Who we are...

We are two moms raising our 3 month old twin boys in Southern California. We have been together 4 years and are one of 18,000 couples whose marriage is still valid and recognized by the state.

Last year we decided we wanted to expand our family (which also included our 3 mini dachshunds) and have our first baby. We skipped right to IVF because we wanted to have my wifes egg implanted into my uterus so I would carry her embryo for the first pregnancy and then I'd carry my own for the second pregnancy (we did it this way since she is a few years older than me and didn't want to experience pregnancy). I switched my insurance at work to the more expensive plan and added my wife to it since it covered IVF and other fertility treatments at 90%. I started doing some research and spoke to some friends of ours who were also going through IVF. They referred us to an RE who we met with in February of 2008. They gave us a bunch of guidelines to start preparing my body for pregnancy and we arranged to start the process in mid July of 2008. We wanted the baby to be born by the end of June 2009 since my wife is a teacher and we could have the summer together (we never even considered the possibility of not being able to get pregnant- which after reading many ttc blogs, was very naïve of us).

The final and most difficult step was selecting a donor. We had originally wanted to use a good friend of ours but when he and his wife had trouble conceiving, we decided it was not the best situation. Luckily, a friend of mine met a woman who owned a sperm bank and had mostly worked with same-sex couples and got some info for us. After weeks of looking at on-line profiles we narrowed it down to five potential donors and then went in to view the long profiles and baby photos. Within an hour we had our donor.

At this point we were about a month away from starting our mock cycle. We purchased two IVF vials of sperm and had it delivered to our RE for storage. During this month I spent most my time reading ttc blogs and researching what we should expect with IVF. When the time came, we did all our shots, ultrasounds, vitamins, etc. We retrieved 11 embryos of which 10 fertilized and made it to blasts. I had a good feeling we would get pregnant right away so I only wanted to transfer one embryo, but at the very last second (as I lay on the table ready for transfer) our RE convinced us to do 2 to avoid having to go through all of the shots again. We hesitantly agreed and we transferred two of my wifes embryos into my uterus.

Four days after transfer I took a home pregnancy test and it came back positive - I immediately knew it was twins. Our first beta came back at 551 and they didn't even do a second beta. Instead we did an ultrasound a week later and at 5 weeks 4 days I found out we were indeed having twins. It was surreal, although I had a good feeling we would get pregnant, after reading so many ttc blogs of women like us trying month after month, and year after year to get pregnant, with no success, I had a little doubt. I couldn't believe that after our first and only try ever, we were pregnant and expecting twins!

Almost all the blogs I follow now were ones I found before I was even pregnant. I learned so much from these women and I loved how they were able to document their experiences so I wanted to start my own blog to do the same. Unfortunately I never got around to it because I had a less than perfect pregnancy (story to follow soon) and then the boys came 2 months early and were in the NICU for one month (baby a) and two months (baby b) which is a whole other story to follow later. So needless to say, any spare time I had was rather spent sleeping, eating or showering.

So here I am 3 months after giving birth to our twins, writing my first post. I hope to write often but one thing I've learned with twins is not to plan anything!