Results are in..............................

Here it is! The post I have been waiting 5 years to write....I'm Pregnant!!! I still can't believe it! I have imagined this time for so long and really thought it would feel real but I am just in bisbelief. I was so sure that I wasn't pregnant. I was having pretty bad cramping and just wasn't feeling it at all but what do I know I guess:)
So Monday we made it to the clinic at 8am for the blood draw. I will say this, Monday morning was the only morning I woke up and felt like it could have worked which only frustrated me more because I knew my hopes were up really high! So blood draw was done by like 8:05 and then we had to kill time and a lot of it. We went to breakfast in Kent and then headed to Ikea. We bought a large bookshelf type thing for the office/sewing/bonus room plus a really cheap sewing table. Then we were off to Starbucks! After we ordered we sat down to play chess. Neither one of us know how to play but to pass time we tried to learn. By then it was 12 and I knew any time between 12-5 I could get the call. As soon as 12 hit, my stomach dropped and I was so nervous! I kept pretending to play. For those that know me, there is not a more fitting place then Starbucks for me to be told that I am PREGNANT!!! So at like 12:45 my phone rang and it was SRM. I knew as soon as I picked the phone up I would know whether I was or wasn't just by the sound of Terry's voice and sure enough I knew right away that I was pregnant! Still in disbelief, she said"you were wrong, you are pregnant"!!!! This was just the start of many "you were wrong" quotes of the day. But I don't care that I was wrong about this becasue I am pregnant!!!! I didn't start to cry or anything, I was shaking but that was about it. I got off the phone and Steven and I hugged for a long time(did I mention we went out to the car, so none of this was happening inside of Starbucks)and prayed and thanked the Lord for the blessing that we knew came from Him alone.
That next few hours was a whirl wind of calls made to friends and family and peeing on sticks! Thats right I really didn't test until after they told me I was pregnant and since then I have taken 5:) I would take more if someone would buy them for me!!!
There are no words to describe how thankful I am for all of you who were praying for us. We felt all of the prayers. We are so excited to be on this next journey! Our first ultrasound is on July 11th which is only the 6 week mark so we may only be able to see something not the actually heart beating but we will see! Thank you thank you thank you to all who prayed and supported us through the last long 5 years of our life!

Our baby!

8dp5dt

Here I am the afternoon before my blood test. I have very mixed feelings right now. Before I start I do understand that I have never been pregnant so I don't know what it feels like but what I do know is that I know what it feels like to not be pregnant. Even before the transfer I was having some cramping and that has never stopped. Over the last few days I have had consistent cramping. By consistent I mean everyday. I don't have cramping all the time but this is what it normally feels like before I start my period. I also know that other women have felt that without a shadow of doubt that they were going to start their period yet they never did and ended up pregnant. So yup all I can do is wait until tomorrow. I go in at 8am and they say they call anywhere form 12-5. So tomorrow we just wait as well. Steven was suppose to work yesterday and for some reason I was happy about that. I felt like I would do better alone, but he called this morning and got the day off. I think it is so very sweet that he wants to be with me but it just seemed a little easier doing it alone:)

So I wait on the Lord. I am praying that this is God's timing for us. Praying that tomorrow I get the call that we have waited 5 years to hear. I want nothing more then to be pregnant but if it is not God's timing then we will make it through and try again. I don't plan on giving up anytime soon!

Thank you again for all your prayers. Please be praying for Steven who has faith unlike anything I have seen and truly believes we are pregnant right now. And who knows WE COULD BE!

Lord I praise you and thank you for your love and blessings that you pour over our lives. Thank you that you are in control of our lives and know what is best for us. Please calm our hearts as we wait for another 24 hours to hear the news we have been waiting for. Let your will be done. As I type this and am having cramping that does not help me in my thinking, protect my heart. Hold my heart. I will serve you no matter the outcome. I love you Father and thank you ahead of time for the blessing of a child that will come.

PUPO~Ashley

3&4dp5dt

3dp5dte
I didn't even blog yesterday because it would have been a mess. I hit a major wall of negativity. Nothing anyone said really was going to make a difference yesterday with how I was feeling....can someone say Debbie Downer!!! With how I have felt through this whole process of birth control, 10 days of hormone shots, numerous probs up the lady area, too many blood draws to count and then continued daily shots and patches I would have never thought I would have felt the way I did yesterday. This whole process has been relatively easy and smooth, feeling very calm and collected that was until yesterday. I just had this overwhelming sense that this didn't work. The devil was working overtime on me. I blasted worship music to drown out the negative thoughts and then when I got homoe I read my Bible and then prayed in what will be the baby's room. But the feeling just never really did leave me.
4dp5dt
Work up to what should have been a brand new start to a brand new day...I could feel it still like a cloud over me. If any of you have seen the lion, the witch and the wardrobe movies(or whatever you call them) saten is depicted in the last film as a green fog like substance that follows you wherever you go once you give into sin. And that is just what happened to me. I allowed the sin of negativity to roam free over me. Now I have to say some of my thoughts are normal for someone in my situation but thinking them and speaking against them is a lot different then bathing in them. I had several people text to check in on me and sure enough my sister did too. I think she could immediately sense something was wrong or maybe the Lord spoke to hear and told her to call because she did. She asked me how I was and I just felt a wave of sadness come over and I began to tell her all the negative things that were following me around. I can't really remember what she said but it helped. But it wasn't until she text me after that finally I was able to let go of the sin I was carrying around...She told me that I needed to remember who God was and what He was calling me to do. She reminded me that i was being used as a testimony to show his Love and Faithfullness to us. She reminded me that He is asking me to run to Him baby or no baby...becasue He is my king and savior. I couldn't have asked for anything more from her. She always has the right things to say and knows exactly what I need to hear. I can honestly say that weights have been lifted from my shoulders and i am now back to believing I will be pregnant at the end of this, if it is God's will.

Thank you to everyone who is praying for us. Thank you to Ashley C for bringing me a jamba juice at work just because and listening to my thoughts! Thank you to my sister who i love more then words. And thank you to the rest that text and email and remind me that we are not in this all by ourselves.

PUPO~Ashley

2 days after a 5 day transfer

Today was much better emotionally then yesterday. Today also wraps up my days of hanging around the house. Tomorrow I am back to work and back to normal stuff. Will I get anything done at work? At Home? Doubtful. My mind is going a million miles an hour, and nothing really in particular. And believe it or not I have stayed off of google, and most sites that people debate symptoms. I do however still stay up to date with my youtube people. I had a wonderful visit with my friend Ashley who recently got pregnant through IVF. I had many questions and she shared as much info as she had, although I will have many more questions for her. I truly think the hardest part with IVF is that there is no real normal with anything. One person could feel one way and another person a completely different way VERY FRUSTRATING! But I will say it is so nice to have someone to talk with in a world that can be so lonely. Other then that I have felt the same today. I have been having cramps since after the retrieval so I have to remember that that was happening before so it probably doesn't mean anything whether it is good or bad. All other symptoms are associated with the progesterone. And that leads me to the last note....My butt hurts from all the shots. You won't hear me complaining about too much but I will say OUCH!!! Well until tomorrow!

PUPO~Ashley

1 Day after a 5 day transfer

Last post I was in the waiting room and now I am in the waiting game.

Surprisingly I do not feel anxious at all but I'll be honest and say today was an emotional day. I woke up feeling perfectly normal but I did get my call from the clinic about the amount of embryos that made the freeze really early. Normally they call from 1pm to 5pm and they called at 9am. The nurse told me that only 2 of the remaining 7 made it to the freeze. I cried. I lost 5 more that were growing but then stopped. I want more then 3 kids at least that is how I feel now and I truly believe I am suppose to have more then 3. Having two frozen isn't a shoe in either is the one that is in my womb right now. I know getting ahead of myself but it is hard not too. My mind tends to race. Sometimes to places I didn't even ask it to go. I am trying to stay as calm in my mind as possible. I am trying to stay as hopefully as possible. I am believing I am pregnant Until Proven Otherwise, also known as PUPO:) I also had pregnancy announcements that came up today. One that gave me great hope(Ashley C:)) and another that was hard to swallow. And to top it all off I have been pumping myself full of hormone medication and I have handled it really well, so I may have just hit a minor breaking point:) But I am back to my positive, have to do this to get pregnant attitude and will keep pushing on!

Will update again soon!

PUPO~Ashley

Waiting room!!

In the waiting room of Seattle reproductive waking to be taken back for my transfer. They told us 11 but apparently it's at 11:30. Totally fine except that they told me to come with a full bladder and there was no way I could make it. So they has me empty my bladder and start drinking again. We are both so hopeful that this is our miracle! Still don't know how many have made it to today but we will know very soon!! So many thoughts that I am refusing to allow to surface. Praying against negative thoughts. Well off to get my blood drawn and then hopefully it will be our turn soon!!!

Be back soon!!

Our new Journey

Well here is is....Almost 5 years to the day that we started trying to have a baby and I can officially say we are doing IVF!!! I am so excited and am trying to enjoy every part of it. Now I don't think I even need to mention that it really isn't a fun process but I'm trying to enjoy! It has been 4 years since we were first told that we would need to do IVF and Steven has spent the last 4 years trying to prove the doctors wrong:) So how did we end up here?!?

I have recently been having abnormally horrible periods, they are normally bad but not like this. Steven hates to see me in pain so we made an appointment to go into Seattle Reproductive Medicine again. When we got there we were given 3 options: Surgery with hormone therapy after, hormone therapy alone or IVF. All three of those options did not seem terribly wonderful but we left the office and had to make a decision. They prescribed me birth control pills since that is step one of the IVF process and we were on our way out the door. Steven and I went our separate ways to work with the lingering decision upon us. I sent him a text later that day asking if he wanted me to fill the BC pills and to my surprise, he said yes! And then to my surprise again he said he wanted me to start taking them!!! And after that everything just kept rolling! WE did all the necessary tests and steps to get everything ready. We got our loan by the grace of God and then we were on our way.

I am on day 6 of my shots and things are going very well. I had my first scan yesterday and I had 30 follicles..30!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! To put that in perspective, woman have on average one a month! So I am being monitored really carefully(I go back tomorrow morning) to get checked again.

Tentative Timeline:

Tomorrow scan and blood work:
6/10- scan and blood work
Possible more scans after that
6/14- 50% chance of egg retrieval!!!!!!!!!
6/19- FATHERS DAY Embryo Transfer!!!!
6/28- Blood draw to see if I'm pregnant!

Everything is happening so fast! Shots are going remarkably well, it is really hard to mentally give them but physically a piece of cake. I am keeping my emotions under control the best I can. The only real side effects I am having are heightened mood swings, bloating and some pain from my overly big ovaries, and fatigue. I will take all those and more when it results in a miracle baby.

There is so much more to write but I wanted to get this down and then I can break it apart as the days come. Secret: I am also doing youtube videos to help other Christian women going through the same thing. I haven't told Steven about my youtube channel yet but that's alright! If you want to watch my user name is hopeforamiraclesoon.

So please be praying for us. We prepaid for 4 rounds of IVF but are believing it will happen the first time!

Ill keep you updated!