Maternity Photos Baby #2

We took family/maternity photos while I am 29 weeks. They turned out fabulous. Here are a few of my favorite.

2nd Trimester...

2nd Trimester

My 2nd Trimester has come and gone! It was a fast trimester full of heartburn and a sore back. Other than those 2 things pregnancy is going well. I have no complaints. I got a lot of house projects finished I put up wainscoting in the bathroom and the nursery. Baby's heart rate is between 145-159 depending on the day. Baby has been moving tons. He/she sleeps mostly while I am at work. Then wakes up to party at 8 pm!

During my 2nd Trimester I also had 2 amazing baby showers! 

20 weeks!!

We made it to 20 weeks!
We had out ultrasound baby looked great. Healthy good heart beat (163) and all 4 chambers of the heart looked great. The brain looked great measuring right on date. Baby has strong arm bones, & leg bones. The doctor saw no problems with baby. 8) We couldn't be happier.
We are waiting for a Christmas surprise to find out the gender. Kain tried to get it out of the ultrasound tech, but she was a good secret keeper!

 

 

First Tri & begining of 2nd

Well we have finally ended the 1st trimester. Which for me this time around was filled with lots, and LOTS of sleeping. I worked, napped, ate dinner, went to bed.... did that routine for weeks! Let's just say Eric & Kain were tired of take out.  I didn't have any morning sickness with this baby. I had times where I felt nauseous, but never threw up. Thanks mom & grandma (they say this is hereditary).
I finally graduated the Fertility clinic at 9 weeks! Baby looked healthy with a strong heartbeat. With babies this young in a high risk 1 trimester they don't check heartbeat rate. It is too stressful to baby.

      

 Then we moved onto a normal OBGYN we had this appt. at 12 weeks. Baby was measuring a few days ahead but doing well! We were able to see the baby moving around tons doing flips even. With 2 arms and 2 legs. Strong heartbeat of 174.

Weeks 14 & 15
They have been great I feel good. I have been having tons of headaches

Baby Dugan #2

We are officially PREGNANT with a viable pregnancy.
I have to stay on all my meds for the first 12 weeks until the placenta takes over feeding and helping my hormones. Eric got really good at giving me my shots every morning!
In all I have gotten 170 shots throughout our 5 years of trying to conceive. All worth it in the end!

Baby Dugan is Due Jan. 4, 2019, however, we are going to have a repeat C section which means I can delivery at 39 weeks. 8) That means we will get to meet this cute little babe on December 28, 2018! Everyone will have to wait to find out baby's gender.. we want another surprise! It will be the last one we get.

The last little embryo that could!

We transferred our last embryo on April 18 2018. It was a good grade 5 days blast good grade (AB). The only thing we changed this time around is we got put into contact with a great natural path (AKA witch doctor)...haha! She was very intuitive and she knew me without ever meeting me! It was crazy! She said I had an over ally aggressive immune system (Kindergarten teacher of 7 years) of course I do! She put me on Zinc. She put me on an avocado a day because they are nature's uterus food. Who knew! I ate probably close to 50 or more avocados. She then worked with the fertility doctors protocol and put me on black cohosh (to help my body naturally produce and absorb the synthetic estrogen I was injecting. She also put me on Wild Yam which did the same thing only for progesterone. Then we started the cycle and I developed fluid build up thanks to all the meds I had to inject. Well "The Witch Doc" put me on bugleweed. Who knew it pulled fluid away from organs. Worked like a charm.  This then brought us to transfer day! Everything went well...strict bed rest for 2 days.

The embryo

Transfer

Day 6 Positive pregnancy Test
and every day following... I maybe over tested a little!

Day 12 was the day for me! This is the day where I tend to lose babies.
Beta HCG came back at 179
Day 14-  HCG  552
Day 20- 5,666

This was a HUGE relief I had officially carried this pregnancy longer than any of the previous ones!

Sad News

Hi All,
Eric & I know you all have been pulling for us in this process. We found out last week that the the 2 embryos we put in didn't stay. It has been hard, and emotional.
We take comfort in knowing that we have have 2 more frozen babies!
We are going to try again in September, only this time we will only put 1 embryo in. We will cross our fingers and hope this next one is the ONE!

Man who knew trying to have a baby could be such a long, emotional roller coaster.

Here are the embryos

Here are the pictures of all 7 of our embryos. We transferred 2 of them Monday, June 19th. We only had 2 more to freeze. The other 3 didn't make it to day 5. 

The Babies are in... now we wait!

On Monday afternoon we had our transfer at 1pm. Before the transfer I had 1 hour of acupuncture to get calm, increase my blood flow and make my body a happy place for these embryos.

Those 2 little white things are our 2 best quality embryos. I now stay on bed rest for 2 full days. Then light duty for the remaining days. On June 29th I will have my blood drawn to see if I am pregnant. 8) We are so excited!

7 Embryos

The Dugan's have 7 healthy Day 3 Embryos. We just got the call today that the embryologist report.

1 embryo- 7 cells

4 embryos- 8 cells

2 embryos - 9 cells

Monday is the afternoon!They will grow into a blastocyst by Monday.  

Let's hope they stick and grow to healthy little Dugan's!

Egg Retrival

Hi All,
I got to pull the trigger to release all those eggs!

Wednesday, I had my eggs taken out. They were able to get all 15 eggs out. It was a long day. I was super sore and slept and didn't do much yesterday.

This morning, I got the call that out of the 15 eggs only 7 of them fertilized into the beginnings of a baby. Not the best results. Usually you don't lose that many due to non fertilization.
                           
Here is what will be happening with our embryos over the next couple of days.

Please keep your fingers crossed that I don't lose anymore embryos! We will know more Saturday! Praying that they all make it and we can successful transfer them at Day 5.

Day 10

I have had daily appointments yesterday and today. I am getting closer to having these eggs come out. I am feeling very full and uncomfortable. I can't wait to have them out on Wednesday morning. My estrogen yesterday was 2,732 which is right where they want it to be to do a fresh transfer. 8) Which is great news.  

This was my right ovary today 6/12/17. These are 6 o f the 13 I have on that side. They are getting so big you can't fit them all into the ultrasound view.

Here was my left ovary yesterday. There are 5-6 mature ones. 

Wednesday morning looks like it is going to be the big day when I will have them surgically removed. Once they are removed tomorrow then they will be fertilized (in comes Eric's part) and they will grow in a petrie dish for 5 days. 

Then we will put the best 2 back on on Monday June 19th. 

Day 7 of IVF

Day 7 of IVF
Eggs are getting bigger. Next Wednesday they all get taken out!

Right Ovary still 13 eggs just getting bigger!

Left Ovary.. We finally got a good picture. There is about 5-6 eggs on this side. All good sizes. 

Day 5 of stimulation

Hi All,
Today marks the 5th day of medicine. I am getting good at giving myself shots. The past 4 days I have given myself 2 shots in the morning. Today, I got to double the dose of 1 shot and add a shot at night. That makes 4 shots in total a day. 😨

Here is my right ovary after 5 days of shots. I have 13 follicles/eggs. Some of the bigger ones measure 13mm in size. This means I get to take another shot to slow down the growth of the bigger ones and let the litter ones grow.

My left ovary was being a pain today and we couldn't get a good picture again. However, there are 7 follicles growing on that side that we saw.

I have another ultrasound and blood draw Friday morning! Looking forward to see if any of the smaller ones start getting larger!

Good morning! 
Today was a good morning! Had my baseline ultra sound and blood draw. My follicle count was good. Ultra sounds are like hieroglyphics to look at. I tried to help you see what we are looking at with my arrows.  Here is a picture where I have pointed to all the little chocolate chips (follicles/potential babies). 8)

There are 11 follicles seen on my Left ovary. 

There are 20 follicles seen on my Right ovary. 

That means that we are going to try and grow 30 follicles. Now the fun begins...injection time. The injections are going to promote them all to grow bigger all at the same time. Then we will get 30 eggs/follicles to harvest and fertilize to make babies! 

Dugan #2...IVF here we come!

Hi All,
It has been a long time since we have posted on this blog. We have a new adventure starting this Saturday at 8am. We have been fortunate enough to be able to start IVF to grow our family!

Here is a little recap of our journey trying to give Dugs a little brother or sister. When Kain turned 2 Eric and I tried to get pregnant for over a year and were successful at the end of March 2014. I was pregnant for 1 week until things weren't quite right. I ended up having an ectopic pregnancy (where the baby was growing in my tube), the baby grew so much it ruptured my tube and I lost my tube and the baby. That didn't stop us.. we then sought out help from a fertility specialist who helped us try determine why it is so difficult for us to get pregnant. We continued to try and got pregnant again Nov. 2015 we knew we were pregnant for 4 days then it was deja vu all over. I then lost the baby and my last tube. Without your tubes it is impossible to get pregnant because there is no freeway to connect the eggs to the home(uterus). This brings us to our new journey of IVF.

If you would like to follow our IVF journey I would love to have your read along and see this process. I only ask if you follow along your send lots of good, positive baby vibes our way. We would love to welcome more kids to our family to love and teach!

Pre IVF

Here are all the medicine(mostly shots) that I get to take during the beginning phase of this journey. A little education about this is that all:

• A normal lady produces 1-2 eggs per month, which could be a baby (if all goes right)
• IVF cycle the doctor wants to get 30 eggs for potential embryos
• Lots eggs = lots of potential embryos (babies)

Stay tuned... Saturday is our first blood draw, ultrasound and round of shots  Hoping to see lots of potential follicles!

Kain Benjamin Dugan is finally here. He is so precious and just a joy. He was born on June 11, 2011 he weighed 7 pounds 7 ounces and was 20.5 inches long. He is now 10 days old and is grows more and more every day.

Final Week

This is hopefully our final week. Baby is doing well still growing and moving around. Baby is just waiting until it is time to come. I am feeling more uncomfortable as the days go by. Sleep is harder to come by, just getting me ready for when baby enters the world I am sure. No weight gain to speak of just staying steady. He or she is ready to come and I am getting VERY anxious to meet this new little one.
Sorrry no new pictures the baby belly is very similiar to the maternity pictures belly.

Stay tuned for...... The Baby!

Maternity pictures

Here are some of our favorite pictures!

Baby is Full Term

Baby is now full term and can come anytime. We have everything ready to go fo baby. Eric built the crib this weekend and all our bags are packed. This weekend we also went and got our maternity pictures taken. I will post them when we get them from the photographer. We will have to see what the doctor says tomorrow about when baby might come.
Below are some pictures of my belly.

Here are some pictures of the nursery kinda finished. I need to put things on walls and add finishing touches.