It's official!!

Anyone who knows us knows the love we have for children.  Our nieces and nephews are such a joy to us and we have been so blessed to watch them grow up over the past several years.  Jody and I have always wanted to be parents and for the past 6 years we have tried fervently to get pregnant and start our family.  Sometimes, though, the good Lord works on a very different schedule than we do.  All we can do is exercise patience and strive to understand the lessons He is teaching us during our trials.  This has been a very difficult journey and has tried our patience in the process.  Yet we have remained strong in our faith and testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ.

When Cace received the job offer to move to New Jersey we weren't terribly excited about the prospect of moving to that particular part of the country, not to mention so far from our family and friends.  Yet we felt peace when we prayed about this opportunity and decided to go forward in faith that the Lord would take care of us.  Shortly after relocating we discovered that Cace's insurance covered up to $20,000 in IVF treatments, which is very uncommon to see in any insurance plan. We wanted to take full advantage of this benefit and found a highly experienced clinic in Morristown, NJ and started the process.

After a period of medication and hormone treatment we were ready to go in for the egg extraction.  We really hoped they would extract several eggs so we could potentially repeat the IVF should the first time not work out successfully.  To our surprise they extracted 32 eggs!!  24 of those eggs were fertilized successfully and, in the end, only 10 of them survived and were saved for the IVF transfer.  2 of the highest quality embryos were implanted and the remaining 8 were frozen for future procedures (if necessary).

Jody getting ready to go in for the egg extraction procedure.  The anesthetics knocked her out pretty good!

Jody getting ready to go in for the embryo implant procedure.  All smiles as this procedure is much less painful than the extraction.

Dr. Cace all dressed up to go in to observe the implant procedure.

Here are the two embryos that were selected for the first implant procedure.

We now had to wait a week after the implant before we could find out if it was successful.  We were on egg shells during the next 7 days.  Finally we got the good news that one of the two embryos successfully survived the procedure.  After 6 long years we could sit back and declare to each other that we were pregnant!!

We are now 12 weeks along and mother and child are doing very well.  Jody is due on May 5th (Cinco de Mayo!!!).  It will still be a few weeks before we find out the gender of the baby.  Regardless of the gender, though, we are so excited and thankful for this wonderful blessing.  This experience has reinforced the lesson of patience and faith for both of us.  The Lord fulfills all his promised blessings but does so according to his own due time.

Below are some of the ultrasounds pics from the past several weeks.

At week 5 we got to see the yolk sack and the tiny little speck that is our baby.  About the size of an apple seed at this point in time.  The baby is still too small to hear the heart beat but you could see it on the ultrasound - like a flickering light.

Now at week 8 the baby is the size of a jelly bean and we can begin to detect the heart beat (the lines on the lower portion of the ultrasound).

Now at week 9 the baby is the size of a grape and the heart beat is more easily detected.  The last picture shows them focusing in on the heart and monitoring the beats per minute.  This was the first time we got to see the baby in motion.  In fact while we were watching it started sucking on its hand.

The above pictures are the most recent week 12 ultrasound pictures where we can now start to see much more definition in the body (arms, feet, spinal cord, etc.).  We even got to watch the baby roll around, move its hands and feet, and even suck on one of its hands.