Well friends, who thought this day would be upon us so soon!?! I believe I left it back in September that I wasn't sure when we would come back to this bridge, but here we are. It actually all happened very smoothly and easily so I feel good about it. I was completely at peace with taking off for about a year and maybe doing it again this summer. And then in God's usual cleverness, he started giving me signs that made me reconsider it again.
First, My financial lady called from Dave's insurance to let me know how much money I had left for infertility treatments. I was thinking I was out of money unless I went to a "Center of Excellence" which the closest one was in Orlando. That seemed like it was meant to be because Kelli was down there now so I could stay with her during appointments and she could help me out. Well when this lady called, not only did she tell me that it is not true (I thought you only had $10k if it wasn't a center of excellence and $25k if it was) but she also told me that I had only used $2500 of my $25,000 maximum!!!! I didn't understand because each frozen transfer with Brown was $5000 each. So I should have a max of $15,000 left. Well apparently he had a lovely contracted rate with them and each time cost only just over $1000. God bless! I have lots of money left then. Maybe I'll have 5 or 6 kids then! LOL jk I kid I kid!
Then a few days later, I am on Pinterest and a link pops up called How to pray for your miracle baby while waiting. So I clicked on it. It actually had nothing to do with that at all. The main point of the story was about this guy who went to church every day and prayed to God to win the lottery. He did this for months and months and then finally God got so frustrated with him he boomed through the church..."My son if you want to win the lotto then please please please buy a lottery ticket!"
The whole premise was that yes every miracle does come from God, but we need to be active in manifesting our miracles. If you have cancer do you just pray for a miracle to be cured? Or do you go get medicine and treatment? Same idea with infertility!
SO that was my ah-ha moment that maybe I am not supposed to take off a year or 2 and truly hope for a miracle baby without any treatments. So here we are back on the horse!
I switched fertility doctors and met with my new doctor right before Christmas. We devised a plan for us since I am starting all over with no embryos or anything and on December 28th I started the birth control.
So let me go back and tell you why I switched Drs. 100% totally nothing wrong with my previous doctor. I loved him and everything he did. The only downside to him is he is a small 1 man show operation. The problem with being small is he has to have a life outside of being a Dr. so to make his schedule work he has to time everyone to do their IVF and frozen transfers at the same time (within a 2 week window). He works 14 days in a row and then takes some time off. The down side of that for the patient is when you go to do a Frozen transfer he suppresses all your natural hormones and then tricks your body into thinking its ovulation time with the meds. I hated this aspect of it. I always thought why not work with nature and when you ovulate naturally put in the embryo and let your body do most the work instead of the medcations. (I mean literally he would say if you miss one dose you are miscarrying bc your body is making zero progesterone) So that is the main reason I switched.
I am now at the FIRM where there are 5 doctors and they do IVF and transfers all day every day. When I first met with him and asked for the calendars for each month to see what worked with my schedule he laughed. He said we can do it whenever you want. We could do it in 4 weeks, we could do Feb 14th if you like that day or April 23rd or literally any day you pick! So I conveniently said well I am going on a Ski trip soon so lets do it after that. And that is the plan.
I am currently on my birth control and will stop that on Feb. 3rd. I should get my period a few days after that and my first Ultrasound and start of my cycle is Feb.7th. Since I have no embryos I am going back to the big stuff of multiple shots every day and ultrasounds every 3 days to monitor how my eggs are progressing. When they look like they are ready to be taken out, I will do a quick 15 minute surgery, have them removed, and good old Dave will be there to fertilize them and then we wait. :) The whole thing is about 10-14 days worth of shots and stuff and then its over!
We have decided to do genetic testing this time around to make sure we are putting in embryos that are not abnormal which is almost a guarantee for miscarriage. So if I miscarry the next time I am pregnant, we know it is because something is wrong with me not with the baby. In order to do the genetic testing, they will be frozen and the results come back about 10 days later. So for now we are just removing the eggs and hanging out.
We haven't decided when to do the actual transfer of the embryo (when you actually can become pregnant) yet and to be honest I don't feel too rushed to do it yet. I would love a trip to Europe! (I am trying to talk Dave into that) or maybe one more fun vacation before I do it but who knows. Maybe I will only have 1 or 2 eggs and say lets do it sooner than later in case I have to do the whole shots and egg retrieval again. This old lady is not getting younger and my egg quality and quantity is going down fast so hopefully once they are out and we have a decent number I will feel good to just time it whenever the Lord tells me to do it. And yes I am know I am not really that old, but I did a blood test that tells you about where your ovarian reserve is and I am a 1.3 which the average 33 year old is a 2.0. Anything under 1 is considered low ovarian reserve so time isn't really on my side. Maybe a good 3-4 years left in these ovaries!
So thats where we stand! I will start back with the regular weekly posts once we get back from our ski trip. We are headed to steamboat the 29th through the 4th which is going to be so much fun!! The entire McLaughlin/Krieg family is going and I can't wait to see how well Delainey picks back up skiing. We may even let Blakely try it out too. She is a nightmare putting on pants and a t-shirt as it is so I don't see her putting on 4 layers of ski clothes, but we will see. I hope you all are having a great start to 2018. I have been doing the Daniel Fast so no new instagram posts or Facebook since January 1st, but I will be back this Sunday so keep an eye out for our trip fun and all that we are doing! And of course I would appreciate the prayers to start flowing for the entire IVF cycle, wisdom on when to do the transfer, and peace and trust that however it turns out is God's plan and we are good with it. Thanks guys! XOXO
Monday, January 8, 2018
Christmas Eve & Christmas Day
On Christmas Eve, we went to our candlelight church service in the morning and then to brunch with everyone. That afternoon we went to Grammys to hang out with The Grif's and Richies. We opened presents, had a lovely dinner, and played lots of boardgames before calling it a night. We came home and sprinkled our reindeer food in the grass, set out our milk and cookies and off to bed we went.
I of course had this great idea to take longer videos so when the girls grow up there will be some actual footage of them opening presents instead of just 20-30 second clips. The only problem with that was I didn't take any pictures only videos of the whole day :( Videos don't do well on the blog so you will just have to imagine what a great Christmas morning we had. The girls opened all their presents and then had to solve a scavenger hunt from Santa to get their big gifts. This year Delainey read and solved it all by herself. She is getting so big! She got a new bike and Blakely got a scooter. So of course we had to test them out in the 40 degree weather. LOL We ate breakfast and watched the movie Leap one of their new DVDs and then we packed up to head to Gammoe's.
The excitement continued over there as we exchanged gifts with Emmy & Will and Gammoe & Dodaddy. The girls were given a new swing and a zipline so of course we played outside for at the next few hours. Their fun was overshadowed by Emily's gender reveal though and we found out we are going to have a baby BOY cousin coming in June! The first boy grandchild for Gammoe & Dodaddy. We had a nice dinner and then lots of fun in bath time with all of our new stocking stuffers.
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Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Christmas Festivities - Part 3 (Seaworld & ICE)
Delainey's last day of school was the Thursday before Christmas, but we all know those days are a waste of time so we decided to skip it and took an overnight trip to Orlando. The main reason we were going was to stay at the Gaylord Palms and do the ICE thing where there is a whole area that is 9 degrees with carved ice to look at and slide on. We still had passes to get in to Seaworld for free for all of 2017 so we figured why not do something else and its free! Seaworld ended up being the highlight of the trip for us all!!
1. Seaworld's Christmas party is included in your regular admission instead of paying for a separate ticket like Disney does which is $95. (Disney has gotten out of control!)
2. All of Seaworld's Music and shows had a Christian undertone to them. They played actual Christmas Carols, Did an amazing performance of birth of Jesus with real nativity animals, they had much better lights, a ice skating show, a Sesame Street christmas show, and we didn't even get a chance to see the Christmas themed Shamu or Sea Lion show. Everything at Disney is so PC that there is no mention or Jesus or songs that refer to him and they of course have every holiday advertised. The rides are all the same and all they really offer is a different parade and free cookies and hot chocolate.
3. They had an entire separate Christmas area with carolers, places to meet Santa and his friends, play free games, and all the hot toddys, hot chocolate and alcohol beverages you could imagine.
Seaworld sold us! We of course will still do Disney and love it during regular times, but for a Christmas themed park we will be attending Seaworld from this point on.
Crazy lady sat in the splash zone at the Shamu show!
We made it back to our hotel around 9:00, checked into our room and called it a night. The next morning we dressed in our ski attire and headed to the ICE exhibit. We were able to stick out the 9 degrees for about 30 minutes which was pretty good considering most people are in and out in 10 minutes. It was cool to look at and the girls did the ice slide. Of course they were more concerned with trying to lick and touch the ice than actually looking at how cool it was that it was all dyed and hand carved haha!
So after some hot chocolate to warm us up, we changed gears and put on our swim suits to enjoy the pool for a while before heading home. Delainey braved the biggest slide I have ever seen all by herself (the blue one) and Blakely and I swam around in the heated pool trying to not get too cold!
We will definitely be staying at Gaylord Palms again when we have time to just enjoy the pool and hotel itself. You could spend an easy 2 days there and never leave in order to see and do everything. It was a great girls trip and it got us all geared up for Christmas 3 days later! I will share another post with all the Christmas Eve, Christmas Day fun we had!
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Monday, January 1, 2018
Christmas Festivities - Part 2
One Friday before school was let out, I let the girls skip school and we went to see the Nutcracker, but it was a shortened 1 hour version special for kids. This was actually the first time I had ever seen the Nutcracker and my opinion was: It was good, but 1 hour was plenty. :) The kids really enjoyed it but I could not imagine watching for 2-3 hours. We went out to lunch with friends and made a whole day out of it. This will be added into the list of annual traditions I do with the girls!
The next day we headed down to St. Augustine to see the Nights of Lights and eat dinner. It was madness down there and after driving through the singing Christmas lights 2 weeks earlier, they were less than impressed with the plain white lights everywhere. LOL I think it was still pretty!
The next night we headed to Emily & Will's house where he drove us around on a hayride for Luminaria in the Riverside area where they live.
Blakely had her Christmas performance the next night and she really rocked those Jingle Bells.
The crazy ladies attempted the polar plunge once the sun was finally shining. It lasted for all of 5 minutes LOL. I went to Delainey's little Christmas breakfast party on Tuesday.
And then Blakely's Christmas party on Wednesday where she met Santa again for like the 4th time haha.
School was out on Thursday so the girls and I decided to do an overnight trip to Orlando to hit up Seaworlds Christmas party and stay at the Gaylord Palms to do the ICE walk through the next day. Part 3 will detail our trip to Orlando.
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