Post Valentine's Day Fundraiser

Just wanted to give a quick update....

THANK-YOU to everyone that purchased some of our sweet treats during our Valentine's Day Fundraiser. And a special thanks to Candice and Sheena for their help spreading the word and getting so many orders for us! You ladies rock!

My mom was also a rock star the last couple of days. Staying up well past midnight, taking off work early to pick up supplies, baking and preparing treats and also helping by making lots of deliveries. Mike and I couldn't have done this without her. I feel very lucky and thankful to have such a kind and generous mother.

Want to know how we did? Drum roll please....we made a GRAND TOTAL of $1,520!!! and still have a couple of orders to collect on...hehe! I'm so overwhelmed...can't believe all the support we've received thus far (you'd think I'd eventually realize that you all are the best!), but we're still in shock each time we have a fundraiser...even after 7 months.

Our new GRAND TOTAL in the BABY FUND is $8,020!!! WHAT? That's crazy! We're over 2/3 of the way to our goal! Yay!

Well, hate to cut this short...just wanted to give everyone an post fundraiser update and tell you where we are at now with IVF funds...oh and of course how much I love you guys! :)

Valentine's Day!

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner…and so is our next IVF Fundraising Event! We’ve nearly reached the half way mark towards our $11,650 goal with over $5,500 raised/saved thus far! Yay! Can you believe it’s been 6 months since we began this journey in August? Only 6 months to go! We can do this!

We will have several sweet treats for sale and are ready to start taking pre-orders! Deliveries of all treats will be made during the week of Valentine’s beginning on Monday, February, 11^th and continuing through the end of the week. If you need/want anything prior to that date please feel free to ask…we’d be happy to make arrangements.

Items will be packaged in Valentine's themed boxes, sold by the DOZEN and include the following:

$10-White Chocolate Covered (Regular &/or Golden) Oreo’s

$10-Milk Chocolate Covered (Regular &/or Golden) Oreo’s

$10-White Chocolate Covered Strawberries

$10-Milk Chocolate Covered Strawberries

$5-White Chocolate Covered Pretzels

$5-Milk Chocolate Covered Pretzels

$5-Cookies (Peanut Butter, Chocolate Chip or Oatmeal Raisin)

Mike and I appreciate all the love and support we’ve received thus far. We’ve come a long way in such a short period of time. I hope everyone is excited about Valentine’s Day and ready to spread the word about our next fundraiser! We love you all and can’t wait to start taking orders! J

Season With the Best Odds for IVF

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By ANN LUKITS

Infertile couples undergoing in vitro fertilization might have more success if the procedure is performed in the spring.

Research published in July's Gynecological Endocrinology found the rate of fertilization was significantly higher in spring than any other season, though time of year had no effect on pregnancy rates. Natural reproduction also varies with the seasons; it is believed the number of hours of sunlight in the day and temperature variations affect fertility.

When Good Circulation Isn't a Good Thing

Researchers compared seasonal fertilization rates in 1,932 women who underwent intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI, in Brazil from 2005 to 2009. ICSI involves the injection of a single sperm directly into an oocyte, or unfertilized egg, outside of a woman's body.

Subjects were organized into groups according to the timing of oocyte retrieval: 435 were assigned to winter, 444 to spring, 469 to summer and 584 to autumn. Fertilization, the fusion of sperm and egg to form an embryo, was assessed 18 hours after ICSI.

The rate of fertilization was 73.5% in spring, 68.7% in summer, 67.9% in winter and 69% in autumn. Ovarian response to ICSI hormone treatments, a measurement of estrogen concentration per number of retrieved oocytes, was higher in spring compared with other seasons, tests showed. Following fertilization, one to three embryos were transferred into the woman's uterus.

The procedure resulted in an average pregnancy rate of 33% for all seasons.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303644004577524824251585782.html

A little Infertility Humor...

I love Pinterest ...its one of those sites I forbid myself from visiting too frequently because I'll waste hours upon hours of my life browsing through pages, staring at the computer and laughing at pictures like these below. I couldn't resist the urge tonight so thought I'd post a few on here.  Hope you find some humor in them also....

http://pinterest.com/resolve/infertility-humor/

What Makes a Baby

While browsing the never ending internet for infertility related blogs, articles, forums, etc. (a common occurrence at our house) I ran across a wonderful website, http://booksfordonoroffspring.blogspot.com, featuring a wide variety of children's books as they relate to the various methods of conception and parenthood.

The traditional Father + Mother = Love = Baby Boy + Baby Girl type family is becoming less common as the future norm will be filled with IVF babies, sperm donor babies, egg donor babies, donor embryo babies  that are conceived in labs in petri dishes carried via surrogacy or through gestational carriers and raised by adoptive parents, infertile parents, gay parents, lesbian parents, single mothers, single fathers and co-parents.


I am very excited to have stumbled upon this site and thought it would make a great post to share with my friends and family. Others out there struggling with infertility or living in a non-traditional family know all the "baggage" that comes along with it...just one more added difficulty of something as simple as explaining where our (fingers crossed soon to be IVF) baby came from.

I've listed just a few of the books I found interesting based on the summary provided by the website or short video clips provided by the authors. I'll definitely want to buy a few of these...regardless of how we end up with our baby at the end of this journey.

http://www.what-makes-a-baby.com/



http://www.publishamerica.net/product43663.html



http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/147002991X/ref=ox_sc_act_image_1?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

It's that time again!

Cookie Mania begins.....

I can't wait to get started baking many more dozens of cookies again this month after several weeks off. Its been a whirlwind of a month...with much heartache and loads of stress. I hope that the next few weeks bring renewed excitement and loads of energy so that we can keep up with all of our planned fundraising events.

I can't believe we've been at this for nearly 3 months now! This is probably one of the only times in my life I will wish for time to continue to pass quickly by....I'm just sooooo EXCITED and ANXIOUS for spring to get here already! To date we are only $20 shy of $4,000!!! WOO HOO! Thanks to all our family and friends for their love and support.

I give a HOOT!

Trying to come up with ideas for decals/logos for tee shirts, bags, etc. for a future fundraising event. This is just one of my first ideas...simple, but cute! I'm definitely an amateur, and I contemplated having someone design a logo for us (and I still may), but I think designing it myself makes it seem a bit more personal. 

On the fundraising front we are up to $3,800!!! YAY! Almost a third of the way there! I'll try to update more about all of that in a few days. Talk to you all soon! :)