baybeasts

Hi y’all (if there’s anybody still there!). We’ve moved (both literally and on-line!), but we don’t want to link the blogs. So if you want to come across to our new home, leave a comment with your email address (in the ‘email’ field, not in the body of the comment) and we’ll send you the link.

Love, the baybeasts

So lucky.

*blue socks on Jinny’s legs are part of her hip brace. Tycho is in one too.

Number four has arrived! Tycho (’ty-ko’) was born at home at 2.30am on the 6th of November. We think we’ll call him Tyge for short. He was born in the caul - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caul for all the cool things this means.

We’re all well and thrilled. Jinny, Arlo and Huey (who slept through most of it) got to meet him straight away (and then the big kids were whisked off by very kind friends - thank you!).

He’s 3.9kg (8 pounds 10 ounces), long and lean, and absolutely gorgeous.

Arlo, Huey, Sorenson and Bean welcome little Jean (Jinny!) born 2.26pm on 30/08/10. Normal birth after previous caesarean despite being 4.1kg!

All tired and thrilled.

I’m aware that it’s much more exciting for the parents but anyway, here they are at 20 weeks.
We think they’re gorgeous.

So what do you think? Which one is the boy and which one the girl? (and yes, we do know. we’re just curious to see what other people think!)

Edit : Sorry so slow… Most of you are right! girl left (S) boy right (me). xxxx

Born 1944, killed himself April 2010.

Bean’s six week scan today showed one healthy heartbeat. Our reaction can be summarised like this:

One!!
Heartbeat!!
One - not none, not two - one!! healthy!! heartbeat!!

It feels like fate has been playing games with us. A long time ago, when we first started talking about having more kids, the two recurrent themes were:

Sorenson: “gee, I’d really like to go first this time;” and
Bean: “gee, it’d be great to have them close together again, even a little bit closer this time would be good…”

After over a year of IVF hell we had sensibly downgraded our expectations to “gee, it’d be nice for us to both just get pregnant and never have to do IVF ever again.” But here we are, due dates 10 weeks apart, all the odds on our side now to have two healthy babies by the end of the year. “I’ll give you what you want girls,” says Fate, “but I’ll make you suffer for it first.”

We’ve had enough of suffering now, thank you very much. Bring on the celebrations. I want to burn all our IVF related crap. I want to shout out to the world about all our friends who have supported us with babysitting, kind words, patience, food, and love, as we have quivered and shivered our way through the last year. I know that there are no guarantees, and that life with four under three will be no walk in the park, but finally the stats are working for us and the hard stuff will be tempered by the joy of growing our family. I want to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative and sing while we do it. And Arlo and Huey will join in with gusto.

I don’t think it was the pineapple/no sugar/no caffeine/no alcohol etc. I think it was spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on herbal mixtures and vitamin supplements and potions from a natural therapist at Melbourne Holistic Health Group and having acupunture from Dr Stanley Chiang in Thornbury.

Of the 25 cycles I’ve done -10 d.i.y. with fresh semen, 5 ivf stim cycles and 10 ivf thaw cycles, the two times something has managed to implant were after a combination of the above. Why didn’t we just go back to what worked with Arlo? Expense (yes we know, doing heaps of ivf was way more expensive), and pain (strangely painful acupuncture), and we just didn’t want the fuss. After all, hadn’t I managed to get it right once? Beta HCG 176. Fingers crossed for a good doubling time.

Thirteen eggs. Seven fertilised with ICSI. Five grown from day 2. Two blastocysts suitable for transfer. The two that made it to blast looked quite nice and I was feeling pretty happy, despite having nothing to freeze. But then one of the embryos was retained in the catheter after transfer, and after re-transfer, there was pinkish mucous in the catheter tip. Not a smooth transfer. I sobbed all the way home. I didn’t want anything to reduce the chances for this cycle. And I’ve tried so hard. Pills and potions and acupuncture and no drinking no sugar no coffee blah blah blah.

I realised this morning that in the last 12 months I have only shaved my legs/toes/some other parts for egg retrieval. What a dubious honour for my Doctor. Off to hospital tomorrow. I’m pretty tired of all these drugs, all this debt, all this failure.
Owlie and Pcat have been giving us some rocking support. They’ve minded Arlo and Huey lots of times, given us heaps of encouragement and presented us with many tokens of luck. Today Owlie gave me this beautiful embroidered good luck charm. I’ve put it in the kitchen where I will see it all the time.

And while I carry on with my (overall) 15th cycle of IVF, I have these amazing creatures to keep me company by day and to snuffle up against me by night.