Finally some news!

I hope everyone had a great turkey day! I know mine and Jennifer's was fantastic with amazing "Dark Thursday" and Black Friday shopping! Sorry for the delay of updating our blog but things have been quite slow on the news front. Now on to the baby details. Jesse and I (and Jennifer of course! Thanks again sis) recently went shopping to pick out a "baby." It seemed like an exhausting feat but after much consideration we feel as if we had made a great choice as to which donated embryo we will go with. Woohoo! As I had previously said, we can't do a natural cycle with donated embryos so we would have to go with the medicated route...wrong! Our clinic has never transferred a donated embryo with a "known" embryo (ours), so our clinic put together a little meeting to discuss what would be best for us to be successful. You see, Jen is a little, shall we say, competitive and, well, you know she was quite the overachiever when it came to responding to the meds, so maybe if we did more of a natural cycle her body will accept the pregnancy. She did have 3 flawless pregnancies after all! So it's settled we will be doing a natural cycle. I know Jen is excited since that means less shots and I'm totally excited to be sort of a test subject for the clinic. This is such of an amazing opportunity for us.

Our tentative calendar was recently emailed to us and it looks as though Jennifer will be on birth control until the end of December. We will then go for an ultrasound on cycle day 2-3, if everything looks good she will start ovulation predictors on cycle day 8.  Then another ultrasound on day 10.  Then ultrasounds everyday or so to see when she will ovulate.  Then a shot of HCG.  Then transfer 6 days later, which should be mid January or so. AAHH! 

My fingers and toes and whatever else will be crossed that this will work for us!

Decision Time

We had our doctor meeting yesterday to discuss our failed cycle and the next steps we will take. As you may already know we only have one embryo left to transfer. If we choose to transfer just the one we only have a 40-50% chance of it taking, yes I know it only takes one! We discussed starting right away with a natural cycle, as in going off of Jen's regular cycle and not adding the meds to force the cycle. One of the other options that I came up with, but didn't know if it was possible, is to add a donor embryo to our embryo, implant 2 and increase our chances by another 25% or so, while keeping the costs down for us. Our clinic has never done this before but didn't see a problem with it and given our history believed we seemed like the perfect couple for it and so gave us the ok. We will have to have a DNA test done after it/they are born so we know  its/their genetics. If we go this route we will have to start Jen again on the meds (sorry Jen I know the natural cycle sounded good to you ;) ) in December and do the transfer the beginning of January. We wouldn't be able to do it in December because the clinic takes a holiday break. We put some thought in our final decision and decided that was the route for us! We will be adding a donor embryo to our embryo and implant them into Jennifer the beginning of January! I am trying to contain my excitement since I know that there is a chance it doesn't work the way we hope but.......WAHOO!! We are waiting to hear back from our clinic to get a tentative calender for Jen and donor embryo profiles. Stay tuned!

Thanks for all the awesome support! You guys are wonderful!

great news!

Ok, so it's great news but not baby related. I finished my last round of chemotherapy yesterday!! Woohoo! I still have 7 or so weeks of radiation but will then be in remission! I am so happy!

I feel like a bloghog since Jennifer hasn't blogged anything for a bit so hopefully she will be posting something soon ;) No pressure or anything Jen!

Deserving... an interesting word

Deserving~

adjective

1.

qualified for or having a claim to reward, assistance, etc.,because of one's actions, qualities, or situation: the deserving poor; a deserving applicant.

2.

meriting; worthy: a criminal deserving of a lifetime sentence.

If everyone in life got what they deserved then I would currently be the mother of at least two children, a boy and a girl, and the word cancer would not even be in my vocabulary. Well here is some news, I am not pregnant and I will never be pregnant again and while I only have one more chemo session left I still have weeks of radiation left and a lifetime of scans with the question of "has the cancer returned?". While I, and many others, deserve to experience motherhood and a lifetime of no cancer worries, life doesn't work in this matter. Life is so much more then "but you deserve it, "life is about experiencing things and looking at the positive outcomes terrible things can bring. Without cancer I would not be able to see firsthand all the undeserving people fighting. I would not be able to see all the wonderful nurses that deal with cancer patients on a daily basis and see that they put smiles on their faces everyday even though they walk into a workplace that feels as if the dark rain clouds have over taken the skies. I would not get to experience the true beauty of people without hair. Without infertility I would not have experienced meeting wonderful women like me that also deserve to be mothers. Without infertility I would not experience the wonders of science and how far we have really come to making dreams come true for people. I would not experience the adventure of obtaining something that I wanted so bad I would do anything for. I would not have experienced meeting a wonderful doctor that led to the cancer diagnosis in the first place. Without infertility I may not have experienced cancer treatments because it would've been too late.

So you see my Husband and I have to sit back and laugh at our crazy little life because even though we may be deserving of things we also have the strength to experience undeserving things in life. Not everything in life is fair and deserving but I believe things happen for a reason, a reason to make you that much stronger and that much more complete.

Next steps

Hey everyone!

Thought I would give everyone an update on our plans. Tuesday the 13th we will meet our doctor to discuss our failed cycle and what would be the best to do next. We are really stuck and don't know what we should do next. Everyone knows we still have one little perfect blastocyst waiting in the freezer but it's only one. If we choose to do another cycle we could get more embryos to add to it to increase our chances (still can only put in two at a time though). Here's the thing though, we may have to get another donor and since the holidays are coming the clinic takes a break and we won't be able to start the process until January. We are confused and have no idea where we are headed yet but I do know one thing... I will do what it takes to be the mom that I dream to be!

We will let you know as soon as we make our decision as to what direction we take, in the meantime we would love some comments from our readers (if anyone is out there ;) ).