8 wks

This is 8 weeks. Babies are the size of kidney beans. Bean is a pet name I use for Megan. Thinking I may start calling the twins my beans.

This week I got the twin bed out of the nursery and the cradle out of the eaves. Having done just that makes it feel even more like a nursery. One of the baby carriers/wearers that I ordered came too. It works, still I think I may want to test drive a few more to see what my options are.

We have an ultrasound next week. After that we graduate from the IVF clinic and onto the OB!

I ordered a birth partner book that I cannot wait to devour. It is also Megan’s birthday this week as well as Valentines Day. Lots to look forward to.

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7 wks

Ta dah!.

Tomorrow is 8 wks! I am excited to look back on these pics and see her belly grow. Right not it seems like not much is happening, but all the time when I look at belly pics, you can see it more in the beginning once you see the huge belly at the end. Still, I do think I see a little pooch forming.

6 wks

Its tough to look back and recall things that were happening then. Technically tomorrow we’re at 8wks. I hope to catch things up within the next couple of days.

This is six weeks!

This week we added this plush green carpet that matched the curtains we already had purchased during our IUI days. Behind Megan is the menagerie of IVF medications required… still.

On that note. We are still doing meds (daily oral meds, daily bum shot ((which we call “booty juice, psych nurse thing)) 3xdaily “vagie pills” , 4 estrogen patches changed every other day and 3xdaily folic acid), which really sucks for Megan. They really hijack her body and they make her really, very uncomfortable. I am running out of space to give her the booty juice. Megan has been experiencing some spotting, which is completely terrifying, but equally normal. After everything we’ve invested and been through, it’s tough not to over think things.

We got to see them.

That’s right, I said “them”, as in TWINS! Two beating hearts. It was so magical. I couldn’t be in the room with Megan, but she had me on video chat so, essentially, I was there.

We decided to tell our family about twins at the anatomy reveal (which I believe is around 20 wks or so.) Initially we were going to wait until they were born for the surprise, but Megan and I agree, anticipation is part of the fun. Also, I don’t think we can keep a secret like that for very long.

Seeing their heart beats made everything a bit more real for me. Truly, I think there will be a part of be who doesn’t truly embrace parenthood until I can hold them in my arms. Perhaps that is part of being a father, or a non-gestational parent.

On that note, I have always wanted to be called “Mum.” Recently however through my experiences as a non gestational parent, I have been toying with the idea of being called “Da.” Its what Irish kiddos call their fathers (Megan is SUUUUUUper Irish) and my name is Aman”da”. Skrew gender norms. 🙂

5 wks

Five weeks! We haven’t gotten far with the nursery yet. I fear that we will lose time in the end if we don’t start to use our time wisely.

I think she is already getting a little bit of a pooch, but maybe I am just wishfully thinking.

I need to come up with a good format to capture all of the things associated with the progression of the pregnancy. They symptoms, the meds the cravings etc. Currently Megan is VERY tired. Like she’ll sleep anytime any where. That is really uncharacteristic of her. She is also having lots of interesting dreams. Also uncharacteristic of her. I keep saying I need to write down her dreams. I urge her to, but she isn’t as into tracking things and writing them down as I am.

4 wks

This is Megan just moments after we got the call that she was actually pregnant, that her numbers were rising and we didn’t need to worry about a chemical pregnancy.

She is in the room we intend to make the nursery. Clearly we have a lot of work to do before babies come. I thought it would be fun to document the progress of both her belly in the foreground and the nursery in the back ground.

the Results

The day that we were going to get the results we had to take a class to renew our BLS certificates. It is the most boring and redundant class, but it’s only required every two years so typically its not that bad. It was made worse by the fact that, I kid you not, 4 minuets into the class (which is an hour and a half long.) we get a call from the clinic. They leave a long message so we can only assume they are leaving the results of our test on Megan’s voice mail.

We were going to try to wait until the end of class to listen to the message, but during a break we couldn’t help ourselves. Megan listened to the voice mail which said, “Congratulations, you are VERY pregnant!”

Megan’s Hcg was 398.8 the nurse said it was possible that both embryo’s took. When we went back for the second lab draw 48 hours later, Megan’s Hcg went up to 1100+. At that point the nurse told us it was “extremely likely” that both embryo’s took.

We keep doing all the meds, so that means more booty shots for Megan. As well as patches (which are causing Megan’s skin to be very irritated) and vaginal suppositories. Fingers crossed these meds don’t need to continue much longer. The next time we go to the clinic for any updates is for our first ultra sound.

Transfer Day

Transfer day was January 4th. It was a really exciting day and I am so glad I was able to be in the room. It just so happened that it was our RE’s 40th birthday so there was a feeling of joy in the office. Or maybe that is just me projecting my joy on the office. Regardless. We were able to see our embryos. The first picture of my babies ever.

That’s them! the one on the left that looks like its dividing into two is “hatching” and the 6AA embryo. The bottom cluster of cells will begin to form the fetus if it successfully attaches to Megan. The top cluster of cells will further imbed the embryo into Megan’s uterus and parts of it may become the placenta. The top one is the 5BB. It’s thinking about hatching, but is going to do so on their own time. This embryo is going to by my late bloomer, my slow poke, the one I will need to exercise more patience with. Just a theory.

And now we wait. Only nine days so not a full two week wait, but still. It feels like an eternity.

Lucky for you readers, you don’t actually have to wait… just read the next post.

Patches and shots

About a week prior to transfer Megan needed to place patches on her stomach, suppositories in her vagina and I got to give her a shot in the butt once a day. The shot is awful, the liquid is so thick I need to have two thumbs to inject it into her, and I’m a nurse, I give shots frequently! We keep saying, “anything for the baby.”

Another thing. With our process to pregnancy being so calculated and planned and nothing getting to be a surprise, we decided not to tell anyone beyond our mother’s that the RE was willing to transfer both embryos. That way there can be SOME element of surprise when the babies are born. Its hard to talk about them singularly. But I think using terms like “they” and “them” help bring attention to the family that gender neutral terms can be used to refer to these babes. Plus we don’t know if both of them will stick, even if we’re transferring both.

Chromosomally Normal

So there is LOTS to catch up on. I am going to make it an evening of posts because a bullet post just wont cut it.

Of the 5 embabies we got. 2 came back chromosomally normal. The rest were either missing a chromosome, or one didn’t split properly etc. When we spoke with the doctor, she told us that one of the embryos was a day 5BB and the other was day 6AA. I don’t comprehend all the details about what that means. What I do understand is that one was just a bit more developed than the other.

The report we got back from the chromosome testing also indicated the sex of the embryos. One was a girl, one was a boy. XX and XY. But it didn’t tell us which was which, if it was the boy or the girl that was 5BB or 6AA.

This was a bit challenging to me. There has been so much of this journey that has been planned and calculated, it just felt too much like “playing God” to be able to decide what the sex of the baby would be too. Megan really wanted to have a girl, which was challenging for me too. I still want to get pregnant and it didn’t seem fair for Megan to be able to make that decision for not just herself, but for me also (because we want both a girl and a boy, if she has the girl, the boy, by default is who I will carry.) Still we knew that our RE had told us she would only transfer one embryo. We decided, all emotional baggage aside, we just wanted the best chance we had at becoming parents and that we would transfer the embryo with the highest likelihood to get us there fastest. We never found out which embryo was which.

We spoke with our RE and she gave us all the details about what would be happening next. At this point it was early December so we were hoping to get transfer in before the holidays. The RE said we could possibly make transfer happen before the holidays, but it would be a rush, so we decided against it and put our goal of transfer at early January.

Our RE also brought up the fact that Megan had stated (on several occasions) that she only gets one shot at this. So the importance of this being successful has even more weight to it. With this knowledge our RE offered being open to transferring both of the embryo’s!! It was an easy decision. I think we thought on it for 12 hours before deciding that we were going to transfer both.

Embabies

We have 5 embabies!! It started out as just 4 but the embryologist said there was one more they were looking at to see if it develops and it did. A friend of mine said “that’s your late riser, at their own pace .”

All of them have been biopsied and we’re awaiting results on their chromosomal make up. This ensures they have all the appropriate amount of chromosomes as some embryos who don’t have the correct amount, end up in miscarriages. Due to our age and the financial investment, we opted for this extra test even though its not going to be able to tell us much more than whether or not our embryo’s have the correct amount of chromosomes.

FIVE!!