she's here!

Our baby girl, Cora, arrived on July 31, 2017 at 6:17 am!

(I'm sorry that I'm so late in posting this. Chasing after a toddler and nursing this newborn have kept me quite busy. I've had this post saved in draft form for a few days because every time I tried to update and post it my son would run into the room and want to jab at every button on my computer - so then I had to hide my computer.)

We are so thankful for our embryo donors and embryo adoption. I can't write it enough! When I look at my kids I'm just stunned with thankfulness! Our journey to become a family is a miracle.

I got my VBAC! I went into labor in the early hours of July 30. I went back to sleep and called my mother in the morning to pick up Logan and bring him to her house. That being done the only thing my husband and I worried about for the rest of that day (Sunday) was keeping my labor going and stocking up the house for the new baby.

By midday Sunday I was having contractions every 10 minutes or so, they progressed to become 5 minutes apart at around 5 pm. I got in the tub. I thought the contractions were pretty strong, but when we called our doula and she dropped in she said that they could get a lot stronger and she stayed with us and helped my labor progress.

I didn't know that labor naturally intensifies in the evening, but that makes sense. My contractions continued to pick up and get stronger between 5-7 pm. At that point they were 3 minutes apart. My doula had me walk around the block and swing my legs in a half moon in front of me pivoting from my hip joint. She also rubbed my feet with clary sage and jasmin and put some clary sage on a cotton ball and had me inhale it as I walked. By the time we made it around the block my contractions had doubled in intensity.

I then sat on the birth ball and let the contractions keep coming. With each contraction my doula pressed on a pressure point in my lower leg and my husband pressed on a pressure point in my hand. She then had me walk up and down the stairs - doing the same time of movement with my legs that I had done on my walk around the block. At this point it was after 11 pm and I was just howling with each contraction and trying to breath.

Sometime after 11 I felt the urge to push. I sat through a few contractions on the toilet and then we headed to the hospital. (Which was only 7 minutes away.)

At check-in I was 4 centimeters, but the time we made it to the room and I got an epidural I was 6 centimeters. I had my bloody show between getting into bed and getting the epidural. A few hours after I got the epidural the Dr. broke my bag of waters because I wasn't progressing.

At that point everything went into hyperdrive. My body started shaking and I was fully dilated a few hours after my waters had been broken.

I pushed for a few hours and we started to see her head, but due to the fact that her heart rate was going down the Dr. wanted to use forceps if I couldn't get her out in a few more pushes. I tried a few times and then let the Dr. use the forceps. Out she came - beautiful and perfect and howling to beat the band.

Her cord was wrapped around her neck 2 times.

There wasn't a mark on her from the forceps. (I on the other hand needed a few stitches.)

So that's our birth story. It worked out for the best! Healthy baby and healthy mommy.

I'm holding her now and she's nursing like a champ.

Praying for all of you on this journey.

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

matching process

We finally got to download the list of donor profiles on Friday. My husband is out of the country, so he spent the night pouring over them and I spent the morning. We finally shared our top choices with each other and 5 out of 10 of them were the same.

I just submitted our list of hopefuls to the NEDC. Now I guess they vet the choices and get back to us with further information.

I'm starting to get excited about our November transfer. I'm feeling like it's really going to happen. I started birth control last weekend and with it Lovenox injections to prevent blood clots. The birth control is high in estrogen and so are the estrogen supplements (obviously) that I will start to take in October as our transfer date starts to approach. Both are bad for women who have had blood clots.

My husband gets home on this Friday. He has been away for over three weeks and we are more than ready for him to be home. I can't believe we've been able to coordinate some of this with him being overseas. We've done webex meetings with our social worker.

I can't believe it's getting to the end of September. Time is moving too fast.

Logan will be 10 months old on Friday as well.

Praying for you all on this journey.

xo Jill

getting ready

August is here!

We've been busy chasing after our little one. He's been army crawling. He's been bear crawling. He's not doing the traditional crawl yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

As I write this he's about seven feet away from me on the floor crawling back and forth. He likes to turn, sit up wave his arms, laugh and then start off army crawling again.

Next week is our return trip to the NEDC. We're flying in, spending the night in a hotel and then visiting the clinic for our appointment and flying back the same day. We usually do a road trip, but our work schedules have us pretty booked this late summer.

My mom and dad are watching Logan for us.

I'm excited and a little scared. I hope things go the way I hope.

Sending prayers to all of you on this journey.

xo Jill