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!!!! :)

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 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.

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.