IRA Contribution

I submitted my tax return and included a year end IRA contribution amount for both me and wife.  The refund was for $3,079 and instead we just got our refund for about $1800.  When I take the IRA contributions out of my tax return the refund drops below the $1800+ refund we received?  How can I check to see if the IRS ever received the confirmation of the IRA contributions at their end after we made the deposits into our IRA accounts????