Another milestone...

After the boys I expected to have good days and bad days. I still feel that August - January was just a blur, a dream.  When I look at my pregnancy pictures I almost have to remind myself that was real and that was me and we were expecting twin boys. We would have been 40 weeks at the end of this week. My boys would have been here. I would be holding them right now. I hate how some days I am fantastic, positive and excited for the future and other days I want to stay in bed and remember the days where I was happy, pregnant and planning my boys future.

Saturday was a gorgeous day! Probably the nicest day we have had yet this year. I was excited to turn the music up and sit on my porch and just soak in the sun. However, with a beautiful day comes all the families that want to get out with their kids, strollers, walks to the park. I sat on my porch for a few hours watching everyone walk to an event on base for military children. All I could think about was how we should be loading our kids up in their stroller and walking up to the event. I wish I could turn my mind off. I know everyone says this is normal and part of the grieving process and it is still very fresh, but I just want to move on. I don't want to forget my boys, but I just hate hurting. The pain is just so unreal. I have been through emotional pain. Pain of losing a relationship, pain of losing a grandparent, pain of losing a pet, but this pain of losing your children is just unfathomable. It almost makes you question if you ever want to have kids again, because their is always a chance that something bad could happen to them.

We took this month off from treatments and I am praying so hard that with a miracle we somehow get pregnant this month. I mean a girl can dream, right? I still laugh at the thought that people can get pregnant on purpose with one month of trying and no fertility treatments. Please Please Please let that be this month. No more needles, ultrasounds to track follicles and the thought of having a surprise pregnancy test! Oh to dream big, lol.

Ok, so I must get on with life now. Get myself in the shower and pretty for my last week of class. I can't believe my shoot is on Friday and then we get our certificates! I finally accomplished one of my dreams and hoping there are more to come. One thing that has been good in my life recently is meeting all these great people in my class. I do believe God puts certain people in your life. They have definitely made these last 4 weeks very manageable :).


Shannon :)  

And the results are in...

As the saying goes..."better luck next time." It's ok though, I am not horribly upset. Thank goodness I have a busy month ahead of me to keep me from dwelling on it. I knew that this cycle may not have worked. Any treatment less than injections never worked in the past so it was just wishful thinking anyways. The only thing I hate is the estrogen and progesterone mimic pregnancy symptoms and you believe you are pregnant because how can you have so many symptoms and not be. So anyone who may be going through fertility treatments in the future be warned!  When you are on extra hormones they will give you every symptom in the book.

On a better note, I am LOVING my class!! I am learning a lot and it's amazing how much I am not a fan of brooklyn, but love Manhattan :). The people in my class are great and I am really enjoying not dwelling on my "issues" everyday, lol.  I think after this class is over I am going to apply at MAC somewhere in lower Manhattan (Oh the possibilities).

Anyways, not much more to report. Thanks for reading!

Shannon :)

Busy week!

Ok, so we are 8 days post IUI (8dpoIUI)and surprisingly this week went really fast! Less than a week to go until the actual blood test. Am I having any symptoms?? Well, I looked in my old pregnancy organizer from last time and the same symptom I do have was burping, lol. Just so you know I am not a burper! The only time I burp is when I drink soda which is not a lot.  Also, the progesterone the doctor prescribes plays with your mind when it comes to symptoms so I am not getting my hopes up since I know how hard it is to think your pregnant and get the negative, so I am just taking it with a grain of salt. Def better to remain positive though, right? I went yesterday morning for the blood work that is required one week post IUI and my estrogen and progesterone were a little on the low side so the doctor prescribed me supplements to boost my levels. One thing I did forget was how the progesterone when taken orally gives you that "I had a few too many glasses of wine before bed" feeling. Just happy I didn't operate any heavy machinery after taking it :). So, I will be on those pills twice a day until they tell me to stop.

I don't know if it's the sun shining, the birds chirping or the extra hormones but I am doing ok!  I should be really sad though.The boys would have been full term this week :(.  I should be hiding in bed not wanting to face the world but I am ok. One thing I do all the time, and I am curious if anyone else does it, is I always wonder where I would be right now if they were still in utero. When I am walking the dogs I think to myself, "would I be outside right now walking the dogs if I was still pregnant?" "Would I be on bed rest right now?" "would I have been bopping around still shopping or would I have been complaining and begging for them to come out?" lol.  I am also getting passed the bitter phase. I have been able to hear about pregnancies without that sad "why does everyone else to get pregnant but me?" thought pops up in my head. This is a huge step. Maybe it's because I know we started treatment and it's only a matter of time before I will get pregnant again and will be able to look towards the future.

As I was driving home today I heard Kelly Clarkson's "stronger" play on the radio and it has been my anthem for the last 3.5 months. Have you ever heard a tragic story and thought to yourself, "OMG if that ever happened to me I would just die." Or, " I can't even imagine what that person is going through. How are they going to go on?" I am sure you think it all the time. Well, I want you to know that you do go on. You overcome everything. You can choose to let it defeat you and you are allowed to be sad, but you do go on. After the boys, I seriously thought I was going to die. My heart hurt so bad, but the days passed and you find strength.  We have been seeing our CG Chaplin almost weekly since January and the last time we saw him he said something I will truly have to thank him for. He told me how inspiring I was for not giving up and jumping right in and not letting this defeat me; However, he also told me that I need to find something else to focus on that's for me. At first I was mad he said that. How can I focus on something else? I am willing, for as long as it takes to sacrifice my body to treatments until we have that healthy baby. So far I have spent three years as a science experiment. Always taking medication, Always getting blood drawn, my ovaries have been the size of ping pong balls. I have put off my career and traveling because it interferes with treatments. Never able to lose weight because the meds just continue to bloat you up and make it almost impossible to workout without the fear your ovaries might burst from being jumbled around your insides. I am willing to endure it. Wouldn't you do anything for your kids and family? If this is what it takes than I am going to do it. But, I also remembered I am a human and have dreams and desires too. We got home from that appointment and Mike told me to find a school in Manhattan for makeup certification and go. Find one that is only a few months or weeks and go! So, as of Monday of next week I will be a full time student for 4 weeks at Chic Studios NYC. I will finally be a certified Makeup Artist! For those of you that know me really well this has been a passion since middle school. One that I have always been scared to do, but I am focusing on me this time.

So, feel free to leave a comment and let me know what was your major symptom for pregnancy and if you have had multiple pregnancies did it continue to be your main symptom each time!? Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks again for reading,

Shannon!

Back in the game! ... of Treatments dun dun dun!

If you have been there you know exactly what I am talking about. Mike and I decided to start the first cycle after the boys with a LESS aggressive fertility treatment. By less aggressive I mean less needles, bloat, and pain. However, you still deal with the hormones which I am sure my wonderful husband can tell you all about. Always crying, bitching, complaining and did I mention crying?  So day 1 is the first day of your cycle (period) and within the first couple days you are prescribed an oral medication (letrozole or Clomid) to take twice a day for five days. On day 10 of my cycle the endless pokes and prods of the treatment begin. I will go in every other day (and for anyone familiar with the Verrazano Bridge, it's a huge toll of 15.00) for about a week to get blood and have a transvaginal ultrasound to track the size and number of follicles that the medicine produced. For all those who are new, a follicle is what releases the egg :). After that week I had one big follicle about 20mm. I was told to take the trigger shot 36 hours before my IUI. The trigger shot will force the follicle to release my pretty little egg and send it on its long journey down my fallopian tube to hopefully meet with one, just one sperm who is fighting his way through the crowd. I always envision the opening credits to the movie "Look Who's Talking," lol.

The IUI process is not too bad. If you can survive a papsmear you are fine. Your husband goes in an hour or so before the procedure to make his "deposit." After that, it is put through a machine that washes the sperm and removes all of the ejaculate so you are left with a very pure and concentrated "deposit." The funniest part to me is when we go in for the IUI and the doctor puts it on a slide and informs us if they are swimming or dead.  I am sure every man, including my husband holds their breath until the doctor congratulates them with the response of, "well, they are not dead". But, you also don't want to hear that you have some that are swimming in circles either ;) So, after the swimmers pass the microscope test I am set up as if you are getting your yearly exam and instead of being swabbed you have a very long catheter that is put all the way into your uterus. If all goes well this only last about 15 seconds and then told to lay there for 15 min. After that I went home and put my feet up. Not that that is even necessary, but believe me if I have to go home and put my legs up in the hope I am giving those little suckers and advantage I will.

As much as I loathe treatments, I am so excited for them. It is definitely a love/hate relationship. I hate the fact that I even have to do treatments, but I love the day we complete them because that means the next two weeks I rub my belly and pray with everything I have that something is growing in there. Of course the thought of getting that phone call two weeks later that the blood test came back negative is the most painful feeling ever. A whole month of needles, trans-vaginal ultrasounds, bloat, ovary pain, night sweats, crying, bitching, complaining all for a negative. But, we aren't going to focus on the negative, are we? 

So, for the next two weeks I will dwell on every poke and twinge I feel in my belly and compare it to www.twoweekwait.com lol. Maybe I will even do a blog and you all can tell me what your immediate symptoms were when you found out you were pregnant!

Thank you again for accompanying me in this chaotic journey!

Possibly some answers!!

Tonight I met with Dr. Kofinas my new High Risk doctor. This doctor could be my ticket to bringing a healthy full term baby into this world. He is known for studying the placenta and deals greatly with situations such as ours on a daily basis. Here is his website: http://www.kofinasperinatal.org/about-us-/doctors

At our appointment we had a thorough exam and was told everything looks great which was even greater for me since we are going in for our IUI tomorrow evening. My uterine lining was thick and our one follicle was 20mm which is perfect. Now we just need sperm to meet egg...but lets save that for another blog :)

Dr. Kofina's started out needing to know the details of our previous pregnancy. We informed him that we had what we thought was a pretty normal pregnancy with little bumps along the way. He looked at our paperwork from our other doctors and noticed that our last ultrasound before labor with the other high risk doctor showed we had a cervix length over 4 and the following week, two days prior to delivery it was 3.14. This right off the bat alarmed him and said that was our first indication something was not right. This should have been a red flag to our doctor after the nurse called it in, but why would our doctor look at our chart when the hospital calls them..hmmm...sounds shady to me. Then the doctor looked over the placenta pathology report from after our delivery and said that the boys combined placenta weight was less than what one of their placentas should have been. This seems to be what went wrong. He discussed that when something is wrong with the placenta your cervix becomes inflamed and brings on contractions resulting in labor. He said that if he were our doctor from the beginning all of our blood work would have been completed that we had done after the boys and the placenta would have been accurately measured and treated accordingly. Basically, this could have totally been prevented. The blood work from the beginning would have revealed that I have Thrombophila and needed to be on Lovenox and baby aspirin. He said unfortunately this happens all to often because doctors don't check the blood work until a person has had a few losses which is a few too late in his eyes.

We made sure to ask if this was destined to happen again and he said not with the right treatment. These are the situations he sees daily. He mentioned one lady who was there while we were there who was 35 weeks with twins and had come to him at 20 weeks when she was going into pre term labor. He was able to take care of her and get her to this point. We asked if twins would be an option and he responded again, "with the right monitoring and treatment of course." This is what he does. Mike and I are completely relieved. I have faith again. I go back in tomorrow (bc their blood lady was out) for another blood test to test our Natural Killer cells and if we conceive this month I will go back right after to start the lovenox shots. I try to think God has put us in NY for a reason and this may be it. He knew there would be a reason I needed this doctor. I feel so blessed. My heart still aches to think that what happened to my boys could have been prevented. I would have been 34 weeks right now and it hurts so bad. However, I can't bring them back but I know that we are so much closer to bringing a baby home after meeting with Dr. Kofinas. My little angels will help us along the way too. Now just to have good luck with our IUI tomorrow!!

Look for my blog on this IUI cycle either tomorrow or later this week :)

This is our reality...

Today we went to our regular fertility doctor. I went to this appointment thinking we would have our consultation on where to go from here, an ultrasound and some blood work. Well, the only thing we did was the consultation and finding out the reality of what is to possibly come.

Our doctor began with the normal introduction we have been hearing for the last two months of how sorry he is and how he wished everything was different. He wanted to know if the labor was brought on by any infection or incompetent cervix and we let him know it was just preterm labor. With that, he is obligated to tell us his opinion and what he thinks we need to do. Like I mentioned before in a previous blog our high risk doctor told us this was a fluke thing and we had a less then 1% chance of this happening and my body is more than capable of having babies and more then one at that. Our fertility doctor is not so sure. Well, not this time around at least. The good news is we know we can get pregnant and the "cocktail" that will accomplish that. With the injections he told us that there is a 75% chance of having one baby and after that the rest is multiples. Obviously, we know the percentages because we had twins before.

I almost decided not to blog this appointment because I really don't even want to think of our options let alone write them down. Since we know what can get us pregnant we need to think about what will happen if we get multiples again. If we get one baby that will be the perfect scenario and we will go about our pregnancy being very closely monitored. If we get more we have the worst possible scenario apart from what we suffered two months ago.

The doctor broke it down like this. My body experienced pregnancy of twins and with that my uterus is stretched. If we get pregnant again and suffer preterm labor again it will likely happen a few weeks later then what it did last time. So, if we went into labor at 20 weeks it could happen again around 23, 24, 25, 26 weeks etc. He made sure to let us know that in that case our babies would have severe life long disabilities and a high chance of not surviving. The other option was to reduce down to one at the end of the first trimester and have one healthy baby. I know what you are all thinking. How can anyone even think of doing this? At the same time, if it meant saving one at the end what do you do? The choice is beyond my grasp and I just can't fathom going through what we did before or having to reduce to one.

He said his goal is to get us a healthy baby and I understand where he is coming from. Since I had no infection or incompetent cervix my chances of having preterm labor again is still high and with multiples it's even higher. I can't imagine going through what we went through again. I now understand how some people just choose to not have children when they are faced with choices like this. I left the office and cried the whole way home. Mike reassured me that we still have other options. Lets try without injections and just do IUI. Maybe we will get lucky. I know I am thinking the worst, but how do I not think the worst right now?

So, we decided to just try without injections and do IUI for the next couple of months and hope and pray with everything we have that we will be blessed to have ONE baby on our own. I am not going to sit and cry all day. I had my 10 minutes in the car on the way home to cry. I know that my time is coming and there has to be a happy ending in sight. I am going to stay as positive as I can and not get upset about something that has not even come about. There is no need in crying over decisions that are not even in my path right now. All I ask is I have that strength and believe we will be a family one day. If you have made it this far thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to read.

Shannon <3

VACATION IS OVER :(

Mike and I just got home from our very busy two week vacation. It was very much needed and definitely kept my mind busy. A lot of people had asked me why I wanted to do a trip to Disney after such a loss. I knew Disney was going to be very hard because of all the families that travel there. I honestly couldn't even tell you how many babies, toddlers, twins, and pregnant women I saw. I kind of looked at this as a challenge. After the boys passed I couldn't even look on facebook at pictures of my pregnant friends or friends with small children because my heart just hurt so much. They say to get over a fear you have to face it head on and I did. I would be lying to you if I said I didn't have that feeling where your heart drops into your stomach and you get little butterflies in your belly from seeing things that hurt your heart. I did. But, it got easier when you are surrounded by it. Instead of wanting to cry I just kept saying that one day we will be bringing our children here as a family and it will be wonderful.

In order to survive this trip I had to psyche myself out a bit. I had to look at it as we could just get up and go and ride as many rides as we could and spend time together as husband and wife and a lot of people couldn't do that because they had children.  When I saw a small child having a temper tantrum and the parent looking like they would rather trade their child in for a Pluto doll then have to deal with a day of kicking and screaming I thought to myself, "well, at least we don't have to deal with that yet." Mike and I at the end of the days at Disney and Universal were EXHAUSTED! Mike asked me how parents even do this? Is there a crack pill that parents take to keep up with their kids and go all day, lol? So, as two adults at Disney and Universal we did the necessities: We rolled out of bed, ate quick bfast's, rode a ton of roller coasters, drank every beer in Epcot, danced the night away at city-walk, saw a LifeHouse Concert, floated the lazy river drunk at Typhoon Lagoon and rode Tower of Terror four times in a row! I guess we wouldn't have been able to do that with kids and I am happy we got to experience Disney together as a couple.

 However, I really just loved watching the faces of little kids when they were in Disney. Seeing Mickey for the first time and not knowing that characters are not real is priceless.We were so happy to have run into Mikes Aunt Geri and her family. It was a nice to see family and experience Disney through his little cousins eyes. Mike even said he teared up to see the kids so happy. Nothing like seeing a child so carefree and in such bliss :)

After a week at Disney we boarded our ship to the Bahamas! This was definitely needed. Not many families and drinks with umbrellas in them! The first day we made it to the top of the ship and relaxed in the hot tub for a few hours making some new friends. However, the friends we were making were maybe 23 years old and ready to party! Not that we aren't ready to party, but last time I remember my hangover's lasted 3 days and our cruise was only 4 days so I think it was time to be a little choosey when making new friends :).  Dinner the first night was good. The only thing about cruises is you get placed at a table with people you don't know and forced to make new friends. Well, I am a social person, but this requires asking and answering questions based on your life and I was nervous that my lying skills were going to fail and I was going to mess up any story we had about our personal life and why we were taking this trip. Safest answer for us was, "no, we have no children and not sure when we want to have kids." However, if you know me at all I am a terrible liar and you can read every emotion on my face at all times lol.

So,  we were placed at a table for four. Not sure this was a good thing or a bad thing. Six would have been better because if we didn't want to be talkative the other two couples could have talked it up or vice versa. At a table of four you are all required to make conversation in order for the table to not be awkward. sigh. Luckily it was a young couple exactly our ages and they were married the day before. We had no problem talking it up the first night! They didn't ask any questions about family and I have learned my lesson after struggling through fertility that I NEVER ask anyone about kids. So, we talked about their jobs, where they live (originally from OH, but recently moved to Dallas) and they also had 2 dogs. success if I should say so myself.

The following night we sit down with them and I notice the girl was not drinking. She also mentioned that she can only have a certain amount of seafood that week. Stupid me asked, "why can't you have fish?" She replies, "I just found out I am pregnant like right before the wedding." I am sure the blood drained out of my face with surprise, but believe it or not I can put on a good show when I need to so I did, for her sake. This was fantastic news for her and I was going to show here how excited we were for her as well. Which I was! I was more surprised at the odds that I was sat at a table with a girl who was newly pregnant. This was my LUCK, for a quick moment I was almost wishing we were put at a table of 80 year olds so our conversation could have been what ailments we are all suffering from :). She then begins to tell us at how surprised they were because the husband was told a year before that he had no sperm and it would be a miracle if they ever got pregnant without help. I felt a connection to them after she told me that. They to, whether they have been trying or a surprise had fertility issues. I also told her we do as well and it is almost 3 years of trying. It's amazing how many people go through some sort of issue when it comes to fertility.

Mike and I really enjoyed our time together and having two weeks to focus on ourselves and not dealing with our reality. We returned home and on Monday we meet with our fertility doctor. This will be our consultation on how to begin the process all over again. The last couple of years my body has been month after month a science experiment and once again my body will not be my own. Do we try on our own for a few months? Do we jump back into injections? These are just some of the decisions we will be making. I am curious to see what the doctor has to say. This doctor is just 1/3rd of our team for having a baby. Keeping my fingers crossed that we will be achieving our goal soon :)

Thanks for reading <3

Shannon