Our IVF Journey In Photos
Our 15 lb box of medication!
The results of 4 shots a day :( my poor belly!
Our wonderful neighbors brought us treats!
This was by far the strangest place that I had to do my shots! I was photographing a wedding rehearsal dinner that was a hayride to an old ranch in the middle of the forest! :) No running water and we did my injections in that outhouse! It worked!
Retrieval Day
We headed up to the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora to do our egg retrieval. They put me under for the procedure so I don't really remember anything more than when I got there and falling asleep in Tyler's truck on the way home... but they got 14 mature eggs!
After we left, the doctors used the icsi procedure to literally inject the sperm into the egg to fertilize them. After the retrieval, we had our first 'waiting' period of torture. We were on call for our implantation since it all depends on how well the embryos are doing. We had 3 embryos make it to the blastocyst stage on Day 5 (which is what you want!-best case scenario!) We took our best embryo and implanted it on day 5 and froze the other 2 for future use.
Many doctors recommend putting more than one embryo back in, but because of our age and the health of the embryo, our doctor only recommended putting one back.
Our precious little embryo who we could come to know as Jake!
My parents and my brother were in Paris the day of our implantation. So they put a lock for Baby Riesling on the Lock Bridge and threw away the key!
Tyler decided to grow a 'playoff' baby beard for good luck! We had a lot of friends and family join in and grow their beards out too!
Once we got home on implantation day, we started our second waiting/torture period. During this time, I was on bed rest... and at the end of the two week wait, we would get our blood test to see if it all worked!
The pineapple is an old wives tale... supposedly if you eat an entire fresh pineapple in the first few days, it makes the embryo(s) stick better!
Bed rest was tough with my family out of the country touring Europe and Tyler working his butt off both at FedEx and then also his landscaping business.
We got snail mail from Meag and her girls all the way in Texas and my parents all the way in Europe!
My garden 'walks' helped get me through those two weeks even though I couldn't do anything!
About the 3rd day in... Bau started acting really weird! He wouldn't stop watching me! It continued through my whole pregnancy!
At the end of our two week wait, I had to go in for our blood test. I wore my old softball socks and pulled them up to rally!
I got a call that afternoon from my doctor telling me that my blood test was positive and I was pregnant! I would go in for my first ultrasound and to hear the heartbeat just a few short weeks later!
When daddy got home, Bau greeted him with his big brother sign and we gave him our little baby Rockies jersey!
We had our local family over for a BBQ to announce it! The yard looked so gorgeous!
We had a lot of family and friends rooting for us!
UP NEXT: Our Pregnancy!
