Feels like a dream…

Thank you so much for your comments, emails, phone calls, congratulations, positive thoughts, kind words, good wishes and continued sticky vibes and prayers!!! Many of you have expressed that you are “over the moon” happy for us and I think that is a great description of how Bob and I feel too! 🙂

Thank you also to all of you who were “waiting along with me” yesterday afternoon, to find out the outcome of this cycle, through positive thoughts, prayers and as some of you have shared “refreshing the front page of my blog over and over again, hoping to find the news!”

Today we are 12dp5dt (17 dpo) and 4 weeks 4 days pregnant! 🙂

We are still in a bit of a state of disbelief after all this time trying to conceive another child… If it is possible, we had gotten use to getting the news month after month that yet again we were not pregnant. So I think when we finally got word yesterday that our “overachieving embryo” literally decided to “stick” around, we were a bit dumbstruck with surprise and joy! It is hard not to tell Sean that he is finally going to be a big brother, something he wants so much and we know he will be so good at, but we still think it makes sense to wait and if all goes well, he will find out in due time.

As many people asked, and I forgot to post yesterday, from what I understand, based on the date of our ET with a day 5 embryo, it would be as if we ovulated on Saturday, October 5 and thus Baby Benson’s estimated due date (EDD) is Friday, June 27, 2008! 🙂 Note: my sister’s lucky number 27! She and her finance will be getting married exactly three months later on September 27, 2008! 🙂 Our baby will likely be born earlier than our EDD though, God willing/if all goes well and so will at the latest be here by June 20, 2008, as it will be a scheduled c-section.

My mom also pointed out that her lucky number is 22 (she was born on September 22) and that yesterday’s date was October 22nd! By the way, a quick update on my sister’s job search… Yesterday she was offered and accepted a job that she very much wanted! So it was a GREAT day for the Axe sisters!! 🙂 🙂 (For those who might not know, my maiden name is Axe.) So a big thank you for all those who have been praying for her, since her big interview last Tuesday! 🙂

I will have my second Beta blood test tomorrow morning and I think another on Friday. The results will come again with a mid-afternoon phone call, though I have to say I don’t think I am feeling quite as anxious, as I did on Monday! I am not sure if I have any more Betas after that. If our embryo continues to grow and be healthy, our 1st ultrasound (u/s) will be on Monday, November 5 (not too long of a wait)! I was told to go ahead and schedule it when I go for my blood test in the morning.

Our 11/5/07 u/s will be a huge milestone for us, after what happened with our last pregnancy…. At our 11/4/05 u/s is when we discovered it was an interstitial ectopic pregnancy and I was rushed into surgery to have it removed. It’s a little ironic that the u/s this time will be 2 years and 1 day since that tragic day in our life, but I am hoping that this one will reveal a heart beat (h/b) and a developing/healthy baby that is in the right location for it to be able to grow. I divided my Beta number backwards every two days (since it is suppose to double every 48 hours) and by those calculations it seems that my Beta (HcG) level would have been about 18 the day after the transfer (Friday, October 12). Since HcG doesn’t start developing until after implantation, that would lead me to believe that our little embryo implanted very quickly after it was transferred! Thus I feel a little less worried about another ectopic, since it was placed directly into my uterus, I don’t think there would have been enough time to travel into my left tube. Also, the embryologist told our RE and us that our embryo had started “hatching” before it was transferred and supposedly embryos hatch right before they implant! 🙂

This afternoon I ordered “refills” for the medications I have been taking and from what I understand will continue to take for at least the next 3 – 4 weeks (this includes the patches, pills, suppositories and injections). As you may recall, since this was a frozen embryo transfer (FET) and I thus did not ovulate this cycle, without the hormone replacement medications (manufacturing progesterone and estrogen), my body wouldn’t know to continue to support this pregnancy. On a related note, Bob and I were very happy to be doing my PIO shot again last night, as every previous cycle we would talk the night before the Beta about how one of the up sides of the blood test being negative the next day is that we wouldn’t have to do PIOs anymore… But we also always would say that we would gladly keep them up if it meant we were pregnant! So we rejoiced in the first post-Beta PIO in our ART experience! 🙂

A few more fun facts/interesting related stories:

If the baby is born sometime in mid-June Sean and he or she would be 4 years and 8 months a part (the same exact age difference between my older sister and me)! 🙂 Although due to when birth dates fall, my sister and I have always been 5 years a part in school and Sean and his younger brother or sister will only be 4 years a part in school. My mom relayed a story to me last night, that right before she got pregnant with you me, she remembers very vividly accepting that she probably would not get pregnant again. She reminded me that at our last consultation with our RE (after our most recent failed IVF cycle), that I shared that Bob and I told our doctor that we realized and accepted that we might not ever get pregnant again, but that we still wanted to try, with his help/ART. My mom wonders if acceptance is/was part of the equation for both of us in our quests to have another child. It certainly is possible and an interesting theory.

Another note about the age difference between my sister and I, as much as we are close now, we have gone through times in our life went we weren’t as close. I use to think that was because of our age difference (which in some ways I am sure it was) and thus really wanted Bob and my children to be closer in age, hence why we started trying to conceive #2 when Sean was 9 months old. I since have come to realize that no matter what the age difference between siblings, that our relationships will ebb and flow and there will be times when we feel closer and times when we may not. I understand, in part from talking with other friends and family members over the past three years, that siblings relationships have many factors including our individual personalities and the stages of life we are in, at any given time. I have met people who have siblings who are very close in age, but their relationship is not strong and vice versa. So I find it a bit ironic, since I use to think my children would be “better off,” and more likely to have strong relationships, if they were closer in age, that Sean and our next child may have the same age difference as my dear sister and I do! 🙂

Speaking of older siblings…In talking with Bob’s sister and two of my neighborhood playgroup friends yesterday, all three of them independently shared with me very similar stories of one of their children (one of Sean’s cousins and two of his best buddies, all of whom are close in age to Sean and have at least one younger sibling) coming up to them in the past week, and asking them (their mothers) “why doesn’t Sean have a baby like I do?!” (or some variation on the phrasing) My sister-in-law and my two friends had all made the connection that our little miracle would have already implanted by the time their children asked them this and we discussed how sometimes it seems like children have a sort of “sixth sense?!”

In light of our three previous pregnancy losses, Bob and I are doing our best to be optimistic about this pregnancy going full term and our baby being a healthy, however it is difficult not to be a little paranoid that something may go wrong. One of my college friends wrote in her congratulatory email yesterday: “hopefully you can continue your practice of not getting yourself too stressed out worrying about what might happen and can just relax, take care of yourself and let God take care of your baby.” Soon after her now 17 month old daughter was born last year, I shared with her (as I often do with my friends/family members when they become new moms) how early on when Sean was born I would constantly worry about him getting sick or him suddenly dying of SIDS (as “they” teach you to be so concerned about). But then one day I had an Oprah “a-ha” moment and realized that I needed to make peace with the fact that anything could happen to Bob, Sean or me at anytime and worrying about it was not going to keep it from being so. Not that a mother shouldn’t be careful and take precautions with their children, but being obsessive about it, does more harm, than good. From then on I feel I have done a pretty decent job of not worrying too much about something suddenly happening to Bob, Sean or me and have been able to thus enjoy more of each day we are blessed to have together. Many of my friends and family members have told me that was one of the best pieces of advice they received early on as a mother and I thought it was great that my friend reminded me of it during this time.

Finally, another good friend, who has been very supportive over the past three years that we have been struggling with secondary infertility, emailed me last Friday, when she knew I was having a hard time waiting to find out if this cycle had worked for us. She shared with me a prayer, that she said she read a lot when she and her husband were trying to conceive the first time and read it before going to each c-section she has gone on to have to help calm her nerves. I found reading it on Friday, and each day since, to be comforting and empowering and today I will leave you with it:

Prayer to St. Anne
Saint Anne, Give me grace and strength.
Grant me courage and a quiet mind.
May I be brave, constant and serene.

Thank you again for your support, positive thoughts and prayers as we enter this next phase of our journey as “Three of a kind working on a full house…” I will be back tomorrow to update you on the results of our 2nd Beta blood test! 🙂

P.S. – For those of you who have been praying for my online friend Sommer and her family (the one who gave birth unexpectedly to her baby boy twins at 31 weeks on Friday), here is a link to their family website: http://www.cronck.com/ that includes updates and pictures of proud big sister Calista and the newest members of their happy family of five! Thank you for your continued positive thoughts and prayers for Sommer and her family, as last I heard she had still not gotten to hold her baby boys (since she they are at different hospitals, Sommer at the one where they were born recovering from her emergency c-section and Ace and Nate with their father in a NICU unit at another hospital), though it sounds like they are all making progress towards being together again soon.