Gorgeous Weekend

I have been pretty surprised by the utter lack of side effects with Lupron. I guess I might have had a tiny bit of night sweats last night (dampness on my chest), but it was less than I have experienced previously with either Clomid or with the end of every cycle when my temperature drops.

I took my last birth control pill yesterday, so now I'm just waiting for a withdrawal bleed in the next couple of days. Assuming that that happens, I'm supposed to have another ultrasound with the dildo-cam and an estrogen level on Thursday. Then, on Friday, I'm supposed to start the Big Guns (Follistim and Menopur). Lupron will continue, too, although the dose drops to 5 units at that point.

It has been kinda relaxing, these several weeks of TTC without having to monitor anything, have sex on demand, or worry about symptoms or lack thereof. However, I'm eager to move onto the next phase of this process.

I'm really excited to report that S and I are going to take a 10 day trip to France in mid/late May. The ironic thing is, assuming that everything goes well, we are leaving on the day of what is supposed to be my pregnancy test! (I didn't realize that IVF would take over 6 weeks when we scheduled the trip back in early March!) Of course, I am going to need to have them move the test up by a couple of days. Waiting til 16DPER seems ridiculous, anyway. I guess that if I am lucky enough to be pregnant, I would miss some of that fun stuff like seeing if my beta numbers double, etc... but in a way I think it will be good to get away. I hope that a negative won't ruin the whole thing, though.

We had a good weekend, overall. I did work overnight at my moonlighting job on Friday night. I make these shifts more palatable by thinking that they pay for the extras in life, like IVF and our trip to France. That was my 3rd Friday in a row (ugh!), and my 2nd to last shift ever (probably), so I am thrilled to have it behind me. After I slept away half the day Saturday, I woke up to one of the most beautiful weekends (weather-wise) in recent memory. S and I went to Home Depot and picked up a bunch of plants to plant in our new planter boxes in the back yard. Hopefully in a few months we will have a crop of 6 different types of tomatoes, bell peppers (yellow and green), jalapenos, and maybe even some basil, cilantro, and a giant watermelon. We also got a bunch of new impatiens and coleus for our front entryway along with several other plants for various spots. We had a lot of fun planting it all.

Afterwards, we went for a "date night" to our local barbeque joint (yum!) and then saw the new movie "Sm.art People." Thumbs up! I did cry a little... somewhere in the middle and then at the end. If you see it, you'll understand why. You must stay and watch the credits, by the way. I'm picky, so I did notice a few gaffs, though. For one, we see a paper that Sar.ah Jess.ica Par.ker wrote for her college freshman English class. It was dated 1992. Well, I was a college freshman in 1993-94, and SJP is quite a bit more than 1 year older than I am. There were also a few medical professional things that didn't ring true. SJP is an emergency medicine physician, and she 1) administered a tetanus shot (sorry, but I have never yet given a shot... nurses do that!), and 2) gave the shot to the guy in his butt (as a patient, I've always had tetanus shots in my arm), and 3) took call (I have NEVER heard of an ER doctor being on call). Also, a neurologist did a slit lamp exam, which is usually the domain of the ophthalmologists and wasn't really indicated for a patient who was being seen to follow up a seizure. Since these things bother me, you can probably see why I haven't watched the TV show ER since my intern year (2001-2002). But besides all these nitpicky details, it was a good movie. But ANYWAY...since SJP was in "Smart People", they had a preview for the Sex and the City movie. It looks really cute and I've now started taping Sex and the City so that I can refresh my memory and be ready for it.

Today, we drove up to Laguna Beach just to do something a little different. It's about a 1.5 hour drive. We went on a 5.5 mile hike in Crystal Cove State Park (beautiful, but hot!), and then had a nice lunch on a shady patio, and then went shopping and people watching for a while. Came home and drank a margarita on the patio. Summertime... and the living is easy...