Suprise, its Rhinephant!!!

We've been thrown a curve ball, we found out that I am 8 1/2 weeks pregnant. I know you are thinking, you wanted more children, why is this pregnancy such a surprise? I thought telling you our story may help you understand.

(The picture to the left is a picture of an 8 week old fetus, however, it is not our 8 week old fetus) Oh, you may wonder where Rhinephant came from --
Charlie insists that if the baby is a girl, it's name is Rhino, a boy should be named Elephant, so we call the baby Rhinephant.

Here is our story--
I have a condition called hyperprolactinemia, which is caused by a microprolactinoma on my pituitary gland. This is a tiny tumor like growth that causes my pituitary gland to produce an excess amount of the hormone prolactin. Too much prolactin and your body doesn't ovulate, causing infertility.

I took a drug called bromocriptine off and on for 15 years, with no luck in regulating the prolactin levels effectively. In December of 2003 I changed endocrinologists, my new doctor changed my medication to a drug called cabergoline. In May of 2004 I had a miscarriage, while this was hard on us, at least we knew this drug was working.


Also in May, our friend Joyce went to Israel and placed a prayer for a baby for us in the Temple Wall in Jerusalem.


Between the new meds and Divine intervention (it wasn't until we started trying for number two that I realized how big God's part was) I became pregnant with Charlie and gave birth to him on March 27, 2005 Easter Sunday.

I nursed Charlie for a year, once he turned a year old, I weaned him and went back on cabergoline, expecting to get pregnant in a few months. However, this time the meds weren't working. I wasn't ovulating like I was suppose to, so we visited with a reproductive endocrinologist. He upped my dosage of cabergoline and put me on Clomid. Three months latter I was pregnant, only to loose the baby several weeks later. After two miscarriages, I wasn't sure I wanted to try again. Since it took us so long to conceive Charlie, we had already planned to adopt. We had just hoped to have two biological kids before adopting one or two children. After weeks of heart wrenching discussion, we decided to give Clomid one more try before adopting. But we did not want to do anything more invasive then that. After two more Clomid cycles with no pregnancy, we did a third cycle that was monitored. That is when you have ultrasounds and blood work done to help pinpoint when you ovulate. At the Feb 14th ultrasound, we were told that Clomid wasn't working. We had been researching adoption agencies and countries. We felt had we clear signs that we were to adopt our next child. After meeting with the doctor on Feb 18th, we were positive that we were not going to go any further with medical treatment. We started the adoption process immediately. We knew we wanted to use Holt International and felt drawn to Thailand as the birth country of our next child. I had stopped taking all of my meds including cabergoline, this should have caused my prolactin level to sky rocket and eliminate any possibility of getting pregnant.


At some point in the next two weeks, we conceived our baby. Even my doctors don't believe the meds had anything to do with the baby and are surprised that it happened.

So here we are, expecting a baby November 24th. Our adoption agencies required that we become inactive until the baby is born. At that point we will reactivate our application and go forward with adopting a third child. This just gives us another year to find the $25,000 we need to adopt. We will be trying several different fund raisers over the next year, so be on the look out for ways you can help.

I am doing well, I am exhausted, my tummy is a little upset and I have horrible headaches. My NP has suggested I try Gatorade, caffeine and Tylenol for the headaches. But if anyone has natural remedies, I would love to hear them!!!

Charlie is sure he is having a baby brother, while Doug is hoping for a little girl. My parents were in Israel the last two weeks, a prayer for this baby and our future children was placed in the Temple Wall.