So excited,looks like we're having more babies to join the family and possibly boy/girl twins. Mandee and Savannah are expecting. Mandee is expecting her fifth, a boy, and Savannah is possibly expecting her sixth.
How exciting is this.... God has truly blessed us. Those little ones are such a blessing and a joy.
I have lots of photos but have to find time to upload them. Here's a video of Sienna's horse tripping.
We have also been so busy with attending our martial arts school. Sienna is back to riding her horse and taking weekly horseback riding lessons. Her horse tripped a couple of days ago and she fell hard but she is fine. She will be away for two weeks in July for horseback riding camp and she will also be a counselor. I've started teaching piano and ukulele at the the music school and practicing learning my black belt Kata. Law school is great also. We just purchased a 18 round pen panels and a gate for our horses and planning on putting it up this weekend. Here's a photo of it.
Step 1: Control Ovarian Hyperstimulation (COH) ...
Step 2: Egg Retrieval. ...
Step 3: Fertilization and Embryo Culture. ...
Step 4: Embryo Quality. ...
Step 5: Embryo Transfer. ...
Laser Assisted Hatching. ...
Cryopreservation
Your specialist prescribes medication specific to your body and treatment plan. It's usually in the form of injections, which can vary from 1-2 for the cycle, or 1-2 per day. It can be daunting, but your fertility nurse will be there to show you exactly how and where to give the injection.
I remember driving back and forth to Raleigh, N.C. every day for three weeks straight. It was tiring, time-consuming, and painful having to endure all of those needles. We also had to undergo 12 hours of psychological testing which by the way I passed with flying colors so I'm not crazy. One thing they asked me was "How much alcohol do you drink in a week?" I responded by saying "I have never drank alcohol in my life as God is my witness". The psychiatrist said "come on everyone drinks" and I responded, "well not me, I have never touched the stuff". They then responded "how about wine", I said "I have never drank wine or any type of alcohol in my life". They then give you a test and make you fill in the bubble and if the bubble isn't completely filled in they will tell you it has to be filled in all the way.
Anyhow, back to the story. The doctor told me I had a 10 percent chance of IVF working so my hopes were shattering. The day came for my transfer; an eight cell, nine cell, and a four cell were implanted and again, the doctor said "Don't get your hopes up." Surprisingly all three took and I ended up giving birth to healthy boy/girl twins although I lost their triplet at eight weeks pregnant. This was one of the easiest pregnancies I've ever had with no complications beside losing the triplet. God took that 10 percent chance and changed it to 100 percent and I can't thank him enough. He knew I was doing everything possible to extend my family and he made it happen. By now the doctor was a part of my family. He just loved me and couldn't wait to take my money and see me. My daughters and I even carried him a box of KFC chicken and he ate it right in front of us. He was such a great Physician, Scientist, and friend. He passed away last year and we sure do miss him. Anyhow, my next IVF pregnancy was with Noah and everything went smoothly with him as well. I had to undergo the same procedures. I really didn't want to face the psychiatrist again but I knew I had to. Again, Noah was born healthy with no complications. After he was born, I thought I would go ahead and use my frozen embryos so I went ahead and had all my testing done so I could have them transferred. The doctors wanted to only transfer one so I wouldn't take the chance on having twins again but the grade was low that they transferred both of them. I ended up having a miscarriage followed by a D and C surgery in Lynchburg which was horrible. I went into surgery with no anesthesia. I thought the pain of this surgery can't be worse than what I was going through with losing the baby so I told the anesthesiologist I didn't need him. I not only lost the babies but also $20,000. Sometime after that, I decided to try IVF again and three blastocysts were implanted but only one took and I became pregnant with Luke. His pregnancy went really smoothly like all the previous ones. I had five embryos frozen from Luke's treatment so I used those to have Levi. Luke and Levi are actually twins born two different years. They were conceived at the same time but Levi was frozen and born later on. For his pregnancy, three blasocysts were implanted as well and I became pregnant with twins. However, about ten weeks into my pregnancy, I lost one of the twins. I actually thought I was losing both of them as I felt I was in labor. My doctor called me the next day and told me to come in for an ultrasound. He looked at me and said, "I have some good news and bad news". He said "the bad news is you lost one of the twins and the good news is one survived."
To make a long story short, I went through IVF nine times altogether and I can say I have no regrets. They are the sweetest children and are such a joy in our home. Even though I had to spend thousands and thousands of dollars and had to endure so much mental and physical pain and suffering to have them, it's worth every penny of everything I went through. To be continued................................. There's a lot more to the story but that will have to come later.
I have so many adorable photos of the twins when they were small. Here are a few:
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