Ollie-bear is one! Today our little nephew Oliver turned one! We had a fun weekend full of lots of birthday festivities in honor of our little smiley guy. Friday night I watched Oliver and his big brother so their parents could get some things ready for the party. Saturday they had a party with family and then today they hosted a party for friends. Oliver didn't really know what all the fuss was about - but he definitely enjoyed eating his smash cakes and was interested in his birthday gifts after his big brother opened them. So hard to believe he's already a year old - but I'm not sure what we did without him. He started really walking a few weeks back - so he definitely doesn't seem like a baby anymore.
IVF Buddy Update: After many days of playing phone tag, I was FINALLY able to chat with my IVF Buddy tonight. She flew out to Denver, Colorado last Wednesday for the last few steps of their in-vitro cycle. Her husband flew out on Thursday to join her. It was so nice to hear her voice and hear how things have been going out there. Since she's been there, most mornings she just has to go in for ultrasounds (to check on the follicles) and do some blood tests. Other than that, she's been doing her daily shots and they've been enjoying what Denver has to offer. She actually has a good friend in the area - so I'm sure that's nice! They were targeting to do the egg retrieval on Tuesday - but based on today's ultrasound it sounds like they may push it back to Thursday to give some more follicles some time to grow. I think she said that they have about 16 follicles and that the largest one is measuring at 20 (which is the size when they're really close to releasing the egg) - the rest of the follicles are ranging in size from 8 to 17. So exciting! :) She said that she feels more relaxed with this round and thinks it may be because they've already been through a cycle before. We are all hoping and praying that this cycle will be the one for them! Please keep my IVF Buddy and her hubby (Mr. RBM) in your thoughts/prayers. :)
This Week: I'm excited for this week and looking forward to re-doing the blue dye test and seeing what the ultrasound shows on Thursday. I can't remember how many follicles they were tracking when we did our two rounds of this procedure back in 2010. Since I only took Clomid - I definitely will not have 16 follicles like my IVF Buddy. For in-vitro, they want to get as many eggs as possible and they do the fertilization outside of the body. However, having that many follicles and doing an artificial insemination would be very risky. At Oliver's birthday party, I was talking to some of our friends about it and I said something like, "Yeah, we're just doing artificial insemination...." and my friend was like, "Oh... just artificial insemination, huh?" :) I guess after doing in-vitro, it just makes this procedure seem so simple - but I need to keep in mind that this procedure is still kind of a big deall. I mean, how sweet would it be if things went our way this cycle? :)
In closing I'd like to ask for prayers for my IVF Buddy, the Boles family, and Ozzle family throughout this week!
My husband and I got married in 2005 and tried to start our family back in January 2008. We started our 1st round of in-vitro in December 2010 - which is when this blog was started. Despite a near perfect cycle, it resulted in a negative pregnancy test in February 2011. We were fortunate to get 6 extra embryos from that cycle that were frozen. In March 2011 we started a Frozen Embryo Transfer cycle. Despite another great cycle (on paper), all 6 of our frozen embryos had to be thawed to get 2 good ones for transfer - which failed to result in a pregnancy. In 2012, we took the first half of the year off and then tried a couple rounds of IUI with and without fertility shots - still no baby. In 2013, we did our 2nd round of in-vitro with my sister offering to be our gestational carrier. We ended up transferring 2 embryos into each of us and were blessed to welcome 4 babies in October 2013.