Halloween Bash

I was so naughty the day after transfer.  We planned to have a big Halloween party at our house Saturday night and I had to spend all day Saturday getting ready.  I tried my best to keep my heart rate down but sometimes you just can't help it!  I had a couple of awesome friends come over to help with some of the food which was fantastic.  Nate helped with decorations and I did a little bit of everything.  My biggest project was creating a cardboard box maze for the little kids, up in my office.  It almost didn't happen, but I was determined!  It was all worth it when the kids loved it :)

And I don't have anywhere else to really post these pictures so this blog will have to do.

We were tourists ;)

Cat Brains

Mummy brownies

Spider cookies and jello brains

Chocolate covered pretzels 

Teresa and Sierra decorated these like PROs.  Probably because they both are actually cake decorators and really are pro.

Drink Station

My favorite room was the bathroom which I decorated like Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets...complete with Aragog and all his baby spiders...muahahahaha

We also recreated our floating candles room from last year.

The kids enjoyed feeling all of the spooky body parts.

Okay, I do not have a good picture of the maze I made but you can kind of see it here.  Well, you can see the top of everything haha

Here are some pictures from inside the maze.

Transfer Day! Take 2...

The time has come again to transfer another one of our little embabies!  I feel like it has taken forever to get back to this point, but here we are.

Again, I kind of feel like it's just another day.  I don't feel especially nervous, but I guess I already know what's going to happen so there's really no need for nerves.  I worked a shift at Starbucks this morning, how fitting.  It's like I wanted to tell everyone that in a few hours I was going to get impregnated and how cool is that?!  But then I also wasn't going to tell anyone, especially work, quite yet.  It's weird to have such exciting news that you can't really tell people about.

I may have filled my bladder a little too full, too early, so I had to go to the bathroom when we got there.  It's not easy to only empty your bladder partially, but I did it!  And then I kept on chugging more.

We only transferred one embryo again.  If this one doesn't work I'm pretty set on transferring two the next time, but we will keep our fingers crossed.

This time I felt everything went a lot smoother.  The first time they had a hard time seeing everything and honestly, I think the ultrasound tech was new because she had such a difficult time and the girl this time found what she needed right away!  Everything went much quicker and it was less uncomfortable.

After the procedure, we went home and I took a nice long nap, like I love.  I'll take any excuse to nap that I can get!

Insurance Games

I'm getting really good at playing this insurance game.  I feel like I've definitely come out on top this year!  I feel like beating insurance is not the norm...so I'm celebrating while I can.

I've been pretty upfront with my insurance dealings on here and want to pass on whatever tips and tricks I come up with to future Starbucks Mommas (or whoever else is reading this).

Benefits reset on October 1st for Starbucks so you want to use as much of your benefits as you can in the remaining time, especially if you've already met your deductible!  This goes for all doctors, not just your fertility stuff.

I was eligible to get refills on my estrogen patches (the ones where they filled 180 for me), leuprolide, and PIO.  I won't need the estrogen patches for a while, and I still have a TON left over from my last batch since the transfer was unsuccessful, but if I do get pregnant I will need more!  I'm hoping I don't need another batch of leuprolide since that would mean the 2nd transfer is also unsuccessful, but I refilled that just in case.

For the progesterone, my prescription has historically been for 2 vials at a time. I refilled that today (in preparation for the coming transfer later in October) and the pharmacy tech who I was speaking with (at Cigna) told me that if the doctor sent in a new Rx for more vials, they could fill that as well.  So I asked my nurse and she sent in a new Rx for TEN vials of progesterone.  This will theoretically last 100 days!  Plus the 4 vials I already have on hand which definitely gets me through week 12 of a pregnancy!!!  So even though my 2nd transfer hasn't even started, and won't happen until my insurance changes, I already have all the meds I need.

A few weeks ago I filled the regular pharmacy drugs for the transfer like valium and an antibiotic as well.

You may be wondering when this is a good idea and if it would be beneficial for you.  This is most beneficial for people who are switching insurance providers (I'm going from Cigna to BCBS) or people switching to a lower insurance plan (I'm going from platinum to silver).  The reason for this is that right now, I have very low copays for pharmacy meds (valium, antibiotic, estrogen patches) and copays will be significantly higher with a silver plan.)  ALSO with a platinum plan, it covers the fertility meds at 100% and with silver I will have 30% coinsurance.  So these meds will go towards my $15k fertility max, but I know I'm not close to reaching that, and since I'm switching to BCBS, I'll get a whole new $15k!