Finally… after 1 Year, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 3 Days…. we have solved our mystery.
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BUT…. Before getting to the results… a bit of background information…
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For those of you not familiar with IVF, the process in a nutshell is as follows:
- Drugs, drugs, and more drugs to stimulate the ovaries to produce ‘eggs’
- Ultrasound after ultrasound to make sure hyper-stimulation does not occur (and that the drugs are working)
- Surgical procedure to remove all the ‘eggs’ (you are completely knocked out for this)
- Fertilization of the ‘eggs’ in the lab
- Transfer of fertilized ‘egg’, embryos, back to the uterus, 3-5 days following fertilization (again surgical, but you are awake for this procedure)
- More drugs & needles to sustain a possible pregnancy
I’ve spared you lots of details, but you get the gist.
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From my previous post, you learned that we did opt to do IVF, and we transferred back TWO embryos
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Which resulted in THREE babies.
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My OB practice had one physician in it that pioneered the IVF process in Austin. He had been doing it for quite a long time. (He actually DELIVERED my OB, if that tells you anything.) At this point in his career, he was only seeing IVF patients and was planning to retire soon. I was one of his last patients before his actual retirement date. He had the reputation of being the best, and he had the best success rate in town.
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I think I know why…
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Luke, Aidan, & Liam are all FRATERNAL!!!
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Three separate ‘eggs’ fertilized by three separate ‘guys’. Not identical, not semi-identical…. all completely unique. This can ONLY mean that he missed at least one follicle/’egg’ during the retrieval, and we managed to conceive our bonus baby on our own.
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Makes you wonder… how many did he leave in there??? I could have been Octomom!!!
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At last, our mystery is solved. We will now forever wonder WHO is missing from the embryo picture, who was made in the Petri dish, and who was made at home. I’ll let the boys fight that one out later! Could make for some interesting conversation over Thanksgiving dinner someday.
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If anyone has any creative ways to share this with my OB, please leave me a comment! He swore up and down that it would be extremely unlikely for this to happen, so I can’t wait to tell him. Who knows what the odds are of this happening…. leave it to ME though!!!
Carrie says
May 14, 2009 at 4:55 pmCrazy! The odds have got to be SLIM!! Beautiful pics of the boys!!
Jaime says
May 14, 2009 at 5:15 pmAmazing! They are gorgeous boys. You’ve done well!
Christa @ Quintooples says
May 14, 2009 at 5:59 pmWoW! I have frats too, but I would have never guessed yours were! They look SO much alike!
Allison says
May 14, 2009 at 6:08 pmOK I thought you weren’t supposed to be “having fun” during the IVF process. Or maybe that was just me because I was hormonal from all the drugs! haha That is a crazy story…I guess only God knows who is who! 🙂
The Kaufmans says
May 14, 2009 at 6:50 pmThat’s wild!! All separate, unique and so handsome! I want to hear Cowan’s reaction to that!!
Sharon says
May 16, 2009 at 5:42 pmGod is amazing! That is great! I LOVE that all my babies are different…I think they will too as they grow up.
Tina says
May 19, 2009 at 4:31 pmWow that is amazing. What a gift God gave you that blessed day!
Christy says
May 20, 2009 at 2:45 amGreat story, and beautiful boys. Your three are a few months ahead of mine. Mine just started crawling, and I can SO see where this is headed — as you show on your blog!
Christy
Lovebug Baby says
May 20, 2009 at 10:17 pmIt's so wonderful to see how handsome and healthy the Boys are! It was a pleasure meeting you today at the store. Anytime you need to custom order anything (esp. since you'd probably need 3), please do not hesitate to call us!! We're always happy to help. Hope the Aquababy Seats work out for you!! Angela & Tanya – Lovebug Baby
http://www.lovebugbabylv.com
Jennifer says
April 21, 2010 at 9:44 pmWOW!! And…yeah, what Allison said…