Its a boy

We had our appointment the maternal-fetal specialist today and our level 2 u/s done. Everything looked good with the u/s and we are happy to announce we are having a boy. We are very excited that we can now start to buy things for him. I went right to bru and bought an outfit and bibs. My father is super excited. He kept saying I dont care what you have as long as its healthy but when I told him today what we were having we was extra excited. He is going to have a grandson. He will finally not be out numbered by women anymore. I bought a bib that says grandpa's little all star it is so cute.

Anxious

The pregnancy overall has been going well until last night when I got a call from our midwife. On Tuesday Jan 4 we had our scheduled visit to recheck my blood pressure which was a little on the high side ( low 130's over low 80's)at our last visit which is when our Ob decided to start me on a bp pill just to keep things in check as she put it. Now I had all the lab work and the nuchal translucency u/s done to check for pre eclampsia, gestational diabetes, and any downs syndrome/chromosomal abnormalities in my first trimester all of which came back negative. She wants to era on the side of caution instead of waiting till things get out of hand. I had some doubts about starting the medication because of my fear of harm to the baby and the fact that I want to be able to breast feed both of which they assured me would not hurt the baby. The medication is called aldomet. They also started me on vitron-C iron tablets for my anemia. So those two things alone started to worry us a little. We also on our last visit (second trimester) had to have an AFP blood test drawn due to my age to check once again for any chromosomal problems. Yesterday the results came back with a slightly increased value as the midwife put it. She said the normal afp level is 2 and mine was 2.03. This warranted me to be scheduled an appointment with a maternal fetal specialist and for a level 2 u/s which will also check for any structural abnormalities. Now this all scares the shit out of us. J and I from the beginning have said that no matter what our baby will be ours and we will love it no matter what but just knowing that something could be wrong really worries us. We are well aware of the statistics for downs syndrome etc due to my age and such but no matter what our child will be loved no less. The things that do worry us though is the chance that something structural could be wrong such as abdominal, heart, or spinal defects(the fact that our child could be really sick).
Today the specialist called and scheduled the appointment for Monday Jan 17. We will know more then. In the meantime we wait a long wait.

2010 In Review

I wanted to do a post of 2010. Overall 2010 was a great year especially since it was the year that we finally became pregnant. I wanted to do a combination of pictures and script for this post. So here it goes:

January 2010: The New Year began quiet for us since I had to work till midnight and ended up watching the clock strike 12 while at work. The highlight of January was when we celebrated 6 years together in the New Hampshire mountains at the High_lands Inn in Bethlehem.

February 2010: We had a huge wind storm that did lots of damage in our area. We lost power for 6 days. Thank god for the generator.

April 2010: Finally lost the weight (60 lbs) and started TTC process again...lots of blood work done to prepare for IVF. We vacationed with my parents in Mrytle Beach, South Carolina.

June 2010: One of the happiest days of my life our wedding day 6/19/10. It was a beautiful sunny day in June. Held in our backyard with our family and friends.

Also in June J did a 25 mile bike ride in VT with friends. It was a fund raiser for aids. I was so proud of her for this accomplishment.

July 2010: Our first IVF cycle was cancelled due to large cyst, we were very disappointed. We took a trip to Boston to hang out with our friends A & G. We always have a great time with them. We took the ferry over to one of the harbor islands (Spectacle Island) for a hike and picnic. It was a beautiful day.

We also got to see Melissa Etheridge in concert in Hampton Beach. It was a great time.

August 2010: We went to Nantucket Island to visit our friend Chrissie for the weekend. We love it there. Started cycle #2 of IVF.

Attended the Portsmouth Air show where we saw the Blu.e An.gels:

September 2010: Spent Labor day weekend in Crawford Notch, NH camping, hiking, and took a drive up the Mt Washington a.ut.o road:

A rainbow from the top of Mt Washington.

An early morning injection of go.nal F. Oh the things we do to become pregnant.

On 9/19/2010 we did our egg retrieval. They were able to get two.

This was us before leaving to go for the retrieval:

Me signing consents getting ready for the retrieval. I have that nervous goofy smile on my face.

We had our transfer of the one surviving embryo on 9/21/2010.

October 2010: We got our first ever BFP at home on 10/1/2010. We were beyond ecstatic. What a great day.

We went to P-town Ma for our vacation/honeymoon but ended up leaving after one day to head down to Alabama because P's mom was very sick and in the hospital. We ended up bringing her back to NH with us where she was hospitalized for 3 weeks and sent to rehab for another 3 1/2 weeks to recover. P's parents stayed with us from November till January 1st when they relocated to NH to be closer to us and the baby ( It will be their 1st grandchild).

We also attended the Top_sfield Fa.ir for a little fall fun:

November 2010: We were released from the RE to the OB at 7 weeks pregnant. We had our first u/s and got to hear the heartbeat for the first time. What a beautiful sound. We never grow tired of hearing it. We had a scare with some spotting at 10 1/2 weeks that turned out to be nothing. Then we had our 12 week u/s and began our 2nd trimester.

12 week ultrasound picture he/she is an active baby:

12 weeks pregnant:

December 2010: We celebrated Christmas at our home with my parents and J's mom and brothers family:

Our furry babies posing for their Christmas picture.

The newest addition to the family Summer Rose..she looks like J's father who passed away.

I love this picture with J and the kids. She is gonna be a great mom.

So there it is 2010. It has come and gone and now we begin the New Year. Waiting anxiously for the birth of our child in June.

Still Here

Yes I am still here. Sorry its been awhile. So much going on here. I don't know where to start.
Well the week we went on vacation in October my mom ended up really sick and in the hospital in Alabama so we cut it short (very short) we only stayed one night in P-town then we headed off to Alabama. We drove down (26 hours pretty much straight through except for 4 hours rest). We stayed there one week until she was well enough to come back with us so we could help take care of her until she fully recovered. She has been sick since she had surgery in July. She just could not bounce back from it. She had one complication after another and the doctors down there just could not seem to find out what the problem was. I brought her here and within one week she was back in intensive care. After 3 weeks in the hospital here and lots of wonderful doctors and nurses she is finally well and is currently in rehab doing physical therapy in order to get strong again to walk unassisted and to be able to do activities of daily living again. It has been a long road but I think she will be fine now.

As far as the pregnancy goes I am now 10 1/2 weeks. The only symptoms I have had so far is a little nausea and feeling very tired (almost to the point of exhaustion at times). We have had one ultrasound at 7 weeks and we got to hear the beautiful heartbeat. And we had one at 9 weeks due to me having some spotting which was very scary but turned out to be nothing. We were released from our fertility clinic at 7 weeks and are now with our Ob/midwife group. I got to stop the progesterone inserts this week because my level was 43. I was happy about that because I feel those made me more moody and tired. I go day to day still in disbelief of the fact that we are finally pregnant and I have a little baby inside me. Each time I get to look at that u/s screen and see it and hear the heartbeat I just amazed and in love. We go for our next u/s Dec 1 and we can't wait.

We came up with a name that we will use to refer to the baby on the blog and actually it is what we use all the time to refer the baby. It is Wynken. The way we came up with this name was when we first went for the u/s to see how many eggs we had for retrieval for the IVF and we found out that we had 3. So we named them Wynken, Blynken, and Nod from the book by Eugene Field. Then we found out that only one survived fertilization so we stuck with Wynken and ever since that is what we have called it. So Wynken it is. J even went out and bought the book for the baby. So cute.

Congratulations to those that have recently gave birth to those beautiful babies. I hope I get time soon to comment.

rising

Fridays Beta Hcg 601. Progesterone 43.15. Numbers rising nicely. Back in on Tuesday for more blood work. We are officially on vacation and are heading down to P-town for a week yay.

Excited

Just got the call from the nurse. Beta #1 is 188. I am happy. Just hoping it all continues to go well. I'm pregnant, I'm pregnant I just keep repeating it...it sounds so good to say.

In disbelief

Today I woke up with a feeling of sadness and gloom. I felt as if I would never get pregnant and that all hope was lost. J recognized this and felt sorry for me and in trying to comfort me she went and got a hpt for me to do. Guess what.....it says BFP. I looked at it while she was sitting on the edge of the tub and I calmly said to her it says pregnant and I dont think she quite understood until the second time I said it with a loud and excited voice. She got up and started to hug me and we both just cried tears of joy. We still are in disbelief but here's the proof...