My plan is to begin weekly pregnancy updates soon, but first I need to catch everyone up on our journey to where we are now! I'm not sure how many posts it will take for me to get you all caught up, but I do know that despite my intentions to keep it short and sweet, that probably won't happen :-). What can I say? I'm a wordy girl, ha!
Okay, so I've talked several times on here about how Chris and I have always dreamed of a houseful of babies. We never assigned a specific number to that, but we both definitely felt like it was more than two children for us. Of course, after we lost B3, we were devastated. Truly, truly heartbroken. It took us six months to decide that we did want to cycle again, then that also ended in miscarriage last summer. At that point, we didn't know if our dreams were over or what exactly. We weren't sure what we even wanted anymore. Our hearts were just so broken.
Initially, we said that we would probably go back to see Dr. P at the beginning of 2014. However, when that time came, we just weren't ready. We didn't feel peaceful about it. I didn't feel emotionally stable enough to undertake fertility treatments again. I knew that I needed to be 100% on board with treatments - 100% emotionally ready - and I just wasn't there. We certainly didn't want to rush into such a major decision, so we decided to wait. We didn't know how long we would wait, but more time and tons of prayer proved to be just what we needed to be truly ready again. I made an appointment with Dr. P on April 21st, and we actually found ourselves excited about the potential the future held. It had been a while since we had felt that way.
The good news is that while we were waiting, healing, and learning how to live with our reality of loss, I was physically feeling GREAT. After six years of seeing Dr. P, we had finally figured out how to manage my PCOS. I was doing so well, in fact, that at my initial consult with Dr. P on April 21st, he said that I was healthy enough to begin cycling as soon as CD1 came! I was so thrilled to not have to do any additional therapy to prepare my body for treatments.
My CD1 fell on May 8th, and I began meds on May 10th (the day before Mother's Day). We stayed with the same protocol we had used the last several cycles . . . 2.5mg of Femara on cycle days 3 through 7, 75 IUs of Gonal F on cycle days 8 through 16 (I had actually always used Follistim in the past, but we switched to Gonal F this time), trigger shot, and IUI.
Funny side-note: I had recently read a book written by the Duggars (the mega-family with 19 kids who live in Arkansas), but I had never seen their TV show before. I ordered the DVD set of the first season of their show from Amazon, and it came in the mail the same day as some of my fertility meds. Oh the irony, haha!!!
As usual, it took a while for my follicles to do anything of significance, but finally (after extra days of Gonal F), I ended up with a 19mm and 21mm follicle on my left side. It is unusual for me to produce two good eggs, though I have had a couple other cycles where I've produced two. One of those cycles failed and one produced Brianna :-).
Tell-tale sign of fertility treatments . . . one arm bandaged from blood draws and one arm bruised from blood draws. Between the injections and the blood draws, I was definitely feeling like a pin cushion!
We triggered on May 24th which meant that our IUI fell on Memorial Day.
The new and improved premixed trigger shot!
Everything went super smoothly with the IUI, and then it was time to wait. We were still feeling very much at peace with everything, so the 2 week wait wasn't bad at all. It was also an especially busy time for us which helped the time pass for sure. However, by the time June 9th rolled around, we were certainly ready to find out the result of our cycle!
Of course, as you already know, it was positive! However, I'll share more details of that in the next post :-).
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1 comment:
Yay, Chelley! Congrats on TWINS. That's amazing.
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