the script in to Meijer. Problem solved. She also gave me a refresher course on how to take the meds and explained the new ways Gonal-F is packaged and how to administer them. I went in to pick up the meds they had for me today after Alison went down for her nap, and got home just a few minutes before Laurie called with my test results. Everything looked good, but my E2 was a little high, so instead of 4 amps of Gonal-F and 4 of Repronex, I'm to used 5 and 5. Since I now knew that I had the Gonal-F pen, she talked me through how to use it, and I did my first injection after I got off the phone. The Gonal-F pens are subq injections. Since I did all of my injections intramuscularly last time, I'm to go ahead and try them subq until my next bloodwork and ultrasound (which will be on Wednesday), and if necessary, we can switch to IM. I'm going to like doing them subq for the time being at least. It's one less shot in the rear, and one less shot that Kevin has to give me. He still has to do the Repronex, though. He did his first injection tonight and did just find, despite being very nervous.....it's been 3 years since he's had to do this, you know.

I know it sounds strange, but I swear I can feel the meds working almost as soon as we're done giving the injection. I guess we'll see how they're doing on Wednesday.

I really hate dealing with insurance companies. Dealing with infertility and the treatments that go along with it is stressful enough, but having the insurance company in there mucking things up makes it that much worse. Stimming for in vitro is rather time sensitive. You have to start them by cd 3. My doctor's office called in my prescriptions yesterday, cd 1, and, after Kevin received an e-mail stating that everything was in and approved and he called and checked for sure with the pharmacy, I went in to pick everything up after he got home from work. When I got there, the only thing they had for me was my syringes and my antibiotic. I was told that they had to call for approval on just about everything else and it was going to take a few days to get it straightened out. "A few days!!!!" I said, "I don't have a few days. I need to start these meds tomorrow!" Well, I was told, you'll have to talk to the doctor's office. How am I supposed to do that, I said. It's 5:30 and no one is there. One less than helpful pharmacy tech said that perhaps the doctor could just reschedule my cycle. Um, I don't think so. I left everything there and got out of the store before I completely lost it. I came home in tears and told Kevin what happened. He whipped out his insurance card and called the insurance company to find out what the problem was. When our insurance was switched to this company, we consulted the prescription drug pamphlet to make sure that the meds we use for in vitro would be covered and they were all on the list. Since Kevin didn't know for sure what I was supposed to be getting, I had to talk to the insurance lady. She was very nice and was able to manually override what ever it was that was preventing the request from going through and then called the pharmacy to make sure they were able to submit it and get approval. She then proceded to tell me that I should try to give them more notice in the future. Well, gee....why did your comapny send my husband and e-mail stating everything was approved when it wasn't? We could have been working on this all day if it had sent him one saying there was a problem.

So, after Alison was in bed for the night, I went back to the pharmacy (lucky for me it's open 24 hours). Well, here's what we have for you.....we've only got 10 of the Repronex, and we're having a hard time getting it in....hopefully we'll be able to get a drop shipment from the manufacturer on Saturday. Great. I'm supposed to take 4 amps a day, so those 10 amps you have will last me 2 1/2 days. We've only got 3 of the Antagon, the rest will be in by tomorrow. Ok, no problem. I won't need those right away anyway. We don't have any Gonal-F. It will be here tomorrow morning. Ok, as long as it's here tomorrow morning, that's fine. I won't have to start it until after I hear from the doctor's office, so I can pick it up tomorrow afternoon. Everything else was ready.

I would like to say that I am very grateful that we have prescription drug coverage, because I was able to walk out of Walgreens tonight with several thousand dollars worth of drugs that I only had to pay about $135 for. I just wish we didn't have to go through the hassle that we so often do when trying to get prescriptions filled.

For the last 3 1/2 weeks, we've been in the inactive phase of our in vitro process. All I had to do was remember to take my pill every day, stop them on the appointed day and wait for my period to start. Today begins the active phase of our in vitro cycle. In other words, AF is in the house. I called in to the doctor's office today and got things going. They are going to be ordering my meds today, and I'll be starting them on Friday. I'm to go in on Friday morning (cycle day 3) for bloodwork and baseline u/s. That is one of the things I hate the most....having to have a transvaginal ultrasound when I still have my period. But I have learned that it is virtually impossible to go through infertlity treatment and come out with a shred of modesty left. When we went through this three years ago, I'd swear my doctor was more familiar with my intimate parts than my husband was.

My MIL is visiting right now, and I'm really not thrilled with having to be doing this stuff while she's here, but there's nothing I can really do about that at this point. I had really hoped to keep this kind of quiet (meaning I didn't really want her to know we were doing it), but the timing didn't work out that way. She doesn't retain information all that long, so maybe it will just slip her mind and she won't be constantly asking about it.

Vacation begins

We left for vacation at about 8:30 this morning. I had hoped to leave the house by 8, since we had to drop the dog off at the kennel, but that didn't happen. Oh well, half an hour off schedule isn't that big a deal, right? We would still get to where we were going by around 6:30. We were on our way to Frederick, Maryland, where my cousin is being married tomorrow. The morning was cool, but fairly bright and relatively sunny. We planned to picnic for lunch (and maybe for supper, too) but when we were finally ready to stop, it was still pretty chilly out and was getting pretty cloudy. Since we were wearing shorts and t-shirts, we had an indoor picnic instead. Back on the road, 20 miles outside of Cleveland, I jokingly say to Kevin that I bet it will be raining by the time we get to Pittsburgh. He has commented before that it always seems to rain when we drive through Pittsburgh. The words were just barely out of my mouth when the rain began. I didn't think it was raining all that hard in Ohio, but apparently everyone else on the road did, because the times I was able to come even close to hitting the speed limit were few and far between. I had planned to turn over driving duties to Kevin before we left the Ohio Turnpike, but Alison fell asleep and I didn't want to wake her up by stopping, so I kept on driving.

The rain got worse the further east we went. When we got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the signs said that there was ponding water in some places. Great! Just what I want to hear. Alison woke up when we stopped to pay the toll to get on, so I decided we'd switch drivers at the first rest area. The road was getting pretty bad.....I felt the car start to hydroplane a few times....and I couldn't wait to get out of the driver's seat. Two miles before the rest area we came to a complete stop. It looked like a car had hydroplaned and gone right into the median wall. Ten minutes later we made it to the rest stop and switched places. When we got back on the road, we had a decision to make....stay on the turnpike, with all the truck traffic and construction, or head down towards Morgantown, W Va and go across I-68. We decided to head towards Morgantown. We no sooner got off the Turnpike and the traffic backed up again. We crawled along for a long time without making a whole lot of progress. Finally we got to the source of the problem. We were being routed up the off-ramp and back down the on-ramp and the going was slow because the police had to periodically let the traffic on the road we had to cross clear out a little bit. The reason for this detour? The highway was flooded! This was not the only place where water was covering the road, but I think it was some of the deepest. During this time I was in contact with my parents, who, along with my brother and his girlfriend, were getting ready to leave to meet us in Frederick for the wedding. I let them know what was going on and told them I couldn't recommend one route over the other.

At 6:30, we stopped for dinner at a Burger King. Did I mention that we were supposed to already be in Frederick by 6:30? Well were actually in Morgantown, a whopping 83 miles from the rest area where we had stopped at to change drivers. It had only taken us 3 hours to get there. We opted to actually eat inside the restaurant. We all needed some time to be out of the car, especially in light of the fact that we still had a looonnggg way to go before we were off the road for the night. We ate, Alison ran around a little bit and then we got back on the road. After another bout of torrential rain while we were eating, the rain seemed to let up a little bit.

Now we were driving through the mountains. It was really strange, but it seemed every time we went up a steep grade, the rain would be almost stopped by the time we got to the top. Then, when we went down on the other side, the rain was horrible again by the time we got to the bottom. Oh, and we also had to deal with fog as we approached the top of the steep grades, and there was a lot of wind. Throughout all this, Alison was quite the trooper. She sat back in her car seat and just read books....until it got dark, then she started to get cranky. About the time it got dark, the thunder and lightening started. To keep Alison from associating it with fireworks, we pretended to be Ernie pretending to be the Count on Sesame Street. When Ernie was "Count for the day," he would shout "Thunder!" "Lightening!" when he reached the point in his counting where the thunder and lightening would just happen for the real Count. So when the lightening flashed, we would say "Thunder!" "Lightening!" just like Ernie. It worked pretty well.

We finally made it back to I-70 and by the time we got to Clear Spring (where my aunt and uncle live) we decided to stop for gas and a diaper change. Good thing we did, because Alison would have leaked out her diaper if we hadn't. I checked in with my parents after we got back on the road and they were about 140 miles behind us....they had opted to take the Turnpike. Alison fell asleep shortly after I got off the phone, and slept for the last 45 minutes of the trip. At 9:20, nearly 13 hours after we left home for our 10 hour car trip, we pulled into the parking lot of our motel.

I could have sworn it was Tuesday.....

....but it sure seems like a Monday kind of day. Today started out just fine. I had a dentist appointment this morning to get my permanent crown and get my spring aligner adjusted. I got to the office, got settled in the chair, got the temporary crown popped off and the area around what's left of the tooth cleaned up and then the assistant tried to seat the crown....and it didn't fit. The reason? It wasn't my crown. My crown was in Sault Ste. Marie. So I got my temporary put back on and scheduled an appointment for the Monday after we get back from vacation to get the permanent crown on, since it will be in the office by Thursday, but they couldn't guarantee exactly when and we're leaving early Friday, so I couldn't do it then.

The afternoon passed quite normally. I played around on the computer for a little bit, did some knitting and then went downstairs and attacked the baskets of ironing that were waiting for me. With that done, I came back upstairs, played around on the computer a little bit more and got ready to take Alison and Bo for a walk. I could see there were some pretty dark clouds over my house, but could also see blue sky surrounding the dark clouds so I thought everything would be fine, especially since it wasn't supposed to rain here until tomorrow night. Well, we didn't even make it to the end of our street before it started pouring down rain. It didn't last long. It had stopped by the time I got Alison off my back and got her "umbrella" snapped on and got her back up on my back. We continued on our walk and I thought we were set. But alas, about 10 minutes later I was walking in another downpour. Fortunately it was in the low 80's today, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been, but I still could have done without a second shower today. Once we got throught that, the rest of the walk was pretty nice.

We have to go out and do a little pre-vacation shopping tonight. I hope we get it all done without some kind of disaster.

I never thought I'd be so thrilled when my daughter started telling us when she has pooped. But I am. It sounds like such a silly thing, but I was practically jumping for joy yesterday when Kevin told me that Alison told him she pooped and there was really something there when he changed her diaper. It gives me hope that she will, eventually, be successful in potty training and we might escape some of the interventions that other SB kids require to make them bowel continent. And since the same nerves control the bladder, I'm encouraged that she will be bladder continent without intervention as well. Of course, only time will tell.

In other news, Kevin's company picnic was a lot of fun. There were lots of kids there and they had fun stuff for them to do. There were some clowns there making balloon animals and painting kids faces. It was a long wait, but Alison got a cat face painted on her. She looked really cute! I was kicking myself for forgetting the camera, but we did take a picture when we got home There were two moonwalks set up. One looked sort of like a carousel and was geared more towards the little kids and one was a crouching dragon that you went in throught the open mouth, climbed up the "tongue" and slid down into it's "stomach." It was geared more towards the bigger kids, though Alison did get to go in it just before they took it down. Instead of going in through the mouth, they sent her in through the other end. It was like crawling through a wind tunnel! She had been in the other moonwalk, but some bigger kids got in, too, and a couple of them fell on her and one ended up kicking her in the face. :( She was upset by it, but was even more upset when we got her out because she really wasn't hurt and really didn't want to get out! Jumping is her new favorite thing to do, so a moonwalk was the greatest thing since sliced bread for her. At dinner, we tried to get as far away from the dj's speakers as we could, but it was still way too loud and Alison got freaked out a couple of times, until we put some earplugs in. Then she was fine and happily ate chicken, mashed potatoes corn and a roll.

After dinner were the awards and after the awards were all handed out, it was time for the fireworks. Alison did not like the fireworks on the 4th of July, but we were hoping that by using earplugs it would be better. It was not. The first three that were shot off were the really loud booming ones and Alison completely freaked out. We hadn't even had a chance to sit down yet. :( I put her in Kevin's car and he got in there with her, hoping she would be all right, but before long she was hiding on the floor of the front seat. During a lull in the explosions, I grabbed her and headed for my car (and her carseat), but didn't get there fast enough. I nearly dropped Alison as she wriggled around trying to get away from the noise while I was trying to unlock the car (no keyless here). We both jumped in the front seat and I turned on her favorite CD. That helped long enough for me to hop out of the car and run to the other side and get in the back seat, pull her between the seats and plop her in her car seat so I could strap her in and we could leave. Since we don't live that far away from the plant, you could still hear the fireworks quite well at our house. Alison was not happy about that. She wanted to go see our neighbors, who were sitting outside with some friends, until she heard the boom, boom, boom. Even inside she tried to hide. Finally it was all over and she was pretty much all right, though I think she had some bad dreams involving fireworks that night because she woke up screaming a couple times. :( I think we'll probably skip the fireworks next year.

On Sunday, Alison started in the 2 year old Sunday school class. We were also there because we're "teaching" on the second Sunday of the month. She had a lot of fun and loved all the new and different toys that they have in that room. We had a good class. There were two kids who cried a little bit at first, but it didn't take long for them to settle down and get interested in playing. Sunday night was our first UMYF meeting. We're counselors again this year. We have paid babysitters for programs like that (and I am the new babysitter scheduler), so I took Alison to the nursery while Kevin headed down to the meeting. Either she had so much fun at Sunday school that morning or she knew Lillian was going to be one of the babysitters, because as soon as I put her down she ran down to the end of the hall and couldn't get the door open fast enough. She was ready to play!

The rest of this week will be spent getting ready for our big trip next week. I think we're going to have a lot of fun, and I will definitely be ready for it.

The week in review

Tuesday I had my ultrasound and mock trial. Everything looked fine on the ultrasound. The mock trial was okay, I guess. I just think that male doctors should never be allowed to say "you're going to feel a little bit of pressure" when shoving things through delicate female parts. Trust me, pressure was not what I was feeling. Because I have really retroverted uterus and Alison was born by c-section, in order to make getting the cathetar into my uterus easier at my real transfer I will be getting a stitch put in to straighten things out. Fortunately that will be done during retrieval and I will be unconcious.

On Wednesday we found out that Kevin's dad is not going to win his cancer battle. The tumor in his lung has double in size over the summer. He'll be getting chemo once a week to stretch the time he has left to 10 months, give or take, as opposed to the 4 months they gave him without it. When we visit next weekend it will probably be the last time we see him. We're wondering why they didn't keep up with treatments over the summer because someone had to have know that this would happen. Or maybe that's why they didn't keep up the treatments.

Yesterday was Alison's appointment with her new SB doctor. You can read more about it here. It really wasn't a bad appointment. It would have been even better if it had been in the morning. Let's just say we had one cranky little girl on our hands last because the 45 minutes to hour nap that she took in the car was not enough but she would not agree to going to sleep again until bedtime.

Tonight is Kevin's company picnic and awards presentation. I think it will be fun. Kevin is scheduled to give plant tours this afternoon, so we're meeting him there. There will be food and cotton candy and popcorn. And clowns making balloon animals. I'm going to have my work cut out for me keeping Alison away from that. She love balloons, but she can't have the latex ones. :( After the awards, when if gets dark, they're going to have fireworks. Alison was not to thrilled with the ones we saw on Fourth of July, terrified is the word that comes to mind, so I bought some earplugs for her in the hopes that maybe that will help. If not, we'll just come home.

We're on our way

We had our appointment with Dr. Shamma on Monday. Let me just say, nothing ever changes at that place. It's been nearly 3 years since the last time we were there and, just as before, our 1:45 appointment didn't start until well after 2:15. We didn't get finished until 3:30. Why I actually thought we might get in on time and be out in half an hour is beyond me. The longer we sat, the more frustrated Kevin, who was taking time off work, got....like there was anything I could do about it. It is not easy keeping a 2 year old occupied at the doctor's office for that long, either. We did end up letting her trot up and down the hall a few times. She went and talked to the office manager for a little bit, too....she had a radio in her office so Alison went in to "dance."

So we have our protocol. It's the same as last time, really. I was kind of hoping that I wouldn't need quite so many drugs to stim with since I've lost about 60 pounds since our last full in vitro cycle, but since I was 29 then, and I've already celebrated the 3rd anniversary of my 29th birthday now, I'm still doing 4 and 4. That's four amps in the morning (Gonal-F most likely) and 4 amps in the evening (Pergonal or Repronex). All 4 amps get mixed into one injection, but my butt still hurts just thinking about it. :( After procedure, in addition to progesterone-in-oil injections, I'll do Lovenox injections and baby aspirin again. If I get pregnant, I'll be one giant bruise by the time I'm able to stop all the meds. But before we get that far, I have to get through an ultrasound and mock transfer and a month of birth control pills. Oh, and Kevin has to get another semen analysis done. As they said, we really don't want to get to the day of retrieval and find out there's nothing there.

At least the financial load won't be quite as heavy this time. As I mentioned before, our insurance will cover about a third of the cost. Prices have increased about $1000 since we did this before, so the doctor knocked $1000 off our price. I don't know if he did it because we're repeat customers or because of everything we went through last time, but I'm not going to complain.

The doctor told us we could be ready to do the procedure in October, but since we are going to be on vacation for the last week of September, that won't work because I wouldn't be able to come in for blood work and ultrasounds to monitor the stimulation process. So we are going to do it in November. When I get my period next month (because let's face it, I'm not going to miraculously get pregnant on my own this month) I'll start birth control pills. And then we're off.....

Well, I did it

Actually, I did two things. The first thing I did was get my hopes up, the worst thing I think a woman dealing with infertility can do. After dealing with infertility for four years before finally getting pregnant with Alison, you'd think I'd know better. But some odd things happened during the "two week wait" this time, and I stupidly allowed myself to dare to hope and from there went right on in to thinking this really could be it. But AF showed herself right on time and now I have to assume that PMS will now include bouts of nausea, hot flashes, night sweats, being hungry all the time and extreme fatigue, rather than just the usual irritability, one day where I can't keep my eyes open in the afternoon and end up taking a nap on the couch and fanatical housekeeping that I normally have. Why I would even think that our circumstances would have changed enough to enable us to get pregnant the old fashioned way, I'll never know.

And this all brings me to the second thing I did. I called and made an appointment to talk to our infertility doctor about doing in vitro again. The appointment is next Monday. I'm a little bit worried that, because of everything we went through with Alison (the fact that she has SB and I/we had fetal surgery), he'll tell us we can't do in vitro again. While I can't say that I'm looking forward to going through the process (I think I'll speak to that in another entry) it would be very upsetting not to be able to at least try again. In actuality, I can't really see why we wouldn't be able to do it. Many of the FS4SB moms have gone on to have more children. One has even had twins since the surgery. At any rate, if we get the go ahead, at least this time it won't be quite so expensive. Our insurance has changed since the last time and we now have coverage for infertility. Granted it's only $2500 lifetime, which (probably) won't even cover a third of the cost, but it's better than nothing, right? So, the appointment's made and now we wait.

Just my luck :(

I went to the dentist yesterday. It was bad news/good news kind of visit. The bad news.... the reason my recently filled tooth hurts excruciatingly every time I chew something hard (which I don't do on purpose) is because I happened to bite something in just such a way that I cracked the whole darn tooth from front to back. So, guess who's getting a crown. I have one on one of my front teeth (the end result of breaking it when I was in third grade). That was pretty easy because it's right in the front of my mouth. This one will be on the second tooth from the back. Complicating matters is the fact that I have a small mouth. Oh yeah, there's also a possibility that I could end up needing a root canal on that tooth, too. I've had one of those before, too, and I really hope I won't need one again.

The good news was that my spring aligner was ready. I first got it about 8 years ago, or so, and it really did a great job closing up the gap in my front teeth (which opened up after I stopped wearing the retainer I had after braces). Then several things happened and I quit wearing it. By the time I felt like wearing it again, I couldn't get it in my mouth because it didn't fit anymore. I avoided the dentist for several years because I didn't want him yelling at me for letting all that work go down the drain. I finally went in for a check-up a few months ago and he had me bring the retainer in and sure enough, it didn't fit. He nicely agreed to take a new mold and try and refit it. Which he did. I got it back yesterday and it's already working. My teeth really hurt!! I have to wear it pretty much 24/7, except when eating and things like that. I'm still in that "Cindy Brady" phase where I lisp pretty badly, but I'm hoping I adjust to it quickly. Hopefully the gap in my teeth will be (pretty much) closed up by the time we get around to getting Christmas pictures taken this year.

Looking for a place to belong

I'm searching for a place to really belong and I don't think such a place exists.

I recently joined a mail list for families that have had fetal surgery for Spina Bifida (henceforth known as FS4SB). They are a great group of people, several of whom we met at the Fetal Surgery reunion two weekends ago, but it seems they are all dealing with things that we don't have to worry about (at least not right now, maybe not ever). There is a lot of discussion about bracing, wheelchairs, walkers and crutches, physical therapy, meds for dealing with bladder issues, and stuff like that. Today a discussion popped up about late talkers, and how many of the kids have been delayed in that area. Alison doesn't wear (and has never worn) braces and she doesn't need a wheelchair, walker or crutches. She started walking at 15 months. At this point, she hasn't needed physical therapy either, and though she may get a referral for it soon, it's to deal with her in-toeing right foot, not to strenghthen her body so she might one day be able to walk. At this point, there are no real bladder issues. Her urologist saw her last year, at 16 months, and isn't expecting to see us again until she's 3. As for talking, by 18 months she had a 60 word vocabulary and could even string together a couple of 2 and 3 word sentences. I feel that I have nothing in common with these people except that Alison has SB and we had FS4SB.

I also post on an AOL board for moms of kids born in Sept. 2002 (ok, so Alison was born in August, but she was due in September and I've been posting there since I was pregnant, before FS4SB). Again, a great group of women. It gives me an idea of what the average 2 year old should be doing. Alison just had an evaluation with Early On yesterday and, without even adjusting for prematurity, she is at a 2 year old level in all developmental areas tested, including gross motor skills. I have everything in common with these women except that Alison has SB we had FS4SB.

So I feel like I'm caught between two worlds. For the most part, we treat Alison like a regular kid because for the most part she is a regular kid. Most people who see her have no idea that she has SB. And I've actually, recently, forgotten to tell people who probably need to know (like people working in the church nursery when our nursery supervisor isn't there) because I don't think about that much anymore. But that doesn't change the fact that she does have SB. And I feel we should probably become more involved in the SB community. But at the same time, I feel guilty because we don't have to deal with what everyone else does. So I'm back to looking for a place to really belong....

Doesn't Know Her Own Strength

Alison broke her rocking chair this morning. That would be her antique, family heirloom, pass it from family member to family member when they have a baby rocking chair. I was running the sweeper in the living room and she had gone down to her bedroom. The next thing I know, she's back in the living room holding a piece of wood. It slowly dawned on me that it was a spindle of some sort. Then I realized, with a sick feeling, that it was from her rocking chair. I grabbed it and ran to her room. Yep, it was a spindle from the arm of the chair. And I have no idea how we're going to fix it because it's broken off flush with both the seat and the underside of the arm. I suspect that it may have been broken before at some point because she's only two. She's not so strong that she can just cleanly rip a spindle out of the arm of a chair, but then again she was probably pulling on it to get herself up into the chair. So now I have to see if we can somehow fix it ourselves or find someplace to take it to get it fixed. At least we aren't in any hurry to get it fixed. My older cousin is done having kids and her brother and my brother aren't married yet. It should stay in our possession for at least another year. But still......I can't believe she broke the chair!!!

Boo Boos and Band Aids

Who would have ever thought that band aids could be such a hassle. Because Alison is in the high risk category for developing a latex allergy, we limit her contact with items that contain latex (meaning we try not to let her be in contact with them at all). That means we use Curad band aids in our house, because they are latex free. Unfortunately, the last time we bought band aids the box only had one size, rather than the variety of sizes that BandAid brand comes in. Not a real big problem for big people boo boos, but for little people boo boos it's a pain in the rear.

I went in to get Alison up from her nap. I noticed there were little blood smears all over her crib sheet. After freaking out for a second, I realized they were all down where her feet had been, and that I had noticed what looked like a little blister on one of her toes the other day. Sure enough, the spot that had the blister had been bleeding. Great. Now we needed to somehow put a band aid on a very tiny toe. So with scissors in hand, I began to "size" my band aid, feeling grateful that I was working on her right foot. This is one of the only advantages to her not having any feeling in that foot. While she was sqirming around a little -- because you must squirm around when mommy needs you to sit still -- it was nothing like it would have been if she could have felt what I was doing to her toes! Of course this same lack of feeling is what let things get to the point where she needed the band aid in the first place. :( In the end, I got the stupid band aid on. Hopefully this won't happen again until someone's little piggies are a whole lot bigger.

Yesterday

Yesterday was a terrific day, weatherwise. We had blue skies, lots of sun, and it was warm. Actually, it was kind of on the hot side. I managed to get us together early and we headed off to Dow Gardens. (We bought season passes, so I'm determined to get my money's worth....yesterday's trip was break even day.) Since I didn't want to take the stroller, I figured the easiest way to get us back to the childrens' garden without losing my mind was to put Alison in her harness. That way, she could run "free" as much as she wanted and I didn't have to worry about her going off the path and falling into the pond. Then when we got to the childrens' garden all I had to do was take off the "leash" part. Along the way we stomped through a few puddles, trip-trapped over a wooden bridge, and checked out the large flower garden, or, more specifically, the huge sprinkler in the flower garden.

Once we got to the childrens' garden, Alison had a ball. We discovered the pig trough and all the watering cans they had there. Alison decided she must water stuff, so we grabbed a watering can and I filled it up for her (the water in the trough was to low for her to reach it at that point). She watered some dirt next to one of the vegetable plants, she watered the sidewalk (a lot) and she watered her feet. We even gave the big bronze pig statue a drink from the watering can, too, since he was hot an looked like he could use a drink. :) We eventually made our way over to the other side of the garden where there are three small holes in the ground that water shoots out of. Alison wasn't to interested in getting near the shots of water, but she screamed with laughter at all the other kids who were running around getting wet. We spent a long time there, and finally it was time to head back to the car so we could come home and meet daddy for lunch. The walk back took a long time, becasue someone was starting to get tired, but at least she consented to letting me carry her a little bit here and there. The puddles were still there, so we stomped through them again. It was a very fun morning. I'm really mad at myself, though, because I forgot to bring the camera with me!

Last night, Kevin's softball team played in the district tournament. They had the potential of playing in three games. We ate dinner early so he could eat before the first game. I stayed home with Alison and told him that if it looked like they were going to win the first game to let me know and we'd come for the second game, as long as it didn't rain (the clouds had rolled in shortly after 4:00 and we were expecting bad storms). They won the first game, so I packed us up and headed to the ball field. After wandering around and checking things out for a little bit, Alison finally settled down to play in the dirt and pebbles at the end of the pad of concrete that held the team bench. She was in heaven! My little girl who doesn't like to get dirty was soon covered in dirt....hands, legs, shirt, shorts, dirt everywhere. I think she played there for at least half an hour. At the bottom of the fifth inning, we headed over to the little concession stand to see what they had to offer and came back with a pretzel to share and a bottle of pop for me. Alison climbed up into her parked stroller and attempted to put the snack tray back in place by herself. Then she started asking for bites of the pretzel. Again I was kicking myself for not bringing the camera with me, because I looked over at her to see her kicked back with her foot up on the tray, knawing on a pretzel, watching what was going on in the game.

Kevin's team lost the game, and I don't think anyone was too upset about it. They had a good chance of winning the first game. They had a so-so chance of winning the second game, but there is no way they would have won the third game. I was kind of glad they lost, becasue we have things to do today that couldn't be done if he was playing double elimination softball games all day.

Yesterday was a great day.