There hasn't been much that has been missed. We have settled into our permanent lives here in ABQ.
We did get a new kitten. His name is Zinc and we adopted him in April from the city animal shelter. He is absolutely adorable and quite the cuddler. He has grown so much in the last 4 months. When we got him he didn't even weigh 2 pounds and now at 6 months old he is just over 9 pounds. Spice is still adjusting to having him around. He likes to attack her when she least expects it. I hope that once he grows out of his kitten playfulness that they will become better friends.
Over the summer I went on quite a few vacations and Greg came with me on one vacation.
In April, I went to Orlando, Fl to visit a friend that just relocated there.
In May, Greg and I went to Chicago, IL to visit our friends the Labuz's, that we met while we were all living in California and Amanda and I worked together.
In June, Greg and I went to AZ because my baby brother, Xander, got married! We are so happy for him and our new sister-in-law Ashley.
In July, I went to New Orleans, LA with Amanda and her friends for a girls weekend.
In August, I went to Logan, UT with my mom, Xander and Ashley to the Utah Opera Festival.
That pretty much catches up what we have been up too.
Now with no more big vacations planned (except all the Goebel's are coming to ABQ for a few days and then we are going to Durango, CO for a few days, next week), Greg and I are starting our first IVF cycle.
*Medical details* Don't read below if you don't wanna know
Since most people are unaware of our situation and why we are going to be going through IVf, I will try a quick and non technical explanation,
Since 2011, I have had 3 unexplained miscarriages and 1 year where I was unable to even get pregnant.
After many exams and tests, I was diagnosed in PCOS or polycystic ovarian syndrome. Basically, my hormones are not at the correct level and messes up my cycles. This also makes it more difficult for me get pregnant and then stay pregnant. This diagnoses explains the year of not being able to get pregnant and one possible reason for my 1st miscarriage. Now that I have been properly diagnosed and medicated, physically I have been able to get pregnant, 2 more times.But the reason the other 2 miscarriages had been unknown.
After a few more Drs. and no answers, I went to a fertility clinic to see a reproductive endocrinologist.
After talking over my history, the Dr immediately order more testing and not just on me but on Greg as well.
I had more hormone testing done, ultrasounds and Greg and I both had genetic testing done. Greg also had his sperm tested. All my hormones and such came back normal and good. Greg and I both had our genetic tests come back normal, no abnormalities detected. However, Greg's sperm sample results were not perfect. All his numbers were good until they looked at the shape of the sperm. Only 2% were the normal shape. This number was lower than it should be but now we had discovered another reason for miscarriages. Abnormal shaped sperm can carry abnormal DNA and/or missing DNA.
This could be the reason why 2 out of 3 pregnancies had heartbeats and appeared normal until it got a stage where the DNA code was missing and then stopped growing.
So with all this new information, our Dr. recommended IVF (In-vitro fertilization). This would give us the best chance for full term pregnancy. We are not just doing traditional IVF either. We will be having the sperm that will fertilize any eggs hand picked, so the best shaped ones are used and then our resulting embryos will be frozen and genetically tested. These processes should gives us the best odds for a normal healthy pregnancy and baby. We plan on only transferring one embryo, so there will be no risk of having multiples. Our Dr. is confident that one embryo is all we will need and transferring more than one is a risk that we don't need to take a this time.
With all the technological advances that are involved in this whole process an added bonus is that if we have more than one good quality embryo, we will able to keep any extra frozen so that if/when we decided to have a second baby (or for some reason the first one doesn't take), we will only have to go through the transfer process and not the whole egg retrieval process too. Another bonus is that if there is more than one good quality embryo we will get to choose which embryo will be transferred, and with having the embryos genetically tested we will know the sex of the baby at the time of transfer.
I think that about explains what we are doing and why. Here is the breakdown of how long this process will take:
Week of Sept 9th-baseline appt (ultrasound to check ovaries and uterus)
beginning injection medications-stimulating hormones to make multiple eggs grow
Week of Sept 16th: daily/every other day ultrasound and blood test to monitor egg growth
Week of Sept 23rd: Egg retrieval, once eggs have reach the appropriate size
fertilization will occur the day eggs are retrieved
Once eggs are retrieved and have been fertilized, we will know how many embryos we have and then all will tested. After testing we will know how many good quality embryos we have and how many we will have to choose from and freeze.
Transfer of embryo is tentatively scheduled for Late Nov or Early Dec.
Once my body has been able to rid its self of all the stimulating hormones and testing has been completed.
I'll be trying my best to update on the progress of everything! We are hopeful, excited and little nervous to be going through this process and that this all be worth the effort in the end.
Courtney
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