17 Week Update!

It’s been two months since I updated my blog…long time right?! There has been so much that has gone on in the past two months. I have honestly been too afraid to update this just in case something went wrong or something happened. I didn’t want to have some great post about how things were going well and have to back track. It’s funny how even when everything you have been trying to so hard to get is right there…you can still be so afraid every single second that it will be taken away. I have struggled quite a bit to enjoy what I have been given. I have been terrified to get too excited or believe that it’s real because I didn’t want to be disappointed when it was all taken away from me.

I have yet to start decorating the baby’s room. I haven’t started buying any baby toys, or clothes, or diapers. Other than what my best friend has SO GRACIOUSLY lent me from her baby boy (I’m talking boxes of stuff!)- I don’t have anything of my own. Before we got pregnant I had actually bought a few things, a stuffed animal, a few outfits, and just random things here and there. But since we go pregnant, I have not bought a single item for baby. Again, I’ve been too scared to buy something specifically for him and then have him taken away from me. We have had a name picked out since before we got pregnant, but since it’s a name that we will use for a baby boy (it includes a family name), I have been too hesitant to call him by his name. If I do that and he leaves then the name leaves with him.

Don’t get me wrong, I am over the moon excited and happy that we have a 17 week baby boy growing! I love hearing his heart beat (158 beats per minute as of yesterday) and watching him wiggle in the ultrasounds. I just am also scared. It’s been a long, hard road to get to where we are and we have definitely struggled along the way. Between 7 and 8 weeks we lost his twin brother. We knew it was coming, but you always hope that things will change. We heard his heart beat at 6 weeks, and then slower at 7 weeks, and by our 8 week appointment his heart beat was gone. Each week since he has slowly disappeared from the ultrasounds and now we cannot even see him. It might sound weird, but knows that he ‘absorbed’ into his brother’s sac is a little comforting. Knowing that part of him will always be with his brother.

We’ve also had some scares with this baby too. At 11 weeks I started spotting. We went to the doctor and saw that the baby was alright. They guessed it was remnants of losing our other boy. The spotting didn’t stop after that. 12 weeks and 13 weeks it happened again. We went in both times, and finally they saw that my placenta was very low and, while it was not covering the cervix (which could have been bad), it was touching the very corner of my cervix and was most likely causing the irritation and bleeding. We were told that as the uterus grows the placenta will move up with it so in a few weeks it should be out of the way and not causing problems. Luckily, the spotting stopped and as of yesterday the placenta is no longer touching my uterus. 

 

So here we are today, 17 weeks exactly. We were able to confirm yesterday that Baby Kneeland is in fact a boy! Which is something we already knew, but it was nice to confirm it.

 I have not felt him move or kick yet (which is completely normal), but I cannot wait for that to happen. I still feel disconnected from it all. I can’t believe that it’s all real and that we will really end these 40 weeks with a baby to take home. I start to feel a little more secure as the weeks pass and my belly starts to harden and bulge…but I still wonder when I will really believe that this is all happening.

Much Anticipated News...

To say the past few weeks/months have been a whirlwind is an understatement. We’ve gone through a lot and had a lot of different emotions running through our heads.

July 10^th we transferred two of our embryos. Two little boys. Everything with transfer went very smooth and then all we had left to do was wait. We were supposed to not take a home pregnancy test (HPT) until after we did blood work (7 and 9 days after transfer) but I was impatient and started taking HPTs 3 days after transfer. On day three it was negative…to be expected. But then on day 4 there was a very faint positive! From that point on the positive got darker and darker! We were officially pregnant!!!

Seven days past transfer (July 17^th) I went in to get my blood drawn to measure the HCG (pregnancy hormone) in my blood. My levels came back at 106.6! They considered anything over 5 to be considered pregnant. Then I went back in on 9 days past transfer (July 19^th) to check to see if it doubled (they expect it to double every 48 hours). My levels came back 244.6. It had more than doubled! 

On July 27^th we went in to have our first ultrasound. I was very nervous since I had been having cramps pretty badly for the past week. I was sure something was wrong. At this point I was 5 weeks and 1 day pregnant. At 5 weeks they expect to see a gestational sac and a yolk sac. We did a transvaginal ultrasound and we saw both gestational sacs and yolk sacs! Our doctor also said she saw a very small start to Baby A and Baby B. Baby A was measuring at 5 weeks and 4 days (so ahead of where we were) and Baby B was a bit small, but right on track at 5 weeks and 1 day. Fraternal twins! We were very excited!

From this point we go back to do ultrasounds every week for the next 5 or so weeks until we are released to my primary OBGYN. 

Baby A

On August 3^rd we went in for my second ultrasound. This time I was 6 weeks and 1 day pregnant. Around 5.5-6.5 weeks you are able to hear the heartbeat…so we were really hoping that we’d be able to hear both heart beats! We went in and were met with some good and bad news. Good news was that Baby A looked great. He was measuring 6 weeks and 4 days and had a strong heartbeat of 124! That heartbeat was so amazing to hear! The other news was that Baby B wasn’t looking so good.

Baby B had actually started to split into identical twins but it didn’t look like he was strong enough. At that point I had 3 gestational sacs. Baby A’s sac was measuring 6w4d, then Baby B had split into

Left to Right: Baby B, Empty Sac C, Baby A

two sacs. One was measuring 5 weeks 3 days but it was empty. It did not have a yolk sac or a baby inside. The doctor said it looked like that baby never fully developed. The other sac was measuring 5 weeks 2 days and Baby B was inside that one. So in the week since our last appointment Baby B only grew one day. We were able to find his little heartbeat but it only measured 71 beats per minute (they want to hear over 100 if not 120+). So we were told that we’d likely lose Baby B. Since we were still so early in the pregnancy chances are we’d experience Vanishing Twin Syndrome and Baby B, and what would have been Baby C, would absorb into Baby A’s sac. 

We went into IVF transfer knowing that there was a chance of twins if we put in two, but we always said we wanted at least 1 healthy baby to come from it. But after seeing two sacs and hearing two little heartbeats it’s really hard to not want both babies to make it! While we were told we had one healthy pregnancy, we were also told that we’d miscarry/lose one of our babies (technically two since Baby B split) at the same time. This appointment was so exciting since we got to hear our babies’ heartbeats for the first time, but also so incredibly upsetting to know that one of those beautiful heartbeats might not be there for the next ultrasound. 

Baby A

Today (August 10th) we had our third ultrasound. Baby A is measuring right on track at 7 weeks 1 day and is now over 1cm big! His heart rate was 155bpm! So he is looking great! Baby B is still hanging on but he is still a week behind measuring around 6weeks1day and his heart rate was so slow that we couldn’t hear it. We anticipate that by our 8 week appointment he will probably be gone. 

Left to Right: Baby A, Empty Sac C, Baby B

We are VERY happy that we have one healthy baby growing and we look forward to meeting him in March 2018!

Baby A's Heart Beat (155bmp)

Less than a Week Away!!!

We are less than one week away from IVF Transfer! This will be my last post for a long while. If transfer works we will take our time and make sure everything looks healthy before announcing anything. Or if transfer does not work, we will want some time to ourselves and to figure out our next step. 

I haven’t posted much since there has not been much excitement going on. I had my first ‘baseline’ check for transfer on June 20^th. They had to check my uterine lining to see how thick it is along with my estrogen and progesterone levels.  “The endometrium changes throughout the menstrual cycle in response to hormones. Estrogen causes the lining to grow and thicken to prepare the uterus for pregnancy”. My endometrial thickness at baseline was 3.7 (which is where they want it to be at the beginning of the cycle). 

After that appointment I started taking 4mg a day of Estrace (estrogen pills) and using an estrogen patch that I change every 3 days. This is to help my lining increase enough to make a good home for a baby. In a natural cycle this would all happen on its own, but since we are synced up with when the clinic does frozen embryo transfers we need to take the medication to be on the same cycle. 

During this appointment we also had to turn in a ‘consent to thaw’ form. This is the form where we give the clinic permission to thaw (an) embryo(s). We had to select if we wanted to thaw one or two and we could also select if we wanted them to thaw a boy or a girl or a surprise us embryo. If you’re hoping to know what we decided on…you’re out of luck because you won’t find out here! Gotta have some surprises left! 

Yesterday, July 3^rd we went in for our last appointment before transfer. They again wanted to check the lining to make sure it was the right size for implantation. Our clinic prefers the lining to at least be over 8. My lining was 11.2! Yay! It was also what they call, multi-layered. Basically you could see an outer, middle and inner layer- which I hear is exactly what they want to see. So it’s definitely looking good right now. I did get an estrogen shot (intramuscular shot on the backside) in the office to help the lining grow just a bit more before I start the next set of medications. 

*Funny story. The next set of medications include progesterone shots that must be given intramuscular on the backside (by the top of the butt/hip).  Since I am not sure how I will be able to turn around and inject myself Steven is planning on helping with these shots. I’m super nervous about that by the way! Anyway, I wanted to make sure we had the correct spot marked so we do it correctly. My coordinator took me in the back to mark the area with a permanent marker. We come out to show Steven so he knows…but we cannot find him. After looking around for a bit, I find my husband by the front desk rummaging through the candy jar. We pull him back into the office to show him as he is grinning ear to ear because he managed to get two dum dum suckers before we found him.*

Tomorrow, July 5^th, I start my next round of medication. I will still take the estrogen pills but I will be adding vaginal inserts (lovely, right?) twice a day, and progesterone injections every other day. The progesterone will help mature the lining. After starting progesterone the lining won’t grow anymore but it will prepare for implantation. The timing of all these meds is pretty cool when you understand it. In a normal cycle the estrogen builds up the lining (like we are doing), then when you ovulate progesterone starts being produced. Since we are on a synthetic cycle I will start taking progesterone around the time I would have ovulated. Since my embryos are already 5 days old, when they are implanted they need to have the same environment that a natural cycle embryo would. This means I need 5 days of progesterone in me prior to them being transferred in. So starting the progesterone tomorrow gives me 5 days until transfer. We are doing everything to make it nice and comfortable for an embryo! 

On July 10^th we will go in at 10:10am (our appointment is 10:30am) for transfer! They will enter a small catheter inside my uterus with ultrasound guidance. There they will ‘plop’ in our potential baby! I will continue to take medicine (shots, pills, inserts) up until around 10 weeks pregnant (or if it fails, until a confirmed fail). About a week/week and a half after transfer we will go in for two rounds of blood work to test the hcg levels. One will show if hcg is being produced (which would confirm pregnancy) and the second two days later to see that the hcg is at least doubling (which would show that the pregnancy is progressing). If things look good, we will go in about a week and a half later for our first ultrasound. 

Please keep those fingers, toes…everything crossed and say a little prayer that everything works! Thanks so much for all the kind words and encouragement through this whole process!