Hello! I’m so thrilled to be joining the blogging team on Hellobee. You might remember me as the former hostess, Leialou, or from a series of guest posts I wrote last fall about embryo adoption. I’m pleased to say that after an almost 4 year battle with infertility, Mr. P and I are expecting our first child through embryo adoption in October!

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Mr. P and I met in 2007 and got married in 2010. We knew that we wanted to have children some day, but had no idea it would take so long. After our first anniversary we decided we were ready to try. We tried for several months before I spoke to my gynecologist at my annual exam. She ordered routine tests for Mr. P and me. Not too long after that we got the news that Mr. P had male factor infertility. We spent the majority of 2012 working with an urologist. Mr. P went through varicocele surgery and took several months of supplements, which resulted in no change. We did two IUIs with the urologist, both of which were unsuccessful. That’s when we decided to see an RE.

Our RE ran several tests on both of us and found the cause of Mr. P’s infertility: a Robertsonian translocation. This means that the long arm of his chromosome 21 is fused to the long arm of chromosome 14. Since there is nothing you can do to treat your chromosomes, we decided the best thing to do was go straight to IVF. I responded very well to the stimulating medications and my RE was able to retrieve 13 of my eggs. Five days later we had 6 blastocysts, but after a fresh transfer and two frozen embryo transfers we were out of embryos and I still wasn’t pregnant. Mr. P and I had to make a choice. We could either do IVF again, this time with genetic testing, or we could pursue embryo adoption. After lots of discussions we decided to go with embryo adoption, and we are very glad that we did.

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Here are some fun facts about us. I am a huge Star Wars nerd and Mr. P loves LSU sports. Together we like to travel, go to the movie theater as much as possible, and build things when we have spare time. We have lots of DIY plans for Baby P’s nursery, one of which is building the crib. We currently live in suburban Texas with our two dogs and two cats, but have plans to move to one of the Carolinas to be closer to our families.

Why Mrs. Pickle? As long as I can remember pickles have been my favorite snack, so it seemed fitting. At any given time you can find two or three pickled items in my fridge. Plus, I think the watercolored pickle jar is very cute.

I have so many things that I want to share with you, from selecting our clinic, to choosing our donors, the FET process, how the first trimester treated me, and what it’s like to be pregnant after infertility. I’m excited to start sharing my journey with you!