Oh Baby!

Wow, I can't believe I am actually entering into the world of blogging...I never thought I'd see the day! I basically wanted to start this blog to keep family & friends from all over up-to-date with our lives. I am going to apologize to my sister Amanda right off the bat because I am guessing she will find grammatical errors throughout my posts, but I will try my hardest!! As most of you know, Justin & I have been trying to get pregnant for some time now (3+ years!) After many trips to Carolina Conceptions, a practice dedicated to fertility, we were at the point of having to try IVF. Unfortunately, IVF just wasn't in our budget ranging anywhere from 15K - 20K. Thankfully, I heard about the Pay It Forward Fertility grant. The Pay It Forward Fertility Foundation (http://www.payitforwardfertility.org/) was created to give hope to people who want to build a family. It is a non-profit organization that helps people of various circumstances afford fertility treatments that are not covered by health insurance. So in September 2010, I filled out all the paperwork needed to apply for the grant and sent it on its way. The recipients of the grant would be announced in December. Well, December came and went! I finally emailed someone and they said because of the overwhelming amount of applicants, the recipients wouldn't be announced until January 2011. Uhhh, the wait was killing me!! Finally on January 12, I received the best call ever for Robb & Lori Moscato, the founders of PIFFF. They called to say that Justin & I had been 1 of 2 couples to receive a grant!!!! I have no real idea what the Moscato's told me on that phone call because I was so busy crying!! Tears of joy, relief, hope, etc.! After I got off the phone with them, I immediately called Justin...I was able to cry out that I was "good crying" and he knew EXACTLY what that meant. We had been given new hope that our little family would some day include a baby!!

We scheduled our IVF appointment with Carolina Conceptions for Tuesday February 8th. This appointment consisted of going over ALL the details involved with IVF. Well, as luck may have it, I decided on Monday night that I needed to take a pregnancy test. I had been feeling completely off and I never really had gotten my period that month. I thought it was a long shot, but what the heck...after waiting 3 minutes, a plus sign developed in the window!! I was so confused, so I decided to send Justin a picture of it over the phone to see what he thought. He agreed that it looked like a plus sign, but I told him to stop at the grocery store on the way home to buy a few more tests. Not to bore you with the details, but the second test had 2 lines (positive) but one was very faint. I decided to wait a little longer for the 3rd test and Justin made me drink a ton of water before taking the test again. The third test had two lines again, but this time very distinct! So for the rest of the night, we sat there looking at one another soo confused. What did this mean for our appointment? I was able to email the Dr. Park at Carolina Conceptions and tell him what had gone on. He asked that I come in before our actual IVF appt. to have blood drawn. I was able to skip out of work a little early, but the results usually take 1 hour. So Dr. Park sat there with Justin & I and went over the details of an IVF round. We were then sent to the financial dept. to talk over the logistics of the grant. We sat down and a minute later Dr. Park came in and said my HCG levels were already really high and we were definitely pregnant! Again, J & I were floored....could this really be happening!?
We left the appt. that day knowing I would have to go back in 2 days to check my HCG levels again. If the levels had doubled, that meant all was going well.
So basically after finding out about the grant my body finally decided to relax and let nature do it's thing...