We went in for a sonogram on Saturday. Everything looked good. The follicles were growing nicely. Kelly is starting to get uncomfortable. Ladies, imagine that time of the month when you ovulate. You can feel a little bloated and crampy just for one egg right? Well, imagine having 20+!! She is feeling unbelievably bloated and quite sensitive in the abdominal area. She's a trooper though.
Now we fast forward to today. Kelly went in for her last sonogram. Great news! We have 15 mature eggs for retrieval. The average is 10 to 12. My wife is such an over achiever. She has to give herself a shot of Ovidrel tonight which is supposed to induce ovulation. Then on Wednesday we go in for the retrieval.
The retrieval is kind of a big deal because they will have to put her under. From that point our eggs are in the hands of the embryologist who will fertilize the eggs and monitor them for about 5 days. We are guessing they will put them back in next Monday or so....we hope.
Everyone please keep Kelly in your thoughts. We are very excited!!!
Monday, November 12, 2007
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Sonogram
This morning we went in for a sonogram to check on the progress of the follicle growth. The tech told us that there were 22....yes 22 follicles there. Now, there are a couple of things to consider. First, we still have a few more days of follistim injections and second, not all 22 will be large and mature enough for fertilization. The good news is that we should have the 10 - 12 wanted for fertilization. It will be better news if we can get more.
We have an appointment on Saturday for another sonogram. We should find out then when we go in for the harvest. That sounds so creepy...like a scary movie when someone wants to harvest another's organs. I guess I should say retrieval.
Anyway, we are thinking the "retrieval" should be next Wednesday. Let's hope.
See ya.
We have an appointment on Saturday for another sonogram. We should find out then when we go in for the harvest. That sounds so creepy...like a scary movie when someone wants to harvest another's organs. I guess I should say retrieval.
Anyway, we are thinking the "retrieval" should be next Wednesday. Let's hope.
See ya.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Step 5: Follistim Injections
Last night we started step 5...the Follistim injections. Drugs.com defines Follistim as:
* Follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) is a naturally occurring hormone. FSH is important in the development of follicles (eggs) produced by the ovaries. FSH is also important in the development of sperm.
* Follistim is used to stimulate a follicle (egg) to develop and mature. It is used when a woman desires pregnancy and her ovaries can produce a follicle but hormonal stimulation is not sufficient to make the follicle mature. Follistim is also used to stimulate the development of multiple eggs for in vitro fertilization. Follistim can be used by men to increase the production of sperm.
So now my poor wife is injecting herself twice a day once with Lupron and once with Follistim. She will be doing this for at least another week. We have a sonogram scheduled for this Thursday to check on the follicle growth. We will let you know how it goes.
BTW-I'm not taking Follistim.
* Follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) is a naturally occurring hormone. FSH is important in the development of follicles (eggs) produced by the ovaries. FSH is also important in the development of sperm.
* Follistim is used to stimulate a follicle (egg) to develop and mature. It is used when a woman desires pregnancy and her ovaries can produce a follicle but hormonal stimulation is not sufficient to make the follicle mature. Follistim is also used to stimulate the development of multiple eggs for in vitro fertilization. Follistim can be used by men to increase the production of sperm.
So now my poor wife is injecting herself twice a day once with Lupron and once with Follistim. She will be doing this for at least another week. We have a sonogram scheduled for this Thursday to check on the follicle growth. We will let you know how it goes.
BTW-I'm not taking Follistim.
Softball Injury
This is just an FYI. When a softball is hit with a bat and it hits you straight in the shin at 60mph it really hurts. Oh yeah and swells up nicely too.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Baby Guevara?
As many of you already know, Kelly and I have been trying to make babies for a while now and have been unsuccessful. After all of these months of trying our only results were two miscarriages and a possible third. As you can imagine, it has been very sad, frustrating and a bunch of other emotions. We have fought, yelled, cried and then finally came to the realization that there is something wrong here and we needed not only answers but help.
So, this past summer we went to see Dr. Brian Barnett who happens to be one of the top 10 fertility doctors in the nation...as rated by Parent or Parents magazine (I can't remember but that's not what's important here). What's important is that he's kind of a big deal and we went to him for help.
We went in wondering why this was happening. I mean Kelly and I are very healthy and still young...relatively speaking. Kelly has had Cole and my family has millions of children. What's the deal here? All of this had been so hard on Kelly because she kept thinking there was something wrong with her.
During our visit, Dr. Barnett had assured us that he would figure out what was wrong and what we can do to get us pregnant but first we took tests. Kelly did a bunch of blood work. I did a bunch of blood work. I also had to give "samples" which was not fun.
So, after a few weeks of this we got some answers. Kelly's results came back very positive. She was healthy and was pretty much deamed to be a baby makin' machine. My self on the other hand, was not as good. It turns out that I have bad or poor....I really dont know what you call it...morphology. Basically, many of my little swimmers are malformed. Now, my first question was what caused this? So I asked Dr. Barnett, "Dr. Barnett, what causes this?" and he said, "Jacob, go see a urologist. I can't tell you." Oh by the way, while our Dr. is one of the best at what he does, his bedside manner sucks. He's a yankee and comes across as being brash. Kelly and I said that it wasn't going to bother us because his track record is awesome. Small price to pay right? Anyway, this gave us the answer to the miscarriages though. Kelly's body, being the highly tuned machine it is, was rejecting the pregnancy because of the malformed spermies. I thought that was pretty cool because it just shows what a wonderful thing the human body is that it knows when somethings not right.
Anyway, so my swimmers are all jacked up and I dont know why...but the good news is that swimming with all the bad are some good ones. Also, modern medicine is so advanced now that they (they being lab people) can physically take out the good from the bad...crazy huh?
So you're asking now what are they (they being doctors and lab people) going to do? Well, after considering all choices we decided to do Invitro Fertilization with Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection or what is referred to as IVF with ICSI(pronounced ick-see). This is a detailed multi-step process whereby Kelly makes a bunch of eggs, "they" harvest them, fertilize them with the good swimmers, then put the best one back in for cookin'.
That's kind of the 10,000 ft view of what's done and believe me it's a lot more involved than just that. The first step was figuring out what was wrong. That's done. The second step was finding some venture capitalist to invest in our venture. We are very fortunate enough to have wonderful parents (Kay, Lydia, Margaret, Bobby, Rick and Diego) and Aunt Lisa that could help us with this as it is very costly. Third step was finding a starting point...we had to consider Kelly's cycle and a future lab closure. We got that done. Fourth step (which is where we are at now) involves Kelly injecting herself daily in the stomach with a drug called Lupron. Lupron is used to regulate a cycle and slow it down almost as if inducing menopause. She does this for a couple of weeks then everything will be kickstarted again by a drug called Follistim which allows the body to make lots-o-eggs. That's step 5.
I'm going to stop here because you know as much as we do now. From here on out I'm going to keep everyone updated here on each step. I plan on adding videos as well. We want everyone in the loop........cause we love you and we like power in numbers.
Kelly, Jake and Cole
So, this past summer we went to see Dr. Brian Barnett who happens to be one of the top 10 fertility doctors in the nation...as rated by Parent or Parents magazine (I can't remember but that's not what's important here). What's important is that he's kind of a big deal and we went to him for help.
We went in wondering why this was happening. I mean Kelly and I are very healthy and still young...relatively speaking. Kelly has had Cole and my family has millions of children. What's the deal here? All of this had been so hard on Kelly because she kept thinking there was something wrong with her.
During our visit, Dr. Barnett had assured us that he would figure out what was wrong and what we can do to get us pregnant but first we took tests. Kelly did a bunch of blood work. I did a bunch of blood work. I also had to give "samples" which was not fun.
So, after a few weeks of this we got some answers. Kelly's results came back very positive. She was healthy and was pretty much deamed to be a baby makin' machine. My self on the other hand, was not as good. It turns out that I have bad or poor....I really dont know what you call it...morphology. Basically, many of my little swimmers are malformed. Now, my first question was what caused this? So I asked Dr. Barnett, "Dr. Barnett, what causes this?" and he said, "Jacob, go see a urologist. I can't tell you." Oh by the way, while our Dr. is one of the best at what he does, his bedside manner sucks. He's a yankee and comes across as being brash. Kelly and I said that it wasn't going to bother us because his track record is awesome. Small price to pay right? Anyway, this gave us the answer to the miscarriages though. Kelly's body, being the highly tuned machine it is, was rejecting the pregnancy because of the malformed spermies. I thought that was pretty cool because it just shows what a wonderful thing the human body is that it knows when somethings not right.
Anyway, so my swimmers are all jacked up and I dont know why...but the good news is that swimming with all the bad are some good ones. Also, modern medicine is so advanced now that they (they being lab people) can physically take out the good from the bad...crazy huh?
So you're asking now what are they (they being doctors and lab people) going to do? Well, after considering all choices we decided to do Invitro Fertilization with Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection or what is referred to as IVF with ICSI(pronounced ick-see). This is a detailed multi-step process whereby Kelly makes a bunch of eggs, "they" harvest them, fertilize them with the good swimmers, then put the best one back in for cookin'.
That's kind of the 10,000 ft view of what's done and believe me it's a lot more involved than just that. The first step was figuring out what was wrong. That's done. The second step was finding some venture capitalist to invest in our venture. We are very fortunate enough to have wonderful parents (Kay, Lydia, Margaret, Bobby, Rick and Diego) and Aunt Lisa that could help us with this as it is very costly. Third step was finding a starting point...we had to consider Kelly's cycle and a future lab closure. We got that done. Fourth step (which is where we are at now) involves Kelly injecting herself daily in the stomach with a drug called Lupron. Lupron is used to regulate a cycle and slow it down almost as if inducing menopause. She does this for a couple of weeks then everything will be kickstarted again by a drug called Follistim which allows the body to make lots-o-eggs. That's step 5.
I'm going to stop here because you know as much as we do now. From here on out I'm going to keep everyone updated here on each step. I plan on adding videos as well. We want everyone in the loop........cause we love you and we like power in numbers.
Kelly, Jake and Cole
Cole's First Punt
As many of you may know, Cole is playing football for the Frisco Broncos. The other week he was fortunate enough to punt for the first time. This video shows the dramatic events as they unfold. Enjoy.
BTW in this league the defense is not allowed to move during a punt attempt.
BTW in this league the defense is not allowed to move during a punt attempt.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Cole: The Shark Rapper
This is a video from Cole's first grade program. As you can see the theme was sea-life. It was a very cute little production. Cole's part was pretty big. He was the hammerhead and he had a rapping part. Check it out. We have had this video (which was taken from my digital camera..hence the poor quality) for a while now but just now had the means to edit and post it.
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