"Anything can happen, child. Anything can be."

"Listen to the mustn'ts, child.
Listen to the don'ts.
Listen to the shouldn'ts,
the impossibles, the won'ts.
Listen to the never haves,
then listen close to me...
Anything can happen, child.
Anything can be.”

This poem has resonated through my head quite frequently as of late. For those of you who know where the sidewalk ends, Mr. Shel Silverstein penned this little bit of prose many moons ago. I know this because it was included in one of my favorite childhood books. Last August, my wife bought this very same book for me. It was to be the first book for our child-to-be. I was tickled pink (ickle me, pickle me, tickle me too...). It was such a signficant gift for her to buy me; so thoughtful, so perfect, so timely. It turned out that this little gem would, sadly, be placed back in the gift bag and stored in our closet until later days. Our child-to-be was not to be had last year. Interesting, though, that this poem showed up unexpectedly on my Facebook page (yes, I'm a fan of Shel Silverstein's page, you aren't?!?!). It showed up on September 25th...halfway through our ten day waiting period. Ah, but I get ahead of myself...

September 20th: Transfer day. This was the day we would have our embryos placed back into Heidi's babymaker. It was a little nerve wracking. We only had three embryos fertilized. Each day since the aspiration, we called our embryologist, Dr. Bill (or Dr. Clarke if you're an adult...I am not, so he shall forever be known as Dr. Bill). Everyday he would give us an update on the quality and progression of our eggs. Our routine for five days was to call Dr. Bill on our way home from work to see how the babies-to-be were doing. Each time we dialed the number, we did so with a slight amount of nervousness, a small level of anxiety, afraid he would deliver bad news. With so few embryos, we were so worried that one would fragment or not survive. It felt like such an incredible amount of pressure, worrying about three small, microscopic eggs and their progress; knowing these three eggs held so much hope and promise for us. But, each day we called, we heard a smile in Dr. Bill's voice as he relayed to us the positive progress made by our little eggies. Each day, he was so happy to report that no fragmentation had occurred and the embryos were progressing magnificently. Each day we hung up with a sigh of relief...this would be the time. This would be our time. We just had to have faith.

Listen to the mustn'ts, child.

The day before the transfer, Dr. Bill said he hoped that at least one of the embryos would reach the blastocyst phase. This is the most ideal phase because it means the egg progressed to the best potential prior to transfer. All that would be left would be for the eggs to find a comfortable place in Heidi's uttie to settle in and grow. We were hoping for the blastocyst phase...it meant less work for our embryo. Fingers were crossed; so were toes, sometimes eyes. You get the point...a lot of body parts were crossed that at least one would progress to blastocyst.

Listen to the don'ts...

When we arrived at Dr. Welden's office on transfer day, Dr. Bill was at the front desk and in his happy little hand, he held a picture. It was the first official group portrait of our embryos. He was grinning from ear to ear. Three blastocysts, he pronounced. Three. All perfect, all ready to be transferred.

We went back to the room, ready to be impregnated. Knocked up. Have a bun placed in the oven. We'd been here before so we knew what to expect from the procedure. Dr. Welden was anxious to see if the dilation would make the transfer easier and hopefully not need to use the guide. He preferred the less invasive method, but because Heidi's cervix likes to fight all who dare enter her forbidden zone, we weren't positive that the dilation would make the process easier. We got settled in for the dirty deed. Deep breath...here we go. After the transfer, Dr. Welden said a prayer. I cried. I know that's not much of a surprise but it was moving. During the transfer, we noticed, as we did with the last IVF, that while he was pushing the embryos into the uterus, he closed his eyes, as if in prayer. Somehow, it meant so much that he not only worked with us medically, he did his spiritual part too.

Listen to the shouldn'ts...

So nothing left now but the waiting. Ten days. Oh my gosh, I don't know if you have ever had that moment in your life when even the smallest period of time somehow defied the entire scientific time continuum and somehow, the amount of time it took to elapse a mere ten days seemingly doubled, no tripled. The wait became it's own living, breathing being, doing all it could to extend its life. The wait...

the impossibles, the won'ts.

As luck would have it, day 10 fell on a Sunday. The lab is closed on Sunday. Really? Why? Why do we need to have seven days in a week? Why not have a lab open everyday? What the what? Perhaps I was feeling a little irrational but geez oh Pete people, we're feeling a little anxious and impatient here. So, instead of waiting for the lab, we opted for the HPT, home pregnancy test. An EPT to be exact. The only thing that stood between us and eternal happiness were two little pink lines. We planned to take the test first thing, around 7:00 a.m. Heidi awoke at 6:30 a.m. She gently shook me awake and advised that she had to pee really bad. If she peed without the taking the test, it may be a couple more hours before she had to pee again. She asked if we should take the test then. And so we did...we went into the bathroom. I unwrapped the test and handed it to her. She did her business (which was, in and of itself amazing because she generally has stage fright when it comes to urinating in front of me, or any other person). As I'm fumbling with the instructions to figure out the requisite amount of time necessary to allow for the appearance of the magical pink lines, Heidi exclaims, yes exclaims, through mid-stream that the lines are showing! They appeared before Heidi could even finish tinkling! She began to cry, as I stared in amazement at those magical two lines. The test before, last August, took a few minutes to register so we were more than a little shocked at how quickly they appeared on this test. Heidi finished making number one and we stood together, hugging, crying. It was happening. Oh my dear God, it was happening. We were making a baby!

Listen to the never haves,

What now? Well, we obviously wanted to tell our family. But how? We didn't want to call them. We wanted to do something else. We debated having cookies made for each person, announcing their new status, you know "I'm going to be a grandma", "I'm going to be a sister", you get the idea. The only problem with that is that it was Sunday at 6:30 in the morning...the mall didn't open until 12:00. Our family knew we were testing today; there was no way they would wait to hear from us until the afternoon. What about t-shirts? We headed to Wal-Mart to see if they had any t-shirts that pronounced the all-familiar "Baby on Board". Nothing. We decided to try Babies R Us to see if they had bibs. Jackpot! We made our first baby announcements...bibs declaring new relationships...sister, aunt, uncle, grandma. These would be our declarations. While checking out, quite proud of ourselves, I get a text from the mother-in-law...the patience has worn off. I do the best I can. I lie. I tell her that Heidi didn't sleep all night because she was so nervous. I tell her she decided to wait until later in the day to take the test...I tell her it meant more for Heidi to hold on to the hope by delaying the test than to give up hope and take it. I'll say this...they were good lies...mostly true, just of Heidi's feelings the day before, not this day; not this amazing day. We knew who our first stop had to be...Nancy's house. We drove up to her house and sent her a text to come outside. She ran to the car. LOL She was so excited. We gave her the gift and after punching me for lying to her, she held Heidi and cried. We stopped by Ross next, where Amanda was shopping for shoes and surprised her with the news. She cried in the shoe aisle. Jessica was at work until 10:00 p.m. so, despite my efforts to lie to her, I ended up having to tell her over the phone. I texted and then called my mom with the news too. And last, but not least, a pop-in at David's house. Family told. Now we could tell our nurse. She had sent a text that morning that we did not respond to until we had told our family. We responded with a simple picture, one of our pregnancy test. She called, shrieking that she had turned her phone off while in church and when she came out and saw our message, she started screaming and crying with excitement. The next call came almost immediately after by our other nurse, Tana. She told me Happy Father's Day. LOL That's my girl. LOL

then listen close to me...

The next morning we made our way to Dr. Welden's office for the blood test. We were met with huge hugs and huge smiles. Both Dr. Welden and Dr. Bill were there and doled out hugs and congratulations. It was happy, happy, joy, joy all the way around. Pam took blood and off we went...anxious to hear what our HCG numbers were. The normal range is anywhere between 5 and 435. Our last pregnancy had an opening HCG of about 20. We both hoped for a higher number than last time. We thought 50 would be great. We wanted to hear a 50 for our number...it just had to be better. That afternoon, Pam called to give us our number. Can you say 769? That's right...769 baby! Wait...769? What does that mean? That's way outside the range...is that bad, good, what? If you are the deductive type, you may have guessed it...multiples! It's not an absolute indicator for multiples but certainly an indicator. Progesterone was supposed to be around 20. Heidi's exceeded 300. Another indicator. Holy IVF, batman...we could be having twins. OR TRIPLETS! Holy multiple babies, Robin! We knew there was a chance but we were hoping so much just to get pregnant, we didn't really thing we could possibly have multiples! So, where are we now? Waiting to take blood test #2 tomorrow...then every Monday and Thursday for the next two weeks. We have an ultrasound scheduled for October 16th. We probably won't be able to hear the heartbeat(s), but the doctor should be able to see how many sacs there are, how many babies. October 27th is week 8...a critical milestone. Chances of miscarrage reduce greatly after the 8th week. What an amazing month October is going to be! What an amazing year it's going to be. What an amazing life we have to look forward to...


Anything can happen, child. Anything can be...