The Update Finally...

So I left off with how frustrated I felt by CD25 and no BFP... Just to put it in perspective I woke each morning with my POAS ritual and added to my supply of used pee tests... all showing me BFN after BFN.

On March 31st I laid down next to my hubby sure all the pregnancy symptoms I had were in my head and I was a loony Birdie with a psychological pregnancy because of wanting it so bad. I questioned my hubby, "Are you sure God told you this is the right time? Because I feel like crap and since I just went back to work and people are coughing and sneezing all over me I think I'm coming down with a bug... I keep getting negatives and I feel like CRAP!" Love looked at me and patted my arm, "Birdie, I promise God told me you were going to get pregnant and this is the time we are going to finally have a baby of our own. Don't doubt God, He's got this." (Me in tears) "Okay, but I'm scared and I'm trying really hard to hold onto my Faith, but maybe Dr Awesome was right, I'm old... maybe my eggs are crusty and dusty and old... maybe they aren't COUGAR EGGS.... What then?" Love kissed my forehead and 'said, they are good eggs, and we will have a baby Birdie. I love you." The next morning, CD26and12DPO I sat on the toilet and said a prayer, God, I'm not bargaining, I just wanted to let you know that I accept your will. Positive or Negative, I will praise you. You have all knowledge and power, and you work all thing together for your good. If we are pregnant Lord I pray that you show me now so I may share this blessing and confirmation with our Church family, They have been praying for our treatments and praying over our family for so long Lord. I want this baby to show glory to you. Amen. PS I really want to surprise our Sr Pastors! AMEN They have been our biggest cheerleaders on the sidelines... they were labeled barren and went onto have 5 children after medical intervention failed. So infertility has been a huge part of their life, and their Faith. I took the test and saw this on April 1st:

Our April Fools Day Surprise! I immediately composed myself and kept squinting and twisting the test back and forth in the dim light at 6:45am... When I ran to the bedroom and laid down I nudged my snoring my hubby... "Love?....Love?" I whispered and he groggily responded, "Huh what? is it time to get up for church? It's really dark in here." I replied, "When our baby is talking what do you want him or her to call you? Baba, Daddy?" He opened his eyes and said Daddy I guess... Then I said well good because your are going to have to start thinking about this stuff, because WE'RE PREGNANT!" and I showed him my "squinter positive!" When we got to church we told our Pastors and Love flagged down basically all 3500 fellow parishioners to tell them! I got to tell about 5 people... but thats okay, It feels good seeing my husband beaming with pride over this long awaited and anticipated pregnancy... Just to be sure it wasn't the worst April Fools joke ever, on Monday morning I took my last 2 tests! and here they are:

Yep folks I took 19 tests in all and had 3 positives after our trigger shot ran out of my system...

Our First Beta was scheduled for Tuesday, and it came in at 90.5 and our 2nd Beta came in today at 211! We are rising nicely and now wait for our first U/S on April 23rd at 7am. I have to continue to take prometrium because my progestrone level is 23.5 and the doctor wants to ensure our pregnancy sticks!

Met with Dr Awesome

Love and I met with Dr Awesome and his Sr Resident and we officially have a plan of action!
Dr Awesome had me pick up an OPK and begin testing for Ovulation since I was on Day 11 of my cycle on our meeting day and he wants me to note the date of Ovulation then call when my cycle starts so we can jump into our cycle with the knowledge of this last cycles timing. He plans to do an unmedicated cycle with 2 consecutive dIUIs once I ovulate in March. HOLY CRIKEY friends this is our time! WAHOO!

We rushed over to Le Drugstore and got our OPK  the Clear Blue Easy one...

Then rushed home to order our Donor Sperm IUI vials...DONE in record time... while on the phone with our DS Bank I asked questions about our donor... Of the vials that have been used of his so far there are 5 confirmed pregnancies and the representative said that no less than 3 of those were multiples...

Now we are in the wait before the 2WW... and this time we are in control... WELL God is in control but I know we aren't relying on another woman, whether related or not to help complete our family. I'm not saying we are never going to go through surrogacy but we will be planning that when we are completely ready to proceed, with our 3 frozen embryos...Since they need to come home to us as well. This being just Love and I with our Dr Awesome is really well AWESOME because this is a huge change. We finally feel like we are moving forward and we took what little control we could of our own family planning. This Friday (today by the time the post goes up) is my CD14 so hopefully I ovulate and this is the final countdown and we get pregnant in March!

Over the years I have ofter said that I just want to end my pregnancies with my body on a high note. I want to carry a healthy pregnancy and deliver without the stress of Rh sensitization. By Love changing his mind on the use of donor gametes he is bringing that dream into a reality for me. What a wonderful husband and life partner, and soon very very soon... what a wonderful father to our future baby.

I can not wait for Love to become Big Daddy Love...it really is the one thing we have yearned for these past 3 years.  So please hurry little turtle...mommy and Big Daddy Love really want to meet you this year!

Nope Not Crazy...

Yes folks you heard it here first!

I can totally see you aren't impressed huh...OK well I guess let me back up so I can bust in with and TADA! We aren't crazy! Maybe that will help okay here we go.


So after a couple years of our private hell rollercoaster Gestational Surrogacy being the main focus, we switched gears suddenly. Love came to me in December and said he was ready to pursue dIUI, he asked me to make an appointment with our RE, Dr Awesome here in Littlebigtown, Midwest.

Alrighty so I jump on the phone while keeping an eye on Love, for fear I was wrong about what month we were in and he was going to jump up and say APRIL FOOLS! (because this had been a heated debate before we ever even married). I scheduled our appointment and hung up the phone, then a couple days ago the Nurse from Dr Awesome's office called me. (I'm gonna just call her nurse because my mommy taught me "if you don't have anything nice to say DON'T say anything at all, Birdiegirl!" so this is me not saying ANYTHING)
So Nurse said "Hey Birdie I see you have an appointment to talk with Dr Awesome about dIUI and get started, I need you to make an appointment with Clinical Psychologist, aka Her Royal Awesome, Psy. D. to go through the evaluation to make sure both you and Love are okay to proceed. " So I quickly inform Nurse that I happen to have an appointment this Friday (today) and I will make sure it gets done in the course of our appointment. Fast forward to today... We walk in to our appointment and just had to sit and visit with Her Royal Awesome, Psy. D. so she could make sure we aren't crazy nutty peeps that think every baby on the street is their long lost baby have reasonable expectations of this cycling process. They also needed to ensure we would indeed love this baby just like it were both of our genetic baby not like a red headed step child...

errr um wait well Love has one of those too. (for the record He loves Bug just like she is his. :) and actually I'm impressed with his ability to help me understand my almost 20 year old son, Froggy... (yeah the older they are they really don't get much easier), but We do so love our Froggy, and Bug. ANYHOO-  We met for an hour taking up my therapy session (what if I really needed that time today?) with Her Royal Awesome, Psy. D. yeah that is her real name! okay maybe not, but it should be. At the end I got this fabulous "permission slip" that says briefly in like 5 sentences that yes we know what to expect, we have realistic goals, we are emotionally stable, functioning, and based on our interaction with her she recommends that we be allowed to proceed in ART, with use of donor tissues (guess that's how they say Super Awesome Sperminator).  That's right Ladies and Gents, it is official we are "ALLOWED" to get pregnant by Secret Agent Donor otherwise know as Super Awesome Sperminator... On February 15th we have our appointment to get our calendar... and order our uber special vials of magic serum so Sperminator can get to work at helping Love and I be Daddy and Mommy. And We aren't crazy... if only Fertiles and teen parents had to get the same little permission slip<------ Yeah that's a rant for another day.


TADA! We aren't crazy!
However I have to go back to  Clinical Psychologist, aka Her Royal Awesome, Psy. D. because she must have been asleep while filling it out the date on it says 02/03/2011.... UGH!

ICLW: Getting to know you...

Hello fellow ICLWers Welcome to my bloggy home! I hope you are all having a fabulous week so far. I figured I should give you the skinny on my story here at Birdie's Family Journey. Love and I went on our first date in November of 2008, engaged in April of 2009, and married in August of 2009... yes that was a whirlwind but I have to tell you not a day goes by that I don't thank God for my husband.  Plus we wanted to add to our family ASAP and we aren't spring chickens! I have 2 grown children from my first marriage. Froggy almost20 and Bug who just turned 18. If you want a breakdown of why I can't carry my DH's baby go here. We started our journey to baby via surrogacy during that fall, and were matched to a wonderful surrogate, who had to back out due to a home electrical fire right before our appointment for psych evals, and cycling. We were so very sad but understood that she needed to focus on her home and family. We went through a few potential matches including a family member match. We were all set to to on our journey and prepping for a June cycle when my dear hubby had a stroke due to unregulated hypertension April 30, 2010. Life changed in an instant, One month before his 37th birthday my hubby was suddenly in a fight for his life. At that instant we went from a dual income family to a no income family, and luckily we had money saved, and the ability to fall back and regroup. I had changed jobs right after we married and didn't have FMLA time allowed so not only did Love's private practice end my job did as well, while my husband was in surgical ICU and in a coma I was told by my workplace.

I spent the next year being Love's personal cheerleader and after almost 4 months in the hospital he was able to come home to a newly renovated place (had to be done for him to come home)... and we continued with on average 9-11 appointments each week for the first few months then it backed down to around 6 appointments each week and tapered off until last July when he stopped all outside therapies. He no longer practices and is medically retired, his Bp is now under control and he is feeling like its time to restart our journey in a new way. We know we still want to pursue surrogacy in the future because we have 3 frozen embryos that are great quality. We do however want to have more than 1 child so they have a sibling.  We have an appointment on February 15th to start a dIUI cycle. I look forward to sharing our journey with you all and please leave a comment, follow me, and I will for sure be following you ladies and gents back!

The Infertile Fertile: my story about me

I have received so many emails, and open questions asking about my story. People in my everyday life whether it's at church, work or just friends I have met after my move here to asking about our potential surrogacy or use of donor sperm (since Love is a positive blood type with me carrying) plans since they know I have had children. I decided that maybe I should open up and explain exactly what makes me fall into the infertile community. Likely there aren't many out there who have heard about my specific ailment, so fasten your seat belt, put your thinking caps on and take notes, because here comes the story of How Birdie Is Broken! in technical terms:

My story is different, I am not infertile, yet I walk the same path to expanding my family as many Infertile couples do. Why? I have Rh disease. Rh is basically what makes your blood type negative or positive but there is more. Rh factor deals with antigen d in the bloodstream. This is where most people say "Oh yeah my (insert sister, aunt, mom, cousin, friend here) had that and they just got a shot of RhoGAM, can't you just do that?" The problem is once you have antibodies built up to specific things they never go away. In fact in this case with each pregnancy they start building once again from the vary place they ended with the last pregnancy. There are 2 other antigens also present in the blood stream to express specific blood types, c and e.  My blood type is O- I have a negative recessive blood type. From each of my parents I received cde. Lower case letters are used to show a non- dominant or recessive trait. Each person has 2 sets of these 3 specific antigens. When a woman becomes sensitized to another blood type, either through blood passing back and forth between mother and child, or transfusion, or some other unknown way blood would enter into her bloodstream she builds antibodies against the offending antigen expressed in the blood. This is purely out of protection, if our bodies didn't build antibodies against these things it could not just be harmful , but could cause death. Antibodies are the way our body fights infections, and disease.

In my specific situation I became sensitized to D and C antigens. I never received baseline testing or (Antibody titer) since this was my first pregnancy to see where my levels were. One day Dr W came in and said "oh we missed giving you the RhoGAM shot and need to do that today." When my son Froggy was born we had no clue there was anything wrong. I had a normal pregnancy, but within a couple weeks of my RhoGAM shot (given to me late at like 33 weeks instead of 28 weeks) I went into labor and the doctor had to stop it. The hospital kept me overnight and then sent me home. The next week I was in and out of the hospital and then finally the last time they wanted to keep me in for 23 hour observation after stopping labor again, I said no I want to go home. I will go see the doctor in the morning if that is okay with him. I was exhausted, being poked and prodded all night over and over, I just wanted my bed, at my home. The next morning I went to the doctor, I was sitting in the office and noticed that I started having timeable contractions. I calmly went to the front desk and told them I was contracting and they brought me in back quickly. I was dialated 2 stretchable to a 3 and 70% effaced. The doctor sent me over to the hospital and told them to stop my labor with an IV drug terbutaline.  This gave me time to get my husband home and rested since he was on midnights and had gone back and forth telling work each time I was in labor that indeed that day was baby day. He didn't want to call in to his boss with another false alarm. At this point I felt like the boy who cried wolf. :) The next morning when Dr W made his rounds he went to check me and my bag of waters broke. He calmly said well you are staying, and will have the baby sometime tonight. That was 6 hours and 7 minutes before my first child was born. SO not only do I get pregnant easy and have a great uterus I have babies quickly... (Although my sister holds the record in our family for fastest 1st baby with 3 hours.) When Froggy came out he was very yellow, the nurses evaluating him never slipped him into my arms, they wrapped him quickly and said "say hi to mommy and daddy" as they whisked him out of the delivery room in into the nursery where he could be better evaluated. Froggy had a very severe case of jaundice caused by my Rh sensitivity. I wasn't allowed to see Froggy for about 7 hours.



So here is where it gets interesting I guess... What do all those antibodies do when passed from the Rh negative mother to the positive blood typed child?  Well my body became aware that a foreign blood type that was potentially harmful to my health was inside me. In normal response my bloodstream sent antibodies built against the "intruder" across the placenta to attach to the red blood cell to "buffer" it and make it safe for me. The baby's white blood cells then acted on that when they recognized something is wrong with that red blood cell. White blood cells fight against infections in our body. SO in this case the white blood cells killed the red blood cells with antibodies attached to them. This is a vicious cycle. In my latter pregnancies when we knew that this was happening they would do amniocentesis to check the level and color of the fluid and then when it was time the doctors would bring me in for Percutaneous Umbilical Blood Sampling (PUBS) with a follow up transfusion. In effect they would transfuse the baby through me. They waited as late as possible to start this process because once you do this process it pollutes the amnionic fluic and you can't go back to the less invasive testing. Each pregnancy gets worse because the anitbodies do not go away they build from where they left off last time. the higher the antibody count the more high risk and potentially fatal to the unborn child. Froggy received 2 exchange transfusions at the hospital before coming home, then another at 11 days old. Babies do not break down iron to make red blood cells while in-utero so as the white blood cells killed the red blood cells there were no new red blood cells being made. We had to wait for Froggy to make them on his own. It was very scary and quite touch and go. With Bug's pregnancy I was moved immediately to Loyola University and the MFM group there watched over our progress. I was text book, followed all directions, residents learned to do amnios on me. Calm as a cucumber. The pregnancy was documented and used during one of the doctors talks at a continuing ed seminar he gave. Bug was born 6 weeks early and the MFM Group said they thought with how well this pregnancy went I could go through one more. Bug had 4 PUBS with followup transfusions, and 2 transfusions after birth. This ended  my successful pregnancies. I became pregnant with my son Little Bean, who was born at just 26 weeks gestation, he lived just 55 minutes. He was in distress shortly after the first PUBS and transfusion. I had to have an emergency c-section. That's not the end of my story but it definitely shows how each pregnancy gets worse until the babies are not safe and there is nothing the specialists can do to help once antibodies grow to huge proportions.

I went on to have many more losses but these first three pregnancies show clearly what happens in Rh sensitization cases. Each one gets worse, until the baby can not possibly reach a viable stage in the pregnancy.

I walk the road of an infertile, knowing that I don't truly fit into either category "Fertile" or "Infertile". What I know is the intense desire to have children, and not be able to. What I've learned is that when infertiles go month after month experiencing periods hating that their bodies are telling them they can't have the one thing they desire most. A baby.  They mourn not for the lost child as I have with Little Bean, but the hopes and dreams for that little boy or girl that seems so out of reach. She was going to be the first woman president, he was going to be a wonderful business man or the researcher that found the cure to cancer. We all mourn the hopes, and dreams we had for that child or children and that is our common bond. I don't share the struggle to conceive but I do share the struggle to mother and bring life into existence.

When my son Little Bean died, I became angry at God. I felt cold and dead inside. I remember driving to the cemetery and weeping as I lay across his grave. I thought my arms would forever feel empty.Years later I started going back to church, and reclaimed my relationship with Heavenly Father. Now I am remarried, to a wonderful man. He is here everyday, telling, showing and guiding me toward fulfilling our dream of a family together. Hand in hand, with our eyes fixed on Him we walk in faith. Do I feel sad still about past choices, and mistakes? Yes. Do I beat myself up about them? Not anymore. I know that I could have made different choices, better ones perhaps, but maybe making those choices, going through that growth has made me who I am today. I love the me I am today, and I can not wait to tell my little one the story of how we brought them to be, against the odds with faith in Heavenly Father's greater plan.