Day 3 of Turkey!!!

Hey everyone!

We are checking in for our daily blog.  Today was a good day. We spent it in the pool just relaxing.  The weather here was a little cooler than yesterday with a nice breeze and sunny.  We went off the resort to a pharmacy to buy some sunscreen for 25 lira, which in the gift shop here they wanted 25 euro.  A euro is way more expensive than a lira.  One dollar US is equal to 1.50 Turkish Lira.  But One dollar US is equal to only .75 euro.  So basically $1.25 of our money to equal one dollar of the Euro!  Most places in Turkey use the Lira, but there are places that use the Euro to jack up the price.  We skipped buying the toothpaste and deodorant, to save money.  We will just stink! LOL We figured the sunscreen was more important.  We have been brushing our teeth with water and then eating parsley or mint at meals.  They have a ton of herbs and so forth on their salad bar here.  It’s buffet style for all meals.  Very different food than what we have in the states, but there is always French fries on the buffet.  LOL  We never eat them though.  The food has been interesting, some of it good, some of it not so good.  The desserts all seem to come in mold/gelatin form.  It’s very different and it keeps us from eating too many sweets, since we’re not real fond of thick molded desserts.  The food hasn’t made us “sick”, but our stomachs can definitely tell we aren’t in America anymore!  LOL

 So can you say hard as a ROCK!!  Our beds at both the hotel in Istanbul and here are SO hard. Man, I don’t think they know how to make mattresses here or what the meaning of the word soft is!!! It feels like they have put a blanket or two over some box springs. I’m not exaggerating at all!  Both the hotels are part of a chain called Titanic and boy do they not know how to pick out a mattress!  We were hoping that maybe it was just going to be the hotel in Istanbul that had the bad beds, but nope it’s here as well.  So needless to say we have not slept good the last couple of nights.  We complained to the front desk today, and they brought up some extra like comforters to put under our sheets, but there is just no helping this bed.  It does make it a little more bearable but not by much!  We miss our bed, BADLY!!!  When we get back to Istanbul tomorrow night, we are going to talk to the front desk there and see what they can do for us.  If they can’t do much, then we will talk to our go to person, Seyhan, and see what she can do.  If worst comes to worst, we will just ask her if there is somewhere she can direct us to buy a blow up mattress or some kind of padded mattress.  Our bodies just can’t keep doing this.  Thankfully my back has been holding up pretty well considering the bed situation. I have been taking Tylenol to help prevent any more pain/inflammation in my back, since it is the only pain killer I can take during my treatments.

I took my first injection last night at 9:00 pm.  I have to do it every night at that time.  It doesn’t really hurt. It’s a very fine needle that I just stink into the fleshy part of my lower stomach and then inject the medication.  All the shots during the first half of the IVF process are basically painless. It’s the second half where I get into the painful butt shots!  Yikes!  Not looking forward to those, but it will be well worth it if the end result is a beautiful baby or two!  J

We fly back tomorrow evening around 6 and then we will be staying in Istanbul for the rest of our trip.  We will see the doctor Monday morning, and we will know how the meds are working on getting my eggs to grow.  Hopefully quite a few of them will have started to grow, we want a lot, but not too many or else there could be complications, but I’m not worried.  I trust and know our doctor is the best and knows exactly what he is doing!  We will also find out if Glen will have to do the sperm aspiration or not.  He had to give a sample, in fact TWO, on Friday to see if they couldn’t at least find a few sperm. If they did find some, then they said they would freeze them for us. So… cross your fingers and pray that some got through!  We aren’t holding our breath, but we are hopeful.  If none are found, then we will proceed with sperm aspiration. Thankfully, this procedure will be NO WHERE as painful as the vasectomy reversals! Amen!  Poor Glen!  He has been such a trooper and a wonderful husband through this whole process!  I’m so thankful to have such a great guy! 

We hope you are all doing well!  We miss you all!  It’s amazing how much we take for granted during our normal everyday lives, until we are taken out of them and put into a completely different country and situation.  We are very blessed to have family, friends, and the life that we do in America!

Until we meet again…much love!

Staci and Glen

PS  Pictures are coming once we get to free untimed Wi-fi!  Yipee!!