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.