So, I must first apologize (I think this is my 2nd one now) - I have completely let “life” get in the way of this blog. The new job has taken up quite a bit more time than I expected.  Over the last 2 weeks, I’ve been in Atlanta, then Chicago from Tuesday->Saturday, then Las Vegas from Sunday->Wednesday, then Los Angeles from Wednesday->Thursday , then Madison & Milwaukee today (Friday).  So, it has been a bit of a whirlwind.  Pretty much all my free time has been just hanging out with the wifey and daugther, doing some house stuff or sleeping.

But…the good news.  We are left with one healthy baby.  The 2nd one never developed any further, but the 1st one is progressing along as it (dare I say he?) should be.

Honestly, though, I’m just happy that we have 1.  I hope it will be less stressful on my wife’s body, that it will lead to a more fertile environment for the baby to grow, and all-in-all I think 1 will be better for the house.

This time around is quite a bit rougher for my wife than the first time through.  She is getting morning sickness a bit, has been in the ER with a racing heart (which she got as I was leaving town), now has a daughter that stresses her a bit when she wasn’t the 1st time and has quite a bit more bloating than before.

And thanks to those of you who have been checking in. This blog has been hanging over my shoulders for the last few weeks, and I’m finally glad to get an update out there.

I should be home for a good while, so I’ll do my best to update things as they go along.

So I must first apologize for being away for so long (and thanks to you who emailed and posted comments checking in!). As if going through this whole process isn’t stressful enough, I have just started a new job after being in essentially the same area for around the last 10 years. I used to be in IT for a large corporation, supporting the sales team who wholesaled our product. Well…about a month ago, the sales organization approached me and asked if I wanted to be part of their team versus supporting their team.

After some conversations with my wife, I decided to take it. My first day was yesterday, and the weeks leading up to yesterday were a bit hectic (and stressful) in the fact that I had a lot of loose ends to tie up. Plus…it is going to require some travel - I’ll be managing the relationship between my company and some banks on the West Coast (I’m in the midwest). However - one of the banks is Bank Of Hawaii. I’m predicting a large need for many relationship-building meetings there Now that I’m a bit more settled, I should be posting again, so hopefully there won’t be any more lapses here.

Ok. To the important stuff. If you haven’t gone to the URL in the title already, go ahead and do so now. I’ll wait…

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Yep. We got two buns in the oven! Within 5 seconds of the ultrasound starting yesterday, the technician stated “Oh my”. At first we thought that maybe it meant three, but it ended up being two.

Shock is currently hitting my wife- 2 car seats (plus we will need a new car), two high chairs, two sets of diapers, two babies who need food, two sets of bottles, two sets of blankets, two cribs, two….you get the point.

I’m rather Zen about this all. Whatever happens, happens. We will make it through it. However, there is one thought that keeps me up at night…has me waking up in cold sweats: If we have twin girls, there will be

3 weddings!

AHhhhhhhh!!!! How will I do it?

Then again, if we do get two girls, and I survive all three of them going through high school, I think a wedding (and paying for a wedding) will be a piece of cake (no pun intended). My wife is a identical twin, so I have an idea of what it might be like in a house with 2 twin girls (although she has a brother, so we will have one more female).

All this being said, I’m getting ahead of myself a bit. We have a long way to go, and the office has already said that one of the embryos needs to do some catching up. Next ultrasound is next Monday (and what a perk to the new job….I get to be there for that one like I was there for it yesterday!), so we should know more then.

On the clinical front, my wife continues to take her endometrin 3 times a day. Also, her HCG was over 7,000 today.

Hopefully more tomorrow. And thank you again for those of you checking in!

No - that is not the sequel to the movie 300 (yes…I’m keeping with the cheesy references).

400 is what my wife’s HCG count was from her blood test yesterday afternoon.  She is hesitant to use the P word, but I’ve used it here and there and have tried to bait her into using it on occasion.  For example - she fell asleep around 8:45 tonight.  When I moved her from the couch to the bed, I mentioned that it was pretty weak that she fell asleep so early.  I was hoping for a “Hey!  I’m pregnant!  Cut me some slack”, but all I got was a look of death.

I quickly explained why I said it.

So, next test is Friday (I beleive) with an ultrasound still to come.  The big question still remains as to how many we have in the oven, but I suspect that question will linger for a while.

All of this seems surreal.  It’s weird going back and reading the progression of how we got here.  It’s almost like it wasn’t us.

Anyhoo (as my wife would say) - I hope all of you are well…more posts as the time arises.

First, thanks to all of you who have posted comments over the last few days.  We obviously didn’t know what the results were going to be yesterday, but we felt a feeling of comfort in knowing there there were other people out there who were living this along with us.

So - thank you again!

Here we are on Saturday morning and my wife is still (dare I say it) PG.  Next blood test is on Monday and the HCG should be at least double.  I think she will also take a HPT either today or tomorrow.  More to come on both.

Related to all of this - I had posted a while back about a friend of mine at work who was going through the Invitro process with her husband (they had tried naturally and with assisted insemination for over 3 years), but she had a really bad reaction to the meds (lots of fluid accumulation in the midsection and in her lungs).  In fact, her reaction was so bad that she was in the hospital for 3+ days and out of work for over 2 week.

She had made the decision, for the time being at least, that she wasn’t going to go retry IVF again…that this was a sign that she shouldn’t do it.  On the other hand, my wife (who is a nurse) looked at it as a learning opportunity for her doc, and this would allow  him to tweak the process accordingly.

Well, she confided in me this week that she and her hubby are now expecting - and by natural means!  She had an HCG reading of 124 on Thursday….good news!

What a crazy week.  But, if the weeks past have led to a lot of waiting, I think the weeks ahead will have a fair amount of worry in them.

Have a great weekend (and a great Easter if you celebrate it)!

The title of this post could be interpreted as the number of times that I cursed this morning while waiting for the call, or my elevated pulse while driving to work and waiting for the call.

Or it could the HCG level that my wife had this morning.  And this is considered a positive level!

She will have another test on Monday, but at least for the moment we are in good shape

More later.  At work right now and probably shouldn’t be blogging!

We’ve bee on one, but not necessarily a fun one.

My wife had some spotting earlier in the week and she was absolutely convinced that she was not PG.

Then, the spotting pretty much stopped, and the doctor’s office said that the endometrin is known to cause spotting.  So, we swung back to the postitive.

It has now been ~90 minutes since she took a blood test, and we are waiting for the call back saying Positive or Negative.

Arrrrgghhhhhhh!  Where is the call!

So still no update other than my wife is returning to normal.

Maybe I should clarify that statement….

For the most part, she has returned to normal from a physical standpoint.  No more bloating, no more pain/discomfort, no more “weirdness”.   But, it is exactly that return to normalcy that continues to wig her out a bit.   Plus, I’ve got my mom asking on almost a daily basis how things are going.

Oh let the waiting end!

Related to this, and I’ve brought this up in the past - the XBox 360 is a wonderful (!!!) time diversion!

Weekend was pretty good - we didn’t have to cook dinner on Saturday or Sunday as we were fed feasts by some friends of ours and by my sis-in-law/bro-in-law.  Solid.

On the baby front - my wife isn’t quite feeling quite as confident as she did previously.  As she told me this morning:

I don’t feel pregnant

Granted, I’ll never know what it feels like to be pregnant, but I’m not sure how many women can say that they feel pregnant 10 days after conception.

All we can do is wait and see what the test says later this month.  No need worrying prior to then.

Of course, that is easier said than done, though

Much of the writing that I have done on this blog has been independent of my wife.  In fact, before around 6:00PM tonight, I don’t think that she even knew how much, how frequently I’ve been writing and how much traffic we’ve been getting here (and that of course is relative - 200 hits in a day really isn’t a lot, but to me & her it is).

But, I showed her some of the stats and I let her read some of my posts and she was moved on both accounts.  Which made me feel pretty good that I was doing a good thing (at least through her eyes).

Then, she asked me why I’m doing this.  My reply was because I hoped that someone, somewhere would take something away from it and that maybe it would make their process just a bit easier or a bit clearer as to how might go.

I just logged into my Wordpress account (it’s around 1:30AM CST) and I was prompted to accept a comment from someone who is an active reader of my blog, expressing the fact that she reads the blog on a daily basis since she is going through the process with her husband as well.

It was at that moment that the reason why I write this was validated.   On this big planet of Earth, I have at least shared some wisdom and experience of this unique and ardous process beyond just my local town and my immediate family.

So - to those of you that are in similar shoes…I wish you all the best, and I wish you happy PG thoughts and results.  I can only hope that your IVF process ends as happily as my 1st one did (and hopefully as my 2nd one will)!

So, on the update front, my wife had an ultrasound today.  Results are positive in the fact that they weren’t negative.  Her ovaries are big enough to maintain her HCG level (good news), and hopefully this is a result of her ovaries being fed by the HCG that is being put off by the possible pregnancy (pregnancies?).  Also - her fluid levels in her belly were good, or at least not bad….she had no free fluid floating around.

She asked the ultrasound tech if that was a good sign, and all she did was smile and say yes.  So - I think we can at least look at this as positive.

Next steps - PG test on the 24th.  More to come…

On a slightly unrelated note - Google is driving my wife mad.  So much information, so much “Your chances are…” or “The percentages are….” or “Morulas at that stage typically….”.  She has stated that she is done.  And will now focus her efforts on a new dining room table.

I think I liked the Googling better.  Not quite the hit on the pocketbook