Life Abundant Blog

To My Daughter on Her 10th Birthday

By: Jessicomment

Check out the letters from her 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th birthdays.

Dear Zoey,

Today you are leaving behind single-digit ages for the rest of your life! You have officially completed a decade. You’re a double-digit girl now! Ten is such a special age in youth. You’re changing week by week in so many ways. We can see a dramatic difference between when you turned 9 to now. People always say that it goes by so fast, and they were not kidding. Where did this year go?!

Here are some things that happened during your 9th year:

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A Serene Touch to Our Master Bathroom

By: Jessicomment

Today’s post is sponsored by Photowall. They provide custom wallpaper and prints with free U.S. shipping, and products ship in 1–4 days. They are offering YOU 25% off their complete selection for a month! See more info at the end of this post.

I can’t believe it has been EXACTLY two years since our master bathroom renovation was completed. You can see the complete INSANE before/after here, but here is a little reminder:

It was a major job with a complete gut, including the removal of a bathtub and an entire closet, and most of the walls were taken down to the studs. After the master bathroom was “done”, we moved on to our hall bathroom and then our basement. We were in renovation mode for literally all of 2018 between those three rooms. That said, we finished our master bathroom, but we never decorated it, other than changing out a few cute items on the vanity each season and putting a picture of us from our honeymoon on a shelf above the toilet. So even though the bathroom has been “done”, it has also remained very simple and undecorated.

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Embryo Adoption: Our Failed Transfer Follow-up and Change to Protocol

By: Jessi1 Comment

On Monday, February 17, we had our “what the heck just happened?!” follow-up appointment with our fertility clinic after our first transfer via embryo adoption failed. Our clinic offers this appointment for free after a failed transfer, which is incredibly generous and obviously very helpful in a time like this. The whole drive down, I was a ball of nerves. Gone are the days of having peace about anything. We went with many questions and bruised hearts.

Oh, and we only have one embryo left, so we went feeling super defeated upfront. I know it only takes one embryo to have a baby, but our track record really stinks so it’s not very encouraging.

But can I be truthful for a second? I am incredibly thankful that we didn’t transfer both at the same time, because knowing our new plan, we could have lost both of them at the same time and that would have been even more devastating.

Also, before someone says “why are you still trying to grow your family this way when it failed the first time and you’ve already been through so much loss?” Listen to me. It’s up to us and God how we grow our family… thank goodness it’s not up to someone else. We adopted TWO embryos and both deserve a chance at life. We love them both. And statistically, your chance of success goes up with more transfers. That’s not super encouraging when you first start this journey, but it is encouraging when you’ve already had one failed transfer. Truthfully, statistics are in favor of your third transfer. It’s most likely to take, and I don’t know why other than changes in protocol, but that’s the science.

So back to our follow-up appointment…

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Embryo Adoption: Our Beta Test Results

By: Jessicomment

A beta test is a blood test that checks for the actual level of HCG (the pregnancy hormone) in the blood to determine whether someone is pregnant and whether it is a viable pregnancy or a chemical pregnancy. People don’t carry HCG above 5 in their bodies unless they are pregnant or put it there with a hormone injection (like a trigger shot to induce ovulation). In my case, I did not have a trigger shot so any HCG in my body is 100% created by a pregnancy, nothing artificial.

Unfortunately, our beta @ 9dp5dt on 2/7/20 was negative. It came back at 0. I am not pregnant, not even remotely close.

We plan to go back for the next embryo immediately. We already have over half the money we need for it, so as soon as I get a period, we’re diving right back in. It’ll be our last chance with these embryos that were donated to us. There is only one left. If this one doesn’t stay with us… well… then I don’t know what is next for our family.

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Embryo Adoption: 1 Week After Transfer (7dp5dt)

By: Jessi2 Comments

One week ago today, we officially became PUPO with one of the two embryos that were donated to us thanks to the amazing miracle of embryo adoption! I still can’t believe that this is our story. 2019 was a crazy year filled with so many emotions and changes to our journey. We started the year pursuing domestic infant adoption, and before we knew it, the tables were turned to embryo adoption. Now here we are! It’s 2020 and we are one week after the transfer (or in IVF talk: 7dp5dt) and just TWO days from finding out if the baby decided to stick around.

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