Thank y’all so much for all the texts, calls and comments! We are really excited. Especially now that I have moved away from shocked awe.
Some comments about the video:
1. We totally expected Mom to glance right over the sonogram picture of the new baby. She’s really horribly predictable. We assumed she’d think it was picture of Aubrey Kate and thus, she did.
2. It is a pure shame we don’t have my SIL Carrie on video when she yelled, “I knew it!” Because it is priceless. There was a fist pump involved in that exclamation.
3. I wish there was a video of us telling Chris’ family. We changed Pumpkin into her “Big Sis” tee shirt and dang it all if she didn’t run into the room much faster than I was expecting. They noticed right away too so I didn’t have time to turn the video camera on. Of course, they were equally excited but there wasn’t a fist pump. Which is a total bummer.
So here’s the story. You remember in November when one of my gratitude posts was about being hopeful for a natural pregnancy? Well, I was sitting there writing that post pregnant. Just didn’t know it.
I was a couple days late and of course, completely obsessed with that fact. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to know for sure that I wasn’t pregnant.
What y’all don’t know is way back in May when I went in to see Dr. K and he did one of those AMH tests, things didn’t come back so well.
Actually, they came back horrible.
My AMH level was 0.16.
I realize that means almost zippo to most of you so here’s a chart for you to look at. (Scroll on down the page some)
Isn't that a beautiful chart? What with my level being not on it at all?
So basically, in layman’s terms, my ovaries were running out of steam. Eggs were old. Lulu and Rita were nearing retirement.
Dr. K said hum, we probably shouldn’t wait that full year we talked about. Might be better to try again sooner.
So we made a plan.
We kept the AMH level to ourselves because we honestly didn’t plan on telling our family when we were going to IVF again. Two reasons for that. One, we wanted the chance to surprise them if it did work. And two, if it didn’t we wanted the chance to grieve the loss of a second child on our own.
The plan was to do suppression in July and IVF in August. Would have preferred June and July but the beach trip in the middle of the month sort messed with that.
And then Chris got a new job.
We were still on track until we lost the first house and had to move into the toxic apartment. I knew there was no way we could do anything after that.
And so IVF plans were put on hold.
I was not happy. Truthfully, I was really angry. Angry we lost the house. Angry we had to move into an apartment. Angry that apartment was not livable and had to move again. Angry we couldn’t try for another child yet.
And by “yet” I mean we would have to wait until 2012.
Chris is gone through the first of November so those months were out. Then I refused to risk a negative result just before Christmas. The first of the year I knew would be really busy for me at work and it just didn’t seem like a good plan to risk stress playing a huge role in the result. So we decided to wait until February/March.
In the meantime, I prayed. A. Lot.
There were a whole lot of reasons I gave God about why a natural pregnancy would be best. But I was also bold and said that I was gonna need a definitive NO to not move forward. Yes, I get that taking the house away was that NO we needed this summer. Yes, I realize I didn’t handle that NO well at all. And yes, I realize I am risking anger and grief by asking for that NO again. But really, a natural pregnancy would serve as a pretty good indication that we shouldn’t do IVF. And it would be a joyful NO!
While we waited for March to role around, we did try on our own. However, I was not getting an LH surge on the ovulation predictors. I wasn’t really sure if that was because I wasn’t ovulating (which was highly likely) or not but regardless, you could say we were shooting blind.
So as I sat there obsessing about being a couple of days late, I knew the two options:
1. I was pregnant. Which would be an absolute miracle.
2. I was entering the early stages of menopause. Which seemed much more likely given the evidence.
Chris wanted me to test. I wanted to wait until Friday. Seemed logical to me. No reason to spend $14 bucks on tests that would only come up negative. Besides, I really liked not knowing for certain I was entering menopause.
I didn’t exactly share all of those concerns with Chris. He is Mr. Optimistic which is highly annoying for someone like myself who tends to be a little more realistic. Not pessimistic necessarily. Just realistic.
So he bought a box of tests.
And he wanted me to test that night.
After I got off the phone with my brother and finished working on my gratitude post for that day (which was my precious nephew Noah’s birthday post), I went to the bathroom to get ready for bed. I tested then put the test right back in the plastic wrap it came in, washed my face, brushed my teeth and got the bed ready. Expecting it to be negative, I pulled it out of the plastic and saw two lines.
I almost passed out.
After I sat down for a minute to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, I went upstairs to Chris.
(To be continued...)
Some comments about the video:
1. We totally expected Mom to glance right over the sonogram picture of the new baby. She’s really horribly predictable. We assumed she’d think it was picture of Aubrey Kate and thus, she did.
2. It is a pure shame we don’t have my SIL Carrie on video when she yelled, “I knew it!” Because it is priceless. There was a fist pump involved in that exclamation.
3. I wish there was a video of us telling Chris’ family. We changed Pumpkin into her “Big Sis” tee shirt and dang it all if she didn’t run into the room much faster than I was expecting. They noticed right away too so I didn’t have time to turn the video camera on. Of course, they were equally excited but there wasn’t a fist pump. Which is a total bummer.
So here’s the story. You remember in November when one of my gratitude posts was about being hopeful for a natural pregnancy? Well, I was sitting there writing that post pregnant. Just didn’t know it.
I was a couple days late and of course, completely obsessed with that fact. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to know for sure that I wasn’t pregnant.
What y’all don’t know is way back in May when I went in to see Dr. K and he did one of those AMH tests, things didn’t come back so well.
Actually, they came back horrible.
My AMH level was 0.16.
I realize that means almost zippo to most of you so here’s a chart for you to look at. (Scroll on down the page some)
Isn't that a beautiful chart? What with my level being not on it at all?
So basically, in layman’s terms, my ovaries were running out of steam. Eggs were old. Lulu and Rita were nearing retirement.
Dr. K said hum, we probably shouldn’t wait that full year we talked about. Might be better to try again sooner.
So we made a plan.
We kept the AMH level to ourselves because we honestly didn’t plan on telling our family when we were going to IVF again. Two reasons for that. One, we wanted the chance to surprise them if it did work. And two, if it didn’t we wanted the chance to grieve the loss of a second child on our own.
The plan was to do suppression in July and IVF in August. Would have preferred June and July but the beach trip in the middle of the month sort messed with that.
And then Chris got a new job.
We were still on track until we lost the first house and had to move into the toxic apartment. I knew there was no way we could do anything after that.
And so IVF plans were put on hold.
I was not happy. Truthfully, I was really angry. Angry we lost the house. Angry we had to move into an apartment. Angry that apartment was not livable and had to move again. Angry we couldn’t try for another child yet.
And by “yet” I mean we would have to wait until 2012.
Chris is gone through the first of November so those months were out. Then I refused to risk a negative result just before Christmas. The first of the year I knew would be really busy for me at work and it just didn’t seem like a good plan to risk stress playing a huge role in the result. So we decided to wait until February/March.
In the meantime, I prayed. A. Lot.
There were a whole lot of reasons I gave God about why a natural pregnancy would be best. But I was also bold and said that I was gonna need a definitive NO to not move forward. Yes, I get that taking the house away was that NO we needed this summer. Yes, I realize I didn’t handle that NO well at all. And yes, I realize I am risking anger and grief by asking for that NO again. But really, a natural pregnancy would serve as a pretty good indication that we shouldn’t do IVF. And it would be a joyful NO!
While we waited for March to role around, we did try on our own. However, I was not getting an LH surge on the ovulation predictors. I wasn’t really sure if that was because I wasn’t ovulating (which was highly likely) or not but regardless, you could say we were shooting blind.
So as I sat there obsessing about being a couple of days late, I knew the two options:
1. I was pregnant. Which would be an absolute miracle.
2. I was entering the early stages of menopause. Which seemed much more likely given the evidence.
Chris wanted me to test. I wanted to wait until Friday. Seemed logical to me. No reason to spend $14 bucks on tests that would only come up negative. Besides, I really liked not knowing for certain I was entering menopause.
I didn’t exactly share all of those concerns with Chris. He is Mr. Optimistic which is highly annoying for someone like myself who tends to be a little more realistic. Not pessimistic necessarily. Just realistic.
So he bought a box of tests.
And he wanted me to test that night.
After I got off the phone with my brother and finished working on my gratitude post for that day (which was my precious nephew Noah’s birthday post), I went to the bathroom to get ready for bed. I tested then put the test right back in the plastic wrap it came in, washed my face, brushed my teeth and got the bed ready. Expecting it to be negative, I pulled it out of the plastic and saw two lines.
I almost passed out.
After I sat down for a minute to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, I went upstairs to Chris.
(To be continued...)
No comments:
Post a Comment