Doctor's Appointment

This morning Jennifer and I had another appointment, the first of many where they will do an ultrasound and then draw blood to check hormone level. We got to see Dr. Werlin today. If you don't know about him, he is a genius fertility doctor that looks like Albert Einstein. He said that everything is looking great. We had about 10 follicles and that more can come since it is so early in the process. The hormone levels checked out good and we do not need to make any changes to our protocol.

Jen is not feeling well right now. She always seems to get sick at the beginning of the year. Those dirty little kids... :) She is going to her regular doctor tomorrow if she doesn't feel any better. The only restriction on medication is sudafed. So I guess that means no sinus relief or crystal meth for us any time soon...

Please pray that Jen feels better and that everything continues to move forward smoothly.

D

New shots...

Darryl and I had an appointment Thursday morning and were given all of our free Folistim (YAY!) and our calendar for our second round of IVF. We began our new shot (Lupron) which we take 10 units of in the morning and 10 units of at night, along with a full 450 units of Follistim every night. Hopefully this time the medicine will kick in early and our doctor will be much happier with the results. I'm definitely feeling much moodier this time around so stay outta my way! :) Thank you for the continuous prayers and I will try my best to keep this updated with each appointment. On a side note, my first week of teaching my K/1 combo class went pretty good. I had a week to decorate my room, start teaching a class full of 24 new students in two different grade levels, and do Back to School Night! I'm exhausted but I'm glad everything went well! :) It will get much easier as the weeks go on and the students and I get used to the daily routine. I'm very grateful for the full time job and excited that it's something I love to do!

Prayer Request: Please pray...
1. that Dr. H is very happy about our numbers at tomorrow morning's appointment
2. that Darryl and I can keep from getting sick during this time. Teaching kindergartners and first graders is almost asking to get sick. I'm feeling a little yucky so hopefully with some Airborne and prayer I will feel much better soon.
3. that we can add a baby (babies) to our family within the year.

Thank you. xoxo

New Beginnings

Hi everyone! Well a lot has changed over the past few weeks. I was called back to work by my district last Tuesday night, had 2 days to set up my classroom, and began teaching a kindergarten/first grade combo class this morning. Today went well but I feel so far behind since I wasn't able to teach the first 13 days of school. I'm sure after a few weeks, my class will be up and running like a well oiled machine. :) (let's hope!) Darryl and I also started our round 2 of invitro today. We had our first appointment with Dr. H and she said everything looked great and we will start our new meds this Thursday night. We will begin with the highest dose of Follistim and and 10 units of Lupron. We are praying that this time, the medicine will do it's job from day 1 and that the doctor will end up with plenty of eggs to choose from at the time of the transfer. Thank you for all of you who have continued to pray for us during this time. It seems like things are turning around for us and we are very excited to see what wonderful things God has in store for us.

Prayer Requests:
1. Please pray that the new medicine has no negative side effects and that it will do it's job from day 1.
2. Pray that Darryl and I continue to have faith that God knows what he is doing.
3. Pray that we can add a baby (babies) to our family within the year.

THANK YOU!!!!!! XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

Monday's appointment

Sorry everyone... I totally forgot to update our blog after our last appointment. We had another early appointment on Monday (8:15) which sucks when it's a holiday and we both could have slept in. And it sucked even more because we ended up sitting in the waiting room for about an hour because Dr. H and Dr. Werlin were not there that day. So we had to see the RN who I really don't care for too much. I think she's new and for some reason she can never find what she's looking for on my ultrasounds. After poking around for a bit, she found 4 follicles on one side and 3 on the other. This must be normal at this stage, because she told us we would start birth control pills that night and come back in 2 weeks. I'm thinking that if everything looks good in 2 weeks, we will start our medications.
After our doctor appointment, Darryl and I went to Chick Fil-A for breakfast (yummy chicken biscuits and.....of course a Dr. Pepper!), we went to Home Depot to pick up some paint stuff and then spent the ENTIRE day painting our kitchen and hallway!!! It will look awesome once we get our cabinets stained to the dark cherry wood color we both like. "Dad? You're going to help us with that right?"
And this week I'm back to work. I missed the little girls I nanny for so much! Ava gave me the biggest hug when I picked her up from school yesterday and Ella is learning things sooooo fast! I can't wait for the day to be doing all these things with my own children. :) I'll also be subbing more now that I can be up and around again. It will be nice to see all my teacher friends and my students. And the best part is that school gets out at 1:40 now!!!! Whoo hooo!
Anyway...that's what's going on with us. Hope you are all having a great day!

Prayer Requests:
1. Pray that with each one of our appointments, our doctor has good news for us and that my body is reacting the way she would like.
2. Pray that we can add a baby (babies) to our family within the year.
3. Pray that we can continue to trust God and know that he knows what is best for us.

The best things happen when you least expect them...

We had our follow up appointment with Dr. H this morning at 7:00am. As soon as we walked in her office, she gave me a big hug and asked how I was doing. I told her I was ok. Then she looked at Darryl and said, "No, really, how is she?" He told her that I was doing pretty good considering everything that had happened. (I'm normally a total mess whenever we talk in her office, but I had prayed that I wouldn't be a bawling disaster, and God gave me complete peace during our conversation). So she began to tell us that she learned a lot from our first round of IVF. She said that she uses a certain protocol depending on the height, weight, and age of the woman doing the IVF. With the meds I was prescribed, she was a little worried that my ovaries would be overstimulated and make too many eggs. She was surprised that they didn't start doing their job until she added in the menopur shots to the follistim shots. So pretty much for the first 3 days of taking the follistim shots my body wasn't doing anything. Once we added in the menopur shots, the ovaries started working harder but by that time the 12 follicles were the only ones there and it was up to the menopur to make them grow. So with this next round she is being very aggressive with the meds. We are starting on the highest dose of follistim and adding lupron instead of the ganirelex. She didn't mention the menopur so I may not be on that at all this time. She said that it could be that 12 follicles is my peak or that my body just didn't like that protocol. (I still believe that because I was VERY sick the week before, it may have made a difference but Dr. H said it shouldn't have). Dr. H explained that lupron is much cheaper than ganirelex which made us happy but when she said I would be on the highest dose of follistim, all I could see was $$$$$$$$$$$$$ because follistim is $5oo per shot and I knew I was going to need 10-12 of them. (And insurance does not cover any of this). She explained that she would like to start me on birth control for 2 weeks to get the timing right and then start up the shots again. Darryl explained that we were hoping to get started in November so we could save up the money for the meds. She then told us with much excitement that she met with the follistim rep over the weekend and she told him about us and begged for some samples for us. He gave her 10 shots and she said they should be here in the next couple of days and they have our name on them! She said we don't need to worry about paying for them! Well my "not crying in her office" almost went out the window. I held it together but with tears in my eyes I said, "That is so cool!!!! Thank you so much!" This was such an unexpected surprise and she said even if the rep didn't come into the office that weekend, she would have called him anyway. I can tell that she REALLY wants us to be pregnant and is going out of her way to try to make things easier on us. As we walked out of her office, she gave me another hug and told me to not lose hope yet. She told us to call her on the first day of my period, we'll set up an ultrasound appointment and go from there. So it looks like we will be starting round 2 a little earlier than what we thought. :) Darryl and I are excited to see what's next and are so thankful to God for the financial help!

Prayer Requests:
1. First of all....praise God for this unexpected surprise!
2. Pray that this new medicine plan will show very positive results and that the final result of this second IVF round will be a healthy baby (babies).
3. Pray that we can continue to feel the peace God has given us and remember how blessed we truly are.

Thank you for the continued prayers and support! We love you all!

The day after...

So yesterday was not a good day as I'm sure you've all heard. Lots of crying, lots of asking, "why?", and lots of feeling like I serve no purpose. I know that's not true but when all you want to do is be a mother and God keeps telling you, "not yet", it gets a little frustrating and you start to wonder what your purpose is and what we should do next. Maybe he's telling us to just wait a few months, maybe he's telling us to use a surrogate, or maybe he's telling us to adopt. It's funny because for the past few years I have never been able to picture myself in a hospital bed with my newborn surrounded by loved ones. I've always had this picture of Darryl and I walking into baggage claim at LAX with our newborn in our arms and tons of family and friends waiting for us. I don't know if this is something we should follow or if I'm just picturing it because the thought of having our own babies is so unreachable right now. Only God knows. But for now we have paid for 2 rounds of IVF so we are for sure trying it one more time. Whether or not we have healthy embryos left over will determine our next move if round 2 fails. And I'm sure some of you are reading this thinking, "Oh no...they shouldn 't be thinking about round 2 failing, they need to be positive, they need to relax and let it happen, they need to not worry." Well honestly...it's not as easy as it sounds. We've wanted children for 3 years now and with IVF you have to expect the best and be prepared for the worst all at the same time. We are doing the best we can and are trying to keep our excitement for what God has planned. Not an easy road, and I hope that Darryl and I can be encouraging to other couples going through the same situation. Neither one of us are the type of people that can go out on the street and spread the word of God but I hope that through sharing this experience with others, we can be witnesses in our own way. Instead of turning our backs on God in this tough situation, we are trusting that he knows what is best. Our time will come and be so much greater than we ever expected.
Ok.....so now on to the fun stuff. Darryl took the day off today so we could spend the day together doing whatever we wanted. We had the awesome idea of taking our babies (Ari and Drama) to the dog beach. Well our fun filled beach day with our lovely little puppies quickly turned into a bad scene from "Marley and Me". We still had a good time but Ari (our 5 month old German Shepherd) has never been to the dog beach and insisted on barking at every dog, person, bird, car, stick, wind, ....that went by. We didn't take her off the leash very often because we weren't too sure what she would do. The first time we let her off, she ran after her tennis ball, grabbed it, and then headed off to a family down the beach that had 2 little girls who didn't seem too thrilled to have a 40 pound dog charging at them with a tennis ball in her mouth . Darryl chased her down the beach, apologized, and Ari ended up back on her leash. Then Darryl took her off her leash a little later, played some more catch with her, and then brought her back up to me on the sand. We continued to hold her as anyone walked by because she would be barking like crazy at them. One lady told us to just let her go because us holding her back might be making Ari think that there is something wrong. Sooooooo....we let her go and she played some more catch and then came up to sit by me on the sand. (Meanwhile Drama didn't want ANYTHING to do with the water, the sand, the other dogs. NOPE. It was almost like she didn't want her pretty little princess paws to get dirty. So she sat cuddling with me on the beach) So then out of nowhere, a giant pit bull comes charging towards us on the beach (I'm sure it just wanted to play) but Ari got in full attack mode trying to protect us, jumped over me (scratching my arm up and knocking me in the face), and was about ready to rip this dog's face off. While I checked to make sure my nose wasn't broken, Darryl pulled the dogs apart and at that point I said WE'RE DONE! Here's some pics of our day! :)

This is Ari when is she is somewhat behaving.

Our precious little princesses




I thought this was a pretty cute pic of D and Ari.



Drama with her,"Can we go now?" face.

Me and baby Drama

This is what happens when your dog is trying to save you from a pit bull!

So besides the doggy madness, we had a good day. Darryl and I went to Esther's Tacos for lunch and then relaxed at home until he went to his basketball game. :) I did want to say to everyone thank you for all the prayers!!!!! I feel like we owe you a baby or something. But please keep praying. I know God listens. xoxo

Prayer Requests:
1. Please pray for peace for Darryl and I as we move into IVF round 2.
2. Pray that I won't be a crying mess while meeting with Dr. H this Thursday. (I tend to do that)
3. Pray that Dr. H has a new medicine protocol for us based on our last IVF round and high hopes that things will turn out better.
4. Pray for my cousin Arielle. She too received a negative on her pregnancy test and is doing her best to stay strong.
5. Pray that we will both be able to add a baby (babies) to our family this year. :) Thank you!

Good Game. Better luck next time...

That about sums it up for Jen and me right now. We got the bad news this afternoon, and we, like always, are floored. We try to not get our hopes up, but I don't think that is possible. We feel devastated.

We've spent the first hour sitting around the house not really doing anything. We haven't felt much like talking (at least I haven't). So if we haven't called or texted you back, that's why. I know there have been a ton of messages, and it is greatly appreciated.

We eventually got up and had lunch. Jen had a sorely needed Dr Pepper. I also set up the rest of our garden fence to help clear my head. I think it will keep our Pekingese, Drama, out. But, no guarantees about our German Shepherd puppy, Ari. She likes to get in trouble a lot...

We have a consult with Dr H on Thursday morning to discuss what the next steps are. We are 0 for 4 now with IUI and IVF with one more shot left at IVF. I am not sure if Dr H plans to change our approach to things. We will find out then. The good thing is that if this is going to work, it usually is on the second try.

Whatever is decided, we will need to save a little bit for the meds before we can go again. I believe they need Jen to go back on birth control for a couple months to get the timing down. So that could work out well in our favor financially. We could always just charge it, but I would much rather not do that.

If this last attempt does not work, we most likely will change gears and look at adoption. I am guessing this will all depend on what happens with the eggs they extract from the next round. If there are good eggs left over from the 2nd round, we will surely think about trying again or maybe even surrogacy. We haven't given any thought to surrogacy. We will cross these bridges later if we have to.

I know I will (and I'm sure Jen will too) always be wondering what our 3 embryos would have been like if they made it. I am sure they would have been great kids, but they weren't in God's plan. Hopefully, they are put to a better purpose.

Please keep us in your prayers. This is going to be a long next couple of weeks/months. Drinks Friday??? Yes, Please!!!

D