The proud Big Sister

Kaitlyn is so excited about "her baby" as she calls it. She tells everyone we see, from the lady at Luby's yesterday to the pizza man who delivered our pizza last night and our friends at church "My Mommy has a baby in her tummy!"

She has so many plans for her and "her baby". She has told me it is going to sleep in her bed and share her princess pillow with her.

Here are some pictures of the proud big sister in her big sister shirt.

6 weeks, 8 weeks, and beyond

Alot has happened since my last post. We had our 6 week appointment and 8 week appointment with Dr. McKenzie and our first visit with the OB/GYN's office.

At the 6 week ultrasound there wasn't much to see. The ultrasound tech told us that there was a 50/50 chance that we would be able to see and hear the heartbeat because all they are really looking for a 6 weeks is the egg sac and the fetal pole. Luckily we were able to see and hear the heartbeat! The heartbeat was 103. The ultrasound tech told us that anything over 100 was good.

Here is a picture from the 6 week visit.

Two weeks later at our 8 week visit.

At the 8 week visit we could actually see the head and body starting to form. The small circle near the feet is the yolk sac that provides the nutrition for the baby. We were also able to see and hear the heartbeat again. This time the heartbeat was a strong 160.

And finally at 9 weeks.

This was our first visit to the OB/GYN's office. We saw the Nurse Practioner, June, on this visit. June said everything looked great and that the baby was measuring at 9 weeks. We were able to see the baby's head, arm and leg buds, and the yolk sac. You can also see from this ultrasound that the baby has changed positions and is now lying on its back, head is on the right side of the picture and feet on the left.

My official due date is March 17, 2010, St . Patrick's Day!

Our next visit will be with the OB, Dr. Journey, on Sept 1st and at that point I will be 12 weeks. I will have an ultrasound every visit up to 20 weeks and after the 12 week visit we will only see the Dr. every 4 weeks.

I will continue to post updates from our Dr's appointments so stay tuned!

Coming March 2010...

Baby Barry!

We got fantastic news when I went in for my pregnancy test on July 8th, it was POSITIVE!

I had been waiting on pins and needles all morning long waiting for that phone call and when it finally came I was really nervous. Chris was convinced that I was pregnant but I knew that the odds were not in our favor so I was trying not to get my hopes up. Luckily all those fears were erased when Judy said "I have good news, you're pregnant!"

Judy, Dr. McKenzie's nurse, said that my HCG level was 119 and that was a good result because they were looking for an HCG level over 50. I had to go back in that Friday, July 10th for more blood work to verify that my HCG level had doubled. Ideally it should double about every 2 days during early pregnancy.

On Friday, my HCG level had risen to 360 and my estrogen level was 919 which meant I was able to stop wearing one of the two estrogen patches I had been wearing. They told me to come back on Tuesday for additonal blood work to check my estrogen level again.

On Tuesday, my estrogen level had risen to 1018 which meant I was able to remove the last estrogen patch and just continue my daily progesterone injections. I will be on progesterone in oil shots until my 10th week of pregnancy.

Chris has to give me the daily injections of progesterone. He is becoming quite good at intramuscular injections!

We have our first ultrasound appointment July 22nd at which point I will be 6 weeks pregnant.

We are so excited!

The transfer is complete!

The embryo transfer took place on Monday and everything went well.


The Dr. called us Monday around 11 am to give us an update on the embryos so that we would not have to wait until our 1:30 appointment to find out. She said that we had 2 embryos that we could potentially transfer. One was Stage 1 blasocyst in development and the other was a Stage 2 on its way to a Stage 3. She also said that we had several others that they would continue to watch over the next day as they might develop to the point where we could freeze them.


When we got to the office that afternoon we met with Dr. McKenzie to decide how many embryos to transfer (1 or 2). After talking with Dr. McKenzie we felt that transferring 1 embryo was the best decision because transferring 2 would have given us a 40% chance of twins. Transferring two has its benefits though because it basically doubles your chance of success, but we felt that after weighing the risks vs. the benefits it was better to transfer just one.


When the embryologist came into the room with the incubator he gave us a printout of what the 2 embryos look like under the microscope. Since 8 am that morning the embryos had both grown to Stage 3 so they were now both the same size and stage of development. Chris asked him how they were going to decide which one to transfer since we were only transferring one. The embryologist was not yet aware that we were only transferring one so he had to take the incubator back out of the room and look at them under the microscope again to determine which one was the best.


We got to watch the entire procedure on the ultrasound. It was all a very surreal experience. Now we just have to pray that it worked!

Tomorrow is a big day!

We celebrate 7 years of marriage tomorrow.

It seems like yesterday; well maybe not yesterday, but it doesn't seem all that long ago that we were living in Arlington planning our wedding.

When the day finally came it seemed like it went by so fast but we enjoyed every minute of it. Luckily, one of the best things we did was hire a fantastic videographer who captured everything from us getting ready for the ceremony up to us leaving the reception in the limo. We occasionally watch the DVD and show it to Kaitlyn which is always fun because she always wants to know where she was during the wedding. Hmmm, how to explain that to a 4 yr old...

Anyway, 7 years later I finally have all of our pictures from the wedding scanned onto a DVD and ready to be made into an album. That's right, we still don't have a wedding album. We have all the pictures and the copyrights and I know exactly what I want in an album and who I want to make it, now it is just a matter of making the investment and getting it done.

There is one thing that is worse than not having your album done after 7 years of marriage...not having your dress heirloomed yet. I still have it hanging in the pink plastic bag it was hanging in on the wedding day. I am making sort of a mid-year resolution that I have got to get my dress heirloomed this year. I guess that is something I can research while I am in bed for two days straight :-).

Tomorrow is also the day I will have the embryo transfer.

We were scheduled for Saturday but it was postponed until tomorrow.

Saturday morning Mom came over to watch Kaitlyn for us while so that we could go to the Dr. We were pretty sure it wasn't going to happen on Saturday, but as of 8:15 we still hadn't received a phone call telling us not to come, so we headed towards Dr. McKenzie's office since our apptmt was at 9:00 in the Memorial City area.

As we were driving down Cullen and I was chugging bottles of water (per the Dr's instructions) because they want you to have a full bladder when they do the transfer, the phone rang. It was the nurse saying that we needed to wait until Monday. As of Saturday, which was 3 days after the retrieval, we had 12 embryos with 7-9 cells and a 3+ rating and since they were so close in size they couldn't differentiate the best from the rest. There were also 4 smaller embryos that only had 4-5 cells so those will probably degenerate.

Here is a picture of an 8 cell embryo, I imagine ours look similar to this :-).

I don't understand that much yet about how they "grade" the embryos but here is some information I found on the internet.

Embryos should be at least 2 to 4 cells at 48 hours after egg retrieval and preferably about 7 to 10 cells by 72 hours. The cells in an embryo are also referred to as "blastomeres".

From reading this information it sounds like the 12 embryos that are 7-9 cells are right on target. The nurse said that this is a very good result. We will get to sit down with Dr. McKenzie tomorrow before the transfer and she will review the grading with us and give us all the details on our embryos.

I was actually a little relieved that we weren't doing the transfer on Saturday, I wasn't sure that I was ready to be on bed rest just yet and I had forgotten to put my bottles of water in the refrigerator to drink. I know, I know, it's a little crazy but anyone that knows me knows I can't stand to drink room temperature water, especially not when I have to chug it because I have to have a full bladder for the procedure. That is why we always have half empty bottles of water in our refrigerator because as soon as it gets warm I put it back in the refrigerator. This is something about me that after 7 years of marriage still drives Chris crazy.

So now the transfer will take place tomorrow at 1:30 PM and this time we are prepared...

the water is already in the refrigerator, I have 3 movies to watch while I am on bed rest and Kaitlyn is going to Mee Mee's house after breakfast in the morning and we are excited that the day is finally here!


One last story and then I am off to bed...
Chris and Kaitlyn were talking earlier and I guess Chris must have asked Kaitlyn if she wanted a little brother and she said something funny so Chris brought her to the kitchen to tell me why she didn't want a little brother and she said
“because they eat meatballs with their hands and they are grossy posey”

I just died laughing.

It is moments like that when I know that going through all of this to have another baby is definitely going to be worth it!

Even better news...

The nurse called this morning and said that they actually retrieved 22 eggs, they found 2 more when sorting through the fluid they retrieved with the eggs. 21 of the 22 were mature, meaning that they measured between 15-22mm in size. 16 out of the 22 fertilized so we have 16 eggs that are in the incubator now and we are scheduled for an appointment at 9:00 am Saturday.

The nurse said to stay by the phone Saturday morning because there is a good chance they will cancel that appointment and let them grow until Monday in order to differentiate the best egg from the rest.

So I think Monday will be the big day. I will be on 2 days of bed rest after the procedure, which I plan on enjoying by watching movies and resting. Mom is going to take the little one off our hands for Monday and Tuesday because it is hard to explain to a 4 year old that you can't get out of bed for 2 days. She will enjoy getting to spend time with her Mee Mee too and Mom will get some much needed time off!

Tomorrow Chris gets to start playing nurse and injecting me with progesterone in oil every day for the next 2 weeks, at least. If we get a positive pregnancy test I will continue taking the shots every day for 6 weeks. I can't say I am thrilled about having to take an intramuscular shot with an inch and 1/2 long needle everyday but it will be worth it if this all works out.

We are praying for a successful transfer! Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

We got 20!

Today was the retrieval and they retrieved 20 eggs. They are going to fertilize them and put them in the incubator and tomorrow they will call and let us know how many actually fertilized.

So I am sitting in bed recovering and I have to say anesthesia is a great thing. I don't remember anything from the actual procedure, I don't even remember getting sleepy. The whole procedure took maybe 20 minutes and then I had to stay in recovery for 45 minutes before leaving.

The transfer could happen as early as Saturday, but will more likely take place on Monday. Since they retrieved so many it would be hard for them to tell on Day 3 (Saturday) which one is the best so they will give them a few more days to grow and look at them on Monday. Hopefully we wil have 1 super star fertilized egg that is ready to go on Monday.