Time to make some eggs!

Well the time has arrived.  I am fully engaged in daily shots, pills, vitamins and prayer, in preparation to undergo IVF next week.  NEXT WEEK! 

Arrival of Meds!

I am half-way through taking Follistim, which is what matures multiple eggs at once.  So my ovaries are awake!  Praise God I have not had any side effects, etc from any of these meds.  Praying this continues.

I can even give the shots to myself because Eric had to leave town for several days & left me no choice :)  So I practiced on an orange & only gave myself one bruise.  I managed, but I am definitely no nurse!  Luckily the needles are little & really aren't that bad.

We leave for St. Louis on Sunday and will be there all week for monitoring (ultrasounds & bloodwork to check egg development & hormone levels).  The Egg Retrieval (I am put under & they take the eggs out of the ovaries) will be either Sept 14 or 15.  Then Embryo Transfer (yay for good embryo's!) will be 3-5 days after that, depending how things mature.

We will also be celebrating our 4th anniversary on 9/13!  (2.5 yrs of that trying for babies).  So I am feeling really good that this will be a great trip overall!   We are having dinner at an Italian place on "The Hill"...an old Italian neighborhood in St. Louis.  So that should be good. 

We got a hotel that does breakfast & dinners, and we have a little kitchen.  So we don't have to eat out every single meal hopefully.  The Cardinals are playing away all week (boo!), but we will find some other fun stuff to do!  The Galleria Mall is conveniently right near our hotel :)  There is a hot air balloon festival going on, a jazz festival, and the zoo is free & nearby also.

I am very nervous, but over-riding that with excitement and hope.  God has brought us to this point & we are following His direction.  Any time I start to "what if" or get scared, I just pray pray pray!  This just has to work!  Bring on the twins! :)

So please if you remember, pray for us next week.  For safe travel, that all goes well, that we get  quality embryo's to put in, for Dr. Ahlering, and that I won't have any side effects or reactions to things.  Also for our nerves, that we won't be scared/stressed/ nervous and our minds will be at ease.  We are totally dependent on God for how things play out and trusting in whatever that is. 

I have a playlist I created to keep my mind in the right place and am taking some good reading.  It will be nice to have the week to relax & not have any distractions to cause any stress.

We appreciate all the prayers & positive thoughts our way!  I know they will pay off!!

Through this, I remember Hannah:

Hannah's Prayer

Hannah was a very ordinary woman who lived in an extraordinary time in Israel's history. She became an integral part of that history though at the time she had no such thought. The time when Judges ruled over Israel was almost over and the Kings were coming. Hannah lived right before this transition occurred; in fact, her prayer helped to usher it in. Hannah was married to a man named Elkanah who dearly loved her but he also had another wife. The other wife, Pininnah, had children but not Hannah - "the Lord had closed her womb." (1 Samuel 1:5) All of Hannah's thoughts centered on being childless and her husband could not comfort her. She endured great provocation and ridicule from Pininnah for her barrenness and she continually sought the Lord to remove her reproach and give her a male child.

Each year Elkanah took his family up to Shiloh to worship God and offer sacrifices because there was a tabernacle of the Lord there and priests who ministered at the temple. One year during this trip Hannah had a divine appointment with her God. She entered into the Lord's tabernacle to pray once again for her deepest need.

"And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish. Then she made a vow and said, 'O Lord of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head" (1 Samuel 1:10-11)

Hannah's Vow Remembered

Eli, the priest, observed her and saw such anguished behavior that he thought she was drunk and he rebuked her for it. When she explained that she was indeed not drunk but was pouring out her heart to the Lord, he said; "Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition which you have asked of Him." (I Samuel 1:17) Hannah left the temple "and her face was no longer sad" (verse 18) because she had given her all in prayer and had made a vow that would cost her the very thing she sought.
The Bible says that God then remembered Hannah; she did conceive and had a male child whom she named Samuel. Hannah also remembered the vow she made to the Lord and when Samuel was weaned she took him up to the temple and entrusted him into the hands of Eli, the priest who had overheard her prayer.

Hannah may have been an ordinary woman but Samuel was not an ordinary child. Even as a tiny boy Samuel began to hear the voice of God which the Bible says was rare in Israel at that time. He grew up and became the greatest prophet in Israel's history. He was a Judge over Israel; he anointed Saul as Israel's first king and then anointed David as king after Saul's disobedience disqualified him in God's eyes. Samuel's influence and power cannot be overestimated; he was a giant of a man that God used as a bridge between two epochs in the history of his chosen people. Two books of the Old Testament are named after him.

Thoughts

So I've been absent from this place, for a while.  Its not that life is boring by any means, but I just haven't felt like there is anything worthy of posting about quite honestly! 

Summer has arrived and I am very excited about that fact!  I love, love it.  Braum's came out with 7 new flavors of ice cream recently, one of which is Grape sherbet.  It. is. delicious.  And a Grape Freeze?  Forget about it.  My new summer indulgence.  Then I figured out I can order in the Jr. size so I don't totally compromise my eating healthy plan I'm attempting. 

My sister and I started a boot camp sort of thing back in April.  Its circuit training style & we go at 530 am three days a week.  I feel like I should be down a couple sizes because it is pretty hard, but I can't tell a difference.  Maybe its because I don't live on grilled chicken & vegetables.  Sorry peeps, but I have to enjoy life a little bit!  I can't give up everything all the time.  I am all about moderation!  I am working out very regularly 4-5 days a week, so hopefully its doing good somewhere in my body! 

Eric is coming along with his masters' program at OSU, he will be done next May, so the end is in sight!!  He doesn't have a summer class this year (thank you Lord), because he chose to do a 3 wk, 3 hr course during May.  So it was very intense for 3 weeks but he finished that last Friday so we finally have more free time on our hands this summer, or he does anyway which means I won't be as bored :) 

As for what's going on in the baby department, our 5th IUI we had back in Feb failed, shocking!  So we have been saving for IVF since then.  We are planning to take the bull by the horns here because I can't sit around another year (its been 2.5 yrs) with ZERO results or answers.  And I will be 35 this year, so time is not on my side.  Right now we are thinking about doing it in Aug or later this fall, we have to work around Eric's travel schedule.  Our Dr. here in Tulsa kind of partners with a clinic in St. Louis- the Sher Institute for Reproductive Medicine, or SIRM.  He has been friends with the Dr. there, Dr. Ahlering, for 25 years, and he & his wife had IVF done there, so he's been a patient as well.  Plus I have a couple of friends who have gone there also.  And I stalk the message boards and have been emailing with some others in Tulsa who are patients there now (and are pregnant), which has been helpful.

We had our initial free phone consult last week with Dr. Ahlering.  He talked to us for an hour & a half, which was awesome.  He is very passionate about his work and they are pretty high tech there, so we feel good about it.

I am still super nervous about going through it, all the meds, side effects, waiting, etc.  I just have to trust God has led us to this point for whatever reason, even if I don't understand why.  I'm hoping to at least get twins out of the deal so I will be DONE! :)  The timing isn't ours to decide, as much as I've tried to control it.  We've done everything we know to & can do.  I wasn't sure how I felt about IVF from a spiritual perspective, like its messing with nature, etc.  But then a friend said no matter how you get pregnant, that life & little miracle (now that I know all the detailed medical science & how much it takes for a healthy baby to happen-its a miracle!!) is from God, and He has blessed us with this technology & blessed the Dr's with the talent & knowledge.  So I feel better about it and am more calm.  And Eric feels very good about it & that this is what we're supposed to be doing.

I am just praying like heck right now that by some crazy miracle things will happen naturally and we won't have to do it :)  But if not, to be at peace that this is the right decision.  I'm getting close!  Its somewhat exciting that we have another option and we could be closer than ever to babies turning our world upside down :)  Which I gladly welcome! 

So if it occurs to you, any prayer in this dept for us is appreciated, and most of all that all will go well with no crazy, scary side effects. 

We may be in for a very memorable summer, which is scary but exciting at the same time!! :)

2012 so far!

So I haven't had much to share with the blogging world lately, sorry about that! I just don't feel like anything going on is post-worthy :) Not that this is...its more of a rambling post!

Eric & my dad just went skiing in Breckenridge with a group of my dad's friends from church. They had a great time!

We had a lovely Valentine's Day this week! I woke up to Disney Princess valentines all over the house that Eric had written one thing he loved about me on each of them. And then roses for each Valentine's we've been married (4). He got me Lady & the Tramp, which we watched that night...so good! And a new watch to workout with that counts calories, etc! We ate dinner at The Chalkboard in the Ambassador Hotel downtown. Super yummy! And I got flowers from my dad which I always love.
We just celebrated by baby sister's 31st birthday tonight. She is younger but still taller than me, and she is always so glowy & fabulous!


Two people told me this past week they thought I was 28, and I will definitely take that! :) Hence the 2 new skin creams I just bought hoping to keep it that way! One is a "BB" cream, or Beauty Balm. These are supposedly all the rage this year. We'll see! Its an Asian cream, but now American companies are coming out with their own. Here is some info if you're curious. I happened to see one for sale at Walgreens by Garnier Fructis, the first cheaper brand I've seen that has one, so I'm going to try it. It was $12 and I will be starting it asap. Reviews to come! If I don't like it, I will be trying the Clinique one next.

So other than skincare, Eric is in two classes this semester & very busy with those. Work travel has slowed down until May, so its been really nice having him home for this long! Work itself is going well for us both.

We are working on a couple of house projects, and recently got a new pantry put in, which has been great! We've had such a mild winter that my daffodils are blooming now and the tulips are coming up! I will be so sad when they are bloomed out before spring. Oh well, they are lovely too look at regardless.

Many of you know about our struggle to add to our little family. We have hit the 2 year mark and still no answers, we are still unexplained. We will be having our 5th IUI done in a couple weeks. This will be with a different Dr. than in the past and on different meds (injectables). Its also post-laparascopy, so I wanted to try it one more time. Even though the lap was clear, but I still have hope! We are doing everything we know to do, including praying our hearts out for this to happen without IVF. But if the road leads to that & we are at peace about it, we will do it. A new little life would make it worth it for sure. We just never expected this would be so hard! But, God has a plan and we are trusting it! We have so much to be grateful for right now anyway & God has blessed us SO much, I really can't complain :) And we have a really good feeling this will be our year!

Anyway, that is the latest in a nutshell---just plugging along & enjoying the ride!