Goodbye 2012

2012 was a mixed bag for our family.  We had some really great moments.  Wonderful, happy, breathtaking moments.  We also had some heartbreaking moments.  Utterly shocking and heartbreaking.  I have had a hard time deciding on how to classify 2012.  I am going to go with mixed bag.

In February, we welcomed Joseph home from a long, long deployment.  It was amazing to see him hold his little man again.  Watching Blake and Joseph get to know each other again was exciting.  Things had changed so much from a seven month old to a fifteen month old.  Diaper changes were entirely different.  Baths were both terrifying (for mommy) and a party at the same time.  Joseph had a lot to learn about the differences between a not-yet-crawling seven month old and a wild fifteen month old.  2012 has truly turned Blake from a Mommy's boy to a Daddy's boy.  He adores Joseph, and I am so glad to see that almost a year away did not cause any bonding issues. 

We have been on countless trips this year.  We have had so much family time.  It has been a drastic change from when Joseph was working at a busy, deploying unit.  That part of the year was great, and it was much needed.

Blake has grown from a baby one year old into a two year old little boy. He is talking in full sentences now. Watching that transformation is shocking.  How is it that my baby was struggling to walk this time last year, and he is now jumping, running, and climbing? How is that possible?

Of course, the year ended with struggles.  Miscarriage, D&C, laparoscopic surgery, another round of IVF...  The miscarriage was hard.  I never realized how hard miscarriages are.  Having a loss as late as Ethan and Jacob, people immediately understand how heartbreaking it is.  Miscarriage is such a different experience.  Such different emotions and expectations. 

Our IVF cycle was abnormally successful, which we are grateful for. Having ten embryos in the freezer means that we won't have to face IVF again.  That is a blessing that I never thought I would have.  We were happy with ONE frozen embryo from our last cycle.  Having ten is something I never dreamed we would have. 

2013 should be an interesting one.  We hope to have another baby in 2013.  Blake will be starting preschool.  Joseph is due for orders.  We are possibly facing an overseas move (Japan), selling or renting our house, a new unit, and a new unit's schedule.  My main resolution for this year is to relax.  No worrying about things out of my control... or at least not as much.

Happy New Year everyone.  I hope 2013 brings everything you wish for. 

And Now We Wait...

We arrived Saturday morning for our transfer. We had not heard from the office about our embryos since our day two report on Wednesday. They had said that no news is good news, so we were hoping for quiet.

They brought us back to the room, and I immediately noticed that there were no embryos in the incubator. ::enter panic:: The embryologist informed us that there were a few egg retrievals that morning. Since they are time sensitive, we were being pushed back a little.

Then he gave us our report. I was hoping for three to four to freeze. Both of my other cycles, we have had one to freeze. This time we had.... NINE to freeze! We were shocked. I did not know how to respond. Of the fifteen we had on day two, nine had made it to a good quality, freeze worthy embryo. That does not include what we transferred. Nine is amazing and completely surprising.

My doctor was very happy with how everything turned out. He came in with a giant grin on his face. This cycle required a lot of thinking on his part. My levels were difficult to control, and I was on the edge of overstimulating for the majority of it.

Our transfer went exceptionally well. We followed my doctor's recommendation for transferring two. He wanted to repeat our last cycle, so we did the exact same thing with similar grading of the embryos.

So now we wait. I'm on bed rest for the next few days, then back to normal and waiting.


Here are our nine waiting in the freezer.

Finding a Bubble

Yesterday morning, twenty little babies left for school that will never come home. Devastating. I wonder about that morning. Did one of them not want to wake up, and mommy made them? Was one child excited about a class event? Were they running late and rushing? Was the Elf on the Shelf a fixture in their homes like it is ours? Did they talk about Santa's upcoming visit? The small details that those parents will forever hold from their last morning. I pray that each one of those parents hugged and kissed their child before sending them to school yesterday.

I can't imagine how devastating it would be to arrive at a firehouse frantically looking for your child, and they aren't there. The drive back home.... Walking into your home.... Waiting for confirmation.

My first instinct is to never let Blake go. I want to shield him from this cruel world. I want to protect his innocence. I want to keep him in a bubble. Blake has no idea that bad people exist, and it is one of my favorite things about his sweet personality. He will flash that Blake smile and say "Hey" to almost everyone. He has no idea of evil. No concept. I want to protect that for as long as possible.

But, it isn't possible. Sure, I can home school him. I can keep him locked in our house forever. But what kind of life is that? A shooting can happen anywhere. Of course when it is in a school it is shocking and horrifying. It could easily happen at a park, the grocery store, or Blake's favorite frozen yogurt store (which he calls "Ike ceam"). We live close to a military base, and we could be injured in a military aircraft accident.... Or a terrorist attack. Or a car accident. The list is endless.

Living in fear is not living. Blake will attend school, and it will probably be public for the majority of his years. I pray that I am never in any of these parent's shoes, but I can not shelter my child. He deserves to experience all the perks of school and hopefully college. We can't live in fear of bad things or bad people.

That do not mean I won't worry, because I will. It doesn't mean I won't kiss him pray he is safe everyday, because I will. It just means that we don't have control.

Shocked

We received our fertilization report, and I was shocked. Of the twenty eggs that were retrieved, seventeen were mature. Of the seventeen, fifteen were growing on day two. That's amazing.

I feel so blessed to have so many this time around. Last cycle, we were working with five. We have ten more embryos this time. So now we wait for the transfer on Saturday. We will find out then how many will be frozen. Hopefully quite a few. We don't expect all of them to make it that far, but we are hopeful to have enough frozen to feel comfortable saying goodbye to IVF.

Dr. T finally figured my medicines out, and my body responded. I'm still shocked that it has turned out this way. Blessed.

20

I have been a very bad blogger. Things have been a little crazy, and I have been struggling to keep up. Joseph has had a busy week or two at work. His busy week just happened to coincide with the worst of my IVF cycle. Add a two year old into that mixture, and you have an exhausted, hormonal mommy that doesn't blog.

We started this cycle pretty normally. My last cycle started off with too little medicine, and it was an uphill battle the entire time. We ended up with six mature eggs. This time my doctor had the goal of more eggs. He started me out at a higher dose of medicines, expecting me to respond similarly to our last cycle.

My body decided to take that medicine seriously this time. My first blood work showed that my body was overly responding. My medicines were decreased, and we officially were dealing with too many eggs. My estrogen level was way too high. We went from threatening cancellation due to under stimulation to threatening cancellation due to overstimulation.

My monitoring office was guessing that I had thirty plus measurable eggs. That is a lot! I was obviously uncomfortable and the high estrogen levels made me feel horrible. We were not sure how many of those thirty plus would be mature. My doctor guessed fifteen, but I was a bit skeptical after my six from last time.

We pushed through and made it to the egg retrieval today....

They got 20 mature eggs! I was shocked when I woke up from the anesthesia. That doubles the amount that I got from my first cycle (9).

So now we wait. We have to see how our fertilization report goes. IVF is such a numbers game. You start out with a number, and slowly the number drops as time goes on. I'm just hoping for enough to transfer and freeze a few. Anything more than that is a bonus.

My baseline went better than I thought it would yesterday. Everything looked perfect, and I was given the all clear to start shots last night.

So, we should have an egg retrieval around the 10th or so. Funny little side note.... Blake was transferred within days of this schedule. So if this works, we could be having double birthday parties for awhile.

Again...

Here we go again...

I have my giant box of medicines, my baseline monitoring appointment, and our sad savings account. Our last IVF cycle was supposed to be our last, yet here we are. I have caught myself saying the same again this time. This is my last.... My last time dealing with the pharmacy and all those meds. My last time waiting on my cycle to start so we can just get things going already! My last time trying to figure out what day we will be doing this or that, and what day I will be on bed rest. This is my last.... I pray.

Today is my baseline. I'm a little unsure of how things are going to go. The last few times I have gone for something routine, it's turned into a setback. Part of me feels like that will probably happen again today. We will see. I'm hoping we can get started today, so we can avoid cycling during Christmas. I stopped taking my birth control pills I haven't started a cycle yet, which makes me think I have a cyst. I would not be shocked.

I have no idea how people can do cycle after cycle of IVF. It just is not for me. The stress and unknown nature of IVF is enough to drive me crazy. Last cycle, I had the benefit of three years of forgetting. This cycle I don't. I just did this, and I didn't really enjoy it. The excitement from last time is gone.

So here we go... I'm praying that this is a smooth cycle with a lot of success.