Surgery time

I'm doing remarkably well today. I started a liquid fast yesterday, and today is the most extreme (water and chicken broth). I am hungry and tired, but no migraine.

I spent 3 hours drinking this foul drink called GoLytely. It tastes like hot murky pond water with dead fish and bloody cats in it. Seriously, that is the best way to describe the taste. It's so bad, that I eventually began throwing up as soon as I swallowed it. It's supposed to clean you out for surgery, and believe me, it does! It kicked in 2 hours after I started drinking the solution.

I just gotta make it through tonight, then to 11:45am tomorrow, when I check into the surgical center. I am so excited for my Whopper, fries, and milkshake tomorrow night! :)

Thanks to everyone for their well wishes, I really appreciate it. I will try to check in once I'm able, post surgery.

On a side note, two more pregnancy announcements today at work! One of them was the lady who referred me to the IVF doctor we're going to use. With his help again, she is now pregnant with baby #2. I'm happy for her.

All these announcements mean MY announcement is coming soon, right?

Ok surgery, here I come!

FAA needs a time out

Did you hear about this? The FAA wanted to do some fancy Air Force One photo shoot - right above Manhattan. Their plan was NOT to tell the Mayor OR the citizens of NY.

Are they OUT OF THEIR MINDS?!?!?! This is absolutely horrible, cruel, stupid, and irresponsible. Imagine how traumatized these people were today, running from their buildings, evacuations, being just as terrified as they were on 9/11. Imagine looking up, seeing Air Force One being tracked by two fighter planes, circling next to skyscrapers.

SHAME on the FAA. And although I believe Obama DIDNT know about this, I even have to say shame on him for not being more abreast of these activities. This was a catastrophically bad move on so many levels.

Here is a link to watch the news clip:
Watch it Here.

Just a warning, the video ad before it starts it for a pregnancy test. :-S

Something nice

My posts have been depressing lately. Time for something positive!

We had a very nice experience today. It was our goddaughter's baptism. It was an at-home baptism, which made it very intimate and nice. One of these days I have to post a picture of my goddaughter - she is really the cutest little baby. B and I gave a speech at the baptism, and I could BARELY get through it without crying. Here, I speak in front of 30 people all the time for my job, and I was barely able to mumble the words at the baptism. Let's just say I was overcome with emotion. :)

But not the "Aww, why don't I have a kid" emotion. That's really the nicest part about this. Despite how painful it is to hear baby announcements, get registries, and hear about other people's kids....my goddaughter is the exception. It's like she has immunity from making me sad. In fact, when I see her, everything feels right again. I can't get enough of the kid, and seeing her is sometimes the ONLY thing that keeps me inspired/motivated to keep trying.

At the baptism today, I had an a-ha moment. I realized how lucky we are to be a part of her extended family. We're close with her moms and her older brother. They feel more like family to us than our own family. Selfishly, a nice byproduct of being her godmother is that it connects us forever to this family. (And her mommies constantly talk me down from the ledge when I have a bad TTC day) :)

So for today - a nice post. I'm so happy to have this little baby girl (and her family) in my life. She feels like an extension of a daughter to me. I can't wait until she gets old enough for piggy back rides, the choo choo train at the park, and for little kid soccer games. Seriously, have you seen how cute those little shinguards are?

Surgery scheduled

Surgery is scheduled! Wednesday at 1pm. Sunday I have to eat a limited diet, and Monday and Tuesday it's liquid diet. I am going to suffer through that one, kids!

Then I'll be home on bedrest for a week, so expect lots of highly medicated blog updates. :)

PS - I need to start a weekly counter.

Here's this week's counter:
Friend/coworker pregnancies announced this week = 3
Baby registries sent to me this week = 1
Ultrasound photos shared with me this week = 2
Baby Showers (for July) I was asked to help plan this week = 1
Fertility doc appts this week = 3

On the flipside, I got a free laser teeth whitening today. :)

Staycation!

I took today and tomorrow off work, for staycation. :)

Thanks to everyone for the outpouring of support. Ive been reading your comments, and looking up any recommendations you made. The first thing I did was order "The Kid" - since so many of you recommended it!

I am STILL waiting to get my surgery date for next week. The clinic I'm getting the surgery at is so absolutey incompetent, from a customer service perspective. Doctors good, staff horrible. I saw the doctor at 9am this Monday, and she said i need surgery asap. She said their surgery scheduler would call my insurance asap, and it takes 1-2 days for them to respond (with where I can have the surgery done).

I was told I'd get a call within 2 days with the insurance stuff, and my surgery date.

Monday passed, Tuesday passed, Wednesday.... No word. I called them Wednesday afternoon. Here is how it went down.

"Hi, I need to speak with celeste, the surgery scheduler. She's supposed to give me my surgery date for next week."
"Oh, Celeste is on vacation today."
"WTF. Well can someone else help me, this is urgent."
"Sorry, no. She's the only person who does surgery scheduling. I think she is back tomorrow, want her voicemail?"

So I left her a vm, then B called them and nicely bitched them out. A clinical coordinator stepped in and tried to help. She said Celeste hadn't even STARTED the process of contacting my insurance, or scheduling anything. She also hadn't asked anyone to cover for her, while on vacation.

i fucking hate this clinic. This is why we left them back on Nov 2008. I trust their doctor with this surgery, but I hate everything else about them. This always happens.

Well Celeste is back from vacation today. Still no word, and she gets in at 6:45am. I just called and left her another voicemail. She is such a bitch - why can't she call me back. Now I'm concerned that I won't be able to schedule surgery for next week, when i REALLY NEED IT. im in constant pain.

The clinical coordinator offered May 6th as the surgery date yesterday. Two weeks from now, for emergency surgery? Are you fucking out of your MIND? I said no.

This bitch Celeste better call me back asap. I have to start getting coverage for work!

NEVER EVER use Fertility Physicians of Northern California, people. I'm serious.

Discrimination at it's finest.

"Sorry, but we do not place children with LGBT families."

"We do not allow LGBT couples to adopt through our program."

I'm slowly starting my search for adoption agencies. I've found a few that will work with LGBT couples, but almost all of them either have VERY limited pools of birth moms, or s substantially longer waitlist.

Other agencies I've found are sending me rejection letter after rejection letter. I guess being gay, I've grown a bit immune to the nuances of daily/subtle discrimination. (With exception to Prop 8) These rejection letters remind me that we have a long way to go, and they are like a slap in the face. I get angry, even, that these agencies would deny a loving, financially stable couple like us from adopting a child. We could be easily the best parents in their entire network. But no, because Sally would have 2 mommies, she's better off in foster care.

Bullshit.

I've been wondering....what would make a birth mother choose a lesbian couple, of ALL the hundreds of traditional families they are looking at? Honestly, I don't know. Why would someone pick us, unless they are gay. The odds of them being gay are low, because if they are pregnant they probably WANTED to be pregnant.

So I'm curious. Why us? We'll likely end up doing open adoption, since the agency that places the most kids with LGBT couples only does open adoption. I wonder what would make someone pick a gay couple. This really puzzles me. If I were some straight 20 year old, I would probably pick Tom and Jane, the cute, sporty, fun couple from Portland, Oregon.

Well, here's hoping if we adopt, that a birthmother chooses us! And to all these agencies that slam their door in our faces, shame on them.

More bad news. Sorry.

So I made an urgent appt with my former RE today. They did the hysteroscopy for me in November.

She took a look, and feels 50% certain it's endometriosis. She recommends semi-urgent surgery next week, so I'm waiting to find out my surgery date. She said she will be very careful to save as much ovarian tissue as possible. There is a risk that many eggs will be removed in the process, lowering my ovarian reserve.

I asked her to be straight with me about my chances of conceiving. She said if this is endometriosis, my odds are much lower even with IVF. She said it usually produces poor egg quality, which IVF cannot circumvent. She said my other issue is that I get these giant leading follicles, which we haven't been able to treat yet. She said that is VERY uncommon in someone of my age, and could pose an equally big threat to my ability to conceive through IVF.

Long story short, she said my odds of conceiving with IVF are dramatically lower now - given these two conditions. She recommends we still try one round. That will help us know if my egg quality is good. if it's not, we move to Becky.

Becky's going to be 36 next year, so her egg quality is declining fast. If worst comes to worst, we will adopt. Wondering if any of you know of adoption agencies in CA? We're ideally looking to adopt a newborn (without much mental/physical diseases - only because we don't have the proper environment to help those kids).

It's funny, you know? We're about to be faced with the "last resort" options we laughed off a year ago. I never thought I would do IVF, and I never thought I'd be told IVF may not work at all. I never thought we'd have to look to Becky for IVF, and certainly not adoption.

This has been a very ..... long 7 days. Processing a lot, and trying to recalibrate my expectations.