Our History - in a nutshell...

A lot of people have questioned if twins run in the family or if we had "help" in conceiving them. Well, most of you know we had "help". But for those of you who do not know the entire story, here is a brief history of what Mike and I went through to end up with our twin pregnancy.

September 2004 - we have our wedding, I mess up my birth control on the honeymoon and decided to stop taking it all together. We did not necessarily want babies right away, but birth control and I really did not get along. It made me moody, etc. We just left it up to destiny.

December 2005 - I start to worry that something might be wrong because I have not ended up pregnant in over a year. I went to my doctor and she put me on Clomid to stimulate ovulation. It is a pretty cheap pill you take once a day, on 5 certain days in the month. The doctor checked my hormone levels through blood work twice in the cycle. Pretty easy to manage.

July 2006 - My regular ob\gyn determines after 6 months of Clomid, and no pregnancy, that we might need to see an actually Infertility Specialist. So, we make an appointment with Dr. Neeoo Chin in Fairfield. After reviewing both mine and Mike's history, running some standard tests, he diagnosed us with "unexplained infertility". There was no reason why we were not conceiving.

Over the next 15 months we go through treatments with Dr. Chin. First, it is just Clomid pills again, with an ovulation trigger injection, and timed artificial insemination. That does not work. We moved on to injectible drugs. This is where is gets really pricey. Luckily, our insurance covered 80% of the doctor visits/procedures, but it covered nothing for the drugs. I was taking a shot, given to me by Mike, 7-10 times a month. Each monthly cycle, with drugs and procedures included, cost nearly $500.

We did these injectible treatments six different times with rest cycles in between, either for my reproductive organs to rest or to save money for the next round. Dr. Chin finally said he would be happy to continue this process, but he really felt that we were having fertilization issues and that we might need to move to In-Vitro Fertilization with Dr. Awadalla.

January 2008 - We head to Dr. Awadalla's office in Hyde Park for our consultation for IVF. We have no real clue about the process or how much it costs, but felt it was important to check out this option. The process seemed easy. A lot more drugs, doctor's appointments, shots, MONEY, etc. But the success rate was pretty decent given our age and good health.

February 2008 - I was put on a daily injection on Lupron to shut down my ovaries. They do this so when they begin to stimulate them again, all the egg follicles grow and mature at the same rate. I took this injection for about 3 weeks, then moved on to the injections for stimulation. I have always responded well to these drugs and this time was no exception.

March 17, 2008 - Harvest time! It is a minor surgical procedure where I was asleep, Dr. Awadalla went in and removed the mature, stimulated eggs from my ovaries. We ended up with 26 good eggs! Surgery wasn't too painful. Mike does his business at the same time so that the eggs can be put in a dish with the sperm to fertilize.

March 18, 2008 - The dr. office calls to say that 11 of the 26 eggs fertilized. This is great news. Usually only about half fertilize so we were pretty much on target.

March 22, 2008 - Of the 11 fertilized eggs, only 2 actually make it to the transfer date. We were bummed as we have none left to freeze in case we need to do this again. Regardless, the two, very strong and healthy - now 8 cell embryos - are transferred to me.

From here on the blog pretty much picks up on the rest of the story. We had to wait awhile before we knew if it worked or not, but obviously it worked out very well for us. Not without a lot of pain, sickness, etc. But I am pretty sure it is going to be all worth it in the end!