I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while now, but I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it.
For some reason, I feel the pull to be completely open & honest with everyone about what’s been going on with me the past couple of weeks/months/years. But to be honest, I think I’m still processing it. A lot of the time, writing on this blog helps me to do just that: process. It helps me to organize my thoughts, and makes me assign & recognize my feelings about those thoughts. So I decided to just sit down, start typing, and see what comes out.
After a lot of contemplation, I’ve also decided to completely “come out” about our struggles with fertility in 2015. You may recall, a few months ago, I decided to “come out” on Instagram, but I wasn’t quite ready for my Facebook world to know everything. In the name of privacy, I’m sure you can understand where that comes from. But I’ve seen friend after friend drop hints, have vague statuses (that only IVFers would understand), and reach out on Facebook. All of them feeling alone in this. I’ve done my best to message them & reassure them that they are not alone. And I’ve actually become close to quite a few of those brave women.
But that got me thinking.
How many of my friends, or maybe even just acquaintances, are out there facing the world of fertility challenges or IVF who haven’t reached out?
This post is for them: YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
David and I have been trying to conceive for five long years now. And we’ve tried everything.
Infertility (IF) does not discriminate. Every color, nation, religion, political sect, & gender has it’s share of IF in it’s people. In fact, one in every eight couples faces it. One in EIGHT!
Let me just say up front– I don’t write this blog for sympathy or attention. Writing is a form of therapy for me. I share this blog with my family & friends to keep them updated, because talking out loud about it is still sometimes very difficult for me. And I’m now sharing it with the world to hopefully help other people cope with or understand what they or someone they are close to is going through. If this can become a resource or an outlet for someone else, then I know my struggles are not in vain. Every time I ask myself, “Why now?” The only answer I can come up with is, “Why not now?”
If this is the first time you’ve visited my blog, I invite you to get up to speed by visiting my “Quick ART Stats” page (ART= Assisted Reproductive Technology),or feel free to browse my past posts. (Warning: some of the posts aren’t about IF at all, they’re just things I thought were funny, but inappropriate for facebook lol)
I promised the rest of you an update.
So here goes:
The last time I updated you guys, I had just come off of cancelled cycle because we were having trouble getting my uterine lining prepped for an IVF Frozen Embryo Transfer (FRET). The minimum uterine lining measurement my doctor will work with for a FRET is an 8.0, but we kept getting 6s. For weeks & weeks I was on an extensive hormone and red raspberry tea capsule regimen tying to get my lining to grow. I finally got up to a 9.1, scheduled my FRET, went in for my final check-up, just to find out it had gone back down to a 7.5. So they cancelled that cycle. TOTAL BUMMER.
Six weeks of hormones down. the. toilet. Not to mention all the moola that went with it.
Anyway, once CD1 (cycle day 1, aka: my period) arrived, we were ready to start fresh.
Not as in “fresh IVF,” because we still had 5 frozen embryos, but “fresh” in the sense of starting over. A new day, a new dawn, a new cycle.
On CD14, I had my ultrasound & blood work, and we started a combo of meds for the books: Lupron shots in the stomach every day, Vivelle patches (worked up to 4, switching twice per week), Estrace inserts three times per day, Delestrogen shots in the hip twice per week, 2 red raspberry tea leaf capsules at every meal, and of course my morning pre-natal vitamins & my nightly baby aspirins. This protocol lasted two weeks. This was also about the time I realized (out of shear necessity, because David was at work) that I could give myself my own intramuscular hip shots.. Go me!! lol I’ve always done the stomach ones, but hips were a whole other story. I told David after I conquered that, that I felt like a bad-ass warrior princess. It’s true! Small victories can mean so much throughout this process.
Speaking of small victories, at my very FIRST lining check this round, my uterine lining was a 9.3!!!
Wait, WHAT!?! YES!! A NINE point freaking THREE! We were so pumped! All that time during the previous cycle just trying to reach an 8, and this round we had already blown that out of the water at the FIRST check. Pumped was not even the word. ELATED is more like it.
Of course, they always need that second number to compare to the first reading. So we went back three days later to check in on the lining, and it had increased to a 10.4. Perfect! As long as it didn’t decrease, we were in business. So that day, they took me off of the Lupron, and put me on daily Progesterone hip shots. (Note: I feel like I have to add that during this round, the hormones didn’t have NEARLY the emotional toll that they’ve had in the past. We were quite pleased with that). They like you to be on Progesterone for at least 5 days before a transfer, so they scheduled my FRET for December 9th. Can we say whirlwind?
The moment we scheduled for 12/9 I felt instant clarity on why my last cycle was cancelled. This was God’s way of setting us up for a Christmas miracle! Everything had gone so perfectly with this round. How could it not be?
Those next five days flew by so fast. We added the standard steroid & anti-biotic to my meds protocol. And all of a sudden, it was transfer day.
Have you ever been crazy-excited-nervous and incredibly calm at the same time? Talk about a surreal feeling.
While we were waiting for the procedure, my doctor came into the room for us to sign our final paperwork regarding the embryos. Going into this round, we had 5 embryos left. And we had signed the paperwork a couple of weeks beforehand stating that we’d like to thaw & transfer 2 of them this round. Welp, those two embryos didn’t survive the thawing process. So they had to thaw two more for us to transfer that day…hence, the paperwork. At first, I was really upset. But David & my doctor both helped soothe me by reminding me that we still had TWO embryos to transfer and one still frozen. Some couples aren’t that lucky even in a fresh IVF cycle. So once that was put into perspective, I felt much better. I think the Valium they gave me next had a little bit to do with it too.
The transfer went perfectly. Here’s a little pic I put together to kinda sum up the day:
Valium is conducive to duck-face apparently… lol
Anyway, my lining was around an 11, and the procedure went off without a hitch. We waited in our room for about 30 minutes, and then we were released to go home.
I was ordered three days of strict bed rest, two days of light bed rest, and then I could go back to “normal activity, but no strenuous exercise.” If you know me, you know that’s not “normal activity” for me…not exercising. I had gotten substitute teachers/angels to teach my classes while I was out. Meanwhile, I was going stir-crazy at home. But I was also relishing in the fact that I was PUPO! For you non-TTC peeps, that’s: Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise. It made me giddy just thinking about it!! I was PUPO! EEK!
The next few days draggggggged on & on. I was still on all my meds, so that kinda helped pass the time. But it’s very hard to find things to do when you’re not supposed to DO anything. No cleaning, no lifting/organizing, which meant NO Christmas decorating. I literally watched TV for almost 2 weeks. I can’t say I hated it though… I guess sometimes we all need a break. I felt so bad for my subs. I knew my clients were going to be asking them where I was eventually. And I could imagine them reenacting that scene from Dirty Dancing when the manager asks Johnny where Penny is, and he’s all like “She’s on a break! She NEEDS a break!” hahahaha I think I was getting delirious.
Finally, the day of the pregnancy test came. I must admit though, in the spirit of true honesty, I had gotten too anxious and did an EPT at home the day before. It was negative, so I went into the appointment with 24 hours of acceptance under my belt. I knew about (and believed in) the possibility of a false negative because it was so early. But I was also prepared mentally & emotionally just in case.
I took the blood test at 10am, and then we decided to go to a neutral place to get the news.
We’ve done it two other ways in the past:
1. We took the test, and headed home so we could be in the comfort of our home to get the news. Either way, however it went, we thought this would be nice. Wrong. There’s a specific spot on my sofa that I look at with disdain because that’s where I was sitting when we got the news that our last IVF had failed. Never again.
2. We waited out the hour at the office to get the results right then & there. I’ve seen other people do this, and they got to celebrate with the nurses & doctor; that looked so special. But, we of course, got bad news and had to wait an hour in a conference room afterwards (see previous posts for details) because the doctor wanted to talk to us about what happened.
Either way, we hated both of those experiences. So this time, we decided to go somewhere neutral. Somewhere nice, that would be a great spot to re-visit & tell our kids about if we got a BFP (big, fat positive). But also somewhere that we wouldn’t ever have to revisit, and we could just leave the news there if it was a BFN. So we decided on the beautiful Audubon Park. It was a gorgeous day, and the park is only about a 15 minute drive from the doctor’s office. So it was perfect.
We were able to spend the hour in peace. We watched some ducks and swans swim, we walked around the park a little bit, people watched. It was really lovely. We chatted about what we were going to do if it was a BFP, how we were going to tell our families…it is Christmas time after all, we could do something really fun with that. We also chatted about how to handle another BFN. God’s timing is perfect, and we just kept reminding ourselves of that fact.
And after about an hour & a half of waiting, the call finally came in.
I made David answer the phone because I was too nervous. He just kept nodding and saying, “Uh huh, ok….I understand… Ok…Uh huh…yes ma’am…” I was looking at him like “WHHHAAATT?!?!?!?!” And he did that thing with his hands where it’s not a thumbs up, or a thumbs down, it’s like a flat hand tilt, meaning “kinda.” He finally got off the phone, and I was begging him to just TALK already.
He said, “That was Mrs. Mary. And we’ve got a B….F….. M.”
“Wait. WHAT??!@#$%^&*(*&^%$#@?
What does that even mean? A big, fat, MAYBE?!”
In a nutshell (and being very basic), when doing a blood pregnancy test, they’d like to see your level (your “Beta”) at a 20 or above. And they’d like to see that number at least double every 2 days. In the past, all of our other betas were always a flat ZERO. Nothing. Nada. Ziltch.
But this time was different. This time it was a 9.5!! So yes, BFM it is! lol
But what do we do with that?
Well, Mary told David to be “cautiously optimistic,” because it could just mean that one or both of the embryos implanted late, which is why the Beta is lower. She said she has seen live, healthy births come from beta tests that were under 20. So they wanted to see me first thing Saturday morning (this past Saturday if you’re counting) to draw the 2nd beta to really see what’s going on.
More. waiting…
The agony of not knowing is the hardest part. But I was holding on to the fact that I was still PUPO, and that we didn’t get horrible news for the first time EVER!! So we celebrated! I excitedly & giddily cried for a little while. David couldn’t stop hugging me. We were just SO happy. A BFM…who would’ve ever imagined?
We ate at Superior Grill, finished up some Christmas shopping in the city, and then headed home.
Saturday soon came, and it was a dreary day. Rainy, cold, foggy, the works. We got up early and we were at the office by 7:45… talk about excited! We couldn’t go back to the park to get the news because it was so nasty outside, so we decided to go get beignets for breakfast, and then proceeded to roam around New Orleans for about two hours. I was getting worried because it was taking so long for them to get back to us, so I asked David to just drive to Audubon Park so we could at least be there again where we had gotten such fun news two days before. We stayed in the car, nervously waiting. It was Saturday, so we had no idea how long it would take to get the labs back.
Right when we were trying to decide if we should just head home or not, my phone then rang with a 504 number that I didn’t recognize. My stomach turned. I got out of the car (don’t know why), and I nervously answered. It was my doctor calling from his personal phone… The second beta was a 2.5.
He explained that the decreasing number meant that it was a bio-chemical pregnancy, the earliest form of miscarriage, and that the only reason we knew about it was because we had done IVF and tested so early. He was so sympathetic, and trying to comfort me. But I just wanted to hang up & disappear into David’s chest.
I wept.
Still processing.
One. Embryo. Left.
***
faithinfertile 