That's right... Baby #3 is on the way! At the end of our first IVF cycle, Monica and I had one embryo left over that still looked "gorgeous" as our IVF doctor put it. We decided to freeze it, as we could not live ourselves for throwing away an embryo. We understand that there is a lot of controversy around whether they are babies at this stage in the game or not, but to us it felt so wrong. Almost the same as having a abortion. So we chose to freeze that last, lone embryo for a later time.
Well, that time was this past November. Monica underwent shots to prepare her body to accept the embryo, and at the end of November, we had the transfer. Everything went perfectly smooth. We got our results 2 weeks later that confirmed a positive blood test! Two weeks later, another blood test still confirmed everything was going great. Two weeks after that, we had an ultrasound and saw our little miracle for the first time. We also heard it's little heartbeat. It was just as amazing as hearing the boys' heartbeats and seeing them for the first time. And now look at them.... It truly is miraculous and awe inspiring to witness them growing from microscopic embryos to almost two years of age. God's awesome hand at work indeed.
We're beyond excited and feel extremely blessed! Monica and I both always dreamed of having 3 or more children. The boys already know that mommy has a baby in her tummy. :) We can't wait to post more updates and keep you all posted on this journey!
Here's a post about our first IVF cycle and Monica's thoughts. click here
We've also gotten several questions with this pregnancy and I wanted to take the time to answer a couple.
The first is whether we got pregnant naturally or through IVF?
As I mentioned above, this was a frozen IVF cycle. We cannot have children naturally. This was also not another full IVF cycle. We cannot afford that, lol. It was a frozen cycle, which is about 1/4 the cost of a full cycle.
The second is what are the chances our boys and this next baby could have CF or be carriers?
They CANNOT have CF. We had Monica genetically tested and she is not a CF carrier. Therefore any children we have CANNOT have CF. However, they will ALL be carriers of the CF gene. Because I have CF the disease, I have both defective CF genes and will pass on one to each of my children. Therefore they will all have one defective gene (from me) and one healthy gene (from Monica) which will make them carriers. What this means for them is that they will have to have their spouses genetically tested to see if they are CF carriers. Then they can decide whether to proceed with having children based on the results. We had to go through Genetic Counseling before going through IVF. It was mandatory by our IVF clinic. They explained all of this to us (which we already knew). It was honestly a difficult decision to make. Knowing my boys and this baby will be carriers of this terrible disease breaks my heart. I don't like to think about it. But we made our decision, and we have two, soon to be three, wonderful miracles from God.
Thank you for reading!! Please feel free to ask any questions you may have and be sure to follow along!
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