Friday, December 11, 2009

December 12th

December 12th holds more significance to me than Sabrina's actual birthday.

December 12th, 2007 was the first day we met. Sure, she was only 8 cells and lacking....well, pretty much everything...but it was the day our little 3 day old embryo was transferred into me. And she stuck. For me, December 12th is the day we started our lives together.

December 12th, 2007
December 12th, 2008
December 12th, 2009 (Yes, I realize today is the 11th. Work with me, okay?)

(Before anyone calls a social worker because my daughter is holding an electrical plug and omigod that's so dangerous, just look at her hat! She's wearing a fireman's hat. Should there be some kind of emergency, clearly she is prepared to handle it. She's fiiiiinnne.)

If you know anything about IVF, you know it's extremely stressful and you're probably wondering what possessed us to cycle during the holidays. Especially since I chose to not drink alcohol my entire cycle and hello? it's the holidays! Nightmare! And let's not forget the numerous holiday party invitations we had to decline since Chris needed to inject nun urine into my ass each night for weeks, and God forbid we get caught shooting up in a bathroom, which would cause countless rumors to start about our heroin use because you know, people shoot heroin into their ass.

But in order to get the fat tax deduction we deserved after spending so much money on treatments in 2007, we needed to cycle before the end of the year. I also think my clinic started thinking one last successful cycle would look fantastic on their SART report, and since on paper it seemed endometriosis was my only real issue, it was a slam dunk (turned out we were all wrong about that).

That morning of December 12th, two years ago, we were not optimistic that we would have any embryos to transfer. After retrieving only 4 viable eggs, we knew the chances were incredibly small that one would even make it to the 3 day transfer, let alone decide to stick.

I remember like it was yesterday sitting in our RE's office discussing the transfer. We did indeed have two embryos survive. One was decent, not perfect by any means but had about a 30% chance. The other? Well, um. She was
different.


I joked that if, by some miracle, both embryos stuck that we'd have to hide the pictures from our twins because one of these kids was clearly doing her own thing. But this little one had a very small chance of sticking, less than 5%.

Before we transferred our two embabies, we were discussing the future cycle.

No one expected it to work.

But then? A positive pregnancy test. Strong, doubling betas. An ultrasound showing a blinking tube.

We started to think it could really happen.

Then we found out we were having a girl. At that same moment, I was put on bedrest for the remainder of my pregnancy. We had new struggles and obstacles to overcome this time.

And she did. We did.

December 12th will always be the start of our journey together. The day we started fighting for HER, not just fighting to have a family.

Two years later, I honestly couldn't have fathomed the love I have for her. She's everything.












5 comments:

minivan soapbox said...

Yea December 12th!!!

Aunt Becky said...

What a beautiful day! Happy, happy day!

AP said...

Happy Dec 12th to all of you!

Brakes and Gas said...

Awww. You described it perfectly, "She's everything."

Alison said...

Ooo - I have chills!!!