Beta #2 is in

Second beta was today, and it came back at 107. So in 47 hours, it didn't quite double. Close, but no cigar. Heather and I both worried, but our NC called to tell us that the RE wasn't concerned & left it our decision to get another beta on Friday, or wait for an u/s on the 30th. We opted to have another beta on Friday, and then set an appointment for an u/s at 11am on Nov. 30th. So, fingers & toes crossed that the number on Friday has gone up considerably.

Beta!

At 9dp5dt, our beta is 59! I go back on Wednesday morning for a repeat, and we'll see then how fast it doubles. 

Our NC called and told us that 59 is a good, solid number, and that as long as our number Wednesday is good, we will schedule an u/s. The RE wants one at 5w5d to check for placement, and then again at 7w to see a heartbeat. So we could possibly be having an u/s on November 30th!

Seeing Double

Well fancy that! That is my home pregnancy test from 6pm tonight. I've been getting much fainter lines beginning on Tuesday night, but we were hesitant to call it until this afternoon. Slowly but surely, that line is a-gettin' darker! Looks like I'm knocked up!

We still need all the thoughts, prayers & well-wishes you can send us. Our blood test is Monday morning and we'll have another one 48 hours later to make sure that the number is doubling properly. There is some standard rule about doubling times, but I can't remember what it is to save my life. Basically, in order to see that it's a healthy, viable pregnancy, the number has to double in a certain timeframe. So that first number will be a good indication of how things will go, and the second number will paint an even clearer picture. Then we have to wait 4 whole weeks from the transfer date to have an ultrasound to see just how many babies we're baking in there & check for a heartbeat/heartbeats.

I wanna thank everyone who has reached out to us, prayed for us, and let us know we are in their thoughts. I know I speak for Heather and I, and both of our Brandons, when I say that we greatly appreciate it. We are looking forward to a happy & healthy 9 months, but we know we have a few hurdles to jump over before we get there. Love y'all!

Transfer Complete!

Our transfer was scheduled Saturday morning at 10:30am. It's about a 3.5 hour drive to the clinic for me, and 4.5 hours for Heather. So needless to say, we had to get an early start. I went to bed early, about 9:45pm, and set my alarm for 6am. I woke up at 6:53. Alarm didn't go off! I yelled at Brandon that we were late and I took off to get ready. In 15 minutes I managed to get dressed, fix my hair, take all of my pills, cram the rest of our things into a bag and get breakfast to eat in the car. Brandon said I was blur the whole time, just running all over the house. Ha! 

We left town at 7:10 and my GPS said we wouldn't get to the clinic until 10:50am, but we somehow made up time and pulled in at 10:15! Heather and her mom, Brenda, arrived right after we did. We were called back to the room shortly after signing in and after I got ready, Heather and Brenda joined us in the room. We all talked and joked around for a little while until the embryologist came in to give us a picture of the babies (below) and explain the grading. They were a 4BB and 4CB. The embryologist said they were great & then started telling us about the risk of splitting and triplets... She said she tells everyone that but she didn't tell us that at the last transfer! 

The RE, Dr. Le, came in a few minutes later. We weren't expecting him, as our transfer was scheduled with Dr. Haas, but Dr. Le told us that he didn't feel right letting anyone else do the transfer. He looked at the embryos & told Heather they were beautiful embryos and he expects at 70% chance of live birth, and a 40% chance of twins. He checked out my file & told me that they grade all patients trasfers on a scale of 1-5, 1 being the easiest transfer, and 5 being the most difficult. I was graded on my past transfers and I am happy to report that I am a 1! Dr. Le was pretty happy about this too. He then went on and on about my wonderful cervix and how I was just made to give birth, and that we'd better be close to the hospital when I near my due date because this baby is just going to pop right out. We were all laughing throughout the transfer. We didn't even know he'd done it, we thought he was still doing the practice transfer and he said "That's it, the embryos are in!"

After they wheeled me down to the car, we drove across the street to the hotel & went up to our room to begin bedrest. When we walked in, I saw the HUGE basket Heather had put together for me. And I mean HUGE. It had bags of pretzels, big bags of every kind of M&M, little bags of gummy bears, Pringles, Reese's, Doritos and Sun Chips, Sprite, Gatorade, Dr Pepper, and 34 pregnancy tests! And right on top of everything, an LSU hoodie :) I felt SO spoiled!! Heather & Brenda went over to Cheddar's to pick us up some lunch and we all ate and talked for a while. They had a long drive back to Houston, so eventually they had to go. We stayed the night in the hotel & got up Sunday morning and did some Christmas shopping for the kids before heading back home.

I'm off work today as well, so I'm planning to just lay around and take it easy. I had some cramping yesterday, but it seems to be gone today. Our original plan was to wait til Wednesday night to start POAS, but Heather's bringing the peer pressure so I think it'll be Wednesday morning! I'll update as soon as we have something worth updating :)

How Many Embryos? E-'Neuf'!

In case you didn't know, neuf is French for nine. And this baby is Cajun, so expect some French words in the next neuf months. And believe me, in a few weeks you'll have to be pardoning my French when I'm cursing my heartburn!

So if you didn't pick up what I was putting down in the first paragraph, we got the embryo report. And at day 3, there are still NINE embryos growing! Seven look great & are exactly where they should be (I'm guessing they all have 6-8 cells) and the other two are growing a bit slower, but are still kickin' so we're not counting them out yet!

Holy Moly!

Away We Go!

I've done a terrible job at keeping up with this over the last 6 weeks or so, but there hasn't been too much happening until just recently. Heather had her egg retrieval on 11/5 and they were able to get 16 eggs! On Tuesday the embryologist called to let them know that 9 of those 16 had fertilized and were growing. We're eagerly awaiting the Day 3 call to tell us how many of those 9 are still growing and how they're looking. This cycle has been vastly different from our first one, and in a very good way. Last cycle, everything that could go wrong, did. There were issues with almost everything. Monitoring, conflicting schedules on important dates, the egg retrieval yielded less than stellar results for the embryos AND for Heather. There were only two embryos and we had to rush into a 3 day transfer, and then we had a chemical pregnancy. I do believe though that everything happens for a reason, and for whatever reason, we just weren't ready. I'm feeling much better about this cycle, and I think everyone involved feels the same.

I really enjoyed keeping up with my blog when I was pregnant with my first surrogacy, and I'm going to try my best to keep it up this time. I want to document everything & take a thousand pictures so that this baby's family can be as involved as possible. With my first surrogacy, my Intended Parents families all would read my blog & comment, and it was just really cool for them to be so connected. I didn't want any of them to feel like my IP's were just showing up out of the blue with a baby that was essentially a stranger. If my IM were the one who was pregnant, her parents would've known everything going on with her pregnancy, and I wanted to share as much as I possibly could. So by the time Miss T was born, her grandparents knew that she was a night owl, that she got the hiccups at least 178 times a day, and that she was very strong and active. And this baby will have 3 older siblings who will be very curious & probably want to know what's happening as well. Blogging was a great outlet for me to get all the thoughts in my head OUT. Carrying someone else's child is an amazing experience & I had to be able to put all of my thoughts and feelings in black & white.

So as helpful and neat as it was to the IP's and their family, it was just as helpful for me. I hope that makes sense. Heahter blogs as well, about pretty much everything, but she'll be blogging about the surrogacy from her perspective as well. She is an author on this blog, if she wants to pop in & share things from time to time! I will also link her blog on mine, once I remember how to do that.

 I'm gonna go get back to crossing my fingers and wishing & hoping that we get a good report on the embryos today. I'll update when I can!

Here We Go!

It's time! I start birth control pills on Sunday (seems so counterproductive to me) and Heather has her first monitoring appointment on Monday morning. I should start lupron on or about the 1st of October. Other than that, I have no idea. I'm hoping we'll know more on Monday, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I love my clinic, but this NC is super tight-lipped about everything. I'm really excited to get this show on the road!