Mama To Be

I'm sitting here trying to write this blog and I am stumped on what I should say and how I should start it... It's been a couple months since I've gave you all an update (sorry about that) but the last 3 months have gone by so quickly that my head is spinning....

So you all remember at our last Doctor appointment Dr. Conway told us that every test we have done has came back normal and that our work-up with her was complete. Usually, once your work-up is complete you then have a treatment plan in mind and go from there.. Well since ours was coming back normal, nothing was keeping us from getting pregnant but we didn't know why I couldn't keep the pregnancy once I get pregnant, we didn't have a "next step". She recommended us doing IVF with the PGD testing to help prevent another miscarriage since with the PGD testing, we would know that the baby's genetics would be normal and healthy. Well Jorry and I don't just have 20 grand laying around to afford IVF right away and we didn't want to finance it all. So we told Dr. Conway that we would take a year and a few months to save up and then once we have the money we would come back in for treatment. Before our appointment was over I asked Dr. Conway if we could try to get pregnant on our own once more before doing IVF and if so, when was the soonest we could start trying. She said yes, we could and that we could start trying on my next cycle. But I remind you that at that point it had taken Jorry and I nearly 1 full year of trying and nothing was happening except for a few Chemical Pregnancies. We were anxious to keep trying in hopes of getting pregnant but we figured it would still take awhile. Boy, was I wrong!!

Meanwhile, Dr. Conway put me on a low dose of Synthroid to help lower my thyroid just a little bit. No, it wasn't high, it was in the normal range just wanted it to be a little lower for pregnancy. So she put me on that and then she had me start the baby aspirin. I started those the next day and I am currently still taking them.

I think it was a few days after our appointment that it was the start of my next cycle and so we had began to try to get pregnant.

On October 28th I took a home pregnancy test.....  (stupid thing won't let me put pictures on here :( I guess I'll just have to put them on facebook in a "baby" album or something)

IT WAS POSITIVE

 

Two little pink lines showed up and the pregnancy line just kept getting darker and darker and darker.... I looked at Jorry and said "NO WAY!!!!!" He didn't believe me at first but when I showed him he was like "I think its broken...." It was positive, people!!! I didn't even miss my period yet... I still had like 3 or 4 more days.. or maybe longer.. I can't really remember.

 

 

I called Dr. Conway the first thing the next morning to let her know and we scheduled our first ultrasound with her at 6 weeks and 3 days.. And until then I was on pins and needles hoping I could make it past 4 weeks and not start bleeding... and to this day I am 14 weeks pregnant and still going!!

 

 

Dr. Conway has me on progesterone. Progesterone, is a hormone that your body produces when pregnant to help support pregnancy. I am still taking it for 2 more weeks, due to my history. All the extra hormones makes it rough and I try not to complain but sometimes its hard not too. I am very grateful to be pregnant and to have gotten pregnant on my own with out all the expensive medication. I am also grateful for Jorry and for all he does to uplift me and take care of me and just listen to me when I have a headache or am puking my guts out and complaining... I sure do love him!!

  

I remember just a few months ago after I was put into Young Women's as the advisor, I had to teach and this was my first time teaching. I was looking on the LDS website at the Young Women's teaching Manuel to pick a topic on which I was going to teach and Patience was one of them. At that time, I was very overwhelmed with the situation we were in. I wanted a baby so bad and I was in such a hurry to get pregnant that I would count down on my calendar every single day to my next ovulation.. I was stressing myself out over it.. I thought to myself "I really need to be more patient." At that moment I knew that I needed to teach on having patience, that it would help me to study it and learn more about the Lord's timing and to have patience with him. During my time studying that lesson my heart was so full, I was upset with myself for being so impatient. The Lord knows our struggles and he knows how we feel and what makes us happy and what makes us upset. Every feeling we have had and will have he has felt too. He is there to help us and guide us. All we have to do is kneel down and with a sincere heart and pray to him. That is exactly what I did.

 

In my heart I know that the Lord gave us these trials in our life to teach Jorry and I. To make us feel something, to show us how to truly be grateful for something. To work together as a unit to make it work. To help us communicate, to rely on each other. To love each other to care for each other. How to teach our children to love. How to be the best they can be. To know the things the Lord would want them to know and do the things he would want them to do. I am beyond grateful for the love you all have shown towards Jorry and I. We have felt your love for us, we know you care about us and we have felt your prayers. I am so grateful for you all. I am also grateful for my Missionary. I love and miss her so much. I am so happy she is out there serving the Lord and teaching those in Virginia. She is always helping Jorry and I and teaching us. I am grateful for the time she takes to talk to Jorry and to show her love for him. She is helping us beyond measure. I am grateful for the gospel and for missionary work. 

 

Families are life's greatest blessings and I can't wait for when I have my own!

  

 

XOXO

 

 

Update!

Hi Guys!

Happy Halloween!!

I hope you guys have a wonderful time tonight and be safe!! 

It's been a while! How ya'll been??? Sorry but nothing new has really been happening, but a lot has happened...! If that makes sense :) So here is a short update!

Recently I've been put in Young Women's at mine and Jorry's Ward! So far I really enjoy it! I am the Adviser for the Miamaid class. Those girls are such sweet spirits. As the Adviser that means I teach the Young Women lesson on Sunday's for the Miamaid class. I've had the opportunity to teach about Patience and How to show Christlike Service in my Service to Others. Its been amazing to learn more of Thee and of this Gospel. It has helped me to understand the Patience we need with God's plan. I personally needed that because I need patience with this "baby process". What a great testimony builder that is for me. I've been praying more than I have before. I've been going to Church and partaking of the Sacrament. I've been teaching the Young Women. I've had more patience with The Lord and with Jorry and my family! I love my family. I love my God and my Savior with all my heart. I know he has a plan for me and for Jorry and for our family. I recognize that. :) I've been so Blessed!

Last week or so, we had a phone appointment with Dr. Conway, and if you remember.. Its probably been about a month ago, Jorry and I had blood work done for our Karyotypes. OK, so we got those done and it took 2 weeks to complete these results and then I had to wait another 2 weeks for our appointment with Dr. Conway. Even though I new the test results before our appointment. I was at ease but also very impatient waiting for the appointment. But as time went by our appointment was good, she told us that our Genetics came back normal and there were no signs of any syndromes or deformities. That's so great. She told us that our work-up is complete and as of now we have nothing else to do. There is nothing else we can do. Our next step is In-Vetro Fertilization with pre-implantation embryo genetic testing. Which is called PGD testing. I've mentioned us doing this before in my other post. However, even though Jorry and I do not have any "genetic" deformities that we can pass on to our children there is this thing call a "trans-location" and that is when conception takes place and the baby's genes are coming together to form its own DNA the genes from Jorry and I get broken or trans-located with other/wrong chromosomes causing it to be incorrect pretty much and that causes abnormalities and it causes miscarriage. Its disappointing that it can happen almost every time. So with IVF and PGD testing they will take our fertilized embryos grow them for 5 days and then take a few cells and then freeze the embryos and they will test the cells that they took from each embryo and individually test each one. The bad ones they will dispose and the good ones they will keep and freeze for our future pregnancies. They will take two of our good, viable embryos and implant them into my uterus and hopefully it takes. This is going to cost us $20,000.00 so that is the crunch in our plans. We can not afford this right now to start any kind of treatment so we wait until we have the money! It will probably take us 2 years to save.

Jorry and I have decided to give it another try by ourselves because we do not have problems getting pregnant. We hope that when it happens for us things will go smooth and pray that The Lord will be on our side and we will not have any problems. If we do end up conceiving, I will be on pins and needles for 9 months.

I've been taking my Synthroid medication and my baby aspirin for 5 weeks now and they tested my thyroid the other day and it came back at 1.25 so that is great. Right where it needs to be for pregnancy.

So far that is all I have to share with you. I am done with my work-up. They have tested for so much and everything is normal. They've tested for all anti-bodies that would fight off pregnancy and all those came back negative, so that is good. I will keep taking my thyroid medicine and baby aspirin for now and will continue taking that when I am pregnant. When I do become pregnant they will do blood work and start me on Progesterone.

That is my update. I am staying positive. I am having patience, and just letting it be and letting God do his work. Thank you for all you support and prayers please keep them coming :)

XOXO

Doctor Visit #3

It was finally Tuesday, and we were going to get some answers!! Our "phone" appointment was scheduled for 3:15. As it approached I was very nervous, I tried writing stuff down that I wanted to talk to her about but when it came to writing my thoughts down on paper, I  forgot half the stuff I wanted to ask! Annoying, I know! Finally the phone rang and Jorry and I were prepared with the voice recorder... Yes, I recorded it so that as we come to find out these answers I wouldn't forget what she said!! She first started out by saying that all of my "blood clotting" blood work came back negative (as I have told you before) :) I then asked about the HSG because lets be honest that was my biggest concern! This was her response "Now, the HSG that I reviewed actually looked FINE!" what????? NOT what I was expecting......  then she continued "I know that when, Brooke performed it, she was a little concerned because she thought it looked like the dye was leaking sideways into your Fallopian tube when actually it looked like it was just leaking back down into the vagina, which is totally normal, that almost always happens when doing an HSG." She also said that she reviewed my HSG test with another Doctor that was working that same day and they both agree that you could clearly see my right Fallopian tube coming off and going a different direction than where the "leak" was. Now, if you've never had an HSG test done before, you probably don't know what the Fallopian tube looks like.. It looks like a really long, squiggly hair strand very thin and you can't see it very well. That is how they are suppose to look.

Let me back up a bit, I wanted to tell you my thoughts when we were first going into this HSG test. In my head I thought FOR SURE that I had scar tissue lining my uterus, because of my 2 d&c's and that was why all these embryo's weren't able to implant. Makes sense right? I thought so. I was pretty dead set on it. I was hoping for scar tissue because its an easy fix, just send me into surgery and remove it.. Boy, was I wrong.. there was absolutely NO scar tissue lining anything! Bummer... Now what could it be? When they told me it was Hydrosalpinx aka tubal infection, I thought "yes! at least an answer, that's why all of this is happening!!" Then with Dr. Conway's findings, that was not it either.... sigh...

So anyway, she said that both of my tubes were absolutely normal and that there is nothing that we need to do to further evaluate my tubes! sweet...

On to the Semen Analysis.... 

Dr. Conway said that this was the only thing she found a little abnormal, but nothing too major. There are 3 things they look for in doing a Semen Analysis and those are...

#1 Sperm Count
#2 Morphology
#3 Motility

They like the sperm count to at least be 20 million in every male and Jorry's was 42 MILLION!!!! (woop woop) So that was great, it was double than the normal cutoff!! The other part is Morphology, looking at the shape of the sperm. They like it to be 4% or greater and Jorry's was right at 4% shaped normally. I know that sounds really, really low but they are super strict at scoring the shape and since he was right at 4% even though that's pretty borderline, that still shouldn't be a problem. So it is still considered to be totally normal! So that's good. The only thing was a little abnormal was the motility, the way the sperm are moving. They like to see at least 40% moving and his was 23%. :( so the concern was pretty mild. Nothing too abnormal. She said "its interesting ya know, because you guys haven't really HAD TROUBLE conceiving." If the morphology was really low or the sperm count was really low that would maybe give more of an explanation as to why this keeps happening, but because its so borderline abnormal it's not really the reason we are having these issues with miscarriages. :(

We are falling into that category of somewhat unexplained. 

One other thing that Dr. Singer check for was my thyroid, normal for the thyroid is 4 or lower and mine was in the normal range which is 3.59. In fertility, newer studies have been proven that if your thyroid is even at 2.5 or higher that can increase your chances of miscarriage in the first trimester. Since mine is at 3.59 they are putting me on a super low dose of Synthyroid medication only for pregnancy, so it won't be a lifetime thing before they start me on any kind of treatment. Oh and I'll also be taking a baby aspirin once a day! 

Since our first Doctor's appointment with Dr. Conway, we've been talking about genetic testing. Genetic testing, is suuuuper expensive so I am hoping that those give us some answers because to be honest, its our last resort!!! Even though Jorry and I may have normal genetics, when an embryo is "forming" sometimes those genetics get twisted, or messed up that it creates abnormal genetics for the baby and its just natures way of getting rid of it before it get too far into pregnancy. IF the genetic testing comes back abnormal, well we will probably never be able to conceive a "normal" healthy baby on our own :( we still have a chance to conceive a healthy baby but that might include 3 or 5 more miscarriages before we get 1 healthy one. Ya, we can still try but I can't go through any more miscarriages and the heartache when we want one so badly. With that being said, IF either mine or Jorry's genetics are abnormal our option is to do IVF (Invetro fertilization) with PGD testing (embryo genetic testing). If they are normal, we are still going to spend the money and do IVF with PGD anyway to reduce our chances of miscarriages.

As of this very second this is all the information we have to share with you. We are going in for blood work today for the Karyotype on both Jorry and I. We will get those results back in two weeks and I will share with you the results of those tests.

This is hard for us because it would be so much easier if we could just do this on our own, but unfortunately we've tried and it doesn't get us very far.. So we are taking it day by day and doing our very best and hoping for the very best.

I hope you've enjoyed my blogs so far, I hope to share more with you as we go on! Please keep us in your prayers!!

XOXO

Doctor Visit #2



Doctor Visit #2

September 18th we had an other Doctor's appointment. This appointment was for my HSG Test, if you've ever had one you know how painful it is! If you haven't had one, I hope you never have to! Talk about cramps! bleh! And Jorry's Semen Analysis!

We are doing my HSG and that was a little uncomfortable because they have these forcepts they use to open your vagina -- wait? am I allowed to say that????? uh??? sorry... so they can see your cervix. Then they take this super long tube and stick it right on up there through your cervix.. REAL pleasant I tell ya... not!  I have a tilted uterus (its normal) which means that my cervix were way up there! Then at the end of this tube or so, is a little balloon that blows up so it helps hold your cervix open while they're in there and then they get this little X-Ray machine and put it over your pelvic area and as they inject your uterus with dye it takes pictures....

It only took about 10 - 15 minutes from start to finish and I knew that we would get my results the minute they were done. After they were finished I sat up and turned to the screen so that I could look at the pictures with them and Brooke, the nurse, said to me "See your right fallopian tube? Do you see how it expands like this?" she then said "it looks like you may have what is call Hydrosalpinx!" It means "water tube". The fallopian tube is distended with fluid and looks like a balloon. Pretty much an infection.... great... just what I needed.... Its a common type of tubal problem that causes infertility. Nearly half of all couples who suffer from infertility have a female-related cause. Of these women, more than half have a disease in the uterotubal complex, which means the female reproductive tract. Now, this can cause your fallopian tube cells to die and/or stick together ruining them and making it hard for the egg to travel to the sperm and visa versa. When you have this it pretty much kills the fallopian tube. When we left the hospital they gave me a hand-out with all the information I would need to know about Hydrosalpinx. I immediately start thinking the worst like they're going to have to remove my tube because if I do reconstructive surgery, it can injure the tube even more anyway and that will increase my infertility even more and if I don't have it removed it can spread to the other side and or infect my uterus and it will kill off pregnancies in early stages. Lets just say mentally I was a hot mess! I was freaking out! Do you blame me though? I was really nervous. But of course, I had to wait until Monday or Tuesday until Dr. Conway reviewed the pictures until I knew for sure that this was what I had. = (

Meanwhile, Jorry had to do his semen analysis.... Lets just say that was quite the challenge hahaha don't tell him I told you guys its not really easy to "get in the mood" when people are outside the door waiting and you can hear them talking..... awka-awkward.. am I right? hahaha I still laugh about it.... Poor Jorry.. His opinion was "IF WE EVER HAVE TO DO THAT AGAIN WE ARE WARMING UP IN THE TRUCK FIRST...." : / WOAH! and then I said "OR we can collect at home.." lol - inappropriate!

Needless to say we accomplished - and were able to go home... whew glad that's over!

Finally Monday came around and I was more than anxious to see what our results were! Well I couldn't really get any information until our next appointment with Dr. Conway! Which was YESTERDAY!!

There is more to come so stay tuned



XOXO