Where it all began

Let's go back to July of 2010 where this journey of ours began. After 1 year of trying to conceive, both of us went through a number of fertility tests to diagnose the problems. Once we pin-pointed the issue, we sat down with an RE (Reproductive Endocrinologist) at Houston Fertility Institute, http://www.hfi-ivf.com/, to discuss our options. Almost immediately we made the decision to try IUI with injectables. IUI is In-Utero Insemination, and using injectables is the most aggressive way of producing the most/best eggs for a given cycle. All of the injections and medications really take a physical and emotional toll on your body, and it definitely wasn't easy for me! Blake had to give me an injection every night, and we had to go into the clinic for monitoring every other day. After 9 days of hormone stimulation we were able to proceed with the insemination. Our Doctor prefers to perform 2 back to back inseminations (Monday and Tuesday for us) to increase your chances of achieving pregnancy. We were very optimistic throughout the whole process, and after the insemination we had to endure the dreaded 2ww, a.k.a. 2 Week Wait. Throughout those 2 weeks I somehow convinced myself that I was pregnant. Keep in mind the medications do not stop after the insemination-- you continue supplementing your hormones with pills, suppositories, injections, etc. and all of these factors cause pregnancy-like symptoms. Blake and I were 99% sure that we were about to find out that we were pregnant! I did take a few HPT's (home pregnancy tests) and they all came back negative, but somehow I held on to a glimmer of hope. On the day of our scheduled pregnancy blood test we were so incredibly nervous. I went in and had my blood drawn, then we waited--AGAIN!  Hurry up and wait. We quickly realized that this is the reoccurring theme to this entire process. Late that afternoon I got a phone call from the Nurse, and I instantly knew that the news was not what we had expected. She said "I'm so sorry, but your results are negative. You can stop taking all medications now".

As you can imagine, this was heart-breaking for us. Devastating. We just KNEW that we were about to be parents...yet somehow, we were wrong. How could it be? It felt like we lost a child that was never even there. We allowed ourselves to grieve for a few days, then we decided to pick ourselves up and carry on with this journey. Clearly this was not going to be easy for us, and we didn't want to waste any time. We had another consult with our RE and he basically told us that the statistics of IUI were not in our favor based on our diagnosis. It didn't take but a second for us to look at eachother and say "We're not messing around... it's time for the BIG GUNS!" We chose to move straight to IVF, In-Vitro Fertilization, a much more intense, much more invasive procedure, but we were ready! And so it began...

Here we are on Halloween of 2009. Oh the irony!