First Post-This is going to be a LONG one

Welcome to our world! The purpose of this page is to give our friends and family both near and far a window into our life. We are going through such a dramatic turning point in our lives right now that it only seems fair to share it with all of you. Hopefully this will serve as a place to share our ups and downs and hopefully one day we'll be sharing the progress of our pregnancy and children's lives. But all that is in the future. Here's what is going on now: Matt and I have been trying to get pregnant for 13 months now. We have endured extensive and sometimes invasive testing and our doctors have come to the conclusion that we will not be able to conceive naturally. As heartbreaking as this news was to hear at the time, we have accepted it and moved on to the next step. Thank goodness for modern medicine because without it we would have no hope for ever having a biological family. We have gotten the "go ahead" for our first round of In Vitro Fertilization (or IVF for short). For those of you who have never heard of this procedure, it is for couples with severe infertility and involves the woman taking injections daily for a period of time to stimulate her ovaries to produce more than one healthy egg. A highly trained specialist monitors the woman's hormone levels and follicles (where the eggs are kept on the ovary until maturation) via blood samples and ultrasounds until the eggs are fully mature and ready for fertilization. At that time the woman is sedated with general anesthesia, the eggs removed, and then the specialist fertilizes the eggs using the males sperm. In our case the sperm will be individually injected into the egg so that an embryo will be guaranteed. The embryos are allowed to grow for a set amount of time (typically 4 days) and then the most healthy embryos (in our case two) will be chosen and placed back into the female uterus in the hopes of implantation and therefore pregnancy. It is a very complicated procedure and I hope I didn't just bore you to tears with that influx of information. We have done extensive research on the steps, statistics, etc and chosen the very best doctor in our area to perform this procedure for us. We have had lots of testing done to prepare for this cycle and had to wait another entire cycle to get ready for it. Now the time has finally come and I have my first appointment today to start the process! We could not be more thrilled! I promise to do my best to keep everyone posted on what is going on and hopefully this is just the ticket we need to begin our own family. I should receive a detailed calendar at my appointment today and have more dates and information to update you on for our next post! Thanks for stopping by!