To Transfer or Not To Transfer....That Was the Question

Okay, before I get to the point of this entry, let me just say the auto save feature on this site ROCKS!! Where was this feature last night when my ENTIRE ENTRY was deleted?!?!

Anyway....on to why we're here.

Let me step back in time for just a sec approximately 26 months ago to March 13, 2008 (at 1:15am to be exact). This was the day my life changed forever--the day I became a mother. Olivia Carol was born into our lives that day and forever imprinted on my heart. And what an entrance she made. She did not come into the world quietly, no sir. I labored with her for 36 long, painful and sometimes frightening hours. The epidural--the miracle drug that had been a God-send for so many of my friends during their labor experiences--did not work for me. Lucky me. So I suffered through the "normal" pain of labor as well as the pain of having her basically get stuck in the birth canal. Other women tell me that I will forget that pain one day and to them I say SHUT UP! I can say with 100% certainty that I will NEVER, as long as I live, forget what that felt like. I remember thinking during it all when the pain would hit that this is what dying must feel like. And that is not a memory that just fades with time. Anyway.......the doctors finally decided that a Csection was the only alternative for me and I was put out of my labor misery (although parts of the surgery itself were painful, too). The entire labor and birth experience was extremely traumatic for me. Olivia was/is 100% worth it and I would go through it all again if I had to.....for HER. But if I thought I had to go through that Hell again for someone else, I'm almost positive I'd say 'no thanks' and Olivia would be an only (biological) child. But, given my history and small frame, by OB has assured me that all future births will be scheduled Csections so no more torture in my future. Thank you, God!

So now fast forward to the beginning of 2009. Olivia was getting ready to be a year old and we were considering expanding our family already. But the decision to do that wasn't so easy for us. Olivia was not conceived "the old fashioned way". She was a test tube baby born to us through the miracle--yes, miracle--of in-vitro fertilization. We were very, very blessed that the IVF process worked for us on the first attempt and I got pregnant. We were even MORE blessed that we had 3 embryos to freeze for the future, too. So now we had to decide if we would expand the family, and to do so it would be through the process known as frozen embryo transfer, or FET. Here, the embryos are basically thawed out and put back into the mother. The process is considerably less taxing on the mother's body than IVF but the success rates are also not as good as they are with IVF. So knowing we could potentially have a long road ahead of us to get baby #2 made us decide to go through with FET pretty soon after Olivia turned a year old.

I started the process in April 2009--this included blood work, some drugs and sonograms. But from the very beginning, my body did not respond properly to the process so my FET cycle was canceled before it even really got started. I was disappointed but I knew that it must have been God's way of saying that it wasn't the right time so I decided to put the quest for baby #2 on the back burner for a while. The embryos weren't going anywhere so I decided to work on myself. I started eating better and exercising and by August 2009, I had lost 30lbs! It was the best I had looked and felt in YEARS--looked like "the old Allison" again which is to say THIN! We even took a quick trip to Mexico that month (just Vincent and I). For me it was a celebration! The old/new me was loving life and how I felt in it! What better way to celebrate than don a cute bathing suit and lay around on the beach!

After that trip, I felt it was time to explore FET again. So in September I started the process again and this time my body cooperated! Yay! It was really going to happen! In mid-October, we transferred 2 of the 3 embryos back into my person. And they were really good looking embryos, too! The day of the transfer, they were already hatching (and anyone who's gone through fertility treatments will tell you that's an excellent sign). I don't remember the exact date we did the FET, but I know it was on a Tuesday. And on Thursday, I started to feel sick--like morning sickness sick. At the time, I just chalked it up to all the hormones I was taking. But by that Saturday when the sickness was still hanging around, curiosity got the best of me and I took a home pregnancy test which came back positive! I was in shock b/c it came back positive so soon after the procedure! Usually it takes at least a week to get a positive result. That should have been my first clue as to what was coming!

Another week went by and I pretty much tested at home every day just to make sure I wasn't dreaming. All tests came back positive! Then it was time to have the official blood work done to confirm pregnancy. They are looking for a specific number (measuring pregnancy hormone) when determining pregnancy and for the clinic, anything over 25 and you are considered pregnant. When I was pregnant with Olivia, my blood work numbers came back at around 300. This time......the nurse calls me and says:

Nurse: "congratulations! you are definitely pregnant!"
Me: "what was my number?"
Nurse: "ummmm, it was 1,100!!! (My eyes get as big as saucers) Now tell me again, how many embryos did you put back?"
Me: "Two."
Nurse: "well, I don't want to speculate, but with a number like that, I'm almost positive you're having twins--maybe even triplets if one of those embryos split!"

Wow! Me.....Allison....a mom to twins--maybe even triplets???? If you had told me 10 years ago I was going to have multiples, I would have laughed in your face!