Thursday, May 3, 2012

I guess its time for an update!

Since it has been WAY too long I guess its time for a real update on here!

I have been pretty lax in my blog posting lately but we have had a crazy amount of life changes recently! First we got orders to Hurlburt Air Force Base, (moving in June of this year, eek!! Only a few weeks away CRAZY!) which is great because its about 40 minutes from both sets of parents, which will be great when it comes to helping out with the baby.

Oh yes, We are pregnant! With a little girl, who is set to arrive in August of this year. We couldn't be more excited if we tried!! Sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and think, is that really a pregnant belly on me?? I'm telling you after four long years of trying for her and finally being successful in our infertility journey it seems surreal to see a baby in my stomach.

Long story short (will do another blog post soon when things settle down a little) after our first IVF failed, we decided to take a short one month break and regroup. We had to save a little more money for our frozen cycle, our embryos were cryo-preserved and in storage in Texas. Not to mention it was emotionally draining to have what we pinned essentially years of hope on our first IVF working. I mean we were given a 60% chance! With our odds of conceiving on our own at a measly 1-2% you have to admit we were pretty excited at those odds. It was one of the most devastating days in our lives to find out it failed.

December 2nd was the day of our scheduled frozen embryo transfer. All of our babysicles ;) are day five embryos, which makes them two weeks old in fertility speak. So, that morning, after having them all shipped in their cozy igloo homes from Texas to Arkansas, we put two precious miracles in my uterus. I have to admit, initially I had a pretty negative outlook on things (we only had a 20% chance of success with a frozen transfer) but Nick always remained positive. The fear from all of the negative pregnancy tests and negative outcomes of all of our fertility endeavors thus far had me on a non hopeful path.

But two days later I decided to quit acting like a mope and just plain distracted myself. I had three friends that had babies in the past three months so I took to my sewing machine. Learned how to thread a needle (thanks YouTube) and went to work on some pretty stinkin' cute baby blankets. This took many hours but it was something I found I really enjoyed doing. I even made some pretty nifty bibs for the babies as well.

I stayed away from the IVF message boards because I discovered from last time that they were the root of evil. Although as good as I had been with my distraction techniques thus far, on day five, my resolve began to fade and I started to peek at the earliest you could test positive on a home pregnancy test after a frozen embryo transfer. Nearly 70% of the patients tested positive on day six... Which would be tomorrow morning, which was a Saturday.

After I told Nick that I broke down and got on the message boards he was totally against me testing early. I did test early on the failed cycle and a few days continuing after that and it was always negative. He was only trying to protect my feelings I know.

I had breakfast, watched two episodes of Say Yes To The Dress and couldn't take it any more. I asked Nick to go pick up a test and he reluctantly did so. I made him go buy a cheap dollar store brand of pregnancy test. It was a two pack. I rationalized that I wasn't going to spend the big bucks on a fancy brand because I was a cheater and it was going to be negative anyways and at least in your shame you will only have been out two dollars.

I waited until I had to go really bad, which was around one o'clock in the afternoon. Took the box into the bathroom while Nick was outside working on his motorcycle not wanting to be involved. (I don't blame him, I mean he does have a crazy wife...)

I used the first test and picked up my recent copy of Glamour. Read for about five minutes and convinced myself before I looked over that it was going to be negative. When I saw the opposite result, a positive sign, albeit a faint one, I just stared slack jawed. Apparently I had some pee in reserve so I quickly used the next test and held it up in front of me. Not even a minute later another positive sign appeared.

Having years to imagine how I would react to learning I was pregnant I liked to think I knew exactly what I was going to do...Scream, cry, have some sort of little gift tucked away to excitedly bring to Nick to tell him that we were finally going to be parents....all KINDS of ideas.

Nope, I just sat there with my mouth gaping open and stared to shake a little. I heard Nick walk in from outside to wash his hands at the kitchen sink and I calmly walked into the kitchen to him. I just put both tests on the counter and said, "I think I'm pregnant."

He just gave me a look that was like, uh, are you sure? Even after looking at the tests he was skeptical. Which is totally understandable. (although admittedly I was annoyed that there was no excitement from him, even the tiniest bit in the moment) He was thinking that some of the meds I was on could cause a false positive. This is was a real fact in the fresh IVF cycle because I was on HCG before they extracted my eggs, so testing early could result in a false positive due to the drug still being in my system. For the frozen cycle however, I was only on estrogen and progesterone. I immediately went to the computer and started searching for false positive/drug correlations with frozen cycles and found none. Then I called my fertility doctor and left him a message. He called us back a few hours later to say that we were pregnant and there were no false positives with a frozen cycle. Nick was still not very excited, although this may have gotten me a small smile. He wanted to wait for our blood results on that Monday.

We have had friends who have had initial success but it didn't last so Nick had them on his mind to stave off his excitement and hope. I, on the other hand, even though still in shock, new I was pregnant. I was still nervous about the blood test results and having high enough numbers to sustain a pregnancy but I was still over the moon.

Monday presented itself with very high numbers and Nick and I cried together in the kitchen when he got home from sheer joy. (I may have teased him a little bit before I gave him the good news which I do regret but it was from him making me wait to share his joy!! Evil of me, I see this in hindsight!)


Baby is great and progressing nicely!


Many more updates to come on whats been going on but a friend of mine wanted to share our journey and so I thought I had better post what has happened in the last six months! I promise to update at least once a month just so that she will have something to look back at in years to come. That is, unless she gets bored with all of the scrap books her mother will fill of memories and moments of her! (Huge scrapper, its an addiction!)

More updates to come, (I promise!)

Love,
The Ellwoods (party of three!)

1 comment:

  1. Congrats on your pregnancy!! You answered a post on DiaperSwappers for one of my ads selling BumGenius 4.0 Snaps in Blossom & White. I tried to PM you there, but I think it blocks PMs to new users with few posts. Anyway, if you are still interested, email me at leannmoore3640@yahoo.com. I can do all 5 for $45ppd. If you want the three dark pink Zinnias and one Bubble (lavender) as well, I can do all 9 for $78ppd with priority mail. I also have 10 pink dyed prefolds infant size that you can have for $5 more. I also have some Size 1 Thirsties covers in Blackbird print (super cute) that go great with the prefolds - 2 of those for $12. I have infant snappis (set of 2) that you can use to close the prefolds for $5. If you're into Bamboo Fitted Diapers (my fave, but I have boys and don't need the girly prints I got in a trade) (one size adjustable), I have 3 Bamboo Velour Goodmamas - 2 with purple serged edges and one with pink serged edges - all three for $50.

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