Fertilized in vitro 2009 Jan 25. These two embryos implanted in utero on 2009 Jan 31. The top one has begun hatching, which is a good sign, meaning the embryos shouldn't need help to hatch. (Yes, the doctors can do that.) Unfortunately this first IVF round didn't result in a pregnancy.
Fertilized in vitro 2009 March 16. These two embryos implanted in utero on 2009 March 21. BOTH of these are doing well! Their due date is Dec 7, but twins are usually born several weeks early, so I'm expecting them sometime in November.
2009 April 9: 5 "weeks pregnant" (ie, 3 weeks since fertilization), here we see two gestational sacs! The doctor, however, could only see one yolk sac, in the upper left one. He didn't think the other was going to make it, (it wouldn't without a yolk sac) but he said maybe he just couldn't get the right angle, and we'd wait and see.
2009 April 15: (one week later) Here we saw both babies doing well, and TWO heartbeats! Each embryo is about 4 mm long, and we were able to measure their heartbeats at 115-120 beats per minute. The ultrasound pic shows two "eyes" staring back at us. The larger dark circles are the sacs of fluid the embryos are developing in, and the white circles inside those are the embryos. The heartbeats looked like just a couple pixels of noise in a small location on each embryo; I could see them beating. The doctor was able to use the ultrasound computer to draw a line over where the heartbeat was and then plot out pixel value (color/darkness) per time and use that to measure how long the heartbeats were.
2009 April 29: (two weeks later) The babies now look like little crescents rather than little blobs. I can't quite tell which end is which, but the doctor could. Here they are about 1.8 cm long and have heartrates of about 160 and 180.
