Opening night

Greetings,





This is the debut of the Triple Play 2008 blog. My wife Jo Ann and I are expecting triplets; our 4o week due date is Jan. 18th and we would like to share the story of our incredible journey.



It all began over 2 years ago when we started trying to conceive. After several IUI's we were pretty certain that having children was not in the cards for us. Jo and I felt a great deal of sadness and began pursuing adoption because we wanted to be parents badly. But we found out this is long drawn out process that gave no guarantees of ever getting a baby. Also, I was getting to the point of not meeting an age requirement (over 40). So against all odds we decided to seek out the assistance of a well renowned fertility clinic here in Colorado. It was a chance we were willing to take, and quite frankly if we never tried, the question "what if ?" would have been something we'd be asking for a long time.



So we had a consultation with Dr. William Schoolcraft , a highly successful fertility specialist of CCRM (Colorado Center of Reproductive Medicine) . He discussed Jo's chances of getting pregnant in great detail, and they did not seem all that high compared to younger women. Jo was 39, and without hesitation, made the decision to jump right into the diagnosis phase of the IVF process. This also meant I would need to have a diagnosis from the male perspective. Well to make a long story short, there were no reasons why we could not conceive. We continued on, and started the cycle where Jo began taking all the shots and medications. She is a real trooper and never complained once about anything! We are now were at the point of retrieval where they were able to get 23 high quality eggs. Dr. Schoolcraft said Jo is a "World Class " egg producer! I always kid her of what it's like to be world class ! Dr. Schoolcraft the made a recommendation of implanting 4 based on her age and only a 3% chance of having 2 or more taking. That's a 97% chance of not taking, pretty long odds again. It turns out, the transfer date is Jo's 40th birthday 5/1/08. Jo and I felt so confident that this was going to work and we prayed to God and asked for his blessing. We would now have to wait until 5/11/08 (Mother's Day) to see if it worked.



Jo and I went to mass Mother's Day morning and when we returned home we were waiting for that all important phone call from Dr. Schoolcraft's nurse. Well the phone rang and Jo answered the call, I had a knot in my gut and was a bundle of nerves, she starting screaming ,"oh my God"! Oh, my God ! And started crying, they were tears of joy! At this point I began crying too! We embraced and balled together for several minutes. When it all set in , we realized that our dream of becoming parents was now a reality. An awesome feeling ! A joyful feeling! Of course there were many things that could go wrong and did not tell anyone other than our immediate family and closest friends. We would now have to wait until 5/22/08 to have our first ultrasound to see if there is a heart beat.



We both went to work on the morning of 5/22/08 and would have our ultrasound and blood tests at 3 pm. Then we'd be driving to Phoenix for a sales meeting my wife had would normally flown to, but under doctor's he said , "no air travel". So we were led into the ultrasound room and that all too familiar feeling of nervousness was ever present. The nurse/technician proceeded , Jo and I had our eyes glued to the flat panel monitor on the wall. The nurse said, "there's a one heart beat, and another , and oh my, three! Wait, I see a fourth sac, but there is no heartbeat. She congratulated us and sent us down the hall to meet with our nurse to discuss the road we would be taking with a "high risk multiple pregnancy". Jo and I were stunned to say the least, but nonetheless, very excited before we spoke with Cami our nurse. She informed us we would be meeting perinatologist from the OBSTETRIX high risk team. She also, gave us a rundown of all the complications that could occur during the next several months. There was also the option of reducing the pregnancy by one to increase our "odds" of not losing the entire pregnancy. This was all coming at us with the speed of light!



We proceeded with our planned trip to the Biltmore in Phoenix for Jo's sales meeting and had a nice opportunity to take it all in during the 12 hour drive. We started throwing names around and wondered if there would be all boys, all girls or a combo of both. We also decided that we would not even consider selective reduction , and put it in God's hands. So, we made all the calls to the families and close friends and let them know of the news. And to our delight, we could hear how excited everyone was and knew we would have their support for the weeks and months ahead.





So here we are in week 21 of Jo's pregnancy and we will be trying to make timely posts to the blog from here on out. And we know what we are having, 1 boy and two girls. William (Will) , Abigail (Abby) and Katherine (Katie) The Morris Triplets.