Tiff's Turn

One year ago today, I had no idea what my life was about to become. One year ago today, I had no idea how much my body was about to change. One year ago today, I had no idea that visiting Santa Claus would go from this to this: One year ago today, I had no idea that attending Colbin's sporting events would go from this to this: One year ago today, I had no idea that I was about to perform in my last Christmas pageant at church for quite a while. This is all because one year ago today, Levi and I thought we were about to become pregnant with one, maybe two, babies. One year ago today, we saw our beautiful new babies for the first time. We had just two, perfect, microscopic lives who were developing ahead of their game. These little five-day-old embryos went from this to this: Since the chance of becoming pregnant with three babies from two embryos was about 1/1,000 the thought never crossed our minds we would get 3 li...

I will have an update on the triplets tomorrow, but for now I want to share on the subject of infertility since as of today it's National Infertility Awareness Week. To do my part to help raise awareness on the struggle disease, I would like to share our story. Back in 2009, Levi and I were young, energetic and excited to get married and start a family. I knew I wanted about two kids and Levi had told me he wanted "a lot of kids", whatever that meant at the time. (I don't think he meant a total of five! :)  ) Silly me was assuming I would be pregnant right after our honeymoon. Months and months went by and I became discouraged and depressed at the thought of not having children with the man of my dreams. I knew I wasn't going to give up, though. We would figure this out. Friends, family and acquaintances would ask us when we would children of our own. There's no easy way to answer that while struggling with infertility. After about a year of b...

We recently announced to the world our big, gigantic news. I've been blogging for two years, but the blog has mainly been all about a day in the life of Aria so that I can keep my family and close friends updated on Aria's adorableness. Now that we are expecting triplets, I think this blog is about to take a different turn. Three days after my birthday last month, Levi and I went to a life-changing doctor appointment. Our six week sonogram was to show us if we were having one or two babies after doing a round of IVF. Not long into the appointment, we heard the words "Well, there's two babies in there... Wait, there's two sacs... one with two babies... you actually have three babies!" Triplets were not even on our radar. We had a 40% chance of twins and we didn't discuss any other possibility. Come to find out, one out of one-thousand IVF patients share our story of one embryo splitting in two and all three "sticking". God doesn...

God's timing does not always line up with our own. I had a check-up on Thursday last week and it wasn't looking good. I had only produced two tiny little eggs after days of shots. Friday I had one more. My doctor canceled our cycle. Yes, it does "just take one egg", but not for IVF. You have to have a minimum of 5 good sized eggs produced to go through with egg retrieval. The size of what I had, plus my low hormone levels, meant it wasn't going to happen this time. I was heart-broken and yes I did cry when the nurse explained it to me, but later in the day I felt better. I know it wasn't God's timing and he has other things in store for us. We are discussing if and when we will try again. My doctor is very optimistic about trying a different protocol if and when we try again. It is definitely something to keep praying about before deciding. Now to focus on our other priorities... Having two beautiful evenings this week to be outside has been wo...