Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Episode III: A Schunke Hope

Wow! Time has flown since my last post. School started which is probably all I need to say to explain why I have not posted in a while. Classes are going well though, I have some great kids this year. The days just fly by though! It is busy!!

Despite our past IVF failure, we decided to try another cycle. We are just not ready to give up yet! We started IVF #3 the first week of september. I was very worried about going through a cycle while in school. Surprisingly, it was much easier than I thought it would be. I think it has been a blessing in disquise. I have been so busy, I don't have time to worry about my numbers and think about how cruddy the medicine makes me feel. I have just been plugging away, trying to put my energy into my kids in school and let God take care of the rest. We have been praying and hoping as always and waiting to see what God is going to do!

So far things are going great! We just gave the HcG shot which induces ovulation. Here is where we stand less than 35 hours before egg retrieval. Today during the ultrasound, we measured 13 follicles! They all looked really good. Most of them were betwen 17 and 20 mm which is great. One was a little small, and will probably not be ready by Friday, but that is still 12 potential eggs. My estrogen levels look fabulous too. They hope for 200 per mature follicle. We have never hit that, until now! My levels today were 2432, so we are looking great!
Our egg retrieval is scheduled for Friday morning at 7:00 am so we will be up bright and early.
Please pray for this procedure for us. The last retrieval was really rough on both of us between the pain and trauma of the procedure and the loss of 50% of our eggs right off the bat. We feel really good that things are going to go much better this time...we appreciate you agreeing in prayer with us on this issue.



This past week, I have seen God's love in so many ways. There are two things that really spoke to me this week. All summer I was really into potting plants for around the house and outside on the porch. It became a kind of therapy for me. I rescued plants on the clearance rack at the home and garden stores and grew them into beautiful plants again. I thought if I cannot grow babies right now, at least I can grow plants! Well, I had two planters with Mexican heather on the front porch. On a really hot day, that got absolutely parched after I was not able to water them the night before. Over the next couple of days, one whole side just turned brown and died. That was about a month ago. The other day I decided to cut the dried off branched out of the planter so that it would look better. I was very surprised to find that on all the dead stems, new growth had started and was flourishing! I was totally surprised! I also have a cyclomen that I rescued from Wal-mart's clearance rack. It had flowered a little when I bought it and then quit. Over a month ago, the leaves started to yellow and die. I read about them on the internet and found out that when that happens most people just through them out because they rarely flower again. They grow from a tuber and if they yellow, some say you can let the dry out and then plant them again in the spring and they might flower. Well, just as I was ready to think about drying it out, it stopped turning yellow. Stayed green. So I decided to keep watering it for a while and it has been green and beautiful. This week, lo and behold, it started blooming again...in the beginning of fall!!! I just think these are little love notes from God, showing how His power is made awesome through weakness.

1 comment:

The Spears said...

We are praying that this will be the time!!