finishing my infertility journey

so i'm home laying on the couch in pain from my egg extraction.. the removal of hlaf of my "future children". i only had this day off from work and had to ruturn the next day.. such a bad idea. i was in such pain for about 3 days,so much for them saying "oh, it just feels likes period cramps". i was miserable,but i kept telling myself this is all worth it to become a mother!
during these few days we were in touch with the "egg doctor" she was in charge of our embryo's. she injected one single sprem into one single egg and watched as they changed from single cell and doubled and kept growing until they were mature enough to transfer them into my uterus. this first time we got 21 eggs and out of that only 5 made it to this stage and of that 3 were healthy enough to be chosin to transfer. with my age and health they thought only one embryo should be transfered do to the fact that it could spilt and i could have twins.
so 3 days after my egg retrieval i was setup for my transfer. this was so much easier then the first proceedure. i could accually be awake and watch this amazing thing happen. i was laying on a bed with my head laying down lower then my legs,an ultrasound pushed on my abdomin looking at my uterus . then a long flexi tube attached to a suringe was handed to my dr from a ajoining room from the egg dr. we were told to to watch the screen to look for a white looking light moving, this was the embryo being released into its new home hopefully for the next 9 months. this took all of maybe 15 mins from beginning to end then i was to lay with my legs up for about 30mins in the office. then off back to myhome where i was to lay low for the day.
Then i was off to work the next day and had to wait for 14 days before we could have a bloodtest to confirme whether or not the the embryo attached to my uterus. waiting,waiting it felt like an eternity. then i went in to get my blood drawn july 4th,2005 then had to wait all day at my job for a phone call, the phone call that could change our life forever. because i had to work from 9am-5pm i had michael get the call and promise me not to tell me anything until i was out of work and in my car with my husband where i could either scream with joy or cry my eyes out. so work seemed to take forever then finally it was 5pm and michael was in the car and i was so nervous,excited...... so? i said to himwhat were the results? well, he said....... were NOT pregnant! the tears streamed down my cheeks like a river,my dream was shattered.........but only for the moment. my friends and family were waiting at my house getting ready for our fourth of july party. what a crappy day to find out that ur months of painful shots and one really painful medical proceedure was a complete failure. so i pulled myself together and put on a "happy face" and joined my party...
so today is july 5th,2005, i grabbed my phone and called rsi ( our fertility clinic) and said to my nurse so when can we start again? she said don't u wana wait a month or so and then regroup? i said no i'm ready now. she was alittle surprised but we got right on it. because i was already on the birthcontrol pills at the begining of this to put me on a regimin so i didn't need to wait i could just start up on my shots again. so that night i was injected again and we continued with our treatment until we got the call for our trigger shot on augs 16th. so this was it, at 7am we were in the office for my second egg retrevial. dreading the pain of this precedure i was smart this time and took 2 weeks off from work,less stress and more couch time for recovery. i think because i knew what to expect it seemed to be much easier to handle, it still was painful but not as much as the first time.
while laying on the couch and resting our "egg dr" called and said we have some good embryo's and i think i want to wait for 5 days instead of 3 days to transfer so the embryo's have a few more days to progress and we can pick the healthest and my body can heal.
augs,21,2005 egg transfer!
so this time we decided on transfering 3 embryos giving us a greater chance of pregnancy but also a higher chance of multiples. a 75% chance of a singleton, 50% triplets, 25%twins and a smaller chance of all of them spliting and having 3 or more. but this info did'nt scare me at all, infact i would have been very blessed with any of those. i just wanted to be a mommy and would take what ever God was going to give us. so i went home and stayed on the couch and hardly moved to ensure the best for my lil embryos to implant. on day 4 i was nausous, day 5 i gagged when i brushed my teeth and had heart burn. of course i didnt say anything to anybody just incase i was imanging these symptoms
14days later we waiting for the phone call, michael grabbed the camera to take a picture of me on the phone in case it was good news. my nurse said...well jessica your pregnant!
AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! finally, i had a little life growing inside of me. i was so happy but nervous all at once. next it was to got in every few days to get bloodwork done to make sure my hgc was rising (this ment my pregnancy was progressing) then a ultrasound 5 weeks into the pregnancy to see how many were in there

today was landons first day of preschool.

today my little boy started preschool... i can't believe that after 6 years of trying to get prego that he is 3 already.. man time flies way to quickly. last night michael found our zip drive and we were looking at his birth pictures and i wanted to cry. he was so tiny and sweet. we hought he had blonde hair untill the nurses gave him a bath, then we discovered he had brown hair and blue eyes.. the drs told me i needed a c section because my belly was so huge they said he had to be all of 9 or 10 pounds.....then after 16 minutes of surgery mt baby boy came out and he was tiny,6.lbs 10.ozs. not even 7 lbs. he was a peanut. i can't believe my lil peanut went to school today. i love it. and I LOVE MY LITTLE LANDON MICHAEL ALEXZANDER! my true miracle,my lil prince.

the thought of going through this again.

The thought of having to go through all of the infertility stuff to have another baby just really sucks! It's been 4years since i was pregnant, and i always said "if i only have just one child, i would be happy." but is it so wrong of me to want more? to go through all of this again with a child in tow?
i remember sitting in the waiting room watching a lady walk through with a stroller with a child on board. i admit that deep inside i was pissed at this lady that i had never met before...why? because she already had her child...i wanted mine... well as selfish as my thought was sitting in that waiting room. i am now in her situation. why should'nt i want a second,third or fourth baby? why does my desire need to be put on the back burnner because i have to go through so much to get the final result? The answer is....i shouldnt feel guilty. i shoudnt have to endure the stares or comments. just like i shouldnt have made that judgment call on that lady trying to get her second blessing.

sick,sick,sick

Today landon,mike and myself are all sick..i was up till 5am coughing,finally fell asleep. then lu (landon) woke up nice and early and was ready to go.even sick he wants to get out of the house.we then all fell asleep and didn't wake up till after 2:30pm. i couldnt believe we slept that long.
then it was time for errands that won't do themselves. so lu and i headed to pack and ship to seend out our ebay sales....29 packages, so we were there about an hour. well landon got his first job. the owner was so good wiith him, she had him put the packages in the right bins and then when anyone came into the store lu said...."welcome to pack and ship". it was so stinking cute.
our backyard has become a huge rainforrest...so lumyspecial helper came outside with me a "sprayed" the yard with "kill everything except grass killer spray" landon had his own spray.....water. although he thought it was the real stuff he did awesome. then i hung our freashly,cleanned laundry.. is it weird that i really love the smell of clean laundry.
inside daddy heated up the homemade ckn noodle soup we ate for dinner with ritz crackers. yummy. during our dinner lu looked up at me and said "momsy, thanchu for helping me do the gwass." i said "no, thankyou my big boy,i hope you will still want to help me when you are bigger?. landon said,i am bigger momsy. i will leave but i will come back to get you. (me) What?? your gonna leave me? (lu) but i love you momsy, don't worry i take care of you. i will be your big lil boy....(me)....sad, i don't want him to get bigger, but at the same time i do wana see him grow up, but what kind of mother in law will i be?
things to think of...

so i guess i should start out my blog with a little history on how i became the momsy to a miracle. it all started 11 years ago when i joined a group called ywam(youth with a mission). it was in the tiny town of titusville pa. where i moved in with a bunch of girls and learned how to speak (asl) american sign language. i had always been interested in asl and knew the abc's and that was about it. so living with deaf was a wonderfull but challenging experience. We were to live with others using no voice, living with anyone deaf is def. a whole other culture. To understand and speak in sign. was hard but turned into a wonderful experience.


anyways,during that time i met a wonderful girl named michelle, we became inseperable. well after alot of up all night chats and escaping in my trusty old dodge spirit car. we became a twosome.i saw a picture of her bestfriend hanging up and thought he was cute.when he called to speak to michelle i stole the phone and we hit it off. everyone said we were jumping into things to quickly and looking back now, we were. we were young and in love. A year later on Oct.9,1999 we married near my home town in NH.


skip ahead five years, after working,living in NH for 3 years then moving to md. living there for 2yrs. to be closer to mike's family. We were begining to wonder why we had not had any "pregnancy scares".. We had not used any protection for 5 years and i became concerned.


i spoke with my dr. who had handled my medical care during my many times when i had ovarian cysts rupture and needed to be seen. He had diagnosed me with pcos (polycystic ovarian syndrome) and stated it would be harder for me to get pregnant but not impossible. We just needed to go on the medication called"clomid" and schedule our "times" according to the medication.


Oh my lord let me tell you what a rollercoaster ride that was. The hormones raging. i was happy one minute,sad the next,hot,cold, irratated and worst of all the dreaded weight gain, not like i wasn't overweight allready but who wants to get even bigger? not me! so after a year of this mike had decided to go back to college and our friends...michelle and jake were living in Pa, going to Valley Forge Christian College. with alittle perswation from shelly we moved to Pa.



i meet with new drs in Pa,at the philadelphia science institute (fertility specialists) there we both met with Dr Munabi who then ran a ton of blood,fluid and physical test on both of us. they even did genitic testing,hiv anything and evreything. then weeks later we were to meet in his office for a break down on our tests. As i sat there waiting to hear if my life long dream of being a mother was to be shattered or come true was just moments away...



my heart was beating so fast and my hand were sweaty, then my worst nightmare had come true. "jessica you don't ovulate and michael has low sperm count and mobility. Youput the two of you toghther and you have a 2% chance of concieving in a lifetime." Tears started to well up in my eyesand a huge ball stared to creep up my throat.dr munabi said wellthere'sno time to waste we should just bypass the oral drugs and inseminations and go straight to ivf (invetro fertilitation) the last step in medical science to concieve. so we started right away.



i was put on a birthcontrol pill to control my cycle for 2weeks then added an injection hormone into my stomach once a day. tthis needle wasn'tto bad, itwas the same size needle a diabetic uses for insulin. the trouble was i just couldnt seem to inject myself, so michael met with my nurse who showed us what to do and he began doing the shots for me. then after 2 weeks on that drug they introduc a drug called progestorin, seems simple enough right?! Wrong! the needle was a 16gage (thick needle) that was an inch and a half long that needed to be injected all the way into the muscle on my hip/butt. Oh yea, not to mention the progestorin was a thick oil that was very hard to get in.you hadto stick the needle into the skin then pull back the suringe to make sure you dont pull in any blood (hit a vein).then you can push the thick oil into the muscle. It hurt like hell! leaving me with HUGE bruises and sore muscles this was the hardest part for me, but i kept telling myself "this was for my baby" at least a chance to have a baby and i was willing to do what ever it took to have a biological child.



now some of you might be thinking,"wow thats kind of selfish of me to only want a biological child". the reasoning behind that thought of mine is, if you don;t know me i am adopted. i was adopted at age 6weeks. i had a loving adoptive family with a brother,cousins, aunts,uncles and grandparents but my blood came from no one. i looked like no one. well everyone always said i looked like the sampsons and to this day i would have to agree.i look alot likemy cousin ang,aunt sue and most def. acted alot like my gram sampson. but to me thyat wasn't enough. it didn't fill the void in my heart. i always wondered, where did i get my love of animals from? or who was into the medical field? if anybody. or why do i have blue/green eyes with a definate ring of brown. silly things like that were important to me.



now to continue on with my injection regimin ice was given a hint to ice my backside for 5-10 mins to help with the sting of the oil injection. so instead of 10 mins i did 20,30 sometimes 40mins so i wouldn't feel anything. Fat chance! it still stung like no tomorrow.

during this time of injections i was to be at the drs office for internial ultrasounds evry 2 days to make sure my folicicles did get too big and rupture. during this time my stomach got really bloated and i felt alot of presure do to all the folicles growing and there being many of them at the same time. normally only one maybe 2 follicles would grow and release an egg in a normal women. they want to get as many as they can to give us a higher chance of pregnancy. when i finally had enough folicles and they reached the right size they set meup with an exact date and time down to the minute when i needed to take what is called the "trigger" shot. then 12 hours after the shot i would have the eggs surgically removed from my uterus.

i showed up formy early appt. ready and nervous to have this done. they said "it should only feel like period cramps when u wake up". it was a quick proceedure that entailed my to be put under and along needle that was attached to the end of a internal ultrasound wand. then they suck out the eggs one by one from each little sac they were held in. during this time michael hadto supply his contribution, sperm. "why do they get the easy part"?

i woke up in the worst pain. thinking it would have been much less pain then it was. i was in the car ride home that seemed like forever to get home. a 30 minute drive seemed like an hour. then at home i was so sore. it feltlikesomeone reached up into my uterus and sucked out my insides....oh yea thats prettymuch what they did except it was my eggs, my future children being removed from my body

It's late more to come later....

today i started my blog

ok, so many of my friends and family have started blogs. iIlove to read them and wanted to start one about my journey to becoming the "momsy 2 a miracle" and landon's and my daily adventures.