baby steps...

Tonight Robby is off with his daddy on his FIRST fathers & sons camp out! He was so excited! I can't wait to hear all about it tomorrow! Hopefully they'll take some pictures!

So you guys have all been so wonderful and supportive and I wanted to give you an update...

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Well, it's been almost a year exactly since our last step in this process... and since then I've been "trying not to think about it." You know, "relax" as the "experts" say. ;) I'm so grateful we've been happy and able to really enjoy life and the one amazing child we have even while we've continued to hope and pray every single day for another baby.

Now we're taking another step...

We are starting our first try of IVF w/ICSI. We've thought a lot about it over the last year and have decided now's the time to try it and we're able to borrow some money to pay for it and get help from family. We've started the process and the actual invitro will happen the end of June, and then we'll find out if it worked 10 days later so July 5-10 ish.

The timing will all depend on how my body reacts to the medications they'll have me on and then how fast the embryos are ready to be put back in... the doctor recommends we transfer 1-2 embryos - he said he wouldn't put 3 in unless I was much older and the egg quality was poor and he'd put just 1 if we were really opposed to twins but I think if we could get 2 babies for the price of 1 in this case it'd be great. Robby's been praying for 2 babies for the last year so maybe I'll get pregnant with twins and he'll get his wish!

It's a pretty intense process, lots of injections and medications for me and some for Rob and lots of doctor's apts and time it'll take but we feel like this is the right thing for us to do right now. I would be due middle-end of March so just before Robby turns 5! I don't feel any kind of guarantee going into this but according to the doctor we talked to we have about an 80% chance of it working.

If it doesn't work - we will probably have embryos left over that we will be able to freeze and a frozen cycle will be about $3000 as opposed to a fresh cycle like we're doing that's $11,000. So a much more affordable option and we'd try that again probably pretty soon after if we can.

We are also doing acupuncture in conjunction with IVF. There are studies that show doing acupuncture with IVF has higher success rates. Trying to increase our chances as best as we can!

I'm kind of torn between wanting to write down every little detail and wanting to just wait and see what happens and then tell you all... maybe it's time for me to start an actual journal so the whole wide world doesn't have to read my personal stuff! But for some reason it helps... sharing it with people... putting it out there for someone to find if they're in the same situation or wondering how this all works! We'll see.

It's a weird thing - wanting to be excited, trying to be hopeful, and trying to stay realistic. It's a weird mix of emotions. But I'm definitely happy to be doing something more to try to have another baby! And definitely just saying lots of prayers...

Funny Robby story - today as I was giving myself my morning shot of Lupron (here come some details) Robby asked me, "well, maybe we will get THREE babies since you are getting so many shots!" I kind of laughed and said, "no, honey, we won't get three babies, we might get one baby, maybe two, but not three!" He quickly said, "I'm gonna say a prayer!" He ran to his room, knelt by his bed and prayed, "Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the day, please bless that mommy will have three babies. Please bless mommy will be stronger than all the other mommies. Name of Jesus Christ, Amen." He's hilarious...