Eggs Over Easy: Our Christmas Miracle!

I eluded to the content of this post a few days ago, but today I am going all in! Santa was good this year, but God was way better!

We are beyond excited to announce that..

We're Pregnant! I have dreamed over and over about writing this post and the day has finally come where we are ready to share. We are so grateful that our third round of IVF has been successful! We feel incredibly blessed to be moving forward in this pregnancy knowing there are so many others out there struggling with infertility. We will not be taking a single second of this for granted.

We began our third cycle way back in September. On October 10th, 2013, we transferred two beautiful embryos. We began testing 6dp5dt and on got our first positive on 7dp5dt.

I'm not going to lie.. I was a bit obsessed with testing.

This was the test I took the morning of our first beta.

Our first beta blood test was on October 23rd. Thirteen long days after our transfer. My hCg levels were at an astonishing 680! At this point we were unsure if we were having one or two. Two days later I returned for our second beta. Our numbers didn't quite double, but they increased by exactly 66% to 1078. Dr. B ordered one more beta three days later. This time our numbers more than doubled! We were beyond ecstatic, but still reserved considering how our first cycle ended. Of course, I was paranoid of ectopic and every other bad thing you read about on Dr. Google.

Two weeks later, on November 6th, we had our first ultrasound at 6 weeks. We saw one beautiful little heartbeat fluttering away at 120bpm! My tubes and everything else were deemed clear and we were told everything looked great. We had two more ultrasounds over the next two weeks. Both showed continued growth (though the baby was consistently measuring about three days behind) and a very strong heartbeat at 166bpm during week 7 and 175bpm during week 8. On November 20th we graduated from Shady Grove and moved on to my new OB.

We had one additional ultrasound at my first OB appointment (9 weeks) that showed a growing baby and a strong heartbeat. We were even able to see the arms and legs beginning to grow. Baby was quite active and didn't want to stay still during this one. He or she took our breath away!

I have since had another appointment (12 weeks) with the OB. Everything felt great. I gained four pounds during that three week time and we were able to hear a very strong heartbeat.

What does this all mean? I am currently 13w4d and our due date is June 28th. We have known about this pregnancy for over two months and have managed to keep it a secret from everyone but our immediate family and a few very close friends. We wanted to keep this one between us as a result of our last two cycles. Again, I posted about this a few days ago.

As far as symptoms, I have been lucky. I am incredibly tired, but absolutely nothing to complain about! I have not had much morning sickness.. as long as my belly is full. I feel like I am a bottomless pit and eat constantly. I even wake up in the middle of the night for snacks. And to pee. I did end up with the stomach flu at 12 weeks. I was not able to keep anything down, including ice chips. I began to show signs of dehydration, so we made a trip to the emergency room. I ended up getting two full bags of fluid and the doctor checked the heartbeat to ensure everything was ok with baby. It took me a few days to get back into my normal eating habits and that did cause some pretty constant nausea. Somehow, I still managed to gain weight during this time, so in the end all was well.

We currently have our 16 week appointment set up in January and then we have an appointment set up in early February with the Maternal Fetal Specialist. The is the only genetic testing we elected to do. We will have a 3d/4d ultrasound to check things up close and personal and also find out the gender. We declined all other genetic testing because it will not change anything with this pregnancy. I also have incredibly high amounts of anxiety (due to our past experiences) and I feel like that would only make it worse. We did purchase a home fetal heart doppler and we love being able to listen to that precious little heartbeat on a daily basis.

I plan to do weekly posts to show updated bump photos and keep our family and friends up to date with all that is going on. I don't want to go overboard because I know all to well what it is like to be on the other side of this fence.. so I feel weekly updates will be the best. All of my weekly updates will be one week behind. For example, I will post week 12 at the end of week 13.

Thank you all for your continued prayers and support throughout this entire process. Every ounce of heartache, every failed cycle, every physical ache and pain, every needle and injection received, every tube of blood taken, every bruise on my body, every pill taken, every mile driven, every tear shed, every penny spent, and every drop of blood and sweat has made this all worthwhile.

Merry Christmas from the three of us! And Sophie and Rooney, too.