Posts Tagged ‘thank you’

Pregnancy Week 5

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

First, thanks to so many of you who’ve reached out with notes of congratulations! I still can’t believe after all this time we were finally able to make this announcement and so glad that so many of you are still following our journey!

Sundays are my week-marker for pregnancy. As this past Sunday was the big pregnancy announcement, I didn’t make a “week” update post. Rather than wait until next week, I wanted to go ahead and fill everyone in where I am for now.

Yesterday I went in for my third blood test to monitor hCG levels (the hormone produced by pregnant women). I was at 9211!! According to the “What to Expect” book, upward of 7000 is normal. So I am raging over here!!!

Thus far I feel fantastic. That’s not to say I’m not feeling a few things I’d rather not, but in the grand scheme, five weeks pregnant isn’t treating me too badly. I tend to “crash” every day around 3pm and don’t really make a recovery. If it weren’t for my sister and new baby niece visiting this week, I think I’d head to bed before 10pm every night. I’ve had heartburn since before the pregnancy test. I’m have two or three Tums at a time once or twice a day. My breasts are enormous and as I explained in this post – reacquainting with my breasts – I’m completely fascinated by this growth spurt, and also completely over the itchiness, soreness and not fitting into any bras.

I also pee ALL THE TIME! You can count on me to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night between 2 and 4 every night. Now I’m going three times each night, which is quite disruptive to the REM patterns. And I pee all day everyday. I thought this part was supposed to wait until you had a seven pound mass sleeping on your bladder!

Finally, I’m ravenous. I could eat three families out of house and home and then ask for dessert. I’m maintaining my usual healthy, balanced diet. I’ve also given in a few times to a few things that I probably shouldn’t have. I had an orange soda the other day, have been to Chipotle twice, chips and queso, and some cheesecake/fudge brownie concoction (because it was my mom’s birthday!!). But seriously, I’m maintaining my typical ration of egg white veggie omelets, whole grain sandwiches with turkey and veggies, fresh fruits for snacks, Greek yogurt, lean proteins, skim milk every morning and buckets of water. Jillian Michaels’ pregnancy advice is that you only need to increase calories by about 200-300 per day and if you do this, and stay safely and moderately active, you shouldn’t have much of a baby belly to work off later. This is my goal. I don’t need Cheetos. The baby(s) doesn’t need Cheetos. My ass doesn’t need Cheetos.

I don’t want to jinx this – but I haven’t puked once. Not a single sign of morning sickness. Maybe this is what I get for having already gone through more than six weeks of shots, fatigue, nausea, pain, etc., maybe I’m just one of the 25 percent who won’t get it, and maybe it’s just waiting patiently for me.

The next big step from here is finding out if both embryos stuck around or if we’ve got a single. The ultrasound is next week and I’m growing more and more anxious every single day.

IVF Shots Days Two and Three

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

I’ve had a lot of people ask me almost hesitantly the last few days “How are you doing?” And I’m thrilled to be able to respond “Fine!” So far I haven’t noticed side effects from the Lupron. Feels like any other day of the week. Except I have to wake up at 7:30am… which is NOT typical.

Shots are much easier than I anticipated. Only because I’m such a needle phobe that you might as well be running a drill press through my abdomen. But instead, it’s really quite nothing.

That was until this morning. I had to go to OKC for the funeral of our friend Anna. Yesterday as I packed I grabbed a needle, the Lupron and an alcohol swab. As Shelton is still recovering from his MESA surgery he stayed home. This meant I’d have to administer the shot myself. I joked with a few friends last night that they were welcome to come over this morning and “juice” me. No takers though. Fair enough, I can’t say I’d have volunteered for that either.

At 7:30 this morning the alarm went off and I went to the bathroom with my supplies. I knew if I let myself think about it that I’d completely panic, and then what? So I just cleaned the Lupron cap, cleaned my tummy, and injected the needle. For a split second as I watched the needle go in (something I NEVER EVER do) I had this OH-MY-WHAT-IN-GODS-NAME-ARE-YOU-DOING moment. But alas, the needle slid right back out and I went back to bed.

I’m trying to decide what kind of design I want to make on my stomach. So far I’ve got three tiny little pink dots that could be the start of so many things. A constellation. A flower. My initials. Maybe we’ll connect the dots at the end and see what we come up with!

I do have to say a very huge thank you to friends, family and our readers. We’ve received tons of texts, tweets, facebook messages, emails and even, if you can imagine, face-to-face conversation offering prayers, encouragement and simply asking how we’re doing. It really means a lot and helps to know that we have so many cheerleaders and supporters out there.

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Happy 2nd Birthday Baby Or Bust

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

WHOA! Baby Or Bust turns TWO today!!

That is so insane and seems impossible. I’ve enjoyed every minute of working on this site.

Thank you to Jeremy who got this baby off the ground, without whom this site wouldn’t exist.

Thank you to our dear family and friends who’ve offered their endless support.

Thank you to the thousands and thousands of visitors who’ve stopped by.

Thank you to EVERY one of you who made a donation. The generosity of perfect strangers from around the world still dumbfounds me. We’ve been able to raise $6088.78 and every penny of that is more than I ever anticipated. It is SO appreciated.

Thank you to each person who has bookmarked this site and visits often.

Thank you to the people who’ve sent an email to share their story, or ask for an opinion or advice. We hope we’ve been able to help.

As a second birthday present to each of you and the site, I had planned on updating a number of items that have been a little neglected. I haven’t gotten to it, but hope to do so very, very soon.

We hope you’ll stick around for two or twenty more years as we continue to share our journey.

Overdue

Sunday, October 8th, 2006

A huge thank you is very overdue and so now I’d like to extend that…

THANK YOU to Lesli, Amy, Shellie and Coreen. These women brought us food for the entire week following my surgery. And not just a ham sandwich and a hug- full on dinner with sides and dessert. All of it was delicious and we scarfed up every bite.

This was an incredible gift. My first reaction when I received the offer was to say no. But Lesli said “I know you’re going to want to say “no,” but I’m only going to take “no” for an answer if you’ve lined up a personal chef for the next few weeks”. Who can say no to that?!

Shelton was so busy taking care of me and my not being able to do much without him, eating took a back seat. Thanks to these kind women, we were able to enjoy wonderful meals without any stress or planning.

THANK YOU… THANK YOU… THANK YOU

Free IVF

Sunday, July 30th, 2006

We received a donation tonight from an organization called Free IVF dot com. We’d yet to hear about or find this site. They raise money and offer it to other couples facing IVF. This is one of our goals, and something we’ve already done once. Fantastic! I’m so glad to have found this site.

They also have a place where you can sign a national petition encouraging Congress to pass legislation to require insurance coverage- I strongly encourage you to sign it by clicking here.

A HUGE thank you to the generous folks at Free IVF.

Our Cup Runneth Over

Monday, July 17th, 2006

Since the site went up 17 days ago, Shelton and I have been completely overwhelmed with the amount of support we’ve received from not only our friends and families, but people across the globe.

We’re blown away by the number of people writing to us to share their stories and experiences, and showing off their perfect little blessings. Oh yes, lots of baby pics and we enjoy seeing every one of them! Every one of your stories has deeply touched our hearts and I’ve shed more than a few tears. The lengths at which a couple will go to finally become parents- be it IVF, other treatments or adoption- is touching. I never knew so many people were affected by this until we got in the boat with you.

Just an unbelievable thank you to everyone who has written to us and sent in a dollar… or more! We’d love to extend a hug to each of you, but we know that just isn’t possible. We’ve made so many new friends. And to our snail-mail donors, while we can’t respond to all of you, please know that you are so appreciated.

We don’t know that it’s been made clear enough- but we have no intentions of getting rid of Baby or Bust when we’ve reached our goal. We feel like the $20,000 is just the beginning of what Baby or Bust can accomplish. We hope to raise so much awareness with the site… and we hope to raise far more money so that we can offer grants to other couples and help them reach their goal to be parents.

We know the last few posts have just been about the goings on of the site and less about our journey, but we’re kind of at a stand still right now. We have a doctor’s appointment on Thursday and we’ll have plenty of news to share then.

Thank you for being a part of this with us and please keep sharing your stories, we look forward to them so much.