War Damn Eagle! And updates..

WAR DAMN EAGLE!

Now, if you know or care anything about college athletics, you know that War Damn Eagle is the battle cry for Auburn University. And you should also know that Auburn University and the University of Alabama are huge, huge rivals. About as big of rivals as two universities can be. And probably the most heated rivalry in all of the world. No lie. People bleed orange and blue or crimson. The traditions go back through generation after generation. It is very rare to find a "house divided" over Auburn and Alabama because the hatred is that strong. Unfortunately, as an Auburn fan, Bama has been pretty good for the past few years. They even won the National Championship last year. Disgusting. And they've also won the Iron Bowl for the past two years (the Iron Bowl is that yearly game between Auburn and Alabama). Bama being good and especially winning the Iron Bowl makes living in this state very unpleasant. To put it mildly.

Well, if you follow college football at all, you know that going into the Iron Bowl Auburn was 11-0! The #2 team in the country and Bama had two loses (YAY!). The Iron Bowl is always played Thanksgiving weekend and has been played on Fridays for a few years. Auburn had to play in Tuscaloosa this year and that is NOT an easy place to play. Over 100,000 of America's trashiest trash fill the stadium and make up (most of) the fan base of Bama Nation. BUT Auburn is 6-1 in Tuscaloosa (for many years the Iron Bowl was played at a neutral site in Birmingham because of the hostility of the rivalry). And going into this year's game, Bama had nothing to lose and everything to gain and it was the opposite for Auburn. You see, all Bama wanted was to keep Auburn out of the National Championship Game. With two losses they don't stand a chance at making a decent bowl game so their goal was to ruin it for us.

AND THEY DIDN'T! AUBURN WON! WAR DAMN EAGLE BABY! GO TO HELL ALABAMA!

It was a hell of a game and one hell of a win! Auburn also has this tradition called Rolling Toomers. In downtown Auburn there is a small drug store called Toomer's, located at Toomer's Corner (and if you are ever in Auburn, you MUST try their lemonade!) and it is tradition to roll--with toilet paper--Toomer's Corner after every Auburn victory. So after the final seconds of the game, everyone at our football party loaded up in cars and headed downtown. And we rolled and rolled Toomers. And screamed War Eagle. And it was incredible. We are still in the hunt for the National Championship. We broke Bama's 20 game win streak at home. We handed their their 3rd loss of the season. And all is right in the state of Alabama!

I'll have to get around to posting some pictures of Toomer's...but The Coach left the necessary equipment up at the office. Next Saturday we are off to Atlanta to cheer on our Auburn Tigers in the SEC Championship game. We win that, we are in the National Title game. WDE!


Now, on to the infertility stuff...you'll have to excuse me, I get a little excited about college football....:)

The Coach and I had our IVF Consult with our RE last Tuesday. I had a whole list of questions going in and I'm so happy to say she answered every single one of my questions before I could even ask them. She went over the typical stuff...the chances of having a child with some type of disability, when the lab is closed over the Holidays, for both The Coach and I to get flu shots ASAP and then got into the meat of the IVF discussion.

We will be doing the antagonist protocol. Her reasoning for favoring antagonist for me over long Lupron is because my E2 has been low in the past (before adding the Menopur) and she doesn't want to risk over-suppressing me with Lupron which wouldn't allow my E2 to increase appropriately. So I'll be on 375iu of Follistim and 75iu of Menopur daily and then add in Garnilex as we get further into stimming. Prior to starting stims I'll be on BCP for 14 days and during that time I'll repeat my HSG (a test where they inject dye into your tubes and uterus while monitoring it via x-ray to check for any blockage or leakage--it is PAINFUL) and my SIS (a saline sonogram where they measure the uterus and check for any polyps or growths).

She gave us about a 50% chance of having success with IVF and said that it is completely up to us if we transfer 1 or 2 embryos. She said guidelines recommend we transfer 1 but she'd understand if we wanted to do 2. The twin rate would be about 30% if we transferred 1, 50-60% if we transferred 2. We've decided to transfer 2. Her hope is to get anywhere from 10-15 eggs at the egg retrieval, which is a good number because it puts me at a low risk for OHSS and should promote good quality of embryos instead of quantity.

The ER and ET will be performed in their main office in Birmingham so I won't have to go a hospital for either. The clinic is attached to a hospital so if there were to be any complications, we would be right there, but we aren't expecting anything to happen.

So right now I'm just waiting to get my period. Depending on when it comes, I may start BCP this cycle or we may have to put that off until my next cycle. We have to time everything around the few days that the lab is closed. Because of the chemical pregnancy last cycle, I'm not really sure when to expect to start.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Ours was filled with family and friends, lots of love and great food and fabulous weather....and lots of orange and blue in support of our 12-0 Auburn Tigers :)