2nd Time's a Charm!

I know I am a little behind  on keeping you all updated!! Shame on me! I guess I'll take you back to when I went to Minnesota for the transfer. I was having some good luck that day. I got to the airport a couple hours early since my Mom had somewhere to be but I'm glad cause as soon as I got there they announced over the intercom that if there were any passengers flying on the 5:50 flight to Minnesota to come to gate 5-13 and if you want you can switch to the 4:30 flight. So I did and there were only about 10 people on the flight. I got a seat in front and no one sat near me, nice!

Oops sorry. I thought I rotated that! Anyway, we had the transfer the next morning. Above is a picture of the 2 embryos we transfered. One is 8 cells and one is 6 or 7 I think and are level 2 in quality. I didn't really get it but the doctor reassured us that these two were much better quality than the two before and I guess she was right because 12 days later we had a positive pregnancy test with an HCG level of 219! That is three times higher than it was the last time. They wanted to make sure my HCG level continued to grow so I had another blood test two days later. At that point they want your levels to be doubled. As of Wednesday my levels were 436! Everything is growing just as it should be. Dawn and Denae from Center of Reproductive Medicine were thrilled and said that we have no reason to believe that things would go down from here. It looks like this time we have a viable pregnancy!!

This is Angie and I just before we went in for the transfer :)

So now I am considered to be 4 weeks and a few days along. My due date is October 23rd! In about three weeks I'm going to have an ultrasound. They said that by that time we may not be able to hear the heartbeat but we should be able to see it.  Plus we will see if just one embryo attached or if both of them did! EEK! We will see!!

Until then I have to continue taking my progesterone shots and the estrace. 

See ya in three weeks!!

Leavin on a jet plane....

Hello all! I'm leaving this afternoon for Minnesotta! The lab tech there just called me. She said that 5 eggs are mature and 3 out of the five have fertilized and are a level 2. I don't really know what level 2 means but the tech said that they were good so I guess I'll believe her! The really good news is that we have one more fertilized egg than last time and they are better quality.

The transfer is set for 10:30am tomorrow. We haven't discussed how many eggs they are going to stuff me with yet. We will probably figure that out in the morning when we talk to the doctor.

So I just printed out my boarding pass. I'm all packed and ready to go. My flight so far seems to be on time. The only thing I have to worry about is the Minnesotta weather! Its currently 54 degrees in Nashville and in Minneapolis its 14 degrees! With a low of -3 tonight! So I might return to you all as an icicle!

Here we go again!!

Alrighty! So Angie had her retrieval on Sunday and it went incredibly well! They gave her drugs this time and she didn't feel a thing. Also, they were able to retrieve 7 eggs, 2 more than last time! So hopefully we will have some to freeze this time around!

I started back on the progesterone shots on Saturday and started tetracycleline on Sunday. Angie bought my plane ticket yesterday and I am leaving Tuesday for the transfer on Wednesday! Its gone by very quickly this time. We just started the cycle the last week in December and here we are ready for another transfer!

So say some prayers and wish us luck! I'll let you know what happens!!

Quick Little Update

So I was on blogger this morning checking everyone else's blogs and thought I would quickly write ya'll an update.

I finished taking my lupron last week and right now I'm just in limbo until Angie has her next egg retrieval. I'm not 100% certain where she is in her cycle but I think she is taking her stimulations meds and they are monitoring her to see how the follicles are growing. When they feel like they have enough they will do the retrieval. Thats when I will start taking the progesterone shots again and a couple days later we will have the transfer! It will probably be coming up there in about 2 weeks! Dawn said they are shooting for February 6th, aka Superbowl Sunday. I know, shocker that I know that right?? I'm so ignorant to football just ask Angie but every time I mention that the transfer may be on February 6th someone says "Ohhh Superbowl Sunday!"

So that is that. I will let you all know when I know!!

Makin Baby - Take Two!!

The holidays are almost over now! You know what that means?? More baby makin! Yeah! 

Theres not a whole lot to report. Jon went to his doctors office on Tuesday for another round of blood work. Apparently he has to have blood work done for every cycle we go through to be tested for STDs. They want to make sure he doesn't have the Syphilis! I have to do it too but I wasn't able to get an appointment till the 10th of January.

We started a new cycle on Wednesday. I started taking my Lupron shots again. Those are the wimpy ones that go in my stomach. I'm too much of a baby to give them to myself this time so I've been making Jon do it for me.

I have to go back to Nashville Fertility Center (blah!) for my monitoring next week. They are going to once again check to see if my endometrial layer is thick. So think thick!! I'm a little nervous about going back there. Hopefully things will go better this time:) I think I might bring the nurse that takes my blood some cookies. Here are some cookies, please don't hurt me!!

So that is about it so far. We don't have to have all the consultations we had last time so this cycle will go a lot faster. So far the transfer date is set for February 6th but that may change depending on how Angies eggs develop. 

Wish us luck!

Life sucks. Guess the embryos knew that.

Bad news. So the pregnancy test came out positive last week but I didn't realize that we weren't in the clear yet. I thought that if it came out positive, that was it and we would have a baby in 9 months. Apparently after I had a positive test I still needed to be monitored to make sure my HCG levels doubled and tripled every couple of days. I had blood drawn every other day last week. On Monday my levels were at 56 which is where they should have been but then Wednesday they were 79 when they should have been 112.  At this point they said they weren't sure what was going to happen but they weren't very optimistic. And then Friday my levels were 46 which means it wasn't a viable pregnancy and we were going to loose it. That was a week ago from yesterday. Yesterday I had my last blood test, hopefully. We haven't received the results from that one yet. My doctors clinic is pretty pokey when it comes to getting test results in. All last week I had to call them about 5 times a day to make sure they got the results in on time. The nurse in Minnesotta wanted me to stay on top of them again yesterday but I'm tired of it. We aren't as anxious to hear these results anyway.

Needless to say it wasn't my best Halloween weekend. I've spent most of the week being depressed. I was convinced it would work the first time. It sucks that after all those shots and all our other efforts it didn't work.

The good news is we may try again starting in January. Hopefully we will have some better luck then. For now I'm going to try to enjoy the holidays.

I'll be back in touch in January.

Bet you wanna know don't ya!!?

We were all kept waiting a little longer than we were supposed to be but the results are in and......its good news. I'm pregnant!! Today we are going to be happy but we have one more hurdle to jump over before we know that everything is good. I had my blood drawn yesterday and this morning they were able to check the Beta HCG levels. The HCG level as of yesterday was 56%. Which is good. They wanted it over 50%. Now I have to go in tomorrow morning for another blood test so they can check my progesterone levels and check the Beta HCG levels again to make sure they have doubled in 48 hours. They want to make sure that the levels go up and not down. If they go down then I could miscarry. This information made me nervous at first because 56% is just barely over 50%. I was afraid that maybe it was higher before and now it was dropping. But then I googled it found this in an article I read:

"At least two (2) quantitative beta hCG blood tests are done (2-4 days apart). The reporting of “beta” pregnancy test results is best deferred until after the 2nd blood test results are in. This is because an initial low (<5iu/ml), successful IVF outcome will (in younger women) at best be 50-55%"

This is good information. It wasn't explained to me before that they always do 2 tests and that the first test would initially come out low (50-55%). Well, I'm 56% so I feel much better. I also came across this chart in my search:

NORMAL TWIN PREGNANCIES

Day after LH or HCG	Average mIU/ml	High mIU/ml	Low mIU/ml	#
14	68	313	56	7

Notice the low is 56! Oh boy!

So I go back to my doctors office tomorrow morning at 9 for my second blood test and we should know by that afternoon the results!

We are very happy and excited! After sitting on pins and needles for a little over a week, it looks like Nevaeh and Alex are going to have a cousin in 9 months!! Thanks for all the prayers and support!