2 Beautiful Embabies transferred

What a great journey this IVF cycle has been. Aside from being very sore from the retreival everything has gone so smoothly. Today October 21st we went in for our transfer. We were told by the lab tech that we now had 6 eggs instead of 5. We transferred the two best lookings ones. They are a...

Grade A 8 cell embryo
Grade B 7 cell embryo

We are culturing 3 out to blastocyst stage, and they will be frozen for future cycles should this second attempt not work and/or we want to have more children.

Thank you so much everyone from the bottom of our hearts for your support. Some people ask, why would you share something so personal, with your friends, and family? Well....if our story helps one woman struggling with infertility, reassures her she's not alone, and provides a wealth of information, gives her hope and courage....well then I've done my part. No one should ever have to struggle with this, and it was from other women going thru the same thing that gave me strength and courage, and I just wanted to pass that same support on!

Thank you again everyone God Bless!

Fertilization Report #2 is in

Out of the 7 eggs that retreived, all 7 were mature. They ICSI'd all 7, and of that 7 we had 5 and maybe a 6th one fertilized! We are so very excited as this time things are very different from the last! Last time we only got 6 eggs, and only one fertilized.

We go in Sunday morning for a 3 day transfer, and will transfer the two of the best looking embryo's! =) The rest we will let go to Blast stage and freeze for future cycles should this one fail as well. Thanks everyone for being so supportive! It means so much to Bob and I!

Keeping our fingers crossed!!!

Thanks everyone!! We will update you all when we have things to update!

Retreival #2

Surgery was this morning at 9:00....we just got home around 2pm. Had some minor complications...low b/p, and major cramping after surgery. Dr. said she had to really dig at the ovaries, so she wasn't surprised I was in alot of pain after this retreival.

The last surgery in August I had little to no pain afterwards no issues...not so lucky this time. The good news however is this....

We retreived 7 eggs this time around vs. 6 the last time. Yay lucky number 7!!! Today is our one year "7" month wedding anniversary =0) Also, we were advised we would not be doing straight IVF this time. Some of you may recall that my RE tried to get ICSI approved, but we were told we needed less than 4 mature eggs...well we got it approved for this cycle...due to other factors that presented in today's surgery. We will get our fetilization report tommorrow.

ICSI For those of you who aren't familiar with IVF vs. ICSI. With IVF the sperm, and egg are just placed in a pietrie dish to "do their thing" together. With ICSI the best looking sperm is selected, and then injected directly into the egg, to give fertilization a nudge, or a lil push as they say.

Thanks everyone for the well wishes, and we are praying this is really our cycle!

For now I am just trying to get my pain under control, it is not fun! Every movement at the moment feels like someone is stabbing me! I can return to work tommorrow, I might not be up to my usual self, but I guess that is to be expected.We'll update ya'll when we know more cross your fingers all seven turn into Embies for us to transfer on Sunday =0)

Oh yeah and I should mention Bob gave up the interview of a lifetime today. He should have been interviewing Eric Clapton this morning, instead he was with me...now that is love! Our running joke is that if we do get pregnant, and if we have a girl we will name in Leila, or a boy Eric...

We go back to Baystate Thursday morning 8:00am for my 9:00 egg retreival surgery =0) Hopefully this time we will have lots of eggs to select from! I have responded remarkably well this time around of Stimming. So tonight at 9:00pm I'll do my HCG injection, which will hopefully be our last for the next few years! Wish us lots of luck we're going to need it, especially after how the last go around went! We'll go back in either Sunday the 21st or Tuesday the 23rd for a 3 day or 5 day embryo transfer. Last time we only had one embryo to transfer, and hopefully this time we'll have more!

Thanks everyone for your support and prayers, it really means alot to Bob and I =0) We'll keep you all updated as we go along!!

Bob's ESPN article

This is waaaaaaay to funny...Especially with the fact that we'll hopefully be pregnant by next month!

Here is the link to the entire article

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn
/page2/story?page=simmons/071011

The portion Bob made it into was the reader "Questions and/or Comment, Answers portion. Bob's comment made it into his column, with a nice long response. He showed me this morning and I was CRACKING up...we've had this discussion a million times for those that don't want to go to the article to read here is the relevant portion of the article. Gotta love Bob!!!!! =0)


Q: Here's my plan for my first kid. I have the entire 2004 Red Sox playoffs on DVD, as well as all the Patriots' Super Bowl DVD's. What if, instead of Dora and Barney, I prop my kid up in front of Tom and Papi? Hell, my kid may come into this world just before the NBA playoffs. What a way to start. This cannot fail; this will be revolutionary. All I need from you is a way to convince my wife this is a good idea.
--Bob, Pittsfield, Mass.

SG: Convince you? I'm beating you to it. There's no rhyme or reason to any of the shows aimed for kids under 18 months old. They have only one goal: to juggle as many weird colors, sights and sounds as possible to keep the kids' attention and eventually give them ADD.

For instance, our daughter went through a huge "Teletubbies" phase that ended only when we sent her to a Teletubbies rehab center. What are the Teletubbies, you ask? Multicolored, androgynous, possibly homicidal Muppets with speech impediments and farting problems who pop out of the ground after getting instructions from a smiling baby whose face has been superimposed on the sun, then jump around, wobble into each other and giggle for no reason. Twice per show, they break away from the Teletubbies to show a group of English kids learning from a female teacher named Debbie who has scary Austin Powers-type teeth. Then the show ends with the Tubbies popping back into the ground as the smiling sun baby grins in approval. That's the whole show.

So here's my question: If I'm going to overload my impressionable child with a show that inundates him or her with colors, weird sounds, strange noises and inexplicable movements, wouldn't a baseball or basketball game make just as much sense? Would I rather have my little boy dreaming of hanging out with Tinky Winky and Dispy ... or KG and Big Papi? Bob from Pittsfield, it's you and me. Let's do this.