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...