Paperwork

Just a quick note. We will do much better updating the blog after we are over this first step of paperwork. Saturday was 14 pages of answering questions. Monday/Tueseday was writing 5+ pages of Autobiographies -- one 5 pager for Rog, one 5 pager for Ab. We've already got our "homework" done for our November 3rd meeting -- so Ab is turning it in today and seeing about moving the meeting date up. Hurry up and wait. Hurry up and wait. We are hoping to get everything squared away by the first of the year, then we'll just be waiting. (Hopefully Ab can find time to write so you don't have to keep reading my posts!) -- Right now she had two jobs: Court Reporting and Adoption. Thanks for all of your continued support. Stay tuned.

And away we go...

We've taken the plunge. After trying to direct our own lives we decided to LET GO AND LET GOD. And what a difference. For the first time in a long time we are both at ease and completely relaxed. I'm sure Abby will fill you in on more details as we go. My job is just to let everyone know we have started the paper work to adopt from Ethiopia. (That's in Africa, Pops). Our dream timeline is to have a new bundle of joy home for Christmas 2009. We know we have a long journey ahead but after all we've been through it feels great to be headed down a road we KNOW will have a successful outcome. We've filled out the first round of paperwork and had our first round of digital fingerprinting. The running joke so far is this: If everyone had to go through all this to have a baby the entire human race would have died off LONG, LONG ago. Here we go.

Watch this space.....

New information in the coming days~

We Are Doing Fine

Yes, our first cycle of IVF did fail. After getting a second negative home pregnancy test on Tuesday morning, I kind of already knew what the news was going to be on Thursday, but of course we had to wait until yesterday afternoon to get the final say. Tuesday was definitely a much harder day for me than yesterday, but poor Roger, who is my eternal optimist, held out hope until we had the blood test results, so he was more than disappointed last night. It is of course devastating news, but both Roger and I concurred that we feel like a huge burden has been lifted off our shoulders. We didn't realize how all-consuming this process had become the last couple of months, and for now at least we feel free from it all. We haven't made up our mind completely about what we'll do next, but more than likely we'll try IVF at least one more time, maybe in October or November, and see if we can get a better result. We qualified for what is called the Outcome Based Plan which means this: You get three tries (cycles). If the first cycle fails, which it did, we can opt to not try anymore and get 100% of our cycle fee that we paid refunded back to us. We can try a second time and if it fails get 75% of our money back and then if we try a third time and it fails we get 50% of our money back. It's tempting at this point to take the money and run! But I'm sure we'll give it one more try before we throw in the towel. Right now I'm looking forward to a break from all the injections and doctor appointments.

I haven't talked to Dr. A yet, but I did talk to the embryologist yesterday, and I learned quite a bit of what might have contributed to our failed cycle. Apparently our embryos were not as good of quality as Dr. A led us to believe on the day of transfer. Embryos are graded on a 1 to 3 scale with 1 being the best and 3 being the worst. Even though we did a 5-day transfer, which is the most conducive for the embryos, the quality of both of the embryos used was actually a Grade 2 and not a Grade 1 like we thought. I guess I didn't ask specific enough questions, but Dr. A led us to believe that the embryos looked "perfect" and therefore we only needed to transfer two, not three. I also learned yesterday that we have no frozen embryos. We were told we would have at least one. We have none. The fact that we have no frozen embryos doesn't really bother me; the fact that there seems to be a communication problem between me and Roger and our doctor does. I understand the value in being optimistic, but I would like to know the whole story too. So, anyway, that may be the reason we are not pregnant. We'll hope for better embryos the next time around if we decide to try again.

Thank you , thank you, thank you so much for all the emails, phone calls, text messages, and blog comments from everyone. Your support has meant so very much to me and Roger. We have some amazing friends and family, that's for sure. I'm planning on leaving the blog open for now, although there will probably not be a whole lot of posts until we decide what we're going to do. Adoption is still very much in our mind and heart right now, and all of this could be leading us to that very place. You just never know.

The Bearer of Bad News....

Well shit! That didn't work. Can't think of any other words at this point. We got the results back today and it appears that Round #1 of IVF was not successful. We appreciate all your kind words and prayers. For some reason this whole "prego" thing just isn't for us, yet. All is as well as can be expected around the house. Tomorrow is another day.
"This too shall pass"
(rog)

"The Waiting"

I'm not quite as eloquent as Abby, but I thought I'd add a little something to the blog.

Tom Petty said it best:
The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part

Big week this week. We'd appreciate all your positive thoughts and prayers.
(rog)

Encouragement During this Long Wait....

Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.

Psalm 37:3-4

Our Beautiful Embryos!

These are our two perfect embryos we transferred today! This is the actual picture Dr. A gave us which Roger then took a picture of the picture to post on the blog for everyone to see. Dr. A said they both look exactly like a healthy 5-day blastocyst is supposed to look, could have been a picture right out of a textbook. We actually had three blastocysts that could have been transferred today, but Dr. A is so confident in the quality of these two embryos that he said there's no reason to put back three and risk having triplets and all the potential pregnancy complications that can come along with that. I tried to talk him into it, but to no avail. It makes me sad to think of that one little embryo frozen all by itself, but I'll get over it. At least we have one frozen embryo for future use. The procedure only lasted about 10 minutes start to finish -- really easy. No pain or bleeding at all. Unlike my two IUIs last summer. Then I laid perfectly still for 30 minutes and was released to go to our hotel where I'm now vegging out horizontally until about noon tomorrow. A lot of reading, sleeping, eating, and movie-watching.

I'm down to one injection a day now (Lovenox -- a blood thinner) along with our progesterone injection Roger gives me every three days. I also take a prenatal vitamin, a baby aspirin, Dexamethasone, and now will be adding vaginal suppositories (to help keep my uterine lining thick) twice a day. Yuck, I know.

I will find out next Thursday, Sept. 4, if we are pregnant. I will do a blood pregnancy test on Sept. 2 and then again on Sept. 4 and if the number has at least doubled between the 2nd and the 4th that will be our confirmation that we have succeeded! Until then we wait and pray.