27?!?!?!?!?!?!!!

Happy Birthday to Me!!!!!

Today is my 27th birthday!!!! Even though I had a list of things I wanted to check off my list before this day had come, I still have to celebrate because it is MY BIRTHDAY!!!! Who knows what this next year will hold??? Hopefully a baby!

Taking a closer look!

Since my last post I have realized that there are reasons that my first IVF attempt didn't work. God has amazing things in store for my life and I just want to have the patience to wait for His perfect timing. I had started putting my struggles and focus for a baby before my relationship with my Savior. Since this realization I have changed my focus and I just pray that I can continue to follow His plans for my life and truly celebrate what Christmas is all about! This year I have not stressed about what gifts to buy certain people and I really believe that I have stayed out of the commercialize Christmas. I know that January will come soon enough and I don't want to wish Christmas to rush by. I love Christmas time!!!! I want to fully enjoy this Christmas with my family and friends!!!!

In my quiet time this was the example:
This guy was setting up a store front Christmas window display with a manger scene and it had a note attached to it. The note said "Open package, from God to all mankind". He said that there were two different responses to the window display. One response was they would just walk past not even noticing anything different. The other response was they would walk up to the window and get a closer look at the baby inside. The point of this is we need to stop during all the hustle and bustle and take a closer look at what this holiday is all about. It seems like we get so busy with Christmas that we rush through it without focusing on God during this time. Christmas is not about getting the perfect gift for someone, it is not about having the perfectly decorated house, it is not about anything but my God coming to this Earth to be born as a baby, live a perfect life and die for my sins. We I need to take a closer look!

We started Sunday night with one of my family traditions. We baked 3 batches sandtarts and 5 batches of trash with my parents. Oh and I most certainly did not just eat sandtarts and trash for supper. They both are sooooo good and will help put on some weight; cookies are a good fat, aren't they?????? I am sure my RE would love to know that I ate cookies for supper. Monday night was Christmas celebration with my moms side of the family and my grandmothers birthday (she was born on Christmas day). It was a great night with family. I have some issues with that side of the family that I will talk about at a later date. I am working on my outlook on certain things because I know that is the only thing that I can control. I am not going to let a few people mess up my time with my grandparents! I hope this Christmas will be a joyful one, no matter where I am or who I am with because no matter the circumstances I am going through Christmas is not about me, it is about taking a closer look.

Trying to embrace

It has been a week and a half and the sadness is still somewhat there. I can be perfectly fine one minute and then it hits me the next minute. Different things trigger it…a lady walking past rubbing her very pregnant belly, someone announcing that they are pregnant, walking into Babies R Us (I don’t know why I did this to myself) and many more. Why do so many 15 year olds keep getting pregnant and all of us infertiles out there are still waiting (big sigh)???? These are all reminders that I am not pregnant and very much thought I would be celebrating at this point. I know God has is perfect timing and I am trying to embrace that, but it is still hard. I know that this strong desire to have children is there for a reason and our dreams of children will come true one day. I am not going to let this beat me, I will overcome this!!!! Everyone keeps asking me how I am doing and I am doing pretty well. I am making it through day by day, I am having fun preparing for Christmas and Marcus and I are enjoying each other and I am just trying to get caught up in and enjoy the Christmas spirit. After this week our schedule is very busy so hopefully that will be a good distraction for me. It is amazing how God can use these hard times to bring about some positive things and also show us what is most important to us. I love my husband and I know that we can make it through whatever is thrown at us and come out more in love with each other than before. Who would have known that in our little 4.5 years of marriage we would have gone through what we have had to go through, but we would not be the people we are today without those trials and so I am thankful for the trails. I started this blog to really document our journey along the way and I have gotten more out of than I expected. This has become a huge support system for me and an easy way to release my thoughts. I have met so many people that are or have gone through the tuff journey of infertility and thank you all for your support and encouraging words. It is nice to be able to talk to others that are experiencing the same thing that you are. My post will still have some sort of reference to our journey but I will try to post more upbeat things from now on. That will be my challenge to myself!!!!!

Now on to a FET

To start off, we were given a great success rate with our first go around and that is why she decided to only put one back in. As some of you know we were a little upset with her decision, but trusted her as our doctor. I think she was a little sorry for this decision when we talked with her yesterday and also a little shocked that it didn't work.

On a side note, what is going on with our generation? There are so many couples battling infertility!!!! It makes me sad when I think of all of you, because I know your pain, your sadness, and your desires! It is hard to go through, but some how we make it through day by day, month by month and year by year.

We have decided to do more blood work to check on a clotting disorder and endometriosis (since this runs in my family). I am going on Monday to give more blood and just pray that everything comes back normal. These are all things that could cause the embryo to not implant. I also have to start taking flax seed oil to help me put on some weight. Then we went through the embryos that we have left and talked about how many we would like to put back in. She totally left this decision up to us, well with in reason, and we decided to put 3 back in. With her 2008 stats their success rate is 43% with putting 3 back in and they did not have any triplets come out of those and only 8 sets of twins. So the stats are not as good as a fresh cycle but you really can't compare your specific problem with their stats because every ones cause of infertility is individual. Unless something new comes up with my blood work, we have hurdled past our cause of infertility; we have 7 beautiful embryos waiting for us!!! If everything works out, we will be starting a FET cycle in January. We are also lucky that this will not cost us too much more money because we went through a financing program that if our first try didn't work we are able to do a FET without any additional cost (except cost of testing and meds). When we decided to go through this program I was hoping that we would not have to use our second chance, but now that we are here I am very happy that we choose to go in that direction. We are saving thousands of dollars!!!! In the end, I think we both left our appointment with some hope and a little more comforted. Thanks again for all your prayers and hugs!

Did it really snow in Southeast TX?

I thought Marcus was playing a joke on me this morning when he woke me up and said that there was snow everywhere. Those of you that don't know where we live, we live in Southeast Texas, a.k.a. the arm pit. It never snows here!!!! When we rarely get a snow flurry everyone freaks out and runs outside with their pieces of black paper to be able to see a snowflake. I know some of you that live where it snows every winter think that we are crazy!!!! Zoe was soooo cute playing in the snow, of course she had to wear her pea coat. She loved it and was very cute pouncing around the backyard. Well that is our December 11th, 2008 Southeast Texas snow story!!!!!

Still have hope!

Thank you all for your prayers, hugs, support and kind words. This just wasn't our time for our little miracle. It is very hard and I am very sad but I will continue to have hope and I know the sadness will ease up over time. We are going for a consult on Wednesday to talk everything over and talk about a FET (frozen embryo transfer). We are very lucky to have 7 frozen embryos. I really have no idea how a FET works or what it will all entail, but I will let you all know after our appointment on Wednesday. I keep thinking if there was something that I could have done differently, but I was even more cautious than the doctor even asked me to be. Who knows why it didn't work, maybe we will get some answers at our appointment. God is still in control and He is carrying Marcus and me through this. We will come out stronger and who knows what miracles God has in store for us.

Beta Results

Just to let you all know, it was negative. I will post more later.

Beta Eve

I can't stop thinking about it, it consumes my every thought! This is true torture! I can't believe the day is almost here. It has gone by a little quicker for me because I was sidetracked a little by the Thanksgiving holidays. I am trying to prepare myself if it is negative, but how do you prepare yourself for something like that?????? I am going shopping tonight with my mom and sister, so hopefully I will be able to take my mind off of tomorrow for a little while. Hopefully I will be able to get some Christmas shopping done, since I wasn't able to join in on our family tradition on Black Friday.

Funny but kind of gross story:
Last night I had to pack my shot up and bring it with me to church, because Marcus stays after for a little while and I have not been brave enough to try and give it to myself. It is a shot that has to be given in the muscle (upper butt) and I am not sure I am that flexible (just try and picture doing it) all with a 1 & 1/2" needle, all while avoiding blood vessels. So I packed all my supplies (an extra needle in case a blood vessel is hit). The first needle I put on had something on it, so I changed it out with the extra one I had brought. While I was doing this I told Marcus he could not hit a blood vessel because we now don't have any extra needles. Side note, by now he has given me tons of shots and no blood vessels have been hit (great job honey). As soon as he was checking for blood I looked back and saw red!!!!! Oh no he hit a blood vessel!!! We now have to start over and clean everything up and use the first needle. It turned out to be a piece of plastic from the cover that was on the needle so I still felt like it was okay to use (I mean it was all we had). Nurses out there don't let me know if we did anything wrong, because it is done and we can't change it now. Marcus said that I jinxed him by telling him not to hit a blood vessel. Tonight will also be interesting because my mom will have to give me my shot (I guess in the back of the car). Don't worry I packed extra needles for tonight. Hopefully we won't look like we are shooting up in the mall parking lot?????? Oh, the stories we have from going through IVF. You have to laugh about them, it's what keeps everything interesting!

I am not going to post the results on Friday, whatever they are. This will give us time to take it all in and talk with our families. Sorry you will all have to wait a little longer to find out.

2WW

Oh, The Two Week Wait (2ww)!!!!! So far, so good and I only have 5 more days to go! I have thought about taking a home pregnancy test, but my doctors office told me with all the meds I am taking it could produce false results (so if I do take one, will I trust the results.....ummm nope). As far as symptoms, I do have some but again the meds are suppose to produce some of these symptoms. I worry each day that goes by and I have a different feeling come on. Is it my body reacting to the drugs, pregnancy, or is my body rejecting this????? All I can do is take each day as it comes with each new ache/pain/discomfort and trust God to carry me through.

Today is my first day back at work! It was weird being off of work for so long. I don't think I have ever missed so much work, even for vacations! I know it sounds weird but it is nice to be back at work. With the Thanksgiving holiday I was able to take it easy for a little longer than the doctor even asked, so that was nice to not have to jump right back into everything just a few days after my transfer. It was nice to have meals cooked for us, dishes washed, clothes clean and put up and so much more (thank you mom and Pam)!!!!! I think I have been spoiled! I still can't lift anything or really do anything other than sit and walk, so I am still a little cautious about what I do. I will let you all know my blood results as soon as I can, please just continue to pray for us.