Second round!

Well Monday we started the second round. Went to the IVF clinic last Friday for the baseline ultrasound and bloodwork. Uterus lining was 7mm which is good. I started the lupron injections Monday and everything is going well with that. Occasional headaches but nothing I can’t handle. Just excited that we are back at it and praying for success this time around.

Not looking forward to the estrogen and progesterone injections but I know this month is just going to fly by.

Stay tuned for future updates.
By for now.

GS – Jessica

What is today….. Today is a new day….

It has been a few weeks since updating on here but it just seemed like there wasn’t much to update on….

Last week I spoke with my IP’s and it was so nice to hear from them… They are optimistic that the next time around we will have a successful pregnancy… I too am very hopeful that we will have a success…. 

On the last transfer two healthy baby boy 6day embryos were transferred and neither of them made it to implantation 😦

The IP’s along with my husband and I have been talking a lot about what the next step is… All of us want to do whatever will increase our odds of having a successful transfer/pregnancy.  

In the past I was not open to the thought of a 3 embryo transfer but after the unsuccessful transfer I now have a different perspective… Knowing that the embryos that are remaining (7) may not be as great of quality as the last ones were I really want to do whatever will increase the chance to at least give us one healthy baby for our IP’s… The thought of three taking does somewhat scare me but I am willing to take that chance if it means we are successful…. 

Should all three stick we have all agreed that a reduction will be absolutely necessary… Is this what I want, absolutely not but it would be necessary as the health of the babies and myself would be at jeopardy if a reduction were not to happen…. I am sure you are thinking “How can someone abort a perfectly healthy baby?”  Well I was in that same mentality a few months ago and am pro life all the way but also know that if it weren’t to happen the health of all three would be at risk…. 

So long story short I believe we will be doing a 3 embryo transfer on the next cycle but still waiting on conformation… 

Aunt Flo came on 8/27/14, exactly 7 days after stoping medication…. Today marks the 6th day of my cycle and today I begin to take the Birth Control Pills once again to get the next cycle started.  

I am tentatively set to begin medication on 9/28/14.  Then a tentative transfer is set for the first week of November…. 

I will keep you all posted as things progress….

 

GS – Jessica Guzman

BETA Big fat NO :(

As I lay here in bed tonight thinking about the results that were delivered today by Dr. Arnold’s office I feel sad.

We got the call around 430pm! I had to wait the entire day thinking about what the answer was going to be. Let me tell you it was agonizing. Before they were even able to call the IP’s texted me with the bad news.

I lay here thinking what went wrong, what did I do wrong, and why didn’t it work?????

I knew there was a chance this could be the outcome but it was definitely not what I expected.

I feel somewhat like a failure and can only imagine how the IP’s are feeling. They had to wait up into the wee night hours to receive this news. I am sure their entire day is going to be a dark one today. I feel so sad that their little boys did not stick and we now have a delay in making their dreams come true of having a baby.

I want nothing more that to become pregnant for them!!!!!!

I wish they could just go back in now and transfer again. Like tomorrow morning. But unfortunately that is not how it works.

I will know in a few days what the plan is for the future. As of right now I am stopping all medication and waiting for Aunt Flo to come. As soon as she visits then I will get more direction from the IVF center on what the next steps are.

Tonight is very weird not administering the medication. This has become part of our life for the last few months and it just feels very strange and out of the ordinary not to take anything :-(.

Well until next time.

GS – Jessica

BETA Day!

Today is the day, the day we find out if the little men decided to stick to my uterus. I got up pretty early and headed to the lab for my draw. Now I sit her waiting for the news.

I know that there is a possibility that they didn’t take and the thought makes me sad. I am praying for good news but preparing myself for bad news as well.

I will update as soon as I hear from the doctor. Probably later this afternoon.

GS – Jessica

Blood Work Day!

Wow. As I sit here in the lobby waiting to get my blood drawn to check my progesterone and estrogen levels I have all of these thoughts running through my head. It is hard to believe that there is possibly two beautiful baby boys growing inside my belly.

It is just sooo hard to believe that this could be a possibility.

I can’t hardly wait to have the pregnancy blood test done. It will be so nice to know whether or not the embryos took. I never thought this wait would be so agonizing.

I took it really easy all weekend and haven’t really had any signs of any effects from the transfer. I did experience a few cramps last night and this morning when I got up to use the restroom but no bleeding or discharge.

The question now is to do or not to do a home pregnancy test (hpt).

I know they are very inconclusive but it would be interesting to see what it comes back as. Maybe I will wait till the end of this week. Maybe not 🙂 we shall see.

GS – Jessica

Transfer Day……

Wow… Today was the big day… TRANSFER DAY….

We headed down to San Diego last night to stay the night at a local hotel so that we wouldn’t have any problems getting there on time and to try to relax… There is usually a lot of traffic on the freeways so this was nice to not have that worry….

The kids travelled with us down to SD, they were just as excited and anxious as we were. 🙂

Got a call Thursday night that our appointment was being moved from 9:30am to 10:30am as the PGD testing was not going to be done when expected on the embryos…

We all had a hard time sleeping and woke up very early… We left the hotel and started heading to the IVF center.. We stopped and picked up a few bottles of water since I needed to have a full bladder before arriving for the transfer… We drove along the coast and checked out the beautiful waves and surfers for a little bit since we had some time to kill…It was a beautiful morning and everything was perfect….

Around 9:45 we headed to the clinic, we arrived pretty early so we just sat in the truck and played games on our phones… My bladder felt like it was going to explode.. I felt like I drank wayyy toooo much water but I knew I couldn’t use the restroom either… 😦

The time had come, time to go into the office… We headed in and met Angie from APM in the lobby.. She came along for the transfer and I was very excited to have her there with us… She brought me the nicest bed rest package, it was so thoughtful of them…

Before I knew it I was being called up to get checked in… I headed back by myself to the dressing room and stripped down and got into the gown… It felt surreal… I couldn’t believe the day had come.. It seemed like it wasnt ever going to happen but here we were… They had me take two muscle relaxers to calm my nerves and relax me.. Boy did it ever 🙂

In came my husband and Angie.. I was so thankful to have sooo much support during such an exciting time…. Dr. Arnold explained everything to all of us and my husband took video to share with the IP’s…. He was able to watch the embryos be implanted through the catheter… He said it was pretty amazing…

I was in some discomfort since I had to go to the restroom soooo bad but other than that I didn’t really feel anything else…Maybe a little pressure and then it was all done..
They implanted two healthy baby boy embryos…

Now the next waiting game starts… The pregnancy test by blood 🙂  Cant hardly wait… I am sure this time will go by very very slow since we are all so anxious….

Time to relax and enjoy some bed rest, lots of tv, computer, phone and veggie’ing out….

Thank you for all of the prayers and continue to pray that these little guys stick like super glue 🙂

Until next time…

GS – Jessica

Fun in the sun!

Today was just an awesome day with our little family and one of my best friends who came to visit with us.

We woke up and started the day off with a kayaking trip to the middle of the bay for a few hours. We had a nice lunch out in the water. It was so relaxing.

                

This was the most fun we have had in a long time…

 

       

 

After some fun in the water we headed to the swimming pool where the hubs and kids played for a few hours. I on the other hand layed out to improve my sun tan. :-). It felt so good to just relax and not think for a few hours.

 

            

 

My best friend showed up so we decided to head back to the bay water and try paddle boarding. This has been on my bucket list for a few years and I can finally say we did it. :-). It was sooooo much fun. The kids picked it up pretty quick.

      

 

 

A little more swimming at the pool won’t hurt anyone right….

 

    

 

Then we headed out for dinner and some s’mores by the Bon fire.

      

 

         

 

       

 

     

 

What a fun night for all of us. Definitely one for the memory book 🙂
Good times.

GS – Jessica

How Thick is Your Lining?

My lining is thick. How thick is yours? 🙂

Well today was the big appointment where we found out if all of the medication was working its magic.

I am not going to lie, I was a tad but nervous. I mean I have been following the specific directions of the doctor but I guess I have just read so many other blogs where people talk about their body not responding to them and I was just hoping that wasn’t going to be our case.

The hubs and I got up nice and early and got ready to head out. The kids stayed at the hotel and slept in. Little did we know, the IVF center was 7 miles from the La Costa resort where we were staying. It was pretty awesome. It only took us about 10 minutes to get there.

We arrived right on time, as we waited in the lobby I begun to think that after all of this we were going to get bad news. We went to out ultrasound room, I got undressed and in came the doctor and her nurse. The doctor is somewhat dry but her nurse is such a sweet heart. They performed the vaginal ultrasound and Dr. Arnold was very pleased with my progress. I measured in at 14.6 which is very good from what I understand. Yeaaaahhhh then they drew blood 😦 never fun being poked. The labs came back perfect as well which was double good news.

This is a picture of the uterus lining which is looking just as it is supposed to 🙂

 

Blood Draws are never fun… But it is what it is and during this process it happens a lot…

What a relief. As soon as we got back in the car I immediately texted the IP’s to deliver the great news. They were just as excited as we were :-).

We headed back to the resort to pick up the kiddos and got ready to go to breakfast and head to our next stop on our mini vacation.

Breakfast was at an awesome place called the Broken Yolk. Wow this food was the best so far. Definitely going back sometime.

After breakfast we headed to the next resort called Paradise Point Resort. This place is amazing. It is located next to Sea World on Mission Bay. We got an amazing room right on the bay with a fire pit outside. It was perfect for a weekend getaway. We went swimming for a few hours then headed back to our room to prepare for our fancy dinner at “Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse”. I absolutely love this place and the kids do now as well. If you haven’t ever been and love good food it’s must!

This is the beautiful view from our resort room… Yes it is amazing…

We went for a little walk before our dinner to check out all of the cool ships on the dock…

A beautiful sunset never gets old……

This was such a fun time eating dinner watching the sunset…

The kids had an awesome time and even got dessert at the end of the night 🙂

 

 

Our next step in our surrogacy journey is a follow up ultrasound next Friday. The transfer day is coming soooo fast.

Until next time.

GS – Jessica

Fun times with the kids!

Today was an awesome day. The kids had a blast. We woke up bright and early (10am) lol. Got all dressed up and headed out to grab a bite to eat before heading to the Del Mar Race Track for some horse races.

On our way to Del Mar I looked on Yelp for a good breakfast/brunch spot and found a place called “Snooze”. Their food was amazing. I especially loved the fresh squeezed grapefruit juice. We were all nice and full and off to the races we went.

Del Mar is a family tradition that I felt necessary to teach our kids about. As a young kid my grandma (RIP) would take me to the races and taught me how to read the odds and bet.  She would place my bet for me and if I won she would let me keep the cash 🙂 I always loved our trips there.

The kids picked up on the racing stuff pretty quick. McKayla won $7 on one ticket so she was very excited.

         
Yes, he won some money and was pretty happy.. Only about $40 but hey off $2 that isn’t bad..

 

Watching the horses come out for a race is always the fun part… Kids really enjoyed this part of the day 🙂

           

This was such a fun day with the kids… Definitely going to try to make it out again soon.

 

 

After a fun day of races we took the kids to a popular skate park they had been wanting to go to for a while. They had a lot of fun there too.

After all that fun in the sun we ended our day with some night swimming and an easy store bought chicken dinner and some s’mores.

Tomorrow is our big Dr. appointment. Hoping for some good news.

GS – Jessica

Vacation Time!

Well the weekend came and went. Now we are starting our mini vacation with the kids from now through Sunday. This should be a lot of fun. We always like to plan one semi big trip for the kids while they are on summer break.
This year the fun is taking place somewhat close to home in the heart of San Diego.

We will be staying a few nights at the beautiful La Costa Resort where we plan to do a lot of swimming and relaxing. The kids are very excited.

This was our view as soon as we got to the pool 🙂 Enjoyed the sun for a couple of hours…

We had the perfect room with a nice balcony to sit on and people watch… Pretty awesome!
I had to pack enough medication for the 5 days. This made me nervous as I am a creature of habit and having to do the “Big” shots away from home scares me.

Oh well. I know my hubs can handle it. He is a champ. :-). I am very thankful for his help and wouldn’t know what to do without him….

Little did we know the resort we will be staying at is very close to the IVF center. This will be nice and convenient for our appointment Friday morning.

Happy Wednesday!

GS – Jessica