And the survey says...

Well if I believe the majority of you, we are for sure having 2 babies. The results are:

1 baby- 6 people
2 babies- 33 people
3 babies- 3 people (confused)

Only a few more days and we will know the answer!

In other news, I got to stop my daily injection in the bum of progesterone yesterday. We will now only be doing them once a week until November. I am thrilled and am so excited to not be limping around anymore because my bum is sore.

I'm still feeling good. Tired and hungry but good. No sickness or weird symptoms. I hit the 6 week mark on Sat and that is usually when the sickness kicks in but maybe I'll be one of the lucky ones!

Let's take a poll...

How many babies do you think are growing inside of my belly? I'll post the results in a few days. Only 1 more week until we actually find out!

An appleseed!

Just in case you were wondering...my little embryo is now the size of an appleseed and looks like a tadpole. This week its brain is forming. No wonder I'm so hungry. It takes a lot of energy to make a brain!

Doubling Betas

Yesterday was our last beta appt at the clinic. My # went from 483 on Sunday to 1028. Again it more than doubled. I'm not sure if we have just one strong, healthy baby or two but we will find out on Monday the 6th at our 1st ultrasound and I will be thrilled either way. I am so anxious to see what is going on in there! Other than being very tired in the evenings, I am still feeling good. I'm trying to really take advantage of these last few weeks of feeling good before the m/s hits. That's all I have to report for now. I will update with more exciting news when I have it and of course with our 1st ultrasound pics!!

Pregnant and happy!!

Well, I am definitely pregnant. I had my 2nd beta today. The number is supposed to get close to doubling in about 48 hours. Mine went from 207 on Friday, 9 days past a 5 day transfer to 483 today. Everything is moving along right on track. Maybe a little even better than we expected. J and I are both feeling there is a very good possibility that there could be 2 growing in there. We are very anxious for the 1st ultrasound!

We had a great weekend. My Mom, Grandma, Aunt Angie and Aunt Julie have had a trip planned to come up and visit from Portland for quite a while. It was very ironic that it happened to fall on the weekend of my first beta. I started testing positive on Monday so I was pretty sure I was pregnant all week and I rescheduled my beta for Friday. None of the ladies knew I had done that or that I was pregnant. When they got in on Friday afternoon we went to lunch in Kirkland. I had already gone to the cafe and placed wrapped bottles of Prego spaghetti sauce at each of their seats. They opened them when we sat down and it took them a minute to understand why I was giving them sauce but once it sunk we all shed tears and had a blast the rest of the weekend. It was really fun having them here to share the news.


I'm feeling pretty good so far. I'm exhausted in the evenings and my bum is just so sore it's hard to move around much. It's just getting worse and worse because the muscle isn't healing between shots. We are hoping to be done with these next Tuesday.

My next beta appt is on Tuesday and our 1st ultrasound, when we find out how many we are having, will be at the end of next week (the 3rd or 4th). Here are a few pics from our fun weekend!

Prego!!!

Confession- I have been testing positive since Monday! I changed my beta from tomorrow to today and it came back at 207!! That is a great high #. I AM PREGNANT!!!! Will post more later with details!

Ho...hum...

This is how I feel, kind of like du...da...du. Just a waiting game. I thought you might like an update but I have nothing new to report. I'm really hungry, that's about it in the Vann household. Oh, and Tucker peed on the carpet today. Exciting! While I sit here and worry about our rotten economy I'll give you a pic from our 1st anniversary last week. Beta is on Sat. so of course I'll report then!

No news is good news...

Unless you are an IVF patient waiting for your beta. I'd love just a little sign, maybe some major cramping, a little nausea, a heightened sense of smell. But, nothing to report here. I know it is really early, I'm only 4 days past my transfer but this may be the hardest waiting period so far. I know those little embryos are inside of me but have they implanted? Are they going to become my children? Who knows! Less than a week to go and I have a busy one ahead of me. Luckily the progesterone is making me exhausted so at least I can just go to sleep whenever the incessant wondering drives me mad.

8 on the rocks

Whenever thinking about things on the rocks the last thing that comes to mind are embryos. Maybe a margarita, a mojito, a scotch but never embryos.

I really can't believe this but we have been blessed with 8 embryos currently on the rocks. As of yesterday we had 4 that had made it to the blast stage and were frozen and 5 more that were working on catching up. The embryologist told us we may have 1 or 2 more to freeze today but our little ones are strong and 4 more made it into the freezer. This is a pretty amazing number. We will most likely never have to do IVF again. If it doesn't work the 1st time or if we want to have more children we have an embarrassing amount to choose from.

So for now, we are thrilled with the # we have frozen and we are just waiting until my beta next Sat. so I can hopefully post with a positive pregnancy test story!

First Baby Pictures

I'm pregnant until proven otherwise! Below are our perfect little embryos that are currently swimming around in my uterus finding a nice cozy place to snuggle in for a long ride. The transfer was a really cool experience. Other than having an extremely full bladder and not being able to empty it due to the ultrasound the procedure was relatively painless. We watched our embryos being placed into the catheter and we watched as they were placed into my uterus. It was amazing and we are on cloud 9 with the thoughts of our future baby (babies) actually inside my body.

We currently have 4 more perfect snowbabies on ice for future use and 5 more that are still growing. Tomorrow we will get a call to let us know if any of the 5 made it to freeze.

The embryos should implant in the next 24-48 hours so please send good implantation vibes our way! Snuggle in little embies...we have a long 9 months ahead of us!

Would you like some bloat to go with that cramp?

Tomorrow is the big day!! As of yesterday we still had 16 little embryos growing away in the lab. Most likely we will lose between 40-60% by Wed and I'm really hoping we have at least 5 to freeze. We have to be at the clinic at 2:15 tomorrow, I will be doing acupuncture before and then they will place 2 perfect little ones into my uterus in hopes that they continue to grow and stick. This is it, the last procedure and Dr. visit until we find out if it worked. I am excited and nervous. I luckily have a very busy day at work today to take my mind off of it all.

In other news, we have begun the progesterone shots. These entail a 1 1/2 inch needle that goes directly into the muscle of my bum. The progesterone is packed in oil so it takes a while for J to get all of the liquid out of the syringe. The shot itself honestly isn't that bad but...about 3 hours after the pain begins. It feels like I pulled a muscle in my bum. I have to limp when I walk and getting up and down is a chore. I've been using the heating pad religiously and after the shot is done, J massages it for about 5 minutes to help the oil disperse through my muscle, it's quite a sight. I've heard these get easier with time and I hope so.

I also look about 5 months pregnant right now. I can't button my pants! My stomach is huge. My ovaries are still really big and I have a minor case of OHSS. This is where the follicles in your ovaries fill up with fluid after the retrieval and secrete the fluid into your abdomen. It's not fun and I don't think it will get much better for a while. Luckily we are having some gorgeous weather here in Seattle so I've pulled out all of my dresses that don't show my protruding belly!

I'll leave you for today with all of the lovely thoughts of bloating and bum shots! Tomorrow after the transfer I have to be on bed rest for the remainder of the day. I'll post with an update then!

Happy 1 Year Anniversary to US!

It's our 1 year anniversary. Time flies when you're having fun, or trying to make a baby! 1 year ago today we had the most amazing day of our lives. Our wedding was out of a fairy tale, it was the most incredible and special day. I am such a lucky girl to have a husband like J. He loves me unconditionally and I have no doubt that 49 years from now we will be celebrating our 50th with the family we will create. Here are some pics from 1 year ago today.

One night stand

My eggs & Jimmy's sperm got to know each other for the first time yesterday. It was their 1st date and they were both very nervous. The sperm spared no expense and brought out the champagne and roses. They swooped my eggs off their feet then proceeded to take advantage of them (and on the 1st date no less). The morning after most of them decided they would like to try to make this relationship work but a few decided to part ways (apparently last night wasn't good enough for them).

So...out of the 24 eggs retrieved, 18 were mature. They injected the 18 with Jimmy's sperm (this is called ICSI) and out of the 18 we have 16 embryos!!!!

I am thrilled. Jimmy's sperm obviously did a very good job schmoozing my eggs last night!

Not all of the 16 will make it to day 5 but we at least have enough to lose a few and hopefully have some to freeze. Our transfer will be on Wednesday and the clinic will choose the 2 strongest looking embryos to place in my uterus. So for now...more waiting and day dreaming about our 16 potential babies growing away. I can't wait to get 2 of them back inside!

Eggs by the dozen

We are home from the retrieval and I can't say it was easy. I have never been in so much pain. My previous 2 surgeries were nothing compared to the pain I have been feeling. I honestly thought that this must be what contractions feel like. I could hardly breath and was writhing in pain. Thankfully, I got home, ate and took a Vicodin and I am a lot more comfortable now and relaxing. Not sure what all the pain was from but I'm so glad to have some relief.

Now the big news....we got 24 eggs!!!! We are thrilled with this number and I hope that as I write this our embryos are forming. It's really weird to think that our future children are being created right now in a lab. Today is their real birthday!!!

Apparently when I woke up from the anaesthesia I was really out of it and saying all kinds of crazy things that I can't remember. The Dr. came in a took my blood pressure and it was 100/49 and I was convinced she told me we had 49 eggs. I told her that must be the most they had ever seen and they had to tell me over and over again that it was my blood pressure #! Of course I don't remember any of this.

Tomorrow we will receive a call from the lab to let us know how many have fertilized. I can hardly wait for the call to know how many little ones we have. I already feel attached to them!

Here is a little video documenting our morning.

Trigger Happy!!

Tonight is the night! We did our last stim shots last night and had another u/s and bw today. My E2 level is getting high (yesterday 2400 & over 3000 today) and my biggest follicles are 18mm. The RE said my uterine lining is textbook perfect and everything is still on track. The trigger shot tonight matures my eggs and gets my body ready to ovulate. Of course we don't want that to happen! My body will ovulate 36 hours after I do the shot, therefore my appt is scheduled for exactly 35 hours after the shot. They will knock me out, use a very long needle and take my eggs out of my ovaries 1 by 1 through the vaginal wall. The procedure is only about 20 minutes long and then it's all in the hands of the lab technicians. The trigger shot is actually human HCG which is the hormone that is tested on home pregnancy tests. If I peed on one tonight it would be positive, hmmm...tempting. I've never seen a positive test before!

Tomorrow I have a whole day off of IVF. No shots, no blood work, no ultrasounds. Nothing. I think it will feel weird, like I'm forgetting something. This process has been such a big part of our daily life for almost 3 weeks now. I'm going to feel like something is missing.

Friday when I wake up the Dr. will tell me how many eggs they retrieved. That's a big deal obviously because then we will know how many embryos we can make. I can hardly wait to see how it all goes. Of course I'll post with an update Friday when we get home.

Wish me luck!!!