What better day...

I hope that I deal with information in a sensitive manner. Sometimes it just comes from my heart without a lot of my head involved to think it through. For anyone who follows my blog in the IF world I hope I never offend (especially today) . I wish the best of luck and hope for everyone who wants to have a family in whatever way they may come.

Anyway, I was supposed to have my beta on Monday but due to my work schedule (I never open and yet that day I am) Nurse G told me to come in on Sunday instead. So Jeff and I went down to Salt Lake today and had my blood drawn. The nurse asked me if I had cheated and I told her yes and it was so far so good. She was excited and said that over 90% of the time home tests are right but they would call us later today with results.

We went home and back to bed for a cat nap. The clinic called around 11:30 or so and it was the same nurse. She told me congratulations you are pregnant and in fact you are very pregnant. My beta number was 1,049 (11dp5dt) and she said they usually expect mid to high hundreds range at this point so there was a possibility of twins although we wouldn't know until an ultrasound. She gave me further instructions on meds and when we needed to schedule a viability ultrasound in a couple weeks. She said the expected due date would be January 13th and then wished me a happy mother's day to which I teared up a little. Like Jeff said, what a perfect day to find out the official news. We're so excited and feel so lucky to be here. Can't wait to see our little one(s) on an ultrasound.

I admit it...

I am weak. Okay and I was finding myself upset and distressed earlier this week. So why can't I just woman up and wait it out. Well...I can't. Jeff and I agreed that I would take a home pregnancy test on Thursday or Friday. From what I read online this was a safe time frame. But I also read that it was a slim possibility to get a positive 5 days after transfer (Monday). So I decided to take one on Monday and told myself it wouldn't mean anything if it was negative. I woke up early that morning to Thor having a breathing attack (scared me to death) and after making sure he was okay snuck upstairs to have a date with my last HPT stick (the one I swore I wouldn't use unless there was a real chance). I forgot about the waiting time of three minutes and the initial time I looked at it there was nothing and I was a little upset but said it was okay and I would just try again another day. Then as I was standing there in the bathroom pumping myself up I looked at it again and saw the faintest of lines. Not where I imagined a line to appear in the tests I had taken before. After a minute it was more definite but still very light and I thought "huh...okay so that's where it's supposed to show up". Then I was excited and happy...false positives don't usually happen although it could still be chemical. I didn't want to tell Jeff when the result was so faint and not really sure. So I crawled back in bed and determined I would test again Tuesday morning and if that was darker I would tell him.

Well here is Tuesday's result:

I am definitely pregnant (at least for now). It still seems so unreal and hasn't sunk in. I brought the stick downstairs while Jeff was getting ready for work and told him I had a surprise for him and to close his eyes. He did and I put the test out in front of them and told him to open his eyes and announced I was pregnant. He was excited but we were both still in disbelief I think. We are so grateful that it seems to have worked the first time but we're also holding out for some beta results on Monday and hopefully an ultrasound after that. It has definitely got the gears in my head going though about things I've tried to stop thinking about: nursery, crib(s), how and when to tell family/friends and hoping to see our baby(ies) heartbeat(s) and all that. Here's hoping for an awesome beta on Monday.

Just keep swimming...swimming...swimming

We got results back from my labs and Jeff's sperm hamster penetration test. So I wanted to throw up the Dory quote from Finding Nemo in honor of the sperm test. The penetration test is basically to find out if there will be any problem with Jeff's sperm penetrating the egg during the actual cycle. They take hamster egg(s) and mix them with his sperm to see if they can get the job done. And they did great. I'm sure they (the sperm) were a little disappointed it wasn't the real deal but we're grateful they gave their all just the same hehe So we can now count that down as a worry we don't have to worry about. Also my blood work and labs came back as a good to go too. We are go for launch. Our next appointment is with the psychologist for donor egg consult at the end of this month. I'm not too worried about that. We have been talking about this and working through this for the last two years. But I do think it will be good to talk to someone professionally and cover any concerns we might have.

Finally Rolling...

The ball seems to finally be rolling. The DE coordinator from UCRM contacted us just before Christmas to see where we were at and what our plan was for the new year and cycling there. I was planning to contact her first part of January so it was nice to see her taking action and concern. We were planning to cycle in April and start running tests in January to prepare for that. I told her that and she came back with an email of some "first things first" and things we needed to get doing soon. The first thing is Jeff needs to go do the hamster penetration assay / sperm analysis. We have joked about this since our IVF consult in June/July. They analyse his sperm, including a penetration test with a hamster egg. In theory to test whether his fellas could fertilize the egg when the real thing goes down. So we have to do that this month and then schedule other appointments in February. It was exciting to actually see some pressure to get things done and feel like we were on a time schedule. It was weird to finally be here where it was only months away from now.

For the first time we were scheduling things around it (or trying to). We had decided to keep things quiet and to ourselves until we get results (maybe even a little longer if they are positive results...to be sure it sticks). This meant no telling or talking to parents, family or friends about it. Well our good friends Lisa and James wanted to get some people together and go 4-wheeling and stay at a cabin this spring. Guess when they wanted to go. In April. It was only a weekend trip but we didn't want to be stressed out or doing injections at the time. So without telling them why we tried to suggest the trip be at the beginning of April (blaming it on my school). They wanted to go further out so it wasn't snowy or muddy at the cabin/resort place. Blah! So then we tried middle of April (finals week for school). So then we shifted our plan to do this weekend trip and also the cycle to late April...which by then I was okay with because I didn't realize finals were so soon and would rather do the cycle between semesters. I guess this is the nice thing about donor cycles. The donor will be doing most of the injections and the synchronized stuff during April while I'm stressing over finals and going on weekend outings. I'm okay with giving her that.

I just almost can't believe it's getting within range now. They gave us a tentative transfer date of May 5th. At first I thought "okay that's 5 months away" and then I realized it was actually 4 months away. Then I thought of how that's the transfer date and the cycle will actually start sometime probably early April. So yah, wow 3 months or so from now we will be starting a cycle.