Good evening ladies,
Sorry I've been MIA; work has been busy and I've been out of the office more often than not! Lots of interesting posts in the last few days!!! Geez, I hope I don't miss important points in my personals...
Renee,
Like the others, I hope the shots go well and that you can avoid another round of IVF! Oh, and about your MIL, well, glad I could help! I hope you guys recover from the shock quickly... pfff what a situation!!!
Lee,
HOW EXCITING that we have dates for your FET!!!! WOOOHOO! Lots of ladies making attempts, it's great! I hope we have lots of 2009-2010 babies to look forward to!
March will be a big month guys!!! I'm glad that you feel reassured by all the tests. Indeed, it feels SO much better when you make another attempt and you know your doc has taken all the particularities of your case into consideration before making medical decisions, adapting the protocol and so on. Let us know the results, if you want. Oh, and of course, I can't help but join the chorus! I, too, really admire what you guys are doing for those kids. I absolutely couldn't imagine getting emotionally attached to a kid and letting him/her go after a few months... ouchie!!! But what you're doing for them makes a HUGE difference, and kudos to you for that!
Angie in her jammies!
How are you doing girlie? Though start this week too? Geez, still a few weeks before your crazy rush ends... working during the weekend???? ARE YOU CRAZY? Oh geez, I hope they pay you GOOD money for this, and I MEAN REAL GOOD! How is DH doing? Oh, and you meanie, you laugh about my cheezes! For your information, the boursin was good, although I'll make it with less thyme and more garlic next time, and I eat the almond cream cheez every morning on English muffins with strawberry jam that I made this summer! HA! And if you were nicer, I'd send you some of that jam, but given that you're laughing at me...
;);)
Carolyn,
SO NICE to see that the good mood is sticking around! Eek about the side effects of the meds though... ooooooh, how I sympathise with you, if you only knew!!! At least you can take stuff to help you with it, right? Like Pepto Bismol or something? Not sure you have that in the UK, but well... works wonders for me!
Miracle,
Hi sweetie! Bummer about the posh dinner!!!
:(:( I hope you guys will have a chance to just postpone it??? Thanks for asking about my furbabies... I'm really glad that you found good food for Mollie and Charlie! Are they done eating their Xmas cookies yet!
LOL I guess they were gone in a blink! As for my furbabies, well... things are not so great. I thought I had figured out what made them anxious, given that the bad behavior had stopped after we let them sleep in our bedroom at night. Well, today it started all over again, and worse. DH forgot a tea towel on the table, and it's gone; no trace. Probably Daria who ate it. Someone, Toulouse I bet, munched on the gyproc around the hall's doorframe... and while munching, pulled on the paper and the paint came with it. About 1 feet x 2 feet is damaged. We'll have to redo the paint. I was flabbergasted. Seriously, I sat at the table for 30 minutes, in silence, waiting for DH to come back home, I felt overwhelmed. It's really bad, not knowing what's wrong, and not knowing what you can do to help them. So DH and I decided that we'd lock them in the guest bedroom in the basement while we're away. We did that for Daria at the very beginning, for the same reason. And after many months, we started letting her alone in the house and, gradually, we saw that she was a good girl again. I hope the same thing happens, but let's face it, we'll probably have to keep them locked until April 3rd (when I start my maternity leave). It breaks my heart, but it's necessary. In the meantime, we'll probably call our trainer again, and I'll check with my best friend to see what Cesar Millan's book says about this.
As for my mother, well... she's a psychiatrist, so she's had solid medical training. She's been really involved these past years, as a doctor and as a catholic orthdox, in bio-ethics. She's published many editorials in that field, and given speeches too. So, alas, her assumptions are everything but uneducated. When we do IVF, we do produce more embryos than we really need. We do have to destroy some of them in the process, for all kinds of reasons. Some clinics, and clinics in the USA have that reputation, tend to over-stimulate their patients and produce way too many embryos. No matter what our faith is, we all deal with those facts differently. I think it's easy to judge when you've never been faced with infertility yourself.
I also think that, no matter how skilled scientists are, no matter the field, there always remains a part of sacred mystery that even they can't control. Einstein himself said that, the more he understood and discovered about the Universe, the more convinced he was there there was a God. He also said, "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." The same applies to IVF. To me, it doesn't really matter if bunches of cells -embryos- are created artificially or naturally. The spark of Life, which is sacred, mystic and undescribable, still can't be created artificially. And that point is so often missed in the religion-based discussions about IVF...
Okay... time to go to bed I guess! See you around ladies!
Hugs,
Sophie xxox
it just sounded fun to say!!! 
and by the way -- i'll take some of that homemade strawberry jam!!!! YUMMY!!!! one of my alltime fav's!! in fact - i bring a pnut butter & STRAWBERRY jelly/jam sandwich w/ me EVERY day for my lunch!!! so there -- i could think of you daily as i gobbled down my samwich!!! 
