New Year

The last few days I've been reflecting on what a crazy year 2011 was. It turned out to be one of the worst and best years of my life.

Here are some of the highs and lows (written while listening to "Happy New Year" by Camera Oscura):

* I won a $10,000 dollar award for my novel-in-stories. By far the biggest check and biggest honor I've ever received. I got to start working part-time instead of full-time, return to the Millay Colony, and join the Writers' Room of Boston. Dan predicted that 2011 would be "The Year of the Lisa."
* I turned 32.
* I decided to switch doctors and went through my third in vitro cycle at Brigham & Women's. It ended in miscarriage while I was at the Millay Colony. One of the lowest points in my life.
* After trying to start an infertility group at church, having no one express interest and feeling alone, I decided to join a weekly infertility group led by a therapist. One of the most important things I've done in my family-building struggle. I found myself in a room of smart, funny, compassionate women who understood exactly what I was going through. One of them is now my nurse and is expecting a baby. One of them just had twins. Another one is expecting twins exactly three days after me. I really don't think I would have been able to keep doing fertility treatments without them.
* As I was about to leave for the hospital for my fourth (and only frozen) in vitro cycle, the hospital called to say that the embryos didn't make it. I decided I couldn't put myself through this anymore, physically or emotionally, and decided to take a break from fertility treatments indefinitely.
* I had a story published here.
* For that one story published, I received at least 50 rejections. I stopped counting after awhile.
* After a break, I was finally ready to do my fifth cycle of in vitro. After four previous fails, I didn't feel very hopeful. I went through the motions anyway.
* My father was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
* I found out I was pregnant from IVF #5. It felt weird. I was excited, but extremely nervous about something going wrong.
* I found out I was expecting twins! Dan had a panic attack. I was elated. It started to seem more real.
* I started bleeding and worried that this, too, was going to end in failure.
* The bleeding stopped. I went on an epic vacation to Hawaii and Utah with Dan and realized that we will probably never be able to do that again (at least for a very long time).
* I found out we're having a boy and a girl!
* Dan and I agreed quickly on a boy name and have quibbled much over the girl's name. Who knew he would be so opinionated? We decided we will give the honor of naming the girl to whoever can come up with a large enough endowment.

I have two (not so small) hopes for 2012:
* Give birth - in whatever way that happens - to two healthy babies.
* Finish my book.

I also have many hopes for a lot of people I love - that things they have been wanting to happen, will happen and that the not-so-good things that have been happening will stop happening.

two dresses

surprise!

so, i decided to surprise dan on christmas morning by secretly finding out the sex of our other baby. how, you ask? by getting an ultrasound at the mall. i know. sounds sketchy, right? i was a little nervous about it, too. but when i found out that the person performing the ultrasound used to be an actual doctor and that he performed the first IVF in lithuania, i felt a tiny bit better about it.

i'm glad i did it. it was a good surprise for everyone. including me.

i'm trying to think of a clever way to tell you the results, but i'm tired and can't think of anything, so i will just get on with it.

we already knew that we were having one boy and were very excited.
now we know that we are also having a girl.

one boy and one girl. seems like an ideal combination to me. we couldn't be more pleased.

now, if we could only agree on names...

disobedient children

So....after a very long ultrasound in which I had to get up to pee twice and both babies did not cooperate, we only know the sex of one baby. The other will remain unknown until (hopefully) December 29th (my 7th Danniversary!) when they try to do another ultrasound. Hopefully (s)he will uncross those legs.

One baby is a boy.

Both ultrasound techs said they think the other one might be a girl, but that they really can't tell for sure.

84% percent of you can't be wrong! Or can you?

The good news is that tomorrow we're off to Hawaii for some R&R and then to Utah for some Christmas festivities.

Mele Kalikimaka!

Poll

I just added a poll so you can vote on whether you think we're having two boys, two girls, or one of each. Poll ends Thursday when the truth will be revealed...

Bunkmates

Here are pictures, as promised. I just took pictures with the camera since our scanner doesn't work. Sorry for the sub par quality (the quality wasn't that great to begin with). The first photo is of the 3-day-old embryos. The next two photos are from my ultrasound yesterday (12 weeks, 5 days).

Ultrasound numero quatro

Today I had my fourth ultrasound (one of the few perks of being an "infertile" is having a lot of ultrasounds from the very beginning). They did genetic testing. Everything looked good on the ultrasound. The twins looked like they were sleeping in bunk bed hammocks. One sac on top of the other. It was kind of adorable. I will post pictures if/when I set up our new printer/scanner. They were able to see the four chambers of their hearts, even though it's really early (the nurse said it's because I'm so thin which immediately made me love her). I saw their arms waving, their feet sticking up in the air, and their little brains. Dan gave me strict instructions because of several vague text messages sent in the past, to send him a text message giving him a report of what I saw and then the words, "this is good" or "this is bad." Last time I sent him a text saying I was anemic, he thought I was going to die and the time before that, when I compared the sound of the heartbeats on the doppler to "a hundred galloping horses," he thought something was terribly wrong.

So, "this is good."