The beginning....

Our 3rd IVF attempt, picture of our embryos

September 22nd, 2001 was a beautiful, wonderful day.  It was the day two best friends were married.  Tony and I had known each other for 3 years at that point.  We met at Western Washington University in Bellingham and once we decided to commit to each other we never wavered.  After 2 years of marriage we decided it was time to start a family.  In August of 2003 we decided to just see what happened.  After a year of trying we headed to the fertility Dr to see what might be wrong.  After extensive testing they could find nothing.  So, another 2 years went by, charting basal body temps and trying every home remedy in the book.  (Robatussen, Black Licorice vodka, baby aspirin....we've heard them all!!)  When we were having no luck with our own methods we decided to try some fertility medication.  The Dr. said it was a slam dunk, no problem.  We were young, healthy and had nothing wrong with us that they could find.  After 3 months of Clomid and still no pregnancy the Dr. suggested an IUI.  She was sure this would work.  Alas, it didn't.   After that we'd had it.  We needed to take a break for awhile.  It was tiring, emotional, time consuming and expensive.  After another two years, still nothing.  With some much needed motivation from some close friends, we decided to visit a different fertility Dr.  At this visit we got the same optimistic news.  This should be easy!  Let's try 3 IUI's and then go from there, but one of the IUI's will definitely work so we won't need to worry about anything further than that.  3 IUI's later...nothing.  That's when we made the big decision.  We had saved up and were ready to put all of our savings into trying IVF. In August of 2009 we had our first failed IVF attempt.  Although extremely disappointing, we had prepared ourselves for having to do more than one cycle so we immediately tried again.  After a month of IVF medications my body decided it didn't want to cooperate and at the last minute our cycle was cancelled.  So, we jumped head first into our third cycle.  In October of 2009 we found out that our cycle had resulted in a bio-chemical pregnancy, meaning the embryo may have tried to implant for a day or two but ultimately could not hang on.  After three failed attempts we were feeling a bit disappointed to say the least.  At this time I had come to a place where I was so content with God's plan for my life.  I can truly say that I was able to give it all to him and was at peace with whatever he wanted for our life.  We were exploring an opportunity to adopt a little baby boy, so we were already remodeling the nursery in preparation for that.  We took some time off, went to Cabo, and enjoyed the holidays.  After the holidays were over we decided to try another IVF cycle.  In February of 2010 we went to the Dr. to get our pregnancy test result and this is when our lives changed forever.....