The past 7 weeks have been the craziest,  happiest,  scariest,  and most rewarding weeks of my life. When we went to our care plan meeting the first week of February I left feeling more scared then I ever have in my entire life. The amount of shots I would be doing the next 8 weeks where far more then I ever expected ( BTW I am a major whimp when it comes to needles ). 

My 1st day of injections I felt this enormous amount of fear lifted off my chest ( I know that was my dad's doing ). My injections have been a little painful and my bum has became a pin cushion, but I feel I have handled them much better then expected. 

Emotionally I have struggled a little. I have kept my emotions pretty private mainly because I can't even imagine Deja and Lucas' emotional roller-coaster they have had to ride through this journey.  

Transfer day was the hardest day since this journey began.  It was our 1st heartache as a family in the journey.  Hearing all but 2 of the embryos had fallen apart was heartbreaking,  but seeing the pure disappointment in my sisters face absolutely broke my heart. When Derek and I had our moment to discuss things we had no doubt in our mind we need to implant both embryos to better the odds for Deja, Lucas,  and our entire family. 

The past 10 days have been SO scary. I have felt so much faith for the most part, but have also had my few minutes of doubt.  My favorite part of the past 10 days though have been the amazing amount of support I have received.  I couldn't have done my end of the deal this far without all of you.  My eyes have been opened once again how truly blessed our family is. 

Tomorrow....... well I don't really know how to put into words how I'm feeling,  but I do know I have prayed, pleaded, and begged God for a positive day for us all tomorrow,  but most of all for a tiny miracle for Deja and Lucas. 

Waiting for BETA

Think Positive

 I have been wanting to write down my feelings this week for several days now. I’ve started, but never really finished. It’s been one of the hardest, longest, more trying weeks of my life. Any of you have been through infertility treatments truly understand what “hell week” is like. The waiting is excruciating!

As you know, we transferred our 2 little embryos on Sunday the 22^nd of March, 10 days ago. It’s kind of a cruel joke to literally know the second you implant a possible baby, and then have to wait for 10 days. I can’t possibly put into words what the last week and half has been like for all of us, I know everyone involved has had a hard, hard week. I can’t speak for them, as I’ve said before, but I can write about MY heart (or try to none-the-less).

In trying to process the last 10 days, it seems nearly impossible to do so. My emotions ride the rainbow of moods not daily, but hourly. I have seen moments of colossal hope and faith, and I have seen moments of unbearable heartache and pain. I have felts hopeless and empty, I’ve felt energized and optimistic. I have sobbed because my heart feels so heavy, and I have smiled because so many TRULY believe our miracle is on its way. I have thrown up in a toilet, cried on a bus, curled up on the floor of my office, called my mom/sister/Lucas with no words but loads of tears, I have not been able to eat AND eating a whole carton of ice cream. I have smiled through tear filled eyes, laughed when it took everything I had to do so, and have found a quiet alley to walk into so I could finally “burst” with the tears I was holding in. I have had hopeful, heartbreaking, tear-filled, angry, faithless prayers go up. Life has moved forward, and I’ve tried desperately to move forward with it, like a robot doing its best to understand and interact with humans.

This week has been surreal.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow we will finally know if all we’ve done to get here worked. I have tried in a million ways to figure out how I can prepare myself for tomorrow. How I can ready myself to hear the biggest news of my life. It’s the day before and I have yet to figure out how you could possibly prepare yourself for this kind of news. I have many, many friends and family who have gone through IVF who have told me over and over that there is no way to prepare—I believe them. My heart aches when I hear these people share their stories of heartache, over and over again, and then triumph and I’m reminded that this journey to baby, when you have infertility, is long and painful…and can end in great joy.

I do not know what tomorrow will bring. If I think about it too much, I feel my body shut down. As much as it might help (and it has helped) to stay busy, IT’S ALWAYS ON YOUR MIND! It’s always there looming reminding you that what you are currently doing in not as significant as what looms ahead. I want to have faith in our two little underdogs, in our two little survivors…I want to and it’s not always there. I’ve had to learn (through therapy) that it’s okay to feel what I’m feeling, when I’m feeling it. I think this week has helped me be a little more true to how I’m REALLY feeling, be a little more okay with whatever emotions creeps in, and be a little more understanding of other people’s pain. To some extent we have to pick ourselves up and move forward, but at the same time, we feel what we are feeling for a reason, for a purpose, and we have to stop, breathe, and take it in.

Tomorrow. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I wish I did. I don’t know what will happen when we get “the news”. I’ve played out every conclusion in my head, over and over, yet there is still no way I can prepare myself, or know, how tomorrow will go.

So many have reached out to us in love and support and it has meant THE WORLD to us. Your words of love, support, faith and encouragement have truly sustained me, have kept me moving forward and have saved me more times than once. I know we are kind of all in this together, and some of you are as anxious as us for tomorrow. That means so much to us.

I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. Right now, right now I have to face life minute to minute. I will let you all know, either way, what happens tomorrow. No matter how hard it might be for us, we’re in this together and you will know.

So, stay tuned, the best is yet to come.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

Meet the Underdogs

I wanted to introduce you all to our two lone survivors...

This is a print out of our two embryo that survived. The one on the top (right) is our Tier 2 embryo, the stronger of the two. He's a fairly strong little guy, but you can see that parts are starting to fall off. But this little guys is not terrible and we are hoping he'll generate "power" from Ambree's uterus.

The second embryo is on the bottom (left), he's the tier 3 embryo. He is not in such great shape-but we love him none the less. He is starting to fall apart, particularly on the bottom. We are hoping he too generates some power while in there.

And do you want to see their first selfie...

 This is a high contrast image I produced so I could see them. The round part is Ambree's uterus and right in the middle are two white, thick lines. They look like grains of rice or tiny little fish swimming. They are actually too small to see in a photo, but the clinic puts little air bubbles around them so we can seem them. This is after they went through the catheter and right into Ambree's uterus.  This is exactly where the doctor wanted them to be, now we are hoping they'll attach!

So these little fellers are who you are cheering on this week. Our fighters. Our underdogs.

Go, emby's go!

The Underdogs: Transfer Day

Before our appointment on transfer day. Deja, Lucas, Derek & Ambree

I’m not sure I’m ready to write this post, but so many of you have reached out to me, and have been anxiously waiting to hear about today. Many of you have followed our story so closely and when I promised to share our journey, I promised to share it all…  I consider you all my dearest friends and family—and we share our heartaches and achievements, today is no exception. 

We went to our appointment at 3:00 today. Derek, Ambree, my mom, Lucas and I all went. They tell you that transfer day is a big, special day, at it certainly is, so we wanted to be there together.

Ambree took a Valum when we got there, to relax her before the procedure. She was then taken to a room, the same room I did my egg retrieval in, and we all followed her shortly after. I had to run to the restroom and out in the hall I ran into my incredible doctor, Dr F,  he’s wonderful! I smiled at him, and he at me, but immediately I senses something just wasn’t right. We went into the room and Dr. F came in shortly after. He sat down next to Lucas and me and handed us a piece of paper, a black and white print-out. On this sheet of paper were two little circles, which turned out to be our embryos. Remember from the previous post he told us that we would pick out our embryo upon arrival.

As he sat down he said, “First off we were amazed the day after transfer that you had a 100% fertilization rate, out of the 30 patients this month, yours was the highest. Then on day 3, we were still so happy that we had 6 solid embryo and 3 semi-solid, 9 options, again we were thrilled. Deja and Lucas, then something happened yesterday, most all of them started falling apart. Today, today we have 2, one is fairly good and the other has already began to deteriorate”.

My heart stopped. It sunk to my gut as I stared at that sheet of paper. I was numb and my eyes started welling up.

WHAT?????

He went on to tell us that on day 4 we “hit a brick wall” (those words are still ringing in my head). The embryo’s starting falling apart, and quickly. He told us that my endometriosis was more severe than they had imagined and was in turn, contaminating the eggs. All I could think of in my head was FAIL, FAIL, FAIL!!! My body had failed me and now I’m looking at just TWO embryo. He rated them between Teir 1 and Teir 3, one being the best, the first was a tier 3 and the second a tier 2. In the blink of an eye I went from so much hope (6 solid embryo) to complete and utter heartbreak!!

I stared at that sheet of paper and my heart burned. I couldn’t control my tears anymore and I sobbed. Dr. F was so kind and caring and said, “We still have one good strong one we can use today.” Ambree asked if this type of thing was normal and he kindly replied, “No, to go from that many to 2 is not normal”. Again…FAIL FAIL FAIL!!!

At that point I think we were all in tears and/or shock and just kind of looked around the room at each other. Of course we would implant the one semi-strong one and hope for the best, but what are the odds of it working? He said it wasn’t great odds, but by implanting both the odds would increase slightly. Dr. F explained to us that it was an incredibly hard decision, but that implanting both embryos would increase the chance we would get pregnant—and because the embryo were not of great quality, Ambree’s odds of having to carry twins would be just 5%.

Ambree asked a lot of great questions—she was super calm and collected. I listened as hard as I could but felt like I was in someone else’s body. We talked for a few minutes about what to do, all along Ambree has said, “Only one embryo”, and I’ve tried to respect here decision. I asked the doctor if we could have a minute to talk, Lucas and I went outside and talked, and Ambree and Derek staying in the room and talked. It felt like I cried in Lucas’ arms for a long time but I don’t think it was really that long. A few minutes later they called us back into the room.

At this point Ambree was already prepped for transfer, the doctor was in there and was already prepped to go for it. One of my favorite songs of all time was playing in the room, “Clocks” by ColdPlay, for some reason it brought me some comfort. At this point, none of us (my mom, Lucas, nor I) had any idea what Ambree and Derek had decided, but I knew it had to be her decision. It was her body and she was just letting us borrow it. The doctor preceded to “prep” her for implantation and NONE OF US ASKED WHAT THE DECISION WAS.

It was just a weird experience—and I didn’t want to feel like I was pressuring her (although it was clearly about to happen anyway). The doctor let me stand real close to the ultrasound machine so I could see what he was doing. After Ambree was prepped, and they inserted a catheter to load the embryo, the sweet women from the lab, who has a great Australian accent, and who was the one who called me the first day to tell me I had a 100% fertilization rate, came in with our embryo.

She repeated back to the doctor, “Powell/Hatch embryo” and handed the doctor a long needle syringe. I watched on the monitor and you could see one tiny embryo (that looked like a white strain of rice, make its ways up and into the uterus. And then another tiny embryo followed behind.

Ambree decided to do both embryo to increase our chances and I cannot tell you how blessed we are she was willing to do that for us. It’s something she has not wanted to do, but in that moment she felt it was the best choice for us and I love her for that.

At the end of the day, we have two little embryo sitting inside Ambree.

I can’t begin to document the emotions I’m feeling. When I got home, I bawled and cried and screamed and yelled at Lucas. I was angry and heartbroken at the fact that my body “did this to me!” That I failed at the one thing I needed to do to make this process work…make an embryo. I still feel like we had a huge loss today, a loss of hope, and a loss of a second change. Today, the two surviving embryo are clinging to life—and that’s it. There are no more to freeze. There isn’t a second chance this go around. There isn’t the comfort that if this transfer doesn’t work, we still have “a few saved up.” In 48 hours, all of that went away. The two we do have aren’t particularly strong, one is visibly falling apart already. My. Heart. Aches. It hurts so badly that I want to rip it out of my chest. My eyes are swollen and red and I feel pain all over my body. I went from an enormous amount of hope, to a glimmer.

BUT we have 2 that survived! We have 2 little fighters that hung in there long enough to make it to today. We have 2 little slivers of hope to get us through the next 10 days. We have 2 embryos that despite all odds, are here. Lucas is a constant reminder to me of looking at the bright side. Sometimes I want to slap him for it, but it’s true. Today we implanted not one but TWO little embryo. He is also a big fan of the underdog, he always roots for the underdog when he can. So this week, this week we are rooting for our two underdogs and we hope you’ll join us in rooting for them too. My heart aches tonight as I write this—but I know eventually, eventually I will also realize that the joy of what happened today. I will better understand why we are here. I will know, maybe not tonight, but sometime soon, that even if this doesn’t work out, there is a glorious plan for me.

And if I may, please throw a prayer in for myself, Lucas, Derek, Ambree and I, that we can find peace in our decisions, and peace in our hearts and minds.

Join us in praying for, and cheering on, our little underdogs this week! On April 2^nd, we will know if they were meant to hang on.

XOXO,

Deja

P.S. So sorry if this doesn’t make sense. I’ll try to edit it later.

Final Embryo Count & Transfer Day

These beautiful cupcakes can be found here.

As I mentioned earlier, we had 13 embryo the day after my egg retrieval (Wed. 3/20/15), 1/3 of those are expected to survive up to today (day 3). It took ALL day long but I got the call tonight around 5:00 with our count.

We actually have 11 embryo as of today, which is a big number! It's a little more complex than that though. Each embryo is "rated" on a scale from 1-10, the hope is for the embryos to be ranked between a 6 and a 10. 

We have 4, which are ranked a 4, which most likely means we will not be able to use these 4 at all. They are kind of out of the picture at the moment.

We have 1 embryo that's a 5 rating. This ones on the cusp, meaning it could fertilize more and become a 6, or is could stop growing all together.

We have 2 that are 7's, 2 that are 8's and 2 that are 9's! 

So we have six that are within the range of "good embryos". 

We are pretty happy with these numbers, as our coordinator told us, "We just need ONE STRONG embryo". We are praying and crossing our fingers that they just keep getting stronger.

So what's next?

Sunday, THIS SUNDAY (3/22/15) at 3:00 pm we go in for our transfer. Guys, this is the day I've dreamed about for over a year. I have longed for this day with all my heart, I get teary eyed just thinking about it. Ambs will take a little sedative at 3:00, upon arrival. Then Lucas and I will go into a room and they will show us pictures of our cute embryos and we "pick" the one to implant. I'm sure we will be guided in this process by the lab--it seems so bizarre that we "pick" THEE embryo but that's how it works. They then go to the lab, get the one we pick and we transfer it to Ambree, at 3:30 pm THIS SUNDAY!

What an incredible process! I had no idea how much my brain could think about embryo until this week. As weird as it sounds I think about them sitting there in the lab, what they look like, where they are, who's with them...I sound crazy right!?! But that's OUR babies and my heart melts thinking about it. 

We need lots of prayers this week as we prep for transfer. Lots of good, STICKY vibes sent our way. We need this feller to STICK!!! My eye fill with tears as I write this because this is what all of you, and we, have worked so hard for, THIS MOMENT. Transfer day is going to be a HUGELY emotional day for us!

Thanks for your love and support! We cherish each of you who follow our story and share in this journey with us!

XOXO,

Deja