BlessedisShe

What’s in a name?

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.” — Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

What’s in a name? We like to believe a great deal can be gathered from our name. For centuries people have written histories and tracked origins of names. Some do it for fun, some for genealogical reasons, and others for history. So when it came to picking out a name for our little miracle, Dear Husband (DH) and I took this very seriously. We thought about our past, present, and future and what we hoped to pass along to our child.

However, due to our desire to wait and find out the sex of our little one we had to come up with not just one, but two names. A boy and a girl. Our decision to “do it the old fashioned way” has been met with some push back. Most people say things like, “Oh you’re stronger than me I just couldn’t make it without knowing” or “How can you plan a nursery?” Which our nursery, by the way, has been done in grey and white tones with Gingham because we are in the South :).

So, for those that truly know me this is will be no surprise, but we started a name list. I keep a list for everything; groceries, work (yes, even housework), projects, weekly meals, etc. We had a few that were “good”, but not quite “good enough” as DH would say. The boy name was easy it only took us two tries, but the girl name was a little bit more difficult. We started with names we liked, and eventually narrowed it down to 2 or 3 that we could agree to disagree on.

Then one day out of the blue it hit me. Why not put our grandmother’s names together? I had always loved my great grandma’s name, and she was what one would call “feisty” (which I admired about her). So I thought let’s see what the meaning behind her name is. I will have to admit that as soon as I read it tears came to my eyes, and it was not just the pregnancy hormones. After finding the meaning DH and I knew there was not a more perfect name if we had a girl.

So without prolonging the suspense any further I give you our chosen names:

BOY

William Henry — William (DH’s first name) and Henry (we both just liked jit). The English meaning of William is Resolute protector and Henry means Rules the Home 🙂

GIRL

Mamie Jane — Mamie (my great grandmother’s name) is a Hebrew version of Mary meaning Wished-for child and Jane (DH’s grandmother’s name) in Hebrew means Gift from God. (Like I said river of tears at this point.)

So for anyone that has been following our journey to this point I think you can tell from our names that we are beyond grateful for this blessing. Our Reproductive Endocrinologist (RE or IVF doctor as some would say) gave us 26 to 28 weeks as being the point I could carry a pregnancy too. Well as of Thursday we are officially 39 weeks! So each day that this sweet little miracle stays put is a blessing from God. We are so ready to meet our miracle, but we are OK if they decide to stay put just a little longer.

I just haven’t met you yet!

I might have to wait, I’ll never give up. I guess it’s half timing, and the other half’s luck. Wherever you are, whenever it’s right. You’ll come out of nowhere and into my life. And I know that we can be so amazing, and baby your love is gonna change me. And now I can see every possibility. – Michael Bublé

Hi y’all! I felt it was time for an update now that we have more information. We received a call from the embryologist and our RE (Reproductive Endocrinologist), and they were both REALLY excited about our final count. We ended up with enough embryos to try more than once. God has blessed us beyond measure with our embryos. We were given grades on our embryos from A to B- which is awesome news! Embryos are are given a “grade” just like if you are in school beginning on Day 3 after retrieval. The below chart is taken from ARC Fertility if you are interested in researching infertility and the IVF process more. The below list is the grading chart for embryos:

Embryo Grade	Description
Grade 1	Cells are of equal size; no fragmentation seen
Grade 2	Cells are of equal size; minor fragmentation only
Grade 2.5	Cells are mostly of equal size; moderate fragmentation
Grade 3	Cells are of unequal size; no fragmentation to moderate fragmentation
Grade 4	Cells are of equal or unequal size; fragmentation is moderate to heavy

So from the above chart our embryos range from the 1-2.5 grades which is exactly where you want to be. Our doctor called with some encouraging words yesterday, and after holding it all together for the last two weeks I let it go. I cried my happy, alligator tears this morning from the overflow of emotions. Although, we are extremely excited about our embryos our infertility battle is far from over. This is honestly the first step in our journey.

Next, we will talk to our doctor about scheduling our first transfer. From here we will have more monitoring appointments of labs and ultrasounds. With this information we will talk about the number of embryos to transfer, our probability of success, and get a date on the books for a transfer! So there are some exciting days ahead for the Fielder crew, and we just ask you to keep us in your prayers as we make our decisions going forward. Thank you again for all the prayers and support and hopefully we’ll be updating again very soon!

It’s the final countdown

Hi y’all! We are back to give you an update on our fertilization process. We have talked with our embryologist in Memphis several times, and we have a final count from the oocyte (follicle/egg) retrieval. However, our future little princes/princesses are still in incubation so we will not have a final count for freezing until next week. So with this post we wanted to go into the process of fertilizing, incubating, counting, and freezing. If you are like us you had no clue this stage could be so interesting. Usually, this is the stage that would happen before you get that BFP (big fat positive) on a pregnancy test. So to actually get to see pictures of your cells splitting and forming your future child(ren) we think is rather cool, and it kind of puts us IVF peeps in a really unique category.

embryo-development

So the above picture is NOT one of our embryos. We have not gotten our official first family photo yet (it’s OK to laugh at this because I am 100% putting it in a scrapbook some day) :). I snagged this photo from another blog post (credit to Sara Ratliff). We are going to try our best to explain what is happening in the above chart, and then we will FINALLY give you a count.

Day 0 – Is retrieval day where the oocytes are removed and then fertilized

Day 1 – The egg is now fertilized and called a zygote

Days 2 – 5 The zygotes remain in a petri-dish in the incubator. From here they will be taken out of the incubator as a blastocyst (day 5). They will be graded on a scale of good, average, or poor and then the best options (zygotes that become blastocysts) will be frozen to await transfer. This is also the stage before freezing where you can find out gender with a PGS (Pre-implantation Genetic Screening), and it also can check for chromosomal abnormalities. We have decided to forego this option, but it is quite amazing what science can do.

So now the whole reason you have read this far our retrieval numbers are (drumroll):

18 oocytes (follicles) were retrieved

15 were mature

14 fertilized

We will get a “final” number that will be viable blastocysts for freezing in the next couple of days, but Drew and I have decided to keep that information to ourselves. Originally, our doctor had hoped for 25-30 oocytes, but we are thrilled with what we were able to retrieve. Obviously we would love as many as possible, but we are happy with knowing we have at least one opportunity.

This process is far from over, but for now we will continue to rest up and get me ready for transfer. Thank you again for all of the love, support, and prayers. We have been truly blessed from all the calls, texts, comments, and good vibes.

Just keep stimming, stimming, stimming

Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us. –Samuel Smiles

So today is the day! This is what all the blood work, tests, surgery and failed IUI’s have led us to. Our first round of IVF. Over the past two years we have had ups, downs, disappointments, and renewed hope. To say that we are excited would not quite be the right word. We would use the word hopeful. We understand that this process comes with no guarantee, but we knew we had to at least try. We have now finished our two weeks of follicle stimulation (stimming) and, we headed to Memphis yesterday (at 5:30 a.m.) for our retrieval surgery. The embryologist will give us a call today to let us know how many eggs were retrieved, how many of those are “mature” follicles, and how many of those fertilized. Over the next several days we will become very acquainted with our embryologist as they call to give us updates on our little one/ones. This may not be an everyday occurrence because they prefer to leave them in the incubator as much as possible, but we should have a final count after 5 days.

If someone would have told me that one day I would have to face on of my biggest fears (needles) in order to start my family, I probably would have been horrified and said they’re lying. Alas, it has come to that. Thank goodness Drew is injection certified from school. He passed our injection training with perfect scores. So that definitely eased some stress from all the shots I would need. So the fun officially began at 6 a.m. on Jan 6th. I pulled out my Buzzy my mom bought me (ladies going through stim please look this little gem up). Essentially, it is a none invasive numbing product and it’s super cute (see picture below).

So the white gel pads are placed in the freezer and then attached to the Buzzy when you are ready to use it. It also vibrates and the noise is a bit loud, but overall I would highly recommend this cutie for anyone having to take multiple injections who may be afraid of needles like me :).

So we starting on 1/6 with 75 units of Menopur in the morning (this one was the worst for me). It seemed to burn, but overall with the Buzzy it didn’t last long at all. Then at night I took 225 units of Gonal-f. We continued this routine until 1/12 when we added in our Cetrotide. We were to take the Cetrotide in the a.m. with the Menopur. Now ladies this is where I’m going to be frank STOP READING THE MESSAGE BOARDS!!! They psyched me out so bad I almost broke down from how “painful” everyone said it would be. So I used my cute pink and white polka dot ice pack and woke up a little earlier that usual, and then used Buzzy so I was good a numb, and you know what it ended up being fine. In between all of the injections I also had to go to Memphis every other day for monitoring appointments (more labs and ultrasounds).

Then on Friday, Janurary 13th I had my first “forgetful” day. DH (dear husband) had continuing education to complete in Little Rock on Jan 14th. We thought it would be a wonderful excuse to get out of Helena for a night, have dinner with some friends, and just enjoy ourselves a little. We made it to LR about 5:45 and after getting checked in and ready for a night out with friends I ask Drew where he put the cooler. You can guess how freaked were both were considering I take my evening injection at 8 p.m. every evening. Needless to say my DH being the amazing man he is didn’t give me any grief. He simply grabbed my hand and we headed back to Helena. Although, it was less than ideal we made it home in time for my evening injection grabbed a bite to eat, and then headed back to LR. It is definitely a story we won’t forget. Our last injection (the Pregnyl trigger shot) at 8:15 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 15th. This one was intramuscular so it was not bad, but I would I definitely would call it pleasant either.

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The retrieval surgery went really well. Our Dr. and his staff are absolutely wonderful. We have been blessed on this journey to meet some truly amazing people and gain some even better friends. For now we rest up from stim and surgery and wait to hear how our embryos are doing. From there we will give my body a rest and then plan a date for transfer (more ultrasounds and labs, of course).

In the meantime we want to thank our family and friends for all the love a support on our journey to this point. We could not have gotten this far without y’all!