It's Twins!!!

I added arrows to show where the two sacs are. We still have to say our prayers that we can see two amazing heartbeats next week. Although seeing them next week would be very early. But I wasn't expecting to find out how many today. We are just thrilled. This has been an amazing week. We are pregnant with TWINS and the Philadelphia Phillies are the WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!!!!!

Also, my Dr. today said my due date is July 3. This would be 40 weeks. He was going by my transfer date but I'm going to keep it at July 1st for now which is going by my retrieval and fertilization date. But now that we are having twins they will most likely make their way into the world early to mid June. Yes, right around when the Flyers will hopefully be on their way to winning the Stanely Cup. :-) And no we will NOT name this kid if it's a boy, Stanley. haha.

Update: I got my numbers back from today's bloodword and our HCG number is now at 3975.

I went to a website about HCG numbers i found the following:

HcG or human chorionic gonadotropin is a hormone produced by the placenta shortly after implantation. The hCG hormone will begin to rise and should increase normally every 48-72 hours for the next several weeks. In a normal pregnancy it increases by at least 60% every 2 days.

So after using the calulator that this website has my 2-day HCG rise was 92 %!!

5 weeks!!!

Below is info I received in my weekly development email:

Fetal development in pregnancy week 5:
The changes to your growing embryo are not quite as drastic this week as they've been in the last few weeks. Growth is now largely focused on their little head, which is starting to develop much more rapidly than the rest of their tiny body. This is because their amazing brain is undergoing some very crucial and rapid development in order to effectively regulate their heart rate, blood circulation, and other vital functions. As for the rest of their miniature body, what were simple limb buds last week are limb flippers this week and the tail is more expressed. Amazingly, within a mere five weeks your little miracle is already developing the rudimentary forms of their liver, pancreas, lungs, stomach and nasal pits while their little heart is already increasing its circulation. Your baby is now a whopping 4-6mm in length.

My Dr. appointment is tomorrow morning. Not sure what we will be seeing or be told tomorrow but I will post as soon as I can with details.

Our Embies!!

Well here they are....our little embryo's. These are the two little ones that were implanted on October 11th. Mike and I did get to see them before they were put in and they had grown even more then what this picture shows. Modern medicine is really amazing. I guess you can even call this their 1st picture.

As far as how i'm feeling, I'm doing ok. While watching the phillies game last night I started to feel sick but I think it was more of the cheesesteak i had for dinner then any type of "morning sickness" (m/s). Mike was also not feeling well after eating. I did have some high cramps which i felt were more indigestion pains then anything. I also did get a little sick. I will admit at first I thought I was actually getting m/s and this did make me happy. But i really believe it had more to do with dinner. I learned my lesson and I won't eat anything that I feel before eating is not right. I won't eat it just to eat it. I'll make something else. :-)

Holy Moly we're really pregnant....

At 13 days past a 3 day transfer (13dp3dt) we received our positive pregnancy!!!

Our HCG number is at 436. Yes this is a high number. Whether there's one or two in there this is a good number to start off with. The nurse told me they would like to see this number at 150. Our next appointment is on Thursday Oct. 30th where they will do blood work and an ultrasound but will probably not be able to see how many are in there just yet. We then have our following appt. on Thursday Nov. 6th where we will find out how many we have cooking.

We're still in SHOCK!!!

We're Pregnant!!!

We knew this day would come but we weren't sure when. I told myself that when we do get pregnant that I would start a blog to record our experience and share in our joy with all of our friends and family.

The beginning of our journey began back in 2001. Mike and I met playing one of the games we love HOCKEY!! This was a co-ed foot hockey league in Manayunk, PA. Mike did not know it was a co-ed league but got the clue when I showed up wearing the team colors and ready to play. Then, four wonderful years later in August of 2005, we were married. Our goal was to buy a house before we thought about starting a family. The next year after buying a house in Ridley Park, PA we had the talk about starting a family.

You don't think when you are having this talk that it will take a long time. You think ok we decided we're going to have kids and next month we'll be pregnant. Well after a year we were still waiting. We went to the Dr. and we tried different things and then it was decided we'd go with In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF). This was a very hard thing to hear but we believed in our Dr. and knew he would do all he could to help us grow our family.

IVF, is a very stressful and emotional process that I would not wish on anyone. A lot of medicine, a lot of needles and a lot of anxiety. But with everything you go through, it's all worth it because in the end you will hold your child in your arms.

Our 1st IVF cycle was in Jan. 2008. We were positive about this cycle but knew that a lot of times the first cycle does not take. Like many others ours did not. It was very hard to hear that the test was negative but we were lucky that in our cycle we were able to freeze 5 of our embryos. This led us to our next IVF cycle which was a Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET).

The FET was less stressful and less meds but the anxiety was there. We began this cycle soon after our 1st in March 2008. We were again positive for this cycle but for me it was hard not to think of the last one. And again we had another negative cycle. Looking back maybe i should have waited and took time off but you can't change what happened and it just wasn't meant to be at that time.

At this point, we did decide we needed a break and get back to our lives without thinking about needles, medicine, IVF or even babies. And this break I feel was the best thing we did. At this point it's mid-April and we took the whole summer off. We were angry in the beginning of how could this fail again. But after time we had to accept that it just wasn't the right time. We both believed it wasn't a matter of IF we would ever have a child of our own but WHEN we would.

The beginning of August we decided we were ready to begin the process again. I decided, I was going to do everything I could to be the healthiest I could be. One major thing with fertility drugs and dealing with the stress of infertility is weight gain. :-) This hit me hard. But in August I decided I was going to take charge and try to loose as much of the weight I had gained through all of this. And I was very proud of myself that I did just that. I didn't loose all of it but I was happy with what I did loose and I don't know for sure but I like to think this contributed to my pregnancy today.

Our 3rd cycle was about to begin, this also happened to be our last cycle that my insurance would cover at 50%. So we had a lot of hope in this one. At this time, with the recommendation and guidance of my mother-in-law, Sherri, I began to follow the philosophy of The Secret. I won't go into too many details here (you can look for your self online at http://www.thesecret.tv/) but it's about the law of attraction and how your feelings and beliefs affect situations in your life. I definitely recommend anyone to look into this. I believe it really help me have a better outlook not only on the IVF process but about life in general.

On October 11th, we transferred 2 beautiful embryos. We were going to transfer 3 but the Dr. recommended only 2 this time. Now the 2 week wait (2ww) began. I felt all sorts of different things. But everything I felt could be attributed to the medicine i was on. Although I did feel a little different then i did the past two times. I was feeling very positive but also cautious because it was hard not to remember the previous two cycles.

Then today on Oct. 24th at around 1:50 we got the call. I heard the nurse’s voice and I could tell it was a happy voice. She told me I was pregnant!!!!!

Our dreams did come true...