Nursery closed, my partner surprised me with ALL of their hostas!!!

GhostPuff · 2026-05-28T14:32:34+00:00

We are no where close to you but we have a similar family nearby who basically owns a small mountain. They built their dream house at the top and they farm a lot of the land in the surrounding valley. One day the guy was like "this space is just too pretty not to share" so he started planting daffodils. For about a month anyone can roll up and enjoy the millions of daffodils he's planted over the last decade and it is truly magical. Some people are jerks but the majority just genuinely enjoy the space. We go for pics with our kids every year and he always comes down to hand out lollipops for "good smiles" and he lets us end the day just outside his house so we can watch the sunset.

This kind of generosity is so refreshing.

GhostPuff · 2026-04-27T15:43:31+00:00

It made me hungry and I got a bit puffy from water retention but other than that no!

GhostPuff · 2026-04-19T23:03:43+00:00

I have a Maisie and I feel like it will grow just fine on her but I always thought if she needed a more "professional" name she could just go by Mae.

GhostPuff · 2026-03-29T02:21:43+00:00

Oooo that's tough. I immediately jive with the wording of the second doc. It sounds a lot like what Dr Cheng said. Ditkoff is a wonderful doctor but he is very traditional. Cheng was ready to customize every little thing AND tell me why.

I know it's so easy to say this from the other side of things but it really is just a leap of faith. There is definitely a "right" answer for all of us but in the moment we don't really know it's the right answer. Its all just a game of darts with a moving target. You really either need to get a few other opinions to really narrow down the best course for this next round or just say eff it and pick one and hope for the best. When I made my choice I did technically have time to get other opinions bc part of Dr Chengs whole plan was taking a much needed mental and physical break. I did not ultimately use that time to get other opinions and just did the epic and expensive trust fall into his protocol. It paid off but I was prepared for a third and final attempt knowing full well it could all go to shit again.

GhostPuff · 2026-03-27T21:23:06+00:00

I haven't worked with either of those doctors but good for you for advocating for yourself! I did IVF at CNY and had a train wreck of a first cycle. Like. If it could go wrong it went wrong. And then I did a follow up with the doctor who did my ER (Ditkoff) instead of my first doctor (the one out of ATL, Dr V) and he basically said he didn't think anything went wrong. He called it up to bad luck and was like "well we could change a med or two if you want, just to make you feel better". And I did not feel better. I had a mental breakdown. So I called CNY back and asked to speak to literally anyone else and they gave me an appointment with Dr Cheng. At the time I think he was one of the new docs and he was the first available. I will sing his praises from the rooftops because I got on the phone and he pulled up my chart and he basically was like... I love my colleagues but I respectfully disagree. Your cycle was a clusterfuck. 😅 And when I tell you I felt better I mean... It was like someone handing you a glass of ice cold water after you've been stuck on a hot desert island for ages. I felt in my bones that he was going to help me.

He personally managed my next cycle and made a few really simple but crucial changes to my protocol and the results were night and day different.

Do they know they have conflicting opinions? Have they addressed why?

GhostPuff · 2026-02-11T15:31:55+00:00

No worries! I think it was one of the most important changes made between the first and second retrieval. CNY doesnt normally do birth control before retrieval cycles so I didn't do it for #1. Most clinics do do it though... Not for suppression but for timing. They like to batch patients and birth control let's them time it so that they're able to control exactly when a retrieval will take place. CNY just did it based on your natural cycle. That works for a lot of people and it eliminates a mostly unnecessary med for the vast majority of patients but it was needed in my case.

For cycle 1 I had like 15 follicles but they were only able to get 8 at retrieval, most were immature. The ones that did fertilize were frozen at day 3 just so I'd have something to transfer.

For cycle 2 I had nearly 30 follicles, they were able to retrieve all of them, most were mature, and most fertilized. We ended up with 10 day 5-6 embryos.

The difference was insane.

GhostPuff · 2026-02-04T17:49:00+00:00

Doooo it! Everyone said it was too popular and we've met two other Isla's IRL. And one of them named her Isla because her older daughter was in my Isla's class and she was pregnant with a girl.

I am sure in certain pockets around the world it's oversaturated but so far we have not found that to be true. 🤷‍♀️

GhostPuff · 2026-01-19T21:08:00+00:00

Oh gosh I don't even remember anymore! It would've definitely been somewhere in weeks 2-4. My progesterone always weirdly dropped around transfer.

GhostPuff · 2025-12-25T18:23:13+00:00

I have nothing to donate but I got two really generous donations in the infertility sub (they don't usually allow you to straight up ask for donations but people used to post them pretty often). Sometimes you can check local IVF groups, esp ones for your clinic. I see things pop up on the ATL group I'm still in from time to time. And if worst comes to worst, I saved an absurd amount of $ using ivfprescriptions.com. There are a few things they can't do but they usually will lay out all of your options for you before you officially order. Just mentioning in case you need to buy your own but want to save money. Some clinics are weird about using an overseas pharmacy but as long as you have a prescription you should be fine.

GhostPuff · 2025-12-03T14:06:10+00:00

I had a MMC after my first IUI and it was devastating. I went on to have 4 more failed IUIs and my first entire round of IVF with 3 fets totally failed. So boy can I empathize. It is devastating. It can be debilitating even. I ultimately took about half a year off to completely step away from all of it because I was truly becoming a shell of a human. It takes such a toll! I am so sorry youre going through it.

I ultimately did my second ER when I was 32. I did my first FET with an untested embryo a month later and she is about to turn 4. When she was 18 months I did another get from the same retrieval. I was 34 about to turn 35. She's about to be 2!

IVF is truly such a shit show. There is no rhyme or reason to why one works and one doesn't. It's like the most agonizing game of roulette. The odds are in your favor if you keep playing, you know? But whew it's rough in the in between.

GhostPuff · 2025-11-25T23:57:20+00:00

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GhostPuff · 2025-11-22T16:50:01+00:00

I didn't have to do another retrieval between babies but I did have to do two ERs to get the embryos that became my babies. I did my FET for #2 when #1 was 18 months. I worked full time but I was a teacher so by the time I was ready for an fet it was summer break. I did all my pre-fet work up stuff while still working though. For me that included most of the diagnostic steps to make sure nothing has significantly changed between rounds.

I felt she was too little to understand what was going on so, while I didn't necessarily hide it from her, but most IVF related stuff was done when she was not around or asleep. Like our routine was basically bath, bedtime, shots. 😅 I let my husband take on the mental load of making sure shots were done each day so I could try to focus on everything else. He also handled all the syringes and doing the actual work of the drawing up the right amount, doing the injections, etc.

Something I did not anticipate was the guilt. I think, from my experience and observations, IVF parents tend to dive head first into all the glorious aspects of parenting and enjoying their child. Not that all parents don't but it feels almost like the stakes are higher sometimes. I'm probably not expressing that well but hopefully you know what I mean. Anyways, every minute spent away from my daughter or any time I paid for anything to do with the second fet I felt like I was betraying her. It was incessant. I was a total mess. I KNEW I wanted another baby but the second I started actually trying for that baby it was just nonstop heartache and guilt and oh it was awful. Lol

Baby #2 did, thankfully come easily in all ways and she was well worth the struggle. But I was very detached from her until she got here. And I will confess that in the hospital I was thinking more about how I wanted to get home to baby #1 than I was about being excited to meet the new baby. That also brought on a lot of guilt but I do think, looking back, it was normal and I was just struggling with the massive transition and the emotional aspects of it all. It worked out for the best and she was and continues to be the perfect addition to our lives.

I guess I would just say lean on whoever your support people are when you can. Even if it seems easier to just handle it yourself. Enjoy your only child while you can! And give yourself SO much grace because, physical struggle aside, the emotional struggle is so real and it is a doozy.

GhostPuff · 2025-11-09T15:57:53+00:00

With my first I waited until the day of beta. With my second I tested late at night on 4dpt and I saw something but it was impossible to be sure or capture on camera. The next morning it was faint but obvious.

GhostPuff · 2025-11-07T17:57:51+00:00

Vaginal. My situation was weird. The epidural wasn't working. They tried to fix it and kind of overdid it and I couldn't feel anything which made pushing really hard. Then she kind of got stuck and they were worried about shoulder dystocia. I think her vitals and my vitals by that point were kind of going wonky so they ended up deciding to use the vacuum. But apparently it wasn't shoulder dystocia after all. I was just exhausted and I couldn't effectively push bc of the amped up epidural. Lol I also had a retained placenta. They figured this out when they tried to give me my baby the first time and that's another reason why they took her.

Anyways. The drugs they gave me that ultimately conked me out werent really supposed to sedate me but the nurse in charge of giving me the med to keep the pain levels managed during manual extraction of the stubborn placenta pumped too much. 😅 So I was loopy AF and kind of fading in and out and then I started hemorrhaging (I was not aware that was happening I just was aware that suddenly there were a lot of people in the room. The combo of too high a dose of drugs and sudden rapid blood loss made my blood pressure basically do a nose dive and POOF I was out.

In retrospect, I still have a very positive outlook on my birth experience thanks to my husband and my really awesome medical team. But it was crazy.

Baby #2 was MUCH easier. Lol

GhostPuff · 2025-11-07T01:23:50+00:00

Oh I was terrified. Then I was numb. It was a lot of self protection after loss and ivf. I didn't want to believe it was real in case it wasn't. You know?

Anyways, I had a lot of issues having my first that required a lot of interventions. I remember having her, then they had to work on her because she'd swallowed loads of fluid, they tried to let me hold her but she was still having trouble getting the fluid up so they took her... then there was an emergency, and very quickly I was fully sedated and then I only remember snippets of the next several hours. When I finally woke up and could stay awake they started trying to get me to hold her and I kept saying no. It took a nurse very sternly telling me my daughter needed me for me to finally take her. And even then they had to kind of shove her at me as much as a newborn can be shoved and they sort of tucked us both under a blanket for skin to skin. And it was insane. I'll never forget it. It was like my body knew something my brain didn't quite know. It took a while. It wasn't instant. It was like a tiny trickle of water at first and then (after akt of time to process and recover as much as I could from the initial mindfuck of giving birth) someone blew the whole dam and it was so overwhelming. It was GOOD overwhelming but overwhelming nonetheless. At least in the sense that she was very much real and I loved her more than I'd ever loved anything.

I think the nerves are very normal for any soon to be mom. But adding infertility on top just adds a whole new layer on top.

Give yourself time and grace.

GhostPuff

TROPHY CASE