Throughout our marriage my wife and I have had difficulty getting pregnant. I know its hard to believe considering we have been blessed with five beautiful children. After our second child was born we tried repeatedly to have another baby. We were fortunate enough to use the fertility clinic at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii while we were in the Air Force, but after several attempts and still no baby we decided to give it a rest for a while.
We moved back to Utah and considered adoption but nothing seemed to be coming together so we ended that process as well. After careful consideration and saving lots of money, we decided to do in vitro fertilization, which is quite a process. To put it simply, the female loads up on lots of medications and the fertility specialists combine sperm and several plump eggs in a petri dish and hope at least a few of them take. After five days, when the embryos consist of hundreds of cells called a blastocyst, the most healthy ones are implanted into the uterus of the mother.
The day we arrived at Reproductive Care Center for the implantation procedure we were full of doubt and hope. We doubted that it could be as simple as implanting a couple of embryos and hoped that all would go well and we would soon be parents again.
We were escorted into a room with a small bed, some medical equipment and a television monitor mounted to the wall in the corner. They prepared my wife for the procedure and together we awaited the arrival of the doctor. He stepped in the room and told us how promising two of the five embryos looked and expressed his confidence that all would go well.
He then turned to look through a glass window into the other room where the embryologist was preparing two of the embryos for implantation. The embryologist told the doctor he was ready then stepped into the room and handed him a small container with the embryos inside. He said to us, “If you’d like you can look up at the monitor and see what’s going on.”
Just as we looked up we saw two fuzzy round spheres, that appeared on the monitor to be the size of golf balls, being aspirated into a tube. As they rolled along I felt this surge of love flow through me and I thought of a line from Dr. Suess' Horton Hears a Who, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
As I was having this surreal experience, I asked the doctor how big they were. He said, “About the size of a grain of sugar. Sweet little things aren’t they?”
My wife and I both smiled with moist eyes and replied, “Yes they are!”
Throughout the rest of the pregnancy, we were so excited as we thought about the amazing miracle of life that was taking place. Within a couple days our little babies would consist of thousands of cells and then millions. Within four weeks their neural tube would close and their arms, ears and eyes would begin to develop. By the end of the sixth week their internal organs, facial features and teeth would begin developing. And finally by the end of eight weeks they would be approximately 3/4 of an inch long, with all their organs created, little elbows and toes moving and a beating heart. Their precious little bodies would be formed and ready to grow exponentially until birth and throughout their childhood!
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| fetus at 6 weeks in utero |
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| Twins at 2 Years Old |
Stay tuned for the next blog post where the story continues and we take a closer look at the development of their precious little teeth!
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