Actually, it started long before the box. Let me just do a quick recap from the beginning.
I remember one day back in early 2003 when Matt and I had been trying for about four months to get pregnant for the first time, and I was watching A Baby Story on TLC. The show caused me to have a little bit of a breakdown because I was sure I would never get pregnant. Because you know, we had been trying for a whole four months. That little episode seems extremely hilarious to me now. It ended up taking a total of 20 months and one miscarriage before I finally got pregnant with Ella on my first round of taking the fertility drug Clomid.
Now for some reason, I thought that trying to get pregnant again after I had Ella would be a breeze. I guess I figured I had paid my dues or something? Again, I'm laughing at myself here. At least eight rounds of Clomid (I lost count), three IUIs, two miscarriages and one chemical pregnancy later, that theory was blown right out of the water. Don't forget to throw a cross-country move into the mix as well, meaning I had to find new doctors that I liked and trusted in the midst of all this.
That brings us to this mysterious box. When my last IUI failed, Matt and I decided to move to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) because frankly, we were both tired of doing the same thing over and over again without success. This is the box I had delivered to me that contained all the medications for my IVF cycle, including a ridiculous number of needles. I was a little worried about what I was getting myself into when I opened up that box. But the bottom line is that after countless doctor visits and procedures, not to mention 78 injections (29 given to myself and 49 given to me by Matt), I can finally say:
I'm pregnant.
During my IVF cycle, I had 19 of my eggs retrieved. 17 of those eggs were mature. 10 of those mature eggs actually fertilized. And because of my multiple miscarriages, I also opted to do a special procedure called PGD to test those 10 embryos for common chromosomal abnormalities. When the results of the PGD testing came back, only one of the embryos was genetically normal. What a miracle that one embryo turned out to be! Matt was excited because that one was embryo #3, which is Matt's lucky number for a variety of reasons. And it really did turn out to be a lucky little embryo:
After all the disappointments I've had, I didn't let myself get excited about this pregnancy at first, but now that I've seen a heartbeat on ultrasound 5 times and heard it in on the doppler twice, I am finally letting myself believe it's true. I'm 13 weeks today and due on March 19, 2008. Although it seems like I've been through a lot to get here, I know many women who have had to go through much more than I have and still have not been able to get pregnant or start the family that they so dearly want. It makes me feel like I've had it easy. I am tremendously blessed.
I'm so excited to finally share my news with the world, and the cool thing is that since we did PGD, we have known the gender of this baby since 5 days after conception! But before I reveal that news, indulge me by voting in this little poll just for fun, okay?