Five Weeks

I had a nifty little Christmas post all set to go today.....and then I got a call.
The Fertility Center FINALLY got back to me with my RE's 2016 availability.

So I scheduled my IVF consultation.

Things are finally in motion and I'm pumped. And nervous. But mostly excited!

In exactly five weeks we should have a whole new game plan for what our doctor recommends for IVF, PGD, testing, freezing, retrieval, the whole thing.

Now, obviously I have my own plans. But we all know how plans work out.....(they don't, at least, not EXACTLY how we expect).

But given what I know about the process, paired with our families timeline....this is my rough estimate for next year.

Early January we meet with Dr. Jacobs.
He gives us our protocol.
We either re-do some preliminary testing, or hop right into our first IVF cycle.

(As it's been exactly one year since we had all our original testing done, I'm not sure what he'll recommend. 
In my head, since we are likely moving forward with ICSI along with PGD, it seems un-necessary to re-do Mark's sperm analysis and all that...but what do I know)

We start our first cycle mid-January.
I will probably go through 2-3 IVF cycles to stim, retrieve, fertilize, biopsy, and freeze our embryos.
I would imagine they have some magic number of embryos that should make it to the freeze, all with good grades.

And then we wait.

Why?

I've said it before and I'll say it again....my seasonal depression cannot handle the thought of baby blues AND being held captivity inside my home during the winter.
I haven't had the luxury of much with making a baby, so at the very least, I know I want us to work towards delivering a child during the spring/summer/early fall months.

That means our embryos chill out (literally) until after summer.
Then we hit go on the process again and get our transfer in place.
I'm totes looking forward to those progesterone shots in my ass....every day for 12 weeks
(said no one ever)

I'm also totally looking forward to multiple shots in my stomach this winter....for weeks.
And the bloat and the weight gain and the stress.
Not.

But anyways, we will do what we have to.

On a lighter note, once I scheduled our appointment yesterday, I starting reminiscing about where we were in life, and on the baby-making trail exactly a year ago.

Exactly a year ago today, I was blogging about our Shrimp Boil wrap-up and how stressed I was feeling that I was "so behind" with Christmas already.

December 15th I blogged about how frustrated I was with trying to conceive naturally using Clomid and Progesterone. I had three failed cycles and was weighing my options with diving into our first IUI.

December 19th I had just met with Dr. Jacobs for the first time, and he eased our worries about IUI and gave us our protocol....including a suggestion to have genetic testing completed.
We agreed (funny how life works, huh?)

I didn't blog too much due to work troubles towards the end of the month. But when I finally did, I mentioned on January 5th that my job seemed to be in turmoil. The end was a lot closer than I thought.
In the midst of all of this, I decided to chill out a bit and pamper myself.

On January 8th, Mark got his results back for his positive MCAD mutation. We continued to trudge on with our scheduled IUI, knowing we would have to get our results back prior to the trigger shot.

Then, on January 15th, more bad news with work. Our short term disability insurance wouldn't allow me to be covered since we were already going through infertility treatments. So we halfheartedly agreed to postpone IUI for four months.

And then the big bomb.....our genetic match. Game. Over.

After all of this, I knew some major changes needed to happen.
But I didn't know how.
I was stressed out, unhappy at work, and needed a life make-over.
HE helped me along our path, and within six months I had a new job and a new lease on life.
We took this last year to re-focus our efforts on each other, on our home, on happy.
It's been wonderful.
Even WINTER has been wonderful thus far.

So that's where we are at. December will fly by and we will be back in the hot seat, gearing up for our biggest life changing event!
Thanks for reading!

PS- You will want to check back Friday as I will be posting about our Christmas decor and there will a sweet STOCKING STUFFER GIVEAWAY!