Michael's 2nd birthday

On Valentine's Day Michael would have turned 2 years old had he survived, instead we celebrated the day he came into and left our lives but never our hearts.

This year we celebrated Michael's birthday by planting 2 pear trees. A Red Pear for Michael since his birthday is Valentines Day and a Bartlett Pear for Wyatt because everyone likes a Bartlett Pear.
A pair of pear trees is said to represent the everlasting bond between a "pair" of people who are truly in love, and I can think of no better way to honor Wyatt & his twin brother Michael.

We have been planning for some time now to plant a tree for Michael.  While doing research into what kind of tree I would get, I found that most trees are 2-3 years old when you purchase them from a nursery.  We decided to wait until the 2 year mark and get a 2 year old tree so Michael's age could be accurately represented.

I love having little reminders of Michael around the house.  Even though he isn't physically here with us, it's nice to feel like he's still a part of our lives.

Right now my little pear trees are just 2 sticks in the ground, but within a couple of years, I'll be able to see Michael's tree in full bloom from my kitchen window.

InVitro Round 2

I'm 2 weeks in to my second round of IVF!

I had the ultrasound that gave me the green light on Valentines Day, started the fertility drugs on the 19th and have been on them ever since.  This cycle has been kind of a crazy one for us.  First of all it's been more nerve racking because we've had more decisions to make, second, it's waaaay more expensive this time because we've opted to do genetic testing, and third, things have not been going to plan which has made it higher stress, which of course isn't so great when you're trying to conceive.

At my appointment last Tuesday, my dr. came in, did the ultrasound, and practically ran out of the room when it was over.  Not.  Good.  I left with a million knots in my stomach and kind of freaked out.  I knew it was a bad appointment.

At my appointment on Friday, when I was called back to a room, my dr. was standing outside of my room going through my chart.  Usually I wait for my dr. not vice versa, so I was immediately caught off guard and not sure how to react.  He started talking to me about my last cycle and making comparisons with this one, then he stepped out so I could get undressed really quick.  I barely had enough time to rip my pants off and was still trying to get myself covered with that paper sheet when he walked back into the room.  He told me that he needed to find me a tiara because I am THE most expensive patient he's ever had to stimulate.  Evidently he's never had a case like me before.  I'm only 28 and should react just fine to the meds, but my body has been kind of resistant to them so I've had to be on the half again longer and taking 2-3x more meds than most women my age.  When he started the ultrasound he immediately smiled and kind of did one of those whole body sighs of relief.  I could see the follicles much bigger on the screen so I asked him if things were going better.  He confessed that he was actually going to cancel me today but that things seem to be going much better.  And with my history of responding slowly to the meds he is going to keep me on and have me do 3-4 more days of the meds.  

So things are taking longer than planned... but at least I'm not getting cancelled!  I've injected over $4K worth of fertility meds into my body so far that would have just been gone to waste.  PHEW!

I figured out that it costs me approximately $620 a DAY just in fertility meds.  Ridiculous right?  Luckily for me, I have a friend that did a round of IVF last year and had about 20 vials of menopur that she sent to me.  That saved me $1500!  That helped a lot since my insurance doesn't cover any of this {which btw I think they should.  If they cover abortions, they should cover fertility options... but I won't even get started on that}

I go back in tomorrow for one more ultrasound before the egg retrieval date is set, but we're thinking it will be Wednesday, the 5th.  Eek!  If the retrieval is Wednesday, then I'll have the embryo transfer on the 11th and will have my pregnancy test on March 21st.

In 19 days I'll know if I get to be a mommy again!

Adding speech therapy

A couple of months ago Wyatt was evaluated for speech therapy.

I was really nervous for this evaluation.

Van, Wyatt's regional center supervisor told me we needed to wait until Wyatt was at least 18 months old so that his chances of being approved were better.

The lady that came out was really nice and tried to get Wyatt to play with her, but he was pretty clingy to me the whole time.  She asked a lot of questions and then told me that unofficially she thought he would benefit from speech therapy but needed to go through everything before she could officially recommend him.  A few weeks later we heard back that he had been approved to receive Speech once a week.  Yay!!!  We started as soon as our Christmas vacation was over.

At that point Wyatt was saying momma, dada, kitty and this.  In the last month of therapy Wyatt has started imitating almost everything that we say and is up to 15-20 words!  I'm am SO proud of my little man!  His therapist does a really good job working with him and has a routine that she goes through every week, which I LOVE, because it's teaching him good life skills.

So now Wyatt has physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and an infant teacher.  Phew!  Thank goodness they all come to us!  That's one of the benefits of him being high risk for infection I guess.  I'll take it.  :)

He still babbles most of the time but it's getting easier and easier to pick out some of the words he's using.  In this clip it's mostly, tickle, and back up {we're working on walking backwards}

Digging myself back up

So for awhile now I've been wanting to get back on here and up to date with blogging.  I'll sit down to write something and end up staring at the keyboard not knowing how to form the words I want to say.  Or I won't even make it to the keyboard because I can't pry myself off the couch or away from my always needy little toddler.  For awhile we were just been crazy busy and I didn't have time for anything extra, but over the last few weeks things have finally slowed down a little and I've found myself just feeling sad all of the time.  I've decided that I might be depressed {I've been diagnosed with depression 3x before & it runs in my family}.  I don't want to be depressed again and I hate taking the anti-depression pills so I've also decided that it's time I try to pull myself out of the funk I'm in.

It's time to stop feeling sorry for myself and it's time to stop feeling like nothing in this world can go right.  I've got it pretty good and I need to learn how to focus on the positives again.

I have an amazing husband who is incredibly loving and supportive of me.  I have a miracle baby who brings so much joy {and screaming} into this little house of mine.  I'm fortunate to be able to stay at home with Wyatt and be his primary caregiver and a homemaker.  I have friends again, oh how I missed having friends that lived nearby and I finally have them again :)

This list could go on forever and ever.  I'm so very blessed, and while life can have ups and down it's time to stop complaining about all the downs and focus on the ups.

Meeting with Dr. Wilcox

I often joke about my infertility by saying that 

"I'm broken" accompanied by a shoulder shrug and a smile, or I say things like, 

"I don't EVER have to take birth control again, woop woop!  No unplanned pregnancies for me!"  

But the truth is, it hurts.  I'm beyond grateful for the technology of IVF which has brought Jared and I our amazing son.. But as we begin planning for our second child, the sting of infertility is ever present.  We have to make decisions that no person ever grows up planning to make and, me being the most indecisive person in the world, I hate it.

We met with Dr. Wilcox last Thursday to discuss our next go at IVF.  We have 6 embryos that have been preserved from the last cycle and I don't want to do the whole IVF cycle again so I've been hoping hard that we'd be able to get 2 more children from what we have.  I went in to the meeting fully expecting to do a frozen embryo transfer, with next to no drugs, and I'd be on my way to having the next Jared or Jessica Jr.  No such luck.  After looking at the quality of embryos and discussing how my last pregnancy went, Dr. Wilcox advised us to do a fresh cycle, complete with genetic testing on all embryos {including our 6 frozen} and do a day 5 transfer.  

Not gonna lie.  I almost cried right there.  No part of me wants to go through all of this again.  But you do what you gotta do for your kids right?  I guess it's time to just grin and bare it again.

I felt torn when the dr. was talking to us about the genetic testing.  The lab reports the gender of the embryo with the test.  My dr. was saying this like it was a great thing that we would get the opportunity to 'pick' the gender of our next child.  Maybe some people would be excited about that, but I feel like it's playing God a little too much.  I want my pregnancies to be as 'normal' as possible, and normal people don't just choose the gender of their next child.  We told the dr. that we didn't want to know or pick the gender and he said it's either us or them.  So instead we've come up with a couple of different options.  1.  See if the lab will screen the results and black out the gender of the embryos.  2.  Number the embryos and draw a number out of a hat.  3. Flip a coin and if it's heads, it's a boy, tails, it's a girl.  Dr. Wilcox said that it has never been requested to have the results from the lab screened before so he'd need to see if they'd be able to do that, but so far I'm liking option 2 the best.  That way, we wouldn't know the genders of any of the embryos, the embryo picked out would be picked by chance, and I would have the dr. tell me the gender if/after the pregnancy test came back positive.

Anyway, since we would like to have 2 or 3 more children, we've decided to take our Dr.'s advice and do another fresh cycle.  I've already started the birth control pills and will start the injections approximately 2 weeks after running my 3rd half marathon on Feb. 2nd.  Over the last couple of years there have been changes in the IVF process so rather than having 3 weeks of injections, it will only be 8 days.  Hallelujah!  If everything goes to plan, we're looking at doing the embryo transfer around March 4th or 5th.  Approximately 10 days after that we'll know if it worked and if it did, we'll have an early December due date.  Fingers crossed!