They never said we couldn't or that we shouldn't.

They said we probably wouldn't...but WE DID!

That's right, everyone's prayers, well wishes, and positive thoughts have paid off! Baby Keebs is on the way, as many of you have seen on our recent Christmas cards. For those of you who haven't, here you go:
The day before Thanksgiving was when we found out we had a miracle "turkey" on the way. We had been preparing ourselves for another round of in vitro in January or February. I was taking the test just to be sure I wasn't pregnant before we went on a trip. To my surprise, that little line showed up very quickly and with no mistake. But just to be sure we took another one, of course with the same results.

Of course we were worried because we hadn't been planning this, or really even thinking it was a possibility. We decided we'd only tell our parents and my sister until we knew more. Let me tell you, it was a bit difficult disguising my nausea at the Thanksgiving table. Kory thought it was very amusing checking in on how sick I was each day of our trip.

Once we got back from our trip, I went in for blood work which has become pretty routine for our pregnancies. The results, however, were anything but routine. Our first round showed my hCG levels at more than 4300. That's the highest first round numbers we've ever had! Those tests really tell the most information when they are repeated two days later. A rule of thumb is that the number should increase by about 67% every other day. Our second round of bloodwork was 8600...that's better than expected! We were very excited to hear this news, but still didn't want to make any big announcements until we had an ultrasound done to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be. We had that ultrasound done Monday. It showed a 6-week fetus in the uterus...exactly what we wanted to see! Now we felt a little more reassured and very excited.

I have definitely experienced more "morning sickness" this time around. I've even hovered over the "porcelain god" a time or two. It makes me smile every time, believe it or not. I prefer my sick days to my feeling good days. I worry less when I feel sick because it's not how I'm used to feeling.

So the next updates will probably be how I'm feeling mostly. We have another ultrasound scheduled for December 22 so I will post some pictures then. Until then, please keep thinking good thoughts.

I believe that God wouldn't send us this miracle just to take it back, but I'll certainly take all the prayers we can get. We are very excited to meet this little one! We love you baby Keebs.

Wow, it's been a while

So to say life got very busy would be an understatement... clearly since I haven't posted anything for more than a month!

It started with my trip to Rhode Island for my work conference. I was busy there covering two jobs, and it seems like I haven't slowed down since. Work is still busy, the house chores keep building up, we've had weekend trips, guests come to visit, and somewhere in there is sleep. Most of these events weren't really blog worthy, which is probably why I haven't posted anything in a while.

We did have some fun this last weekend though. One of Kory's roommates from college came in and we all went to the Jimmy Buffett concert Saturday. It was incredibly hot and crowded. The show was great though and he played for 3 hours!

The only other exciting news that's happened (and it's REALLY EXCITING - I saved the best for last) was the birth of Baby Addison. Congratulations Steph and Jon! She is absolutely amazing and I love the time I get to spend with her and you guys! If you need anything at all, you know where to call. :)

Now it's late and time for bed. I'll try to update sooner next time.

2+2 = 4...or maybe it equals 9

That's no hidden message, just the basic idea of my message today. Numbers don't always have to make sense.

Kory and I met with the doctor last week to go over the reasons for the IVF not working. The first reason was that my ovaries didn't react to the stimulation drugs like he expected them to. It seems mine reacted more like that of a 30-some year old. A lot of my eggs were not mature and couldn't be used. The quality of our embryos was also that of a 30-some year old. So apparently when I say I'm 25 years old, I mean only certain parts of me are 25.

The plan for our next IVF cycle is to greatly increase the dosage of the stimulation drugs. They couldn't do this on the first round because it would have made the risk of Over Hyperstimulation Syndrome too high. Now that we know how my ovaries produce, it will be safer and make more sense to use higher amounts of the drugs. We will also do all fertilization through the process ICSI, which is how our four successful fertlizations were this cycle. We didn't do all of them that way this time because we showed no need for that kind of assistance. Hopefully we'll get a lot more eggs and viable embryos, and who knows, maybe we'll even get to freeze some for the future!

Until then, because it's going to take us several months to come up with enough money for another round, we have to try to live life like normal and hope for a miracle. I'm told they happen more often than you'd think, and I've seen plenty of real-life examples. I just hope one happens to us...and soon!

The wait is over, and yet its just beginning

Unfortunately the phone rang today with not great news waiting on the other end of the line. It seems all of our efforts over the last three weeks were for nothing. Neither embryo implanted so the process is basically done now.

We go back next Wednesday for our WTF (yes, that means exactly what you think it means) appointment. Hopefully they will have some ideas for our next cycle even though we can't do another one for a bit. Unfortunately the doctor's office that we chose didn't offer any shared risk program so the money we already paid was a one-time shot. Now we have to keep making those payments and try to put aside more money for later. We have a plan, though at this point it doesn't feel very short-term.

I can't write too much more without breaking down in tears for the 15th time since 3 this afternoon so I'll just leave it that for now. Life sucks today, but eventually one of my tomorrows will be better...or at least I can hope.

And now we wait

So I have officially spent the last 33 hours lying down. Most of those were on the couch, but about 9 of them were in my bed.

We went for our transfer Saturday morning. After waiting a little over an hour (while I had to pee extremely bad), we met with the doctor. He told us we had two embryos that were good and two that were not so good. This wasn't exactly the news we wanted to hear about our 4 fertilized eggs, but it did make the decision easier. We had 2 embryos transferred back and were sent on our way home to lay down for the next three days.

That pretty much gets us to here. Mom and Dad C., Luke, and Steph (and Addie) spent the evening with us last night. The boys ate enormous Schoop's burgers and the girls munched on some yummy nachos. After the array of ice cream desserts was picked through, everyone went their separate ways and we went to bed.

Today was not much different, with the exception of the visitors. Tonight it was Mom and Dad K. with a Father's Day dinner of lasagna, salad, and brownies. We had some heated rounds of rummy and bullshit, but then it was time for my nightly PIO (progesterone in oil) shot so they went home to get ready for the work week. Mom and Dad C. were here with Luke so that Mom could give me my shot and so we could semi-celebrate Father's Day.

So it was definitely not like any other Father's Day, but with any luck, this time next year we'll have a baby or two sleeping soundly upstairs after a long day celebrating with their daddy and grandpas!

[Note: There's not a lot of creativity flowing in the couch potato's head tonight.]

Check back soon for pictures of our embryos! I have to wait until I can get to the scanner.

A bit of a shock...cross fingers especially tight right now please

So I suppose it would have been unrealistic to think that every entry I would post on this blog would be a nice, uplifting, or funny piece. Today's is not necessarily unhappy, just not really what we were expecting or hoping for.

We got our fertilization report yesterday. They were able to get 10 eggs, 9 of them matured, and 4 of them fertilized. This was shocking to us because everyone told us we would produce eggs like there was no tomorrow (and I had 23 follicles last Sunday), but it seems we just did average. And obviously 4 fertilized eggs is better than none, so I am happy about that, but it kind of lets down our dreams of freezing several to use later.

I was a hysterical mess yesterday, but have regained enough composure to write this without crying so I guess that's an improvement. I'm trying to think positively about the 4 embryos we have. They still have to grow to a transferable state so our prayers are running wild right now. All crossable body parts are crossed.

We meet with the doctor tomorrow morning to go over the grades of our embryos and decide how many to transfer back. The transfer is scheduled for 9:40 tomorrow morning. We're hoping to hear we have 4 rockstar embabies, but obviously we'll take whatever we can get now.

Thank you for all the prayers, love, and support. We really do appreciate it, and someday so will Baby Keebs!

Brutal honesty today

Well while I'm anxiously awaiting our fertilization report call, I figured it was only fair for me to share the whole truth and nothing but the truth about what this has been doing to my body. Just as a fair warning, it's not a pretty site!

These are the bruises from the Follistim injections. I had nine of these injections, and for some reason two of them bruised. For the most part these didn't hurt. Now the Ganirelix, which were also in the same spot would leave me feeling bruised but showed no signs. Had I taken this picture a few days ago, you would have been able to see more injection marks spread around. They just looked like little pink dots, nothing too interesting.

Now for the real ugliness...


This is all the bloating that has occurred since starting the fertility treatments. Needless to say, most of my pants don't fit real well. And if it all works out in the end, I'm totally not complaining. If it doesn't work (which I'm trying really hard to NOT think of as an option), then it is just plain cruel!

That's all I have for the gruesome pictures. The only update I have so far is that we had the ER (egg retrieval) done yesterday, but they didn't tell us how many they got. This is driving us nuts! Almost everyone we've read about got their numbers before they left the clinic (and I was told this is how it would go), but for some reason our doctor said he doesn't tell the number. His description was, "On a scale of bad to average to good, she was above average." I always thought that above average meant good, so I'm totally confused. This was a non-translatable scale, if you ask me.

I will post more when we get our phone call later this afternoon/evening.

Please think good thoughts!

Did someone fool me into running a one-legged race last night?

My right leg certainly feels like this was the case!

We got the instructions to do the hCG trigger shot last night at 12:45 a.m. There's just nothing like getting up in the middle of the night and driving down the street to allow your sister to jab a good-sized (all right, HUGE) needle into your leg.

The shot itself didn't hurt near as much as I thought it would. I think, however, that coming home and going back to bed wasn't my best idea. Obviously this is what made sense at the time, but today my leg is really sore. It's like I did a really strenuous workout with just the right side of my right thigh. Thank goodness this is the only middle-of-the-night shot!

The plan now is to go have the ER (egg retrieval) done tomorrow. The actual process is about 30 minutes, but we'll be in the city for a few hours once it's all said and done. They will tell us before we leave how many eggs they got. Then I go home and rest.

Thursday they will call and tell us how many fertilized and give us our instructions for ET (embryo transfer), which should be Friday. When we get there Friday, they will tell us how many embryos we have and we will tell them how many to put back in.

Our plan (and we know by now to only make loose plans) are to put 2 embryos in. This increases our chance of pregnancy but obviously creates a chance for twins. We are totally okay with the thought of twins. Once you get this far, and pay this much, you pretty much want to get "the biggest bang for your buck" as possible! The hope is that we will have a lot of embryos and will be able to freeze the rest of them. That way any future babies we may have can be created with a lot less drugs and invasiveness.

Check back tomorrow for how the ER went!

Big numbers today, but the big day is Wednesday

Our appointment today showed that we went from 10 follicles to 23 follicles ranging in size from 9mm to 20mm. It was questionable whether we would do another night of Follistim or move on to the trigger shot and do retrieval Tuesday.

The call came in while we were at a Gary Railcats game...definitely made for a little difficulty in hearing the woman on the phone! It turns out they want me to take the little bit of Follistim that I have left and then we will trigger tomorrow.

The trigger shot is the dose of hCG that prepares my body for the egg retrieval. It's given 34-36 hours before retrieval so they will tell me what time to take it tomorrow and we will do the retrieval on Wednesday.

It's getting very exciting now, but it is also testing my patience to wait until Wednesday. I'm definitely feeling the bloating side effect. Most of my pants don't fit right now so it's a good thing I work from home and can sit around in sweats all day.

The schedule is also working out very nicely for me not to have to miss too much work though. This is a good thing since I am trying to save up as much time as possible for my maternity leave.

So far we have been pretty lucky with how all of this has gone. Now we'll just keep crossing our fingers (and toes) that the rest will go as smooth!

Shots in parking lots

Yes, we had to do my shots in the parking lot tonight. It probably looked like some drug deal going down, and I guess in a sense it was.

Kory, Luke, and I met Stephanie at TGIFridays for dinner tonight, and so she could do my shots. I know, you say, "but you did your own last night, why not tonight?" Well the IVF coordinator called with the news that we needed to double my Follistim dose and add in the Ganirelix. I'm assuming this is just to give the follicles a little boost so we can retrieve them sooner. With two shots (one being a very big dose) I decided I needed a little help.

I have to do the same doses tomorrow and then go back for an appointment on Sunday morning. Hopefully retrieval will be very early next week!

Just keep growing, just keep growing...

The follicle update is in...

On Wednesday we had two measurable follicles. This morning we had 10 measurable follicles. Yea for Follistim!

Retrieval will be next week, but we don't know when yet. It depends on the sizes of the follicles. They would like for them to be around 18-20mm for retrieval. Right now, my biggest is 13mm. As a side note, they have to be 10mm to be considered measurable. So it's also a good thing that most of mine are growing at the same rate.

For those of you who knew about my bloodwork situation last week, the staff has all started labeling my vials right in front of me. For those of who you didn't hear, last week had quite the Friday. I had my blood drawn and the ultrasound done (a normal monitoring appointment), and then I left to work in Champaign for the day. At about 10 a.m., I got a call from the doctor's office saying that they had an unlabeled vial and couldn't find my vial, but also couldn't assume the unlabeled one was mine. They quickly found a place for me to have it redrawn in Champaign, and after dealing with the registration process at that clinic, I had it drawn and was back on track again. The in-person version of that story is much longer, but I assume most of you will be happy with the short and sweet version.

Next appointment: possibly this weekend, or Monday for sure

I did it...I did it!

Sorry Uncle John, this is your warning... I'm talking about shots tonight.

Some of you may have already guessed what I'm bragging about tonight. For those of you who haven't, I gave myself my own shot tonight! Yes, it was just the sub-q Follistim shot, but for me that's a big deal. I had to watch myself and push it in, and I did it all without passing out. Meg was sure that I had gotten myself too worked up to do it without passing out, but I chilled out, sucked it up, and did it!

Now I shouldn't have to travel to other people's houses just to be stabbed with follicle-inducing hormone each night.

Tomorrow I go for my next appointment so I'll update again with how many follicles they tell me we have. And maybe if we all pray real hard tonight, they'll start talking about a retrieval date!

Items you'd never expect in your house

That's right, that's a giant bag of needles/syringes and a biohazard sharps container! A box came to our house a couple weeks ago that was filled with all of this stuff and a refrigerated box for the drugs that had to stay cold (those aren't pictured). It was a little intimidating.

Now we have done the first 4 days of Follistim and I had my first monitoring appointment this morning. My left ovary is producing follicles (the things that release the eggs) nicely and my right is producing them slowly. Apparently my endometriosis caused a cyst on my right ovary so that is slowing the production but they don't see any problems with it.

The shots aren't bad. So far Mom has done two of them (she's still freaking out that she's hurting me--they don't hurt, Mom). Meg and Stephanie have each done one for me. Stephanie's was the smoothest but we don't really know why. Mom's tend to burn a bit, but it's probably because the drug isn't warm enough. Meg's fell right in the middle on that scale. The needles themselves don't hurt at all. It's just a question each night whether the medicine is going to burn or not.

Other than being bloated (by night time I even look a little pregnant!), I'm not feeling too many symptoms. Now we wait for our IVF coordinator to call and tell me if I have to adjust my dose tonight and I go back to the doctor for more monitoring on Friday morning.

I'm anxiously awaiting for retrieval. I want to know how many eggs we have to work with and I want to get moving on to transfer day. Then of course I'll wish that the following two weeks will go by as fast as possible so we can find out if it worked (or as my positive side says, "find out THAT it worked").

That's all for now. Check back for more updates soon! I promise to keep up better than I have the last two weeks. :)

May 20 was one crazy day

Kory and I went to the fertility clinic yesterday. It was actually our first time going together! The appointment went well and we met with one of the doctors. He went over all of our operative/test reports and told us our best option was IVF (even though we already knew that).

From there we met with the nurse to sign contracts and schedule upcoming appointments. After signing our names and initials more times than we did on our mortgage, she said Kory needed to have some bloodwork done. Mine had been done three weeks earlier or I would have had to do it too. I told Kory it would be easier to just do it today rather than making another trip just to have it done. He agreed.

Here is where the story gets interesting...

Anyone who knows Kory, knows he doesn't like needles all that much. He has a history of passing out and we warned the nurse of this. Kory sat in the chair and kept his eyes closed. He was doing really well though I could tell he was nervous. Just as the nurse was finishing the third vial, I saw Kory's eyes roll back in his head and he started to go limp. I knew he passed out, but I wasn't really worried. About 2 seconds later, he jumped in the chair and started jerking around looking like he was seizing. At this point, I was VERY scared. That lasted 5-10 seconds although it seemed much longer.

When he came out of that, he didn't know where he was and was still light headed. When the nurse tried to move him to an exam room so he could lay down, he fell again--no spasms this time, thank God! He layed there for a while, drank some Gatorade and was talking to us. The nurses had already decided that the ordeal warranted an ambulance call.

The EMTs came and checked all the basics and ran an EKG. The EKG was completely normal, but Kory's heart rate was a little low. We later found out this is because all of the running that he does. Long story short, we wound up in the ER for a few hours where the doctor decided the spasming reaction was just Kory's brain's response to being deprived of oxygen. They sent him home, where I watched over him like a hawk because I was still nervous.

I have two appointments next week, a trial transfer/physical and my education class (they'll teach Meg and I how to do all my injections). Look for another update after those!

By the way, the nurses all joked that I'm not allowed to bring Kory back to the office anymore.

Our Baby Making Experience - it's not what you're thinking

Where to start, where to start?

Kory and I have had a long and rocky road to building our family. We have two angels in heaven and we're hoping they send us a baby to hold in our arms very soon.

It has been one year, three months, and nine days since we found out we were pregnant for the first time. Since then we've had a miscarriage, D & C, ectopic pregnancy, two doses of methotrexate, an unexpected day of hemorrhaging, a laparoscopy and hysteroscopy (with a diagnosis of stage IV endometriosis), six months of Lupron (medical menopause), and a hysterosalpingogram (with a diagnosis of two closed tubes). All of this lead to our decision and need to go with in vitro fertilization.

As of today (May 8), we’ve selected our doctor and had some hormone testing done. We meet with the doctor May 20 to decide what our next steps are and hopefully to set up our timeline. We are keeping our fingers crossed that we’ll get to start the process in June.

We plan to blog our progress through the process, and probably occasionally vent some of our emotions. For those of you tracking our trip, thank you for your prayers and please, keep them coming! The last year was very difficult, but would have been close to impossible if it hadn’t been for all of the support we’ve received. Thank you!