thankful

As we were getting ready for this cycle this verse kept popping into my life. After our first ultrasound, I worried about the next ultrasound and I turned on my radio and the speaker was reading this verse. Then after I got off the phone with the nurse from the NEDC after our second ultrasound and she told me that our cycle could be canceled due to some fluid in my uterus I sat down at my desk at work, plugged in my headphones and immediately heard this verse again. I teared up, because I know God has a plan for our family. He has a plan for the precious embryos we adopted.

I'm not sure exactly what his plans are - I have my hopes and prayers. I know no matter what happens He keeps His promises.

The day of our transfer there was a bible sitting in the lobby of the NEDC and I turned to this verse to strengthen me and remind me of my future.

We got our second beta results today 14dp5dt - 1,226!

All I can do is pray that things keep moving in the right direction and that we get to bring home a healthy baby with a healthy mama at the end of July 2017.

I don't know why we have been so blessed. I am stunned and grateful. Thank you, thank you, God!

Here's our betas on the hCG chart. 

Thank you all for your prayers and support. Keep them coming! Praying for all of you on this journey. Praying for hope and strength to you all.

Thank you all of you who are donors. You change lives.

xo Jill

Praise God!

Thank you God!! Blood draw at 7:45 am to confirm this! Grateful for embryo adoption and our donors!

First Beta - 99

xo Jill

6 days past (FET#2)

Symptoms to report:

Midnight to AM - vivid dreams with bouts of insomnia. I dreamt that I was EA baby and that I was meeting my genetic father for the first time. This meeting happened on the dirt road that leads to my grandparents house. My genetic father was also one of our donor fathers. (Very weird.) He was a very nice guy. He asked me to go deep sea fishing.

AM on my morning walk I experienced one of the gagging sessions that I experienced in my first trimester with Logan. My mouth has been very full of spit. Severe bout of chills at work. I put on my winter jacket for several hours. (This happened with Logan.)

Afternoon - not a lot. Tired.

PM - hungry, super thirsty, tired. I have bit of a sore throat and thick mucus at the back of my throat. (I could be getting sick. Logan had a sinus infection last week.) Headache, again, may be my sinuses.

Sorry for the very detail-oriented post. (And then I felt this, and then I felt this.) It helps me to be able to look back and see what I was feeling on each day of my cycle. I like to read other people's posts and see what they were feeling on each day. It's never the same as me!

Crazy head games!!!

Praying for another miracle. 

xo Jill

4 and 5 days past 5 day transfer (FET#2)

I was just rereading our post procedure instructions and realized that we have to test on 11/23 - the day before Logan's birthday and Thanksgiving and I'm feeling a little dismayed. Nothing is going to make me not feel absolutely joyous and grateful on our son's birthday, but if we get back sad results it will be a lot of emotions to process over night.

I know we can do it.

A positive beta would just be so lucky for us. Luck-luck-lucky. 

4 days past 5 day transfer - tired, some pinches and pulls in my uterus. Chills. Very vivid dreams. Insomnia. Hungry in the middle of the night. Tire and get winded easily.

5 days past 5 day transfer - tired, less pinches and pulls in my uterus. Chills. Very vivid dreams. Insomnia. Tire and get winded easily. Hungry in the middle of the night - got up and ate left over pizza.

Beta is on Wednesday. Gah! Scared. Hopeful. Praying!

Not sure what to expect, some of these symptoms are similar to what I felt with Logan, but they are coming on way sooner than what I experienced with Logan.

It's going to be another long week and a stressful pre-dawn Wednesday morning at our house.

Please pray for us and for a positive beta on Wednesday.

xo Jill

3 days past 5 day transfer (FET#2)

We made it home to Minnesota safe! The roads were perfect both ways. We drove straight to my parent's house to pick up Logan. One thing they weren't telling us on the day of our transfer and the day after is that he had quite a cold with a fever. Tuesday and Wednesday he had a high fever and my mom had to give him a bath to get him cooled down, but he was on the mend and happy to see us when we got there on Thursday afternoon.

Lots of smiles and very green snot.

My mom is now sick, so I hope we can avoid catching what he has. He slept between us last night, so we might not be able to avoid it. My mom gave us half a chicken, so I already have chicken noodle soup stock simmering on the stove.

Logan has kept me pretty distracted, but I've still been keeping track of my symptoms.

Transfer day - no symptoms. Sleepy from the meds. I managed to stay on the bed for the full 20 minutes after the transfer, despite the fact that my bladder felt like it was going to explode. We went our for lunch, then back to the hotel for a nap for me. We took a light walk in the afternoon, to keep the blood flowing.

1 days past - first leg of trip home. I felt several twinges and pulls in my uterus. We stopped every two hours to walk around.

2 days past - second leg of trip home. More twinges and pulls, several little pricks. I fell asleep in the car, which is something I never do. We stopped at a beautiful rest stop in Illinois and took a walk around the lake beside it.

3 days past - Vivid dreams about a lady wearing colorful socks and an English mansion house (???) in the am, slept hard even though Logan was fretful and slept with us half the night. Hungry in the morning, despite a huge meal of spaghetti the night before. Both baby and I slept for another 3 hours after hubby went to work.

I've felt a few more twinges today, felt one just a now and felt one faint twinge in my chest. I had lots of those in the late days of my two week wait for Logan.

And another thing, I've been getting the chills. This happened this morning when Logan and I went back to bed. I got three or four cold flashes even though I was snuggled under the covers. This didn't happen until 7 or 8 days past with Logan.

So, I'm still only three days out. I want these days to go by fast and I also want them to stretch out forever, because it's so nice living in this hope.

It was so wonderful meeting our adopted embryos on Tuesday. I have been praying over the embryos from our first donor for over two years and it was so good to see them. They are fighters for sure. Carol, the embryologist, said they looked just average - that's why she thawed the other embryo from our second donors, but I just keep reminding myself that they are fighters to make the thaw and be alive. They are now where they are supposed to be.

(I looked back over my notes from Logan's transfer and he was one of two 3AB and 3AC embryos. The two from our first donors were 4AC and 4CC.)

I'm almost afraid to talk about our third embryo, because it looked perfect. I never thought I'd ever see a 5 AA embryo and that a doctor would be telling me they are transferring it into my uterus - but he/she is in there now! The picture of all our our babies is proudly hanging on the fridge.

God is doing his work in our life. I'm just praying his and my hopes line up.

I have to laugh at that because the plan he's had so far for our life is something I never could have imagined. A perfect plan.

Well, I hear my little guy waking up.

Thank you to our donors and prayers to all of you on this journey.

Please pray for our family!

xo Jill

transfer day :) :) :)

We made it to transfer day - it truly is a miracle.

Remember when I commented in my last post that there was a small amount of fluid in my uterus at my first ultrasound, well it was still there at my ultrasound last Thursday. That is not ideal and it looked like our cycle was in real risk of being cancelled if the fluid was not clear by our ultrasound on 11/14 (which was yesterday.)

To make a long story short we took the risk and drove out to Tennessee to have an ultrasound yesterday - which was clear - but if it had not been we would have had to return to Minnesota (1,000 miles) with an empty womb.

My doctor in Minnesota was pretty sure that the fluid would clear when we introduced progesterone into my protocol. So we came.

Both our cars also broke down last week - can you believe it? The starter went out on our newer car and my husband broke the emergency break on our back-up car (so the warning bell beeps the whole time we drive it.) Our repair man worked late Friday night to fix the starter on the car we wanted to drive to Tennessee, so we got here!

So many people have helped us get this far.

My parents are watching Logan and they've been sending us pictures and videos every day. We can't wait to get home to him.

FET #2 Transfer Details

Three embryos transferred at blast stage. Two from our first donors and one from our second. The two from our first donors were average quality - 4CC and 3AC. The one from our second donors was a beautiful 5AA blast.

There are no more blasts left from our first donor and 10 left from our second donor.

We are praying this is it. We know God has a plan for our family.

Thank you for your prayers. Please pray for a positive beta for us the day after Thanksgiving.

P.S. Our son's first birthday is Thanksgiving Day!

Prayers to all of you on this journey.

Jill

getting close

It's hard to believe we are only 10 days out from our transfer.

Trying for baby number two has been very different than trying for number one - obviously! I'm so busy with our little one and work and our life that I haven't had a lot of time to worry. My heart is also so full and content with our child that the gaping, bleeding hole that was there when we were going through treatment after treatment for our first child (30 months of trying) has healed. The scar is still there, though.  And I'm fearful of failure.

I'm afraid of how I will react if our transfer doesn't work the first time. Or the second time.

While these fears are floating there beneath the surface I've been prayerfully working to build up my faith and put my trust in God. I keep on telling myself: "He has a plan for our family. Before the world was even formed he had a plan for our family. It's all under control."

It's gonna suck if we undertake this struggle again and we don't get the results we hope for. The same cousins who were pregnant while we were struggling for our first are now pregnant with their second or even third baby.

And I'm going to have to see them over the holidays. I SO HOPE WE ARE PREGNANT!

I'm just going to take a deep breath and hang tight. I'm so grateful for the blessing of our son - he has completely transformed my life. I can't ever go back to those dark days when infertility was tearing me apart.

I've got to stay strong. And count my blessings. There are so so many.

Update on FET #2

• My first US and labs looked good. (Although there was some fluid in my uterus. This was probably because I was at the tail end of my period. Hope so. 
• I'm on 10 units of Lupron a day
• I'm on 1 injection of Lovenox a day
• prenatals, fish oil and vitamin D daily
• 2 estradial pills a day
•  

Soon we'll be adding in the progesterone intramuscular injections. I have another appointment for US and labs this coming Thursday. If we are cleared to proceed I'll start the progesterone and we will leave for our road trip to Tennessee on Sunday. Transfer is on November, 15.

I hope we can keep moving forward. I'm looking forward to our road trip. It's a nice buffer between the stress of work and our transfer. I have a few knitting projects and a baby quilt that needs to have the binding sew on set aside to work on during our drive. We also like to check out a few books on CD to listen to. It's a good time for my husband and I to catch up. We really enjoy hanging out with each other. We go out to eat, watch movies in the hotel.

Our son's first birthday is on Thanksgiving this year. I've started to collect the things I will need to bake his cake and celebrate.

Prayers to all of you on this journey. Please pray for us and our precious embryos.

Thank you,

Jill