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Monday, July 30, 2007

I heart my Honey :)

First I have to apologize for the drought in posts. There's been nothing to update you with but I've emailed the agency to see what the donor's status is regarding her bloodwork. I'll update when I hear something.

V. is a pretty amazing, special guy. Regardless of how stressful he's finding life (both work and home) he's still thinking of me and how he can surprise me with something. As you know from his last post we've got a new nephew but he's in Ot.tawa. So finding the time to go see him, or just visit them this summer has been difficult as we've got very few free weekends. I'd hoped that we were going to be able to go up on Friday and hang out with them, and if possible arrange to get together with Gil. But alas, the weekend I envisioned didn't materialize.

TC spend several nights at a sleepover so V. and I had some much needed time to reconnect and relax. Friday night we hung out with Patti and Mark, Saturday found us with a long list of tasks of which I believe we got 2 things done. However, we finally saw the Harry Potter movie with a friend and her son. Because we went to a late afternoon flick, I just wasn't hungry yet to go out and eat. By the time I said we should go, V. said "yes, time is short". As it's about 8pm, the comment seemed out of place until he handed me an envelope and said "because we're going here". I open the envelope and find two tickets the the 9:30pm show for Toronto's Just for Laughs. We decided to opt for subs because he also told me the plan was to pick up TC after the concert, catch a few hours of sleep and head off to our nations capital to see the baby. Yeah! So, instead of going out for a nice dinner (he still owes me and I'll be collecting) we stopped first at Chapt.ers for a copy of "Walter the Farting Dog" for our almost 3 year old nephew and new big brother (great book), and then ran into Zellers for a gift for the baby. No easy feat to accomplish in the 10 minutes I had while V. zipped across the street to grab the subs for us. However, I managed to pick up a cute 3 piece set for him. We headed down to the concert scoring a pretty decent parking space, at dinner, and then wandered over to the show. We had a great time. Craig Ferguson was the host and opening act - absolutely hilarious. Who knew he could do stand up. There were 5 more comics several of whom I'd heard of. But Russell Peters was the closing act. For those of you who haven't seen him, if you get the chance, go. He is absolutely hysterical and will have you in stitches. This was the second time we've seen him as we were lucky enough to attend one of his sold out shows in June when he played Toronto. And the best part is that he's a local boy.

So, we go pick up TC about 12:30am and head home with the intention of leaving around 4-4:30. Well, for those of you know who us, go ahead and laugh. There was just no way. We were both pretty tired so we didn't leave until 8am. Now, remember, not only did V. surprise me with our weekend, we didn't tell BIL or SIL that we were coming down. This was going to be a surprise for them as well. :) We love just showing up. We get into Ot.tawa about noon to find that they aren't home. V. has to creatively text them to find out where they are and when they are returning without giving away our whereabouts. They say they'll be home in an hours so after I got some work done (yes, I was on call this weekend) we headed out to find something for lunch. Ending up with a couple of pizzas for us all, we head by for about 2pm only to find that they haven't returned yet. He calls them and BIL says "I'll call you back" so we don't know where they are or when they're coming back at this point. We wait a bit until V. says he's got to blow the surprise and tell them where we are so they can get themselves home so we can have a short visit before heading home. Just as he's typing the message, they come around the corner with BIL jaw dropping to the ground as he sees us. They are totally surprised and absolutely thrilled.

We had intended to stay an hour or so and head home in time for dinner. Again, I didn't think this was going to happen as it never does when we go. So, we hang out, play with our 3yr old nephew and I get to bask in my new nephew (I did share with V. and TC). After eating dinner with them, we headed home about 8:00pm arriving in our driveway about 11:30pm.

So, I heart V. for being able to pull of these surprises. We had a great weekend!!

I will leave you with some photos of the latest member of the family - Nathaniel Terrance Afif (I think his name is longer than he is).



Sunday, July 22, 2007

Welcome to the world, !

Yesterday, at 5:54PM, my brother and his wife (well, as you know, she did all the work) gave birth to an 8lb 9oz baby boy. The little jewel has yet to have a formal moniker attached to him, but at long last he is finally here; I was getting very tired changing the java timer on my blog. Mother and child are doing well, father went home to get some rest and stupidly forgot to turn off the house phone so was woken up far too early this morning by our mother and father and whomever else calling.

Congratulations to the Ottawa massive! We will see you as soon as we can. In the meantime, here is a quick shot of mother, father and newest bundle of joy.


And here is a close-up of the newest addition. Anyone who knows his older brother will see a spitting image in this shot. There is no doubt that these two are siblings.


Congratulations, Mikhail and Keisha, it's a boy!!!! :)

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Moving forward

Well, CD2 was today, finally!! It's not like I had to wait ages, but my cycle was 2 days longer than normal, and as luck would have it, I had a dentist appointment scheduled for this morning at 8:30am. This would mean I'd have to head over after the dentist and sign in for monitoring and bloodwork. I'd probably get there about 9:30-9:45. However, my day did not go as I planned. I was working on getting out of the house for 7:30am to give myself lots of time to get downtown, and deal with any issues I may encounter on the highway today. However, I got delayed by about 2o minutes because V. hadn't signed the contracts I needed to give in to the clinic. Not a biggie, and we rectified that before I left, but it meant that I was on Canada's busiest highway at 7:50am with 40 minutes to get downtown. Now I've done it before, on a weekday morning. But of course, Murphy raised his ugly head and decided that today would be a good day to slow it all down to a crawl. Needless to say, at 8:20, when I was still about a half hour away, I called and rescheduled the dentist. So, I headed to the clinic and arrived there about 9am.

At this clinic it's all first come first serve, as many of the fertility clinics are during monitoring hours. So, I get in at 9am and there is no one waiting for bloodwork so I headed over there immediately and got that out of the way. After that I put my name down on the list for ultrasound and sat down to wait. I'm glad I remembered to bring a book today. I think I waited about a half hour to be called. I'm thinking "hey, that's pretty good". After the ultrasound I headed back out to the waiting room and continued to read. By 10:15 I'm getting antsy and wondering how much longer it's going to be. I know I have to see the doctor and I was pretty sure I'd be seeing the nurse as well after that. At 10:30 I checked the list and OMG there were still four people ahead of me. I settled back down with my book and continued to wait. The doctor comes out and calls the 4 people ahead of me (there's another waiting area inside). Yeah! I'm next, whenever that will be. I think it was about 20 minutes later that he called my name. He looked at my scan for today, checked with the nurse about the status of the donor (still on track for late August/early September he says) and then prescribed birth control.

I know, some of you are wondering why. Basically the purpose is to sync my cycle with the donors and to suppress my lining.

Anyway, I met with the nurse and requested the prescription be written so I could fill it at the local pharmacy and get it covered without paying out of pocket first. I could have gotten it at the clinic, but I didn't want the hassle of submitting to my benefit plan, and the pharmacy down the street has me on file thanks to all the previous attempts we made a couple of years ago. I pay them the last of the money owed and am on my way at 11:15. So, all in all, I've been there for about 2.25 hours for what amounts to about 40 minutes of face time. All par for the course.

Anyway, I have to go back on day 20 of the pill so because that would have fallen on August 5th had I started today, I'll be starting that tomorrow. That way V. and I aren't stressed in trying to get to the clinic and then TC off to camp on the 5th and he will be able to come with me on the 6th as it will be a holiday here in Ontario.

So that's if for now. We're moving on. :)

Friday, July 13, 2007

Friday the 13th

For most people, this day is bad luck. But for V. and I the 13th, regardless of the day it falls, has always been good luck. We got engaged on a Friday the 13th, we got married on the 13th, and other things have happened for us on the 13th.

Today I got a call from the agency giving me an update on our donor's status. Apparently our donor is only half way through her medical testing kit. She's done the required vaginal swabs but was having trouble finding a lab in her area to do the bloodwork. I believe it's because the lab has to send the actually samples back to Toronto as opposed to just the results. I wasn't totally clear on that part. However, the agency has been talking to her daily and they've been able to find a lab in her area to do these tests and they've made the appointment for her. I'm not sure if they are next week, but she's booked to do them. I commented that I thought as a proven donor (or one who's done this before) that she had a lab. Apparently the lab she had used in the past had changed their protocol and no longer would do the tests for her. At least I know she's definitely done this before. The call had me wondering if perhaps the donor hadn't done this before but her answer confirmed that she's been a donor before, which I found reassuring. :)

In any case, she told me it may be tight to get things into place for the upcoming cycle. So for now, we go forward as expected. She'll give me a call next week to let me know the status and meanwhile I wait for me CD1 so I can get into the clinic. That should be showing up in the next day or so.

Have a good weekend all.

Friday, July 06, 2007

This week's update

So I know you all have been wondering what's going on because I haven't updated since June 22nd, so here it is. There really isn't much to update. I emailed our donor coordinator to see what was going on:

Hello!

Your donor is currently completing her medical testing kit and is on schedule to start the medical protocol in the next couple of weeks in preparation for a late August retrieval. Please make sure that you have been in touch with the clinic to ensure you have all necessary testing done on your end of things if you have not done so already. Thank you and have a great weekend!


So needless to say, V. and I are ready to go. I'm due back at the clinic on my next CD2 as per the instructions I was given last cycle. That means, if all goes as I expect, that will be July 15th. Being a weekend, V. will be able to come with me for this one when we get our protocol, prescriptions, and calendar. We've got a good friend hanging out with us that weekend, so V. and I would head down early in order to get back home so we can all go out for breakfast before she heads back home. I could use a Denny's fix (mmmmm.....I choose Dennys over Golden Griddle any day). If it turns out CD2 is Monday, then I'll hit the clinic on my own and fill V. in on any details.

So that's it. Hope you all have a good weekend.