Preparation

I head into our 3rd fresh IVF cycle as a seasoned pro. Got my medication request a few days ago and immediately called the nurse to ask some questions. Do I really need estrogen, we’re not doing a transfer? Why progesterone for stimulation? Why are we using mini-HCG instead of Menopur?  I now know enough about this process to understand the use for each drug and ask the right questions. And in the case of the example questions I shared above, my knowledge is what saved me from ordering a few meds that were on the list that I do not need. If knowledge is power, I’m feeling pretty powerful these days.  The Dr may be driving the bus,  but I’m sitting shotgun with my eyes also on the road.

Another preparation item we took care of a few weeks ago was a Hysteroscopy which is the inspection of the uterine cavity by endoscopy with access through the cervix. They put you under, you’re out for about 30 minutes. The actual procedure isn’t painful (thanks to the drugs), but I found the recovery this go around to be quite difficult. 9 lbs of water weight in 24 hours made for some serious bloat and discomfort. While I had a similar procedure completed at the beginning of our fertility treatments a few years ago, we wanted to double check that my uterus was structurally sound and that we weren’t overlooking anything obvious that could have attributed to our failures. While the Dr didn’t find anything major, she did see a bit of scar tissue that she cleaned up and removed. What we don’t know is the effect of this scar tissue on our outcomes of the past or if the removal of this tissue will have any affect on our successes in the future. I don’t think we’ll ever know without trying with a transfer again and giving my little uterus another shot. Whether or not we do this is still TBD based on the number of genetically sound eggs we’re able to generate.

As much as I say I’ve given up on carrying our child, there is a little voice inside of me that isn’t quite ready to quit. I realize given our history it is a serious gamble and likely to be a waste of our money and our time, but I’m having a difficult time letting go of this dream. The dream of me with a big fat belly and a baby onboard. Fingers crossed that will happen…one day soon.

A Year Later

Holy sh*t! I cannot believe its been almost a full year since my last posting and it is even harder to believe we’re almost in the exact same position 346 days later. No pregnancy.  No baby. No end in sight…

In some ways a lot has happened in the last year…time off, several more IUIs, adoption research, surrogacy research…but in other ways it also seems like nothing has happened at all. This seemingly lack of progress frustrates me beyond belief. I’ve watched the miracle of life happen all around me, but like a kid peeking through a window, I’ve only been an observer. It’s been hard.  But over the past year, I’ve also been working with a therapist to better deal with my grief and accept the cards that we’ve been dealt. It hasn’t been an easy year and I know the road ahead will continue to challenge me, but I am forging ahead because I want have to.  I don’t feel like I have a choice. My confidence may have wavered, but for the past 4 years my heart has been locked and focused on the same goal. A baby. A family.

I decided to come back to this space to document the next phase of our journey. Why? Well, I’m hopeful that this will be the last phase and therefore I want to record it and remember it. I’m hopeful that this will be the final chapter in our story to our family and therefore its a chapter I’m excited to write. But, brace yourselves…its likely to be a long chapter as there is a lot more ahead of us.

So where are we now? Well, in summary we are heading into our 3 (and final) IVF where our goal is to generate as many eggs as we can for genetic testing. The current hypothesis by us and our Dr is that our problem up until this point has been implantation failure due to problems with me and/or my uterus. So the theory is that the embryos we produce are genetically sound. However, we don’t know this for sure. So by proceeding with IVF and genetic testing our hope is that we’ll get the information we need to confirm or dismiss this hypothesis. This testing will give us the information we need to proceed:

A) if embryos test well, then we can assume that the other embryos we’ve transferred (9 to-date) were also good, meaning it has been my uterus that is the problem

B) if the embryos don’t test well, then we’ll assume that genetic problems have been our hang up in the past, explaining our past failures and informing our future

Either way, we should have the information we need to move forward and we’re hopeful that this testing will provide answers to our outstanding questions and help with the grief we’ve dealt with over the past four years. What comes after IVF? We don’t know until we get the results. That part of the story is yet to be determined….

Stick around, I plan to do a few more post about things swimming around my head and also plan to document our IVF journey starting on the 26th if all goes well…