Happy Beginnings

It’s been over 2 years since my last post and for my one loyal reader and anyone else who might stumble on this space I wanted to provide you with a bit of closure.

We had a baby!

She was conceived via an FET with embryos that were genetically tested. We transferred 3 and 1 took. We had a very rocky first trimester with dropping betas and lots of bleeding. At our 20-week scan we found out that I had a rare condition called vasa previa which basically meant that her umbilical cord was inserted directly over my cervix…so the drama continued. I was admitted into the hospital at 30 weeks and after 3.5 weeks of hospitalized bed rest, at 33.5 weeks on 5/26/13, our little girl was born. She was a peanut at 3 lbs, 12 oz, but a fighter. A short 10-day stay in the NICU and we came home.

Through our 6+ years of infertility, heartache and struggle I used to say “I just want my happy ending.”

I now realize that what I was really asking was for my happy beginning…

So if you find yourself here looking for hope, please know that your happy beginning will come one day too. It might not be the way you always dreamed or without struggle or on the timeline you imagined, but you’ll find it. And when you do, it will bring you happiness like you never imagined.

22…

Egg retrieval was yesterday and we got 22! I said anything over 20 would make me happy so it was so nice to wake up from anesthesia and hear that number. It was the first question I asked when I came to..”how many” and his response made me smile.

We got word this morning that of the 22 harvested, 20 were mature and 18 successfully fertilized. This is excellent news and the best we could ask for. So now we wait to see how many make it to a Day 5 blastocyst, then they biopsy them.

So we have a few days to wait, but for now we’re off to celebrate our 18 babies in development.

Day 12 – Ready to go

I had an appointment yesterday morning and while the follicles had progressed, they were falling short of the size we were looking for to indicate maturity. So I heard the familiar words from the doctor: “one  more day” and went on my way. Another set of shots last night and I was back at the doctors this morning. The good news is that we were ready. Most of my follicles were measuring mature and my E2 blood work was up to 3,700. (For reference in IVF #2 I was at 2,700 and IVF #1 2,527). This increase over the last cycles indicate that we likely will collect more mature eggs. The general estimate is 150-200 E2 per mature egg so we should get between 18-25 mature eggs on Thursday. I’d be happy with anything over 20, so fingers crossed.

So exactly 4 minutes ago at 9:00 pm on the nose I got my final shot of this cycle bringing me to a total of 30 shots over the past 12 days. Now everything is in place for my egg retrieval which will be timed at exactly 35 hours from now at 8 am on Thursday.

I’m ready to do this for the final time…

Day 10…

I had every intention of blogging throughout this cycle, but my plans to be relaxed and my scheduling of distractions got the best of me. I am on Day 10 of the cycle and honestly, time has flown by. In past cycles I’d obsess over my blood work results, spend hours upon hours researching IVF, my meds, follicle sizes, etc. on the web. But not this time. This time is so different. Maybe it is because I’ve walked this road before…2x to be exact. Or that I’m in a different place mentally. Or some combination of both.

The Olympics have been a wonderful distraction. As was the fun trip to Vegas last weekend with friends. Got another vacation planned in a week’s time. The cycle has been the last thing on my mind over the past 10 days. The bruises on my belly are a good reminder, as is the alarm set every night at 7 pm for my shots. But besides those brief reminders, I’ve uncharacteristically not thought about it all too much.  I’ve tried every other trick in the book, so perhaps this new and improved ‘relax and have fun’ approach will be a success. I guess time will tell.

But, I wanted to stop by and record a few of our stats. Because I’ve found that these little details are easy to forget and I’ve appreciated having the cycles of the past to look back on. So here is the update. We’re currently 10 days into medication. Our routine has been 300 units of follistim and 20 units of min-HCG nightly since a week ago Friday. We added in a dosage of Cetrotide in the mornings 3 days ago to prevent ovulation on my own. So far things are looking pretty good. My right ovary is quite the champ and it looks like there are about 15ish eggs in development. My left ovary is being a bit lame. It looks like just 5-7 developing there. But the doctor thinks this is a blessing in disguise…if both ovaries were going gangbusters I’d be pretty miserable right now and we’d have hyperstimultion concerns to contend with. We’re gearing up for our egg retrieval in 3-4 days…likely Wednesday or Thursday. Dr. Marshall thinks we’ll get 20ish eggs. Looking back we got 16 last time, 13 of which were mature and 11 fertilized.

While 20-25 is a big number, I know there are a ton of steps once they are retrieved where we’ll see drop off so I’m hoping for a good number to start. Just to recap here are the all the steps between where we are now and where we want to be: healthy, genetically sound embryos for transfer:

– Retrieved

– Mature

– Fertilized

– Day 3 survivors

– Day 5 survivors

– Day 6 biopsy survivors

– Genetic testing survivors

Anyway, I found myself getting a worked up about the numbers after our appt on Saturday, and then I took a deep breath and reminded myself…this is all out of my hands. Can’t control it so, stop worrying about it. Usually that little pep talk doesn’t work for me, but for some reason, this time it did.

Appt tomorrow to check progress. Then we’ll hear if we’re triggering on Monday or Tuesday night which would set our retrieval date. My biggest concern now is being out of the office for yet another appt tomorrow and missing a day of work this week for the surgery. My privacy is very important to me, but I really hate lying to the office about my whereabouts…

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…

The Result

I wish I had better news to share… We got our beta blood result yesterday and it was 15. While this indicates an implantation took place, this number also indicates a unsucessful pregnancy. We were shocked. We had every reason to believe it would work. The odds were in our favor at 70%. Seriously, how could we have 70% odds and still come up with a failure? We’re confused, shocked and so very sad. With each failure I lose more and more hope that this dream will happen for us. I am so heartbroken.

I know in my heart I did everything I could. I ate the right things. I gave up the wrong things. I did my yoga.  I did the meditation. I took every shot on time. I took every pill I was suppose to. I relaxed and I accepted it was out of my control. I guess the powers that be didn’t think it was time for me to be a mother.

It was really the picture perfect cycle with everything except the perfect result.

I’m not sure where we’ll go from here. For now, I am back in survival mode. Getting out of bed, getting dressed, trying not to let the wells of tears break the barriers of my eye lids throughout the day.

My heart hurts and my disappointment is overwhelming.

Tomorrow is beta day

This time tomorrow we well know the outcome of this cycle. To say were anxious is an understatement.

The Transfer

Great news! The transfer procedure went very well! Embryologist spent 15 minutes with us raving about the two perfect blastocyst she selected as clear front runners. My favorite doctor did the procedure and everyone was so great to us. Our future babies entered my belly in such a great environment.

I spent the next 48 hours resting and we got the great news yesterday we had 5 left to freeze! I hope well never need those extras but that security blanket is wonderful to have.

Cycle went as well as we could have hoped. Now we just need the perfect outcome. T-1 week!

Updated Embryo Report

We spoke to the clinic yesterday and of our 11 fertilized eggs, all were still progressing. 5 of them were at 8 cells, which is exactly where they should be at 3 days post fertilization. The other 6 were still progressing, but were somewhere between 4-9 cells. We’re confirmed for our transfer tomorrow, Monday, and will get our final report at that time. Our goal will be to have a minimum of 2 blastocysts for our transfer, but ideally a few more that we could freeze as well.

I’m feeling much better physically since the egg retrieval surgery on Wednesday and am ready to get our embryos in my belly.

Fingers crossed for a great lab report, healthy, good quality embryos and a smooth and safe transfer tomorrow afternoon.