I went to Washington D.C. for two weeks to start IVF #4 last month at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Thankfully Dave's Mom had said she could come out to N.C. for the two weeks I was gone to take care of Brenden while Dave was working. The coordination of the trip and caring for baby was not an easy task. Fortunately my friends Marilet and Perry let me stay with them in Quantico, VA (which made the trip into D.C. an hour) which was very sweet of them. Unfortunately the day after I got there, I got into a car accident and my car was hauled off for two weeks in the body shop. No one got hurt which was fortunate but it made an already stressful situation worse. Not a good way to start off. Marilet was sweet enough to let me use her car and again made my life easier. Thank God for good friends!
When Dave, Shirley and Brenden did make it up there for the final week of the process, we had a few days to sight see and to try to take our minds off of the emotional and physical roller coaster known as in vitro fertilization. It's a necessary evil in our lives and for those of you out there that don't ever have to go through it, consider yourselves very fortunate. It's something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. That said, when it works -the outcome is more than worth it (for us that would be after two failed IVF's and having success with IVF #3) so we wanted to try it again.
This time around I had a chemical pregnancy which means I had a small enough level of HCG to test positive but the levels didn't double on the second test and thus.. nada.... We did have one embryo that made it to day 6 blastocyst stage and thus could be frozen so we will try again in a few months but for now we are going to enjoy the summer with Brenden and pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off. Trying to have a 'glass is half full' attitude. It turns out that gets harder and harder to do after these cycles. I do appreciate all of my friends and family's well wishes and pep talks. They really do help!
On a lighter note, not only did Shirley get to spend two weeks of time with Brenden but my parents also came out to help us for a week and a half so there was some very good family time spent together which was awesome. I also saw a lot of interesting things on my trip like George Washington's Mt. Vernon as well as many Civil War related buildings, cemeteries, historic sites. I took hundreds of photographs and it's hard to choose the best ones for the blog but here goes:
Mt. Vernon:
Marilet and 4 month old Ava. She is the sweetest baby and helped me curb my missing Brenden so much!
Shirley, Dave and Brenden touring the National Air and Space Museum:
He was fascinated with the museums and pointed at most big items:
The front of the Jefferson Memorial:
Washington Monument as seen from the Jefferson Memorial:
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment