The long version of our story....

D and I have been together since 2000 and married since 2008. We waited this long to get married because we wanted a big party and we wanted to pay for it ourselves so we waited until we could and then life got in the way of things and we ended up having a small ceremony with 13 people instead. Like many people have said in movies "i want marriage not a wedding" and thank God my wish is true to this day. I am the luckiest girl alive to have found my soul mate so even if our wedding was not what we had planned the most important thing is that we are in love and happy.

D wanted babies before I did, I am the rational one and I figured if we cannot afford them how can we have them. So we waited and in Jan 2008 we started getting ready and TTC. The agony of trying month after month and nothing happening was heartbreaking. We tried everything people would suggest, from getting drunk to just relax to taking my temperature every morning for months on end. We both started every month with hope and dreams of a baby born 9 months later and at the end of each month we were in tears. It was really tough on our relationship too. Sex became something we did on a schedule and it hurt us. It took us a holiday 1000s of miles from home in Cape Cod for us to break down and "get real". We could not go on like this. We decided to take a break from TTC until March and see how things went and then in March we would go see a RE. By the time March rolled around I felt broken. I didn't know why we could not get pregnant and I blamed myself for it not working... well the blame was about to go to another level!

After many blood tests, sperm samples and a really painful HSG later we discovered that one of my tubes is closed and the other is damaged, that D has a good quantity of spermies but that they are a bit on the slow side due to his thyroid condition but nothing that requires intervention. The problem was me. Of course we were not getting pregnant... my tubes are blocked. We don't know why they are blocked or what caused it but she suspects endometrosis but I refused to do any operations. Our only option was IVF. It took us a long long time to get used to the idea. I have always been the type of person that advocated adoption and here I was considering IVF. I felt like a traitor. We talked about it and talked about it and decided to try it and see if it worked. We currently live in a country which does not allow adoption so we would have had to move to even consider it so that made considering IVF easier. Before our first IVF cycle she sent me for the usual Day 3 blood work and u/s. The results that came back were shocking. My FSH was too high for someone my age. So she sent me for a AMH test to see how my ovarian reserve looked like and it looked "poor/diminishing". How could this be??? I was 28 years old at the time!! How could this be happening to us??? I hated my body. Hated the fact that it was letting me down and at the same time I blamed myself for what was happening. I kept saying to D that if he had found someone else he would have had kids by now... it was a hard fact to accept for me. D of course was super supportive and was there to always make me feel like we were in this together and that he didn't want anyone else but me.

Our RE told us that given the numbers it'd better if we moved fast with IVF as we don't know how many chances of getting pregnant we really have. We did IVF in September 2009. We had to go for the super strong 6 vials a day of Menopur a day Microdose Flare Protocol. The whole cycle went like a dream. D learned how to do al of the injections and even if they were IMs he did so well. The ER went smoothly and we got 11 eggs. We transferred two beautiful looking 3 day old embryos. 12 days later we went for the beta and the news that it did not work literally broke our hearts. I went from being so sad about it to being angry at my body that failed me so miserably yet again. I left all the support groups I joined during the last year as I needed some time to think things over. D was also devastated as he was more hopeful than I was and was really shocked it did not work. The thought of never having our own children started to become a real possibility.

We waited a month or so then went to speak to the doctor who was as surprised as we were that it did not work. She yet again mentioned doing a laparoscopy to see if there are any blockages that could have prevented the embryos from implanting. The idea that, on top of all that is already "wrong" with me, there might yet another issue scared us. We thought long and hard and decided to refuse an operation. The options left to us we doing a FET or a fresh IVF cycle. Given we had 4 frozen babies (2 of which were of a good quality and 2 of which possibly wouldn't make it) and given the fact that my ovarian reserve is diminishing we decided to do "save" those embryos and do another fresh cycle in January 2010. New year, new start. We spent the last few months of 2009 wishing it away and hoping and dreaming that 2010 would bring us our baby.

Cycle number 2 went wrong from the beginning. The injections hurt more and I was bleeding and bruising like crazy. I was not responding well to the meds so my RE had to increase the dosage. When it came to the ER I remembered from last time that it was not painful and that I would have heard all sort of funny stories afterwards. Of course this time around it all went wrong. My left ovary was hidden away so she had to go through my cervix (this is was D told me afterwards) and at around this stage I started coming around and I told everyone that I was waking up. They immediately gave me another set of drugs and as a result I was out for 2 hours after the ER. I remember waiting for D in the waiting room and drooling on myself. They retrieved 10 eggs. We didn't get to see my eggs meeting D's swimmers this time but the nurses told me they would record it for me. D thought that was a good omen. This time we insisted on a 5 day transfer. By the 5th day we went back for the ET and we had 2 super start blasts that we decided to put back. This time the ET was less magical than the first time but the fact that we saw the blasts going inside my uterus made it a good omen for me. I also got a removable tattoo with a Good Luck charm on my belly... maybe that's what did it! LOL 3 days after the transfer I got the first BFP. The first one I have ever gotten.... the one that changed our life around.

15 weeks later and here I am pregnant with our miracle baby whom I am so in love with. D is going to be a daddy in October and I a mommy and life is just AMAZING for us... We got the most amazing of miracles and we feel terribly blessed to be have been granted our wish... Life seems filled with possibilities again...Peanut is due the 10th of the 10th month 2010... For the last two years whenever I looked at the clock I kept on seeing double digits I looked at my digital clock and I thought it would be a sign we would have twins eventually but instead it was a sign that we would have our miracle baby on the 10/10/2010... life has it's way of telling to keep hope.

So this is our story in a nutshell.. my blog went from being about hope of a pregnancy to living a pregnancy and what it is like to being pregnant from my prospective of course. I hope my story gives hope to those lady still navigating their ways in the land of IF...