(IN)FERTILITY FRIDAY

So I've got nothing for you guys today! This morning we went to Labcorp to give blood since Dr. Brown's office can't read the higher numbers of HCG. Delainey had a field trip to the Museum of Science and History so we swung by on our way and quickly gave blood. I asked them how soon would my doctor hear the results and they said usually 2-3 days. I was hoping they would get the info over sooner, but Dr. Brown hadn't received anything by 4 pm today when they were closing. So maybe Monday we will hear?! To be honest I am not that concerned with it. If it's not doubling all that will do is stress me out all weekend long. In my mind it is doubling and everything is good so why worry about what the tests say. I'm glad to have a relaxing weekend without it on my mind.

Tomorrow we are taking the boat out to head down to St. Augustine. Going to meet up with friends and have lunch at a restaurant down there. Watch some basketball tomorrow night and go to church on Sunday. I'm glad to have no serious plans or places to be for the weekend :) I'll be back when I get the results to update you all, but who knows when that will be.

No symptoms so far. The only thing I can't truly tell has changed is my face is breaking out horribly! These hormones are all out of whack! The crinone is going great. Light years better than the shots in the booty. And the heparin shots in the stomach still hurt/burn sometimes, but I have gotten used to it. My stomach has totally grown! Not because of a baby though. These shots are making my stomach so lumpy and bloated. Look at the before and after. Woah belly!

I hope you all have a nice relaxing weekend. Welcome April... Dave's birthday month! :) Here are some pics from our field trip today.

Happy 2nd Birthday Blakely!

Mom of the year I know, her birthday was 2 days ago, but I wanted to do a little shout out before I do here whole 2 year update with all the stats. We are heading to the Dr. today so I will get all that information soon! I can't believe Blakely is already 2! She is such a wild woman who is sassy, will yell at you at the drop of a hat, but is so funny and snuggly with her mommy 2 seconds later too. She is full of personality. Some of my favorite things she says wrong are Badoons instead of balloons and she says Bonk ya dean instead of Bonk your bean. When she wants you to do something she will get a deep voice and say hey Mommy get that for me. I guess she hears my voice change when I am being stern. She loves her sissy, but also loves teasing her big sissy. She will stick out a toy and say here you go Sissy, and when Delainey goes to grab it, she runs the opposite direction laughing. She hates to say sorry which was 100% me as a kid. She would rather run from you, get a spanking or sit in timeout before she says sorry. She is totally going to give me a run for my money when she is a teenager. But then after timeout she will hear the buzzer go off and run to me as fast as she can hug me and give me a kiss and say i love you mommy. So I definitely get the best of both worlds with this girl. She loves to be rocked to bed still and will say Mommy rock you every night at bed time.

We had a great day yesterday celebrating Blakely at Chuck E Cheese with all her cousins and then having her birthday party with the whole family on Saturday. Here are some pics from Chuck E Cheese. I will do another birthday party post soon since I have so many pics!

Blood Draw Results are in and...

I'm pregnant again! Well at least for now I am! :) Woohoo! I had my blood draw today and my HCG level was 219. Really anything over 5 is good. Unfortunately, it is no indicator of 1 or 2 babies so we will just have to wait another 3 weeks for that. I do have another blood draw on Friday where they make sure my numbers are doubling. If so then we are good to go until the ultrasound at 7 weeks. Isn't this all sounding very familiar again lol. Hopefully my levels will be high enough and I won't need to do a 3rd blood draw like last time.

I had a lovely morning today. The girls had a sleepover last night with Gammoe since my appointment would have made D late for school. So this morning, I got up, got dressed in my Women's Retreat shirt, and headed off to have my blood drawn. I liked being able to look down and remember the verse from Luke 1:45: "Blessed is she who believes that the Lord would keep his promises to her." Isn't that the truth, talk about how Faithful God has been through all this.

 After my blood draw, I went to Starbucks to do my bible study outside in peace and quiet then I headed to get a pedicure and then had lunch with Grammy at Beach diner. It was a glorious relaxing morning!

At noon, I then headed to the hospital to meet my friend Jessica's new son Banks who was born this morning! She is my friend who lost her twin boys a year ago at 21 weeks and has had a long road to get to this point today where she is finally able to hold her son in her arms. Again God's faithfulness at work right here! 

I picked up D from school, finally heard from the Doctor to confirm I was pregnant and we had soccer and dinner and finally I am sitting down to do my blog.  Busy but great day! 

I do have to confess though. I wasn't as worried because I took a pregnancy test before hand this morning. Well to be honest I have taken 3 in the past few days which was not a good choice on my part. Last Thursday I couldn't sleep and the anxiety of it was killing me so I said let's just take a test. I knew it was probably too early, but maybe the hormone was already there and could be detected. Big mistake. I got this. 

A big fat not pregnant. It definitely was not what I wanted to see, but it also didn't completely ruin my thoughts that it didn't work this time. I just told myself it was way too early and to wait till Saturday which is when I could tell last time. So Saturday morning, Dave got called into a surgery at 6 am and as soon as he left, I hopped up and took another test. It said pregnant! I called him immediately so excited! So I shared the good news at Blakely's party with the family, but of course wanted to confirm it today with a blood test. I also took 1 more test this morning to make sure I wasn't having an early miscarriage and we were still good. :)

Pregnancy test #3

So baby step/hurdle #1 we are past. Got to get past step # 2 on Friday and then we will shoot for Step # 3 which will be my ultrasound on April 18th. Slowly but surely! Thank you all so much for your prayers and for my amazing family who have helped TREMENDOUSLY over the past week and half with my kids and anything we needed. Hopefully we will have a beautiful healthy baby at the end of this! I'll be back Friday with my 2nd blood draw results! Thank you all again and keep those prayers coming for a healthy baby! XOXO

(IN)FERTILITY FRIDAY - 1 WEEK DOWN, 5 DAYS TO GO

Can you tell from the title of the post I am counting the days...really hours and minutes to be exact. My mind is totally playing tricks on me and I hate it! One day I am 100% certain it didn't work and I am not pregnant and that is fine. I convince myself that its for the best, I am going to have even more growth in the waiting and I will do it again and it will work when the timing is better. Then the next day I am sure I am pregnant because it has worked the past 2 times so why wouldn't it work again statically speaking. Heres a glimpse of what my mind thinks. If it worked why don't I have any symptoms... let me look back at my blog and see when I had symptoms last time... what about the time with Blakely...why didn't I give more detail when I was pregnant with Blakely... lets google when other people started having symptoms...oh it says some people could tell by day 8 with a pregnancy test...some didn't till day 10...but that girl did on day 6... should I try today and take a pregnancy test...what if its no because it's too early... I should just wait...but what if its a yes and I am sitting in agony for longer than I need too... and it goes on and on and on. :(

Physically I feel fine. Getting used to my heparin shots in my stomach and the crinone is no big deal at all. I feel completely normal. It's all just in my mind. So I will continue to wait till Wednesday to have my blood test which will give me the true answer and who knows when/if I will take a pregnancy test in the next 5 days. Atleast I'll be busy these next few days. Today I am prepping food and decorations for Blakely's 2nd birthday party tomorrow and Delainey has a soccer game then on Tuesday it is actually Blakely's birthday so we are going to go to Chuck E Cheese for that. She will not stop asking to go there lol. So keep the prayers coming, really more for my sanity these next few days but of course that it worked as well. Thanks guys and I'll be back Wednesday night with the blood results. XOXO! Oh and I am getting my outdoor kitchen installed as we speak so stay tuned for some pictures of that!! It's gorgeous!!!

Blakely can Swim

Blakely Boo can officially swim. Well we call it swim, but it's more of a float, flip over and move your arms, and go back to floating. She at least would survive for the 30 seconds it takes for me to get her if she falls in the pool. She finished lessons 2 weeks ago, and I was hoping we could swim some this week to keep up her skills. Of course it was 30 degrees all week. So we may go back once a week just to stay in the pool since its a nice heated indoor pool. 

 Here was B on her first day...a little nervous. 

Half way through lessons. She can float!

 Silly swim day...swim in your winter clothes so you know what it would be like if you actually fell in.

My ISR graduate! :)

(IN)FERTILITY FRIDAY - TRANSFER DAY

Well friends...I'm pregnant! Haha Well at least that is what Dr. Brown said. He also said he thinks it will be red headed Irish boy. What does that man know LOL. I guess technically I am pregnant for the moment. We will see if these little babies stick and continue to grow and the key is staying pregnant. So now we wait. And wait. And wait. It's actually only 12 days away when I do my blood draw, but of course it seems like an eternity. Here is a rundown of my day.

Being the nut job I am, I emailed the FET coordinator a few weeks ago and asked if I could be the last one for my transfer. Last go around I felt like I laid there for 5 minutes and they rushed me out of the room because someone else was next. I wanted to lay there for a solid 20 minutes this time. She was kind enough to grant my request so my appointment was scheduled for 11:30. This morning we woke up and had a nice relaxing morning packing the girls for a sleepover at Gammoe's, cleaning the house, doing some laundry and then heading to Krispy Kreme for some St. Patrick's Day donuts. We dropped the girls and off we went to the Dr. They want you to have a full bladder so they can see your uterus better so I started drinking my 2 water bottles at 11 am. At 11:30 we went back, got undressed from the waist down and put on my fancy socks and hair net. (side note: I am a pro at this and wear a dress everytime so it is less clothes to put on when its time for me to leave. Slide on the panties and run to the car to lie back down. LOL) They took me back to the main room with the ultrasound machine and the chinese embryologist asked me my name and birthday. He rattled off some jibberish and off he went to get my 2 eggs. Basically he said we have 2 eggs thawed and I have 2 eggs remaining. Dr. Brown put the ultrasound wand on my belly. We watched the catheter go in and then we watched some liquid and 2 white specks be placed in my uterus and it was done. The girls transferred me to a bed and agreed to let me lay for 15 minutes before they had to leave for lunch. By 13 minutes I was dying I had to pee so bad that I hopped up peed and got dressed. TMI but it literally was the longest pee of my life. It took like 3 minutes haha. Having the full bladder was totally the worst part. 

We hopped in Dave's car and headed home. I of course laid in the back propped up by a pillow. I wonder what strangers think of me with my feet in the air. haha So here I am now looking at a black TV laying in bed for the next 48 hrs. He said I had bathroom and kitchen privileges but that was it.

Laying around sounds great in theory but I'm such a busy body I am already bored. Since I got home at 1 I have already taken a nap, booked a vacation for Delainey's graduation to Daytona Beach, scrolled through every post on Facebook and instagram (prob 4 times) and done my blog. I have a feeling I'm going to spend lots of money the next 2 days doing online shopping. Anyone need some research done for anything? LOL 

No but in all seriousness, I wanted to say thank you so much for all the prayers and kind words. I have received countless texts and phone calls letting me know they were praying that God bless me with a baby this time. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. There is power in multiple prayers going up at the same time and I firmly believe that. My bible devotion today was in John and Jesus was talking about how as a human he of course didn't want to have to suffer and die on the cross. But what was he supposed to say, God take this pain away from me? He said No, let your will be done and do what you must to glorify your name. That really stuck with me. Of course I want to be pregnant and life to be pain free, but the number 1 purpose is to Glorify God's name so whatever the outcome my be, let it be used to do just that! Like I tell Delainey every morning before school, Shine like a light for Jesus; I am trying to do the same. 

Well thanks for keeping me in your prayers over the next week and a half and I hope you all have a good St. Patrick's Day. Someone said maybe you'll be lucky and get pregnant. Maybe thats true but there really is no such thing as luck. I saw this on facebook and just had to leave you with it. Talk to you all soon! Xoxo

(IN)FERTILITY FRIDAY

Well friends we made it! My last blog post before my transfer! I can't believe I'll be laying in bed this time next week hoping theres a baby growing inside. Ahh! Lots of good things happened this week. For starters, today is my last day on my Lupron shot in the stomach. They really weren't too bad and I'm excited for a 4 day hiatus until the stomach shots start again. On Wednesday, I will start the heparin shots and hopefully I will be on them for the next 12 weeks because that means a baby is growing. Most people don't do the heparin shots, but I do because I have a genetic mutation called MTHFR. Basically it is a blood clotting disorder so I am more likely to miscarry...so we keep my blood nice and thin with shots in the both the morning and the night. The shot itself isn't bad, but I have to inject an entire syringe full so this is when the lumps and bruises start occurring. Here is a before and after pic of how my stomach has changed since doing shots for the past 27 days. I personally don't see much difference except that I'm bigger because I am hungry all the time! :) I think I am up a good 5 pounds since January.

My estrogen is back down to 1 pill twice a day and on Sunday I start taking my Crinone, the progesterone. Basically we are done telling my body don't ovulate and now we are flipping the script to tell it I am pregnant and keep a baby alive. Last time I did the progesterone in oil shots in the booty and I despised every last one of them. This time I'm doing the vaginal gel and I'm so excited about it. I saw a new Doctor on Thursday and he asked me if he should draw my circles so I knew where to do my injections. I said No way Jose. Not doing those this time! He said he actually prescribed only Crinone at his old practice up north which made me feel good that he saw great results with it and it is just as effective. Bring on the Crinone!

Thursday we had our last ultrasound to make sure everything was still quiet and it was. No cysts or crazy things going on so we got the all clear for the transfer. Delainey came with me to this appointment and what a gem she was. It's so much easier to bring a 4 year old with you vs a 1 year old LOL. We headed to BSF afterwards which is why I had her in tow. Blake was a little sick so we kept her home with Grammy. 

So that is all that is going on in the fertility world. I will be back next Friday with a recap of my transfer. Please get those prayers working as we are in the final countdown. We could be pregnant or going through this all again in 3 short weeks! :) We are celebrating Georgia's 3rd birthday tomorrow and then we are on spring break next week. I'm planning on doing a day trip to Seaworld with the girls and maybe the beach/zoo before I go on bedrest for 2 days! I hope you all have a great weekend!  XOXO 

(IN)FERTILITY FRIDAY

It's March!! The month for attempt #2 for baby number 3. I honestly cannot believe how fast March got here. I feel like I just scheduled my transfer 5 days ago. It's nice things are moving quickly and we are staying so busy so I am not so focused on this whole process, but at the same time I want time to slow down because my girls are growing up too fast! Blakely will be 2 at the end of the month (actually she turns 2 the day before I do my blood test to see if I am pregnant) and Delainey will be 5 in 2 months. :( Kindergarten is approaching, preschool for B and I just don't want my girlies to get any older! We have lots of stuff planned this month so I am sure it is going to fly by just as quick. This weekend I am going to the Women's Retreat at our church and I am really looking forward to that. Nice to relax and recharge my relationship with Christ. Then we have Paige my niece in town for the next week for her spring break and my twin nephews in town for the next 2 1/2 weeks. We have Georgia's 3rd birthday party next weekend then my transfer the following weekend and then Blakely's birthday party the week after that....and there goes March! I am excited for all the fun things this month though!!

Last infertility post I mentioned not much was going on this upcoming week and that was true. My shots are the same, all I did was add in some estrogen pills. They don't seem to bother me too much so I am feeling pretty normal and good as far as hormones go. This regimen will stay the same this upcoming week with another/last ultrasound on Thursday before the transfer. Assuming all goes well at the ultrasound, they will call me with my time of transfer and I will stop the shots and start the Crinone (progesterone) to get my body ready to carry a baby. This would be the point where I would do the shots in the butt, but instead we are doing vaginal gel and I couldn't be more excited about it!!

I feel so different this time around. Maybe because I know I don't have to do the horrible progesterone shots, but I am not nervous at all. To be honest, I almost feel an unexplainable peace about this entire thing which I know only comes from God. Last time, I was a nervous wreck playing every possible scenario in my mind...what if my eggs die during the thaw process, what if doesn't work. This time I have a much deeper ability to TRUST that God knows exactly what is right for my life and whatever the outcome is, that is God's plan. Of course I am human and want it to work and have a baby because I want another baby. But since my miscarriage in September and starting Bible Study Fellowship on the same day I miscarried, something has definitely changed inside me. I have a deeper understanding of God and because I know how much he loves me, I can rest assured that he wants what is best for my life and will give me what is best. Let His will be done, not my own. So when people see me and ask how are things going, I almost feel guilty saying they're great! Because I know most people in my shoes don't have the peace I do, just like I didn't the last time. All I could say to those going through it is...to take on this IVF journey alone is miserable, to do it with God by your side, it makes it much more bearable. I know I have posted this verse 500 times, but it is a personal fave because the peace that transcends upon you is not something you could ever experience on your own. Only through God can you feel such an overwhelming peace.

Hopefully anyone who is reading this going through a similar situation can feel the same way I do this time around because it is a million times better! Sheesh Jamie why did it take me so long to realize :) It's all part of God's plan to grow us and boy is it working in my life. I'll be back next Friday with my ultrasound update and hopefully some exact times you can be praying for my transfer to go well! I hope you all have a great weekend!