Saturday, December 25, 2010

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Tickled

Caitlyn loves to be tickled!  She'll ask for "more" or "again" over and over.  Her laugh is infectious...I can't get enough!

Monday, December 13, 2010

Third Go Around

When I first started writing this post a little over a week ago, I titled it Defeated.  I was feeling pretty down about our second cycle not working.  Especially because the numbers were in our favor.  The nurses and Dr's all thought this was going to work for us.  But it didn't. 
 
Our first cycle in October we used the same protocol that we did to get pregnant with Caitlyn. I took Femara (pill) from day 3 through day 8. I started Gonal-F injections on day 6 of my cycle. I did these injections for 5 days. I triggered ovulation with an HCG trigger shot and we did the IUI on Oct 25th. I took Caitlyn to daycare that day but took the day off so I could go home and lay down and just relax all day. I didn't respond very well this time around to those drugs. I think I had 2 follies (eggs) that may have been viable. I was still optimistic. I had "symptoms" the whole time I was waiting to test. That cycle failed.


Our second cycle in November we used a totally different protocol. On day 3 I started Follistim injections. I did this injection for 7 days. Then on day 8 I used a Ganirelix injection in the morning and then I took 2 lupron injections 12 hours apart for ovulation. We had great numbers this time around. I responded really well (25 eggs) to the meds that they put me on. Jared's numbers were the best they've ever been while we've been trying (42 million little swimmers). Two Dr's and all the nurses were talking to me about multiples. I think they were all convinced I'd be pregnant. Jared said he had the same feeling that he did when we were pregnant with Caitlyn, so he was convinced that I was pregnant. I had no symptoms this month. We also added another drug (Estradiol) to the protocol during my 2 week wait that I had never had to take before. When I talked to Jared about the multiples factor we both kind of laughed about it. Do you know who we are?  We'll be thankful for one.  This cycle failed.


We are in the middle of our third cycle.  Almost the same protocol as last cy only instead of 75 units of Follistim they lowered it to 50 units every day.   I'm on day 8 of injections and as of this morning I'll have at least 2 more.  I have another follow up appt on Wednesday morning and then hopefully IUI will be either Friday or Saturday morning. 


We started this process because I had met my deductible this year. This is my last cycle before the end of the year and our deductible starts over. I'm not sure what we'll do if this third cycle doesn't work. When we were trying to get pregnant with Caitlyn we were on our last cycle that Dr. M would let us do the IUI. She was pushing for IVF after that and we hadn't decided what we would do in that situation. And thankfully we didn't have to make a decision.

We found out that we were pregnant with Caitlyn on New Year's Eve in 2007...maybe we'll have another New Year's surprise!  I'm hoping I'm meant to be surrounded by Virgo's in this house and this will be our month! 

Saturday, December 4, 2010

What Could Be Better....

...than free Christmas cards for us to send to family and friends this year?  Shutterfly is having a special for bloggers (to see more info click here ) 50 free Christmas cards for writing a blog post about their wonderful holiday cards!  Check out some of my favorites...although I'm not sharing my favorite as that has to be a surprise for the mailbox! 

For some reason I'm drawn to candy cane's on Christmas cards.  Since having Caitlyn the past 2 cards have had candy canes on them.  Something fun and childlike maybe???  That's why this one was one of my favorites.



I love the colors on this one!  And I thought I could put a family picture in the center with pictures of Caitlyn on either side. 


Oh Holy Night is one of my all time favorite Christmas songs so I think that's why this one speaks to me.  It reminds me of Midnight Mass as a child growing up.  So simple and beautiful.  


I'm also working on one of these for Christmas for Caitlyn...I've never made my own photo book before but have heard through the grapevine that kids love them.  And I know that Caitlyn loves looking at pictures of herself in my scrapbooks so it should be a great stocking stuffer for her this year! 

I'm so excited to order these cards and finish with our holiday photo shoot!  Christmas really is a wonderful time of year and I'd like to thank Shutterfly for adding a little bit of holiday cheer to my Christmas season this year!