LUCKY NUMBER 7!

well today was the first ultrasound/bloodwork day of our final invitro attempt and it seems as though 7 is the lucky number! i had 7 follicles on both ovaries, all measuring at 7's, 8's, and 9's (for the lucky ones that need translation, just know those are good measurements! haha) Maybe we will name our child after the number 7 like the Beckhams did! haha silly celebrities! (but hey, we still may if this all turns up successful! ;) this was the first time i had to go to an appointment without Chadd or my mom but i was a big girl! since chadd started his new job its a little hard to hop on over to meet me at the clinic when he works all the way in Mertzon now! i wasn't too worried though since i knew by the hot flashes and cramping ovaries that more than likely everything was growing as it should!
i have another appointment thursday, same as todays, then if it all looks okay we will head to san antonio friday night for an appointment saturday morning! we will know more by then as to what exact days retrieval and transfer will occur, since my ovaries are in control its their call! short and sweet! I will try to update thursday for anyone interested in keeping up!

Big Change in the Brown household!

well tomorrow is the big day for Chadd! He starts his new career at Town & Country Wholesale in Mertzon as an operations manager/sales! He will get  a company truck which will help with the commute and a company phone. He's super excited and if anyone needs someone to purchase fuel or other related products give him a shout! I'm so happy and so proud of him for taking this leap of faith and taking a jump at bettering his future as a successful man and providing for a family we long for so badly! I have the most amazing husband i could ever ask for! (which, i guess their are no bad ones since we all think we have the best of them? or atleast most of the time! haha)
 Weve been taking it easy today since our weekend was filled with celebrating chadds last day at work thursday night, helping Cody, one of our bff's, throw his parents a surprise anniversary party, then we helped Miss Tayler, my brothers girlfriend, celebrate her 21st birthday last night! Whew! Makes me tired again just recapping! Haha Also resting today to prepare ourselves for not only Chadd starting a new job, but going for our (hope to be) LAST Invitro cycle attempt!
I am a little nervous having to go to the first 3 ultrasounds alone since Chadd will be in Mertzon working we know its rather pointless to make him ask off work and drive all the way back into town just for a couple quick blood draws and ultrasounds! Maybe I can get my mommy to come! ;) I have my first baseline set for this thursday, then if all looks good i will start injections this coming saturday! we will follow with two more ultrasounds to check progress not this week but next, on tuesday and thursday then will head to san antonio that friday for hopefully the final ultrasound! its all a play it by ear journey of course so i will do my best to update either on here or facebook when the time comes!
were also looking forward to spending the weekend in Dallas with some great friends this weekend! Maybe our last hurrah before getting prego??? haha wouldn't that be nice! we've invited a set of friends for a fun filled weekend in Dallas, but they dont know what surprises lie ahead of them!!! Can't wait Wes & Micha!!! They are very special friends that did a very special thing for us in our invitro journey to help out so this is our way of thanking them!!!
Anyways stay tuned! the next 3 weeks should be quite interesting!!!! as usual with the IVF process! chadd and i are just so ready to get this crazy, emotional, whirlwind of a rollercoaster ride over with!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Laaaaaaaaaaaaaater!

STICKS AND STONES MAY BREAK MY BONES...BUT STONES THEY JUST MIGHT KILL ME!!!

ok so hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July!!!!!!!!!!! boy was mine a little heartbreaking for a day, but then it shaped up! read on for the story...haha
well i had my surgery last wednesday the 29th and everything went smooth! we checked in and waited and waited with my mom then they called me back and we waited some more in the hospital room then chadds mom showed up but we didnt wait too long so it was ok! the anaesthesiologist came in, Dr. Igler which ive had before and i totally love him by the way! he is hilarious!!! so they got my IV going and wheeled me back and placed me on the table. the last thing i remember talking about was we (all the staff in the surgery room) were going to meet at InVino Veritas after the surgery and boom i was out! haha. i woke up and all was good, went to recovery then my chadd came in and karyn and tamra then within an hour or so we were good to go home! i recovered the rest of  the day and slept most of it as well!
by thursday i was feeling better so me valarie and bowen ventured to the grocery store to prepare for the weekend! my moms side of the family, along with anyone who wants to tag along, all go to Junction every year since i was about 3 for the 4th so i wasnt about to miss that!!!
well, all in all the camping trip was awesome as usual except for around 5:00 friday to saturday mid afternoon i was pretty much all tears!!!!! yep, debbie downer right here, but i had a totally valid excuse!!!!!!! as we were swimming in the river us women decided to get out and i got splashed from behind so naturally i turned around to return the splash and swoosh! there goes my wedding ring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yes i said wedding ring!!!!!!! all 5 bands, (yes i'm gaudy) all 2 1/2 carats into the Llano river!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so i instantly scream, cry, yell, and cuss like a sailor that my ring flew off! then i look up and see chadd literally running through the water with his beer in one hand, he drops the other hand to the bottom of the river immediately to start searching! as did everyone else in the water, which was about 10 or so people, more or less because they were probably scared i was going to go all lunatic since i went on a yelling rampage that lead into sobbing that finally lead to my mom pulling me out of the water holding me while everyone searched and prayed!!! props to bryan munn for taking off to the dollar store as well as meme to load up on goggles!!! well we didnt find it, so Tamra calls her husband david, since he hadn't left angelo yet, to bring the metal detector his parents own! yes, how ironic that the last one to arrive in our group hadn't left yet and conveniently had access to a metal detector??? ya crazy! so night falls, no ring...morning comes...no ring...so everyone is down at the water swimming around lunch saturday and david looks at me and says, "im going to find that ring shelby, its gonna bother the hell out of me until i do!" so i said have at it brotha! so he goes down to the water after making another trip to the store for a fresh battery...about an hour later chadd, kysha, josh, sloane and i were all up at the camp when everyone down at the water started freaking out!!! THEY FOUND IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
they decided to submerge the metal detector and everytime it beeped my Uncle David, (not to be confused with brother in law david) would dig wherever it beeped while B-I-L david maneuvered the detector and right as my Godmother Gina was praying, david pulled up a handful of mud and rocks and voila! there it was!!!!!!!!!!!
needless to say mine and chadds weekend got a whole lot better as well as everyone elses! they didnt like seeing me so sad! chadd reassured me the whole time it was missing that he didnt care it was just something materialistic and he would get me a bigger one! but boy did he lay it on when we found it!!! haha not too bad though but he did put it in the ash tray in his truck and i wasnt allowed to touch it the rest of the weekend!!! thank the lord for my brother in law david and his family for making a special trip in from grape creek to bring him the detector before he left town!!!!!!! also a HUGE THANKS to all my friends and family that helped in the treasure hunt! your efforts WILL be rewarded i promise!!!!!!!! oh and please forgive me for my sailor mouth that went nuts in the heat of the moment! trust me there was no other way to react!!!!!!!!!! haha so thankful knowing the one gift, besides his heart of course, that chadd gave me did not have to be left behind! the sentimental value is totally irreplaceable!!!!!!!!!!!

ok so to continue on from my living hell....i spoke with my doctor friday afternoon in san antonio and he spoke with my urologist and they decided that all would be good to go to possibly do both my retrieval, granted the eggs were ready, and lithotripsy on wednesday as long as everything went as planned...well boy did it NOT go as planned....
so chadd and i enjoyed an italian dinner before heading to glendas for the night which was so good! we had a pepperoni pizza! anyways we headed to glendas, watched TV and basically went to bed! well, so much for a good nights sleep! i woke up about 1:30am with the lower back pain, it did nothing but get worse. i took two lortab that my urologist prescribed me when i saw him friday morning for "just in case"...well those didnt even touch the pain!!!!!! so i got up about 4am and took a shower to see if it would help ease the pain, which it didnt...i got out of the shower and noticed my left side was super swollen up and the pain was worse so i told chadd it was time to go to the ER....so 45 minutes later, driving 80mph down the highway, i was in the ER! it went pretty smooth all in all, they got my IV going and pumped me up of the good stuff and voila! the pain was gone! love that good juice!
so they prescribed me all sorts of meds and we were out of there by 8:45am and headed to the fertility clinic across the street...keep in mind i looked like i had been hit by a bus so the looks i was getting from everyone was like, whoa, that girl needs help...so i let them know about the ER and we go on to the ultrasound and blood work where my follicles had grown a little and their were lots of them which was good, but after speaking with Dr. Martin we decided it was in my best health interest to cancel the cycle due to a bigger chance of infection. when kidneys are involved it can make everything quite scary so even though we were disappointed we were also relieved to just go home and relax and recover!!!
so i pretty much slept the whole day saturday sunday and now its monday and im awake for now until i take another hydrocodone! trying to hold off from them since i dont have any pain yet but for my sake and mostly chadds, we want to keep on top of the pain because my poor husband cant take seeing me in such pain!!! i feel so bad that he has had to take care of me soooo many times! it really sucks for him! in sickness and in health, right??? poor thing!
so for now im just taking it easy until wednesday when im scheduled for lithotripsy so i will update after all of that!
from an awesome person whom i hope to call my sister in law one day, Tayler...Proverbs 3:5-6 "trust in the lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding, in alll your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths"...

well....not what we had anticipated...really???

well....its been quite a whirlwind the past couple days! lets just recap! we, as in me, my mom, Valarie, and grayson, hit the road Wednesday night to head to Glenda's in Bulverde. She is my distant cousin but i call her my aunt! she is gracious enough to let us stay at her house anytime we need too when were in san antonio so it helps tremendously on our travel expenses! anyways, we made it safe and sound with only one detour! yes you would think since i've been there 500 times in the past year i would be able to remember how to get to her house but once you hit Boerne its a little tricky! AND it was dark! so, i get ready for bed that night and notice a little blood in my urine (i know TMI but if you are grossed out then don't read it! haha) but my body does some crazy things so i kinda just blew it off and went to bed...well, the next morning theirs the same problem now accompanied with a slight back pain, so i told my mom and of course she and i both were thinking the unspeakable...kidney problem...
so we all load up and head to the clinic with swimsuits in tow since we planned on going to Sea World after the appointment which we were soooo looking forward too! well, we get to the clinic, all four of us, and while were in the waiting room, something funny to share....lesbians...and grayson...we were a little nervous because they were getting pretty cozy so we were all just waiting for grayson to blurt something out! don't get me wrong more power to them to each their own! but we were more concerned with the way G would've reacted if he would've seen them do anything, but thankfully they didn't and G was distracted with his iPod! THANK YOU APPLE! HAHA anyways moving on...
so my mom and i go into the room after lots of waiting and then more waiting in the ultrasound room and a urine sample, which by the way, for a girl, is by far one of the most difficult things to do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (like i said if you cant take the heat, stay in the shade!) anyways my ultrasound comes in and my endometrial lining is looking beautiful thank goodness! and my ovaries, WOW! the prettiest ive ever seen! haha we saw lots of follicles that weren't measuring too big yet but as you read on you will see why this may be a good thing! anyways, since she was doing the ultrasound she decided to check out my kidney that was causing problems to see if she could see anything suspicious...well about 10 minutes later she found what we suspected! a bleeping STONE!!!
so immediately the tears started flowing for one reason i was reliving the pain and agony i was in from the first one i had, then i just knew it was going to mess up our cycle, which would mean thousands of wasted dollars!!! thankfully since chadd  wasn't there my mommy was! yes, even when you're trying to become a mommy yourself, you still need yours to help you get there! well i calmed down thanks to her and got dressed and went to the office to meet with the doctor and nurse. when we stepped into the hallway we could see grayson and val patiently waiting for us! he was waving at us telling us it was time to go to sea world and to hurry up! haha
well we left the clinic basically with everything up in the air until i heard from my urologist from home. as we walked out of the clinic i mumbled, "could my life get any worse?" well, my six year old cousin gave it to me straight..."yes Shelby, it could be worse." hahahahaha that coming from a six year old definitely reminded me that yes it could be worse! well, i still had no pain from the stone and we were kind of at a stand still by this point so we decided lets just go to sea world and if i start to hurt or whatever then we could leave!
well thankfully ive had no pain and didn't all day yesterday and the four of us had a blast at sea world! loved loved loved the sea lions show! too funny!
so i found out i had an appointment for a CT in Angelo at 8:15 the next morning (today) but we enjoyed ourselves anyways knowing we were going to have to drive home so late! but we did and we made it home about 12:45 last night! i had a small cry and lots of hugs from my chadd and everything was better!
well today its only 11:40am as i type and wow its been a long morning! i had the CT at 8:15 then went and saw my urologist and they said that the stone is a good size but is in a spot where they cant just go out and remove it, they will have to use lithotrypsy, google it, and he only does it on Wednesdays since its done by a machine that isn't always available....so as of now im waiting on my doctor in San Antonio to call me back to see if were going to wait until then or if they could maybe get me into a doctor in San Antonio earlier to get rid of it!!!!!!!! either way it looks like we will be traveling back to San  Antonio today because they want to do another ultrasound in the morning to make sure they watch my follies closely to make sure we still can do the retrieval on time!
as of right now were looking at doing that Wednesday but like i said its all up in the air until my doctors communicate then call me about it! if we do the retrieval and the stone is still there, they will freeze my eggs so we don't have to worry there about losing my eggies they will just be on ice until were ready to fertilize and transfer them! in the mean time they gave me some Loratab in case i develop any pain and now we wait!!!!!! so i will update ASAP and again thanks so much to my awesome family for doing everything they can to help chadd and i get through all of this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! we couldn't do it without everyone's help!

FOLLICLES FOLLICLES EVERYWHERE!

haha yeah so anyone that's been through this or has had me explain all of this in the past will understand the title! we had a couple good looking ovaries working away at our ultrasound this morning! my endometrial lining also was developing well, which is what is needed in order to have a good surrounding for implantation. i had about 10 small follicles growing on my right ovary and about 5 to 7 on my left one! my right one is the one we want to root for since its easier to get to than my left! my left ovary adhered itself to my uterus after a surgery i had a couple years ago so its difficult to get to during the retrieval but it still functions! Dr. Neal was able to get to it the first time he said their was lots of pushing, pulling, and awkward positions for the nurses in order for him to get to it but he made it which helped us out! so this time it would be just as good to get to it since the more we can retrieve the better our chances of lots of embryos!!! although my follicles weren't quite big enough I'm sure hoping our retrieval will not get pushed back since we plan on  going to junction with our families for 4th of July!!! although i wont be able to swim and will pretty much be on bed rest i still don't think i could handle missing a year since I've gone EVERY year since i could walk! and no I'm not joking! but i guess if it gets pushed back its for a good cause so i wont complain too much! haha
anyways i guess me, my awesome mom, Grayson (my awesome 6 year old cousin) and Valarie (my awesome aunt), will hit the road to San Antonio tomorrow after work so i can go to my appointment thursday morning then were gonna own sea world for the day!!! YIPPPPPPPPIIIIIIEEEEE!!!!!!!!! CAN YOU TELL IM EXCITED??? i cant wait to see the walrus show!
well goodnight for now and i will do my best to update from my phone while im in san antonio! time to go watch the rain!!! thank you lord!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HAPPY FATHERS DAY!!!

Well, once again another fathers day gone by that my husband can't officially celebrate :( but we did get to celebrate two of the best dads anyone could ask for and without them we wouldn't be here and we wouldn't be able to attempt to have a child through invitro to celebrate days like this with in the future! i love my husband more than anyone knows and he has fulfilled my life in so many ways that this is such a heavy burden to not be able to fulfill his. I know he would never hold any of this against me, since he's told me and he shows me by sticking by my side and being at my beckon call for whatever i need throughout this whole process! he truly amazes me by being able to give me my shots and put on a strong face and open his arms when i need to break down! although he is quite good at pushing my buttons when he knows im all hyped up on hormone injections but hey, gotta find the humor SOMEWHERE in all this!
well we have one more day of injections in the morning then its back to the doctor Tuesday morning for another ultrasound and another round of blood work to see how things are progressing! really hoping everything stays as scheduled for the fact that were supposed to have an appointment Thursday morning in San Antonio then me, grayson, mom, and val are off to Sea World after that for the day!!! so anyways until Tuesday have a great Monday and hope everyone enjoyed being able to celebrate fathers day with an amazing father or angel father!

I love you Chadd and would fly to the moon and back to provide a child for you to love and appreciate not only on Fathers Day but every day of the year...I know it will happen one way or another one day, and when it does, you're going to be the best daddy a baby has ever known!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!