A visual glimpse into our embryo's future?

Happy Monday! I am so excited because our donor gave me permission to share photos of her son, the little boy who grew from an embryo from the batch we received. Below on the left is a photo of him as a baby, and on the right is a photo of him now as a four year old. You can see how absolutely beautiful he is. Always full of big smiles! 

In the past few weeks she has sent me a couple of links to oodles of photos of him growing up, christmases, vacations, etc. I spent hours staring at the pictures and daydreaming about the future of our embryos. It is a feeling I can't describe! Our children would be 100% genetic siblings to this little boy so it's likely that our children would look as much like him just as any siblings would. We are incredibly lucky because he is so adorable! Clearly these embryos have adorable genes in them. :) I still am pinching myself that we have real hope again.

I started Lupron injections yesterday, and so far it's been okay. Lupron doesn't hurt at all because it's through an insulin needle. I'm less worried about the shot itself than I am about the side effects. I had some side effects from the micro-dose I had to take during the summer so I can only imagine how I'm going to feel on the full dose that I'm on now! But day one is out of the way, and it wasn't too bad. I had a minor headache all day yesterday and quite a bit of nausea.  But honestly, I think the nausea is because I must have eaten gluten by accident somehow the night before. After suffering for 13 years not realizing I had an intolerance, I can easily tell when I've come into contact with it and that's exactly how I felt. I was very tired yesterday too which could have been the Lupron, or it may be because I'm getting sick. My husband is sick with a cold (the third cold in three months!) I have gotten sick myself right after him on the first two colds, so I'm bracing myself to catch this one any day now. I've been careful about washing my hands and avoiding germs, but we all know that it's pretty inevitable when you live with someone. I read that if you do a neilmed sinus rinse when you're exposed to colds, you can avoid them. I love the sinus rinses and  usually only do them when I already have a cold or allergies, but to try to avoid getting this cold at all I started rinsing as a precaution. I did have a massive hot flash while at the checkout line at Target. That was fun, let me tell ya! I'm sure that's a side effect of the Lupron because I remember those during the summer and this was the same exact thing. I'm on 10 units now but will switch to 5 units after my first ultrasound on the 18th. I start the estradiol that day as well which should help with the Lupron side effects.

I felt bad for my husband being sick yet again, so I cooked up a big batch of chicken noodle soup for dinner. It was so good! I substituted gluten free noodles for regular ones and it turned out exactly like the wheat version. I'm really happy that there are so many gluten free substitutes out there that taste exactly like old version I was used to. We had plenty of leftovers so I took some over to my dad's house and he loved it too.