First Post

Hey there! Thanks for coming by. Just wanted to let you know what the plans are here for this blog.

Kelli and I have wrestled with figuring out how to let people in on our personal path to pregnancy nirvana. You see...we've been trying to have a baby for about two years now, and frankly, it's been a bit of pain in the butt. You probably aren't that interested in the bad stuff, but we plan to stock more good stuff than bad stuff here so it will work out in the end. Like I said...we're glad you're here.

THE DEAL

We started out just trying to have a baby...trying to get pregnant that is, and man, that was not bad work. I'm telling you....you could do worse. Unfortunately, just "doing it" without a net didn't get it done. So...of course, you go see the doctor and you get checked out and turns out, my team is doing ok, but the practice field is a bit of a mess.

So we get Kelli on Clomid and some other fun infertility drugs, and I mean fun as in, "Gee that's fun when Kelli is happy then tears my head off for chewing gum too loudly in the car"...yes, that kind of fun. The bright side is, we get to try a lot, AGAIN, at least a lot more than we normally would, but turns out it still doesn't work. A tough row to hoe indeed.

So we go back to the infertility doctor, and we start some different drugs and try IUI, or intrauterine insemination. Yes, sounds delightful doesn't it? I went from making love to my lovely wife to inseminating her....not exactly a word you'd hear in a Barry White song. That would be kinda funny though "Oh baby baby, I want to love you, rub you down, and inseminate you all night long..." I'm sure he may have at least tried using that word. Too hard to rhyme something with inseminate though I'm sure.

Well IUI doesn't work either...and we decide to go directly to IVF, or in vitro fertilization. Test tube babies...indeed. Wild wild science stuff. I don't know if you know how this works, but if you don't, it's your lucky day, because I'm going to explain it to you.

IVF was invented in the late 70's, and is still being perfected today. The idea is this....first, stop the woman's menstrual cycle with birth control pills. Then, once that happens, the woman takes a drug that stimulates her ovaries to produce a very large amount of eggs. After weeks of monitoring the number of eggs in each ovary, and measuring the size of the follicles on the ovary (the follicles on the ovaries contain the little bitty eggs), a different drug is given to the woman that causes her follicles to collapse, pushing the eggs out into the uterus. The exact moment this occurs, the fertility doctor retrieves the eggs during a surgical procedure and puts each one in a petri dish. At that time, the embryologist takes a sperm, and physically injects the spermy guy into the egg, which, at that time, the egg is fertilized.

The doctors monitor the fertilized eggs over 3 or 5 days, after which a certain number of fertilized eggs are inserted back into the woman's uterus. Now the woman is given very high doses of estrogen to start the baby cooking process. (Yes, this estrogen is fun too). Fast forward two weeks (which feels like an eternity and over which approximately 10,000 prayers are said and serious promises are made to the Big Man) and you find out if it worked. Yes, a regular old pregnancy test is taken.

Well...now you are practically a doctor so pat yourself on the back and join a country club....

For K-Dog and me, the first IVF try didn't work, which was personally crushing for both of us and frankly sucked very very much. However....

The second time, voila!, it worked. Thank God...literally. We were blessed....twice!

We are having twins! And no...we don't know if they are boys or girls or both, yet. That will be in a few more weeks. For now I call them the deuce...as in Little Loose Deuce. We've had some fun with that as in "The Duece is Loose" or "The Deuce Grows Kelli's Caboose" or Kelli is now "The Duece Papoose" or "The Deuce Moose". I haven't run that last one by her but I'm pretty sure she's not going to like it. It's funny for me though.

At this writing, we have been pregnant about 11 weeks....I know....we started the blog late but really, not much has been happening up to this point. We've had a lot of nausea, some throw-ups (by both of us), headaches, sugar crashes, general crankiness, and lots of late-night pee-trips....and that's just me. Really, Kelli has been a trooper.

From here on out, we both will be posting updates to this blog so prepare for some seriously fun stuff...or maybe just a fun little stroll down our weird little life path.

Again, thanks for stopping by.