Saturday, August 11, 2012

Glory Baby

For my babies, Grant Alexander, Caleb Bradley and Allyson Paige.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Adoption story

Now that I have a few minutes, I'll explain our latest trip to Cincinnati. We met with our doctor first. He tried to convince us to do donor eggs instead of donor embryos because they have a little bit better success with that but Brad and I aren't comfortable with the baby only being genetically related to one of us so we declined. He said he may possibly want to do another laparoscopic surgery to make sure my endo hasn't returned. When I asked him if it really matters when you do IVF he said not usually but in my case it may make a difference. He left the decision up to us and said to let him know a few months prior to the transfer if we wanted to pursue it. (Any opinions on doing laps once using IVF?) He also said that although our embryo quality isn't ideal, it doesn't necessarily mean we couldn't ever have our own genetic child. It just might mean several more miscarriages and years of trying. We are done with the miscarriages and the years of trying. We are definitely ready to move on to something that hopefully takes away both of those things.

Next we met with the nurse who coordinates the donor eggs and embryos. She was extremely nice-one of those people who you just meet but feel like you've known forever. She showed us the profiles of the families of three groups of embryos. They had information such as medical history from the donor's grandparents, parents and themselves, information about their children and how they were conceived along with the donor's occupation and height, weight, hair and eye color. They also had met with the psychologist and the questions she asked with the answers were attached. The first group was a group of 9 3-day embryos. The second group was a group of 4 6-day blastocysts. The last group was a group of 10 morulas. We read through all three very thoroughly and decided to go with the 4 blasts. Not only were we happy about these being the strongest embryos but the family was the most closely related to our own. I cannot explain much about the family on here for obvious reasons. If it doesn't work and we have to adopt more later, we are OK with that. We didn't want to pick a family based on the number of embryos it would provide us.

Lastly we had to met with the same psychologist that the donating family met with to make sure we understood exactly what all of this means. It felt a little weird sitting on a couch and discussing our childhoods but we got through it. I guess our answers were fine because that very day the embryos got transferred into our names. How simple was that?

We aren't sure when we will transfer them. We are still trying to heal from the miscarriage and the fact that we may never have our own genetic child. We are certainly dealing better with the you may never have a genetic child part than the loosing your baby two weeks ago part. School started this past Monday, August 6. I went to an inservice that I was supposed to miss because it was the date of my first ultrasound. Needless to say it was an incredibly miserable day. I want my baby back.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Allyson Paige Davis

We finally named our baby we just lost. It's not that we weren't wanting to. It's just that with our other two pregnancies we named them as soon as we found out. Both times we didn't think the baby would die so we figured naming them early was fine. This time wasn't the same. Although we were certainly hopeful for this pregnancy to continue, we also knew that with our track record it might not. So we didn't name the baby while I was pregnant.

When I was a little girl, I always named my Barbies and Cabbage Patch Kids Allyson. And yes, she needs a y because her mommy has a y in her name that most people don't either. When I asked Brad what girl names he liked he mentioned Allyson. So Allyson it is. No we don't know she was a girl. We don't know the other two were boys either. I guess if we get to Heaven one day and find out she's a boy, we'll call her Al!

We love you Allyson! We don't understand why you couldn't stay here with us but Jesus needed you there with him. One of my favorite sayings is, " Jesus, we didn't get to put our children on our lap and tell them all about You so now can You put them on Your lap and tell them all about us?" I pray He will. If He does He'll tell you about how much you were loved even before we made you and about how much you were wanted. The week I was pregnant with you was one of the best weeks of my life. We miss you sweet girl.

My favorite quote of all time is "Never regret something that once made you smile." We don't regret one minute of this journey so far.