You’ve heard of a babymoon…I recommend those, but more importantly schedule and take an IVFmoon! If I can recommend anything to those of you about to embark on your IVF journey, please listen to this tip! Each of us has a different journey, and different ups and downs, but the one thing we can all agree on, is that its stressful and nerve wracking. Take the time for you and your spouse to get away, get outside the IVF bubble, disconnect, and enjoy each other for a few days! This is sort of your last hurrah before getting pregnant.

We waited a few weeks before our transfer to take our IVF-moon. My only request for our trip, was to be somewhere in the mountains. I needed the crisp air, the snow, and a picturesque view, and a hot tub, (this would be my last hot tub experience for quite some time, so might as well take advantage).

I packed for myself and my husband, which is no easy task. When my husband and I first moved in together 8 years prior to this trip, I thought I was being a wonderful girlfriend, by doing his laundry. Little did I know the engineer in him was not impressed with my laundering skills. He apparently had special settings on the washer; the button down shirts had to be buttoned all the way up; and when transferred to the dryer, they could only be dried on the lowest setting for precisely 20 minutes; then promptly hung up when the timer sound. I told him to do his own damn laundry. Nevertheless, I packed his bag for a three day weekend in the mountains.

Rick had planned the entire trip and I wasn’t sure where we our final destination would be, but he picked me up on Friday and we took off up I-70 towards the mountains. Rick pulled off in Vail, where I thought we were filling up with gas, but he pulled into the Sebastian Hotel, and I couldn’t have been more excited. The hotel was absolutely breathtaking, and we were supposed to get our first snow that weekend. The gentlemen who came to help us unload our car, were amazingly helpful. I will never forget the look on one of the gentlemen’s face when he took our basket of medication out of the car. There were needles, alcohol wipes, bottles of liquid and pills sticking out of the basket. The man looked at my husband and I with wide eyes, and my husband said, “be careful with that.”It was hysterical to see a stranger handling my medication. We headed up to our room, and realized we were upgraded to a suite! There were two master bedrooms, a kitchen, a beautiful balcony, and a living room with two champagne glasses and a bottle of Prosecco. It was perfect.

We walked through Vail Village for a bit, and grabbed a bite to eat in town. I was truly escaping all of the testing, injections, blood draws and emotional roller coaster we had been on for the last couple of months…and then our alarm went off, reminding us it was time to go back to our hotel room and take our Lupron injection. This would also be the start to our intramuscular Progesterone injection. For those of you not familiar with intramuscular injections, this means you are administering your medication deep into the muscle…which also means the needle goes deep into muscle. I brought my heating pad to help with my discomfort, turned it on, and got ready for the injection into my backside. Rick told me to take a deep breath, and then BAM he injected the needle. My muscle involuntarily flexed, which only made things worse. The medication was also like molasses, which meant you had to press hard to get the medication to come out of the needle, and it took a long time to inject. It felt like five full minutes, when in reality, it was around 20 seconds. My husband talked me through it and started a countdown routine to help me realize the end game. I decided I wasn’t going to end our first night on this note, so we went down to the hotel bar and ordered a drink. We talked for hours, and we were so connected with each other.

The next morning we had a massage scheduled, and I had to ask my therapist to stay completely away from my lower back, and my backside. I was in so much pain from the injection the night before. We later found out that we had inadvertently struck a nerve during the injection, which made the muscle knot up and caused severe pain. That hot tub really came in handy! We switched cheeks for the morning injection, After our massages, we ventured into town to shop, eat lunch and walk through the village. We began to realize that things started to appear to us in sets of two. We must have seen twins six times during our walk, pairs of dogs, sets of friends with two children each, and on and on. I turned to Rick and told him, “I think God is sending us a message right now!”

We enjoyed our time together, relaxed, and reconnected after so many months of focus. When the time finally came to check out and head back to reality, we loaded up the car and started the drive back down the mountain. The mountains had the first dusting of snow for the year, and the scenery looked like it was a Christmas card. We didn’t talk much on the way home. We were both in our thoughts about the adventure that was right around the corner for our little family. We were both content, completely in love with each other, and so ready to bring our babies home (in my belly that is).