You're done...right?
This is a question I get just as much as "how do you do it?". People ask us all the time - or rather assume - that we are done having kids. They say oh you have a perfect family, you have 3 beautiful kiddos, you have at least one of each - your perfect little girl sandwiched in between her big brother who is already obsessed with her and will protect her for the rest of her life and her little brother who will be her best friend, the one she shared a home with for 9 months.
What most of them don't know is that we have 2 babies who we never got to know and one more waiting for us. Admittedly when we were told that there was no chance we were getting pregnant on our own - it was quite a shock and we didn't know anything about IVF. We didn't have the typical road to infertility that a lot of people have where they try rounds of clomid or femara, IUIs and timed intercourse - we had none of that. The doctor said there is no sense bothering with any of that - it's a waste of time and not going to work so it's IVF or bust. We quickly learned what we were up against and what we would have to endure but we were willing to do anything to become parents.
We were so hopeful that first round when we transferred this beautiful embryo even though it wasn't given great odds. It was a day 3 embryo that wasn't graded very high but we thought it might be our little miracle. We went into IVF thinking this is a sure thing - it's bound to work right? If a doctor can't make us pregnant with the perfect circumstances and the perfect conditions we are really screwed. When the doctor called from the second he said hello I knew it was not good news and we cried and we were sad but we knew we had to pick ourselves up and move on. There was part of us that wanted to put things on hold and there was part of us that wanted to start a new cycle that day. Eventually we decided to take a few months to get as healthy as possible and try again. That being said - we often thought about our sweet embryo but without ever seeing any of our children - our flesh and blood created from an embryo just like the one below - we could not at the time realize the impact that embryo would eventually have on us.
What most of them don't know is that we have 2 babies who we never got to know and one more waiting for us. Admittedly when we were told that there was no chance we were getting pregnant on our own - it was quite a shock and we didn't know anything about IVF. We didn't have the typical road to infertility that a lot of people have where they try rounds of clomid or femara, IUIs and timed intercourse - we had none of that. The doctor said there is no sense bothering with any of that - it's a waste of time and not going to work so it's IVF or bust. We quickly learned what we were up against and what we would have to endure but we were willing to do anything to become parents.
We were so hopeful that first round when we transferred this beautiful embryo even though it wasn't given great odds. It was a day 3 embryo that wasn't graded very high but we thought it might be our little miracle. We went into IVF thinking this is a sure thing - it's bound to work right? If a doctor can't make us pregnant with the perfect circumstances and the perfect conditions we are really screwed. When the doctor called from the second he said hello I knew it was not good news and we cried and we were sad but we knew we had to pick ourselves up and move on. There was part of us that wanted to put things on hold and there was part of us that wanted to start a new cycle that day. Eventually we decided to take a few months to get as healthy as possible and try again. That being said - we often thought about our sweet embryo but without ever seeing any of our children - our flesh and blood created from an embryo just like the one below - we could not at the time realize the impact that embryo would eventually have on us.
Our first cycle we had 11 eggs and only that little one made it to the transfer day. It just wasn't a good outcome but we were still hopeful. After lots and lots of changes we went through our second cycle and we had 18 eggs with 7 fertilizing and 5 become blastocysts. We transferred the beautiful embryo below and that sweet little embryo would become our precious Ceej. It wasn't until he was born and we fell in love with him and looked into his eyes and saw pieces of ourselves that the full effect of what that first embryo meant to us would be realized. That embryo that was transferred and never made it was a piece of us - it was our flesh and blood created by us. Would it have been a boy or a girl? Would it have had my eyes? Chris' nose? Blonde hair? Would that baby look like Ceej? I found myself thinking about that embryo and what might have been a lot more after we became parents.
You can see that Ceej (above) is a lot more "developed" than our first embryo. With our first you can still see that it's basically an 8 cell embryo whereas ceej was a blastocyst. The image below shows the development.
Fast forward to Ceej's first birthday and we know we want more kiddos and we know we want them close together so we decide that it's time to go back for round 3 with one of the frozen embryos from Ceej's cycle which at that point had been frozen 2 years.
We had nothing but high hopes for that embryo. It was from Ceej's cycle and the same grade as Ceej - why wouldn't it work? As you all know - it didn't. And who knows why - God has a plan for everything. Maybe there was something wrong with the baby where it wouldn't have survived - who knows. But again - this embryo meant more to us than we could have ever imagined because we had all of the what ifs and wonder whats...wonder what that baby would have looked like? What would his or her voice sound like? Would it be a boy or a girl? All those questions came flooding back. When that embryo didn't work the doctor had a talk with us and we were now dipping into our last 3 embryos - all of which were graded down from what Ceej and our 3 embryo was graded which naturally made us worry - if #3 didn't work and these were supposedly not as strong how were they ever going to work?
This is when the doctor told us that our best chance of a successful outcome based on the strength of grading of the embryos from the embryologists was to transfer 2. At that point - if they didn't work we would consider banking the final one and starting a fresh cycle. We had told him going into IVF in 2013 that we were not about to have twins and he knew our stance on that. We were never going to transfer 2 and the thought of it terrified us. Well as I said - sometimes God has other plans. We had trusted him thus far and he had given us our first miracle - why stop now? So we transferred these 2 beautiful embryos - one hatching. We were thrilled and had high hopes, and 3.5 short days later I would see a second pink line and know in my heart that we were having twins. And for the record I'm so glad we took the chance because being a twin mom is something amazing and special and I cannot imagine not ever having the privelige of such a special gift.
All of this to say what? I know - it's a lot of rambling to get to a simple point. The answer is no. We have one more baby - one more little blob - one more precious embryo sitting in the freezer and waiting for us. I think about it often already - is it a girl? Mia looks so much like me and my side of the family I wonder what a girl would look like if she looked like daddy? Will it be another boy? And Mimi Grace will truly be Daddy's princess with 3 brothers who will love and protect her? Is there a possibility it could split and become a second set of twins for us? Identical twins. All of these questions that I contemplate often and think about often - we know in our hearts we have to give it a shot to become a part of our sweet family. So the answer is we hope and pray there will be one more Wiklund baby someday.
XOXO
K
Comments
Post a Comment