Packing up Tomorrow!

The movers come tomorrow and Thursday to pack our stuff for the move to DC. Tonight we have to pack our clothes and other stuff that is going with us in the car.

Technically, I am supposed to be on bed rest until Thursday afternoon. I have observed a 24 hour period of bed rest and I am going to try to take it as easy as possible over the next few days, but there really isn't anything I can do to stay on a strict bed rest. With retrieval not happening until last Friday, we really got behind on our packing schedule. I have to pack my clothes and the stuff that I will need immediately. Obviously, John will load the cars so I won't be lifting anything. I have heard that there really is no difference in pregnancy rates between those who are put on bed rest and those who aren't. Still, if there is anyone who has been through this and did not have bed rest (and especially if you got pregnant), I would love it if you would leave me a reassuring comment.

I believe our Internet connection is being shut off after today, so I may not be posting or commenting on your blogs as much. John has a laptop, but it is not entirely set up yet. I am hoping he will get it up and running soon.

Also, I wanted to clear up something about the egg freezing I mentioned in a couple of my previous posts in case it came out wrong. I had said that they were experimenting with this new procedure to hopefully help cancer patients and those with religious/moral objections to freezing embryos. John and I chose to limit the number of embryos, not because we are against freezing, but because we were afraid of ending up in a situation where we had more embryos than we could ever use ourselves. Even though we know that a 100% success rate is highly unlikely, we wanted to assume 100% and know we would be willing to commit to giving everyone of them a chance at life. Having the miscarriage, very much lessened what I feel I could endure in terms of further cycles. I have several friends in the blogosphere and in real life with frozen embryos and I didn't want any of you to think that I thought it was wrong or was passing judgment on you in any way. The egg freezing appealed to me for a couple of different reasons. First, even though we did shared risk and have a 3rd egg retrieval if we need one, I would have to travel back to Mobile, AL from DC in order to do it. We already found out transferring to another reproductive center in DC is not possible with the shared risk program. I know people do travel all the time for IVF, but it would involve either a prolonged period away from John or getting monitoring set up in DC and just coming down to Mobile for the egg retrieval itself. While this is possible, it would probably cost us a lot more money (for both the travel and the monitoring) which is a major factor for us to consider. Currently, Dr. K gives a substantial discount to military members for the monitoring. We pay $700.00 instead of the usual $2000.00 fee. I am also guessing monitoring will cost a lot more in DC, since everything else does. We felt like freezing my eggs would give us a third option and at the same time leave a door open for further treatment if we so desired it down the road. We wouldn't be able to use the eggs as part of the shared risk program (we would have to cancel out), but we could avoid ever having to do another egg retrieval which shared risk would require. We would have to pay for the transfer procedure and that is about it. It would be very similar to doing a frozen embryo transfer. The other reason freezing eggs appealed to me is because its main purpose is to help cancer patients. My sister Debbie just recently had Hodgkin's lymphoma. She completed chemotherapy and radiation and is now, praise God, cancer-free. I know that her future fertility was something that was a great concern to her when she was going through all this. The current methods for freezing eggs are just not very good, which is why this research is needed. Even if I never use the eggs myself, I feel like this research could help others, like my sister, in the future.