Carnival Splendor--Take 2 (Part 2)

Day 2

Today was a “Day at Sea”, my least favorite day aboard a cruise ship.  Emily loves them.  These days remind me of when we really were at sea for 4 days.  The difference from then and now is then I had to study for a chemistry class that I was in, now I had no studying to do.  That means there wasn’t much for me to do.  I know that the majority of Americans enjoy nothing more than to show off their latest “upgrades”, especially the ladies.  Little soapbox now, ladies, please ditch the string bikinis, it makes life so uncomfortable for everyone else that has to look at you.  It might be cool for you and your significant other, but no one else appreciates your “latest model” which seems to give you such a thrill to show everyone.  And believe me when I say that it is ok if you have a little bit of a tan line on your back, no need to undo that little teeny, tiny string which produces no line anyway, so that the entire world can see your squished breasts hanging out the side of your pool-side cot—not attractive.  Please cover up.  I’m done.

I can’t stand to just sit by a pool and soak in the rays of the sun.  The sun never wants to cooperate and give me a nice, brown hue to my skin, I think that it laughs at me and says, “Is this a joke, you think you can sit out and enjoy my rays? Haha!  I will show you what I can really do!”  The instant I step outside in the sun, it changes my skin to a nice hypercolor (remember those shirts back in the 80’s?), from white to red, and then when you touch my red skin it turns white again in the shape of your finger, then the white spot disappears and turns red again.  It really is quite the spectacle.  I am a fan of staying in the safety of the shade.  Anyone remember that movie Benchwarmers, the guy that plays Jon Heder’s brother, he wouldn’t step foot into the sun because he was so white, that was actually me and they asked me to act natural. 

Something else I got from my dad is that unless I am fast asleep, I can’t stay in the same place with nothing to do, I have to be moving around.  Even in the mornings when I wake up, I can’t just lay there like Emily can for an hour or more, for some strange reason I have to get up and go do something, even if that means I have to walk in circles.  Believe me, I wish that I could just lay there, sit there, whatever there and just relax.  A “Day at Sea” would be the perfect place to hone that talent, a talent that definitely passed me over.

With all of this being said, this “Day at Sea”, for me, was spent doing a lot of circle walking. I started off the day walking/jogging in circles on the outdoor track.  We then all met up for breakfast, and enjoyed some amazing omelets. We sat around and talked a lot, just getting caught up with everything going on in life, we talked mostly about how Emily and I felt about having triplets (that is still so weird to think that we will have triplets!). 

The rest of the day for me was spent walking in circles.  From going up and down stairs, going to the lobby and back to my room to the swimming pool and back, to the yummy and delicious ice cream bar (a few times) and back to the room.  I won’t lie and tell you that I am such a fun, exciting, wonderful companion to have with you on a cruise, in fact, I am probably the opposite (sorry Emily!).  It is funny whenever we are on the chairs poolside, after about 5 minutes, I say to Emily, “Let’s go do something.”  She replies, “Like what?”  My response is 100% of the time the exact same, “I don’t know, I have to go do something though.”  She will usually at this point just tell me to go and walk around, but that she is staying there.  So I spend a lot of time with me, myself and Jake.

Dinner time rolled around (finally) and we got all fancied up.  

(Finger-Lickin' Good)

This is when Emily points out that the ceiling in the dining room (which is called the “Gold Pearl”) has boobs on the ceiling.  I told her that it was an open clam with pearls inside of it.  She said that she knew, but it looked like breasts.  She then said that this should be called the “Boob Cruise”!  I laughed because it was so true!  Here are just a couple of examples of the thousands aboard this ship:

After dinner we went to the “Spectacular Spectacular” lounge to watch the evening show, which was a medley of rock and roll songs mostly from the 60’s and 70’s.  It was a well put together show, and keeping with the “Boob Cruise” theme, the dancers, like the sunbathers, were not dressed very adequately to cover up their “upgrades” (Sorry, no pictures of this one).  However, it is fun to see truly talented people, I have a lot of respect for people that can go on stage and perform like they do.  I personally always wanted to be a member of NKOTB, or NSync, or even the Backstreet Boys.  My problem is that I can’t sing or dance, so that dream was never going to be realized, so I remain a “closet karaoke-er”.

This was pretty much the end of our day. We went back to the room and played a game of B.S. and then hit the sack.  Our first port of call is tomorrow, Cabo San Lucas, where we will be for 2 days, and then it is off to Puerto Vallarta.

Carnival Splendor--Take 2

This is my (Jake's) journal entry from our most recent cruise.  It was a 7 day, 8 night cruise that went to Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta.  It was aboard the Carnival Splendor, same ship as the "fire cruise".  This will be a long entry, followed by more long entries.  Enjoy:

It is currently Monday morning (July 30) of our cruise aboard the Carnival Splendor.  There is something much more quiet about this one at 6:30 am than our last attempt of a cruise on this exact same ship.  The difference is the fact that I am the only one out and about, in November of 2010 everyone aboard the Splendor was standing at their muster station, inhaling smoke that was coming from the engine room, and eagerly awaiting the call (which never happened by the way) to abandon ship! 

This cruise from where I am writing this beautiful story actually began in November of 2010.  That is when we came aboard the Carnival Splendor for the first time, it was an attempt at a family reunion.  As several of you know, that was the same time said ship decided that the engines had had enough and they didn’t want to work anymore (yes, we were on “that cruise”).  Unfortunately for us, it happened on the very first morning at 6:00.  I will not get into details about that one, because I already wrote a 17 page essay on the matter, which you can find on our family blog, jakeandemilyhutchings.blogspot.com, and look in the November or December file in the 2010 category on the right hand side of the webpage.

The nice thing about that “cruise” was that they reimbursed us for it, and they gave us vouchers for another cruise with Carnival for the same rate.  It took us until the vouchers just about expired to take them up on their generous offer, which is where we are today.  For reasons very unknown to me, and as fate would have it, we are aboard the EXACT same ship, going to the EXACT same ports of call we were supposed to go to (minus Mazatlan), and the EXACT same room (just kidding about the room, but that’s all I could think of). 

Now, the journal portion begins.  On Friday (July 27, 2012) afternoon we drove up to Denver where Grant and Shalie were super generous and decided that they wouldn’t mind taking on three extra kids for a week, thank you so much you guys!  We got in at about 8:30 that night and put the kids to bed (who were SUPER excited to be with their cousins, so excited I don’t think they slept for more than 4 hours!), then we just sat around and talked until it was our bedtime.  On Saturday Emily and Shalie went into IKEA for some girl time, while Grant and I took the 6 kiddos to the neighborhood swimming pool.

This pool is the nicest neighborhood pool I have ever seen, and coming from ABQ where lifeguards won’t let you swim in a pool, it was so nice to feel like I could actually enjoy my kids a little bit in the pool!  Plus, they even let Ethan wear floaties (unheard of in ABQ public pools), so he was content as well.  Later that day, Grant, the older 3 boys and I went to Bass Pro Shops in order to escape it all for a couple of hours.  A great time was had by all, then we had to return.  Upon arrival, the ladies went and had their toenails done, we had dinner, watched some Olympics, and went to bed to wake up at “the butt-crack of dawn” to catch our flight to LAX. 

We arrived at LAX, met up with our favorite travelling buddies (Gary and Becky, Madison and Emma) and hopped into our shuttle that was taking us to the Carnival Splendor.  Gary was talking about how he was going to put on his “nasty persona” (because being “nice” gets you nothing in life when it comes to dealing with companies, so remember that when you go return something to Target or Wal-Mart without a receipt), to try and get some credit aboard the ship, he is very bitter about the way that Carnival treated us after the disaster of Nov 2010.  He has very valid points, as his work revolves around making companies better in treating their guests.  It truly is a blast to travel with Gary and Becky because you never know when the “nasty” Gary is going to come out, and it is fun to sit a few feet back and observe the “master” in action.

Day 1

We arrived at the Cruise Terminal a couple of hours early which was nice because unlike Nov 2010 there was no line to go through.  We registered with no hiccups, we were put into Zone 2 for boarding the ship.  This is where we spent an additional 3 hours of line waiting in 2010, yesterday was a very different experience, still inefficient, but a lot better.  I was taking pictures of the lines when a security guard came to me and said, “Sir, you need to delete that photo!”  I didn’t understand why, he just pointed to a TV screen where it said something about carrying firearms is illegal at this point of the security process.  I said I didn’t see anything, and he replied it is illegal to take a picture of the security point.  Oh!  That makes sense, camera=firearm.  Well, I obliged, I held up the camera so he could see me actually delete the picture, he was satisfied and moved on.  I did see the TV five minutes later where it said that “photography was not permitted at this point”, I am such a jerk, plus a law breaker! Here is a picture of the line for security (you can't see any security devices so I am pretty sure that I am safe to put this one up).

Nothing extraordinary happened for the remainder of the boarding process.  We were welcomed aboard the ship, went to the Lido Deck (oh the memories!) and had a buffet style lunch.  Now, in Nov 2010 this happened to be the only meal I had that was not infused with some sort of canned meat product.  So far so good.  It has been really strange to walk around the ship seeing all of the places that bring back so many memories.  “This is where I sat and studied for hours!” “Look, that is where we sat when it all began.”  “This is where we got together as a family and had discussions.” Etc, etc, etc. 

I made it to dinner.  This is already better than 2010, where I got a migraine right when dinner started and decided to lay down in the dark room instead of go to dinner.  What an experience, being able to sit in the restaurant, with lights, and eating food that has been cooked!  It was really good, I had the salmon.  After dinner there wasn’t much happening.  We went to go talk to the Guest Services about our credit, where they had no record of us having an on-board credit last time (which we did have), so they told us the only way we could do that would be to talk to the travel agent that set up the last cruise.  I think that good customer service would have been to say, “oh, you were on THAT cruise, yeah, we’ll put the credit back for you.”  That would have been too easy, even after they verified we indeed WERE on THAT cruise.  Whatever, I am done cruising Carnival, just like I am done purchasing Dodge vehicles.

We then proceeded to bed where we watched some Olympics, then we watched the Planet of the Apes movie and fell asleep.  Unfortunately for me, I inherited my father’s capability of sleeping—I can sleep anywhere, but I cannot sleep past 6:00 am, which is what brought me to where I am now…in the casino, all alone with my laptop typing away! In Emily’s words, “You are such a nerd!”

Just Kidding!

So, surprisingly, it turns out we were wrong.  When I went into the Perinatalist this afternoon they immediately saw that there were not twins in my tummy, but TRIPLETS!  OH.MY.GOSH!  We are very shocked right now!  We have ZERO idea how we missed an actual baby in the third sack during 2 different ultrasounds, but we did!  All three babies are in separate sacs with separate placentas which is good news!  There is obviously a much higher rate of losing one of them and also of chromosomal deficiencies.  I will be highly regulated during the pregnancy so we will get a lot of answers as we go.  I go back in 2 weeks to measure the spinal fluid in all 3 babies which will tell a lot and for some basic genetic counseling.  Eek!  I feel like I am in a foreign world!  So, keep us in your prayers as we will be needing it!

For your viewing pleasure:

EASTER!

We didn't do anything fancy, in fact we even stooped as low as dye-ing our easter eggs with kool-aid.  But the kids loved the traditional easter egg hunts, finding their hidden baskets, and especially devouring candy without limitations!  We had the nicest Sunday meal at our friend's home and then played games while the kids played and ate their Easter egg candy.  I love this time of year!

Happy Late Easter!

Exciting Times in the Hutchings Household!!!

It is twins for sure, no more hyperventilating thinking that it might be 3! They are both doing well, heartbeats looked good, and they were measuring right on schedule.  The third one that we thought we saw last week, is what they refer to as an "invisible twin" (triplet in our case), and that one will just disappear basically, you can still see the sack of the invisible twin in the Twins picture, it is the dark spot below them.  Since some of you have asked for these, here you go.  I give you first Baby A, Baby B, and then the twins together.  Enjoy!

1, 2, or 3?

Here is your clue....Let's say you are in Minnesota and you go to watch a baseball game.  You are going to "root, root, root for the home team", the Minnesota......

TWINS!

At least we think.  Here are the pictures from the ultrasound, I will let you be the judge. Twins, or triplets? We found a third sack in there, and we (the ultrasound tech included) thought we saw something moving around in said third sack.  However, it was measuring at a week earlier than the the other two healthy (excellent heartbeats) little babies.  We were unable to locate a heartbeat on the third one.  The tech said that she wants a doctor to look at it and give a final say, but she said that in her professional opinion it probably would not survive if in fact there is anything in there.  So, for your viewing pleasure, I give you Fetus A, Fetus B, and Sack C:                                                                                                                                                  

 

We are SO excited for Twins! Triplets on the other hand, scares us to death.  Just imagine 6 kids age 6 and under.  I mean 5 kids 6 and under is bad, but 6....AAAGGGHHH!!!  We are going back in for another ultrasound probably next week to see if there has been any development on sack/fetus C.  Til then.... 

Yet Another Update

Well, we went in for more blood work this morning to make sure the little fellas are growing.  My number's came back really, really strong.  I was so relieved!  I feel like I can let myself believe that I'm actually pregnant now.  I was much, much, much more nervous today than I was on Monday.  Just to hear that it/they were growing and growing strong....PHEW!  Okay, details!  My HCG was at 366.  Given that number compared to the 86 on Monday, something is growing strong!  I wouldn't be entirely surprised if it was twins but there is a good chance it's only one.  Definitely not triplets!!  I hate to admit it but that is definitely a relief.  I have been having anxiety attacks about possibly having triplets--that would make 6 kids under 6 so don't judge me!

Next step is ultrasound on either June 7th or 8th.  CANNOT WAIT!  Seriously, I am so excited!  And that's how we're rolling for now!  Currently I am wearing 3 estrogen patches that I switch out every 2 days that costs $15 each.  Yeah, we sound like "high rollers" but we're not!  Then I am receiving a horrible progesterone oil shot every night.  I feel like I have a massive sandbar on each of my butt cheeks from these shots.  They wake me up at night because I rock from one side of the lump to the other in my sleep and it feels like you're rolling over a bruise.  Not to complain...just trying to record the realities of it all for the future.  I still have to get my blood drawn every week to test all my levels.  All oft that stuff will go on until I am 11 or so weeks and then I will be officially done with all of the stuff that makes my pregnancy unique and just be a normal prego girl.  That's it for now!

The News

Truth be told: we cheated.  We kind of knew the results on Saturday with home tests.  Those of you who know me well should be not be surprised at this news.  I am a "million miler" type customer at the Dollar Tree.  In case you didn't know, they have one dollar pregnancy tests that are very accurate.  I buy a lot of them.  However, this time I splurged and spent $6 on two tests at Target.  I felt like this was a special occasion and I thought it was okay to splurge.  They were accurate.  Twice.

This morning we went in for blood work and.....DRUM ROLL....I am pregnant!  Oh my goodness, it feels so weird to say that!  A matter of fact, it has not sunk it at all.  At all.  It is crazy awesome, amazing, miraculous.  I feel greatly indebted to so many people, most of all, Heavenly Father.  I don't know why he chose to give us this miracle right now when there are so many amazing wonderful people out there who need one just as much as us (you know who you are!).  Nevertheless, I will take it!

The coolest thing was shopping at Target today and looking at the maternity section and thinking that I can legitimately shop there right now.  I didn't, but I could have.  One of my favorite past times is browsing the maternity section and dreaming of wearing the clothes!  Now I actually can!!

The breakdown: my HCG level was at 86.  With Cooper my level at this point was at 54, so comparatively 86 is a very solid number for me.  Don't get excited yet, that doesn't mean it's twins or triplets!  They didn't think Cooper's embryo would make it so that just means this one is probably healthier, growing stronger.  I go back in Thursday to make sure my numbers are increasing as they should....cross all of our fingers and toes!  Then in 2 weeks I will go in for an ultrasound and that's when we will know how many little monkeys we have inside.

For now we are ecstatic!!!!!  A little nervous about it all still, but very, very excited and happy!  Also, very humbled.  We have learned a great deal about friendship, relationships, and the importance of being there for others when they are going through trials. You guys have taught us so, so much!  Thank you for your continued support.  We feel like when this baby comes that it will be a part of so many people who have donated money, thoughts, fasting, and prayers.  The heart is claimed but feel free to pick any other body parts!!!:)

We will be sure to continue to update!!!

Lovely day to all!

Update and Gratitude

I don't have much to update on but I thought I would continue the posts.  Really the only change we have had since I last updated is that our 4th embryo that they grew for another day, sadly, did not make it and was discarded.  So, we have no frozen embryos...bummer.  It seems that, for one reason or another, Jake's and my stuff do not like each over very well!  The frustrating thing is there is no obvious reason why we have such a high fall-off rate.  Our doctor won't really talk with us about solutions or alterations until we find out if we are pregnant or not.  We would never do another IVF cycle so it would seem that it doesn't really matter what happened or why BUT we still really want to know if for nothing else but to know.  We are still waiting for Monday.  This week has C-R-A-W-L-E-D by.  I am trying my best to stuff it with activity but it still goes by slowly.  I am over half-way done with the wait so that's progress!

On a more positive note we had an amazing, amazing MIRACLE happen today.  We received a VERY generous "donation to the cause" in the mail today.  Totally anonymous and totally generous.  We are so very humbled by the generosity of loved ones.  We feel like so many people have sacrificed for us from finances to babysitting to prayers and fasting to 2 liters of Diet Coke for sanity!  The overwhelming lesson that Jake and I have taken from this experience is that we literally laid our faith on the altar and just said, here it is, Lord, do with it what you may!  And the Lord has blessed us.  I say this before I know the results because I want it "recorded" that , come what may, we have seen the Lord's hand in our lives throughout this process.  So many paths have been opened to us to be able to do this financially: donations, the opportunity for me to work next year, people hiring us for odd jobs, the ability to obtain a loan.  Then emotionally we have had an astounding amount of support.  I am so grateful we have been able to share our experience with other's as it has lent us so many shoulders to share our burdens.  Please know that we are grateful.  So very, very grateful.  When I called Jake to tell him about the check we received today we both talked about how excited we are to one day have enough money to be able to bless others as we have been blessed.  If we are successful in our future dental field dreams then that will be one of the things we will be most adamant about-using our money to bless others as we have been blessed!

I promise to update on Monday, negative or positive.  I am nervous, anxious, and excited.  Until then...

Transfer Update

So this is the part I've been dreading: when things stop going perfectly!  This morning was a hard morning and, admittedly, I should have mentally prepared myself a little bit better than I did.  My downfall in this whole process is that I have been very optimistic and hopeful.  Not to say that's not a good thing, but a healthy dose of "reality" never hurt anyone!

I went in this morning around 11 for my transfer and was anxious as ever to hear about the progress of the embryos since I haven't heard anything since Tuesday.  I had to drink 30 oz of water an hour before I came in to make sure my bladder was full so my uterus would sit lower.  I had to pee pretty bad and they kept pressing down on my bladder with the ultrasound--and none too gently!  After waiting for a while they took me back to the procedure room and then the doctor came in and I was sweating bullets!  He immediately informed us (Jake was on the phone) that we only had 4 embryos left.  My heart just dropped.  I was so, so hopeful that by some miracle our results would be drastically different than last time.  I will say that 4 live embryos is much better than last time but the thing about all 4 of these embryos is that they were all growing slow.  They should have all been in the "blastocyst" stage but they were all behind, growing slower than normal.  In my emotional state I neglected to ask if they were even still growing but I assume he would have mentioned it otherwise.  We decided that we would put 3 of the 4 embryos back in.  The fact that we even had an option of putting 3 instead of just 2 embryos in is very telling.  They are going to grow the last embryo to day 6 and if it keeps growing we will freeze it, otherwise we will just discard it.  After watching them put the embryos in I had to lay down for another hour.  My bladder was absolutely bursting at this point and I almost ran out very immodestly just to relieve myself!

I really don't know what to feel about our chances right now.  I got no percentages from the doctor-I didn't even ask because I was just digesting all of the information.  I was very disappointed this morning, shed lots of tears in my hotel bed (yes, I am on bed rest for a day).  I really thought things would be different this time.  Another reason for my sadness is that I feel this really is the end of an era of hope for us.  Now that we have had two fairly bum IVF cycles I officially feel "infertile" (the first one obviously turned out great, but medically speaking it should not have worked).  Duh, right?  I had always felt we would find a solution but now I feel like that hope is gone.  I am so, so grateful for the children and each of the miracles that we have been blessed with.  I am just now realizing what an AMAZING miracle Ethan is.  Wow!  We may very well get pregnant this time too which would be nothing short of another miracle.  I am not shutting the door to that possibility like I did the first time.  Jake feels a lot more hopeful about a positive result this time than last time and I have to admit I do also.  However, the cycle has definitely not worked out ideally like I was hoping!  

Here's to hoping!  Please continue to keep us in your prayers and thank you for doing so thus far.  I will have my blood work pregnancy test next Monday, the 21st.  For those of you who unfortunately witnessed my "breakdown" after my first cycle, please rest assure that I am doing fine.  I don't feel depressed, just saddened.  I probably won't answer my phone today as I just want some time to work it all out in my head!  Please know that we are grateful for all of the support and I/we have really felt the comfort of your prayers today and that is what we needed most of all!