Friday, November 21, 2014

Short Introduction

Hello and welcome IComLeavWe'rs (and everyone else)!  It has been a long time since I have participated in this special week, but I thought it was finally time for me to get involved again.  If you are a first time visitor to my blog, here is a short introduction to our story:

My hubby and I have been married for 17 years.  It took us a loooonnnnggggg 14+ years to finally have our family.  We thought we were destined not to have children, but then just a few years shy of age 40, we decided we needed to make that final push.  We didn't want to end up in our 40's/50's, looking back and regretting that we didn't do EVERYTHING in pursuit of our family.  If it didn't work, it didn't work, but at least we would know that we tried everything we could.

Our infertility journey consisted of a few years of charting temps and timed intercourse, as well as a surgery for me to have a cyst removed from my ovaries, and just waiting.  And waiting some more for it to be our time.  We were told that it was highly unlikely that we would ever be able to get pregnant.  Not only did I have issues, but Tony had poor swimmers as well.  We both settled into the fact that we were probably not going to have our own kids.  Here's a summary of what we did once we bit the bullet and finally sought an RE:


  • We did an IUI that everyone knew wouldn't work.  It didn't, of course.
  • Our first IVF resulted in 5 eggs retrieved.  3 embryos made it to a day 3 transfer, in which we transferred all 3 embies.  Chemical pregnancy.
  • Second IVF got cancelled due to a poor response and only 1 mature egg.  Turned into an IUI which everyone knew wouldn't work.  Guess what?  It didn't.
  • Decided to use donor eggs.  We debated using an anonymous donor, but also had the option of my sister being our egg donor.  You can read about this decision process here.  We chose to go with the amazing, generous gift my sister was willing to give us.
  • They retrieved 14 eggs from my sister, 9 mature.  5 fertilized, and 4 made it to embryo status.  The embryo quality wasn't super high, so they did a day 3 transfer of 2 embies.  There wasn't a lot of hope that the other two would make it to freeze.  However, on day 6 of fertilization, one of the embryos met all of the criteria to freeze.  The other one wasn't quite there and normally wouldn't have been kept, but since it was close, they decided to freeze it anyway since they try to freeze the embies in pairs.
  • BFP!!!  However, at 9w5d, we found out our baby had no heartbeat.  Chromosomal testing showed the miscarriage was due to Trisomy 18, which was a less than 1% chance of happening.  Lucky us.
  • FET, transferring our last two embryos.  This was it for us.  If it didn't work, we would be living child free.
  • BFP!  Turned out to be twins!
  • Water broke at 32w3d.
  • December 23, 2013 at 33w2d, our babies were born.
  • 19 days in the NICU.
  • January 11, 2014 we brought our babies home.

Then

Now

23 comments:

  1. Thank you for the summary! I just started IComLeavWe'rs I like how you had it summarized all right there to start. I'm so happy that you got to finally have your two babies. They are gorgeous and look so happy :)

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    1. Thank you so much Jen! Hope you enjoy IComLeavWe! I am looking forward to visiting your blog as well.

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  2. I can't even imagine struggling for 14 years. That must have been awful. I'm glad to hear you finally got your beautiful children in the end.

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    1. It was terrible to think that we would never have children around when we were older. It seemed like it would make old age a very lonely place. Thankfully we won't ever have to find out if it really would be!

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  3. Just proves that embryo "quality," isn't what makes a pretty baby. I'm glad they decided to go ahead and freeze that second embryo even though they didn't have much hope for it.

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    1. Exactly! If they had gone by their freeze standards, one of my babies wouldn't be here today! Terrible to think about.

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  4. Love the timeline you put together. I usually like going back to read from the begning, and I still might. I'm just starting my journey now.. hit my 1st road block with a ployp that is being removed next week - -also a good time to catch up on my own blog and read others. I love that you have a happy ending! And you should be proud of your story. A lot of times this can be so overwhelming, it has already been very emotional for me this early - even though we're going on 11 years of trying. Its just the fact that we are actually movnig forward with treatments. Very exciting but nerve wrecking too. By the way - your twins are sooo dang gone cute! Congratulations. I'm sure you are enjoying every single second of motherhood. :)

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    1. Thank you for visiting my blog! I enjoy going back and reading blogs from the very first post as well. I wish you weren't joining me in the decade club of ttc, but I am excited for you as you move forward with treatments! It took us a long time to get to that point ourselves. I understand how emotional it is when you finally get to that point in your journey. Good luck next week having the polyp removed! Hopefully that's just another step closer to your own happy ending!

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  5. Ahhh! I love this! So encouraging! The twins are simply ADORABLE!

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  6. ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE!!!!! AND THANK YOU GOD AND EVERYONE INVOVLED FOR THIS FAMILY'S CHRISTMAS MIRACLES!!!!! Love & hugs, Auntie

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  7. I had totally forgotten that they almost didn't freeze one of your twins. So crazy how stuff like that works out! Good thing you don't know which one is which, or else one of them would owe a pretty big favour to the other one. ;)

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    1. It's totally crazy to think that one of them almost got tossed! It's kind of weird to think that one of them wouldn't be here and not knowing at all which one was which embryo.

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  8. What a journey. Your children look very happy and you can just see that they are thinkers.

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    1. Oh, they definitely plot what they are going to get into next! haha!

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  9. I've heard a few people mention that they had to try IUIs before IVF and I don't know why - did your doctors give you a reason? I'm glad that we got to go straight to IVF with ICSI 'cause everyone knew an IUI wouldn't work either - but I don't know why some doctors seem to require the IUI first.

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    1. I don't recall that they required it really.... I honestly can't say what the reasoning is at this point, other than if it did magically work, it would have saved us a tremendous amount of money!

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  10. Stopping by from ICLW. Your story is incredibly inspiring! I'm also a twin momma to two girls who are 12 months. Your little ones are adorable. :)

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  11. Here from ICLW. You have such an inspiring story! I'm hoping to start IVF very soon and it's very intimidating, but I love reading stories like this. It gives me hope that this might actually work for us too. Congrats on your beautiful twins!!

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  12. I love your story and the amazing happy ending that are your twins!!

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