I definitely just included it because last time we were making this choice a bunch of people were like “one of each!” And I was like 
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I grew up with 2 sisters a fair bit younger (5 yrs and 8 yrs) and while we had rocky periods as kids, we all like each other a lot as adults now. I never wished for a brother, I feel like we were an awesome family as is. That said, I do think male-female sibs I have known have also offered each other companionship, and any rifts were due to individual personalities or upbringing, so not less likely between 2 sisters. So I don’t think having a brother makes Latte more likely to feel alone.
Can you try the embryos sequentially? I think in your shoes, if SirB is interested in having a son, I would try the boy, then the girl if he doesn’t take (at that point you can say “fate” right?) But this is not me saying what to do, just sharing how I think I would think /feel. (PS I am actually kind of terrified of parenting boys, but don’t expect to have a choice, and if I did would respect that Human likely wants a child like himself…)
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I would transfer the boy because having one child of each sex would be ideal. This is said as the mother of 3 boys 
. There’s no guarantee that siblings will like each other as adults or kids. My youngest and oldest weren’t close as kids but are as adults. They are 7 years apart. Each was close with the middle one but he has been a drug addict with short recoveries so no one is close to him. I have no relationship with my brother and only email my sister. We live far apart. There’s a 6 year gap between my brother and I and he has always resented me since I am the youngest. There’s 9 years between my sister and I.
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It’s a hard decision. There’s lots of good reasons for either one.
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I grew up with two little sisters (and we have a half brother we don’t really know). I can’t say whether a brother would have been as good (probably would have been!) but I know when I was having a sibling for my kid, I really really wanted her to have a sister, because I’m totally biased by my own sisters.
We didn’t have a perfect childhood (umm or even a very good one in some ways), but my mom always projected that our family was a team, and I think we all really bought into it. Even when we fought, it was with that sense that if any outside thing came against us there was no question whose side we’d be on.
Ok I’m rambling now, but I’m saying all that to float the idea that I think parents have a lot of influence over how kids get along and whether they end up as friends. So often I see posts like, “yeah my sister and I aren’t close, we’re just too different.” Followed by “my parents enabled her and gave her everything she wanted always so she sucks.” I think decent conscientious parents probably won’t often raise kids that dislike/are disrespectful to each other, whatever the sex. (I’m probably about to get blasted now by posters with perfect parents who hate their siblings 
)
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My sister and I are very close and are kinda bummed that neither of us has sisters (she has a girl and two boys, I have two boys). But, life is what it is.
My TempDrop is not as intuitive as I hoped it would be. We keep doing this pattern where it gives me a really high reading, then the next day it adjusts it back downwards. and now FertilityFriend is confused. I had really LOW readings for the first week after ovulation and then they went up again–I often have a triphasic chart and it doesn’t mean anything for me–but it got confused and made my ovulation a whole week later. No, I did not ovulate on day 22. Sigh. I just want to know when my period is due.
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I totally agree that parents/environment can influence the bond a lot. I’m 6 years older and a different gender than my brother. We have a lot of baseline love and trust but I wouldn’t say we’re enmeshed in each others’ routine lives. Growing up we spent a lot of years in very different headspaces (ie I was a preteen who walked to the library a lot or hung out with friends while he was in kindergarten). Meanwhile, my husband is also 6 years younger than his sister and they’re much closer - partly bc they ended up on the same city/region for their adult lives, and partly bc their parents did a lot of things as just their nuclear family growing up, and didn’t live within walking distance of anything else so they played together a lot despite age differences.
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On this day last year, I got my IUD pulled. It sure has been a crazy ride since then.
Ranting
Tomorrow, I have an appointment with my PCP to get a referral to a hematologist to see if I can nail down a diagnosis on the clotting thing soon—next month, most likely. In the meantime, I take baby aspirin and keep trying and hoping for the bests.
I spoke with Swan’s sister and she said that her doctor had her on baby aspirin through all of her recent pregnancies, no diagnosis required—it’s just something the doc recommended to her. NONE of the doctors at my first practice with my first pregnancy mentioned this to me, and my new doctor only off-handedly mentioned it after I got my test results, saying something like, “Did I talk to you about baby aspirin yet? No? I recently read something recommending it, and it’ll help if this is what you have, so go ahead and start taking it.”
Swan-sister’s oldest “new” child (she has a 22-yo as well) is six years old. Why did SHE get that advice through all of her pregnancies, and I am only getting it in this weird, off-handed way after I already found it for myself on the internet after troubling test results? Would my earlier pregnancies have survived if I had been taking it? I am pretty pissed about all of this. Swan is too. He said, “It’s pretty crazy to think that if you’d been taking some aspirin, we might have a baby next month,” and “what, does medical research arrive by drunken carrier pigeon from the east coast years later?” He has a point.
I mean, I guess it’s likely that the real answer is that Swan’s BIL is a doctor and his sister is a nurse and they are filthy rich, so they are probably hooked into the medical community and have the best doctors, while I have a shitty little HMO that is all that I can afford (if I want to save anything). I really LIKE my doctors in my new group, but they are pretty young and maybe not all that experienced yet. It seems like my insurance plan mostly has ancient dinosaurs who still use paper folders for everything or chipper young things who maybe haven’t been at it long enough to figure stuff out easily.
But I guess there’s not much point in staying mad about the past and instead I’ll just try to be hopeful for the future. I have the aspirin now.
Maybe some day soon, I’ll get lucky.
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PCOS
You all have excellent scripts… What should I ask the endocrinologist tomorrow? I have:
- What is your experience and background in/with PCOS specifically? (Specialized Edu, # patients, outcomes?)
- What does it mean that my Glucose and A1c are normal but testosterone is high? Do I likely have high insulin? Should we test? Anything else worth testing?
- Treatment plan/strategy. Are these worthwhile: Supplements: inositol, vit D (on it), Omega 3, anything else rec’d? Meds: metformin? (was on it before, pre HBCP)
- Follow up: would like to re-test to see impact of measures taken in a few months/several weeks/regularly. Can this happen/be recommended?
- Does Kaiser have nutritionists with experience specific to this condition (vs generic “healthy eating”) how can I work with one?
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A friend, who is the mother of twins after her own infertility journey finally had a happy ending, just reached out to me to tell me she feels for what I’m going through and offered me embryos if I need them because she and her partner have 13 banked. I am just like 
level of touched by this. Their twins are the cutest creatures on the planet. I know she has had kind of a rough ride with them (premature, some developmental delays due to the prematurity, now terrible twos x 2). It just means so much to me that she would reach out to me to literally offer to give me her potential-children if I couldn’t get any of my own. I’m not sure it would even be a good idea depending on my diagnosis, but it was just so sweet.
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Oh my gosh what an incredible offer 
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Last cycle didn’t work out. We will keep on trying but I did have a talk with Mr Pug about maybe seeing someone to find out if we have any issues that are stopping us from conceiving. We had the same talk about 3 years ago and then i got pregnant with Puglet so never took any steps to finding someone. We’re coming up to a year of trying (again).
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Sorry to hear that. hugs
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IDK where Fertility Friend is getting its predictions the past couple months. It’s consistently wrong about the projected ovulation date and then “fixes” itself based on the data I put in after I’ve clearly ovulated earlier than it predicts. This month it thinks I’m going to ovulate on CD16 when it is clearly happening today/tomorrow-ish (CD12-13) and ever since my period came back after my first loss, it’s been CD13-14. But even before my loss/pregnancy it was usually CD15. But for some reason for the past two cycles it randomly thinks it’s gonna be CD16. It’s never been CD16. Why would it suddenly start being CD16? Go home, FF, you’re drunk.
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Meanwhile, I’ve been using premom scoffing at it’s assessment that I would get my period on CD 30 because I told it my cycle is always 26-27 days.
Sitting here at day 28 like um…
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Anybody try the At Home Fertility tests? It tests hormones and a bunch of other stuff. It’s only $159 so I’m thinking maybe this is worth a try…
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I did Modern Fertility and it was my first tip-off that I might have some problems and couldn’t really wait much longer if I wanted to try. I had poor markers for egg quantity and possibly quality. I started supplementing right after taking it and took my results to my doctor, who advised me to start trying ASAP. (I still had to wait for almost another year for situational reasons, but I was at least supplementing and practicing with temping and getting to know my cycles.) I may have a referral discount if you want to do that one. If you’re interested, I could log in and see.
ETA: I just logged in and it was super easy to find. It’s $20 off if you use it… http://rwrd.io/wwpn9zl?c
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thanks, that’s the one I was looking at!
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I tried Modern Fertility and wasn’t able to get enough blood (despite 3 attempts) via fingerprick for them to do a valid test. I have low blood pressure and a few other quirks that may have contributed. Even my last one, I thought it was good enough but they said they couldn’t run it. The company was very good about offering a refund though, fwiw (I didn’t even have to ask).
Even if I had gotten the results, the HSG and sperm tests were needed for a fully comprehensive eval. Knowing what I do now, and with decent health insurance, I probably would have gone straight to a reproductive endocrinologist for eval.
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That is AMAZING! That is the route I am looking at and I would love it if I could know the genetic parents and siblings. (I most likely won’t–for a variety of reasons including cost, timeline, and our “marketability” we are pursuing the clinic route–but other people seem to like it.) Obviously if you have immune/clotting/other carrying issues that wouldn’t help, but if egg quality is or becomes an issue…
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