Shots and puppies

We are headed in the right direction and all arrows point to an August 21/22 transfer. Whoa... is that like less than two weeks from now?!? Yep, it really really is. We are close. So close we can almost feel it. I feel like maybe I should knock on wood for saying everything is going great. A little like I'm being overconfident and getting a little too big for my britches, but I think this is going to happen as scheduled. My lining is getting its "fluff" on and the egg donor, from what I understand, is right on track.

Last Thursday I was given the go ahead to start Delestrogen. If you remember, this is one of the honkin' big shots. And by honkin' big, I mean a needle almost as long as my pinkie finger. This mother has to be injected all the way into my thigh or upper tush. Currently I'm taking it in my thigh.

I swear this photo doesn't capture the true intimidation rolling off this needle. It's much bigger/longer than it appears.

So far I have been able to give myself the shots. I only gave myself Lupron shots during my first journey and had Jeremy give me the two long needle shots. I'm actually pretty proud of myself for getting over the anxiety of it. I'm giving myself pep talks and listening to "We are the champions" while I ice the area I'm about to inject. Okay not really but it sounds fun so maybe I'll start.

I had my third monitoring appointment today and am waiting to hear if everything looks great. I could see on the screen that my uterus is cooperating, but I'll hear from IVF soon to verify it looks as good as it should. Fingers crossed!



In other news... IT'S A BOY!

Bernard the pup

I know many of you have already heard Bernie's story but I thought I would share it again here on my blog. Bernie is a 3 month old rescue pup. About a month ago my daughter went to South Dakota on a church mission trip. She called me a few days into the trip to tell me about the crazy number of stray dogs. Now, I'm sure there were quite a few stray dogs but you know the mind of a teenager... she made it seem there were thousands. One pup in particular caught her eye and stole her heart. This pup was living around the house the youth group was restoring. He was staying there with his mama and two siblings. The mama had an owner but they weren't interested in keeping the pups. Another youth group member's mom operates a no-kill rescue organization in our city and agreed to find a foster home for the pups until they could be adopted.

We weren't sure we were really ready for another dog, especially a puppy. We already have a chocolate lab and 4 kids running around our chaotic house. But I knew Kaelyn's love for this puppy was strong and she's at an age where she can really take care of a pup. Without Kaelyn's acknowledge, I began the adoption process. On the night we went to pick him up the kids were all fired up about the "secret family mission" I had been talking about for two days. The kids had tons of ideas as to what we would be doing on the mission, but my favorite was one of the last ideas they came up with. "Are we getting shots?!?!" I laugh at this because in order to get a few of them their flu shots we need to trick them into the car. I told them I would never hype up the mission this much if it were shots. I'm not that cruel.

We walked into PetSmart, where the adoption was taking place, and Kaelyn found out very quickly what was happening. Not surprisingly, there were tears and giggles. Bernie and Kaelyn were reunited and it was such a happy moment.

A girl and her pup